The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 23

[Footnote 128: See Eckermann's "Gesprache", under date of March 16, 1831. What Goethe there says, however, is in flat contradiction of the following pa.s.sage contained in a letter of Schiller to Iffland, written April 14, 1804: "Auch Goethe ist mit mir uberzeugt, dasz ohne jenen Monolog und ohne die personliche Erscheinung des Parricida der Tell sich gar nicht hatte denken la.s.sen."]

CHAPTER XXI

The End.--Unfinished Plays, Translations and Adaptations

Es sturzt ihn mitten in der Bahn, Es reiszt ihn fort vom vollen Leben.

_'William Tell'_.

Our story of Schiller's life draws to a close. After the completion of 'William Tell' his tireless energy of production found its next theme in the story of Dmitri, the reputed son of Ivan the Terrible. Just how and whence the suggestion came to him is unknown, but the connection of things is patent enough in a general way. Far-reaching intrigues in high life had always had a fascination for him, and recent studies undertaken for 'Warbeck' had interested him in the type of the pretender whose kingly bearing seems to betoken kingly blood. In a work upon Russia,--a land which had been brought closer to the Schiller household by the appointment of Wilhelm von Wolzogen as Weimarian envoy to the Czar,--he read anew the history of the 'false Dmitri', and was struck by its dramatic capabilities. In 'Warbeck' he had thought to portray a pretender who knew that his claims were fraudulent; in Dmitri he found one who believed in himself. The psychological problem, and the idea of conquering an entirely new territory for the German drama, attracted him strongly, and he set about the laborious task of self-orientation.

Ere long, however, there came an interruption which, for a while, seemed to promise a momentous change in the tenor of his life. Iffland wished to lure him to Berlin and had intimated that the Prussian government might be disposed to offer inducements. Schiller was not entirely averse to the idea; at least he thought it worth while to reconnoitre. So, toward the end of April, 1804, he set out with wife and children for the Prussian capital, where he was received with the greatest cordiality.

The king and queen of Prussia, to whom he was presented, were very gracious, and it was all decidedly pleasant. So at least he thought and so his wife pretended to think,--keeping down for her husband's sake the dismay which a daughter of fair Thuringia could not help feeling at the thought of making a home on the flat banks of the Spree. After a fortnight Schiller returned to Weimar and was presently invited by the Prussian minister, Beyme, to name his terms. Now came the rub; for he did not really wish to leave Weimar. He had taken deep root there and his affections clung to the place for the sake of Goethe and a few other friends. On the other hand, his stipend was but four hundred thalers, and his other sources of income were by no means such as to free him from anxiety about the future of his family. Feeling that it was his duty to better his position if possible, he laid his case before Karl August, who promptly doubled his stipend. After this it was virtually impossible for him to leave Weimar. Unwilling nevertheless to renounce the Berlin prospects altogether, he wrote to Beyme that for a consideration of two thousand thalers annually he would reside a few months of each year in Berlin. To this proposition Beyme made no answer.

Possibly he thought the price too high for a fractional poet.

Pending these futile negotiations Schiller worked with great zest upon 'Demetrius ',--reading, excerpting, examining maps and pictures, schematizing, balancing possibilities, and so forth. But again he was interrupted; first by an unusually severe illness, which brought him to death's door and left him for weeks in a condition of helpless languor, and then by the distractions incident to the arrival of the hereditary Prince of Weimar with his Russian bride, Maria Paulovna. Golden reports had preceded this princess, who was expected to reach Weimar in November, and preparations were made to welcome her with distinguished honors. For some reason Goethe, in his capacity of director of the theater, remained inactive amid the general flutter until a few days before the great event, when he besought Schiller to come to the rescue.

The result was 'The Homage of the Arts', called by its author a 'prologue'.

We have a rustic scene in which country-folk plant an orange-tree and invoke the blessing of pagan divinities. The Genius of Art appears, and with him the seven G.o.ddesses: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, Music, Dance and Drama. Genius asks for an explanation of the tree-planting, and is told by the rustics that it is an act of homage to their new queen, who has come from high imperial halls to live in their humble valley. They wish to bind her to them by keeping her reminded of home. On hearing this Genius a.s.sures them that the queen will not find all things strange in her new home: old friends are there after all.

