A poor soldier, exploited by his captain and used as a guinea pig by a doctor, murders his unfaithful lover. Buchner died at twenty-three and left it unfinished; the fragments were published decades later. It's the first working-class tragedy in European theater and reads like it could have been written yesterday. Alban Berg turned it into the opera Wozzeck.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.