Miss Sara Sampson

Miss Sara Sampson
Written by	Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Characters	Sir William Sampson Miss Sara, his daughter Mellefont Marwood, Mellefont's old lover Arabella, Marwood's daughter Waitwell, an old servant of Sampson Norton, servant of Mellefont Betty, maid of Sara Hannah, maid of Marwood The Innkeeper and some secondary characters.
Date premiered	10 July 1755 (1755-07-10)
Place premiered	Drill hall in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, Germany
Original language	German
Genre	Tragedy Bourgeois tragedy
Setting	England

Miss Sara Sampson (original spelling Miß Sara Sampson) is a play by the Enlightenment philosopher, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Written in 1755 while the author was living in Potsdam, it is seen by many scholars to be one of the first bourgeois tragedies. In the same year it was represented at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and was very well received. It was afterwards translated and acted in France, where it also met with success. The play was Lessing's first real success as a playwright and it was in part due to the success of this play that he was asked to be the dramaturg at the German National Theatre in Hamburg.

See also

• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• Bourgeois tragedy
• Age of Enlightenment

External links

• Miss Sara Sampson, full translation by Ernest Bell online.
• Miss Sara Sampson public domain audiobook at LibriVox