The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 5

Such a scheme, it is evident, does not provide for a 'republican tragedy', except in a very loose sense. If we had a republican idealist pitting his strength against a tyrant and going down in the battle, either because of his adversary's superior strength or because of some weakness in his own character, that would be a tragedy of republicanism.

In Schiller's play, however, the conflict is not of that character. At heart Fiesco is never a republican, though he sometimes takes his mouth full of fine republican phrases. His mainspring of action is not the welfare of Genoa, but his own aggrandizement. Old Andrea, whose power he plots to overthrow and whose magnanimity puts him to shame, is actually a better man than he. If he has a measure of our sympathy in his feud with the younger Doria, that is only because Gianettino is portrayed as a vulgar brute deserving of nothing but the gallows. Politically there is little to choose between the two, so long as we regard virtue as consisting in an unselfish devotion to an ideal of republican liberty.

The character of Fies...o...b..ing what it is, his final catastrophe produces no very clear impression. One does not see precisely what bearing it is to have on the political fortunes of Genoa. At first blush the conclusion seems to mean that the state has been saved from the clutches of a tyrant who was about to subvert its liberties. But if we look at the matter in that light we have a tragedy, not of republicanism, but of the "vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other."

With the usurper Fiesco, and the brute Gianettino, out of the way, the state returns to the good regimen of Andrea, who represents the only republicanism then thinkable, democracy in the modern sense being nowhere in question. But it is doubtful whether Schiller intends Fiesco to be thus reprobated. The hot-blooded Italian has certain traits that win sympathy; and even his consuming ambition is so invested with a glamour of romantic enthusiasm that it is difficult to reckon him among the dangerous tyrants. If he is false to his better nature, we at any rate see that he has a better nature. One is thus tempted to regard Verrina's act as that of a madman who cares more for form than for substance and sees danger where there is none.

For Verrina, who plays the part of Brutus to his country's Caesar and seems to represent the sternest type of republican virtue, is a repulsive fanatic. The horrible curse that he p.r.o.nounces upon his daughter when he hears that she has been outraged is significant at once for his character and for the young Schiller's notion of tragic pathos.

Throwing a black veil over her head he vociferates thus:

Be blind! Accursed be the air that fans your cheek! Accursed be the sleep that refreshes you! Accursed be every human trace that is welcome to your misery! Go down into the deepest dungeon of my house! Moan! Howl! Drag out the time with your woe. Let your life be the slimy writhing of the dying worm,--the obstinate, crus.h.i.+ng struggle between being and not-being. And this curse shall rest upon you until Gianettino has gasped out his last breath.

After this it is difficult to look up to Verrina as a competent savior of society, however much one may sympathize with him in his private feud. His cynical tergiversation at the end makes his previous conduct ridiculous. It seems to say that he has been partic.i.p.ating in a tragic farce which is now ended. One might almost get the impression that the whole play is only a satire upon republican clap-trap.

Satire, however, was very far from Schiller's thoughts. His enthusiasm for liberty was much too genuine to permit any trifling with the sacred theme. There is no doubt that he began 'Fiesco' supposing that it would prove a convenient setting for those inspiring ideas of liberty which he had absorbed from the reading of ancient history and of modern revolutionary literature. They were vague and tumultuous ideas, which had very little relation to a definite theory of government, but he was very much in earnest with them, especially after his rasping experience with the Duke of Wurttemberg. No one can mistake the autobiographic note in the speech of Bourgognino which closes the first act: 'I have long felt in my breast something that would not be satisfied. Now of a sudden I know what it was. (Springing up heroically) I have a tyrant.' But the young dramatist had not proceeded far before he discovered that his ideal requirement was out of tune with the facts. To represent Fiesco as a would-be liberator of his country was impossible without a violent perversion of history for which he was not prepared. Out of deference to history he was led to abase his hero into something like a Catilinarian conspirator. But he could not give up the idea of a republican tragedy; so he tried to save it by depicting his hero as a man who had it in him to become a n.o.ble liberator, but is corrupted by the dazzling lures of power and so led on to ruin.

