The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 19

As we have already seen, Schiller found it no easy task to mould the historical Wallenstein into a satisfactory tragic hero. The character was lacking in n.o.bility. To be sure it was not necessary to make him out an infamous traitor; for his character, his motives, the measure of his guilt, were subjects of debate among the historians, and the evidence was, as it still is, inconclusive. It was therefore quite within the license of a dramatic poet to take the part of Wallenstein, so far at least as to throw into strong light all the palliating circ.u.mstances that could be urged in his favor. Such were, for example, that he was a prince of the empire and as such had a right to conduct negotiations and to make peace; that he wished to give rest to a torn and bleeding Germany; that he had been ign.o.bly treated by the House of Austria, and so forth. By laying stress upon these things and pa.s.sing lightly over others, it was easily possible to save Wallenstein from the detestation that is wont to a.s.sociate itself with the idea of a traitor.

But for an interesting tragic hero it is not enough to fall short of infamy. He must have some sort of distinction. He must be a towering personality. One does not go to the theater to be convinced in a moral or political argument, but to be carried along with a rush of feeling, for which the old term sympathy is perhaps as good a name as any other.

A magnificent criminal will serve the purpose very well, as Schiller had discovered in his early years, but he must be magnificent. Now it was precisely this element of greatness that was lacking in the character of the historical Wallenstein. No lofty idealism of any kind could be imputed to him. He was not a religious zealot, like Cromwell or Gustav Adolf, nor was he a strenuous German patriot, like Frederick the Great.

He was not even a great soldier; for while, as the head of a great host of marauding mercenaries, he made himself the scourge and the terror of Germany, he never won a decisive battle against an equal enemy. The history of his fighting is largely a history of futilities. And when he formed the plan of a separate peace,--a plan which if promptly and vigorously executed might possibly have succeeded and have caused him to be numbered with the benefactors of Europe,--he dallied with the thought until it was too late, fell into the pit which he had digged for himself, and, in trying to flounder out, met his death at the hands of an a.s.sa.s.sin who had a grudge against him. Thus even his death was pitiful rather than tragic. It does not appear to be the work of that high Nemesis which Schiller noticed as dominating the career of Shakspere's Richard the Third.

To have succeeded as Schiller did succeed, in the face of such difficulties, is a memorable triumph of the poetic art. By purely aesthetic means, without any appeal to political or religious pa.s.sion, without requiring us to take sides in any debatable cause, but simply by the skill and subtlety of his drawing, he has invested Wallenstein with an impressiveness such, as belongs only to the great creations of the great tragic poets. His overruling trait is ambition; and in the denotation of this, as of his whole relation to the Countess Terzky, the influence of 'Macbeth' is obvious. And yet he is very far from being a copy of Shakspere's hero, or a mere embodiment of ambition. On the contrary, he is the most complicate of all Schiller's creations, and the most difficult to portray on the stage in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. As a good critic observes, he is 'fascinating and repulsive, admirable and contemptible, fantastic and cunning, cautious and frivolous, a mighty organizer and a helpless child, false and true, touching and terrible, a mixture of all possible qualities, and yet a unity, a totality'.[115] The promise of the Prologue is admirably fulfilled:

But art shall show him in his human form And bring him nearer to your eyes and hearts; She sees the man in all the stress of life, And for the greater portion of his guilt She blames the working of malignant stars.

The last two lines, be it observed, involve much more than a mere allusion to Wallenstein's superst.i.tious belief in astrology. Schiller's idea, schooled as he had been for years upon Sophocles and Shakspere, was to blend the fate-tragedy of the ancients with the modern tragedy of character. The two things were not incompatible, since in a broad view of the matter a man's character is his fate. It is to be observed also that the peculiar effect of Greek tragedy does not depend upon the way in which the external [Greek: moira] was conceived, but upon the fact that the hero seems to be battling, and was by the audience known to be battling, against the inevitable. The situation is not what he supposes, and the event will not be what he intends. He is the subject: of an illusion, an infatuation; and this [Greek: ate] is the princ.i.p.al factor in the tragic effect.[116]

Now Wallenstein's [Greek: ate] takes the form of a blind and overweening self-conceit. He has the 'great-man-mania' hardly less than Karl Moor.

