He had with him, virtually complete, the manuscript of the new play upon which he had built illusory hopes. It will be in order to consider 'Fiesco' before we follow its author into the vicissitudes of his exile.
[Footnote 30: The somewhat conflicting data are subjected to a critical scrutiny by Weltrich, I, 323 ff.]
[Footnote 31: Bulthaupt, I, 210, quotes from Pichler's history of the Mannheim theater the following account by an eye-witness; 'The theater was like a mad-house,—rolling eyes, clenched fists, stamping feet and hoarse shrieks from the spectators. Strangers fell sobbing into each other's arms, and women staggered to the door at the point of fainting. There was a general dissolution, as in chaos, from the mists of which a new creation bursts forth.' This description is perhaps the best possible antidote to Matthew Arnold's fastidious observation that 'The Robbers' is violent and tiresome.]
[Footnote 32: In a letter of Dec. 12, 1781, to Dalberg, he admits the cogency of the objection to his horde of robbers 'in our enlightened century' and virtually expresses regret that he had not himself, from the beginning, imagined an earlier date for the action. But he fears that to change the time, now that the piece is finished, will result in making it a monstrosity, a 'crow with peacock's feathers'.]
[Footnote 33:
"Love gilds not for thee all the world with its glow,Never Bride in the clasp of thine arms shall repose;Thou canst see not our tears, though in torrents they flow.Those eyes in the calm of eternity close."—Bulwer's Translation.]
[Footnote 34: As different poems undoubtedly Schiller's were variously signed, and as many of his youthful effusions were excluded by him from the collection of 1801, the sifting out of his share in the 'Anthology' and the ascription of the remaining poems to their proper authors are tasks of no small difficulty. The critical student should consult Weltrich, I, 501 ff.]
[Footnote 35: Schiller seems to have got his idea of Rousseau chiefly from H.P. Sturz's "Denkwürdigkeiten von Johann Jakob Rousseau" (1779). The famous 'Confessions' did not begin to appear until 1781. Curiously enough our poem refers to Rousseau as 'suckled on the banks of the Seine', and as having 'stood like a meteor on the banks of the Garonne'.]
[Footnote 36:
Geh, du Opfer dieses Trillingsdrachen,Hüpfe freudig in den Todesnachen,Grosser Dulder, frank und frei!Geh, erzähl' dort in der Geister KreiseDiesen Traum vom Krieg der Frösch' und Mäuse,Dieses Lebens Jahrmarktsdudelei.]
[Footnote 37: Bulwer's translation, which is here particularly good.]
[Footnote 38:
"Out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense,The veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow;Body to body rapt—and, charmèd thence,Soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow."—Bulwer's Translation.]
[Footnote 39:
"And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee—Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee;Thismade thy glances to my soul the link—Thismade me burn thy very breath to drink—My life in thine to sink."—Bulwer's Translation,]
[Footnote 40: Concerning the provenience and the philosophic connection of the youthful Schiller's ideas of love and friendship the reader will do well to consult Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 41 ff.]
[Footnote 41: Of course this roseate statement to his Highness took no account of his debts, which had not yet begun to be particularly pressing.]
The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa
Ein Diadem erkämpfen ist grosz; es wegwerfen ist göttlich.'Fiesco'.
As we have seen, 'Fiesco' was written during the summer and fall of 1782. The following winter, having been rejected by the Mannheim stage, it was published as a literary drama. This first edition bore the sub-title: 'A Republican Tragedy.'
There is a very general agreement that 'Fiesco' is upon the whole the weakest of Schiller's plays. As a 'republican tragedy' it is a disappointment, since its political import, though obvious enough to one acquainted with Schiller from other sources, is not brought out distinctly in the play itself. Neither the friend nor the enemy of republicanism, in any historical or human sense of the word, can derive the slightest edification from 'Fiesco,' The political talk is vague and unpractical, and we get no clear idea of the contending forces. When the curtain goes down upon the chaos of intrigue, one is at a loss to know how one is expected to feel. And yet the play is full of powerful scenes, developed with masterly dramatic skill. As a mere spectacle it rivals 'The Robbers', to which as a drama it is decidedly inferior. In general its defects strike the reader more than the spectator. It is not the hand of the dramatist but the eye of the historian that is lacking. In other words the author, with all his seeming profundity of philosophic reflection, was simply not ripe for historical tragedy.
