Footnote 169: In language, as well as in form, _Clavigo_ followed
traditional models. Wieland was naturally gratified by Goethe's return
to those models which he had set at defiance in _Goetz_.]

[Footnote 170: In his Autobiography Goethe expresses the opinion that
Merck's advice was not sound, and that he might have done wisely in
producing a succession of plays like _Clavigo_, some of which, like
it, might have retained their place on the stage.]

But if _Clavigo_ is not to be ranked among the greater works of
Goethe, as a biographical document it is even more important than
_Werther_. In the Weislingen of _Goetz_ he had drawn a portrait of
himself, and in _Clavigo_ he has drawn a similar portrait at fuller
length. "I have been working at a tragedy, _Clavigo_," he wrote to a
correspondent, "a modern anecdote dramatised with all possible
simplicity and sincerity; my hero, an irresolute, half-great,
half-little man, the pendant to Weislingen in _Goetz_ or rather
Weislingen himself, developed into a leading character. In it," he
adds, "there are scenes which I could only indicate in _Goetz_ for fear
of weakening the main interest." In _Clavigo_ we have at once a fuller
revelation of himself and of his own personal experience. He is here,
in a manner, holding a dialogue with himself regarding his own
character and his own past life. In the first Scene of the first Act
we must recognise a vivid presentment of the state of Goethe's own
feelings at the crisis when he abandoned Friederike. In such a passage
as the following Carlos only expresses what must then have passed
through Goethe's own mind: "And to marry! to marry just when life
ought to come into its first full swing; to settle down to humdrum
domestic life; to limit one's being, when one has not yet done with
half of one's roving; has not completed half of one's conquests!" Out
of Goethe's own heart, also, must have come these words of Clavigo:
"She [Marie] has vanished, clean vanished from my heart!... That man
is so fickle a being!" What was said of Werther as the counterpart of
Goethe applies, of course, equally in the case of Clavigo. Goethe was
not at any moment the feeble creature we have in Clavigo, yet in
Clavigo's inconstancy and ambition, in his womanish susceptibility and
the need of his nature for external stimulus and counsel, we have a
portrayal of Goethe of which every trait holds true at all periods of
his life. In the Maries of _Goetz_ and _Clavigo