The following irreverent summary takes a few liberties with the plot, and leaves out a few details about Werther's intellectual life (Werther reads Homer when he is sane, and Ossian when he is mad), but it does capture the centrality of the famous scene (27 May 1771) in which Werther first sees his love preparing food for the children.
Sorrows of Werther
Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter.
Would you know how he first met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.
Charlotte was a married woman,
And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the wealth of Indies
Would do nothing that would hurt her.
So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by them troubled.
Charlotte, when she saw his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person
Went on cutting bread and butter.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Transcribed from memory (!) by yours truly; it sometimes alarms me what I find lying around in my grey matter.
CST approved: Thackeray died in 1863; this work is in the public domain. | 
