[Footnote 15: "Ernst ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst."--_Prologue to 'Wallenstein'_.]
[Footnote 16: Weltrich, I, 298 ff., analyzes it and discusses its scientific value at some length.]
[Footnote 17: Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 139, has some very interesting remarks on this subject. "Woher gewann er [says Fischer], der Sohn eines Dorfbarbiers,... eine solche sichere und eingelebte Anschauung, ich möchte sagen, Fühlung fürstlichen Wesens, wenn nicht Herzog Karl, ein Meister in der Kunst fürstlichen Repräsentierens, ihn zum Modell gedient hätte?"]
O über mich Narren, der ich wähnete die Welt durch Greuel zu verschönern und die Gesetze durch Gesetzlosigkeit aufrecht zu erhalten.--'_The Robbers_'.
After leaving the academy Schiller soon began to look about for a publisher of his precious manuscript. Not finding one he presently decided to borrow money and print the play at his own expense. It appeared in the spring of 1781, accompanied by a modest preface in which the anonymous author pronounced his work unsuited to the stage but hoped it would be acceptable as a moral contribution to literature. In less than a year it had been played with ever memorable success and ere long it was the talk of Germany.
In dealing with 'The Robbers' it has always been much easier to point out faults than to do justice. Schiller himself set the fashion of a drastic criticism which had the effect of advertising 'The Robbers' as a violent youthful explosion containing more to be apologized for than to be admired. And indeed it is not a masterpiece of good taste. Upon an adult mind possessing some knowledge of the world's dramatic literature at its best, and particularly if the piece be read and not seen, Schiller's first play is very apt to produce the impression of a boyish extravaganza. The sentimental bandit who nourishes his mighty soul on the blood of his fellow-men, and undertakes to right a private wrong by running amuck against society in another part of the world, is a figure upon which we decline to waste our sympathy. We have no place for him in our scheme of art unless it be in comic opera or in the penny dreadful. Emotionally we have lost touch with him as we have with Byron's Corsair. When he stalks across the serious stage and rages and fumes and wipes his bloody sword, we are inclined to smile or to yawn. As for the villain Franz, with his abysmal depravity, and Amalia, with her witless sentimentalism, we find it hard to take them seriously; they do not produce a good illusion. And then the whole style of the piece, the violent and ribald language, the savage action, the rant and swagger, the shooting and stabbing,--all this seems at first calculated for the entertainment of young savages, and moves one to approve the oft-quoted _mot_ of the German prince who said to Goethe: 'If I had been God and about to create the world, and had I foreseen that Schiller would write 'The Robbers' in it, I should not have created it.'[18]