Written in supremely eloquent blank verse, Goethe's play is one of the richest of his works. In part autobiographical, it goes beyond to explore larger questions. In the confrontation between the Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso and the statesman Antonio Montecatino at the court of Ferrara, Goethe's own experience at Weimar is fashioned into universal conflicts: between dream and reality, imagination and reason, liberty and the constraints of civilization.