The bare facts of Fiesco's conspiracy, related with as little ascription of motive as possible, are these: In the year 1528 Andrea Doria, who had won great distinction as an admiral in the French service, but had now quarreled with the King of France and hoisted the colors of Emperor Charles the Fifth, landed an expedition in Genoa and captured the city from the French. Historians agree that he could easily have made himself sovereign, but instead of doing so he restored the old aristocratic republic, thus winning for himself the enduring title of 'father and liberator of his country.' Although Doria was simply an influential citizen of Genoa and enjoyed the general esteem of his countrymen, his prominence in the state gave rise to animosities among the noble families, and these were increased when he made his young and headstrong kinsman, Gianettino, his heir. In the year 1547 the malcontents found a leader in the person of Giovanni Ludovigi Fiesco, Count of Lavagna. Fiesco was young, handsome, rich and ambitious—a dashing and unscrupulous cavalier. His first thought was to restore the French domination and make himself only a viceroy of the French king; but a fellow conspirator, Verrina, persuaded him to seize for himself the sovereign power to which his rank and talents entitled him. The conspiracy was carefully matured, Fiesco meanwhile, to divert suspicion, acting the part of a giddy spendthrift and man of fashion. On the night of January 2, 1547, the conspirators made their attack upon the city. Gianettino Doria was killed, but the aged Andrea made his escape. The success of Fiesco appeared to be complete, but as he was going on board a galley the gang-plank turned, he fell into the sea and his heavy armor bore him down. Without a leader the conspiracy instantly collapsed. On the following day Andrea returned and the Genoese republic went on as before,
It was a hint from Rousseau that suggested to Schiller, during his last year in the academy, the idea of dramatizing this episode of Genoese history. In the German 'Memoirs of Rousseau' by H.P. Sturz, referred to in the preceding chapter, he found Rousseau quoted as follows:
The reason why Plutarch wrote such noble biographies is that he never selected half-great men, such as exist by the thousands in quiet states, but grand exemplars of virtue or sublime criminals. In modern history there is a man deserving of his brush, and that is Count Fiesco, whose training made him the very man to liberate his country from the rule of the Dorias…. There was no other thought in his soul than to dethrone the usurper.[42]
Here was a tempting theme for a young dramatist who had fed his own soul upon Plutarch, was enamored of 'greatness' in whatever form, and had already tried his hand upon a 'sublime criminal.' What could be better for his purpose than a daring conspiracy, led by a Plutarchian hero who was at the same time a single-minded patriot? In his earliest musings it is probable that Schiller accepted Rousseau's view of Fiesco at its face value, and when he began to consult the historians he found at first some support for his preconception. Among his sources was the 'Conjuration du Comte de Fiesque', by De Retz; a book which was written, according to a somewhat doubtful tradition, when its author was but eighteen years old, and which, by its clever perversion of history and its subtle insinuation of revolutionary ideas, is said to have drawn from Richelieu the comment: 'There is a dangerous man!'[43] In the sophisticated narrative of De Retz Fiesco appears as a modern Brutus, whose thought of personal aggrandizement was altogether subordinate to the thought of his country's welfare. He is made much better than he really was, and the two Dorias much worse.
Further study of the subject, however, soon opened the eyes of Schiller to the other side of the question; for in Robertson's 'Charles the Fifth' he found Fiesco portrayed as an ambitious revolutionist who sought to overthrow the Dorias only in order that he might make himself the master of Genoa—in short as a Catiline instead of a Brutus. The dramatic problem then turned from the first upon the character of Fiesco. In the 'Dramaturgic' of Lessing the doctrine had been proclaimed that the dramatist is not bound by the so-called facts of history; that he may deal with them as suits his artistic purpose. But what was the purpose to be in this case? Should it be a tragedy of austere patriotism going down against a relatively bad order too strong to be resisted, or a tragedy of corrupt ambition dashing itself to death against a relatively good order too strong to be overthrown? Either conception, if consistently worked out, might have sufficed for the groundwork of a good historical tragedy. What Schiller did, however, was to vacillate between the two, to blend them in a confusing way, and finally to let the interest of his play turn largely upon the hero's mental struggle between selfish ambition and unselfish patriotism.
