The Robbers | Page 3

Wieland is infinitely more amusing than this short quotation
from memory enables me to show. H. G. B.]
Let as many friends of truth as you will, instruct their fellow-citizens in
the pulpit and on the stage, the vulgar will never cease to be vulgar,

though the sun and moon may change their course, and "heaven and
earth wax old as a garment." Perhaps, in order to please tender-hearted
people, I might have been less true to nature; but if a certain beetle, of
whom we have all heard, could extract filth even from pearls, if we
have examples that fire has destroyed and water deluged, shall
therefore pearls, fire, and water be condemned. In consequence of the
remarkable catastrophe which ends my play, I may justly claim for it a
place among books of morality, for crime meets at last with the
punishment it deserves; the lost one enters again within the pale of the
law, and virtue is triumphant. Whoever will but be courteous enough
towards me to read my work through with a desire to understand it,
from him I may expect--not that he will admire the poet, but that he
will esteem the honest man. SCHILLER. EASTER FAIR, 1781.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE ROBBERS.
AS COMMUNICATED BY SCHILLER TO DALBERG IN 1781,
AND SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN USED AS A PROLOGUE.
--This has never before been printed with any of the editions.--
The picture of a great, misguided soul, endowed with every gift of
excellence; yet lost in spite of all its gifts! Unbridled passions and bad
companionship corrupt his heart, urge him on from crime to crime,
until at last he stands at the head of a band of murderers, heaps horror
upon horror, and plunges from precipice to precipice into the lowest
depths of despair. Great and majestic in misfortune, by misfortune
reclaimed, and led back to the paths of virtue. Such a man shall you
pity and hate, abhor yet love, in the Robber Moor. You will likewise
see a juggling, fiendish knave unmasked and blown to atoms in his own
mines; a fond, weak, and over-indulgent father; the sorrows of too
enthusiastic love, and the tortures of ungoverned passion. Here, too,
you will witness, not without a shudder, the interior economy of vice;
and from the stage be taught how all the tinsel of fortune fails to
smother the inward worm; and how terror, anguish, remorse, and
despair tread close on the footsteps of guilt. Let the spectator weep

to-day at our exhibition, and tremble, and learn to bend his passions to
the laws of religion and reason; let the youth behold with alarm the
consequences of unbridled excess; nor let the man depart without
imbibing the lesson that the invisible band of Providence makes even
villains the instruments of its designs and judgments, and can
marvellously unravel the most intricate perplexities of fate.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The eight hundred copies of the first edition of my ROBBERS were
exhausted before all the admirers of the piece were supplied. A second
was therefore undertaken, which has been improved by greater care in
printing, and by the omission of those equivocal sentences which were
offensive to the more fastidious part of the public. Such an alteration,
however, in the construction of the play as should satisfy all the wishes
of my friends and critics has not been my object.
In this second edition the several songs have been arranged for the
pianoforte, which will enhance its value to the musical part of the
public. I am indebted for this to an able composer,* who has performed
his task in so masterly a manner that the hearer is not unlikely to forget
the poet in the melody of the musician.
DR. SCHILLER.
STUTTGART, Jan. 5, 1782.
* Alluding to his friend Zumsteeg.--ED.

THE ROBBERS.
A TRAGEDY.
"Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat,
ignis sanat."--HIPPOCRATES.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
MAXIMILIAN, COUNT VON MOOR.
CHARLES,| FRANCIS,| his Sons. AMELIA VON EDELREICH, his
Niece. SPIEGELBERG,| SCHWEITZER, | GRIMM, | RAZMANN, |
Libertines, afterwards Banditti SCHUFTERLE, | ROLLER, |
KOSINSKY, | SCHWARTZ, | HERMANN, the natural son of a
Nobleman. DANIEL, an old Servant of Count von Moor. PASTOR
MOSER. FATHER DOMINIC, a Monk. BAND OF ROBBERS,
SERVANTS, ETC.
The scene is laid in Germany. Period of action about two years.

THE ROBBERS
ACT I.
SCENE I.--Franconia.
Apartment in the Castle of COUNT MOOR.
FRANCIS, OLD MOOR.
FRANCIS. But are you really well, father? You look so pale.
OLD MOOR. Quite well, my son--what have you to tell me?
FRANCIS. The post is arrived--a letter from our correspondent at
Leipsic.
OLD M. (eagerly). Any tidings of my son Charles?
FRANCIS. Hem! Hem!--Why, yes. But I fear--I know not--whether I
dare --your health.--Are you really