There are those who regard Fiesco's inconsistency as an artistic complexity of motive going to show that Schiller had progressed in the knowledge of life and become aware that human heroism is apt to be more or less mixed with base alloy. One writer[45] thinks it shows "how intelligently he had studied the Italian Renaissance and how correctly he had grasped its spirit." But this is to give him a credit that he does not fully deserve. The simple truth is that 'Fiesco' was written very hastily and that its author had spent precious little time in studying the Italian Renaissance, though it must be admitted that he possessed a remarkable gift for visualizing the little that he had read. Complexity of motive is all very well,--very human and very Italian; but the difficulty is that in this case it is not properly subordinated to a luminous dramatic idea. When a man's motives become so complex and contradictory that one does not know how to take him, he ceases to be available for the higher purposes of tragedy. That 'Fiesco' produces this bewildering effect is due to the fact that the inner logic of the piece had not been fully and consistently thought out when the writing began.

And this is not all. The author seems unable to control and guide the unruly spirits whom he has conjured into life. There is no lucid grouping of historical forces. France, Germany and the Pope stand dimly in the background like mechanical puppets, and we never learn what they severally represent in relation to Genoese politics, Gianettino pulls a string and has a sanction for the wholesale murder of his countrymen.

Fiesco pulls another string and gets men and galleys ad libitum. We do not see an intelligible clash of great political ideas, but a wild melee, in the outcome of which we have no reason to be particularly interested. It is all as little tragic as a back-country vendetta, or a factional fight in the halls of a modern parliament.

How loosely the play is articulated, and how little of logical compulsion there Is in the catastrophe, is shown with fatal clearness by Schiller's procedure in revising his work for the Mannheim stage. By a few strokes of the pen at the end he changed its entire character. In the original draft his vacillating mind had leaned more and more decisively towards the Catilinarian conception of his hero, and the book-version of 1783 was accordingly supplied with a motto from Sall.u.s.t's 'Catiline.' The sentence runs: _Nam id facinus imprimis ego memorabile existimo, sceleris atque periculi novitate._ So the conspiracy was to be a _facinus_ and a _scelus_, and the hero, of course, another 'exalted criminal' in the style of Karl Moor. In the stage version we observe that the motto from Sall.u.s.t has been dropped, and that while the t.i.tle of 'tragedy' (_Trauerspiel_) is retained, the adjective 'republican' is omitted. Furthermore, without any radical revision of the preceding portraiture taken as a whole, a non-tragical conclusion has been subst.i.tuted for the final catastrophe. Fiesco, hard pressed by the strenuous Verrina, declares that his heart has been right all along; only he was resolved that Genoa's freedom should be his work and his alone. So he breaks his scepter, concludes an eternal friends.h.i.+p with the amazed Verrina, and bids the people embrace their 'happiest fellow-citizen.' Thus the original version, which had called itself a republican tragedy and was a tragedy without being republican, became a play which is truly republican without being called so, but is no longer a tragedy.

This singular _volte-face_ on the part of our dramatist has of course been the subject of infinite discussion. The most of the critics appear to regard it as a mistake, to say the least. One of them, Bellermann,[46] surmises that Schiller made the change against his will to meet the views of Dalberg. But of this there is no clear proof; and surely we cannot suppose that Schiller would have consented even reluctantly to a change which he himself felt to be utterly absurd because a complete stultification of the preceding plot. He must have felt that the new ending was artistically at least possible. And so it is. It is with 'Fiesco' somewhat as with the Bible: the conclusion that one reaches must depend upon the particular texts that one selects for emphasis. If we accent certain pa.s.sages and pa.s.s lightly over others, we get the impression that it is a tragedy of selfish ambition doomed to disaster. If we accent a different set of pa.s.sages, we are sure that it is a drama of republican idealism, sorely tempted by autocratic ambition, but destined to triumph finally over the baser motive. In the one view Verrina is a virtuous patriot; in the other he is a mad fanatic who does not understand the greatness of his chief. After Fiesco declares in soliloquy,--when a dramatic character is supposed to speak his real sentiments if anywhere,--that it is far n.o.bler to renounce a diadem than to win it, we are certainly justified in expecting that he will seek the higher glory for himself. Thus either ending is possible, and which is the better is mainly a question of stage effect. Neither is historical, and neither gives a republican tragedy.

It would be pedantic indeed to have devoted so many words to a mere matter of name. If a drama is good it signifies but little what we call it, or whether its t.i.tle be exactly appropriate. In this case, however, we have to do with a vital defect and not merely with a misnomer. A play may be good in different ways; and what the preceding criticism is intended to bring out is the fact that the strength of 'Fiesco', such as it has, does not lie in the intellectual organization of the whole. The mind of Schiller, but little trained hitherto upon historical studies, had not yet learned how to extract a clear poetic essence from a confused medley of recorded facts and opinions. Nature had endowed him with a vivid imagination for details, but study had not yet fitted him to exercise in a large and luminous way the sovereignty of the artist.

