REVOLUTION OF THE STAGE 1700–1850

Goethe – The director as visionary

Night has fallen in Weimar, early August 1831. In the study of an old baroque house on the Frauenplan, an aged Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sits at his mahogany desk, quill in hand, the glow of a solitary oil lamp casting his long shadow on walls lined with books and curiosities. He is eighty-one years old, his once auburn hair now snowy white, but his eyes still gleam with intellectual fire. Before him lies a manuscript he has tended for nearly six decades – the second part of Faust, the magnum opus of his life. The summer air is warm and still; through an open window drifts the scent of the garden’s roses and the faint chirr of crickets. Goethe dips his quill, steadying a slight tremor in his fingers, and writes the final lines in a firm, flowing script:

“All t ...