Abstract
Danton's Death is the first play of a twenty-one year old German revolutionary who died before he had lived another three years. Written in secrecy during five weeks of 1835, it may well be the most remarkable first play ever composed. It breaks through prevailing patterns of dramaturgy to a new form, creates the first passive hero in the history of tragedy, and strikingly foreshadows surrealism, expressionism and naturalism. Its author, a youth who short weeks previously had barely escaped arrest for his own revolutionary writings and organizational activities, proceeded to concentrate, in this study of the decline of the French Revolution during Danton's last days, on the antinomy of his passionate desire for social change and his calm knowledge that revolution could not succeed in Germany in his time.
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