The Catiline conception required an avenger of Genoa, for it was evident[44] that the accidental drowning of Fiesco in the moment of his triumph would never do in a play. It was necessary that his death appear as a punishment, a nemesis. So for the role of avenger Schiller invented a stern patriot to whom, without historical warrant, he gave the name of Verrina. Verrina is the real Brutus. To furnish the conspirators with a definite grievance Gianettino was made to violate the helpless Bertha, who was then provided with an avenger in the person of the young Bourgognino. Leonora, the wife of Fiesco, is historical. Robertson relates that on the night of the uprising Fiesco went to take leave of his wife, "whom he loved with tender affection." He found her "in all the anguish of uncertainty and fear"; and her terror was increased when she learned what was on foot. She endeavored by her tears and entreaties and her despair to divert him from his purpose. But in vain; he left her with the exclamation: "Farewell! You shall either never see me more, or you shall behold to-morrow everything in Genoa subject to your power." On the other hand, the intrigue of Fiesco and Julia, the sister of Gianettino, is unhistorical. It was invented by Schiller as a part of the general scheme of duplicity and frivolity by which Fiesco should seek to quiet the suspicion of the Dorias. If this particular invention was upon the whole unfortunate—the matter will be discussed further on,—the same cannot be said of the Moor Hassan, who becomes Fiesco's factotum and ends his career on the gallows. The rascally Moor is the most picturesque figure and the most telling role in the whole piece.
Schiller introduces Fiesco as a seemingly frivolousroué, flirting desperately with the Countess Julia, to the great torment of his wife Leonora. We soon see, however, that the frivolity is only a mask: he has a serious purpose and that purpose is to make himself master of Genoa. At first, indeed, he toys with the idea of a nobler fame. In a soliloquy at the end of the second act he exclaims: 'To conquer a diadem is grand; to throw it away is divine. Down, tyrant! Let Genoa be free and me be its happiest citizen!' But this mood does not long withstand the intoxication of power. To rule, to rule alone, to feel that Genoa owes everything to him only,—this soon becomes his all-absorbing ambition. At the last, when the revolution has succeeded, he puts on the ducal purple and the people are ready to acquiesce in the new régime. But old Verrina is not so tractable. When he cannot prevail upon Fiesco to doff the hateful insignia, he pushes him into the sea and exclaims in disgust: 'I am going to Andrea!'
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 Fiesco being 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 pronounces 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, crushing 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 participating 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 Württemberg. 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 noble 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 mêlée, 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 Sallust's 'Catiline.' The sentence runs:Nam id facinus imprimis ego memorabile existimo, sceleris atque periculi novitate.So the conspiracy was to be afacinusand ascelus, and the hero, of course, another 'exalted criminal' in the style of Karl Moor. In the stage version we observe that the motto from Sallust has been dropped, and that while the title 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 substituted 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 friendship 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 singularvolte-faceon 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 passages and pass 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 passages, 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 nobler 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 title 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 constitutes 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 god', one is justified in assuming 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 assert the poet's sovereign lordship 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 rôle 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 coarse 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 stagytour 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 assumption 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 coarse 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 passion to tatters, the same predilection for florid rhetoric in the sentimental passages, and for frenzied talk and action in passages 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 God 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 passion, a temperance that may give it smoothness."
[Footnote 42: Schiller refers to the quoted passage 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 unglücklichen Zufall am Ziel seiner Wünsche zu Grunde geht, muszte durchaus verändert werden, denn die Natur des Dramas duldet den Finger des Ungefährs 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.]
The Fugitive in Hiding
Ich kann nicht Fürstendiener 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 Württemberg and meanwhile to keep out of sight. So he wrote another very humble letter to his sovereign, explaining the desperate circumstances that had led to his flight and offering to return on condition of being allowed to continue his authorship. This letter he sent to his general, Augé, asking his mediation. In due time Augé 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 manuscript 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 rôle of protectress might, if discovered, offend the Duke of Württemberg, 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 ashore. 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, friendship, 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 friendship, 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 passed 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 passed 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 Württemberg 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 admonishing 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 Württemberg.'