His facts confused him and pulled him this way and that. And so we miss in 'Fiesco' that 'monumental fresco-painting', as it has been called, which const.i.tutes the charm of his riper historical dramas.

But average play-goers are wont to bother their heads but little over these questions of higher artistic import which are apt to bulk so large before the mind of the literary critic. There are hundreds of literary dramas that are impossible or deadly dull upon the stage; and conversely dramatic talent will often make an interesting play out of a succession of scenes that lead the philosophic mind no whither. If 'Fiesco' remains a fairly good stage-play, it is because the interest turns not upon its ultimate import, but upon its elaborate intrigue, its exciting situations and its general picturesqueness. The intrigue carries one along by its very audacity, notwithstanding that in the light of reason much of it appears rather absurd. Thus we wonder how a mere brute like Gianettino can have become such a power in the state right under the eyes of the wise and good Andrea, who is subject to no illusions with regard to him. No objection can be made to Fiesco's mask of gayety and cynicism in the first two acts, for that is historical. But was it necessary for him to deceive and torture the wife to whom in the end he appears loyally devoted? In any case it is clear that the exposition should have hinted somehow at the true condition of affairs, for it is a good old rule that while the people on the stage may disguise themselves and befool one another as they will, the audience must be kept posted.

As it is, there is no suggestion of make-believe in Fiesco's courting of Julia. When he exclaims in soliloquy that she loves him and he 'envies no G.o.d', one is justified in a.s.suming that chivalrous devotion to his wife is not among his virtues. It is to be supposed, apparently, that he makes love to Julia in order to be seen of men; but as a matter of fact nothing comes of his flirtation except the torture of his wife. No one is deceived whom it was important for him to deceive, and the whole incident serves only to put his character in a dubious light. Is this what Schiller intended? Did he feel that his hot-blooded Italian should not be made too much of an idealist in his relation to women? Did he wish it to be understood that Fiesco is honestly infatuated with the voluptuous Julia until he learns of her attempt to poison his wife?

These are queries to which the play gives no very clear answer. So far as the conspiracy is concerned the whole affair with Julia is rather badly motivated.

Still more dubious, from a rational point of view, is Fiesco's relation to the Moor. That a man having large political designs requiring secrecy and fidelity should, on the spur of the moment, choose as his confidential agent a venal scoundrel who has just tried to murder him, is, to say the least, a little improbable. Here Schiller was evidently trying to Shaksperize again; trying, that is, to a.s.sert the poet's sovereign lords.h.i.+p over the petty bonds of Philistine logic. The Moor's frank exposition of the professional ethics of rascality, the dash with which he does his work, his ubiquitous serviceableness, and his rogue's humor make him a picturesque character and account for his having become on the stage the most popular figure in the piece; but that Fiesco should be willing to trust himself and his cause to such a scamp, and that such remarkable results should be achieved by the black man's kaleidoscopic activity, brings into the play an element of buffoonery that injures it on the serious side. The daring play of master and man excites a certain interest in their game, but it is impossible to care very much who wins. From a dramaturgic point of view, however, the Moor is a very useful invention, since Fiesco is thereby enabled to direct the whole conspiracy from his palace, and at the same time, in the person of his lieutenant, to be in every part of the city. Thus the action is concentrated and changes of scene are avoided.

As a portrayer of female character the author of 'Fiesco' has clearly made some progress since his first lame attempt in 'The Robbers', but the improvement is by no means dazzling. Both Leonora and Julia are singular creatures, and their unaccountableness is not of the right feminine kind that offers an attractive role to a good actress. Why should the Countess Fiesco, herself an aristocrat and a woman with heroic blood in her veins, submit so meekly in her own house to the coa.r.s.e effrontery of the woman who has wronged her? We get the impression that she is only a crushed flower,--a helpless, wan-cheeked thing, with nothing womanly about her except her jealousy. And then, at the end, she suddenly develops into a heroine. And what a strange heroine! No one will chide her for resorting on the fatal night to the protection of male attire,--a good enough Shaksperian device,--but how remarkable that a woman wandering crazily in the dark, and already sufficiently disguised, should borrow a tell-tale cloak and a worse than useless sword from a corpse that she happens to stumble upon! No wonder that Schiller in revising for the stage decided to let Leonora live rather than provide for her death by such a stagy _tour de force_. In the stage version, however, she does not reappear after the parting scene, and so we are left to wonder why she was introduced at all.

