The Life of Friedrich Schiller

Joanna.Madman!Thou dar'st?Lionel. I yield to force; again I'll see thee.[Exit.

The introduction of supernatural agency in this play, and the final aberration from the truth of history, have been considerably censured by the German critics: Schlegel, we recollect, calls Joanna's end a 'rosy death.' In this dramaturgic discussion, the mere reader need take no great interest. To require our belief in apparitions and miracles, things which we cannot now believe, no doubt for a moment disturbs our submission to the poet's illusions: but the miracles in this story are rare and transient, and of small account in the general result: they give our reason little trouble, and perhaps contribute to exalt the heroine in our imaginations. It is still the mere human grandeur of Joanna's spirit that we love and reverence; the lofty devotedness with which she is transported, the generous benevolence, the irresistible determination. The heavenly mandate is but the means of unfolding these qualities, and furnishing them with a proper passport to the minds of her age. To have produced, without the aid of fictions like these, a Joanna so beautified and exalted, would undoubtedly have yielded greater satisfaction: but it may be questioned whether the difficulty would not have increased in a still higher ratio. The sentiments, the characters, are not only accurate, but exquisitely beautiful; the incidents, excepting the very last, are possible, or even probable: what remains is but a very slender evil.

After all objections have been urged, and this among others has certainly a little weight, the Maid of Orleans will remain one of the very finest of modern dramas. Perhaps, among all Schiller's plays, it is the one which evinces most of that quality denominated genius in the strictest meaning of the word. Wallenstein embodies more thought, more knowledge, more conception; but it is only in parts illuminated by that ethereal brightness, which shines over every part of this. The spirit of the romantic ages is here imaged forth; but the whole is exalted, embellished, ennobled. It is what the critics call idealised. The heart must be cold, the imagination dull, which the Jungfrau von Orleans will not move.

In Germany this case did not occur: the reception of the work was beyond example flattering. The leading idea suited the German mind; the execution of it inflamed the hearts and imaginations of the people; they felt proud of their great poet, and delighted to enthusiasm with his poetry. At the first exhibition of the play in Leipzig, Schiller being in the theatre, though not among the audience, this feeling was displayed in a rather singular manner. When the curtain dropped at the end of the first act, there arose on all sides a shout of "Es lebe Friedrich Schiller!" accompanied by the sound of trumpets and other military music: at the conclusion of the piece, the whole assembly left their places, went out, and crowded round the door through which the poet was expected to come; and no sooner did he show himself, than his admiring spectators, uncovering their heads, made an avenue for him to pass; and as he waited along, many, we are told, held up their children, and exclaimed, "That is he!"36

This must have been a proud moment for Schiller; but also an agitating, painful one; and perhaps on the whole, the latter feeling, for the time, prevailed. Such noisy, formal, and tumultuous plaudits were little to his taste: the triumph they confer, though plentiful, is coarse; and Schiller's modest nature made him shun the public gaze, not seek it. He loved men, and did not affect to despise their approbation; but neither did this form his leading motive. To him art, like virtue, was its own reward; he delighted in his tasks for the sake of the fascinating feelings which they yielded him in their performance. Poetry was the chosen gift of his mind, which his pleasure lay in cultivating: in other things he wished not that his habits or enjoyments should be different from those of other men.

At Weimar his present way of life was like his former one at Jena: his business was to study and compose; his recreations were in the circle of his family, where he could abandon himself to affections, grave or trifling, and in frank and cheerful intercourse with a few friends. Of the latter he had lately formed a social club, the meetings of which afforded him a regular and innocent amusement. He still loved solitary walks: in the Park at Weimar he might frequently be seen wandering among the groves and remote avenues, with a note-book in his hand; now loitering slowly along, now standing still, now moving rapidly on; if any one appeared in sight, he would dart into another alley, that his dream might not be broken.37 'One of his favourite resorts,' we are told, 'was the thickly-overshadowed rocky path which leads to the Römische Haus, a pleasure-house of the Duke's, built under the direction of Goethe. There he would often sit in the gloom of the crags, overgrown with cypresses and boxwood; shady hedges before him; not far from the murmur of a little brook, which there gushes in a smooth slaty channel, and where some verses of Goethe are cut upon a brown plate of stone, and fixed in the rock.' He still continued to study in the night: the morning was spent with his children and his wife, or in pastimes such as we have noticed; in the afternoon he revised what had been last composed, wrote letters, or visited his friends. His evenings were often passed in the theatre; it was the only public place of amusement which he ever visited; nor was it for the purpose of amusement that he visited this: it was his observatory, where he watched the effect of scenes and situations; devised new schemes of art, or corrected old ones. To the players he was kind, friendly: on nights when any of his pieces had been acted successfully or for the first time, he used to invite the leaders of the company to a supper in the Stadthaus, where the time was spent in mirthful diversions, one of which was frequently a recitation, by Genast, of the Capuchin's sermon in Wallenstein's Camp. Except on such rare occasions, he returned home directly from the theatre, to light his midnight lamp, and commence the most earnest of his labours.

The assiduity, with which he struggled for improvement in dramatic composition, had now produced its natural result: the requisitions of his taste no longer hindered the operation of his genius; art had at length become a second nature. A new proof at once of his fertility, and of his solicitude for farther improvement, appeared in 1803. The Braut von Messina was an experiment; an attempt to exhibit a modern subject and modern sentiments in an antique garb. The principle on which the interest of this play rests is the Fatalism of the ancients: the plot is of extreme simplicity; a Chorus also is introduced, an elaborate discussion of the nature and uses of that accompaniment being prefixed by way of preface. The experiment was not successful: with a multitude of individual beauties this Bride of Messina is found to be ineffectual as a whole: it does not move us; the great object of every tragedy is not attained. The Chorus, which Schiller, swerving from the Greek models, has divided into two contending parts, and made to enter and depart with the principals to whom they are attached, has in his hands become the medium of conveying many beautiful effusions of poetry; but it retards the progress of the plot; it dissipates and diffuses our sympathies; the interest we should take in the fate and prospects of Manuel and Cæsar, is expended on the fate and prospects of man. For beautiful and touching delineations of life; for pensive and pathetic reflections, sentiments, and images, conveyed in language simple but nervous and emphatic, this tragedy stands high in the rank of modern compositions. There is in it a breath of young tenderness and ardour, mingled impressively with the feelings of gray-haired experience, whose recollections are darkened with melancholy, whose very hopes are chequered and solemn. The implacable Destiny which consigns the brothers to mutual enmity and mutual destruction, for the guilt of a past generation, involving a Mother and a Sister in their ruin, spreads a sombre hue over all the poem; we are not unmoved by the characters of the hostile Brothers, and we pity the hapless and amiable Beatrice, the victim of their feud. Still there is too little action in the play; the incidents are too abundantly diluted with reflection; the interest pauses, flags, and fails to produce its full effect. For its specimens of lyrical poetry, tender, affecting, sometimes exquisitely beautiful, the Bride of Messina will long deserve a careful perusal; but as exemplifying a new form of the drama, it has found no imitators, and is likely to find none.

The slight degree of failure or miscalculation which occurred in the present instance, was next year abundantly redeemed. Wilhelm Tell, sent out in 1804, is one of Schiller's very finest dramas; it exhibits some of the highest triumphs which his genius, combined with his art, ever realised. The first descent of Freedom to our modern world, the first unfurling of her standard on the rocky pinnacle of Europe, is here celebrated in the style which it deserved. There is no false timsel-decoration about Tell, no sickly refinement, no declamatory sentimentality. All is downright, simple, and agreeable to Nature; yet all is adorned and purified and rendered beautiful, without losing its resemblance. An air of freshness and wholesomeness breathes over it; we are among honest, inoffensive, yet fearless peasants, untainted by the vices, undazzled by the theories, of more complex and perverted conditions of society. The opening of the first scene sets us down among the Alps. It is 'a high rocky shore of the Luzern Lake, opposite to Schwytz. The lake makes a little bight in the land, a hut stands at a short distance from the bank, the fisher-boy is rowing himself about in his boat. Beyond the lake, on the other side, we see the green meadows, the hamlets and farms of Schwytz, lying in the clear sunshine. On our left are observed the peaks of the Hacken surrounded with clouds: to the right, and far in the distance, appear the glaciers. We hear the rance des vaches and the tinkling of cattle-bells.' This first impression never leaves us; we are in a scene where all is grand and lovely; but it is the loveliness and grandeur of unpretending, unadulterated Nature. These Switzers are not Arcadian shepherds or speculative patriots; there is not one crook or beechen bowl among them, and they never mention the Social Contract, or the Rights of Man. They are honest people, driven by oppression to assert their privileges; and they go to work like men in earnest, bent on the despatch of business, not on the display of sentiment. They are not philosophers or tribunes; but frank, stalwart landmen: even in the field of Rütli, they do not forget their common feelings; the party that arrive first indulge in a harmless little ebullition of parish vanity: "We are first here!" they say, "we Unterwaldeners!" They have not charters or written laws to which they can appeal; but they have the traditionary rights of their fathers, and bold hearts and strong arms to make them good. The rules by which they steer are not deduced from remote premises, by a fine process of thought; they are the accumulated result of experience, transmitted from peasant sire to peasant son. There is something singularly pleasing in this exhibition of genuine humanity; of wisdom, embodied in old adages and practical maxims of prudence; of magnanimity, displayed in the quiet unpretending discharge of the humblest every-day duties. Truth is superior to Fiction: we feel at home among these brave good people; their fortune interests us more than that of all the brawling, vapid, sentimental heroes in creation. Yet to make them interest us was the very highest problem of art; it was to copy lowly Nature, to give us a copy of it embellished and refined by the agency of genius, yet preserving the likeness in every lineament. The highest quality of art is to conceal itself: these peasants of Schiller's are what every one imagines he could imitate successfully; yet in the hands of any but a true and strong-minded poet they dwindle into repulsive coarseness or mawkish insipidity. Among our own writers, who have tried such subjects, we remember none that has succeeded equally with Schiller. One potent but ill-fated genius has, in far different circumstances and with far other means, shown that he could have equalled him: the Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns is, in its own humble way, as quietly beautiful, as simplex munditiis, as the scenes of Tell. No other has even approached them; though some gifted persons have attempted it. Mr. Wordsworth is no ordinary man; nor are his pedlars, and leech-gatherers, and dalesmen, without their attractions and their moral; but they sink into whining drivellers beside Rösselmann the Priest, Ulric the Smith, Hans of the Wall, and the other sturdy confederates of Rütli.

The skill with which the events are concatenated in this play corresponds to the truth of its delineation of character. The incidents of the Swiss Revolution, as detailed in Tschudi or Müller, are here faithfully preserved, even to their minutest branches. The beauty of Schiller's descriptions all can relish; their fidelity is what surprises every reader who has been in Switzerland. Schiller never saw the scene of his play; but his diligence, his quickness and intensity of conception, supplied this defect. Mountain and mountaineer, conspiracy and action, are all brought before us in their true forms, all glowing in the mild sunshine of the poet's fancy. The tyranny of Gessler, and the misery to which it has reduced the land; the exasperation, yet patient courage of the people; their characters, and those of their leaders, Fürst, Stauffacher, and Melchthal; their exertions and ultimate success, described as they are here, keep up a constant interest in the piece. It abounds in action, as much as the Bride of Messina is defective in that point.

But the finest delineation is undoubtedly the character of Wilhelm Tell, the hero of the Swiss Revolt, and of the present drama. In Tell are combined all the attributes of a great man, without the help of education or of great occasions to develop them. His knowledge has been gathered chiefly from his own experience, and this is bounded by his native mountains: he has had no lessons or examples of splendid virtue, no wish or opportunity to earn renown: he has grown up to manhood, a simple yeoman of the Alps, among simple yeomen; and has never aimed at being more. Yet we trace in him a deep, reflective, earnest spirit, thirsting for activity, yet bound in by the wholesome dictates of prudence; a heart benevolent, generous, unconscious alike of boasting or of fear. It is this salubrious air of rustic, unpretending honesty that forms the great beauty in Tell's character: all is native, all is genuine; he does not declaim: he dislikes to talk of noble conduct, he exhibits it. He speaks little of his freedom, because he has always enjoyed it, and feels that he can always defend it. His reasons for destroying Gessler are not drawn from jurisconsults and writers on morality, but from the everlasting instincts of Nature: the Austrian Vogt must die; because if not, the wife and children of Tell will be destroyed by him. The scene, where the peaceful but indomitable archer sits waiting for Gessler in the hollow way among the rocks of Küssnacht, presents him in a striking light. Former scenes had shown us Tell under many amiable and attractive aspects; we knew that he was tender as well as brave, that he loved to haunt the mountain tops, and inhale in silent dreams the influence of their wild and magnificent beauty: we had seen him the most manly and warm-hearted of fathers and husbands; intrepid, modest, and decisive in the midst of peril, and venturing his life to bring help to the oppressed. But here his mind is exalted into stern solemnity; its principles of action come before us with greater clearness, in this its fiery contest. The name of murder strikes a damp across his frank and fearless spirit; while the recollection of his children and their mother proclaims emphatically that there is no remedy. Gessler must perish: Tell swore it darkly in his secret soul, when the monster forced him to aim at the head of his boy; and he will keep his oath. His thoughts wander to and fro, but his volition is unalterable; the free and peaceful mountaineer is to become a shedder of blood: woe to them that have made him so!

Travellers come along the pass; the unconcern of their every-day existence is strikingly contrasted with the dark and fateful purposes of Tell. The shallow innocent garrulity of Stüssi the Forester, the maternal vehemence of Armgart's Wife, the hard-hearted haughtiness of Gessler, successively presented to us, give an air of truth to the delineation, and deepen the impressiveness of the result.

Act IV. Scene III

The hollow way at Küssnacht. You descend from behind amid rocks; and travellers, before appearing on the scene, are seen from the height above. Rocks encircle the whole space; on one of the foremost is a projecting crag overgrown with brushwood.

Tell [enters with his bow].Here through the hollow way he'll pass; there isNo other road to Küssnacht: here I'll do it!The opportunity is good; the bushesOf alder there will hide me; from that pointMy arrow hits him; the strait pass preventsPursuit. Now, Gessler, balance thy accountWith Heaven! Thou must be gone: thy sand is run.Remote and harmless I have liv'd; my bowNe'er bent save on the wild beast of the forest;My thoughts were free of murder. Thou hast scar'd meFrom my peace; to fell asp-poison hast thouChanged the milk of kindly temper in me;Thou hast accustom'd me to horrors. Gessler!The archer who could aim at his boy's headCan send an arrow to his enemy's heart.Poor little boys! My kind true wife! I willProtect them from thee, Landvogt! When I drewThat bowstring, and my hand was quiv'ring,And with devilish joy thou mad'st me point itAt the child, and I in fainting anguishEntreated thee in vain; then with a grimIrrevocable oath, deep in my soul,I vow'd to God in Heav'n, that the next aimI took should be thy heart. The vow I madeIn that despairing moment's agonyBecame a holy debt; and I will pay it.Thou art my master, and my Kaiser's Vogt;Yet would the Kaiser not have suffer'd theeTo do as thou hast done. He sent thee hitherTo judge us; rigorously, for he is angry;But not to glut thy savage appetiteWith murder, and thyself be safe, among us:There is a God to punish them that wrong us.Come forth, thou bringer once of bitter sorrow,My precious jewel now, my trusty yew!A mark I'll set thee, which the cry of woeCould never penetrate: to thee it shall notBe impenetrable. And, good bowstring!Which so oft in sport hast serv'd me truly,Forsake me not in this last awful earnest;Yet once hold fast, thou faithful cord; thou oftFor me hast wing'd the biting arrow;Now send it sure and piercing, now or never!Fail this, there is no second in my quiver.

[Travellers cross the scene.

Here let me sit on this stone bench, set upFor brief rest to the wayfarer; for hereThere is no home. Each pushes on quick, transient,Regarding not the other or his sorrows.Here goes the anxious merchant, and the lightUnmoneyed pilgrim; the pale pious monk,The gloomy robber, and the mirthful showman;The carrier with his heavy-laden horse,Who comes from far-off lands; for every roadWill lead one to the end o' th' World.They pass; each hastening forward on his path,Pursuing his own business: mine is death![Sits down.Erewhile, my children, were your father out,There was a merriment at his return;For still, on coming home, he brought you somewhat,Might be an Alpine flower, rare bird, or elf-bolt,Such as the wand'rer finds upon the mountains:Now he is gone in quest of other spoilOn the wild way he sits with thoughts of murder:'Tis for his enemy's life he lies in waitAnd yet on you, dear children, you aloneHe thinks as then: for your sake is he here;To guard you from the Tyrant's vengeful mood,He bends his peaceful bow for work of blood.[Rises.No common game I watch for. Does the hunterThink it nought to roam the livelong day,In winter's cold; to risk the desp'rate leapFrom crag to crag, to climb the slipp'ry faceO' th' dizzy steep, glueing his steps in's blood;And all to catch a pitiful chamois?Here is a richer prize afield: the heartOf my sworn enemy, that would destroy me.

[A sound of gay music is heard in the distance; it approaches.

All my days, the bow has been my comrade,I have trained myself to archery; oftHave I took the bull's-eye, many a prizeBrought home from merry shooting; but todayI will perform my master-feat, and win meThe best prize in the circuit of the hills.

[A wedding company crosses the scene, and mounts up through the Pass. Tell looks at them, leaning on his bow; Stüssi the Forester joins him.

Stüssi. 'Tis Klostermey'r of Morlischachen holdsHis bridal feast today: a wealthy man;Has half a score of glens i' th' Alps. They're goingTo fetch the bride from Imisee; tonightThere will be mirth and wassail down at Küssnacht.Come you! All honest people are invited.Tell. A serious guest befits not bridal feasts.Stüssi. If sorrow press you, dash it from your heart!Seize what you can: the times are hard; one needsTo snatch enjoyment nimbly while it passes.Here 'tis a bridal, there 'twill be a burial.Tell. And oftentimes the one leads to the other.Stüssi. The way o' th' world at present! There is noughtBut mischief everywhere: an avalancheHas come away in Glarus; and, they tell me,A side o' th' Glarnish has sunk under ground.Tell. Do, then, the very hills give way! On earthIs nothing that endures.Stüssi.In foreign parts, too,Are strange wonders. I was speaking with a manFrom Baden: a Knight, it seems, was ridingTo the King; a swarm of hornets met himBy the way, and fell on's horse, and stung itTill it dropt down dead of very torment,And the poor Knight was forced to go afoot.Tell. Weak creatures too have stings.

[Armgart's Wife enters with several children, and places herself at the entrance of the Pass.

Stüssi.'Tis thought to bodeSome great misfortune to the land; some blackUnnatural action.Tell.Ev'ry day such actionsOccur in plenty: needs no sign or wonderTo foreshow them.Stüssi.Ay, truly! Well for himThat tills his field in peace, and undisturb'dSits by his own fireside!Tell.The peacefulestDwells not in peace, if wicked neighbours hinder.

[Tell looks often, with restless expectation, towards the top of the Pass.

Stüssi. Too true.—Good b'ye!—You're waiting here for some one?Tell. That am I.Stüssi.Glad meeting with your friends!You are from Uri? His Grace the LandvogtIs expected thence today.Traveller [enters]. Expect notThe Landvogt now. The waters, from the rain,Are flooded, and have swept down all the bridges.[Tell stands up.Armgart [coming forward].The Vogt not come!Stüssi.Did you want aught with him?Armgart. Ah! yes, indeed!Stüssi.Why have you placed yourselfIn this strait pass to meet him?Armgart.In the passHe cannot turn aside from me, must hear me.Friesshardt [comes hastily down the Pass, and calls into the Scene].Make way! make way! My lord the LandvogtIs riding close at hand.Armgart.The Landvogt coming!

[She goes with her children to the front of the Scene. Gessler and Rudolph der Harras appear on horseback at the top of the Pass.

Stüssi [to Friesshardt].How got you through the water, when the floodHad carried down the bridges?Friess.We have battledWith the billows, friend; we heed no Alp-flood.Stüssi. Were you o' board i' th' storm?Friess.That were we;While I live, I shall remember 't.Stüssi.Stay, stay!O, tell me!Friess. Cannot; must run on t' announceHis lordship in the Castle. [Exit.Stüssi.Had these fellowsI' th' boat been honest people, 't would have sunkWith ev'ry soul of them. But for such rakehells,Neither fire nor flood will kill them. [He looks round.] WhitherWent the Mountain-man was talking with me?[Exit.

Gessler and Rudolph der Harras on horseback.