Then he leads forward his seven G.o.ddesses, who explain themselves and say pretty things about Russia. 'The Homage of the Arts' is in no sense a weighty production, but its graceful verse and well-turned compliments had the desired effect. Maria Paulovna was pleased with it.

The reaction from these Russophile festivities fell heavily upon Schiller and he became gradually weaker. Unequal to creative effort he undertook a translation of Racine's 'Phedre' in German pentameters and finished it about the middle of January, 1805. After this he threw himself with great energy upon 'Demetrius', but it was the final flicker of a dying flame. In February came a fresh prostration, and it was then evident that the end was near. Nevertheless he worked on for a few weeks longer with feverish eagerness. On the evening of April 29, he went to the theater. After the play was over, the young Voss,--a son of the poet, who had attached himself warmly to Schiller during these latest years,--came to him to attend him home. He found him in a violent fever, which soon led to exhaustion and delirium. This time the strong will of the sufferer and the eager offices of wife and physician proved unavailing. He lingered on a few days longer, now and then in his delirium reciting disconnected verse or sc.r.a.ps of Latin, until the end came, on the afternoon of the 9th of May. Three days later, between twelve and one o'clock at night, the body of the dead man was borne by a little group of friends through the silent and deserted streets of Weimar, and lowered into a vault in the churchyard of St. James. There it remained until 1826, when the remains were exhumed and, after some curious vicissitudes, were placed in an oaken coffin and deposited in the ducal mausoleum, where they now rest near those of Goethe and Karl August.[129]

The death of Schiller made many mourners. Goethe, who had himself been very ill, wrote to a friend in Berlin: 'I thought to lose myself, and now I lose a friend, and with him the half of my existence.' From every hand came tokens of sympathy for the widow. Maria Paulovna asked for the privilege of caring for the children. Queen Luise of Prussia sent a message of heartfelt condolence. Cotta, whose business relations with Schiller had given rise to a warm personal affection, made generous offers of financial aid. As for the nation at large, however, it can hardly be said that much notice was taken of the event. Schiller had led a secluded life, had been but little in the public eye, and his personality was known to but few. What should the pa.s.sing of a single dreamer signify in the stirring epoch of Austerlitz and Jena? Not many knew that one of the real immortals had ceased to breathe,--one whose figure would loom up larger and larger in receding time, like a high mountain in the receding distance.

But leaving this subject, of Schiller's subsequent influence and reputation, for discussion in the concluding chapter, let us now turn to a brief survey of his unfinished plays and of his more important work as translator and adapter.

And first, 'Demetrius', of which one may say, as Schiller said of the Faust-fragment of 1790, that it is the torso of a Hercules. Such extant portions as had reached something like a final form in verse tell of a tragedy that bade fair to rank with 'Wallenstein', perhaps to surpa.s.s 'Wallenstein', in dramatic power and psychological interest. The completed portions pertain mainly to the first two acts; for the rest we have an immense ma.s.s of schemes, arguments, excerpts and collectanea. To read through this material, particularly the various schemes laboriously written out in numberless revisions, conveys at first an impression of over-solicitude, as if erudition and logical a.n.a.lysis were being relied upon to take the place of slackening inspiration. The moment one turns to the finished scenes, however, one sees that the poetic spring was still flowing in full measure; and one is amazed at the creative power which could still, with death knocking at the door, so swiftly and so surely fashion great poetry out of dull and contradictory books.

The story of the false Demetrius had been familiar to Schiller from his youth, but there is no evidence that he ever thought of dramatizing it until the year 1802, when we hear of an intended drama to be called 'The Ma.s.sacre at Moscow'. Just as before in the cases of Fiesco and Wallenstein, he found here a notable conspirator whose character and motives were the subject of dispute among the historians. The more usual view was that Demetrius was an escaped monk who gave himself out as the son of Ivan the Terrible, having either himself invented the fraud or else taken upon himself a role that was suggested to him by some one else. On the other hand, there were those who regarded him as the genuine son of Ivan and thus ent.i.tled to the throne which he conquered from the usurper, Boris Gudunoff, in the year 1605. Fraudulent pretender, or genuine Czar of the blood of Rurik,--this was the great question. With a fine dramatic intuition Schiller conceived a third possibility, namely, that Demetrius, though not in reality Ivan's son, fully believed himself to be such until he had triumphed, and then, though undeceived, went on his calamitous way as a tyrant because he could not turn back.

