Bürden sends Goethe some of his theatrical works, which he hopes might be of use for the Weimar Theater. He notes that he was requested by Iffland to make a translation of Voltaire’s Alzire, but that he was not happy with it when it was performed in Berlin. This, he suggests, is why Goethe is receiving a new reworking from him. He then references Rousseau’s “small piece of intrigue”, which he says deserves Germanisation.

Robert opens by praising Goethe’s translations of Voltaire’s Tancrède and Mahomet, and sends his own translation of a recent French tragedy, Etienne Méhul’s Joseph en Égypte (1807) which he hopes to see performed under Goethe’s direction at the Weimar Theatre.