"Intrigue and Love" belongs to the era of Sturm und Drang and is categorised as a bourgeois tragedy, a genre attributable to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Lessing's own "Emilia Galotti" is a key influence on it.Tragedy had previously been limited to the nobility, through the Ständeklausel or "estates clause", but Lessing's genre opened it to the world of the German middle classes.