His first thought was to begin with a scene at Sambor in Galicia, wherein the escaped monk Grischka, tarrying at the house of Mnischek in complete ignorance of his high birth, but given none the less to ambitious dreaming, should be made known as Ivan's son, Demetrius, supposed to have been murdered sixteen years before at the instigation of Boris. Several scenes, interesting in their way but somewhat lacking in horizon, were elaborated in accordance with this idea. Then, however, the plan was modified and it was decided to begin directly with a session of the Polish parliament at Cracow, at which Demetrius should appear and triumphantly a.s.sert his claims before King Sigismund and the a.s.sembled n.o.bles. This scene, though left imperfect here and there, is certainly one of the best that ever came from Schiller's pen. As usual we have a bit of world-drama, for the element out of which the action grows is the national antipathy of Poles and Russians. And what an interesting figure is the young Demetrius, confronting all the pomp and power with the easy dignity of one born to kingship, and carrying the parliament with him by dint of his own self-confidence and royal bearing. He is essentially a new creation, unlike any of Schiller's other youthful heroes, though a certain family resemblance is of course discernible. Ambition of power is the great mainspring of his character, and he is as unscrupulous as Napoleon. Nevertheless he has his sentimental and his ethical promptings, and the whole basis of his conduct in this first part of the play is his perfect confidence that he is the son of Ivan.

It is thus ever to be regretted that Schiller did not live to write the later scenes in which Demetrius, on the eve of his triumphant entry into Moscow, should be approached by the _fabricator doli_ and told the true story of his vulgar birth. Here, just as in the 'Oedipus Rex', was a stupendous tragic fate, unconnected with any conscious guilt and growing entirely out of the circ.u.mstances. What should Demetrius do? What he was to _say_ we know from a prose sketch which runs as follows:

You [addressed to the _fabricator doli_, who appears in the ma.n.u.script as X] have pierced the heart of my life, you have taken from me my faith in myself. Away, Courage and Hope! Away, joyous self-confidence! I am caught in a lie. I am at variance with myself.

I am an enemy of mankind. I and truth are parted forever! What?

Shall I undeceive the people? Unmask myself as a deceiver?--I must go forward. I must stand firm, and yet I can do it no longer in the strength of inward conviction. Murder and blood must maintain me in my position. How shall I meet the Czarina? How shall I enter Moscow amid the plaudits of the people, with this lie in my heart?

One sees from this whither Schiller's idea was tending. From the time that Demetrius is undeceived his character changes. The youth who, with truth on his side, had it in him to become a great and wise ruler, breaks with the moral law and becomes a Macbeth, or a Richard the Third.

His course from this time on is flecked with blood and dishonored by treachery and tyranny. As Czar he excites the hatred of the Russians by his impolitic contempt of their customs. His Poles are insolent and trouble begins to brew about him. Finally there is an uprising against him and he falls--the victim of his own [Greek: hubris].

Had Schiller been permitted by fate to complete 'Demetrius', we should have had, it is safe to say, the most impressive of all his heroes, with the possible exception of Wallenstein. And we should have had also, in all probability, the very best of his historical tragedies; for his plan had provided for an unusually large number of highly promising scenes.

The picturesque Polish parliament, with its tumultuous ending; the first meeting of Demetrius with his reputed mother; the scene with the _fabricator doli_; the triumphal entry into Moscow; Demetrius as Czar in the Kremlin; his love intrigues with Axinia and his perfunctory marriage to Marina; the final gathering and bursting of the storm of indignation,--all this would have been wrought into a dramatic masterpiece of the first order.

