Don Carlos and Mary Stuart

Translated by Hilary Collier Sy-Quia and Peter Oswald
Edited by Hilary Collier Sy-Quia with an Introduction by Lesley Sharpe
Don Carlos and Mary Stuart, two of German literature’s greatest historical dramas, deal with the timeless issues of power, freedom, and justice.
Both plays dramatize periods of crisis in sixteenth-century Europe, and in doing so reflece Schiller’s passionate engagement with the great themes of his own age—justice, power, freedom of conscience, legitimacy of government.
A youthful work, Don Carlos (1787) shows the victory of the forces of reaction over the representatives of a new age. Mary Stuart (1802) shows the struggle of the Scottish queen in the last days of her lite, not only for freedom but also for peace with her conscience, and that of her English rival, Elizabeth I, with the challenge of ruling justly. A vivid imaginative experience when read, these plays, with their starkly contrasting characters and thrilling confrontations, also demonstrate Schiller's brilliant stagecraft.
* INTRODUCTION * TEXTUAL NOTE * BIBLIOGRAPHY * CHRONOLOGY * EXPLANATORY NOTES