# Open Book Classics

# **Love and Intrigue**

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER TRANSLATED BY FLORA KIMMICH INTRODUCTION BY ROGER PAULIN

**OBP**

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**Love and Intrigue**

Friedrich Schiller

Schiller's play *Kabale und Liebe*, usually translated into English as *Love and Intrigue*, represents the disastrous consequences that follow when social constraint, youthful passion, and ruthless scheming collide in a narrow se� ng. Wri� en between 1782 and 1784, the play bears the marks of life at the court of the despo� c Duke of Wür� emberg, from which Schiller had just fl ed, and of a fraught liaison he entered shortly a� er his fl ight. It tells the tale of a love aff air that crosses the boundaries of class, between a fi ery and rebellious young nobleman and the beau� ful and du� ful daughter of a musician. Their aff air becomes entangled in the compe� ng purposes of malign and not-so-malign fi gures present at an obscure and sordid

*Love and Intrigue*, the third of Schiller's canonical plays (a� er *The Robbers* and Fiesco's *Conspiracy at Genoa*), belongs to the genre of domes� c tragedy, with a small cast and an ac� on indoors. It takes place as the highly conven� onal world of the late eighteenth century stands poised to erupt, and these tensions pervade its se� ng and emerge in its ac� on. This lively play brims with comedy and tragedy expressed in a colorful, highly colloquial, some� mes scandalous prose well captured in Flora Kimmich's skilled and informed transla� on. An

As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher's website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material,

Cover image: Luise reaches for the glass of lemonade. From Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, engraved by

princely court somewhere in Germany. It all leads to a climac� c murder-suicide.

authorita� ve essay by Roger Paulin introduces the reader to the play.

can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com

Conrad Geyer a� er a drawing by Arthur von Ramberg (ca. 1859).

Cover design: Anna Ga� .

book ebook and OA edi� ons also available

e

**OPEN ACCESS**

Friedrich Schiller

Translated by Flora Kimmich

**Love and Intrigue**

Introduction by Roger Paulin

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# LOVE AND INTRIGUE

# Love and Intrigue

A Bourgeois Tragedy

*By Friedrich Schiller*

*Translation and Notes to the Text by Flora Kimmich Introduction by Roger Paulin*

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Translation and Notes to the text Flora Kimmich © 2019 Introduction Roger Paulin © 2019

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Open Book Classics Series, vol. 11 | ISSN: 2054-216X (Print); 2054-2178 (Online)

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Cover image: Luise Miller from Friedrich Schiller's *Kabale und Liebe*, engraved by Conrad Geyer after a drawing by Arthur von Ramberg (ca. 1859). Cover design: Anna Gatti.

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# Contents


Schiller's *Kabale und Liebe*, a title usually rendered in English as *Love and Intrigue*, presents a text that is "low" style: in prose, highly colloquial, sometimes to the point of slang, and strongly marked by class distinction. Translation of such a text proceeds, necessarily, largely by ear and instinct. Spoken language, which is ephemeral, leaves a blank that must be filled by words in current usage, the old forms having vanished. I cannot claim to have escaped anachronism; my best hope is to have avoided jarring anachronism that injures the illusion of an action that took place more than two hundred years ago.

German texts set in previous centuries, especially comedy, enjoy the advantage of four forms of direct address: second- and third-person, singular and plural. These many forms create social distinctions, convey nuances of hierarchy, and color expressions of contempt and deference in ways that do not survive in English. Thus Wurm's abjectness and malice, read in the original, plumb new depths of squalor. And his retribution at the end of the play acquires new pungency and a satisfying ring of social justice when he turns on his ennobled master, who has always addressed him, with proper condescension, as "Er," and whom he has addressed, deferentially, as "Sie," and the two men square off on a common level of reciprocated contempt, addressing each other as "du." These small carriers of meaning are lost in translation.

Here again, as in translating *Don Carlos*, 1 I have pruned certain exuberances of the original—restatements that do no work, flights of

<sup>1</sup> *Don Carlos Infante of Spain*: *A Dramatic Poem* by Friedrich Schiller. Translated by Flora Kimmich (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2018), https://doi.org/10.11647/ OBP.0134; https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/711

fancy that know no end, interjections that break an effective flow of expression—in the interest of good rhetoric and good argument. My object here again is to gain felicity and persuasion at no expense of meaning.

This translation, like the others in the series of Schiller's major plays, which Open Book Publishers makes freely available to a wide readership,2 is intended for young people in college-level instruction and for the general reader. The endnotes undertake to ease the reader's way through an old text by situating the play in its period and remarking on its structure.

I gratefully acknowledge my debt to Gerhard Kluge, editor of the edition Deutsche Klassiker, Frankfurt am Main, 1989, the text on which my translation is based, whose commentary gave me valuable guidance in preparing the endnotes. My debt to Roger Paulin grows with each new volume of the series. The present text has been greatly strengthened by his fine ear, his command of both languages, and his learning. Alessandra Tosi presided over it all with vigilance and resourcefulness. Christoph Kimmich, once again, provided me with everything I needed.

<sup>2</sup> See https://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/40/1

# *Roger Paulin*

Friedrich Schiller wrote *Love and Intrigue* (*Kabale und Liebe*) in 1782 after having fled from his native Württemberg, and completed it in early 1784. It was ready for the first stage performance in Mannheim on 13 April 1784.

Duke Karl August, the ruler of Württemberg, had not appreciated Schiller's talent and was more interested in his services as an army surgeon. Schiller had escaped across the border to the more congenial Mannheim, where he was to see the first two of his plays, *The Robbers* and *Fiesco*, completed and performed. His absences had incurred the Duke's displeasure. This was not to be taken lightly: in 1777, Karl Eugen had had the poet and journalist Christian Daniel Friedrich Schubart arrested and incarcerated for speaking things he did not wish to hear. While Schiller was at the cadet school founded by the Duke, the Hohe Karlsschule, the pupils were taken to see Schubart in prison. The message was clear: toe the line, or else.

During his incarceration, Schubart had written a poem, a vision of a royal burial vault, where lay side by side the good princes, the fathers of their people, and those whose reigns had spelt oppression and misrule, extravagance and favouritism. Whatever they might think of the rest of the play, audiences and readers of *Love and Intrigue* are unfailingly moved by the old retainer's account in Act Two, Scene Two, of the sale of 7,000 soldiers to fight in the American War of Independence (so-called Hessians) in order to pay for Lady Milford's diamonds. It rings true. In fact Karl Eugen did not sell his soldiers, but he did grind his subjects to build palaces for his mistress.

To this is added the subject of love across the social divide of aristocracy and commoner. In these terms, the play could be read as an anti-monarchist, anti-aristocratic tract, an indictment foreshadowing demands expressed violently in France in 1789 — just a few years ahead — and calling for a reordering of society's values. Unlike *The Robbers*, where anarchy threatens to break out, or *Fiesco*, where a regime is overthrown, *Love and Intrigue* offers no such challenges to the established order. The explosive charges mentioned in the text — by the First Minister and by Lady Milford — are metaphorical only: they are not laid under the palace (and the Duke never appears). Despite suitable punishment of wrongdoers at the end, the system does not change. At least in Shakespeare's *Romeo and Juliet*, with which this play is often compared, the families cease feuding at the sight of the dead lovers. But we do not sense any change of heart here, nor are we led to expect any.

Titles and subtitles matter in plays. Schiller's first title for this play was *Luise Millerin*, the heroine's name. From this one might infer that he was placing her not merely in the centre of the action (she engages with all of the characters) but that her personal tragedy represented the main dramatic interest (as indeed it does in Verdi's opera, *Luisa Miller*). Instead, he chose a more speaking title, *Kabale und Liebe*, the only one in his oeuvre that does not name the main character directly or the milieu in which he or she operates. Was it his intention to place the court cabal in the foreground and all that it entailed, with its machinations frustrating and ultimately destroying the love that forms the second component of the title? Or do Love and Intrigue balance each other equally, the one conditional on the other? Certainly, English titles since the first translation in 1795 have reversed Schiller's order — more natural in English — as *Love and Intrigue*, as good a rendition as we shall ever get, 'cabal' in English having too strongly political overtones. But another early translator rendered the title as *The Minister*, which, while not Schiller's original, does foreground Walter's corrupt and inhuman calculations and schemings, in the toils of which the lovers are inextricably caught.

