au von Wolzogen. Here he remained several months,
occupied mainly with a new play which came to be known as _Cabal and
Love_. He also sketched a historical tragedy, _Don Carlos_, being led
to the subject by his reading of St. Real's historical novel _Don
Carlos_. During the first part of his stay at Bauerbach Schiller went
by the name of Dr. Ritter and wrote purposely misleading letters as to
his intended movements. By the summer of 1783, however, it had become
apparent that the Duke of Wuerttemberg was not going to make trouble.
Relieved of anxiety on this score, and not having had very good
success of late with his theatre, Dalberg reopened negotiations with
Schiller, who was easily persuaded to emerge from his hiding-place and
become theatre-poet at Mannheim under contract for one year.

During this year at Mannheim _Fiesco_ and _Cabal and Love_ were put on
the stage and published. The former is a quasi-historical tragedy of
intriguing ambition, ending--in the original version--with the death
of Fiesco at the hands of the fanatical republican Verrina. While
there is much to admire in its abounding vigor and its picturesque
details, _Fiesco_ lacks artistic finality and is the least interesting
of Schiller's early plays. Much more important is _Cabal and Love_, a
domestic tragedy that has held the stage to this day and is generally
regarded as the best of its kind in the eighteenth-century German
drama. Class conflict is the tragic element. A maid of low degree and
her high-minded, aristocratic lover are done to death by a miserable
court intrigue. Far more than in _The Robbers_ Schiller was here
writing with his eye on the facts. Much Wuerttemberg history is thinly
disguised in this drastic comment on the crimes, follies and
banalities of German court life under the Old Regime.

Notwithstanding his success as a playwright and his receipt of the
honorable title of Councilor from the Duke of Weimar, Schiller was
unhappy at Mannheim. Sickness, debt and loneliness oppressed him,
making creative work well-nigh impossible. In June, 1784, when the sky
was looking very black, he received a heartening letter from a quartet
of unknown admirers in Leipzig, one of whom was Gottfried Koerner.
Schiller was deeply touched. In his hunger for sympathy and friendship
he resolved to leave Mannheim and seek out these good people who had
shown such a kindly interest in him. Fortunately Koerner was a man of
some means and was able to help