why should such a crafty schemer risk his neck and put himself in the
hands of a dangerous confederate for the purpose of hastening by a few
hours the demise of a childish old man who is already in his power? And
in his final agony of terror, when we should expect him to hide himself
or try to escape, how absurd that he should summon Pastor Moser merely
for the purpose of arguing with him upon immortality and judgment! We
see that he is after all a wretched coward who has merely cheated us
into the belief that he has put away the superstitions of orthodox
belief, while in reality they still linger in his blood. We miss in him
the invincible sang-froid of villainy which might have given a touch of
Shaksperian grandeur to his character. As it is, he is not grand, but
pitiable and revolting. When he strangles himself with his hat-band, one
is quite satisfied with the unheroic manner of his taking-off.

The subordinate characters of the piece are hardly worth discussing at
any length. The elder Moor is a mere nonentity,--a dummy in a
rocking-chair would have done as well. Evidently Schiller was concerned
to make the way as easy as possible for the clumsy villainy of Franz. A
more vigorous father, he may have felt, would have necessitated a more
subtle and plausible intrigue, which would have diverted attention from
the main issue of the contrasted sons. The heroine Amalia has always
been recognized, and was immediately recognized by Schiller himself, as
the weakest character in the play. But posterity's criticism is hardly
that formulated by him, namely, that we miss in Amalia the 'gentle,
suffering, pining thing--the maiden.'[27] Of gentle, suffering, pining
things there is no dearth in the German drama, and they were not in
Schiller's line. Nearly all of his women are made of heroic stuff, and
we honor him not the less for that. No one should blame Amalia for
boxing the ears of Franz or drawing the sword upon him: it is unladylike
conduct, but very good storm-and-stress realism.