The successive scenes are, indeed, without organic connection, but each scene by itself has the vivacity and directness of improvisation.

Nor do the anachronisms to which criticism may object really mar the interest of the work.

Rather they constitute its most characteristic elements, proceeding as they do from the poet's own deepest intellectual interests, and, therefore, from his most spontaneous inspiration.
But the most conclusive testimony to the essential power of the play is the effect it produced not only in German but in European literature.

Its publication in its altered form in 1773 had the effect of a bomb on the literary public of Germany.

It sent a shudder of horror through the sticklers for the rules of the classical drama which it ignored with such contemptuous indifference; a shudder of delight through the band of effervescing youths who shared Goethe's revolutionary ideals, and to whom _Goetz_ was a manifesto and a challenge to all traditional conventions in literature and life.