altercation with Leonora in the second scene of Act II she uses a number
of coarse expressions befitting a woman of vulgar birth,--wherein some
of the critics see an evidence of Schiller's unfamiliarity with the ways
of refined ladies. It is quite possible, however, that we have to do
instead with a realistic attempt to make her language match the
essential vulgarity of her character. At any rate it is interesting to
know that the scene was offensive to Schiller himself. He worked upon it
with repugnance and was glad to be able to omit it entirely from the
stage version.[47]

In respect of its diction 'Fiesco' is in no way essentially different
from 'The Robbers', albeit some have imagined that a faint improvement
is discernible. There is the same tearing of passion to tatters, the
same predilection for florid rhetoric in the sentimental passages, and
for frenzied talk and action in passages of more violent emotion. When
Fiesco discovers that he has killed his wife, he first thrashes about
him furiously with his sword. Then he gnashes his teeth at God in heaven
and expresses himself thus: 'If I only had His universe between my
teeth, I feel in a mood to tear all nature into a grinning monster
having the semblance of my pain.' In his final expostulation with the
would-be tyrant, Verrina delivers himself of this sentence: 'Had I too
been such an honest dolt as not to recognize the rogue in you, Fiesco,
by all the horrors of eternity, I would twist a cord out of my own
intestines and throttle you with it, so that my fleeing soul should
bespatter you with yeasty foam-bubbles.'

No wonder that critics and actors alike were offended by such insanity
of rant and that Schiller himself soon saw the folly of it. He had got
the idea that when a man is figuratively 'beside himself', the most
effective way to portray his state of feeling is to make him talk and