6 Nearly every essay or chapter on Der Groß-Cophta refers to it as an aesthetic failure.
6 Nearly every essay or chapter on Der Groß-Cophta refers to it as an aesthetic failure. Its deficient status assumes programmatic importance in Fritz Martini, “Goethes ‘verfehlte’ Lustspiele: “Die Mitschuldigen” und “Der Gross-Cophta.” Lustspiele und das Lustspiel (Stuttgart: Klett, 1974), 105–49. Martini argues not only that Goethe’s ‘aesthetic organization’ of the comedy was faulty, but also that comedy as a genre was inadequate to the ‘social and moral reality’ of the time.