In Madame Julia we have a type of woman who was meant to be repulsive, and so far forth the young artist must be admitted to have wrought successfully. She is somewhat minutely described as a 'tall and plump widow of twenty-five; a proud coquette, her beauty spoiled by its oddity; dazzling and not pleasing, and with a wicked, cynical expression.' That such a woman should befool Fiesco and rejoice in her triumph is quite thinkable, but her qualities are those which usually go with a certain amount of discretion. That she should suddenly lose her head and throw herself away in a voluptuous frenzy hardly comports with the type. Nor is there anything in the inventory of her qualities that prepares us for her sudden a.s.sumption of the role of poisoner, when she is already, as she must suppose, the mistress of the situation. In her altercation with Leonora in the second scene of Act II she uses a number of coa.r.s.e expressions befitting a woman of vulgar birth,--wherein some of the critics see an evidence of Schiller's unfamiliarity with the ways of refined ladies. It is quite possible, however, that we have to do instead with a realistic attempt to make her language match the essential vulgarity of her character. At any rate it is interesting to know that the scene was offensive to Schiller himself. He worked upon it with repugnance and was glad to be able to omit it entirely from the stage version.[47]

In respect of its diction 'Fiesco' is in no way essentially different from 'The Robbers', albeit some have imagined that a faint improvement is discernible. There is the same tearing of pa.s.sion to tatters, the same predilection for florid rhetoric in the sentimental pa.s.sages, and for frenzied talk and action in pa.s.sages of more violent emotion. When Fiesco discovers that he has killed his wife, he first thrashes about him furiously with his sword. Then he gnashes his teeth at G.o.d in heaven and expresses himself thus: 'If I only had His universe between my teeth, I feel in a mood to tear all nature into a grinning monster having the semblance of my pain.' In his final expostulation with the would-be tyrant, Verrina delivers himself of this sentence: 'Had I too been such an honest dolt as not to recognize the rogue in you, Fiesco, by all the horrors of eternity, I would twist a cord out of my own intestines and throttle you with it, so that my fleeing soul should bespatter you with yeasty foam-bubbles.'

No wonder that critics and actors alike were offended by such insanity of rant and that Schiller himself soon saw the folly of it. He had got the idea that when a man is figuratively 'beside himself', the most effective way to portray his state of feeling is to make him talk and act like a veritable madman. He had yet to learn the profound wisdom, for poets as well as actors, of Hamlet's rule to "acquire and beget, in the whirlwind of pa.s.sion, a temperance that may give it smoothness."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: Schiller refers to the quoted pa.s.sage in his review of 'The Robbers', Schriften, II, 357. It has not been found in Rousseau's writings. Sturz drew from unpublished sources.]

[Footnote 43: On the character of De Retz's work, and its relation to the original of Mascardi, consult the Notes and Introduction by Chantelauze in Vol. V of the 'Grands Ecrivains' edition of De Retz, p. 473 ff.]

[Footnote 44: It was evident, that is, to Schiller. In the dedication of 'Fiesco' to Professor Abel he wrote; "Die wahre Katastrophe des Komplotts, worin der Graf durch einen unglucklichen Zufall am Ziel seiner Wunsche zu Grunde geht, muszte durchaus verandert werden, denn die Natur des Dramas duldet den Finger des Ungefahrs oder der unmittelbaren Vorsehung nicht."]

[Footnote 45: H. H. Boyesen, in his biography of Schiller, Chapter III.]

[Footnote 46: "Schillers Dramen," Berlin, 1898, I, III ff. Bellermann, who defends through thick and thin the unity and consistency of the original 'Fiesco', thinks that it is from first to last a tragedy of vaulting ambition,--not a political play at all, but a character play,--and that no other idea ever entered Schiller's mind. But his argument is anything but convincing and he carefully refrains from all discussion of the tell-tale phrase, 'a republican tragedy'.]

[Footnote 47: This appears from a letter of Sept. 29, 1783, to Dalberg.]

CHAPTER V

The Fugitive in Hiding

Ich kann nicht Furstendiener sein.--_'Don Carlos'_.

