Much of Bräker's criticism is typical of its time and place, in that he judges the plays more by their moral content than their artistic merits. This often leads him to address Shakespeare directly, and sometimes even the characters themselves. This has the rather unfortunate effect of making it look as if Bräker is a victim of the "Coronation Street" syndrome, speaking of the characters as if they were real people - this is a quite common trait of under-educated people, and appeared in Bräker in earlier years, as I have noted concerning his reading of "Werther". Now, however, his chief concern is to match the characters to "nature" as he knows it. He knows nothing, however, of the conventions of the theatre in Shakespeare's time, so that, for example, the plots of or the strike him as so preposterous that he cannot suspend his disbelief as a more sophisticated reader could have done. It is also easier to do this when watching a play on stage, rather than reading the text, but it seems unlikely that Bräker ever saw Shakespeare's plays acted. He was able, however, to appreciate Shakespeare's genius in a way that many better-educated people of his time could not; even in England Shakespeare's plays were neglected or "improved" to suit 18th century taste. The governor of the Toggenburg, Karl Müller-Friedberg, who had written two plays himself (the plots taken from Swiss history but the dramatisation very much on the French classical model) is quoted by Voellmy as writing to a friend: "Shakespeare was worthy of admiration; but in the present refined and improved school of drama, would you really want to imitate him?" [v 3 p 309]

In the same year [in autumn, according to the Chronik, p 189] Bräker had a shot at drama himself, writing a comedy called "Gerichtsnacht [could be rendered as "Justice Night"]

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or what you will. As I see it, a peasant comedy, peasant philosophy, theology, the life of the common people, marriage, single life, conversation among peasants, treating of heaven, earth and hell, as you like it, right and wrong, as you please, written in the night hours in September 1780. The scene is in various places in and outside the village. The play has two acts. Voellmy has many quotations from it (here and also in v 2 pp 20-27, 66-70). He seems quite right in saying that Bräker could reproduce some racy peasant talk, I doubt if any 18th century stage could have borne it, and most people outside the Toggenburg would not have understood much of it anyway. The Chronik, however, says that a much revised version was staged in 1977 in the municipal theatre of St. Gallen.