Like 'Demetrius' in having a royal pretender for a hero, but unlike it in every other respect, is the play which was to have been called 'Warbeck'. To this subject Schiller's attention was drawn in the summer of 1799, while reading English history in Rapin de Thoyras. During the ensuing years he took it up repeatedly, but each time dropped it in favor of some other theme. At the time of his death he left 'Warbeck'

material sufficient to make eighty-four pages of octavo print. The most of this material consists of prose schemes, but there are also several hundred verses, some of them complete, others with lacunae, great or small. By a close study of these data one can make out the general character of the proposed play and the essential lineaments of the more important characters. The play was not to have been a tragedy, and it would have owed to history hardly anything more than its _milieu_ and a few names. The plan was something like this:

About the year 1492 there turns up at Brussels, at the court of Margaret, d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, a young man calling himself Warbeck. He is ignorant of his own birth, and does not suppose himself to be of royal blood, but he has a strong resemblance to Edward the Fourth of England. Being herself of York blood and wishing to make trouble for the Tudor king, Henry the Seventh, Margaret persuades the stranger to pretend that he is the son of Edward the Fourth,--one of the two boys supposed to have been murdered in the tower by Richard of Gloucester. He consents to the fraud and speedily acquires a following as pretender to the English throne. In reality Margaret despises him and merely wishes to use him as a tool, but it soon appears that Warbeck is a man of character who insists on playing his a.s.sumed role in a manner worthy of an English sovereign. Preparations are made for an invasion of England to a.s.sert his claim. Meanwhile Warbeck falls in love with Adelaide, a princess of Brittany, for whom the imperious Margaret has other designs.

Presently a man named Simnel appears, a.s.serting fraudulently that _he_ is a son of the fourth Edward. He and Warbeck fight a duel and Simnel is killed. Then the real Edward Plantagenet appears, with a convincing story of his own wonderful escape from the executioner in the Tower. A murderous plot is concocted against the boy's life, but he is saved by Warbeck, who acknowledges him as his rightful king. All this time Warbeck has supposed himself to be acting a part of pure fraud; and as he is really a man of honor, and in love with an amiable princess, the role of deceit has become increasingly hateful to him. At last, however, the old Earl of Kildare arrives, and from the depths of his superior knowledge makes it plain that Warbeck is in truth a natural son of Edward the Fourth. Thus all ends romantically and we have no adumbration of that later scene of the year 1499, when Perkin Warbeck was drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

From this plan it is clear that the princ.i.p.al stress was to fall on the character of Warbeck, conceived as a high-minded youth entangled in an odious lie. To quote Schiller's exact words: 'The problem of the piece is to carry him (Warbeck) ever deeper into situations in which his deceit brings him to despair, and to let his natural truthfulness increase as the circ.u.mstances force him to deception.' To arouse sympathy for such a character would have been, to say the least, a difficult task; one cannot wonder that Schiller was perplexed by it. The schemes indicate that his main reliance was the love-story, which would have been very prominent. Of the other characters, the most important, probably, was the d.u.c.h.ess Margaret, conceived as a selfish, overbearing, heartless creature, in sharp contrast with the romantic Adelaide. On the whole, judging from such imperfect data as we possess, one must regard 'Warbeck' as a far less powerful and promising design than 'Demetrius'.

Contemporaneous with 'Warbeck' and 'Demetrius', and broadly similar to them in that it was to deal with a political adventurer and to present an elaborate picture of intrigue in high life, is the plan of a play which was at first called 'Count Konigsmark'. The subject occupied the thoughts of Schiller for some little time in the summer of 1804, until it was dropped in favor of 'Demetrius'. Count Konigsmark was a n.o.bleman who was murdered in the year 1694, at the court of Duke George I., of Hannover, in consequence of a supposed criminal relation with the d.u.c.h.ess Sophia, a princess of the house of Celle. As he mused upon the dramatic possibilities of the story, Schiller became less interested in Konigsmark and more in the compromised d.u.c.h.ess; so the name of the piece was changed to 'The Princess of Celle'. From his extant notes and sketches one can make out that the heroine was conceived, like Mary Stuart, as a n.o.ble sufferer. She is a virtuous lady who is given in marriage for political reasons to an unloved and licentious duke, whose mistresses insult her. In her misery she makes a friend of the chivalrous but inflammable Konigsmark. Their relation excites suspicion, Konigsmark is murdered and the d.u.c.h.ess sent to prison,--disgraced but innocent. In prison she finds peace of soul, just as Mary Stuart finds it in the presence of death.

Much older than any of these plans and entirely different from them, is that of the 'Knights of Malta', which dates back to the year 1788. While pursuing his studies for 'Don Carlos' Schiller had become greatly interested in the story of La Valette's heroic defense of Malta in 1565.