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 passed 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 menacingvonin her name. Still he liked Fräulein 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 Abbé St. Réal'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 pronounce 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 passion 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 friendship 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 friendship 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 schwärme 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 hitherto 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 Württemberg. 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 manuscript. 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:
You have commended to me your Lotte, whom I know completely, I thank you for the great proof of your love…. Believe me, my best of friends, I envy you this amiable sister. Still just as if from the hands of the Creator, innocent, the fairest, tenderest, most sensitive soul, and not yet a breath of the general corruption on the bright mirror of her nature,—thus I know your Lotte, and woe to him who brings a cloud over this innocent soul!… Your mother has made me a confidant in a matter that may decide the fate of your Lotte and has told me how you feel upon the subject. [It appears that Wilhelm disliked the young man,] I know Herr W—n and … believe me, he is not unworthy of your sister…. I really esteem him, though I cannot at present be called his friend. He loves your Lotte and I know he loves her like a noble man, and your Lotte loves him like a girl that loves for the first time.
But the foolish dreams were not so easily to be given their quietus, especially when he discovered that Lotte was only half in love with Winkelmann after all. Then there seemed hope for him and he surrendered himself freely to the intoxication of his little summer romance. What were the world and a poet's fame in comparison with happiness? Still he did not declare himself. He often called Frau von Wolzogen 'mother', and averred in letters that no son could love her better. Probably a word from her might have led to an engagement. But the word was not spoken. She was a sensible lady, who knew how to look into the future and to guard the welfare both of her daughter and of her protege. She saw that if he was to make his way in the world as a dramatist he must return to the world; a prolongation of the Bauerbach idyl could lead to nothing but disappointment and unhappiness. Besides, his incognito had now become only a conventional fiction; everybody knew who he was.
One day, accordingly, as they were walking together, she suggested that he pay a visit to Mannheim and see what could be done with Dalberg. He resolved to follow her advice. Late in July he set out, promising himself and her a speedy return. But it was not so to be. Becoming absorbed in the business of a new career he continued, indeed, to think of her affectionately and to write to her, but at ever-increasing intervals; and after a few months Bauerbach and the Wolzogens were only a delightful memory. It is true that after the lapse of nearly a year he one day took it into his head to suggest to the mother that she take him for a son-in-law. But the wooing went no further. After all he had not really been in love with Lotte in particular so much as with an ideal of domestic bliss.
Shortly before his departure from Bauerbach there had been some talk of his accompanying Reinwald on a contemplated journey to Weimar, where he might make the acquaintance of Karl August, Goethe and Wieland. In his excellent little book upon Schiller, Streicher expresses regret that his friend had not acted upon this suggestion instead of following the 'siren voice' that led to the Palatinate. But it is difficult to sympathize with this regret. He was not yet ripe for the role that fate held in store for him in Thüringen. His education was to proceed yet a while longer by the process of flaying. He was to suffer and grow strong; to battle further with the goblins of despair; to tread the quicksands of adversity and fight his way through to a firm footing among the sons of men. Who shall say that it was not better so?
The long-cherished hopes of a connection with the Mannheim theater were destined this time to be fulfilled. In the course of a few weeks Schiller entered into a contract which assured him, for a year at least, a respectable status in society and opened a new chapter in his life. Before we take up that chapter, however, it will be proper to consider the new play which he had brought with him as a passport to Dalberg's favor. Thus far he had called it by the name of its heroine, but when it was put upon the stage it was rechristened, at the suggestion of the actor Iffland, and has ever since been known as 'Cabal and Love'. The revision which he had undertaken, after the reopening of correspondence with Dalberg, was even now not quite finished; so that the final touches had to be given at Mannheim. It is probable that the political satire, which was based in part upon veritable history and contained transparent allusions to well-known personages, was more or less toned down in deference to the wishes of Dalberg. Minor changes were also made at the behest of the actors. But while it was not played and not printed until the spring of 1784, it belongs in its substance and its spirit, not to the Mannheim period of Schiller's life, but to the period which he had spent in hiding. It is a freeman's comment upon high life as he had known it. Scrupulously enough Schiller kept the letter of his promise not to use his pen in belittling the Duke of Württemberg. But theWirtschaftin Stuttgart was fair game, and there were other ways of masking a dramatic battery than to lay the scene in Italy. In 'Cabal and Love' the reigning prince does not appear upon the stage.
[Footnote 48: Letter of March, 1783; in "Schillers Briefe", edited byJonas, Vol. I, page 101.]
