Joan of Arc - Maid of Heaven - The Maid of Orleans by Friedrich Schiller

THE MAID OF ORLEANS (Joan of Arc)
By Friedrich Schiller

Translated into English
By Anna Swanwick

Cover for Friedrich Schiller Play The Maid of Orleans

Table of Contents


	SHORT MEMOIR OF SCHILLER
	DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
PROLOGUE	SCENE I of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
PROLOGUE	SCENE II of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
PROLOGUE	SCENE III of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
PROLOGUE	SCENE IV of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE I of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE II of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE III of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE IV of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE V of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE VI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE VII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS

ACT I	SCENE VIII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE IX of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE X of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT I	SCENE XI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS

ACT II	SCENE I of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE II of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE III of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE IV of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE V of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE VI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE VII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE VIII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE IX of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT II	SCENE X of THE MAID OF ORLEANS

ACT III	SCENE I of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE II of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE III of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE VI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE V of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE VI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE VII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE VIII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE IX of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE X of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT III	SCENE XI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE I of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE II of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE III of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE IV of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE V of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE VI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE VII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE VIII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE IX of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE X of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE XI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE XII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT IV	SCENE XIII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE I of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE II of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE III of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE IV of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE V of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE VI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE VII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE VIII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE IX of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE X of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE XI of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE XII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE XIII of THE MAID OF ORLEANS
ACT V	SCENE XIV of THE MAID OF ORLEANS

SHORT MEMOIR OF SCHILLER
John Caspar Schiller, the father of the poet, was the son of a baker of Bittenfeld. Owing to the straitened circumstances in which the family was left on his father's death, John Caspar left his home, and for many years led a wandering life as soldier, barber, and regimental surgeon. In 1749 he settled down at Marbach, and married Elizabeth Dorothes, the daughter of the landlord of the "Goden Lion." The scond child of this union was JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH, born at Marbach on the 10th of November, 1759.

Three years after, John Caspar Schiller, now a captain in the Duke of Wurtemburg's army, retired with his family to Ludwigsburg, where young Fritz received his early education from the old pastor there. In 1766 the lad was sent to the Grammar School, it being the father's wish that he should train for the Church. In 1772 Schiller had completed his Grammar School for the University, when Captain Schiller, now overseer of the forestry of the Duke's forest-castle, Die Solitude, received and offer from the Duke to take his son to the new "Military Academy," established at Solitude. As offer from Duke Eugen was equivalent to a command, and young Schiller became the Duke's pupil.

From 1773 to 1780 he was a prisoner. At the "Military Academy" he was put through a training which would have cramped and stunted the mental growth of nineteenths of the ordinary youth, and left them, as it was intended they should be left, moulded and fashioned after a pattern, with not thought beyond Wurtemburg, and no hope beyond Duke Karl Eugen. Schiller bore his confinement ill. The life was a great trial to his sensitive nature, but before he left the Academy's walls behind him, he had sketched his first dramatic work Die Bauber. When he left to start in life for himself, he became army surgeon. In the autumn of 1781, he printed his play at his own expense. A clandestine visity to Mannheim, to see a performance of it, got to the ears of the Duke, and the young playwright underwent a fortnight's arrest, and afterwards was forbidden to write any more. Schiller, naturally, became utterly disgusted, and he determined to free himself. He took leave of his parent, and on a September morning in 1782 made his escape from the hateful Wurtemburg territory.

At Mannheim he experienced nothing but disappointment. Towards the end of the year, however, a lady whose acquaintance he had made at Stuttgart, Frau von Wolzogen, offered him a refuge at her house at Bauerbach. The offer he gladly accepted. During the eight months in which he enjoyed this lady's hospitality, he worked at two new plays, Verschworing des Fiesco (The Conspiracy of Fiesco), and Kabale and Liebe (Plot and Passion). They were published together in 1783, and were presented at the Mannheim Theatr4e. Fiesco met with but a poor reception, but Plot and Passion had quite an astonishing success. The plays brought what to Schiller, just then, was of more value than fame, namely, the appointment to the post of poet and critic to the Mannheim Theatre, with a salary sufficient to keep him form want. Duke Karl August of Weimar honored him with the title of Bath, the German society at Mannheim elected him a member, and the Rheinisches Thalia began its nine years' life with the number containing the first three acts of Don Carlos. In addition, his success brought Schiller the friendship of Frau von Kalb-a friendship which, if it at first helped the further growth of his nature, became afterwards a source of much anguish and vexation of spirit. From a few enthusiastic admirers at Leipzig he received gifts and expressions of warm admiration for his genius.

His life, however, at Mannheim soon became unbearable. Disagreements with the director of the theatre, Dalberg, unpleasantness with the actors and actresses, small appreciateion for his heavy exertions, and the poor wages which accompanied them-these gradually effaced the joy with which he had entered on the life, and made him realize more an more keenly that he must seek elsewhere for a sphere in which he could give out the many aspirations and thoughts crowding in his being. The message from his unknown friends at Leipzig came back to his mind, and to them he turned. In one of these, Christian Gottfried Korner, he found a friend of the sturdiest and noblest mind. At Korner's invitation, Schiller left Mannheim, and arrived in Leipzig in April, 1785. The influence of the new life soon showed itself on him in the few poetical pieces composed at this time, particularly in the Lied an die Freude (Song to Joy). He also began in the Thalia a series of Philosophic Letters, and announced the issue of an historical work to be written by several writers, to which Schiller himself would contribute the History of the Fall of the Netherlands.