The subtitle of the play, in German 'bürgerliches Trauerspiel', is harder to render, for the simple reason that English has no such term. True, the 'middle-class tragedy', the French 'drame bourgeois', owed its origin to an ultimately English source: George Lillo's *The London* 

*Merchant* (1731). That play seemed to upset the traditional subdivision of the dramatic genre into characters of high station (tragedy) and the lower orders (comedy). It was in prose, thus going further than Shakespeare, whose high characters may only occasionally speak in this form. Instead, it proposed that high sentiments, pathos, tragic confrontations and emotional entanglements may be experienced not only by kings and potentates, but by those of lower social rank, the 'middle class', who now acquire a dramatic dignity hitherto denied them by neo-classical poetics. In France, Denis Diderot stresses the domestic sphere as the place of dramatic conflict; he praises the high pathos of the middle-class family scene in painting. Both in France and Germany, the notion of a 'middle-class tragedy' goes hand in hand with the cult of feeling, German 'Empfindsamkeit', French 'sensibilité', with its appeal to the heart, to human goodness, to tears, as exemplified in England by the novels of Samuel Richardson (the kind of novel that Luise in *Love and Intrigue* has been reading). And the tragedies would be in prose, not in verse.

In Germany, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing took up this mode with his *Miss Sara Sampson* of 1755 (note the English title), with its endangered virtue and high emotional turmoil. But his second major tragedy, *Emilia Galotti* of 1772, and thus chronologically closer to Schiller, introduced elements that we see recurring in *Love and Intrigue*: the conflict between social classes and stations, the corruption of courts, the moral dilemma of the heroine. Set in an Italian court, Lessing's play reduces the action to a short span of time and a tightly reduced number of characters, all this in five acts — features adapted from the traditional classical tragedy. Schiller follows this scheme, but takes the bold step of placing his action at a German court.

Schiller has a similarly spare cast — eight main characters — and the action is restricted to two private spheres, the antechamber of a court, where the ruler, although omnipresent, never actually appears, and the domestic quarters of the Miller family. We no longer have the huge cast lists of *The Robbers* or *Fiesco*, or their frequent changes of scene. In this respect, *Love and Intrigue* foreshadows the tighter action of *Don Carlos*, the second and third parts of *Wallenstein*, and *Maria Stuart*. We are reminded, too, of how the action in *Wallenstei*n is directed by the absent Emperor, who, like the Duke in *Love and Intrigue*, never intervenes personally in the action.

The classically tight *dramatis personae* also reflect the close interaction of the characters. Those around whom the main action revolves, Luise, Ferdinand, the First Minister, and Wurm, all confront each other both in the commoner's house and in the palace. Miller and his wife never leave their sphere, Kalb and Lady Milford similarly. We note certain imbalances: the First Minister has no wife and Ferdinand has no mother (she is never mentioned). Luise, on the other hand, has her father and her moral and filial duty towards him (her mother is a caricature and hardly developed). The constellations as they are set up are such that there is no female character to balance or restrain Walter senior in his corrupt dealings or to rein in Walter junior's extravagances and flights. Indeed those characters beginning with 'W' arouse our attention: Walter (which in German can suggest 'he who is in control'), and Wurm (meaning worm), who is his creature, raised from nothing to carry out his master's bidding. (The course of the action will show that the worm has more devilish cunning than the man in charge). Kalb, a figure of fun, is a useful idiot created for Walter's use, whereas Lady Milford, the only character who has the real personal freedom to rise above love and intrigue, breaks loose from the court and exercises a kind of moral awareness. She will, of course, be replaced. Nothing will have changed. There are very small grounds indeed for believing that the catastrophe in the Miller and von Walter families will effect a change of heart in the Duke.

But there are more subtle forms of interrelation: in the modes of address adopted by the characters. English cannot render these, but they deserve mention nevertheless: the formal mode of address ('Sie'), as used between persons of higher station, and by Ferdinand to his father; the intimate ('du') between members of the same family (Walter to Ferdinand, Miller to Luise), but also as a form of insult (Ferdinand to Kalb in Act Four, Scene Three); and the third-person ('Er", 'Sie") used for menials (Walter to Wurm, Lady Milford to Luise at first, but also Luise to her father). These interlocutory forms tell us who belongs where and who defines whose station. They are most revealing of the heroine, Luise. For, at sixteen, she is already educated beyond her station and expresses herself (like Shakespeare's Juliet) with a sophistication beyond her years. This places her a cut above her father, the town musician, and he seems to accept it. But this does not free her from a sense of moral responsibility towards her father, and it is he who persuades her not to take her own life. In so doing, Miller is appealing to a residual Christian conscience not shared by the characters of higher status. It is this, too, which influences Luise's fatal admission when Ferdinand interrogates her about the letter in Act Five; the truth comes too late to save her. It also enables Luise to worst Lady Milford in moral argument, but by the same token it also delivers her into the hands of Wurm. Where Ferdinand talks lightly of eloping with Luise, she is constrained by a love and a sense of responsibility alien to him. It is not by chance that Schiller has Luise first appearing with a book; it is followed by her avowal that she is a 'great sinner' and has lost the piety that has hitherto sustained her. She is not the only heroine of a 'bürgerliches Trauerspiel' to take upon herself the burden of guilt imposed by another, and Margarete in Goethe's *Faust* is similarly placed. It informs Luise's awareness, expressed in her very first scene with Ferdinand, that their love is fated, their deaths certain. An absolute love without barriers and constraints is impossible, even if the father for whom she has so much affection and for whom she sacrifices her love is only partially worthy of it. And Ferdinand? He would hardly need to open his mouth for us to form an idea of his character. His body language would suffice — in a play where Schiller writes gestures into the text as a dramatic component, not as a mere accompaniment to language. Ferdinand's bespeak grand movements and impetuous gesticulations that go with speech interlarded with exclamation marks and dashes. We do well to study his bodily expression before imputing to him any degree of systematic reflection.

It has become a convention of some recent studies on this play to look beyond its social statement — despite our outrage at the sale of soldiers or our admiration for Miller and his bold stand against Walter — and to see in it patterns that are at bottom philosophical or even theological. Why is the world ordained as it is? Who is responsible? On the one hand, Ferdinand believes — Luise too — that theirs is a love preordained by God, a 'heaven' (Luise uses this word to Lady Milford), a paradisiac state free of social bonds and convections, an encapsulated existence with its own terms of reference, like Romeo and Juliet's, if one will. When it becomes clear to him that this cannot be and that fate or some other agency is conspiring to draw them apart — the 'Intrigue' of the title — we hear much more radical language: that of judgment, revenge, recrimination, divested of its Christian connotations and now part of a private theology of retribution. There will be propitiation, but on his terms. He is prepared to take upon himself the role of judge and judged. We seem to hear Karl Moor's 'I am my heaven and my hell' from Schiller's first play, *The Robbers*. But Ferdinand acts alone: his favorite word appears to be 'my' or 'mine', '*my* love', '*my* understanding of greatness and fortune', 'trust *me*' (my italics). There is no-one to intervene, to tell him that this must end in death — and not only his. Not that this is anywhere systematically formulated. Ferdinand goes, it seems, from one extreme, one overwrought formulation, to the next, in the heat of the moment piling one radical vision on to another. No wonder, therefore, that he does not pause for reflection, ridden as he is by visions that are total and absolute. Despite differences, we see something of Shakespeare's Othello and Leontes in the abruptness of his manic fantasies and frenetic jealousies. Has he, like his Luise, been reading too many books, absorbing too many notions current in the century: sentimental love, 'made in heaven', a world framed by providence, man born free but now in chains? *Love and Intrigue*, like Goethe's novel *Werther* of 1774, demonstrates that the most noble and laudable ideas of the culture of feeling may be turned inwards into personal catastrophe, there a botched suicide, here lemonade laced with arsenic. (We must try hard to forgive Schiller for this 'middle-class' beverage).