[Footnote 49: Letter of Jan. 4, 1783, to Frau von Wolzogen. ]
[Footnote 50: Undated letter of March, 1783; "Schillers Briefe", I, 101.]
Cabal and Love
Ich bin ein Edelmann—Lasz doch sehen, ob mein Adelbrief älter ist als der Risz zum unendlichen Weltall; oder mein Wappen gültiger ist als die Handschrift des Himmels in Louisens Augen: Dieses Weib ist für diesen Mann.—'Cabal and Love'.
In 'Cabal and Love' Schiller found again, as he had previously found in 'The Robbers', a thoroughly congenial theme. More properly the theme found him, took possession of him and would not let him go, until the inner tumult had subsided and German literature had been enriched with its most telling tragedy of the social conflict. 'Fiesco' had proved a disappointment; he had not been able to bring himself into perfect sympathy with the subject, and at the best his Italian conspiracy was a far-away matter. Now he set foot again upon his native heath and all went better. In spite of certain defects which led him to speak of it later as rather badly designed, 'Cabal and Love' must be pronounced the most artistic and the most interesting of his early plays.
It is the tragedy of two lovers, an honorable aristocrat and a girl of humble birth, who are done to death through a vile intrigue which is dictated by the exigencies of an infamous political régime. By means of a compromising letter, which is not forged but extorted under duress, the lover is made to suspect his sweetheart's fidelity; and she, though innocent, is prevented by scruples of conscience from undeceiving him. In a jealous fury he gives her poison and then partakes of it himself. The mischief is wrought not so much by the wickedness of the great, albeit that comes in for a share of the responsibility, as by the obstinate class prejudice, amounting to a tragic superstition, of the heroine and her father. Many of the details were taken over by Schiller from his predecessors; but he so improved upon them, so vitalized the familiar conflicts and situations, and threw into his work such a power of genuine pathos, caught from the pathos of real life, that 'Cabal and Love' still stands out as a notable document of the revolutionary epoch. The epoch produced many bourgeois tragedies, but Schiller's is much the best of them all. Before we look at it more closely it will be worth while to glance at the history of the type in Germany.
The tragedy of middle-class life first took root, as is well known, in England. It was in 1732 that Lillo brought upon the Drury Lane stage his acted tale of George Barnwell, the London 'prentice who is beguiled by a harlot, robs his master, kills his uncle and ends his career on the gallows, to the great grief of the doting Maria, his master's daughter. The prologue tells how the experiment was expected to strike the public of that day:
The Tragic Muse sublime delights to showPrinces distrest and scenes of royal woe;In awful pomp majestic to relateThe fall of nations or some hero's fate;That scepter'd chiefs may by example knowThe strange vicissitudes of things below….Upon our stage indeed, with wished success,You've sometimes seen her in a humbler dress,Great only in distress. When she complains,In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving strains,The brilliant drops that fall from each bright eyeThe absent pomp with brighter gems supply,Forgive us then if we attempt to showIn artless strains a tale of private woe.
So it appears that 'Barnwell' was something new, yet not entirely new. The stately tragedy of solemn edification, at which no one was expected to weep, had already yielded a part of its sovereignty to the tragedy of distress. It occurred to Lillo that tears could be drawn for the woes of the middle class, which had been looked upon as suitable only for comedy. The event proved that he had reckoned well: the "brilliant drops" fell copiously, the innovation crossed the Channel, and soon the bourgeois tragedy,—whence by an easy differentiation the lacrimose, pathetic, or serious comedy,—had entered upon its European career.
The first German example was 'Miss Sara Sampson', written in 1755, wherein the daughter of a fond English squire is lured away from her home, like Clarissa Harlowe, by the profligate Mellefont, who promises to marry her. The pair take lodgings at a low London inn, where Mellefont finds pretexts for delaying the marriage ceremony. Presently his former mistress, Marwood, appears—a proud and passionate woman of sin. She claims him as the mother of his child, but having now found out what true love is he spurns her. Bitter interviews follow, with, spiteful recriminations and awful threats. Marwood tells her story to Sara and finally ends the tension by poisoning her, whereupon Mellefont commits suicide. In writing this play Lessing was in no way concerned with any social question. He constituted himself the champion of the bourgeoisie before the tribunal of Melpomene, but not before the conscience of mankind. The woes of hero and heroine are in no way related to class prejudice or to the great democratic upheaval of the century. Lessing's atmosphere is the moral and sentimental atmosphere of Richardson, though his literary power is incomparably greater.