Accustomed to follow his own light, to command and to be obeyed, and to look with contempt upon the interference of priests and courtiers in the business of war, he thinks himself omnipotent. There is no power that he fears save that of the stars; and even that he imagines he can bend to his will by studious attention to astrologic portents. He has found it possible to raise and maintain a great army by taking good care of his officers and men; and appealing thus constantly to the lower motives of human nature, he comes to think at last that there are no others. When the Swede Wrangel suggests a suspicion of his Chancellor that it 'might be an easier thing to create out of nothing an army of sixty thousand men than to lead a sixtieth part of them into an act of treachery', Wallenstein replies: 'Your Chancellor judges like a Swede and a Protestant.' And when he finds that this sentiment of loyalty--_die Treue_, one of the most ancient and powerful of motives--is still a real force in human affairs, he can only account for it as a curious superst.i.tion:

'Tis not the embodiment of living strength That makes the truly terrible. It is The vulgar brood of all the yesterdays, The eternally recurring commonplace, That was and therefore is and hence will be.

For man is fashioned of the trivial And customary use he names his nurse.[117]

It would seem as if such a blind and superst.i.tious self-worshiper could have but little chance of winning sympathy, and the less chance for the reason that he really does nothing in the play to justify his grand airs. His mighty deeds are a matter of hearsay. We are obliged to take his greatness on trust, as something growing out of the past. And yet Schiller contrives, with splendid artistic cunning, that we do take him from first to last at his own estimate. His a.s.sumption of superiority appears perfectly reasonable; and even in the ticklish astrological scenes, about which Schiller himself was in doubt until rea.s.sured by Goethe, he never becomes ridiculous. His belief in destiny and his unctuous palaver about the occult connection of events do not detract from his dignity. One understands that his oracles are fallacious, that it is all a humbug; but so perfect is the illusion that instead of smiling one mentally a.s.sociates him with other men undoubtedly great,--men like Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon,--who were haunted by more or less similar hallucinations.

This is effected, in part at least, by bringing Wallenstein into contrast with vulgar and commmonplace natures. In the presence of a real hero he would be a pigmy,--even under the searchlight of the ardent young Max his effulgence pales somewhat,--but surrounded by the Illos, the Terzkys, Isolanis and the rest of them, he is a moral and intellectual giant. One does not wish to belong to _their_ company or to believe in their arguments; and so when they urge him to act one is quite prepared to credit the mysterious oracles which a.s.sure him that the time is not yet ripe. Thus even his indecision,--most d.a.m.ning of weaknesses in a great soldier,--does not seem to belittle him. One enters into the spirit of his self-defense, is half inclined to believe in his innocence and to sympathize with him, when the psychological moment arrives and the capture of Sesina compels him to translate a traitorous thought into a traitorous deed. And even after this, when he stands forth as a declared traitor; while his trusted friends are secretly turning against him, and his unsuspected enemies are quietly plotting his doom; when, with a futile energy, he is making the plans that are yet, as he believes, to leave him master of the situation; and when, finally, in his bereavement and isolation, he is brought to face his miserable fate,--everywhere he looms up as a grand figure. Schiller has taken good care that one shall not think of his treason or of his weakness, but rather of his imposing personality.

That Wallenstein produces such an impression is largely due to the character of his chief antagonist. Octavio Piccolomini is certainly one of Schiller's most notable minor studies. It is he who stands for the cause of loyalty to which one naturally leans; but he is so portrayed that one soon distrusts and in the end almost despises him. And yet he is no villain of the extreme type so dear to Schiller in his early years. Octavio's conduct and his sentiments are technically correct. He is a faithful servant of the empire, a far-sighted and energetic commander and an affectionate father. The groundwork of his character seems much better ent.i.tled to sympathy than that of Wallenstein. In the play, however, from the moment we hear of the secret order making him temporary commander-in-chief, we begin to suspect that he too is playing a game for profit. And when he lays his secret plans against Wallenstein, while openly appearing as his friend; when he craftily works upon the vanity of Butler, and instils into Butler's small soul the poison of a murderous hate, one is not drawn to the cause which needs such championship.

Rationally and before the bar of politics, Octavio's conduct is unimpeachable. He does his duty in baffling a powerful traitor in the most effective way. It is not his fault that Wallenstein is deceived in him, and nothing requires that he go and undeceive him. He resorts to no tricks, he feigns no sentiments that are not his. He but tells the truth to Butler in regard to the ancient matter of the t.i.tle. It is no part of his plan that Butler shall murder his former chief. And when Wallenstein falls, not so much because of his present treason as because of his former duplicity, Octavio is technically guiltless of the deed. And yet so skillfully is the portrait drawn, so subtly are the lights and shadows managed, that when the curtain falls one is little disposed to sympathize with him in his triumph. There is a world of ironical pathos in those last words of the play: 'To Prince Piccolomini'.

