The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller

by Calvin Thomas

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, institutes 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 illustrate 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, entitled 'The Police', was to present a story of crime and its discovery at Paris,—with telling realistic pictures for which Schiller took a mass 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 rôle of Margaret of Parma entirely, rearranged here and there in order to avoid a too frequent change of scene, and made a multitude 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 'Naïve 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 circumstances. 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 class. 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.