About the work
Der Engländer – Eine dramatische Phantasey (The Englishman – A Dramatic Fantasy) is a short five-act drama by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, published in 1777 and generally regarded as his last completed play. No stage premiere is documented, so the year of first publication is used as the work's year for lack of a confirmed alternative.
Plot
The Englishman Robert Hot stands at night with a rifle outside the palace in Turin, hoping to draw closer to Princess Armida, the unattainable object of his love, who fails to notice him. When his father presses him to return to England for an arranged marriage, Robert descends further into madness and despair; news of Armida's marriage to another man finally drives him to suicide.
Cultural significance
The play is read as a working-through of Lenz's own troubled relationship with his strict father, and its resigned, fragmentary form marks the author's retreat from the programmatic dramatic principles of Sturm und Drang.