CHAPTER IV

The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa

Ein Diadem erkaempfen ist grosz; es wegwerfen ist goettlich.
_'Fiesco'_.

As we have seen, 'Fiesco' was written during the summer and fall of
1782. The following winter, having been rejected by the Mannheim stage,
it was published as a literary drama. This first edition bore the
sub-title: 'A Republican Tragedy.'

There is a very general agreement that 'Fiesco' is upon the whole the
weakest of Schiller's plays. As a 'republican tragedy' it is a
disappointment, since its political import, though obvious enough to one
acquainted with Schiller from other sources, is not brought out
distinctly in the play itself. Neither the friend nor the enemy of
republicanism, in any historical or human sense of the word, can derive
the slightest edification from 'Fiesco,' The political talk is vague and
unpractical, and we get no clear idea of the contending forces. When the
curtain goes down upon the chaos of intrigue, one is at a loss to know
how one is expected to feel. And yet the play is full of powerful
scenes, developed with masterly dramatic skill. As a mere spectacle it
rivals 'The Robbers', to which as a drama it is decidedly inferior. In
general its defects strike the reader more than the spectator. It is not
the hand of the dramatist but the eye of the historian that is lacking.
In other words the author, with all his seeming profundity of