He had not yet, however, brought his powers under strict control. Many conflicting ideas struggled in his mind for mastery, and his moods varied from day to day, one giving way to another without any apparent reason and with startling rapidity. Goethe’s nature was too complicated, touched to too many fine issues, to attain suddenly, or soon, to inward repose. Two complete prose dramas were written in Frankfort after he finished “Werther”--“Clavigo” and “Stella.” “Clavigo” is a dramatic rendering of incidents recorded in the “Memoirs” of Beaumarchais. These “Memoirs” appeared in Paris in the spring of 1774, and in the summer of the same year Goethe’s play was published. In imaginative energy, and in range and depth of feeling, “Clavigo” is far inferior to “Goetz,” but it displays a striking advance in the power of construction. The formerly despised unities are here observed, and the interest, such as it is, steadily grows until it culminates in the catastrophe. The chief defect of the play is that Clavigo, on whose action everything depends, is too feeble a character to excite much interest. His cynical friend, Don Carlos, has, however, marked individuality, and the part played by him is still found by German actors to repay careful study. Maria, the heroine, dies of a broken heart, and in describing Clavigo’s desertion of her, as in describing Weislingen’s desertion of the Maria of “Goetz,” Goethe did a kind of penance for his treatment of Frederika Brion. “Stella,” which was written in 1775, seems to have been suggested by Swift’s relations to Stella and Vanessa. In this play also Goethe respects the unities, and much technical skill is shown in the development of the story. The play in its original form, however, could not now be acted without exciting ridicule. The hero, Ferdinand, having married Cecilia, whom he loves, feels after a while that his freedom is unduly limited by a wife and daughter; and accordingly he leaves them. Then he falls in love with Stella, but her also he ultimately deserts. When the play opens, he has returned in the hope of being re-united to Stella. He finds her, but at the same time finds his wife and daughter, the latter having become Stella’s companion. There is now a vehement conflict of motives. Which of the two women shall he select? Cecilia suggests that it may be possible for him to live with both, and this solution, with Stella’s hearty consent, he joyfully accepts. Such was the passion for “nature” at the time that the public do not seem to have been in any way offended or perplexed by this strange conclusion; but thirty years afterwards Goethe changed the last act, bringing the play to an end with the suicide of Ferdinand and Stella. A tragic issue, however, could not be made to appear the natural result of conditions which were in the first instance planned for a wholly different scheme.