Love And Intrigue A Tragedy

Reproduction of the original.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Love and Intrigue" (A Tragedy) by Friedrich Schiller. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Schiller (1759-1805) was a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. During the period 1788-1805 he struck up a productive friendship with the already influential Goethe. The pair frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he had left as sketches. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which they challenged opponents to their philosophical vision. This five-act play, first performed in 1784, was Schiller's third dramatic work. Entitled Kabale und Liebe (literally Cabal and Love) in the original German, it shows how cabals and their intrigue destroy the love between Ferdinand, a nobleman's son, and Luise, daughter of a middle-class musician.

"Schiller's play Kabale und Liebe, usually translated into English as Love and Intrigue, represents the disastrous consequences that follow when social constraint, youthful passion, and ruthless scheming collide in a narrow setting. Written between 1782 and 1784, the play bears the marks of life at the court of the despotic Duke of Württemberg, from which Schiller had just fled, and of a fraught liaison he entered shortly after his flight. It tells the tale of a love affair that crosses the boundaries of class, between a fiery and rebellious young nobleman and the beautiful and dutiful daughter of a musician. Their affair becomes entangled in the competing purposes of malign and not-so-malign figures present at an obscure and sordid princely court somewhere in Germany. It all leads to a climactic murder-suicide. Love and Intrigue, the third of Schiller's canonical plays (after The Robbers and Fiesco's Conspiracy at Genoa), belongs to the genre of domestic tragedy, with a small cast and an action indoors. It takes place as the highly conventional world of the late eighteenth century stands poised to erupt, and these tensions pervade its setting and emerge in its action. This lively play brims with comedy and tragedy expressed in a colorful, highly colloquial, sometimes scandalous prose well captured in Flora Kimmich's skilled and informed translation. An authoritative essay by Roger Paulin introduces the reader to the play. As with all books in the Open Book Classics series, this translation is supported by an introduction and notes that situate an old text in its period and help both the student and the general reader read it with ease and with pleasure."--Publisher's website.

Ferdinand is an army major and son of President von Walter, a high-ranking noble in a German duke's court, while Luise Miller is the daughter of a middle-class musician. The couple fall in love with each other, but both their fathers tell them to end their affair. The President instead wants to expand his own influence by marrying Ferdinand to Lady Milford, the duke's mistress, but Ferdinand rebels against his father's plan and tries to persuade Luise to elope with him. "There are truly magnificent scenes and the characters are admirably put into effect." -Carl Wilhelm Ettinger (on the first production in 1784) "Schiller's talent was just made for the theater." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "If I did not regard Schiller as a great writer, I could not regard myself as a writer at all." -Franz Grillparzer (dramatist) "Nowadays, in a time of disoriented search for meaning and the canonization of the profane, Schiller's play is of astonishingly explosive force." -Thalia Theatre, Hamburg (2002)

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788-1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with the already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.