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 stagy tour de force. In the stage version, however, she does not reappear after the parting scene, and so we are left to wonder why she was introduced at all.
In Madame Julia we have a type of woman who was meant to be repulsive, and so far forth the young artist must be admitted to have wrought successfully. She is somewhat minutely described as a 'tall and plump widow of twenty-five; a proud coquette, her beauty spoiled by its oddity; dazzling and not pleasing, and with a wicked, cynical expression.' That such a woman should befool Fiesco and rejoice in her triumph is quite thinkable, but her qualities are those which usually go with a certain amount of discretion. That she should suddenly lose her head and throw herself away in a voluptuous frenzy hardly comports with the type. Nor is there anything in the inventory of her qualities that prepares us for her sudden 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."
FOOTNOTES:
[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.]