A very important element in the impression produced by Octavio, as also in that produced by Wallenstein himself, is the fact that we are made to try them not at the bar of worldly ethics, but before the tribunal of the heart as represented by the young idealist, Max. It is a weak criticism of Wallenstein which objects to the love-story or regards it as a mere concession to the sentimental demands of the average play-goer. For the reason just stated it must rather be looked upon as a vital element of the plot. No doubt the play can be imagined without it and would in that case be more in accordance with history.

But what a relatively cold affair it would be! The tragedy of the lovers is an important part of the Nemesis that follows Wallenstein from the moment of his taking the fateful step. It is this which makes in no small degree the real impressiveness of his final isolation.

Without it we should see in Wallenstein a masterful spirit, like Macbeth, playing fast and loose with the higher law and meeting an ign.o.ble fate at the hands of enemies meaner than himself. In a sense the moral law would be vindicated, but how much more effective is the vindication when this masterful spirit first makes havoc of all that should be dearest to him as a man!

It is quite true that the figure of Max, like that of Posa, is out of harmony with the general _milieu_. Schiller was a lover of contrast, and in his skillful use of it lies a large part of his effectiveness as a playwright. To a certain extent his contrasts are made to order; that is, they proceed from the vision of the artist calculating an effect, rather than from the observation of life as it is. Partisans of realism tell us that this propensity is a weakness, a fault; and such it is, beyond question, whenever it leads to forced and stagy contrasts. But surely no general indictment can lie against Schiller for taking advantage of a principle which is perfectly legitimate in itself and has been employed more or less freely by the dramatists of all ages, including realists like Ibsen and Hauptmann. After all life does really offer contrasts of character as glaring as any that poet ever imagined, only they are not apt to be found in juxtaposition. The artist, however, has a perfect right to juxtapose them if it suits his purpose; that is, if it will really enhance the effect that he wishes to produce. If ever he departs too far from the familiar verities of life, he pays the penalty; for the judicious, instead of being thrilled by his pathos (or whatever it may be), are annoyed by his artificiality. This is the whole law of the matter, so far as its general aspect is concerned.

As for Max Piccolomini, he is a perfectly thinkable character--in the time of the Thirty Years' War or at any other time. There is nothing supernal about him; he is simply the type of a brave and honorable young soldier who tries to walk by the higher law of conscience. There are always such men in the world, and Schiller cannot be blamed for locating one in the camp of Wallenstein, though history omitted to hand down his name. It is perhaps a little surprising that such a youngster as Max should be in command of the great Pappenheim's regiment; that, however, is a part of the presupposition which one must mentally adjust as best one can. Within the limits of the play everything follows naturally. As a soldier he loves his commander and sides with him instinctively against the courtiers and politicians. His enthusiasm increases the 'mighty suggestion' that goes out from Wallenstein; one feels that the object of such idolatry from such a worshiper must indeed be great. In the love-scenes Max is always a man,--no trace here of sentimental weakness, or of any leaning to Quixotic folly. In his relation to Wallenstein, to Octavio, and to Thekla, his character is firmly and naturally drawn. And when his great disillusionment comes and he is forced to choose between love and duty, he makes a man's choice and his career ends as it must end--in a tragic drama.

The drawing of the female characters in 'Wallenstein' bears witness, like all the rest of the play, to the ripening power of the years that had intervened since the writing of 'Don Carlos'. That indefinable something that infects the earlier heroines of Schiller and gives them an air of sentimental futility, or else of schematic unnaturalness, has disappeared. The Countess Terzky, in particular, is a strong portrait which one can admire without reservation. As for Thekla, while her essence is an all-absorbing love for Max, she has at the same time a will and an energy of resolution which make her the worthy daughter of her father. Upon the whole she is the most lovable of all the heroines of Schiller. It is her tragedy of the heart which renders 'Wallenstein'

perennially interesting to the young. And this is much; for does not Goethe's shrewd Merry-Andrew declare that the great object of dramatic art is to please the young,--that _die Werdenden_ are the very ones to be considered?[118]

It is true that critics, speaking more for _die Gewordenen_, have often objected that the love-story in 'Wallenstein' is unduly expanded and that the lines have here and there, for a historical tragedy, rather too much of a sentimental, lyrical coloring. In the first of these objections, at any rate, there is some force. It was Schiller's personal fondness for his pair of lovers that led him to spin out his material until it became necessary to divide it into two plays of five acts each.

