through an army of the lewdest devils without having a single one of them dare to touch her.2 On the other hand, Friedrich Nicolai criticized the lack of a more explicit seduction scene on stage. He was so disturbed that he even wrote his good friend Lessing, Sie den Prinzen hitten in einer Scene pressant seyn lassen, und daB Emilia zwar nicht gewankt hatte, aber doch in einige Verlegenheit gerathen wire.3 Goethe more or less summed up contemporary 18th-century critical positions when he said he thought Emilia had to be either eine G a n s or ein L u d e r c h e n.4