ABSTRACT
The first three plays of Schiller are full of protest against his age, and of the bitterness of a disappointed optimist. His favourite Shakespearian play at this time was Timon of Athens. In Don Karlos authors see what he holds to be good and worth striving for, his fine humanity as well as his desire to be free from the shackles of the past. In the same year as Don Karlos, 1787, there appeared also, in verse, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, which had been completed in prose and acted in 1779. Torquato Tasso is obviously closely linked with Iphigenie both in form and content but, though it is much concerned with the world within the mind, as a study of a poet's inner life was bound to be, it reminds that practical activity with one's fellow-men and the qualities of character it demands had by now their own importance for Goethe too.
