Clavigo (play)

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Clavigo is a five-act tragedy written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1774. The lead role is taken by Pierre Beaumarchais. The play was written in just eight days in May 1774. It was published by July 1774 and is the first printed work to which Goethe put his own name, although the play was received with disfavour.

An act is a body part theatre work, including a play, film, opera, and musical theatre. The term can either refer to a conscious division placed within a work by a playwright or a unit of analysis for dividing a dramatic work into sequences. The former use of the term may or may not align with the latter. The word act can also be used for major sections of other entertainment, such as variety shows, television programs, music hall performances, and cabaret.

Tragedy form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences

Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 18th/19th-century German writer, artist, and politician

Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe was a German writer and statesman. His works include four novels; epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. In addition, there are numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly 3,000 drawings by him extant.

The first performance of the play was by the Ackermannschen Gesellschaft in Hamburg on 23 August 1774.

Konrad Ernst Ackermann was a German actor.

Hamburg City in Germany

Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany with a population of over 1.8 million.

It is based on the offer of marriage that the Canarian writer José Clavijo y Fajardo made to the sister of Beaumarchais.

José Clavijo y Fajardo, was a Spanish publicist.

Pierre Beaumarchais French playwright diplomat and polymath

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French polymath. At various times in his life, he was a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary.

During the 1970s, Clavigo was adapted as a TV movie.

Clavigo is a 1970s television movie directed by Marcel Ophüls, based on the play Clavigo by Goethe. The movie is the film version of a play staged and directed by Fritz Kortner. This play premiered 1969 im Deutschen Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, Germany. It was first acclaimed at the Berliner Theatertreffen 1970.


This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:  Wood, James, ed. (1907). "article name needed". The Nuttall Encyclopædia . London and New York: Frederick Warne. 

The public domain consists of all the creative works to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable.

The Reverend James Wood was a Scottish editor and Free Church minister. He was born in Leith and studied at the University of Edinburgh, living most of his life in Edinburgh. His admiration for Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin may have contributed to his failure to secure a ministry. Instead he earned a living as a writer. He translated Auguste Barth's Religions of India and edited Nuttall's Standard Dictionary, The Nuttall Encyclopaedia, Warne's Dictionary of Quotations, Bagster & Sons' Helps to the Bible, and a Carlyle School Reader. In 1881 he published anonymously The Strait Gate, and Other Discourses, with a Lecture on Thomas Carlyle, by a Scotch Preacher. He is described by P. J. E. Wilson as " that most conscientious of pedants".

The Nuttall Encyclopædia: Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge is a late 19th-century encyclopedia, edited by Rev. James Wood, first published in London in 1900 by Frederick Warne & Co Ltd.

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