Goethe, The Natural Daughter (1804)
Left: Eugenie.
Right: Act 1, scene 4: Eugenie, the king, the duke, surgeon, attendants, after her riding accident.
(All illustrations from Goethe’s Works, ed. George Barrie, vol. 2 [Philadelphia 1885], 241–88.)
Act 1, scene 5: Eugenie, the king, and the duke.
Left: Act 1, scene 6: Eugenie and her father, the duke.
Right: Act 2, scene 1: the secretary and the governess discuss their plot.
Act 2, scene 4: Eugenie hides her sonnet in a secret compartment in a cupboard.
Act 2, scene 2: the secretary and the duke discuss Eugenie’s purported accidental death.
Act 2, scene 4: The secular Abbé feigns sympathy in relating to the duke the mendaciously concocted assertion that he has interred Eugenie in the chapel because her body was so mangled by her riding accident that the duke could not possibly want to remember her that way.
Act 4, scene 1: Eugenie in the park, waiting to embark for forced exile in the “islands.”
Act 4, scene 2: Eugenie pleads with the magistrate to find a way for her to avoid exile.
Act 4, scene 3: The magistrate, Eugenie, and the governess along the harbor.
Left: Act 4, scene 4: The governess explains to Eugenie that she can indeed avoid exile by marrying a commoner, namely, the magistrate. Eugenie resists.
Right: Act 5, scene 4: The abbess, alongside two nuns, Eugenie, and the governess, accepts Eugenie into her religious fold just before the governess shows her a mysterious lettre de cachet, after which the abbess withdraws her offer.
Act 5, scene 7: Monk exhorts Eugenie to flee this corrupt country for the islands, where she yet might do some good; the governess listens.