‘Verdammte Staats-Klugheit / die Treu und Bund heist brechen!’ Reason of state in Lohenstein’s Cleopatra

Abstract

Although the tragedies of Daniel Casper von Lohenstein (1635–83) are nowadays known mainly to specialists in the Baroque, they amply repay attention. Set in the ancient world or the modern Ottoman Empire, they explore politics in the coolly realistic light of ‘reason of state’, a doctrine prominent in early modern absolutism. They are indebted also to neo-Stoicism. These features are illustrated by a close study of the tense intrigues and double-dealing that dominate the drama Cleopatra (the revised edition of 1680).