Even now the necessity of seeking his fortune somewhere was daily becoming more imperious. The Thalia did not pay, though the critics spoke well of it, and he could not live forever upon Körner's friendly advances of money. The sense of his dependence often galled him; and yet when a proposal, in itself highly attractive, came to him from a distant city, he could not pluck up courage to leave his friend. Friedrich Schröder, the greatest German actor of the time, wished to draw him to Hamburg. Schiller looked up to Schröder with genuine admiration and speculatively promised himself great gain from association with 'the one man in Germany who could realize all his ideas of art.' In Mannheim,—so he wrote in October, 1786,—he had lost all his enthusiasm for the theater; it was now beginning to revive, but he shuddered at the treatment to which playwrights were exposed by theatrical people. Moreover he was living at Dresden 'in the bosom of a family to which he had become necessary'. So nothing came of the negotiations except the preparation of a stage version of 'Don Carlos' for the Hamburg theater.
An amusing glimpse of domestic conditions in the Körner household is afforded by Schiller's dramatic skit, entitled 'Körner's Forenoon'. It belongs apparently to the year 1787, but was not published until 1862. The busy councillor of the Dresden Consistory sees a little leisure before him and squares off at his desk for a solid forenoon's work. He begins by ordering his man to shave him. Then he is interrupted by a procession of callers,—Schiller, in various rôles, and Minna, and Dorchen, and Professor Becker and others—who keep the stream of babble flowing until one o'clock. Körner is too late for the consistory and all that he has accomplished is to get shaved. The piece is a slight affair, but there is enough of solemn fun in it to make one wish that its author had seen fit to work his lighter vein more frequently.
About the time when this facetious bagatelle was penned, or a little earlier perhaps, Schiller became the hero of a comedy in real life. In the winter of 1787 he attended a masked ball where he met 'a pretty domino—a plump voluptuous maiden,—who fascinated him. Her name was Henriette von Arnim. He followed up the acquaintance and was soon quite seriously interested. As the Arnim family did not enjoy the best of reputations, the Körners were annoyed at Schiller's seeming lack of connoisseurship in women. They contrived to let him know that on the evenings when Henriette was not at home to him she was at home to a certain earthy Count Waldstein, or to a certain jew banker, as the case might be. This was painful, but not immediately decisive, and miserable days ensued. In the spring he was persuaded to try a few weeks' outing in the country. Here he was at first frightfully lonesome,—a dejected Robinson Crusoe, who could neither work nor amuse himself. To his pathetic demands for reading-matter his friends replied with malicious humor by sending him Goethe's 'Werther' and Laclos's 'Liaisons Dangereuses'. After a while the Arnims followed him, but presently the count came also; and then the course of true love, thus awkwardly bifurcated, was more troubled than ever. After Henriette's return to Dresden there was an interchange of letters, wherein love fought a losing battle with doubt and suspicion.
This half-year of amatory perturbation was of course unfavorable to literary labor. No further numbers of the Thalia appeared, and 'The Misanthrope', a new play of excellent promise, made no progress. But 'Don Carlos' did at last get itself completed—after a fashion. It was published early in the summer. And now, with this burden lifted, the time seemed to have arrived for carrying out the long-cherished plan of a visit to Weimar. Who could tell what might come of it? Körner was just as loyal as ever, but he was also wise enough to respect his friend's longing for a more assured and less dependent existence. And so in July Schiller set out for Thüringen,—to be seen no more in Dresden save as an occasional visitor. But the letters he wrote to the noble-minded friend who had done and been so much for him constitute, for several years to come, our best source of information concerning his outward fortune and his inner history. Before we follow him to Weimar, however, it will be in order to consider the play which remains as the most important achievement of his Dresden period.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 64: Letter of March 25, 1785.]
CHAPTER IX
Don Carlos
Arm in Arm mit dir, So fordr' ich mein Jahrhundert in die Schranken. 'Don Carlos'.
With the publication of 'Don Carlos' Schiller's literary reputation entered upon a new phase. Hitherto he had been known as a playwright in whom the passion for strong effects often obscured the sense of artistic fitness. Of his dramatic power there could be no doubt, but had he the higher gift of the great poet? Would he ever be able to clothe his conceptions in a form that would appeal permanently to the general heart because of high and rare artistic excellence? Doubts of this kind were quite justifiable up to the year 1787, but they were set at rest by 'Don Carlos'. However vulnerable it may be as a poetic totality, it has passages that are magnificent. Its sonorous verse, wedded to a lofty argument and freighted with the noblest idealism of the century, made sure its author's title to a place in the Walhalla of the poets.