It seemed to him to promise well for a tragedy in the Greek style,--with a chorus, a simple plot and few characters. He began work upon it, but was soon diverted by his historical studies. In subsequent years, however, he returned to 'The Knights of Malta' from time to time, and as late as 1803 was strongly minded to attempt the completion of the work.

During these fifteen years the plan underwent various changes. Although certain aspects of the subject made it very attractive to Schiller, he felt from the first that it lacked the 'salient point' of a good tragedy. The extant data show him working tentatively with one idea after another, without ever finding exactly what he wanted. This being so, it is hardly worth while to go minutely into the history of his plans and perplexities.

'The Knights of Malta' was to have been a poetic tragedy of heroic devotion, friendship and self-sacrifice. The exposition, as we have it in outline, shows,--partly by means of a chorus of 'spiritual'

knights,--the desperate plight of the besieged Christians. The crisis requires absolute devotion to the principles of the order, but the knights have degenerated. Two of them are quarreling over a captured Greek girl, and so forth. La Valette, the grandmaster, inst.i.tutes stern measures of reform to restore the ancient _morale_ of the order, and these provoke intrigue and opposition. The defenders of Fort St. Elmo ask to be relieved, on the ground that the place cannot be held. La Valette decides that St. Elmo must be defended to the last: it is a case where a few must be ready to sacrifice themselves for their principles and for the order as a whole. Among those thus sent to death is La Valette's own son, who leaves behind a very dear friend. In the end the defenders of St. Elmo are killed, but Malta and the order are saved. The Turks raise the siege.

Reading this outline one has no great difficulty In seeing why Schiller's dramatic instinct could never be satisfied with 'The Knights of Malta'. It has no tragic climax, no point upon which the action could be focused. As a stage-play it would have had small chance of favor, on account of its chorus and its entire lack of female characters. Romantic love was to be left out and friendship to take its place. But could anything worth while have been done with the heroics of friendship after 'Don Carlos'? On the whole one must regard it as a great good fortune for the German drama that, when Schiller was hesitating in 1796 between 'Wallenstein' and 'The Knights of Malta', the former carried the day. As for the pseudo-antique chorus, the best that he could do with that, by way of an experiment, was done later in 'The Bride of Messina'.

Besides those already mentioned, there are a number of other plans which deserve a word, were it only to show the wide range of Schiller's interest and the eagerness of his quest after variety. Thus we find him occupied, at one time or another, with two antique themes, 'Aggripina'

and 'The Death of Themistocles'; with an Anglo-Saxon theme of the tenth century, 'Elfride', and with a medieval romantic theme, 'The Countess of Flanders'. Then we find two subjects that were suggested by the reading of modern travels, 'The Ship' and 'The Filibuster'. In one the scene was to be laid on some distant coast or island, and the plot was to ill.u.s.trate sea-life and commerce, with their characteristic types. In the other the whole action was to take place on shipboard, bringing in a mutiny, ship's justice, a sea-fight, trade with savages, and so forth.

Finally there are sketches of two other plays, based on the annals of crime. In one of them, called 'The Children of the House', the hero was to be a thorough scoundrel, whom Nemesis would impel mysteriously to a course of conduct whereby his long hidden crimes would be discovered.

The other, ent.i.tled 'The Police', was to present a story of crime and its discovery at Paris,--with telling realistic pictures for which Schiller took a ma.s.s of interesting notes.

Verily, a rich collection, which shows that a good deal of Schiller failed to find expression in the works he completed. One could wish particularly that we had those sea-plays, and the Parisian criminal drama. Perhaps in that case the critics who have taxed him with this or that narrowness would have found it more difficult to make headway.

We turn now from these dramatic might-have-beens to glance at the translations and adaptations made for the Weimar theater.[130] And first it should be observed that in all these, without exception, Schiller's point of view was that of a practical playwright, not that of a literary virtuoso. His concern was to enrich the repertory of the theater with good acting plays; plays which, when put upon the boards, would 'go', and go with such actors and such properties as were to be had. In his efforts to do this he was never restrained by any feeling of piety toward his originals from making such changes as commended themselves to his dramaturgic principles or instinct. The first work of this kind undertaken by him at Weimar was a version of Goethe's 'Egmont', made in 1796. Iffland was starring in Weimar and wished to appear as Egmont.

