Why did Gotthold Ephraim Lessing urge German playwrights to use Shakespeare as a model?

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing urged German playwrights to adopt William Shakespeare as a model because he believed that the courtly, mannered style of French Neoclassical drama—championed by critics like Johann Christoph Gottsched—was alien to the German mentality.12

Lessing sought to establish a truly national German drama that was faithful to nature and reality. He argued that Shakespeare’s tragedies were more successful than those of French Classicism at arousing the essential dramatic emotions of fear, pity, and compassion in an audience. By advocating for Shakespeare, Lessing aimed to break the dominance of French models and promote a more authentic, emotionally resonant form of theatre that aligned with his reinterpretation of Aristotle’s Poetics, which emphasized the moral influence of these emotions on the spectator. This shift paved the way for the development of modern German literature and the later Sturm und Drang movement.1234