This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition.
NATHAN THE WISE: A Dramatic Poem in Five Acts
by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Translated by William Taylor of Norwich
INTRODUCTION
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born on the 22nd of January, 1729, eldest of ten sons of a pious and learned minister of Camenz in the Oberlausitz, who had two daughters also. As a child Lessing delighted in books, and had knowledge beyond his years when he went to school, in Meissen, at the age of twelve. As a school-boy he read much Greek and Latin that formed no part of the school course; read also the German poets of his time, wrote a "History of Ancient