This, from a dramatic point of view, was unfortunate, albeit the reader who knows the entire work will hardly find it in his heart to wish that any portion of it had remained unwritten. Properly speaking, the entire 'Piccolomini' should const.i.tute the first two acts of a five-act tragedy. It has no distinct unity of its own, but it takes an entire evening with what is properly the exposition and the entanglement of a play relating to Wallenstein's defection and death. The result of a separate performance is that the climax of what should be the third act--Wallenstein's momentous decision--comes right at the beginning of the second evening, and is thus not adequately led up to, save as one carries over the impressions of a preceding occasion. The effect is like that of dividing any other play between the second and the third act.

One could wish, therefore, that Schiller had seen fit in his later years to prepare a stage version which would have made it possible to present the entire play in a single evening. It would have been a difficult task,--hopeless for an ordinary theatrical man working by the process of excision,--but for Schiller it would have been possible. And if he had attempted it, we may be quite certain that the love-story would have been very much abbreviated.

As regards the lyrical and softly-sentimental pa.s.sages, the cogency of the critical objection is not so clear. Any opinion grounded upon an abstract theory of historical tragedy as such can have but little weight. Schiller had no models for 'Wallenstein'; and if he had had, there is always more merit in finding new paths than in following the old. Historical tragedy without tender sentiment is possible, but it presupposes a public politically awake and an author upborne and inspired by a vigorous national life. Schiller could appeal to no such public, and his instinct told him that a play based upon cold pa.s.sions must itself be cold. So he chose to sentimentalize history, at the expense of detracting somewhat from its dignity, rather than to make frigid plays which no one would care to see or to read. And if we grant a _raison d'etre_ to the sentimentalized historical drama, no fault can reasonably be found with lyrical pa.s.sages like that at the end of the third act of 'The Piccolomini'. Schiller found the soliloquy at hand as an accepted convention of the stage and he converted it occasionally into a lyric monologue, as Goethe had done before him in 'Iphigenie' and 'Faust'. This looked toward opera, toward Romanticism, toward a mixture of types; but it was effective as a mode of portraying states of feeling. The lyric monologue is of course out of tune with the modern naturalistic dogma, but so is Hamlet's soliloquy. And then it must be remembered that the naturalistic dogma was no part of Schiller's creed.

A noteworthy characteristic of 'Wallenstein', as of all the plays that followed it, is its pervading seriousness. Humor plays no part. There are no Dogberries or grave-diggers, no quips or quibbles. Schiller had but little of the far-famed quality of 'irony'. It did not lie in his nature to take a position aloof from the moving panorama of life and depict it impa.s.sively as it runs, with its sharp contrasts of grave and gay, of high and low. He is always a part of the world that he creates.

For the other and higher method, as exemplified by Shakspere and also by Goethe in 'Wilhelm Meister', he showed a keen appreciation, and for a little while he imagined that he himself was catching the trick. That he did not altogether deceive himself is abundantly proved by 'Wallenstein's Camp'. After that, however, the ingrained seriousness of his temperament rea.s.serted itself with all-controlling power. The gift of humor was not denied him, but the use of it in a grave drama was repugnant to his sense of style. In this respect he was more a disciple of the French and of the Greeks than of Shakspere.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 113: Let it be said once for all (to avoid frequent references), that the following account of the genesis of 'Wallenstein'

is based upon Schiller's letters--chiefly to Korner and to Goethe--beginning in November, 1796.]

[Footnote 114: "Schiller", p. 286.]

[Footnote 115: Bulthaupt, "Dramaturgie des Schauspiels", I, 288.]

[Footnote 116: Notwithstanding frequent references to occult powers and overruling destiny, the Greek idea of fate is quite foreign to "Wallenstein". It is essentially a modern character-drama. Cf. Fielitz, "Studien zu Schillers Dramen ", page 9 ff.]

[Footnote 117:

Nicht was lebendig, kraftvoll sich verkundigt, Ist das gefahrlich Furchtbare. Das ganz Gemeine ist's, das ewig Gestrige, Was immer war und immer wiederkehrt, Und morgen gilt, weil's heute hat gegolten!

Denn aus Gemeinem ist der Mensch gemacht, Und die Gewohnheit nennt er seine Amme. ]

[Footnote 118:

Dann sammelt sich der Jugend schonste Blute Vor eurem Spiel und lauscht der Offenbarung, Dann sauget jedes zartliche Gemute Aus eurem Werk sich melanchol'sche Nahrung....

