It is as a tale, a narrative, and not as a drama, that it is to be read if it is to be enjoyed without the sense of artistic failure.

The anachronisms with which the piece abounds, and which Hegel caustically noted, have been a further stumbling-block to the critics.[106] In the second scene of the first Act, Luther is introduced for no other purpose than to expound ideas which come strangely from his mouth, but which were effervescing in the minds of Goethe and his contemporaries--the ideas which they had learned from Rousseau regarding the excellence of the natural man.

Similarly, in the scene following, educational problems are discussed which sound oddly in the castle of a mediaeval baron, but which were awakening interest in Goethe's own day.

In the supreme moments of his career--on the occasion of the surrender of his castle and in his last hour--Gottfried is made to utter the word _freedom_ as the watchword of his aspirations, but in so doing he is expressing Goethe's own passionate protest against the conventions of his age in religion, in philosophy, and art, and not a sentiment in keeping with the class of which he is a type.
[Footnote 106: Lessing strongly disapproved of _Goetz_ as flouting the doctrines laid down in his _Dramaturgie_.

When his brother announced to him that _Goetz_ had been played with great applause in Berlin, his cold comment was that no doubt the chief credit was due to the decorator.] These blemishes in the play as a work of art are apparent, yet it may be said that it was mainly owing to these very blemishes that the "beautiful monster," as Wieland called it, took contemporaries by storm and retains its freshness of interest after the lapse of a century and a half.