When Schiller arrived at Mannheim, in the latter part of September, 1782, he was soon made aware that he had reckoned badly on the 'Greek climate of the Palatinate'. The friends to whom he showed himself were shocked at the audacity of his conduct; they could only advise him to conciliate the Duke of Wurttemberg and meanwhile to keep out of sight.

So he wrote another very humble letter to his sovereign, explaining the desperate circ.u.mstances that had led to his flight and offering to return on condition of being allowed to continue his authors.h.i.+p. This letter he sent to his general, Auge, asking his mediation. In due time Auge replied, advising him to return, as the duke was 'graciously minded.' But this was not enough; Schiller knew his man too well and had probably never expected that his appeal would have any other effect than possibly to mollify the duke a little and thus avert trouble for Captain Schiller.

The fugitive had fixed all his hopes on the production of 'Fiesco' at the Mannheim theater. The manager, Meyer, was well disposed toward him, and it was soon arranged that Schiller should read his new play to a company of actors. The reading turned out a dismal failure. One by one the distressed auditors withdrew, wondering if what they heard was really the work of the same man who had written 'The Robbers'. The next day Meyer looked over the ma.n.u.script by himself and saw that it was not so bad after all; it had merely been murdered in the reading by its author's bad voice and extravagant declamation. But the decision did not rest with the friendly Meyer; it rested with Dalberg, who was just then away from home. Meanwhile, as reports came from Stuttgart to the effect that Schiller's disappearance had caused a great sensation and that there was talk of pursuit, or of a possible demand for his extradition, the two friends thought it best not to remain in Mannheim. Schiller did not actually believe that the duke would pursue him, but there was no telling; it was best to be on the safe side.

Accordingly 'Dr. Ritter' and 'Dr. Wolf' set out for Frankfurt. From there Schiller addressed a pathetic letter to Dalberg, setting forth that he was in great distress and asking for an advance of money against the first performance of 'Fiesco'. But the cautious Dalberg, who had just been in Stuttgart, replied coolly that 'Fiesco' was unsuited to the stage and would need to be radically revised. So the luckless author, having no other recourse, returned to the village of Oggersheim, in the vicinity of Mannheim, and there, with the faithful Streicher to keep him company, he spent the next few weeks, partly upon the thankless revision of 'Fiesco' and partly upon 'Louise Miller', which interested him more. Having done his best with 'Fiesco' he sent it to Dalberg, who curtly refused it a second time. His theatrical hopes thus completely baffled, Schiller turned over his play to the bookseller Schwan, who gave him eleven louis d'ors for it and immediately published it as a book for the reader.

In his extremity the exile now bethought him of the kind-hearted lady who had offered him an asylum in case of need. Frau Henriette von Wolzogen was a widow of humble means who had several sons in the academy at Stuttgart. She had conceived a liking for Schiller, and although there was some danger that her role of protectress might, if discovered, offend the Duke of Wurttemberg, she did not hesitate to keep her word. The necessary arrangements were soon made, and late in November Schiller bade farewell to Streicher and set out for Bauerbach, a little village near Meiningen, to occupy the vacant cottage that had been placed at his disposal. He still kept the name of 'Dr.

Ritter',--not so much from the fear of arrest, probably, as from a natural desire to remain in obscurity until he had won a position which would justify his flight in the eyes of the world, and more particularly of his father. While at Oggersheim he had occasionally sent out misleading letters, in which he spoke of journeys here and there, of remarkable prosperity and of brilliant prospects in Leipzig, Berlin and St. Petersburg. But his family knew of his whereabouts, and before leaving the Palatinate he contrived a meeting with his mother and his sister Christophine, who drove over to a half-way village to see him. He arrived at Bauerbach on the 7th of December, and wrote thus to Streicher on the following day: 'At last I am here, happy and contented that I am actually ash.o.r.e. I found everything in excess of my wishes; needs no longer trouble me, and no annoyances from outside shall disturb my poetic dreams and my idealistic illusions.'--And in this quiet retreat, well supplied by the villagers with the necessaries of physical existence, he did actually find for the next seven months all that he needed. There were books, friends.h.i.+p, leisure, peace,--until the peace was disturbed by a maiden's eyes.