At Leipzig and Dresden he remained for two years. After the publication Don Carlos, in 1786, Schiller determined to forsake the drama, and devote himself to historical work, and while studying and meditation on his History of the Netherlands, he paid a visit to Weimar. This was in 1789. At Weimar he met Herder and Wieland. Goethe he did not meet. He also revisited his old friend at Bauerbach, and on his return stopped at Rudolstadt where he made the acquaintance of Frau von Lengefeld, and her two daughters. The elder, Caroline was married; the younger, Charlotte, was just twenty-one, and charmed Schiller by her grace and joyous disposition. He left more than his friends behind at Rudolstadt.

In the autumn of 1788, the first volume of the History of the Netherlands was published. It never was carried further, but so great was the impression it made on the literary world, that it easily carried its author, with the help of Goethe's influence, to a final resting-place in the professorship of history at Jena University. The professorship brought with it no salary, but Schiller's popularity was such that he had sufficient form his students' fees, and the money coming in from his literary works, to make the proposal to Charlotte Lengefeld appear a reasonable one. The two had been betrothed for some time, and on the 21st February, 1790, they were married at the little church, Wenigen-Jena.

Towards the end of 1790 Schiller had completed the History of the Thirty Years' War, and had published in the New Thalia and The Hours a series of letters on "Esthetics," the outcome of a study of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment.

The years after 1792 were years in which Schiller's genius reached its finest growth, but they were years in which the man himself suffered many physical ills. His friendship with Goethe, however, made these years also years full of work, full of high thinking and noble living, and made joyous with the light of his friend's love. To Goethe also the friendship of Schiller was, he said, "the greatest blessing fortune has given me in my old age."

In the autumn of 1796 the two friends issued, in the Musen Almanack for 1797, a series of satirical epigrams which they called Xenien. For the Almanack of the next year Schiller contributed several of his ballads and shorter poems. He now finally forsook his purely historical studies, and resumed once more the dramatic form for the expression of his genius. The Weimar Theatre had been closed for extensive alterations; it was re-opened in October, 1798, with Schiller's Wallenstein's Camp. In the following year were presented the other two parts of the Wallenstein trilogy; The Piccolomini in January, and Wallenstein's Death in April. The ballads of Schiller, written between the years 1797 and 1798, though failing somewhat in the true spirit and naivete of ballad poetry, are justly appreciated for their purity of diction, their musical language, and their exquisite construction. They were written for the Musen Almanack as a set-off to the Xenien, and includes among them Der Ring des Polyhrates, Der Taucher, Der Kampf mit dem Drachen, Die Kraniche des Ibycus, Der Bitter Toggenburg. The magnificent Lied von der Gloche belongs to the year 1799.

Schiller was now anxious to take up his residence at Weimar, so that he could more easily superintend the rehearsals at the theatre, and also have the pleasure of a daily intercourse with Goethe. In 1799 he obtained a pension from the Grand-Duke, which enabled him to resign his professorship, and make his final home by the side of his friend.

The few years of life which were now left to him Schiller spent in a strenuous effort to realise the high ideals which he had always kept before him. Between the years 1800 and 1805 he wrote Mary Stuart, the Maid of Orleans, the Bride of Messina, and finally the great dramatic poem, William Tell.

With the spring of 1805 came new hopes and new plans of work; but these were destined to be laid low. The malady, from which Schiller had been so long suffering, again took hold of him, and on the 9th of May he lay prostrate and delirious. But shortly before six in the evening he recovered, and very touching was the tender farewell he took of all those about him. The daylight had hardly waned when he sank into a deep sleep to wake no more. "I thought to have lost myself," wrote Goethe to Zelter shortly after his own illness, "and now I have lost a friend, and in him the half of my being."

Schiller's work is characterised by the high value he placed upon his art, and by the wonderful power and facility of his imagination. To him life was but a series of opportunities for realising ideals, and he literally gave his very being to this aim. If his influence is not now what it once was, it still lingers to recall to the minds of the German people that life may be enjoyed seriously. Unlike Goethe, Schiller's imagination, as well as his sympathies, were narrow. He saw one thing in one aspect, and transfigured it with the splendour of genius. In Goethe's purview facts were fluid, they ran one into the other, and the sensual and the spiritual became but the two sides of one shield. With Schiller, on the contrary, the spiritual and the ideal were the only real; and how beautifully real he made them seem. But his creations, after all, are vitalised by his imaginative genius only� they lack the lustiness of life. They are not children of the earth, but delightful spirits of the ether, clothed for the time being, in human shapes, by the creative force of a splendid imagination. Viewing them, we stand, as it were, apart, and are not touched by the kinship of nature. Schiller is more near our Byron or Shelley than to Shakespeare or Goethe, but his works, as his life, are distinguished by an earnestness and steadfastness ot purpose to the supreme end of life--the being ever true to his highest thought.

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