'Miss Sara Sampson' did not long hold the stage, but its influence is discernible in subsequent developments. The 'man between two women' became a regular feature of the new domestic tragedy. In play after play we find a soulful, clinging, romantic creature—usually the title-heroine—set over against a full-blooded rival whose ways are ways of wantonness. Lessing himself repeated the group in 'Emilia Galotti', which in its turn became the mother of a new brood. The tragedy of lawless passion led by an easy step to the tragedy of social conflict, which portrayed the depravity of princes and nobles in their relation to the common people, or called upon mankind to weep for the woes of lovers separated by the barriers of rank. In Germany the species was very timely. Nowhere else in Europe had the nobility so little to be proud of, and nowhere else was the pride of birth so stupidly intolerant. That fruitful theme of earlier and later poets, the love of nobleman for maid of low degree, had been lost in the age of gallantry, save in lubricious tales of intrigue and seduction. The appalling dissoluteness which characterized the French court during the first half of the eighteenth century, and was duly copied by the princelings of Germany, had poisoned the minds of high and low alike and led to a state of affairs in which there was little room for a noble or even a serious conception of love. Love was understood to be concupiscence. If an aristocrat stooped to a bourgeois girl, it was his affair and at the worst only an aberration of taste; her fate was of no importance.
When the inevitable reaction set in, it took the form of a debauch of sentimentalism. The poetry of real passion came back into literature and people wept for joy to find that they had hearts. Love was no longer a frivolous game played for the gratification of lust, but a divine rapture of fathomless and ineffable import. It was now the era of the beautiful soul, of tender sentiment, of virtuous transports and of endless talk about all these things. Love being natural,—a part of that nature to which the world was now resolved to return,—it was sacred, and superior to all human conventions. It belonged to the sphere of the rights of man. Its enemy was everywhere the corrupt heart and the worldly, calculating mind. Fortunately the new ecstasy associated itself with a strong enthusiasm for the simplification of life; for the poetry of nature and of rustic employments; for the sweetness of domestic affection. In Germany public sentiment had already been prepared for a certain idealization of the bourgeoisie. Enlightened rulers and publicists, here and there, were coming to feel that a virtuous yeomanry was the sure foundation of a state's welfare. Countless idyls and pastorals and moralizing romances had thrown a nimbus of poetry about the simple virtues and humble employments of the poor, and taught people to contrast these things with the corruption and artificiality of courts and cities. It was, however, the passionate eloquence of Rousseau which first gave to this contrast a revolutionary significance, and it was Rousseau who first stirred the reading world with a woeful tale of lovers separated by the prejudices of caste.
In 'The New Heloise' it is the lady who is the aristocrat. Julie d'Etange, the daughter of a baron, wishes to marry the untitled St. Preux, to whom in a transport of passion she has yielded up her honor. But the Baron d'Etange is an implacable stickler for rank and she is a dutiful daughter; whence her marriage to the elderly infidel, Wolmar, and the well-known moral ending of the novel. The thought that concerns us here is best expressed by the enlightened English peer, Lord B., who thus expostulates with Baron d'Etange:
Let us judge of the past by the present; for two or three citizens who win distinction by honest means, a thousand knaves every day get their families ennobled. But to what end serves that nobility of which their descendants are so proud, unless it be to prove the robberies and infamy of their ancestor? There are, I confess, a great number of bad men among the common people; but the odds are always twenty to one against a gentleman that he is descended from a scoundrel…. In what consists then the honor of that nobility of which you are so proud? How does it affect the glory of one's country or the good of mankind? A mortal enemy to liberty and the laws, what did it ever produce, in the most of those countries where it has flourished, but the power of tyranny and the oppression of the people? Will you presume to boast, in a republic, of a rank that Is destructive to virtue and humanity? Of a rank that makes its boast of slavery and wherein men blush to be men?[51]
This is of course the language of passion and prejudice (it would not else be Rousseau), but there was enough of truth in it, as in the case of Rousseau's other fervors, to rouse the revolutionary spirit. German literature began to teem with novels and plays which exhibit the sufferings of some untitled hero or heroine at the hands of a vicious aristocracy. The theme is touched upon in 'Werther', but without becoming an Important issue. It appears in Wagner's 'Infanticide', wherein a butcher's daughter, Evchen Humbrecht, is violated by a titled officer, runs away from home in her shame, kills her child and is finally found by the repentant author of her disgrace. We meet it again in Lenz's 'Private Tutor', the tragedy of a German St. Preux who falls in love with his titled pupil and dishonors her, with the result that she too runs away from home and tries to commit suicide, while her lover in his chagrin emasculates himself. These are grotesque tragedies, not devoid of literary power, but devoid of high sentiment and saturated with a woeful vulgarity. We cannot wonder that the high-minded Schiller should have condemned Wagner's malodorous play as a mediocre performance. His incentive came rather from Gemmingen's 'Head of the House', which in turn carries us back to Diderot.
