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