Christian Felix Weiße was probably the most popular writer of the German Enlightenment. His prodigious output of successful tragedies, comedies, operetta librettos, poetry, and children's literature; his editorship of the most widely read literary journal of his day; and his friendships with almost every important writer of the time put him at the center of German literary life, especially in the 1760s and 1770s. Today he is largely forgotten, a victim of both the ease with which he wrote and the historical developments that passed him by. Concerning Weiße's facility with the pen, Moses Mendelssohn echoed a common judgment when he wrote to him, "Sie scheinen mir mit gar zu großer Leichtigkeit zu dichten. Boileau hat den Racine gelehrt, sich die Verse sauer werden zu lassen. Ich wünsche Ihnen einen Boileau" (You seem to me to write with much too...