Luise is not free of these high-sounding sentiments, but, as said, she is subject to constraints that Ferdinand is not. To save her father, she must place Ferdinand second. Her tormentors play on her moral virtues, knowing that she will not break an oath once given. She demonstrates greatness of soul to Lady Milford, but what good is it to her? Lady Milford, in her turn, has preserved her 'heart', her inner integrity, throughout all the changes of fortune that have landed her here at this court. She can claim to have mitigated abuses, but she is powerless against the system as such. Her decision, as ex-mistress, to leave, is not exactly heroic, but it does not lack a certain grandeur either, and it will certainly spoil the Duke's dessert.

What of the ending? A murder, a suicide, two arrests and two bereft parents. All the talk of forgiveness, of making the journey together, comes too late. Ferdinand's dying challenge to the 'Judge of this world' will not help Luise, the 'angel'. Wurm goes off like the stage villain that he is. Do we believe in the last-minute reconciliation of father and son, the punch-line of the play? The First Minister certainly does, perhaps the last delusion in a play full of tragic misunderstandings. Or perhaps not?

## Further Reading


Title page of the original edition of *Kabale und Liebe* (Mannheim: Schwan, 1784), http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/show/schiller\_kabale\_1784

# LOVE AND INTRIGUE. A BOURGEOIS TRAGEDY

# Characters

FIRST MINISTER von WALTER, at the court of a German prince

FERDINAND, his son, major

CHAMBERLAIN von KALB

LADY MILFORD, favorite of the Prince

WURM, private secretary of the First Minister

MILLER, town musician

his WIFE

LUISA, his daughter

SOPHIE, chambermaid of Lady Milford

An old RETAINER of the Prince

various minor figures

Miller just rising from his chair, his wife finishing her coffee. Engraving by Wilhelm Hecht from a woodcut by Heinrich Lossow, *Schillers Werke illustrirt von ersten deutschen Künstlern* (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1877). University of Virginia. Image in the public domain.

## Act One

### Scene One

*Room in the Music Master's house*

*Miller is just rising from his chair and sets his cello aside. His wife sits at a table, still in night dress, drinking her coffee.*

MILLER (*walking rapidly up and down*). Once and for all. This business is turning serious. My daughter and the Baron—it's getting to be a scandal. My house is losing its good name. The First Minister gets wind of this and— Long story short, I'm going to show his lordship the door.

WIFE. You didn't talk him into coming here, didn't throw your daughter at him.


WIFE. God save us!


a bowl of soup; I'll sooner smash my cello and carry manure in the sounding board than develop a taste for money my one child has paid for with her soul and her salvation. You just give up that cursed coffee of yours and the snuff you're sniffing,4 and you'll not have to take your daughter's pretty face to market. I always got to eat my fill and had a good shirt on my back before that confounded nine-day-wonder sniffed his way into my parlor.


#### Scene Two

*Secretary Wurm. As above.*

WIFE. Oh, good morning, Mr. Sekertery. Have we the pleasure once more?


MILLER (*irritated*, *pokes her with an elbow*). Woman!


MILLER (*angry*, *kicking his wife in the rear*). Woman!


no attention to this twaddle, Cousin. And you march straight out to your kitchen. (*To Wurm*.) You wouldn't take me for such an idiot's brother-in-law as to want to use the girl to climb? You wouldn't think that of me, would you, Mr. Secretary?


far as I can throw him. If he amounts to anything, he'll be ashamed to bring his talents before his sweetheart in this outmoded way. If he doesn't have the courage, he's a mouse—and that's no man for Luisa. He'll have to go behind the father's back to court the daughter. And make it so that the girl wishes father and mother to the devil before she'll let him go. Or so that *she* comes, throws herself at her father's feet, and begs for her one and only love or for black death. There's a man! That's what I call love! And anyone who can't get that far with the womenfolk—let him go ride his quill pen.

WURM (*reaches for his hat and stick*, *and out the door*). Much obliged, Mr. Miller.


#### Scene Three

*Luisa Miller enters, a book in her hand. As above.*


#### Scene Four

*Ferdinand von Walter. Luisa.*

*He flies to her. She sinks into a chair, faint and wan. They regard each other silently. Pause.*

FERDINAND. You're pale, Luisa?


LUISA. Oh, but I am, Beloved.


your father—my nothingness. (*She starts and drops his hand.*) Ferdinand! A dagger over you and me! They'll separate us!15


*(She rushes out. He follows her, speechless.)*

#### Scene Five

#### *Anteroom in the First Minister's suite*

*The First Minister, wearing the cross of an order and a star beside it,19 enters, with Secretary Wurm.*


beginnings as a rascal I find delightful. But, my dear Wurm, you must not try to fool me along with all the rest. Understand me well. Don't push the prank to the point of trespassing on my principles.


in all the land, and if he consents, let Secretary Wurm drag a ball and chain about for three full years.


FIRST MINISTER. *You'll* not be harmed, Wurm.


FIRST MINISTER. Just the one I wanted. (*To the Attendant.*) It's my pleasure.

*The Attendant goes off.*

### Scene Six23

*Chamberlain von Kalb in opulent, but tasteless, court dress: chamberlain's keys, two watches, sword, his hat under his arm, his hair teased high. He flies toward the First Minister with a screech, spreading a scent of musk over the theater stalls. The First Minister.*


*(Wurm goes off. The First Minister walks up and down, deep in thought.)*

#### Scene Seven

*Ferdinand. The First Minister. Wurm, who goes off again.*

FERDINAND. At your orders, honored Father—

FIRST MINISTER. Only so am I ever to have the pleasure of my son. That will do, Wurm. Ferdinand, I've been observing you for a while now and do not find the frank, high-hearted youth who once delighted me. A curious sorrow broods in your face. You avoid me. You avoid your usual circles. Come now! At *your* age you'll be forgiven ten extravagances for one moment of crotchetiness.27 Leave the crotchets to me, dear Son. Let me work on your future fortunes and think only of falling in with my designs. Come! Embrace me, Ferdinand.

FERDINAND. You're very gracious today, my father.

FIRST MINISTER. Today, you rogue—and this "today" said with a grimace? (*Earnestly.*) Ferdinand, for *whose* sake have I trodden the risky road into the Prince's affections? For *whose* sake have I fallen out both with my conscience and with heaven? Listen, Ferdinand. (I'm speaking with my son.) *Who* did I make room for when I removed my predecessor—a story that cuts me the more deeply the more carefully I conceal my knife from the world. Now tell me, Ferdinand: For *whose* sake did I do these things?


throne of God. My ideal of happiness withdraws into me, sufficient to itself. My wishes all lie buried in my *heart*.


*(The First Minister bursts out laughing.)*

You can laugh—I'll overlook that, Father. How can I show myself before the simplest artisan, who at least received a body that is whole as his dowry? Or before the world? Before the Prince? How before the paramour herself, who'd want to wash the blot on her honor away in my disgrace?


*(Ferdinand stands petrified, then starts and tries to escape.)*

Where to? Stop there! Is that the respect you owe me? (*The Major returns.*) You've been announced to the Lady. The Prince has my word. Town and Court know all about it. If you make a liar of me, boy—before the Prince, the Lady, the town, the Court—listen, boy—or if I *get behind certain stories*— Ho! Ho! What has so suddenly blown out the fire in your cheeks?

FERDINAND (*pale and trembling*). What's that? It's surely nothing, Father.


Lady Milford improvising at the piano, Sophie at the window. Engraving by Wilhelm Hecht from a woodcut by Heinrich Lossow, *Schillers Werke illustrirt von ersten deutschen Künstlern* (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1877). University of Virginia. Image in the public domain.

