Clavigo

   by Johann Wolfgang Goethe

   Premiered 1774. Goethe based this revenge tragedy on an episode from the memoirs of French playwright Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), detailing the seduction and betrayal of his sister at the hands of a Spanish scoundrel named Clavijo. In Goethe's play, Clavigo indeed seduces and abandons Marie Beaumarchais and then departs for Madrid. There Beaumarchais finds him and forces him to write a letter of reconciliation to his sister. Clavigo, led astray by his companion Carlos, subsequently abandons Marie again, and she dies of shock. Beaumarchais then kills Clavigo.

   Many critics condemned the play as an overdone sketch; when Beaumarchais saw himself portrayed on the stage in a 1779 Augsburg production, he said the play had incidents absent in the original event, revealing Goethe's "empty-headedness" and paucity of talent. Clavigo was nevertheless enormously popular with audiences throughout Germany, largely because of its perceived contemporaneousness.