The epoch produced many bourgeois tragedies, but Schiller's is much the
best of them all. Before we look at it more closely it will be worth
while to glance at the history of the type in Germany.

The tragedy of middle-class life first took root, as is well known, in
England. It was in 1732 that Lillo brought upon the Drury Lane stage his
acted tale of George Barnwell, the London 'prentice who is beguiled by a
harlot, robs his master, kills his uncle and ends his career on the
gallows, to the great grief of the doting Maria, his master's daughter.
The prologue tells how the experiment was expected to strike the public
of that day:

The Tragic Muse sublime delights to show
Princes distrest and scenes of royal woe;
In awful pomp majestic to relate
The fall of nations or some hero's fate;
That scepter'd chiefs may by example know
The strange vicissitudes of things below....
Upon our stage indeed, with wished success,
You've sometimes seen her in a humbler dress,
Great only in distress. When she complains,
In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving strains,
The brilliant drops that fall from each bright eye
The absent pomp with brighter gems supply,
Forgive us then if we attempt to show
In artless strains a tale of private woe.

So it appears that 'Barnwell' was something new, yet not entirely new.
The stately tragedy of solemn edification, at which no one was expected
to weep, had already yielded a part of its sovereignty to the tragedy of