Nathan the Wise

Name: Nathan the Wise
Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Enlightenment play exploring religious tolerance and coexistence among different faiths

Find on Amazon

About the author

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The founder of German classical drama, Lessing established a bourgeois realist theater in opposition to French neoclassical models. His criticism in Hamburg Dramaturgy was as influential as his plays. He championed religious tolerance and Enlightenment reason in works that still resonate.

More by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Miss Sara SampsonSentimental tragedy about a virtuous woman seduced and abandoned by a nobleman
Minna von BarnhelmComedy about reconciliation between a soldier and his fiancée after misunderstandings
Emilia GalottiTragedy portraying a woman's destruction through tyrannical male authority
LaokoonAesthetic treatise on the boundaries and relationship between painting and poetry