The contributors to this volume treat fourteen plays of key significance in the history of German literature and show the way in which each dramatist has engaged with important social and theatrical issues of the age. Essays range from that on Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (a key text in the history of ‘tolerance’ in Germany) to Jelinek’s Krankheit oder moderne Frauen (a critique of theatrical representation, gender roles and the authority of the text), that is, from German classicism to the contemporary avant-garde. Each major movement in German literary history is represented, and the volume as a whole thus provides a partial history of German drama. The essays, all by specialists in the field, were originally delivered as lectures in the University of Cambridge.