The scene is laid in an inn, and the characters are four in number: the Host, whose leading trait is insatiable curiosity; his daughter Sophia, represented as of easy virtue; Soeller, her husband, a graceless scamp; and Alcestes, a former lover of Sophia, and for the time a guest in the inn.

In the central scene of the play there come in succession to Alcestes' room in the course of one night Soeller, who steals Alcestes' gold; the Host, to possess himself of a letter with the contents of which he has a burning curiosity to become acquainted; and Sophia by appointment with Alcestes.

As father and daughter have caught sight of each other on their respective errands, each suspects the other of being the thief, and in a sorry scene the father, on the condition of being permitted to read the letter, which turns out to be a trivial note, informs Alcestes that Sophia is the delinquent.
Finally, Soeller, under the threat of a prick from Alcestes' sword, confesses to the theft, and the piece ends with a mutual agreement to condone each other's delinquencies.[44] The play is not without humour, and the different characters are vivaciously presented, but the blindest admirers of the master may well regret, as they mostly have regretted, that such a work should have come from his hands.

The most charitable construction we can put on the graceless production is that Goethe, out of his abnormal impressionability, for the time being deliberately assumed the tone of cynical indifference with which he had become familiar in his intercourse with his friend Behrisch.
[Footnote 43: The exact time and place of its composition is uncertain, but Goethe's own testimony seems to indicate that it was mainly written in Leipzig, in 1769.

It was first published in 1787, with some modifications, which affect only the form.] [Footnote 44: With a fatuity into which he occasionally fell, Goethe in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ remarks that his two plays are an illustration of that most Christian text, "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone."] In direct connection with the shorter poems which Goethe wrote in Leipzig, there is a passage in his Autobiography which has perhaps been more frequently quoted than any other, and which, according as we interpret it, must materially influence our judgment at once on his character and his genius.