Götz von Berlichingen is a 1773 play written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
It is a (un)historical drama about the eponymous recalcitrant Franconian knight, mercenary and poet Götz von Berlichingen.
Tropes in the drama:
- Artificial Limbs: Götz's 'Iron Hand'.
- Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Most editions of the drama don't actually print its most famous line, featuring only a cryptic censoring hyphen in its place.
- Cluster F-Bomb: "Kiss my ass" seems tame by modern standards, but in Goethe's day it was a calculated audience shock.
- Driven to Suicide: Franz, Weislingen's squire, defenestrates himself from a castle window when overcome with remorse for poisoning his master.
- Famed In-Story: Götz is already widely known for his daring and fighting prowess by the beginning of the drama.
- Handicapped Badass: Götz, as well as Sickingen, his ally and, later, brother-in-law who only has one leg.
- Have a Gay Old Time: Adelheid calls Franz "warmer Junge" (=warm boy; nowadays people would wonder whether she called him gay).
- Historical Hero Upgrade: Goethe's Götz is much more noble-minded than anybody could honestly believe of the real Götz, who was (however he may have sugarcoated it in his own memoir) ultimately a self-serving robber baron and mercenary with shifting allegiances.
- Honor Before Reason: A prominent motif; Götz just cannot part from his ways or swallow his pride to submit to the "new era".
- Meaningful Name: Metzler (reminds of Metzger/metzeln [butcher / to butcher]), Kohl (cabbage), Wild; also, the government bureaucrat Stumpf (dull).
- My God, What Have I Done?: Franz, after poisoning his master on Adelheid's instigation, confesses, then jumps to his death from a castle window.
- The Vamp: Adelheid, who perfidiously manipulates and corrupts Weislingen, and in the end inveigles his squire Franz (after seducing him) to poison his master.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The play deviates from history somewhat egregiously. Most obviously, Goethe's Götz tragically dies an early death as a middle-aged man while the real Götz lived to a (for the time, especially for a soldier and an amputee) biblical age of more than 80.