Goethe was just then somewhat lukewarm toward the theater, and even if he had not been, it was by no means hidden from him that his own strength lay in the poetic rather than the dramatic sphere. So it was arranged that Schiller, as a man of experience, should operate upon the play that he had reviewed so candidly some years before. His procedure was 'consistent but cruel', as Goethe afterward phrased it. He dropped the role of Margaret of Parma entirely, rearranged here and there in order to avoid a too frequent change of scene, and made a mult.i.tude of little changes in the interest of stage effect. As to the propriety of these alterations it is futile to argue on general grounds, since so much depends on the point of view, and the point of view has changed.

To-day people who go to the theater to see 'Egmont' prefer to see the play, for better or worse, as Goethe wrote it. Piety toward the author counts more than abstract principles. For a while Schiller's version of 'Egmont' had a certain vogue in the German theaters, but it soon gave way to an increasing preference for the original. Goethe himself was pleased when this tendency manifested itself.

Similar considerations apply to the version of Lessing's 'Nathan', which was made in 1801. Strangely enough, as it seems to us now, Lessing's masterpiece had up to that time met with no favor on the German stage. It was not so much that people objected to its philosophic drift as that something seemed to be lacking in its dramatic quality. Very naturally Goethe and Schiller, who were strongly in sympathy with Lessing's tendency, were desirous of domesticating 'Nathan' on the Weimar boards. So Schiller undertook an adaptation, taking the task very seriously. Years before, while following up the theory of the drama in his strict and strenuous fashion, he had convinced himself that 'Nathan' was a monstrosity; it was neither tragedy nor comedy nor tragi-comedy, and he was opposed to a mixture of types. In tragedy, so he had reasoned in his essay upon 'Nave and Sentimental Poetry', _raisonnement_ is out of place; in comedy, pathos.

Lessing had yielded to the 'whim' of mixing the two. If, therefore, it was desired to make an acceptable stage-play out of 'Nathan' it would be advisable to modify it in the direction of tragedy by reducing its _raisonnement_, or else to make it more like comedy by reducing its pathos. In other words, theory had given Schiller a point of view which is not the modern point of view. To-day no one, unless it were a pedant, would be disposed to criticize Lessing, because, toward the end of his days, out of the fullness of his heart and following the impulse that was in him, he for once threw his own theories to the winds and wrote a dramatic masterpiece of its own peculiar kind. The very fact that it is unique is for us a part of its merit.

But now, as was pointed out in a preceding chapter, the effect of Schiller's occupation with the drama at Weimar was to weaken his reverence for theory and to convince him of the importance of 'keeping the type-idea flexible in one's mind'. So when he came to adapt 'Nathan'

for the stage he proceeded much less radically than one might expect from his previous utterances. The tendency of the play was left intact, but many changes were made in the interest of brevity, simplicity and rapidity of movement. To these no one can seriously object, since Lessing's text is too long for an evening in the theater, as the matter was regarded in those pre-Wagnerian days. Not so readily to be approved are certain other changes which amount to a retouching of some of the portraits with which Schiller was dissatisfied,--notably that of the Sultan Saladin.

Of much greater interest than either of these adaptations is that of 'Macbeth', which was made in January and February, 1800. This particular tragedy of Shakspere had always been a favorite with Schiller, and its influence is discernible in some of his plays, especially in 'Wallenstein'. It was only natural, therefore, at a time when Goethe and Schiller were reaching out in every direction for the enrichment of their theatrical repertory, that the staging of 'Macbeth' should appear as a consummation devoutly to be wished. There were already German versions which had been used at various theaters, but they were wretched travesties of Shakspere. In setting out to make a new and better one, Schiller took as the basis of his operations the translations of Wieland and of Eschenburg, following now the one and now the other. When he was half through with his labor he procured the English text and used it thereafter as a corrective. He added, subtracted and rearranged at will, and converted Shakspere's prose into verse. The result is a decidedly Schilleresque 'Macbeth', the merit of which has been debated to this day. The Romanticists, with A. W. Schlegel at their head, were disgusted with it and did not hide their emotions. Others have defended it through thick and thin. The questions involved are too far-reaching to be discussed here, but it may at least be remarked that there is no ground for a severely unfavorable judgment of Schiller's work. It is in no sense a translation and is not to be judged as a literary performance at all, but as a stage-play. As such it served its purpose very well; it made Shakspere acceptable at Weimar in the only way then possible under the circ.u.mstances. And it helped bring Shakspere into favor elsewhere.

