[Illustration: 2. SCHILLER'S BIRTHPLACE IN MARBACH]

During his two years' sojourn in Dresden Schiller was mainly occupied
with the editing of a magazine, the _Thalia_, and with the completion
of _Don Carlos_, the first of his plays in blank verse. Hitherto he
had written with his eye on the stage, and in the savage spirit of the
Storm and Stress. Now, however, the higher ambition of the dramatic
poet began to assert itself. His views of life were changing, and his
nature craved a freer and nobler self-expression than was possible in
the "three hours' traffic of the stage." He had begun _Don Carlos_ at
Bauerbach, intending to make it a love-tragedy in a royal household
and incidentally to scourge the Spanish inquisition. Little by little,
however, the centre of his interest shifted from the lovesick Carlos
to the quixotic dreamer Posa, and the result was that the love-tragedy
gradually grew into a tragedy of political idealism with Posa for its
hero. As finally completed in the summer of 1787, _Don Carlos_ had
twice the length of an ordinary stage-play and, withal, a certain lack
of artistic unity. But its sonorous verse, its fine phrasing of large
ideas, and its noble dignity of style settled forever the question of
Schiller's power as a dramatic poet. The third act especially is
instinct with the best idealism of the eighteenth century.

After _Don Carlos_ Schiller wrote no more plays for some nine years,
being occupied in the interval chiefly with history and philosophy.
His dramatic work had interested him more especially in the sixteenth
century. At Dresden he began to read history with great avidity and
found it very appetizing. What he most cared for, evidently, was not
the annals of warfare or the growth of institutions, but the
psychology of the great man. He was an ardent lover of freedom, both