Wilhelm Meister, the son of a merchant, has been seduced by the chimerical world of the theater and embarks on the ambitious quest to become a great theatrical performer and dramatist. The Apprenticeship was a landmark in European literature, as not only one of the key works of Weimar Classicism, and the prototype for the Bildungsroman genre, but also for being a timeless tale of self-discovery and a fascinating portrayal of theatre in the late 18th-century.