## Act Two

*A salon in Lady Milford's palace; a sofa stands to the right, a piano to the left.*

#### Scene One

*The Lady*, *still in charming* négligé,28 *her hair not yet done*, *is improvising at the piano*; *Sophie*, *her chambermaid*, *comes back from the window.*


comes away the poorest, since she's the only one to get to know the wandering beggar in that great rich man. True, he can use his greatness as a talisman to raise my every heart's desire like a fairy castle out of the earth. He puts the nectar of both Indies on his table, summons paradises out of wildernesses, makes the streams of the land play proudly in fountains. Or he burns up the life's blood of his subjects in fireworks.30 But can he command his *heart* to beat *great and fiery* against another *great and fiery heart*? Can he search out a single fine feeling among his dwindling reserves? My heart starves in all this excess of the senses. What help to me are a thousand high sentiments, where I'm here only to cool passions?

SOPHIE (*looking at her*, *amazed*). How long have I been in your service, my Lady?


SOPHIE. You, my Lady, are the *last* one from whom I expected to hear *that* truth.


and I'll throw the Prince's heart and his principality at his feet and flee with this man into the farthest wilderness in the world—


#### Scene Two

*An old Retainer of the Prince, carrying a jewelry case. As above.*


*(Sophie goes off. The Lady walks up and down, reflecting; then to Sophie, who returns.)*

Was there not a rumor recently that fire had destroyed a town on the border and made beggars of nearly four hundred families? (*She rings.*)


SOPHIE (*hurrying to the Lady*). God! You're blanching—

LADY. The first man who's ever frightened me— Sophie— Say I'm not well, Edward— No, wait— Is he in good spirits? Laughing? What does he say? Oh, Sophie, don't I look horrible?

SOPHIE. My Lady, please—

SERVANT. Do you order me to turn him away?

LADY (*stammering*). He is most welcome. (*The Servant goes off.*) Tell me, Sophie— What shall I say to him? How shall I receive him? I'll be speechless. He'll laugh at me. He'll— I'm afraid that— You're leaving me, Sophie? Stay! No. Rather, go! Oh, do stay.

*(The Major is coming through the anteroom.)*

SOPHIE. Compose yourself. He's here.

#### Scene Three

*Ferdinand von Walter. As above.*

FERDINAND (*with a short bow*). Should I be interrupting you, my Lady—

LADY (*her heart hammering*). In nothing I would find more important, Major.

FERDINAND. I come at my father's orders.

LADY. I am indebted to him.

FERDINAND. To *announce* to you that we shall be married. Thus my father's commission.

LADY (*blanches*, *trembling*). And not of your own heart?

FERDINAND. Ministers and panders never ask that.

LADY (*so anxious that words fail her*). And you yourself have nothing you would add?

FERDINAND (*with a glance at Mamsell Sophie*). Quite a bit, my Lady.

LADY (*signaling Sophie*, *who goes off*). May I offer you this sofa?

FERDINAND. I shall be brief, my Lady.

LADY. Yes?

FERDINAND. I am a man of honor.

LADY. Whose virtues I value.

FERDINAND. A knight.

LADY. None better in the duchy.

FERDINAND. And an officer.

LADY (*conciliating*). You touch here on excellences that others have in common with you. Why no mention of those in which you are *unique*?

FERDINAND (*frosty*). Here I have no need of them.

LADY (*with mounting anxiety*). And how am I to understand this preamble?


and pedigree thrown away, or of this tassel on my sword,37 or of this world's opinion. I am prepared to trample all that underfoot as soon as you persuade me that the *prize* is no worse than the *price.*


LADY. Are you done?


FERDINAND (*leaning on his sword*). I'm eager to hear.

LADY. Hear then what I have not told anyone but you, nor ever shall. I am not the adventuress that you take me for. I could be grand and tell you: I am of princely blood, of the house of the ill-starred Thomas Norfolk, sacrificed for Mary Queen of Scots. My father, lord chamberlain to the king, was accused of treasonous relations with France, condemned by Parliament, and beheaded. All our property fell to the Crown. We ourselves were banished. My mother died on the day of execution. I, fourteen years old, fled to Germany, accompanied by my lady-in-waiting and carrying a little case of jewelry and this family cross that my dying mother passed on to me with her last blessing.

#### *(Ferdinand becomes thoughtful and regards the Lady more warmly.)*

(*With mounting pathos.*) Ill and without name, without protection, without fortune, a foreign orphan, I arrived in Hamburg. I had learned nothing but a bit of French, a little needlework, and piano. I knew that much better how to dine on gold and silver, sleep beneath a damask cover, send ten servants flying with a flick of my fingers, and receive the blandishments of the scions of great houses. I had passed six years in weeping, the last brooch was gone, my attendant died—and now fate brought your Duke to Hamburg. I was strolling along the Elbe, looking into the river, and I began to imagine whether *this water* or *my suffering* were the deeper. The Duke saw me, followed me, and found my lodgings, then knelt before me and swore he *loved* me. (*She pauses*, *very agitated*, *then continues*, *her voice breaking.*) All the images of my happy childhood awoke again, shining irresistibly; a desolate future, black as the grave, filled me with dread. My heart was burning for another heart. I sank on his. (*Rushing away from him.*) Now condemn me!


here and the most gruesome scene stood suddenly before my eyes. The lust of the great of this world is a ravenous hyena that hunts its prey with driving hunger. It had raged frightfully in this land: had separated bride from bridegroom, even broken the holy bonds of marriage, had razed the peaceful happiness of a family in one place, opened an inexperienced young heart to pestilential ruin in another, and the foaming mouths of dying schoolgirls pronounced their teacher's name among curses and spasms. I placed myself between the lion and the lamb, obtained a princely oath from him in a moment of passion, and this abominable sacrifice had to stop.


full of boundless love, and you now pronounce the cold word "honor"— When this unhappy creature, oppressed by the sense of her disgrace, sick and tired of vice, heroically lifted up by the call of virtue, now throws herself into your arms (*she embraces him in solemn entreaty*) to be *saved* by *you*, returned by *you* to heaven, or (*turning her face away*, *with a hollow voice*) *fleeing from your image*, answering the call of despair, pitches down into yet more hideous depths of vice—


*(The Lady turns away; he continues, more animated.)*

I know what I am throwing myself into. But even if prudence would silence *passion*, *duty* speaks the more loudly. *I* am the guilty one. *I* was the one who broke the golden peace of her innocence, flattered her feeling with wild hopes and betrayed it to hot passion.38 You will remind me of rank and birth, of my father's principles—but I love. My hopes climb the higher the more deeply Nature has fallen out with convention. My resolve and mere prejudice! We shall see whether fashion or humanness carries the day.

*(The Lady meanwhile has withdrawn to the far end of the room and now covers her face with both hands. He follows her.)*

My Lady, you were saying?

LADY (*expressing great pain*). Nothing, Major von Walter! Nothing but that you destroy *yourself* and *me* and *a third person*.

FERDINAND. A third person?


*(She goes off rapidly. The Major stands speechless. Pause. Then he plunges through the double doors.)*

#### Scene Four

*Room in the Music Master's house*

*Miller, his Wife, Luisa enter.*

MILLER (*rushing in*). I told you so!

LUISA (*appealing anxiously*). What, Father? What?

MILLER (*running up and down*). My long black coat! Quick! I have to get there first. A white shirt with cuffs! I saw it coming!

LUISA. For God's sake! What?

WIFE. What's going on? What is this?


MILLER. To the Minister, on the spot. I'll be the first to open my mouth. I'll file the complaint myself. You knew before I did. You could have told me. The girl would have listened then. There was still time. But no! We had to go and haggle for something, we had to go and fish for something! And you only heaped coals on the fire! You pander, you look out for your own hide. You've made your bed, now lie in it. I'll take my daughter on my arm and march with her over the border.

### Scene Five

*Ferdinand von Walter plunges into the room, alarmed and out of breath. As above.*

FERDINAND. Has my father been here?

