About the work
The Freethinker is a comedy in five acts that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote in 1749; it was printed in 1755. No stage premiere is documented, so the year of first publication is used here.
Plot
The self-assured freethinker Adrast and the young clergyman Theophan, without initially realising it, court the wrong one of two sisters, Juliane and Henriette. Only once the prejudice between reason and piety dissolves do both couples find their way to each other.
Cultural significance
As an early Lessing comedy, the play negotiates the conflict between Enlightenment free-thinking and faith, a theme he would take up again in more mature form in Nathan the Wise.