house under cover of night, as had been arranged with Carlos, Clavigo passes the Guilberts' door, where he sees three mourners standing with torches in their hands. On inquiry he learns that Marie Beaumarchais is dead; and presently the body is brought forth attended by Guilbert, Don Buenco, and Beaumarchais. Then ensues a passionate scene in which Beaumarchais slays Clavigo, and the Act closes with expressions of tenderness and compunction on the part of all the chief persons concerned. In a letter to a friend[168] Goethe explained that in writing _Clavigo_ he had blended the character and action of Beaumarchais with characters and actions drawn from his own experience; and this description strictly corresponds with the play as we have it. Though in the first four Acts, as we have seen, the incidents are directly taken from Beaumarchais and many passages in them are simply translations, the characters of the leading personages--Clavigo, Carlos, Marie, and Beaumarchais--are entirely of Goethe's own creation. Moreover, in what is original in the dialogues there are touches everywhere introduced which are not to be found in the original, and which are precisely those that are of special interest for the student of Goethe. Of the play as a work of art he was himself complacently proud. It was written, as he tells us, with the express intention of proving to the world that he could produce a piece in strict accordance with the dramatic canons which he had flouted in _Goetz von Berlichingen_.[169] "I challenge the most critical knife," he proudly wrote to the same correspondent, "to separate the directly translated passages from the whole without mangling it, without inflicting deadly wounds, not to say only on the narrative, but on the structure, the living organism of the piece." In _Clavigo_, at least, he has achieved what he failed to achieve in any other in the long series of his dramatic productions; it proved a successful acting play, and is still produced with acceptance to the present time. Yet from the beginning those who have admired Goethe's genius most have shaken their heads over _Clavigo_. It was to be expected that the youthful geniuses of the _Sturm und Drang_ would be wrathful at the apostacy of their protagonist, who in _Goetz von Berlichingen_ had set at naught all the traditional rules of the drama. But more discerning critics, then and since, have expressed their dissatisfaction on other grounds. There are in _Clavigo_ no elements of greatness such as appear even through the immaturities of _Goetz_ and _Werther_. Clavigo himself is so poor a creature as to leave the reader with no other feeling for him than contempt; Marie is characterless; and the other persons in the play have not sufficient scope to become well-defined figures. And the last Act, the only original addition to Beaumarchais' narrative, is in a style of cheap melodrama which, coming from the hand of Goethe, can be regarded only as a weak concession to the