In the hands of Diderot, democrat, moralist and apostle of thegenre honnête, it was natural that the drama of class conflict should end happily. In his 'Father of the Family', written in 1758 and first played in 1761, the contrast of high and low is vividly portrayed, but without bitterness. The aristocratic St. Albin d'Orbisson falls in love with a poor girl from the country who lives in an attic and earns her own living. Sophie's beauty and virtue make a man of him and he wishes to marry her, but is opposed by his kind-hearted, querulous father, who argues the case with him at great length, confronting passion with prudential common-sense. St. Albin is also opposed by his rich uncle, the Commandeur, from whom he has prospects. The uncle plots to get Sophie away by having her arrested, but is baffled by a counter-intrigue. Stormy scenes follow the revelation, and in the end it appears that Sophie is not a plebeian maiden at all, but the niece of the purse-proud Commandeur, who has neglected his poor relations. With the literary and dramatic qualities of this play, its absence of humor and of sparkling dialogue, its tedious moralizing, its hollow pathos and its general relation to Diderot's dramatic theory, we are not here directly concerned. What is important to observe is that, as a contribution to the burning social question, its point is blunted by the fact that its heroine is not what she seems to be. The whole matter reduces to a brief misunderstanding in an aristocratic family. Villainy is thwarted, true love comes into its own, and the foundations of society remain as they were.
Diderot's 'Father of the Family' enjoyed a short vogue in France and Italy and met with considerable favor in Germany. Most noteworthy among minor German plays that were influenced by it is Gemmingen's 'Head of the House'. Gemmingen was himself an aristocrat, a baron by title, who was born in 1755. After studying law he settled in Mannheim, where he became deeply interested in the drama, so that in 1778 he was given the position of dramatist to the newly established 'national theater'. Two years later he brought out his 'Head of the House' with great success. The piece is a pendant of Diderot's, but by no means a slavish imitation.
Gemmingen's 'head of the house' is an upright German nobleman of the admirable sort, who returns home after a long absence to find the affairs of his family very much deranged. His eldest son, Karl, has fallen madly in love with Lotte Wehrmann, the daughter of an impecunious artist, gotten her with child, and promised to marry her when his father shall have returned and given his consent. The younger son, Ferdinand, an officer, has taken to gaming, lost heavily and has a duel on his hands. His son-in-law, Monheim, has become infatuated with a dazzling widow, Countess Amaldi, grown cold toward his wife Sophie, and the quarreling pair are eager for a divorce. The tangle is further complicated by the fact that Amaldi, an excellent match, is in love with Karl. The perplexed father sets at work with the tools of common sense and rational argument. He urges Karl to break with Lotte for his career's sake. The irresolute and dutiful Karl consents, saying nothing of Lotte's approaching motherhood, and the rumor of his intended marriage to the countess is spread abroad. When Lotte hears it she rushes to Amaldi and wildly demands her lover in the name of her unborn child. When the father hears the whole story he no longer thinks of rank but of honor. He bids Karl marry his true love and retire to the country, where, as overseer of a large estate, he will be less encumbered by a plebeian wife than in the career which had been planned for him. The magnanimous Amaldi furnishes the bride's dowry, the other domestic complications are easily adjusted and all ends happily.