*(All speak at once.)*

LUISA (*leaping up*, *frightened*). His father! Almighty God!

WIFE (*with a despairing hand clap*). The First Minister! We're lost!

MILLER (*with an angry laugh*). Praise God! Praise God! We had it coming!


*(Luisa sinks into a chair, her face averted. He goes to her, stands speechless before her, then moves away, very aroused.)*

No! Never! Impossible, my Lady. *Too much* to ask. I cannot give up this innocence for your sake. No, by almighty God, I cannot break my oath, which cautions me, loud as heaven's thunder, in this sightless eye. My Lady, look *here*; look *here*, you faithless father— I should take this angel's life? Should heap hell into this heavenly breast? (*Hurrying to her*, *determined.*) I shall lead her before the great Judge's throne; eternal God is to say if my love is a crime. (*He takes her by the hand and lifts her from the chair.*) Take courage, my dearest one. You have won. From the most dangerous contest I return a victor.


#### Scene Six

*The First Minister followed by a retinue of Attendants. As above.*

FIRST MINISTER (*entering*). He's here already.

FERDINAND (*taking a few steps back*). In the house of innocence.

FIRST MINISTER. Where the son is learning obedience to his father?

FERDINAND. Spare us—

FIRST MINISTER (*interrupts him*, *to Miller*). This is the father?

MILLER. Town musician Miller.39

FIRST MINISTER (*to the Wife*). And this the mother?


LUISA (*to the Major*, *with dignity and disdain*). Major von Walter, I release you.

FERDINAND. Father! Virtue, even in beggar's guise, commands *respect*.


MILLER (*backing away*). Just my opinion, sir. If it please your Honor.

FIRST MINISTER (*all alight*). Ha, you rascal! You'll talk your way into a prison with this opinion of yours. Go! Fetch the bailiffs.

*(A few go off. The First Minister rushes about in a rage.)*

Father into prison—mother and trollop of a daughter to the pillory! Justice will lend my rage its arm. I shall have satisfaction for this scandal. Is this kind of riff-raff to defeat my plans and set father and son on one another, unpunished? Ha, you wretches! I'll appease my hatred with your destruction; the whole brood—father, mother, daughter—I'll sacrifice to my revenge.


#### Scene Seven

*Bailiffs. As above.*

FERDINAND (*hurries to Luisa*, *who falls into his arms*, *half-dead*). Luisa! Help! The fright was too much for her.

*(Miller seizes his walking stick, puts on his hat, and prepares for attack. The Wife falls to her knees before the First Minister.)*


*(The Bailiffs close in on Luisa.)*

FERDINAND (*placing himself before her*). Who's asking for it? (*He draws his sword*, *still in its scabbard*, *and defends himself with the grip.*) Dare to touch her, anyone who's not also hired out his pate to the courts. (*To the First Minister.*) Spare yourself. Don't go any further, my father.

FIRST MINISTER (*to the Bailiffs*). If you love your daily bread, you cowards—

```
(The Bailiffs seize Luisa again.)
```

*(The Bailiffs become rougher.)*


FIRST MINISTER (*to the others*). Away with her!


First Minister von Walter, attended by Secretary Wurm. Engraving by Wilhelm Hecht from a woodcut by Heinrich Lossow, *Schillers Werke illustrirt von ersten deutschen Künstlern* (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1877). University of Virginia. Image in the public domain.

## Act Three

### Scene One

*Antechamber in the First Minister's suite*

*The First Minister and Secretary Wurm enter.* 

FIRST MINISTER. A dirty trick.


FIRST MINISTER (*annoyed*). And how is this clever gloss to mend our affair?

WURM. It'll point your Excellency to the wound and perhaps also to the bandage. Permit me: One ought never to have made either a *confidant* or an *enemy* of a character such as his. He has a horror of the means by which you've risen. Till now it was perhaps only the *son* in him that silenced the *traitor*. If you give him occasion to shake off the son, if your repeated attacks on his passion lead him to believe that you're no loving *father*, his duty as a patriot will come to the fore. Why, the curious fantasy of making so remarkable a sacrifice to justice could seem so attractive to him that he'd even bring down his father.

FIRST MINISTER. Wurm, Wurm, you're leading me to the brink of a precipice.

WURM. Let me lead you back, my Lord. May I speak freely?

FIRST MINISTER (*seating himself*). As one condemned man to another.

WURM. Forgive me— It seems to me that you owe your rank as *First Minister* to the supple arts of the court. Why did you not entrust the *father* also to these arts? I recall how graciously you invited your predecessor to an evening of piquet and, like a friend, washed half the night away with a bottle of Burgundy—the very night a great mine would go off and blow the good man away. Why did you let your son see you as an enemy? He never should have found out that I knew about his love affair. You'd then have undermined this romance from the girl's side and kept your son's affections. You'd have been the clever general who does not attack his enemy at the center but splits his ranks instead.

FIRST MINISTER. How was that to be done?

WURM. In the simplest fashion—and the cards have not yet all been played. Forget for a while that you're a father. Don't match yourself with a passion that every resistance has only made more powerful. Leave it to *me* to use that passion's heat to hatch the worm that will eat it up.

FIRST MINISTER. Tell me more.


FIRST MINISTER. For example?


FIRST MINISTER. Sworn? What good is their swearing, you dunce?


WURM (*shrugs*). Not exactly *my* taste, if my name were Luisa Miller.


*(Wurm goes off. The First Minister sits down to write. An Attendant enters. The First Minister stands and gives him a document.)*

This arrest warrant must be delivered to the courts right away. Send someone to bid the Chamberlain come.

ATTENDANT. His Lordship has just driven up.

FIRST MINISTER. Excellent. — But also say the measures must be taken with great care, so that no unrest follows.

ATTENDANT. Very well, your Excellency!

FIRST MINISTER. You understand? Very quietly.

ATTENDANT. Very good, your Excellency. (*Exit.*)

### Scene Two

#### *The First Minister and the Chamberlain*


CHAMBERLAIN. Don't frighten me, my dear.


CHAMBERLAIN. You're not serious. That's an obstacle?

FIRST MINISTER. The most insurmountable with this pig-headed son.

CHAMBERAIN. He's mad enough to turn his back on his own fortune? Is he?

FIRST MINISTER. *You* ask him that and see what he answers.

CHAMBERLAIN. Mon Dieu! What can he answer?

FIRST MINISTER. That he'll disclose to all the world the crime by which we've risen, that he'll come forward with our forged letters and receipts, that he'll deliver us both to the knife—that's what he can answer.

CHAMBERLAIN. Have you lost your mind?


FIRST MINISTER. The first I hear of it.

CHAMBERLAIN. My dear! When you do hear, you'll be beside yourself. If you remember the Court ball—it's now been almost twenty years—where we danced the first contredanse41 and the chandelier dripped hot wax on Count Meerschaum's domino— Good heavens! You must remember!

FIRST MINISTER. Who could forget?

CHAMBERLAIN. You see! Princess Amalie lost a garter there, in the heat of dancing. Everyone's alarmed, understandably. Von Bock and I—we were hardly more than pages—we crawl through the whole ballroom looking for the garter. I catch sight of it, von Bock notices, jumps in, snatches it out of my hands—I ask you!—brings it to the Princess and snaps up the compliment I should have had. What do you think?

FIRST MINISTER. An impertinence!

CHAMBERLAIN. Snaps up the compliment I should have had. I thought I would faint. There never was such malice! When I am finally man enough to do it, I approach Her Grace and say: Most Gracious Lady! Von Bock had the good fortune to return the garter to Your Highness while the one who first caught sight of it rewards himself in silence and says nothing.

FIRST MINISTER. Bravo, Chamberlain! Bravissimo!


FIRST MINISTER. I know only *one*—it's up to you.

CHAMBERLAIN. To *me*? And is—

FIRST MINISTER. To come between the Major and the girl he loves.

CHAMBERLAIN. Come between? How do you mean? What do I do?

FIRST MINISTER. We only need to make him suspect the girl.


