SOURCE: Brown, M. A. L. “Lenz's Hofmeister and the Drama of Storm and Stress.” In Periods in German Literature: Volume II: Texts and Contexts, edited by J. M. Ritchie, pp. 67-84. London: Oswald Wolff, 1969.

In the following essay, Brown explains what makes Der Hofmeister a classic Sturm und Drang drama.

The choice of a drama to represent the Storm and Stress in a work of this kind is not surprising. Despite the undoubted affinity which existed between the Storm and Stress conception of creative genius and the poetic form of the lyric, an affinity reflected in the finest poems written by Goethe between 1770 and 1775, drama was the most popular mode of literary expression with this generation of young writers. It was the field, as they saw it, on which their revolutionary battles could be best fought and won. It enabled them, in the words of one critic, to...