G...

Strasbourg in the 1440s. While celebrating the profits he has made from manufacturing mirrors for pilgrims, the materialistic G (whose worldly values are echoed by an Evil Angel) tells his colleagues that he has a more ambitious project in mind. As he discloses to Nicholas of Cusa, he has begun an experiment in printing books - Nicholas approves of this and suggests he print the Bible. Enter Ennelina, his fiancée, who asks if she and G can now be married - he fobs her off, confessing, after she has left, that his work matters more to him. Alone G excitedly reflects on the possibility of freeing the word of God from the hands of priests. But his reverie is rudely interrupted by trouble on all fronts: Ennelina returns with her mother, who angrily accuses him of breaking a marriage promise. G is also besieged by creditors, to whom he owes money; by soldiers, conscripting men for war against the Armagnacs; by scribes, who feel threatened by his invention; and by women siding with the distressed Ennelina. As he reaches crisis-point, three spectral figures appear - Johann Fust, his daughter Christina and G’s assistant Peter Schoeffer - and G dreams of returning to his home town of Mainz.
Mainz in the 1450s. G’s work on the Bible is now in full swing, and in a busy printshop he lectures his men on the importance of keeping their great work secret. G is now a changed man, devoted to God and to aesthetic beauty. When Fust, his backer, turns up to monitor progress, G, irritated, defends the painstaking slowness of the work. Fust is angry and impatient. So is his daughter Christina, who can’t marry Peter until the Bible is finished. The imminent crisis erupts when Christina shows her father proof that G is using his loan for other purposes. Fust – as he reveals to a tortured Peter – decides to take G to court. Among the witnesses called is Peter, who effectively betrays G. The case is awarded to Fust. In the Epilogue, a benign G muses on his achievement and asks, now that the print era he inaugurated is over, to be left in peace.