Although the following analysis has little overlap with Borchmeyer’s chapter on Der Groß-Cophta, I enthusiastically agree with the claims that critics have failed to appreciate the play’s literary qualities and that Goethe’s etiology of the revolution focuses on courtly corruption.
9 I have learned much from Dieter Borchmeyer, Höfische Gesellschaft und französische Revolution bei Goethe: Adliges und bürgerliches Wertsystem im Urteil der Weimarer Klassik (Kronberg: Athenäum, 1977). Although the following analysis has little overlap with Borchmeyer’s chapter on Der Groß-Cophta, I enthusiastically agree with the claims that critics have failed to appreciate the play’s literary qualities and that Goethe’s etiology of the revolution focuses on courtly corruption.