DER STERBENDE CATO

(The Dying Cato) byJohann Christoph Gottsched.

Premiered 1732. Gottsched based this verse tragedy on subject matter French neoclassical playwrights had tried to develop, as part of his efforts to reform German theater along neoclassical lines. The play's principal virtue is Gottsched's attempt to write Alexandrine verse in German. Its title character (Marcus Porcius Cato, known to history as Cato the Younger) has sought refuge in Utica, North Africa, during the civil war between the forces of Caesar and Pompey. Cato refuses the conciliatory efforts of Caesar, preferring suicide to what he realizes will be a dictatorship in Rome. The final act features Cato's lengthy deliberations on God and eternity, culminating in his realization that the way to freedom, in his case, lies only through self-inflicted death.