"It is pleasant and satisfying to remember the obstacles that we sadly thought were insurmountable, and then compare what we, as mature persons, have now developed into, with what we were then, in our immaturity.

Blackall & Lange, 1989)(4) The young soldier who had constructed the theater and put on the play persuades Wilhelm's father to a repeat performance.

(9) Wilhelm allows his imagination to run wild in the following days"Fate, he decided, was extending its helping hand to him, through Mariane, to draw him out of that stifling, draggle-tailed middle-class existence he had so long desired to escape."

His friend, Werner, enters, and gives Wilhelm a speech about the power and attraction of double bookkeeping (doppelte Buchführung) and world commerce.

An uncomfortable Wilhelm stays the night and, after setting out the next morning, sees a wagon bringing the pair of lovers back to town.

Ill at ease, Wilhelm rushes off to see Mariane that evening, and his spirits are revived as they reminisce about past times together.

(3) While on another business trip, Wilhelm hears there will be a play put on by factory workers in the small village of Hochdorf; he decides to attend.

Blackall & Lange, 1989)(10) The clergyman disappears, and when the friends return to the inn they get inebriated on punch while performing an impromptu play set in the German Middle Ages.

Wilhelm, returning home and ignoring Mignon, overhears a horseman say that shortly a count and a prince will be arriving at the neighboring estate.

(1) The following morning Mignon enters Wilhelm's room, singing a song for the zither (“Kennst du das Land?”), which reveals clues about her background.

"And in a very short while, he was seized, as one would expect, by the torrent of a great genius which swept toward a limitless ocean in which he completely lost and forgot his own self."

When the troupe begins to mock their previous patrons Wilhelm rebukes them and gives a speech on the upper and lower classes.

Wilhelm gives an exegesis of Hamlet's character to Serlo and his sister, Aurelie:"In these words ['the time is out of joint; O cursed spite!

'], so I believe, lies the key to Hamlet's whole behavior; and it is clear to me what Shakespeare set out to portray: a heavy deed placed on a soul which is not adequate to cope with it."

She picks up her life story, which involves a deceased husband, who was Serlo's partner in the theater, and a more recent lover, Lothario, who reinvigorated her hope for the German public and nation.

(18) We learn of Serlo's background: a harsh childhood and early talent for mimicry as well as theatrical roles at a monastery, in a community called the “Children of Joy,” and solo.

But you can’t decide….And yet, if you are honest, you must admit that the urge towards a life of business proceeds entirely from external factors, whereas your inner desires are direct toward the development and perfection of your predisposition, both bodily and mental, toward what is good and beautiful."

(1) Aurelie's restlessness affects others, like Felix, who has picked up a number of bad habits (e.g. drinking out of the bottle rather than a glass); Mignon begins to care for him more and more.

Wilhelm, pleased with Serlo's decision to put together a musical group composed of the harper, Mignon, and Laertes, is shattered when he receives news of his father's death.

(3) He confesses that the impressive travelogue was fictitious, digresses on the difference between nobility and the bourgeoisie, and shares his decision to pursue life in the theater.

Wilhelm decides to leave the Ghost's role open after receiving a mysterious note one evening:"We know full well, o wondrous youth, that you are in a serious predicament.

In the veil he notices an embroidered message: “For the first and last time, young man, flee!” Mignon enters with breakfast, seeming somehow different.

When the Apprenticeship was completed in the mid-1790s, it was to a great extent through the encouragement and criticism of Goethe's close friend and collaborator Friedrich Schiller that it took its final shape.

[4] According to Andrew Crumey, "while Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is billed as the classic coming-of-age tale, or Bildungsroman, it’s really far more than that: a story of education and disillusionment, a novel of ideas ranging across literature, philosophy and politics, a masterpiece that resists all pigeonholing.

Romantic critic and theorist Friedrich Schlegel judged it to be of comparable importance for its age to the French Revolution and the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte; and Schopenhauer cited Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship as one of the four immortal romances.

[6] He says of the book in his Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit: "where we were looking for pleasure, happiness and joy, we often find instruction, insight and knowledge, a lasting and real benefit in place of a fleeting one.

[8] Robert Schumann felt special affection for the novel and set "Kennst du das Land" from book in his Lieder-Album für die Jugend, Op. 79.

98b, not a true requiem but a tragic choral work with orchestra setting the passage in book 8 which describes Mignon's funeral.

6 Romances, from three years later, contain the song "None but the Lonely Heart", setting a translation into Russian of Wilhelm Meister's "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt".

But the best-known screen version is Wim Wenders's The Wrong Move, a free adaptation with screenplay by Peter Handke and starring Rüdiger Vogler.