Given the model, however, Goethe had to infuse it with motives which would have a living interest for his own time.

One of these motives was the admiration of great men which Goethe shared with the generation to which he belonged.

During this Frankfort period he was successively attracted by such contrasted types of heroes as Julius Caesar, Socrates, and Mahomet as appropriate central figures for dramatic representation.

"It is a pleasure to behold a great man," one of the characters in _Goetz_ is made to say; and, if Goethe had any determinate aim when he took his theme in hand, it was to present the spectacle of a hero for admiration and inspiration.

As it was, deeper instincts of his nature asserted themselves as he proceeded with his work, and Goetz is overshadowed by other characters in the drama in whom the poet himself, by his own admission, came to find a more congenial interest.
The play exists in three forms--the first draft being recast for publication in 1773, which second version was adapted for the Weimar theatre in collaboration with Schiller in 1804.