Theatre
Nathan the Wise
Nathan der Weise
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing · 1779
Opening lines
Daja
Er ist es! Nathan!—Gott sei ewig Dank,
Daß Ihr doch endlich einmal wiederkommt.
It is he! Nathan! God be thanked for ever
That you have come back at last.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In Jerusalem, during a truce in the Third Crusade, the Jewish merchant Nathan learns on returning from a journey that his adopted daughter, Recha, has been saved from a fire by a young Templar, himself pardoned by the Sultan Saladin because he resembled a vanished brother. Short of money, Saladin sends for Nathan and asks him which is the true religion; Nathan replies with the parable of the three rings. The Templar, in love with Recha, learns that she was born to Christian parents and confides in the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Context
A theological quarrel with Pastor Goeze, arising from his publication of fragments by a deist author, earned Lessing a partial ban on publishing; he then took his ideas to the theatre. He made Nathan a tribute to his friend Moses Mendelssohn, and took up the parable of the rings from a medieval tradition known through Boccaccio. The play, in blank verse, was only staged in 1783 in Berlin, two years after his death. Banned under Nazism, it returned after 1945 to the stage and to school curricula.
Who it is for
Five acts in verse; the parable that Nathan tells in the third act can also be read on its own.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a major Enlightenment plea for religious tolerance, and as a classic of school reading in Germany.