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Updated: June 23, 2025
There are not lacking signs of late that the drama is likely in the immediate future to assert a sharper rivalry with prose-fiction; and novelists like Mr. Barrie and M. Hervieu have relinquished the easier narrative for the more difficult and more dangerous stage-play. But there is no evidence that the novel is soon to lose its vogue.
But this being only the private opinion of so inconsiderable a man as I am, I leave it to the further disquisition of the critics, if they think it worth their notice. Most evident it is that, whether he imitated the Roman farce or the Greek comedies, he is to be acknowledged for the first author of Roman satire, as it is properly so called, and distinguished from any sort of stage-play.
Threadbare is the simile which compares the world to a stage. Schiller, less complimentary than Shakspeare, lowers the illustration from a stage to a puppet-show. But ever between realities and shows there is a secret communication, an undetected interchange, sometimes a stern reality in the heart of the ostensible actor, a fantastic stage-play in the brain of the unnoticed spectator.
While Goethe was incomparably the more subtle psychologist, Schiller had the better eye, or rather he cared more, for that which is dramatically effective, average human nature being such, as it is. His dramatic instinct told him that Egmont was not a very powerful stage-play.
So I out, and met my wife in a coach, and stopped her going thither to meet me; and took her, and Mercer, and Deb., to Bartholomew Fair, and there did see a ridiculous, obscene little stage-play, called "Marry Andrey;" a foolish thing, but seen by every body; and so to Jacob Hall's dancing of the ropes; a thing worth seeing, and mightily followed, and so home and to the office, and then to bed.
A little honesty, or a great deal of honesty, in this quest will do the novel, as we hope yet to have it, and as we have already begun to have it, no harm; and for my own part I will confess that I believe fiction in the past to have been largely injurious, as I believe the stage-play to be still almost wholly injurious, through its falsehood, its folly, its wantonness, and its aimlessness.
As a stage-play it would have had small chance of favor, on account of its chorus and its entire lack of female characters. Romantic love was to be left out and friendship to take its place.
All works of genius are the epitome of a civilization, and presuppose an immense utility. Forsooth, a pair of boots will not outvie a stage-play in your eyes, and you will not prefer a windmill to the Church of Saint Ouen. So, a people is animated with the same sentiment as a man; and man's favourite idea is to survive himself mentally as he reproduces himself physically.
This is one side of the story. The other side is that 'The Robbers' made an epoch in German dramatic literature. Not only is it the strongest and completest expression of the eighteenth-century storm and stress, but it proved a highly effective stage-play. Nor was its success ephemeral.
Loyalty to the great dramatic poet of the nation plays its part. People think: Thus our Schiller began, and they expect to make allowances. But when all such allowances are made, it remains true that 'The Robbers' is a powerful stage-play which reveals in every scene the hand of the born dramatist.
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