The books came from a man named Reinwald, who was in charge of the ducal library at Meiningen and to whom Schiller, foreseeing his own need, had made haste to introduce himself. Reinwald was some twenty-two years older than Schiller, a bit of a poet and a man of some literary ambition; but he had not got on well in the world. It was fated that he should marry Christophine Schiller, become peevish and sour in the course of time and lose the respect of his brother-in-law. For the present, however, he proved a very useful friend; for he not only executed orders for books and tobacco (Schiller had learned to smoke and take snuff), but he served as general intermediary between the mysterious Dr. Ritter and the outside world. Schiller's nature craved friends.h.i.+p, and his imagination easily endowed Reinwald with the qualities of an ideal companion of the soul. After a while we find him writing in such a strain as this:

Your visit the day before yesterday produced a glorious effect, I feel my spirits renewed and a warmer life courses through all my nerves. My situation in this solitude has drawn upon my soul the fate of stagnant water, which becomes foul unless it Is stirred up a little now and then. And I too hope to become necessary to your heart.[48]

As for Reinwald, he had long since pa.s.sed the effusive age, but it pleased him to receive the younger man's confidence. He wrote in his diary: 'To-day Schiller opened his heart to me,--a youth who has already been through the school of life,--and I found him worthy to be called my friend. I do not believe that I have given my confidence to an unworthy man. He has an extraordinary mind and I believe that Germany will some day name his name with pride.'--Which was not bad guessing in its way.

Excepting Reinwald and the villagers Schiller saw at first but little of his fellow-mortals. Both on his own account and for the sake of Frau von Wolzogen he wished that the persons who saw him should not know who he was. So he continued to scatter false reports with a liberal hand: he had gone to Hannover, was going to London, to America, and so forth. In the mean time, with no thought of leaving his nest at Bauerbach, he devoted himself to his work. For the first time in his life he was the master of his own movements; he had a chance to collect himself, to browse among his books, to meditate and to dream. And as for mankind in general, he felt that he had no cause to love it. 'With the warmest feeling ', so he wrote after a time, when the first bitterness had pa.s.sed away, 'I had embraced half the world and found at last that I had in my arms a cold lump of ice.'[49] Withal the demands of work were imperious. He had risked everything upon his chances of literary success and it was necessary to win. He had broken for good and all with the Duke of Wurttemberg and there was nothing to be hoped for in that quarter. At the same time,--and the fact is characteristic of his large-mindedness,--he resolved not to air his personal grievance. To Frau von Wolzogen, who had been admonis.h.i.+ng him never to forget his debt to the Stuttgart Academy, he wrote: 'However it may be with regard to that, you have my word that I will never belittle the Duke of Wurttemberg.'

Toward the end of December the wintry dullness of his Bauerbach cottage was brightened by the arrival of its owner and her daughter. Lotte von Wolzogen was a blond school-girl who had not yet pa.s.sed her seventeenth birthday. The records do not credit her with exceptional beauty, but she was sufficiently good-looking and her demure girlish innocence appeared to Schiller very lovable. Not that his plight was at all desperate; he hardly knew his own mind and was in no position to make love to any maiden, least of all to one with that menacing _von_ in her name. Still he liked Fraulein Lotte very much, and the tenderness which now began to manifest itself in his letters to the mother must be credited in part to the daughter. Were this not so we could hardly account for such expressions as these, which are contained in a letter written after the ladies had left Bauerbach for a short sojourn in the neighboring Waldorf: 'Since your absence I am stolen from myself. To feel a great and lively rapture is like looking at the sun; it is still before you long after you have turned away your face, and the eye is blinded to all weaker rays. But I shall take great care not to extinguish this agreeable illusion.' And again after they had left the Meiningen region for Stuttgart, with a promise to return in May: 'Dearest friend--a week behind me without you. So there is one of the fourteen got rid of. I could wish that time would put on its utmost speed until May, so as to move thereafter so much the more slowly.'

Such flutterings of the heart were not altogether favorable to that austere program of literary industry which the ambitious young dramatist had set for himself. When a man is in love other things seem more or less negligible, and it takes resolution to steer a firm course. Schiller was resolute--by spells. In the first list of books ordered from Meiningen we find noted, along with works of Shakspere, Robertson, Hume and Lessing, 'that part of the Abbe St. Real's works which contains the history of Don Carlos of Spain.' From this we see that a second historical drama was already under way. At first, however, it was not 'Don Carlos' that claimed the most attention, but 'Louise Miller ', which had made considerable progress in Oggersheim.

