After some hesitation between prose and verse he began in prose, being led thereto partly by the advice of Wilhelm von Humboldt and partly by his own desire to produce this time an acceptable stage-play. His progress was at first very slow. There was endless reading to be done and endless rumination over the plot. In the winter season, with its close confinement and its lowered vitality, the invalid could accomplish but little. He fixed his hopes longingly upon the return of spring and decided to buy a house with a garden, so that he could muse and write in the open air. In May, 1797, the purchase was made, but by this time work on 'Wallenstein' had completely stagnated and other interests were at the fore. He was back among the Greeks. Renewed study of Sophocles, particularly of the 'Trachiniae' and the 'Philoctetes', had convinced him that everything hinges upon the invention of a poetic fable. To quote again from a letter to Goethe:
The modern poet wrestles laboriously and anxiously with accidental and subordinate matters and, in his effort to be very realistic, loads himself down with the vacuous and the trivial. Thus he runs a risk of losing the deep-lying truth which constitutes the real nature of the poetical. He would fain imitate an actual occurrence, and does not consider that a poetic representation can never coincide with actuality, because it is absolutely true.
A little later he took up the study of Aristotle's 'Poetics' and was delighted to find that the dread Rhadamanthus was after all so very liberal and sensible. He had now reached a firm footing and was not to be dislodged even by Aristotle, whose whole body of doctrine, as he did not fail to observe, was deduced empirically from concrete specimens of a particular type of play. It could not be canonical for all the world, but it was very instructive. Schiller was glad that he had finally discovered Aristotle, but glad also that he had never read him before.
On returning to 'Wallenstein' in October, after the summer claims of the 'Almanac' had been satisfied, he noticed that what he had written was characterized by a certain dryness. It was evident that, in his strenuous effort to avoid his besetting sin of rhetoric, he was in danger of becoming trivial. He had still a sustaining faith in the goodness of his subject, but the great problem would be to make it poetical. It was necessary to find the middle way between the rhetorical and the prosaic. The practical result of these cogitations was a decision to write 'Wallenstein' in verse. In versifying the completed scenes he found himself, so he wrote to Goethe, before a different tribunal. Much that had seemed very good in prose would not do at all; for verse tended to invest everything with an imaginative nimbus which rendered triviality and mere logic intolerable.
But the new form brought with it a new danger—that of prolixity. It was necessary that the exposition account for Wallenstein's conduct by exhibiting the sources of his power. This meant a dramatic picture of his wild and irresponsible soldatesca. The theme was boundless and Schiller was a facile verse-maker. Ere long he reported ruefully to Goethe that his first act was already longer than three acts of 'Iphigenie'. He was in doubt whether his friend had not infected him with a 'certain epic spirit' which tended to diffuseness. In his embarrassment of riches he decided to give the preliminary picture the form of a dramatic prologue having but a loose connection with the play proper, which was still conceived as a five-act tragedy.
During the winter of 1797-8 he worked as he could, steadily upborne by the friendly encouragement of Goethe. When summer arrived the last two acts were still unfinished, and the first three had grown to portentous dimensions. It was now that he decided to divide his unmanageable tragedy into two parts, 'The Piccolomini' and 'Wallenstein's Death'; his idea being that 'The Piccolomini', preceded by the dramatic prologue, which was now christened 'Wallenstein's Camp', would fill up an evening and prepare the way for the real tragedy of 'Wallenstein's Defection and Death'. This plan, involving a reconstruction of the whole, was carried out in the ensuing months. At the urgent request of Goethe, preparations were made to reopen the newly-renovated Weimar theater with a performance of the 'Camp' alone. As the piece was too short for this purpose, Schiller hastily amplified it to a sufficient size and wrote for it a noble prologue, which ranks among the best of his poems. When played at Weimar, in October, 1798, the 'Camp' was well received as a picturesque novelty, but that was all. It gave no clew to what was coming, and there was nothing in it to stir the depths of human nature.