Wer fertig ist, dem ist nichts recht zu machen; Ein Werdender wird immer dankbar sein.--'_Faust_'.]

CHAPTER XVII

Mary Stuart

Wohlthatig heilend nahet mir der Tod, Der ernste Freund! Mit seinen schwarzen Flugeln Bedeckt er meine Schmach--den Menschen adelt, Den tiefstgesunkenen das letzte Schicksal--_'Mary Stuart'_.

After the completion of 'Wallenstein', in the spring of 1799, Schiller was not long in selecting a new dramatic theme. The unwonted leisure was irksome to him, so that he felt like one living in a vacuum. At first, being weary of war and politics, he was minded to try his hand upon something altogether imaginary, some unhistorical drama of pa.s.sion. But the aversion to history and the balancing of attractions did not last long. On the 26th of April he wrote to Goethe as follows:

I have turned my attention to a political episode of Queen Elizabeth's reign and have begun to study the trial of Mary Stuart.

One or two first-rate tragic motives suggested themselves straightway, and these have given me great faith in the subject, which incontestably has much to recommend it. It seems to be especially adapted to the Euripidean method, which consists in the completest possible development of a situation; for I see a possibility of making a side issue out of the trial, and beginning the tragedy directly with the condemnation,

This time the historical orientation proceeded very rapidly. By the 4th of June he was ready to begin the first act, which formed his princ.i.p.al occupation during the next two months. From a letter to Goethe, written June 18, it is clear that he was then thinking especially of the danger of sentimentalizing his heroine. She was to excite sympathy, of course, but, so he averred, it was not to be of the tender, personal kind that moves to tears. It was to be her fate to experience and to arouse vehement pa.s.sions, but only the nurse was to 'feel any tenderness for her'. As we shall see, he did not remain entirely faithful to this early conception of Mary's character. In August, the second act was completed and the third begun. Then came a long interruption, occasioned by the demands of the 'Almanac', the dangerous illness of Frau Schiller,--a lingering puerperal fever following the birth of her third child, Caroline, on the 11th of October,--and finally by the distractions incident to a change of residence. For Schiller had now decided to make his winter home in Weimar, so that he might be near the theater. He was heart and soul in the business of play-making, and looked forward to devoting the next six years of his life to that kind of work. To Korner he did not confide his new plan at first, though he wrote of it often to Goethe.

The removal to Weimar took place early in December, having been made possible by an increase of stipend amounting to two hundred thalers. In granting this increase Karl August intimated that it might be of advantage to Schiller as a dramatic poet if he were to take the Weimarians into his confidence and discuss his plays with them. 'What is to influence society', he sagely remarked, 'can be better fashioned in society than in isolation'; and he added a very gracious expression of his own personal friendliness. Schiller thus found himself once more virtually a theater poet. The Weimar stage, with its little and large problems, became the focus of his activity. As a good repertory was of prime importance, much of his time went to the making of translations and adaptations. Thus he began a version of Shakspere's 'Macbeth', and had not finished it when he was again prostrated by a fresh and dangerous attack of his malady. After the completion of 'Macbeth, in the spring of 1800, he returned to 'Mary Stuart', but found his progress impeded by manifold interruptions. To escape these he retired to the quiet of Ettersburg, and there, early in June, he finished his tragedy of the Scottish queen. A few days later, June 14, it was played at Weimar, and from that time to this it has been one of the accepted favorites of the stage. One who saw the second performance has left it on record that the spectators unanimously declared it to be 'the most beautiful tragedy ever represented on the German boards'. Madame de Stael characterized it as the most moving and methodical of all German tragedies.

Schiller conceives Mary Queen of Scots as a beautiful sinner who has repented. Her sins are grievous and she does not deny or extenuate them. But they are in the distant past; so far as the present is concerned, she is in the right. She has come to England seeking an asylum, but instead of being treated as a queen she has been confined in one prison after another and finally brought to Fotheringay, where she is subjected to petty indignities and denied the consolations of the Catholic religion. She has been charged with a crime of which she declares herself innocent, has been brought to trial before a commission of judges whose jurisdiction she indignantly repudiates, and has even been denied the common right to confront the witnesses testifying against her. At the opening of the play she does not yet know the verdict of the court.