By January 14, 1785, Schiller was able to p.r.o.nounce the new play finished, though his letters show that the revision occupied him some time longer. Meanwhile we hear of other dramatic projects,--a 'Maria Stuart' and a 'Friedrich Imhof', whatever this last may have been.

Nothing is known of it save that it was to deal with Jesuitical intrigue, the Inquisition, religious fanaticism, the history of the Bastille, and the pa.s.sion for gambling.[50] By the end of March he had decided, after long vacillation between these two themes, to drop both of them and proceed with 'Don Carlos'.

He began in prose, identifying himself completely with his hero and writing with joyous enthusiasm. A letter of April 14 to Reinwald deals at length with love and friends.h.i.+p and their relation to poetic creation. All love, we read, is at bottom love of ourselves. We see in the beloved person the sundered elements of our own being, and the soul yearns to perfect itself in the process of reunion. Thus love and friends.h.i.+p are of the nature of poetic imagination,--the waking into life of a pleasing illusion. Wherefore the poet must love his characters. He must not be the painter of his hero, but rather his hero's sweetheart or bosom friend. Then he makes the application to Don Carlos in these words:

I must confess to you that in a sense he takes the place of my sweetheart, I carry him in my heart,--_ich schwarme mit ihm durch die Gegend um_.... He shall have the soul of Shakspere's Hamlet, the blood and nerves of Leisewitz's Julius, and his pulse from me.

Besides that I shall make it my duty in this play, in my picture of the Inquisition, to avenge outraged mankind ... and pierce to the heart a sort of men whom the dagger of tragedy has. .h.i.therto only grazed.

But the 'bosom friend' of Don Carlos soon had his thoughts pulled in other directions. In the first place there came, very unexpectedly, a sugary letter from Dalberg. What led him to make fresh overtures to the man whom, a few months before, he had treated so shabbily, is not difficult to make out. He had become convinced that there was after all nothing to be feared from the Duke of Wurttemberg. Moreover, since the peremptory rejection of 'Fiesco' the Mannheim theater had been doing a very poor business. What more natural than that the shrewd intendant, with an eye to better houses, should bethink him of the pen that had written 'The Robbers'? From Schwan and from Streicher, who had remained in Mannheim, he knew of Schiller's address and occupation. So he wrote him a gracious letter, inquiring after his welfare and expressing particular interest in the new play. It was now Schiller's turn to be foxy. He replied that he was very well, and that as for the play, 'Louise Miller', it was a tragedy with a copious admixture of satirical and comic elements that would probably render it quite unfit for the stage. Dalberg replied that the specified defects were merits,--he would like to see the ma.n.u.script. The upshot of the correspondence was that Schiller, who had been negotiating with a Leipzig publisher but had been unable to make an acceptable bargain for the publication of 'Louise Miller', now determined to revise it for the stage and meet the views of Dalberg if possible. So about the middle of April he laid aside 'Don Carlos' and, for the third time in his life, devoted himself to the irksome task of converting a literary drama into a stage-play. On the 3rd of May he wrote to Reinwald:

My L.M. drives me out of bed at five o'clock in the morning. Here I sit now, sharpening pens and chewing thoughts. It is certain and true that compulsion clips the wings of the spirit. To write with such solicitude for the theater, so hastily because I am pressed for time, and yet without fault, is an art. But I feel that my 'Louise'

is a gainer.... My Lady [Lady Milford in the play] interests me almost as much as my Dulcinea in Stuttgart [Lotte von Wolzogen].

Ere the revision of the new tragedy was finished Dulcinea herself arrived in Bauerbach; an event to which Schiller had looked forward with joyous palpitations and anxious forebodings. For back in March Frau von Wolzogen had written him that she and her daughter would be accompanied on their northward journey by a certain Herr Winkelmann, a friend of the family. Schiller at once divined the approach of a rival and wrote in great agitation that he would go to Berlin if Winkelmann came. In justification of his threat he made the diaphanous plea that his incognito was of the utmost importance to him, and that the inquisitive Winkelmann (whom he had known at the academy) would be sure to blab. To this Frau von Wolzogen sent some sort of soothing reply, hinting at the same time that she, the mother, would not interfere with her daughter's choice. So Schiller resolved to stand his ground. The ladies arrived in the latter part of May and soon thereafter he was given to understand that Lotte's affections were fixed upon the other man. There was nothing for him now but the role of lofty resignation. To his former schoolmate, Wilhelm von Wolzogen, he wrote as follows: