[GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832)]. Neueröfnetes moralisch-politisches Puppenspiel. Leipzig and Frankfurt: [Weygand], 1774.

Rare first edition of this very early satirical work published for the Leipzig autumn fair of 1774, like Werther, when Goethe was 25 years old. It is a carnivalesque extravaganza for which Goethe revives the medieval Germanic verse meter of Knittelvers, where consecutive lines rhyme in pairs (AABB) and each line has four stresses. The collection includes a dramatic poem, Des Künstlers Erdewallen, and two Shrovetide carnival pantomimes, Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern and Ein Fastnachtsspiel vom Pater Brey. Leaf c5r in the Jahrmarktsfest shows the ten-verse omission determined by the censorship – a gap which would only be filled in 1789. The plot, in true pantomime style, has been thus rendered: ‘In a fairground setting a vivid and satirical kaleidoscope of figures, quacks, gypsies, peasants, pedlars from Nuremberg and the Tyrol, an Italian barrel-organist, and one or two more characters from the refined classes, all conversing in a lively rhyming farrago, form an audience for a play within the play: the biblical folk-story of Queen Esther and the villainous Haman’ (N. Boyle). A second edition appeared in the same year, with a different title woodcut vignette. Hagen 77.

Octavo (170 x 99mm). Woodcut title vignette (b1 reinforced at gutter, occasional light spotting.) Uncut in the original drab wrappers (some repairs to spine); in a card slipcase. Provenance: Kruger (contemporary inscription to title).

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