Romantic Drama

Romantic drama brings historical conflict, imagination, and intense personal feeling into theatrical and verse forms. Goethe’s Faust gives striving and moral responsibility a wide imaginative setting, while Schiller’s historical plays turn public conflict into tests of judgment and duty. In French Romantic drama, Hugo joins elevated feeling with contrasts of social position and theatrical register. These traditions differ in language and stage practice, but share an interest in characters whose aspirations exceed the circumstances containing them. Historical settings and extraordinary events gain their force from the human choices and consequences at the centre of the action.