The Schillerized 'Macbeth' may be regarded as a sort of necessary transition-stage between the gross travesties of an earlier time and the more faithful presentations that were to come.

With respect to 'Turandot' a few words must suffice. This again grew out of the laudable desire of the duumvirs to acclimate in Weimar dramatic productions that had pleased the public in other climes. Gozzi's so-called _fiabe_ belonged to this cla.s.s. They had had a great though short-lived vogue at Venice, and this had led to a German translation in prose by a man named Werthes. What Schiller did was to turn the prose of Werthes into pentameters of the style that he had made peculiarly his own. He seems not to have looked at the Italian text at all, and indeed it could have been of little use to him. As one would expect, he made an attempt to give some poetic weight to the fantastic trifle, but it was a thankless undertaking, albeit good Italian critics have praised his 'Turandot' as far superior to the original. The comic-opera subject, for such it really is, was not adapted to Schiller's vein. His 'Turandot' is distinctly stiff and operose. It had a short run at two or three theaters, where, as at Weimar, it excited a small interest on account of the riddles and the Chinese 'business', and then it was quietly consigned to the limbo of things that were.

The remaining adaptations made by Schiller were from the French, a language which he knew better than any other except his own. The Duke of Weimar, and with him a considerable portion of the Weimar public, had retained from early education a strong predilection for the French drama, both in comedy and in the _haute tragedie_. It was thus a cause of joy in court circles when it became known, in the autumn of 1799, that Goethe had so far overcome his early anti-Gallic prejudices as to have undertaken a translation for the stage of Voltaire's 'Mahomet'. To this enterprise, however, he was moved not so much by any change of heart, or by poetic sympathy, as by a desire to improve the style of the Weimar actors,--to teach them ideality and self-abnegation. With this purpose Schiller was in hearty accord, as can be seen from his verses 'To Goethe', written in January, 1800, in which he set forth his dramatic confession of faith. The Frenchman, he declared with unction, could by no means serve them as a model; there must be no bringing back of the old fetters. The Germans had advanced to a new era, and demanded now a faithful picture of nature. Nevertheless their histrionic art was in a backward condition, lacking in ideality and distinction. Wherefore the French tragedy was to be welcomed as a 'guide to the better'. It was to come 'like a departed spirit and purify the desecrated stage into a worthy seat of the ancient Melpomene'.

The result of this new _rapprochement_ was that Schiller began to take a more lively interest in the French drama, and out of this interest grew presently his translations of two of Picard's comedies, 'Mediocre et Rampant' and 'Encore des Menechmes'. In both he took his task very lightly. Picard's alexandrines, in 'Mediocre et Rampant', were converted into German prose, and the play was christened 'The Parasite'. In the case of the other, renamed 'The Nephew as Uncle', the original was in prose and Schiller merely made a free translation. These enterprises were little more than hackwork, which had its suitable reward of brief popularity. Of an entirely different character is the version of Racine's 'Phedre', which, as we have seen, was finished a few weeks before Schiller's death. Here we have for the first time what can properly be called a poetic translation. To a large extent Schiller's version is a line-for-line rendering of the French alexandrines into German pentameters,--a thing by no means easy to do. 'Phedra' is by far the best specimen we have of Schiller's powers as a translator.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 129: In the year 1805 it was still usual at Weimar to have the bodies of the dead borne to the grave in the night by hired workmen. On the death of Schiller the burgomaster gave orders in accordance with the custom, and it was with some difficulty that friends of the dead man succeeded in displacing the guild on which the lot had fallen and securing for themselves the privilege of acting as bearers. While lying in the old churchyard the bones of Schiller became commingled with others in the vault, so that the proper rea.s.sembling of his mortal framework, in the year 1826, was a matter of some perplexity. For a while the skull was exhibited in the court library, where it called forth Goethe's well-known poem.]

[Footnote 130: For an excellent discussion of Schiller's more important adaptations the reader is referred to A. Koster, "Schiller als Dramaturg", Berlin, 1891.]