'The Piccolomini' was completed in December and put upon the Weimar stage, under Schiller's personal direction, on January 30, 1799. As then performed it included two acts of 'Wallenstein's Death'. The first performance was a great success. The Weimarians, with Goethe at their head, were enthusiastic; and Schiller, who had of late known but little of popular favor, found himself suddenly invested with a new renown. He was pleased, elated; from this time on he felt sure of his vocation as dramatic poet. Returning to Jena he applied himself steadily to 'Wallenstein's Death', completing it finally in March. It was first played on the 20th of April, preceded at short intervals by the 'Camp' and 'The Piccolomini'. And great indeed was the poet's triumph, now that his achievement could be judged as a whole. He had given his best after years of preparation, and the world saw at once that it was very good. The animosities aroused by the Xenia lingered for a while in a few small minds, but it was of no use to fight genius with the missiles of petty malice. The Germans had accepted Schiller as their great dramatist.
To form a right estimate of 'Wallenstein' one must first look at it in a large way, remembering that structurally it forms a class all by itself. The name 'trilogy', in the technical sense of the Greeks, does not apply to it, seeing that the 'Camp' is not an integral part of the whole, but a dramatic prelude in an entirely different key. In a loose sense, to be sure, it forms a part of the exposition; but it can be omitted entirely, if one chooses, since everything technically necessary to be known is repeated in 'The Piccolomini'. Its characters are different and nothing is said or done that is vitally related to the ensuing complication. Its purpose is to show the nature of Wallenstein's soldiers and the grounds of their attachment to their commander. Their loyalty is of course the great factor in Wallenstein's position; it is because he relies upon their fidelity that he dares to dally with the thought of treason. But this fidelity of theirs, their sturdy esprit du corps, their unwillingness to be separated, could have been indicated in a scene, or in the report of a messenger; in fact it is indicated in the memorial which they place in the hands of Max Piccolomini.
The 'Camp', then, with its eleven-hundred verses, is to be regarded as a military genre-picture, elaborated for its own sake into an independent piece. As a prelude it transports us into the milieu of the tragedy, but without anywhere striking its key-note; for the tragedy is intensely serious, while the note of the 'Camp',—notwithstanding an undertone of seriousness without which it could not have been the work of Schiller,—is that of jovial humor. And the poet's scheme required just this effect in the prelude. One can hardly assent, therefore, to the suggestion of Harnack[114] that it would have been well if the sentiment of loyalty to the emperor had been made more prominent and given a more worthy champion than the stolid Tiefenbachers, who have nothing to say. Had this been attempted it must have led to an adumbration of the coming tragic conflict,—which is what Schiller wished to avoid. He wished that spectator and reader should accept the prelude as a thing of its own kind, complete in itself. It was for this reason that he gave it a distinctive meter, having convinced himself that meter of some kind was essential if he would avoid banality. With a wise instinct he chose the old free-and-easy tetrameter, which Goethe had used with excellent effect in some of his early plays. In German this meter lends itself beautifully to the bluff, off-hand discourse of soldiers. It gives an illusion of realism while preserving the effect of poetry.
Particularly admirable is the art with which Schiller has contrived to denote the motley variety of human types gathered under Wallenstein's banner, while giving to each of his figures a fairly distinct individuality. With a little study of costume a painter could paint them all. There is the wretched Peasant, who has been reduced to beggary and is willing to retrieve his fortunes by gambling with loaded dice; the sagacious Sergeant, who always knows more than other people, and prides himself upon 'the fine touch and the right tone' that can only be acquired near the person of the commander; the depraved Chasseur, who glories in fighting for its own sake, cares not for whom or what, and objects to discipline; the philosophic Cuirasseur, who argues for a higher ideal and pities the woes of the producing class, but cannot help matters; and the fiery Capuchin, who pronounces his wordy anathema against the whole godless crowd. What a picturesque assembly they make and how admirably they bring out the lights and shadows of the Wallenstein régime! One wonders how an invalid recluse, a bookish philosopher like Schiller, should ever have been able to write such scenes.