Here he resumed his poetical employments, and published, within a year, the tragedies "Verschwörung des Fiesco" and "Kabale und Liebe." This "Conspiracy of Fiesco," the story of the political and personal relations of the Genoese nobility, has the charm of a kind of colossal magnitude. The chief incidents have a dazzling magnificence; the chief characters, an aspect of majesty and force. The other play, "Court-intriguing and Love," is a tragedy of domestic life; it shows the conflict of cold worldly wisdom with the pure impassioned movements of the young heart. Now, in September, 1783, Schiller went to Manheim as poet to the theatre, a post of respectability and reasonable profit. Here he undertook his "Thalia," a periodical work devoted to poetry and the drama, in 1784. Naturalised by law in his new country, surrounded by friends that honoured him, he was now exclusively a man of letters for the rest of his days.
From His Settlement at Manheim to His Settlement at Jena
(1783-1790)
Schiller had his share of trials to encounter, but he was devoted with unchanging ardour to the cause he had embarked in. Few men have been more resolutely diligent than he, and he was warmly seconded by the taste of the public. For the Germans consider the stage as an organ for refining the hearts and minds of men, and the theatre of Manheim was one of the best in Germany.
Besides composing dramatic pieces and training players, Schiller wrote poems, the products of a mind brooding over dark and mysterious things, and his "Philosophic Letters" unfold to us many a gloomy conflict of the soul, surveying the dark morass of infidelity yet showing no causeway through it. The first acts of "Don Carlos," printed in "Thalia," had attracted the attention of the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar, who conferred on their author the title of Counsellor. Schiller was loved and admired in Manheim, yet he longed for a wider sphere of action, and he determined to take up his residence at Leipzig.
Here he arrived in March, 1785, and at once made innumerable acquaintances, but went to Dresden in the end of the summer, and here "Don Carlos" was completed. This, the story of a royal youth condemned to death by his father, is the first of Schiller's plays to bear the stamp of maturity. The Spanish court in the sixteenth century; its rigid, cold formalities; its cruel, bigoted, but proud-spirited grandees; its inquisitors and priests; and Philip, its head, the epitome at once of its good and bad qualities, are exhibited with wonderful distinctness and address. Herr Schiller's genius does not thrill, but exalts us; it is impetuous, exuberant, majestic. The tragedy was, received with immediate and universal approbation.
He now contemplated no further undertaking connected with the stage, but his mind was overflowing with the elements of poetry, and with these smaller pieces he occupied himself at intervals through the remainder of his life. "The Walk," the "Song of the Bell," contain exquisite delineations of the fortunes of man; the "Cranes of Ibycus," and "Hero and Leander," are among the most moving ballads in any language. Schiller never wrote or thought with greater diligence than while at Dresden. A novel, "The Ghostseer," was a great popular success, but Schiller had begun to think of history. Very few of his projects in this direction reached even partial execution; portions of a "History of the Most Remarkable Conspiracies and Revolutions in the Middle and Later Ages," and of a "History of the Revolt of the Netherlands," were published.
A visit to Weimar, the Athens of Germany, was accomplished in 1787; to Goethe he was not introduced, but was welcomed by Wieland and Herder. Thence he went to see his early patroness at Bauerbach, and on this journey, at Rudolstadt, he met the Fräulein Lengefeld, whose attractions made him loath to leave and eager to return. The visit was repeated next year, and this lady honoured him with a return of love. At this time, too, he first met the illustrious Goethe, whom we may contrast with Schiller as we should contrast Shakespeare with Milton. Goethe was now in his thirty-ninth year, Schiller ten years younger, and each affected the other with feelings of estrangement, almost of repugnance. Ultimately they liked each other better, and became friends; there are few things on which Goethe should look back with greater pleasure than on his treatment of Schiller.
The "Revolt of the Netherlands," of which the first volume appeared in 1788, is accurate, vivid and coherent, and unites beauty to a calm force. It happened that the professorship at the University of Jena was about to be vacant, and through Goethe's solicitations Schiller was appointed to it in 1789. In the February following he obtained the hand of Fräulein Lengefeld. "Life is quite a different thing by the side of a beloved wife," he wrote a few months later; "the world again clothes itself around me in poetic forms."