Based on a real incident of the time, Büchner's work deals with the story of the soldier Johann Christian Woyzeck, who, in a fit of jealousy, stabs his lover, Maria, and is sentenced to death. The German author, who wrote the play at the age of just twenty-three, although he deeply studies the social, criminal, and medical aspects of the case, does not limit himself to the dark case of a deeply oppressed individual, but composes an existential tragedy that touches on timeless questions about human dependence on social conditions beyond his control, such as morality, social relationships, power. Woyzeck, presented in the excellent translation by Spyros A. Evangelatos, consists of short, cinematic scenes, without following the rules of conventional linear narration. A landmark text for German and broader European theater, it was often considered a work for the oppressed, for the proletarians, for the wronged, a work about absolute love that leads even to death. Woyzeck, which influenced the theatrical landscape of the twentieth century as few works have, is a cry of anguish from modern man, deconstructing the entire religious, military, scientific, and family structure of modern society, where violence and exploitation continue to be at the core of human relationships.