FIRST MINISTER. Would be *you*, Baron.

CHAMBERLAIN. Be me? Me? — She's nobility?

FIRST MINISTER. Whatever for? What an idea! The daughter of a music master.

CHAMBERLAIN. Of a burgher? That won't do. No?


CHAMBERLAIN. As soon as I make sixteen calls *de la dernière importance*. Do forgive me if I take leave right away. (*He goes off.*)

FIRST MINISTER (*ringing*). I'm counting on your wiles, Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN (*calling back*). Mon Dieu! You know me.

### Scene Three

#### *The First Minister and Wurm*


*(They go off to different sides.)*

#### Scene Four

*Room in Miller's house*

*Luisa and Ferdinand*


LUISA. Leave off. No more. I blanch at what you're going to say.


and your heart belongs to your rank. My claim was church robbery and with a shudder I give it up.

#### FERDINAND (*his face distorted*, *biting his lower lip*). You give it up.

LUISA. No! Look at me, dear Walter. No more such bitterness. Come! Let me raise your failing courage by my example. Let *me* be the heroine of this moment, restoring an escaped son to his father; let me renounce a bond that would disjoint the civil world and bring down eternal general order.42 *I* am the transgressor. My heart was full of foolish, impudent wishes; my unhappiness is my *punishment*. But leave me the sweet, flattering illusion that this was my *sacrifice*. Would you begrudge me this pleasure?

*(Ferdinand, distracted and enraged, has seized a violin and tried to play it. Now he snaps the strings, shatters the instrument against the floor, and breaks into loud laughter.)*

Walter! God in heaven! What is this? Control yourself. This moment calls for resolve—this is *parting*. You have a heart, dear Walter. I know it *well*. Your love is as warm as life itself and boundless like infinity. Give it to a *noblewoman*, to someone more worthy—she'll not have to envy the happiest of her kind. (*Suppressing tears.*) You'll see no more of *me*. Let the foolish and misguided girl weep away her sorrows within solitary walls. No one will take notice of her tears. My future is empty, it has died out. But I shall ever and ever enjoy the scent of the faded bouquet of time gone past. (*She turns her face away and gives him her hand.*) Farewell, Major von Walter.


#### Scene Five

*Luisa alone*

*She lies motionless and silent in the chair, then stands up, comes forward, and looks around, frightened.*

Where could my parents be? My father promised to be back in a few minutes and it's been five full hours. If something's happened— What's this I feel? Why am I so short of breath?43

> *(Wurm enters the room at this point and stands in the background, unnoticed.)*

It's nothing real. It's nothing but the shudders of too much excitement. When the soul has taken in enough horror, the eye sees ghosts in every corner.

### Scene Six

#### *Luisa and Secretary Wurm*

WURM (*coming forward*). Good evening, Miss.44

LUISA. God! Who's speaking? (*She wheels around*, *sees the Secretary*, *and steps back*, *appalled.*) Oh, my prophetic soul! (*To the Secretary*, *with a contemptuous glance.*) Perhaps you're looking for the First Minister? He's no longer here.

WURM. It's you I'm looking for, Miss.

LUISA. I'm surprised you didn't go to the marketplace.

WURM. Why *there*?

LUISA. To fetch your bride from the pillory.

WURM. Mamsell Miller, you suspect wrongly—

LUISA (*suppressing a response*). How can I oblige you?

WURM. I come, sent by your father.

LUISA (*nonplussed*). From my father? Where is my father?


LUISA. The Duke?


the one who brings the news, to come wailing like the banshee and stand before the door while a heart shudders on the shaft of iron Necessity and Christians doubt their God. So help me! If every anxious tear that you see fall here were balanced by a ton of gold, I would not be in *your* place. What else can happen?

WURM. I don't know.

LUISA. You claim not to know? This news that flees the light also fears the sound of words, but in the terrible stillness of your face I see the ghost. What more is there? You said the Duke will *visit due punishment*. What do you call due punishment?

WURM. Don't ask.


WURM. He'll be tried for his life.

LUISA (*stoutly*). I thank you! (*She goes quickly into the next room.*)


LUISA. To the Duke. (*About to go.*)


whose only part in this whole trial for insult to the prince is his authority and his princely signature.

WURM (*laughs too loudly*). To the Duke!


LUISA. My father, too— What is this way?

WURM. It's easy for you.


LUISA. He won't.


WURM. Sit down and write. Here's pen, paper, and ink.

LUISA (*sits down*, *very uneasy*). What am I to write? Who am I to write to?

WURM. To your father's hangman.

LUISA. Ha! You know well how to pin souls to the rack. (*Seizes a pen.*)

WURM (*dictating*). "My Lord"—

Secretary Wurm presses his suit with Luisa. Engraving by Wilhelm Hecht from a woodcut by Heinrich Lossow, *Schillers Werke illustrirt von ersten deutschen Künstlern*  (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1877). University of Virginia. Image in the public domain.

*(Luisa writes with a shaking hand.)*

"Three unbearable days have passed—have passed—since we last saw each other."

LUISA (*stops short and lays down the pen*). Who am I writing to?

WURM. To your father's hangman.

LUISA. Oh, my God!


WURM (*reaching for his hat*). As you please, Mademoiselle. Quite as you choose.

LUISA. *Choose*, you say? As I choose? Go, you Hun! Dangle a poor soul over the pit of hell, demand something of him, and blasphemously ask if he *chooses*. You know all too well that our heart is bound as if by chains to natural urges. — Nothing matters anymore. Go on dictating. I'll not think anymore. Hell has got the better of me, and I yield. (*She sits down again.*)

WURM. "Like an Argus all day long"—do you have that?

LUISA. Go on! Go on!

WURM. "We had the First Minister here in our house yesterday. It was a sight to see—how the good Major defended my honor."

LUISA. Excellent! Splendid! Keep on.

WURM. "I took refuge in a faint—in a faint—so as not to laugh out loud."

LUISA. Dear God!


*(Wurm takes her off with him.)*

Ferdinand with a pistol attacks Chamberlain von Kalb. Engraving by Wilhelm Hecht from a woodcut by Heinrich Lossow, *Schillers Werke illustrirt von ersten deutschen Künstlern* (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1877). University of Virginia. Image in the public domain.

## Act Four

*Reception room in the First Minister's suite*

#### Scene One

*Ferdinand von Walter, an open letter in his hand, storms through one door, an Attendant enters through another.*

FERDINAND. The Chamberlain's not been here?

ATTENDANT. Major, sir, his Lordship the First Minister has been asking for you.

FERDINAND. Blast it all! I ask if the Chamberlain's not been here.

ATTENDANT. His Lordship is upstairs at the faro table.

FERDINAND. His Lordship should, in hell's own name, present himself.

*(The Attendant goes off.)*

#### Scene Two

*Ferdinand alone, rapidly rereading the letter, standing frozen then raging through the room by turns.*

It is not possible. Not possible. This heavenly exterior doesn't hide a heart so devilish. And nonetheless! If all the angels should descend, vouch for her innocence, if heaven and earth, Creation and Creator came together to vouch for her innocence—it is *her* hand. An unheard of, monstrous deception, like none known to humankind. So *that* is why we so stubbornly resisted fleeing! *That* is why— Oh, God! Now I wake up, now everything comes clear! *That's* why we so heroically gave up all claim upon my love! And soon, quite soon this heavenly greasepaint would have fooled even *me*!

*(He rushes more rapidly through the room, then stands still, reflecting.)*

To have seen me so clearly! To return every bold feeling, every timid tremor, every fiery emotion. To grasp my soul on the indescribable fineness of a sound half-uttered. To take my measure in a tear. To accompany me up every sheer peak of passion, meet me on the brink of every staggering descent— Oh, God! Oh, God! And that was all no more than *mugging*, pulling faces? If lies have such fast color, how is it that no devil has yet lied his way into heaven?

When I told her the danger of our love, how persuasively the deceiver blanched. With what triumphant dignity she struck down my father's impudent contempt. And at that moment the woman knew herself guilty? Indeed! Did she not even withstand truth's trial by fire—she fainted. What language will you now speak, Feeling? Coquettes faint, too. How will *you*  justify yourself, Innocence? Trollops, too, fall fainting.

She knows what she has made of me. She has seen my whole soul. My heart showed in my eyes in the blush of our first kiss. And she felt nothing? Perhaps felt only the triumph of her art? While my happy madness imagined that it embraced all heaven in her, that my wildest wishes were stilled? No thought appeared before me but eternity and this girl—and she felt nothing? Only the success of her attack? Only felt her charms soothed and stroked? Death and destruction! Only that I'd been fooled?

### Scene Three

#### *The Chamberlain and Ferdinand*

CHAMBERLAIN (*tripping into the room*). You let the wish be glimpsed, my dear—


FERDINAND. By happy chance. Say your prayers.

CHAMBERLAIN. You see how I am startled, Baron.


*(The Chamberlain again takes to his heels.)*

Easy now! Such is the request— (*He overtakes the Chamberlain and bars the door.*)


CHAMBERLAIN. And *I* that much more, my dearest.

FERDINAND. *You*, fellow? How so *you*? To fill an empty place at table when there is no one else? To go seven times long and seven times short every twenty seconds, like a salted snail? To keep a careful record of your master's stools and be a rented nag to peddle his jokes around town? Equally useful. I'll take you with me like the organ grinder's monkey, to prance to the howling of the damned, to fetch and dance attendance, and, with your courtly arts, relieve the permanent despair down there.


FERDINAND (*fiercer*). Coupled his daughter with you?


#### Scene Four

#### *Ferdinand, after a long silence in which his features show development of a terrible thought.*

Lost! Yes, unhappy creature! *I* am. *You* are, too. By God, if I am lost, then you are, too. Judge of the World! Don't require her of me. The girl is mine. I gave up your whole world for the girl, renounced all your magnificent Creation. Leave me the girl. Judge of the World, over there millions of souls wail for you. Turn your merciful eye on them. Let me act alone, Judge of the World. (*Folding his hands*; *terrible.*) Would the rich, all-powerful Creator covet one soul, the least in all his Creation? The girl is mine! Mine—once her god, now her devil. (*Staring wildly to one side.*)

To be lashed with her to the wheel of damnation in all eternity, eye rooted in eye, hair against hair standing on end, even our hollow whimpering melted into one— And there to repeat my endearments, to chant her vows to her— God! God! To be wedded so is terrible, but eternal.

*(He is about to leave quickly. The First Minister enters.)*

#### Scene Five

*The First Minister and Ferdinand*

FERDINAND (*dropping back*). Oh! My father!

FIRST MINISTER. Good that we meet, my son. I have news for you. Something that surely will surprise you, dear Son. Shall we sit down?


#### Scene Six

*A magnificent salon in the Lady's palace*

*The Lady and Sophie enter.*

LADY. You saw her then? Is she coming?

SOPHIE. This minute. She was still in house dress and wanted to change quickly.


*(Sophie goes off. The Lady takes a turn through the room.)*

Good! Yes, good that I'm now stirred up. That's how I wanted to be. (*To the Attendant.*) The Mamsell49 may enter.

*(The Attendant goes off. She throws herself on the sofa and assumes a carelessly haughty attitude.)*

#### Scene Seven

*Luisa Miller enters timidly and remains standing at some distance. The Lady has turned her back and observes her carefully in a mirror opposite. Pause.*

LUISA. My Lady, I await your orders.


LADY (*to herself*). More roguery than this open countenance would lead you to believe! (*To Luisa.*) Luisa is your name? And how young, may I ask?

LUISA. Just turned sixteen.


knowing if I wish to receive my happiness from *her*? I had torn up my title to worldly happiness, forgiven good fortune its untimeliness—why remind me of it now? When even the Godhead hides its beams so as not to blind the angels. And how is it, my Lady, that your vaunted happiness so eagerly seeks envy and admiration from my *wretchedness*? Does your great happiness require despair as a foil? Just grant me the blindness that alone can reconcile me to my barbarous lot. For the insect in a drop of water is content until it hears of the great ocean where fleets sail and whales play! And you want to make me *happy*? (*After a pause*, *she goes to the Lady and asks her point-blank.*) Are *you* happy, my Lady?

#### *(The Lady moves away abruptly, Luisa follows; indicating the Lady's bosom.)*

Does this heart have the smiling face that becomes your rank? And if we were now to exchange heart for heart and fate for fate, and if I asked you innocently, asked you upon your conscience and as my mother, would you urge me to make the exchange?


happiness—and *you* shall not either. Just know this, you wretch: to destroy a great happiness is also a great happiness.


#### Scene Eight

#### *The Lady alone*

*She stands shaken and beside herself, her eyes riveted to the door the Miller girl has hurried through. Finally she emerges from her stunned state.*

What did that unhappy creature say? The damning words still ring in my ear: *Take him!* Who, you unhappy creature? The gift of your dying breath? The legacy of your despair? God! God! Have I sunk so from all the thrones of my pride that I thirst for the bounty that a beggar girl will toss to me in the throes of death? *Take him!* Spoken in a *tone*, accompanied by a *look*— Ha! Emilia! Was it for *this* you stepped beyond the bounds of your kind? Did you cultivate the splendid name of a great British woman only to see the edifice of your honor sink beside the higher virtue of an abandoned burgher girl? No, indeed! Emilia Milford lets herself be *shamed*, but *disgraced—*no, never. *I*, too, have the strength to renounce.

(*Walking up and down majestically.*) Be gone now, weak and suffering woman. Farewell, golden images of love. Magnanimity alone now be my guide! This loving pair is lost if Milford does not renounce her claim, if her flame is not extinguished in the Prince's heart. (*After a pause*, *vivid.*) It is done! The terrible obstacle removed, all bonds between me and the Duke now broken, this raging love torn from my breast! Virtue, I throw myself into your arms! Take up your contrite daughter Emilia! Ha! How relieved I feel, how much lighter, how lifted up! Great like a falling sun, I'll sink today from the peak of my highness; let my grandeur die out with my love and nothing go with me into this proud exile but my *heart*! (*Going to her writing desk*, *resolved.*) Now, right away, before the charms of this dear young man renew the struggle in my heart. (*She sits down and begins to write.*)

#### Scene Nine

*Lady. An Attendant. Sophie. Then the Chamberlain. Finally, Servants.*


ATTENDANT and SOPHIE. His Lordship the Chamberlain, my Lady—

LADY (*turning around*). Who? What? So much the better! Creatures like that were put here to fetch and carry. I await him.

*(The Attendant goes off.)*

	- *(The Chamberlain enters and bows a thousand times to the Lady's back. When she does not notice, he comes closer, stands behind her chair and tries to catch a corner of her gown and kiss it.)*

CHAMBERLAIN (*whispering timidly*). Serenissimus—


*(While the Chamberlain reads, the Lady's staff gather in the background.)*

CHAMBERLAIN (*reading aloud*). "My Lord, a contract that *you* broke so lightheartedly cannot bind *me* anymore. The happiness of your land was the condition of my love. The deception has lasted two years. My eyes are opened. I abhor favors wet with your subjects' tears. Give the love *I* can return no longer to your weeping land instead and learn from a *British*  *princess* mercy toward your *German people*. In one hour I shall be over the border. Johanna Norfolk."

#### ALL SERVANTS (*murmuring among themselves*). Over the border?


*(She goes off. All others go their separate ways, much moved.)*

Luisa pleads with Ferdinand, the glass of lemonade between them. Engraving by Wilhelm Hecht from a woodcut by Heinrich Lossow, *Schillers Werke illustrirt von ersten deutschen Künstlern* (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1877). University of Virginia. Image in the public domain.