This is the substance of Schiller's masterly exposition; and the effect of it, upon the reader or spectator who has not prejudged the case, is to create an att.i.tude of compa.s.sion for the prisoner. But the sympathy that one feels for the pa.s.sive victim of political or legal injustice is not the kind which Schiller regarded as 'tragic'. There had to be some sort of 'guilt', and it was also necessary that this guilt should grow out of the free act of the individual. But what was to be done with a helpless captive who was not free to shape her own fate? From the above-quoted letter to Goethe, of April 26, 1799, it is inferable that Schiller at first thought of representing the trial of Mary. He soon saw, however, that this would make the effect of the drama turn upon political, religious and legal considerations of an abstruse and doubtful character. It would be with the play as it always had been with the historical controversy: the devout Catholic would regard Queen Mary as the victim of brutal tyranny, while the Protestant would think her deserving of her fate. Schiller did not wish to take sides boldly in a partisan controversy, but to make a tragedy the effect of which should grow out of universal human emotions. So he felt happy when a 'possibility' occurred to him of dispensing altogether with the trial and beginning with the last three days of Mary's life.

The expedient that had suggested itself to him involved three unhistorical inventions: first, an attempt to escape, in which Mary and her cause would become involved in the guilt of the murderous fanatic, Mortimer; secondly, a supposit.i.tious love for Leicester, who would use his influence with Elizabeth to bring about a meeting of the two queens; and, finally, the meeting itself, in which Mary's long pent-up pa.s.sion would get the better of her and betray her into a deadly insult of her rival. After this her fate would appear inevitable and incurred by her own act. This concentration of the action brought with it certain other departures from history which are of minor importance. Mary was beheaded in February, 1587, in the forty-fifth year of her age. At the time of her death her captivity in England had lasted about nineteen years. In order to account for the infatuation of Mortimer and the still lingering pa.s.sion of Leicester, our drama imagines her some twenty years younger than she actually was.[119]

As thus made over by Schiller, Queen Mary is a pathetic rather than a tragically imposing figure. She appeals, after all, to the sentimental side of human nature and does not produce that effect of tragic sublimity which is produced by 'Wallenstein'. The sympathy that she excites is like that one feels for a martyr. We see in her a royal _religieuse_ who is persecuted by powerful and contemptible enemies and is unable to help herself. Her death is decreed from the beginning and there is no way of averting it. The object of fierce contentions on the part of others, she herself does nothing, and can do nothing, to change the predestined course of events. She is never placed, as the real tragic hero must be, before an alternative where the decision is big with fate. When the end comes there is nothing to do but let her renounce all earthly pa.s.sion and face the headsman as a purified saint.

So far as she is concerned, there is no action at all, but only the dramatic development of a situation.[120]

For, after all, the expedients just spoken of do not hit the mark exactly, in the sense of making the heroine responsible for her own fate. They bring in some new and exciting complications, which, however, do not affect the course of events at all. The catastrophe would have been just the same without them. This, nevertheless, is something that one does not see until we reach the end and look back. Before the two queens come together it seems as if the meeting might be a turning-point in Mary's fate; and this appearance is all that Schiller aimed at. In a letter to Goethe he spoke of this scene as 'impossible', and he was curious to know what success he had had with it. By this he meant, seemingly, that the futility of the scene, as affecting Mary's fate, was predetermined by the nature of the subject[121]. Mary was to die; it was impossible to make Elizabeth pardon her or treat her claims with Indulgence. And yet it was necessary to create the illusion of great possibilities hanging upon this interview of the two queens. This was a very pretty problem for a playwright, and the skill with which it is solved by Schiller is the most admirable feature of the whole piece. The scene is not great dramatic poetry, for there is too little of subtlety in it,--we are simply placed between light and darkness, as one critic says,--but it is the perfection of telling workmanship for the stage.

The preparation for the scene begins back in the first act, where Mary declares to Mortimer that Leicester is the only living man who can effect her release. When she produces her picture and sends it to him for a token of her love, we begin to share her premonition that something may indeed be hoped for if her cause is taken up by the powerful favorite of Elizabeth. The lyric pa.s.sages at the beginning of the third act fix attention altogether upon Mary's longing for mere physical freedom. There is no room for the suspicion that she wishes to use her liberty for any political purpose whatever. She appears as a n.o.ble sufferer whose whole being is absorbed in the delirious joy of breathing once more the free air of heaven. She surmises rightly that her unwonted liberty to walk in the park is due to Leicester, and she imagines that greater favors are in store for her:

They mean to enlarge the confines of my prison, By little favors to lead up to greater, Until at last I see the face of him Whose hand shall set me free forevermore.