Friedrich Schiller - Don Carlos and Mary Stuart

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogot Buenos Aires Calcutta
Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul
Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai
Nairobi Paris So Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw

with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford Univeristy Press
in the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

Translation Hilary Collier Sy-Quia and Peter Oswald 1996
Chronology, Explanatory Notes Hilary Collier Sy-Quia 1996
Bibliography Hilary Collier Sy-Quia and Lesley Sharpe 1996
Introduction Lesley Sharpe 1996

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published as a Worlds Classics paperback 1996
Reissued as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outisde the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

No performance of these plays may be given unless a licence has been
obtained; application to the Rights Department, Oxfrod University Press,
should be made before rehearsals begin

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Schiller, Friedrich, 17591805.
[Don Carlos. English]
Don Carlos and Mary Stuart / Friedrich Schiller ; translated with
notes by Hilary Collier Sy-Quia ; adapted in verse drama by Peter
Oswald ; with an introduction by Lesley Sharpe.

p. cm.

I. Carlos, Prince of Asturias, 15451568Drama. 2. Mary, Queen
of Scots, 15421587Drama. I. Sy-Quia, Hilary Collier.
II. Oswald, Peter. III. Schiller, Friedrich, 17591805. Maria
Stuart. English. IV. Title.

PT2473.D5S9 1996 832.6dc20 964317

ISBN 0192839853

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by Graphicraft Typesetters Ltd, Hong Kong
Printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd.
Reading, Berkshire

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics have brought readers closer to the worlds great literature. Now with over 700 titlesfrom the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth centurys greatest novelsthe series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.

The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Grahman Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential beckground information to meet the changing needs of readers.

Refer to the to navigate through the material in this Oxford Worlds Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes.

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

Translated with Notes by
HILARY COLLIER SY-QUIA
Adapted in verse drama by
PETER OSWALD
With an Introduction by
LESLEY SHARPE

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

DON CARLOS AND MARY STUART

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER was born in 1759 in Marbach in Wrttemberg. After the success of his first play, The Robbers, he abandoned his career as a regimental doctor and fled Wrttemberg, spending periods in Mannheim, Leipzig, Dresden, and Weimar and completing plays, poems, stories, and historical writings. In 1789 he settled in Jena, where he held a chair in history at the university. In 1790 he married Charlotte von Lengefeld (17661826). Four children were subsequently born.

After a severe illness in 1792 Schillers life became outwardly uneventful. In 1794 he formed a friendship and close literary alliance with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, out of which some of the central works of Weimar Classicism emerged. Though battling with failing health, in the last decade of his life he completed major works on aesthetics, his greatest poems, and a series of verse dramas. He died in 1805 at the age of 45.

Schiller is arguably Germanys greatest dramatist. In matters of form a tireless experimenter, he was a master of swift-moving action and of the thrilling set-piece encounter. His historical dramashis finest playsexplore with compelling intensity the problem of moral choice and the nature of human freedom, both personal and political.

HILARY COLLIER SY-QUIA is enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley as a postgraduate student in the German Department.

PETER OSWALD is a playwright, whose plays and adaptations for the stage include Valdorama (1992), Don Carlos (1992), and Don Juan (1995).

LESLEY SHARPE is Reader in German Literature at the University of Exeter and has written extensively on Schiller and on eighteenth-century German literature. She is the author of Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics (Cambridge, 1991) and has recently completed a critical history of Schillers aesthetics.

At first sight Don Carlos and Mary Stuart, with Wallenstein Friedrich Schillers greatest historical dramas, are striking in their similarity. Both are blank-verse plays, set against the background of religious strife in sixteenth-century Europe. Both explore the private emotions of the great and powerful as they confront the insoluble dilemmas of the political world. Both also display the hallmarks of Schillers style and techniqueswift-moving action, great set-piece encounters, impassioned rhetorical speeches, strongly contrasting characters, an unabashed theatricality. In both plays the historical setting is used not as a backdrop for a costume drama but to provide an opportunity to explore problems of Schillers own age. The later eighteenth century was also a time of violent upheaval and ideological conflict, of the clash of tradition with experiment. His plays are concerned with freedom and tyranny, the relation of power and responsibility, of ends and means in political life and with the challenge facing those called to act upon the stage of history to preserve humanity and integrity.

On closer inspection the dissimilarities between the plays are striking and significant.