## Act Five

*Evening twilight in a room in the Music Master's house*

#### Scene One

*Luisa sits motionless and silent in a dark corner of the room, her head lying on her arms. After a long pause Miller enters, carrying a lantern. By its light he anxiously searches the room without finding her. Then he lays his hat on the table and sets down the lantern.*


MILLER. Listen, Daughter! I wish you were wailing. I'd like that better.


Would you cheat me of this, Luisa? Make off with what belongs to your father?


#### Scene Two

#### *Ferdinand to join the others*


*(He tosses Luisa the letter to the Chamberlain. She opens it and collapses.)*

MILLER (*not noticing*). What's this to mean, Baron? I don't understand you.

FERDINAND (*leads him to Luisa*). *She* has understood me that much better.

MILLER (*stooping over her*)*.* Oh, God! My daughter!

FERDINAND. Deathly pale! *That's* just how I like her, your daughter. Lovely like never before, this just and pious daughter. The face of a corpse. The breath of the Last Judgment, which strips the gloss from every lie, has stripped away the paint and polish this artful sorceress used to fool the very angels of light. Her loveliest face, her *first true* face! I'll kiss it. (*About to go to her.*)


LUISA. This letter, my father—


Luisa! A lie! If you knew one now, tossed it to me with your open angel's face, persuaded just my ear, my eye, deceived this heart— Oh, Luisa! Then may all truth go out of Creation in *this* breath, and justice yield henceforth to a courtier's servile falseness! (*With a faltering voice.*) Did you write this letter?


*(Luisa goes off.)*

#### Scene Three

*Ferdinand and Miller*

*They walk up and down on opposite sides of the room, saying nothing.*


*(Miller goes off.)*

#### Scene Four

#### *Ferdinand alone*

His only child. Do you feel that, murderer? His only one! The man has nothing else in all the world but his instrument and this only— You would rob him? Rob the last red cent from a beggar? Throw the broken crutch at the feet of a cripple? You could stomach that? And when he hurries home and can hardly wait to tell the whole sum of his happiness from the face of this daughter, and comes in and she's lying there, the flower, withered, dead, stamped out, willfully, this one last hope— And he stands there before her, and all Nature holds its breath, and his frozen glance wanders through unpeopled endlessness in vain, seeks God and finds God no longer, and comes back more empty— God! God! *My* father, too, has this one son. This, his only son, but not his only riches— (*Pause.*) But what's he losing then? The girl, for whom the most sacred feelings of love were only playthings would she be able to make her father happy? She won't, oh, no indeed! And I deserve thanks for stepping on the adder before it bites the father, too.

#### Scene Five

#### *Miller, returning, and Ferdinand*


throw. The merchant who loads all his treasure on a single ship is called a fool— But why don't you take your money?


dead, the girl. (*Returning to the money and throwing himself on it.*) But now I have everything and you have nothing, and I'll have to shell out the whole lot again?


FERDINAND (*hastily*). Oh, quiet, quiet—


#### Scene Six

*Luisa with the lemonade, to join the others*

LUISA (*her eyes red*, *her voice trembling*, *brings the Major the glass of lemonade on a tray*). At your service, if it's not strong enough.57


#### Scene Seven

#### *Ferdinand and Luisa*

*Luisa returns slowly, carrying the light. She sets it down and stands on one side, her head down, glancing timidly at the Major from time to time. He stands on the other side, staring straight ahead.*

*(A deep silence to announce this scene.)*

LUISA. If you'd like to accompany me, Major von Walter, I'll play a piece on the fortepiano.

*(She opens the piano. Ferdinand gives her no answer. Pause.)*

You also owe me a return game on the chessboard. Shall we play a round, Major von Walter?

#### *(Another pause.)*

Major von Walter, the letter case I once promised to embroider for you— I've begun it. Would you like to see the pattern?

#### *(A third pause.)*

Oh, I'm so miserable!

FERDINAND (*unmoving and unmoved*). That may well be.


LUISA. You're in good spirits, Major von Walter?


LUISA. Dear God! I didn't fear this scene for nothing.

FERDINAND (*commanding*). Taste it!

*(Luisa takes the glass somewhat reluctantly and drinks. As she sets the glass to her lips, Ferdinand turns away, suddenly pale, and hurries into the farthest corner of the room.)*

LUISA. The lemonade is good.

FERDINAND (*without turning*; *shaken*). To your health!

LUISA (*sets down the glass*). If you knew, Walter, how you offend my soul.

FERDINAND. Huh!


FERDINAND. Hot and hemmed in— Want to be comfortable.

LUISA. Then drink! The lemonade will cool you.

FERDINAND. That it surely will. A kind-hearted whore—they all are!

LUISA (*rushing into his arms*, *full of love*). That to your Luisa, Ferdinand?


LUISA. Why this question?


LUISA (*her tongue faltering*, *her fingers cramping*). This letter—steel yourself—my hand wrote what my heart condemned. Your father dictated it.

*(Ferdinand stands rooted to the spot; finally he falls, thunderstruck.)58*

Oh, the terrible misunderstanding—Ferdinand—they forced me forgiveness—your Luisa would have chosen death—but my father—the danger—they were so treacherous.


#### Final Scene

*Ferdinand. The First Minister. Wurm and Servants.*

*All rush into the room, alarmed. Then Miller accompanied by court Attendants and a crowd, which gathers in the background.*

FIRST MINISTER (*the letter in his hand*). Son, what is this? I'll never believe—

FERDINAND (*throwing the empty glass at his feet*). Then *look*, you murderer!

FIRST MINISTER (*staggering back*). My son! Why have you done this to me?

#### *(Everyone freezes. Pause.)*


*(He opens the door to Miller, who plunges in with court Attendants and a crowd.)*


at the Resurrection and—beside God when he judges you. (*He faints*; *court Attendants support him.*)


*(The Major is laid beside Luisa.)*

FERDINAND. The glance is for my God of mercy.

FIRST MINISTER (*kneeling before him*, *tormented*). Both the created and the Creator desert me—no glance to restore me at this last?

*(Ferdinand extends his dying hand. The First Minister leaps up.)*

He forgave me! (*To the others.*) Your prisoner!

*(He goes off. Attendants follow. The curtain falls.)*

## Act One


## Act Two


## Act Three


## Act Four


## Act Five


# This book need not end here...

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# **Love and Intrigue**

# Friedrich Schiller Translated by Flora Kimmich Introduction by Roger Paulin

Schiller's play *Kabale und Liebe*, usually translated into English as *Love and Intrigue*, represents the disastrous consequences that follow when social constraint, youthful passion, and ruthless scheming collide in a narrow se� ng. Wri� en between 1782 and 1784, the play bears the marks of life at the court of the despo� c Duke of Wür� emberg, from which Schiller had just fl ed, and of a fraught liaison he entered shortly a� er his fl ight. It tells the tale of a love aff air that crosses the boundaries of class, between a fi ery and rebellious young nobleman and the beau� ful and du� ful daughter of a musician. Their aff air becomes entangled in the compe� ng purposes of malign and not-so-malign fi gures present at an obscure and sordid princely court somewhere in Germany. It all leads to a climac� c murder-suicide.

Open Book Classics

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

**Love and Intrigue**

TRANSLATED BY FLORA KIMMICH INTRODUCTION BY ROGER PAULIN

*Love and Intrigue*, the third of Schiller's canonical plays (a� er *The Robbers* and Fiesco's *Conspiracy at Genoa*), belongs to the genre of domes� c tragedy, with a small cast and an ac� on indoors. It takes place as the highly conven� onal world of the late eighteenth century stands poised to erupt, and these tensions pervade its se� ng and emerge in its ac� on. This lively play brims with comedy and tragedy expressed in a colorful, highly colloquial, some� mes scandalous prose well captured in Flora Kimmich's skilled and informed transla� on. An authorita� ve essay by Roger Paulin introduces the reader to the play.

As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher's website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com

Cover image: Luise reaches for the glass of lemonade. From Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, engraved by Conrad Geyer a� er a drawing by Arthur von Ramberg (ca. 1859). Cover design: Anna Ga� .

**OBP**

**Love and Intrigue**

Friedrich Schiller