Goethe read Kalidasa's play in Georg Forster's German translation of 1791 and wrote a well-known epigram in its praise. The Prelude on the Theatre that opens Faust, in which a director, a poet and a comic actor discuss the play about to be performed, follows the prologue of Sanskrit drama as Shakuntala uses it, where the stage manager and an actress introduce the play. MEDIUM: the debt is a framing device, not the story.