The Robbers

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.

ACT I.