Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship centers upon the protagonist attempt to escape what he views as the empty life of a bourgeois businessman. Wilhelm is introduced to William Shakespeare's dramas by Jarno, and after extensive discussion of Shakespeare's work they decide to gather a theater group. They give a production of Hamlet, in which Wilhelm plays the lead role. After a failed romance with the theater, Wilhelm commits himself to the mysterious Tower Society, and undergoes a journey of self-realization.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a German writer and statesman, best known for his tragic play, Faust. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of meters and styles, prose and verse dramas, memoirs, literary and aesthetic criticism, novels, numerous literary and scientific fragments and many more. A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. He was also an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement.