Don Carlos Infante of Spain


Book Description

Schiller’s Don Carlos, written ten years before his great Wallenstein trilogy, testifies to the young playwright’s growing power. First performed in 1787, it stands at the culmination of Schiller’s formative development as a dramatist and is the first play written in his characteristic iambic pentameter. Don Carlos plunges the audience into the dangerous political and personal struggles that rupture the court of the Spanish King Philip II in 1658. The autocratic king’s son Don Carlos is caught between his political ideals, fostered by his friendship with the charismatic Marquis Posa, and his doomed love for his stepmother Elisabeth of Valois. These twin passions set him against his father, the brooding and tormented Philip, and the terrible power of the Catholic Church, represented in the play by the indelible figure of the Grand Inquisitor. Schiller described Don Carlos as "a family portrait in a princely house.” It interweaves political machinations with powerful personal relationships to create a complex and resonant tragedy. The conflict between absolutism and liberty appealed not only to audiences but also to other artists and gave rise to several operas, not least to Verdi’s great Don Carlos of 1867. The play, which the playwright never finished to his satisfaction, lives on nonetheless among his best-loved works and is translated here with flair and skill by Flora Kimmich. Like her translations of Schiller’s Wallenstein and his Fiesco’s Conspiracy at Genoa, this is a lively and accessible rendering of a classic text. As with all books in the Open Book Classics series, it is supported by an introduction and notes that will inform and enlighten both the student and the general reader.










Schiller the Dramatist


Book Description

In examining Schiller's often-neglected use of gesture, this study treats his dramas as written to be performed -- not merely read. Many aspects of the works of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) have attracted attention. His work as a philosopher and pioneering thinker in poetics and aesthetics and as a historian have recently been the focus of much attention. But Schiller's dramas have always held the most interest, and they continue to be performed regularly both in German-speaking lands and around the world. Schiller is a dramatist of psychological conflict rather than of abstract ideas, and he had a unique grasp of how to use the stage to that end. This study of Schiller's use of gesture begins with a discussion of the origins of the gestures he employs, viewing them in relation to his medical writings, his literary influences, theories of the theater and acting, and Enlightenment thinking in general. The study then considers the use of gesture and related aspects of stagecraft in Schiller's nine completed dramas, highlighting elementsof continuity and development. It is concerned with the interpretation of gesture, often marginalized in studies of Schiller's works, and with the interrelationship between gesture and verbal text. It also considers Schiller's relationship to the theater of his day, and discusses the first performances of his plays as well as their more recent stage history in both Germany and Great Britain. Appearing in the 250th anniversary of Schiller's birth, this study treats his dramas as plays written to be performed -- as works that reach their fullest potential in the theater. John Guthrie teaches modern German literature and language at the University of Cambridge, where he isfellow and director of studies at Murray Edwards College.
















John Stuart Mill


Book Description