Polyamorous Goethe
'One Home, One Bed, and One Grave'
GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.
Stella. Ein Schauspiel für Liebende in fünf Akten. Berlin, August Mylius, 1776.
Small 8vo, pp. [4], 115; woodcut ornament to title, woodcut headpiece; a very good copy in contemporary half calf with marbled sides, spine gilt with gilt green morocco lettering-piece; contemporary English ownership inscription ‘J. Reed, Vienna’ on title, Skinos booklabel to front pastedown.
First edition, scarce, of Goethe’s early play about a man caught between his love for two women, which ends with reconciliation and a mariage à trois.
The play can be seen as a sort of companion piece to Werther. The publisher Mylius had taken a risk with publication, primarily to make Goethe’s acquaintance, and the work appeared on bookstalls in January 1776. When Stella was premiered in Hamburg on 8 February 1776, it was immediately prohibited.
Goethe changed the ending for a performance in Weimar in 1806 (published in 1816), turning the play into a tragedy in which Stella takes poison and Fernando shoots himself.
Goedeke IV/3, 131, 113; Hagen 121; Wilpert/Gühring 14.