German literature from roughly 1750 to 1850 has a tradition of tragic drama unmatched by any other literature in that period. To an extent seldom recognized, this drama engages with political themes. Robertson traces these themes back to the thought of Machiavelli, its reception, and its frequent distortion by subsequent theorists, especially in the early modern concept of 'reason of state' and the nineteenth-century notion of Realpolitik. Writers...