Dramatically Gemmingen's play is rather tame, though its literary merit is considerable. He had a fair measure of constructive skill, but very little of poetic impulse or of dramatic verve. His best scenes interest us more for their good sense than for any more stirring qualities. His nearest approach to a strong character is the paterfamilias himself, who is certainly much less "woolly and mawkish"[52] than his pendant in Diderot. Next one may place the artist Wehrmann. Karl is a poor stick, Amaldi is rather colorless, and Lotte would be quite insipid but for her impending motherhood, on which everything is made to turn. Such as it was, however, the play excited the cordial admiration of Schiller, who read it soon after its appearance. Very likely it may have suggested to him the thought of trying his own hand upon a drama in the bourgeois sphere, but it was not until July, 1782,—just after he had finished reading Wagner's 'Infanticide',—that the plan of 'Louise Miller' began to take shape in his mind. Gemmingen's poor artist, Wehrmann, became the poor fiddler, Miller, and the daughter Lotte was rechristened Louise. The aristocratic lover, Gemmingen's Karl, was named Ferdinand von Walter, and Amaldi was converted into Lady Milford. One of Gemmingen's subordinate characters, the foppish nobleman, Dromer, who goes about making compliments to everybody, reappears in Schiller's play as the perfumed tale-bearer and exquisite ladies' man, Chamberlain von Kalb. The places represented are three in number and the same in both plays. Here, however, the parallel ends. Instead of Gemmingen's high-minded paterfamilias we have the rascally President von Walter, who, with his tool Wurm, reminds one of Lessing's Prince and Marinelli. And what is much more important, the relation of the lovers is so portrayed that we get the pure poetry of passion, such as it is, without any tinge of grossness.
In its earliest phase Schiller's plan looked toward a telling tragi-comedy for the stage, with a plenty of rough humor and caustic satire at the expense of 'high-born fools and scoundrels'. As he worked, the possibilities of his theme developed. An abstract enthusiasm for the rights of man was kindled by honest love of the common people, and by the lingering smart of a personal wrong, into a holy zeal of vengeance. President Walter was painted in colors which were taken largely from the political history and thechronique scandaleuseof the Württemberg court. As this court had its angel of light in soiled garments, Lady Milford was fitted out with the benevolent qualities of Franziska von Hohenheim; and as the portrait grew In firmness its author fell in love with it, like the young Goethe with his Adelheid. When he came to depict the jealousy of Ferdinand, he had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with the green-eyed monster. Thus the play was extracted from the book of life, as Schiller had been able to read it, and that accounts for its vitality. But in his details he is nowhere less original. Not only in the general conception of important characters, but in particular scenes, situations, motives, contrasts and forms of expression, we can see the influence of the literary tradition which he inherited.
To show the exact nature and the full extent of this indebtedness would be a tedious undertaking, which would require pages of quotation from works whose chief interest now is that they served as quarry for Schiller. Three or four illustrations will suffice. Our play begins with a scene which at once recalls what was originally the opening scene of Wagner's 'Infanticide'. In both there is a blustering father,—Lessing's Odoardo reduced to the bourgeois sphere,—discoursing with his silly wife upon the dangers that threaten their daughter from keeping aristocratic company. In both the domestic thunderer expresses himself in rough, strong language, and is only made the more furious by his wife's efforts to allay his fears. In Wagner's next scene Magister Humbrecht comes to woo Evchen, just as Schiller's Wurm comes to woo Louise, and we hear that the girl's head has been turned by reading novels. Just so Louise, whose father can scarcely find words to express his detestation of the young baron's infernal, belletristic poison. When Wurm arrives at Miller's and asks for Louise, he is informed that she has just gone to church. 'Glad of that, glad of that', he replies, 'I shall have in her a pious Christian wife'. Here is a reminiscence of the scene in which Lessing's Count Appiani exclaims, on hearing that Emilia has just been at church: 'That is right; I shall have in you a pious wife'. The devout heroine was a hardly less hackneyed figure in the dramatic literature of the time than the blustering father of whom Goethe complained.[53] In Schiller's Louise we have the religious sentiment sublimated into something quite too seraphic for human nature's daily food. Her high-keyed sense of duty to God, her natural filial piety and her superstitious reverence for the social order, combine to produce in her a curious distraction which is the real source of the tragic conflict. She feels that her love is holy but that marriage would be sinful; and so she hesitates, responds to her lover's ardor with tremblings and solicitudes, knows not what to do, does the foolish thing and atones tragically for her weakness.