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Updated: June 11, 2025
When Carlos, importuned by Count Egmont, asks for a commission to the Netherlands, Philip does not refuse, but declares that he will go too and share the peril of his son. This, however, is a mere ruse to gain time. While they are waiting, the king meanwhile feigning illness, Carlos communicates freely with the queen through his bosom friend, the Marquis of Posa.
Even when Death was already stretching hi hand toward the Emperor, he was still overburdened with business, and the heretical agitation which was discovered at that time in Spain had caused him much sorrow, especially as men and women whom he knew personally, belonging to the distinguished families of Posa and De Rojas, has taken part in it. The monarch's end came more quickly than was expected.
ALVA. You will beware a certain Marquis Posa He has of late been secretly employed In the king's service. QUEEN. With delight I hear The king has made so excellent a choice. Report, long since, has spoken of the marquis As a deserving, great, and virtuous man The royal grace was ne'er so well bestowed! DOMINGO. So well bestowed! We think far otherwise.
This he turns over to the king, and gets a warrant for the arrest of Carlos. The young prince, suspecting quite reasonably that he has been betrayed, goes to Eboli for enlightenment. Here Posa finds him and draws his dagger upon the woman, as if she were the possessor of some terrible secret, which in fact she is not. Then he relents and arrests Carlos without explanation.
It may indeed be fairly objected that, in view of what is to come later, the Carlos of the first act is a little too soft even for the sentimental age. We are required to have faith in his heroic capacity for enterprises of great pith and moment. But after his first dialogue with Posa it is as difficult for the reader or spectator to trust him as it is for King Philip.
Although disgusted with the life I was leading I was unwilling to change it: Simigliante a quells 'nferma Che non puo trovar posa in su le piume, Ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma. Thus I tortured my mind to give it change, and I fell into all these vagaries in order to get away from myself.
What the king was believed to need pre-eminently, was to keep alive his human sympathies; and how could he do this better than by having some one to love and confide in? So Schiller provides his Spanish prince with a friend. Our drama seems to wish to impute to Posa a lovable personality; else how account for the spell that he casts over all three of the royal personages?
In a cynical foot-note of the year 1845 Carlyle quotes, with seeming approval, Richter's comparison of Posa to the tower of a light-house, "high, far-shining, empty". But what would Jean Paul have had? Is it not quite enough for a light-house to be high and far-shining? One does not see how its usefulness would be enhanced by filling it with the beans and bacon of practical politics.
Then we are told that it was not the author's purpose to depict Carlos and Posa as a pair of ideal friends. For Carlos, indeed, friendship is everything, but not for Posa. In him the passion for friendship is everywhere subordinated to the passion for humanity. He is not to be blamed, therefore, for belying the character of a true friend, since that is not his dominant and essential character.
Carlos himself had declined in my favor, for no other reason perhaps than that I had outgrown him, and for the opposite reason the Marquis of Posa had taken his place. So it came about that I brought a very different heart to the fourth and fifth acts. Let us look somewhat closely at the process of evolution here alluded to in general terms.
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