3 - Playing at Politics: Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua

Summary

IN HIS MEDICAL DISSERTATION of 1780 Schiller refers to the Genoese Count Fiesko, linking him with Catilina as a highly sensual being. Schiller was also familiar with scenes from Abel's drama Die grausame Tugend, published in the Wirttembergisches Repertorium der Litteratur (Würtemburg Repertory of Literature) in March 1782. This had no direct connection with Fiesko's story, but it does have significance for Schiller's treatment of it. Abel's drama portrays how Timoleon's brother Timophanes murders some of the citizens of Corinthia and assumes power. Timoleon begs him to renounce power, but he refuses, and Timoleon visits him with two friends, Aeschylus and Ephorus, and implores him once more. When Timophanes shows only contempt and threatens them, Timoleon leaves, covers his face and allows Aeschylus and Ephorus to murder his brother. The resemblance to the situation in Schiller's play Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua is unmistakable, and the presence of gesture that begs for dramatic treatment even more so. Schiller's second play was published at Easter 1783 and was slower to reach the stage than Die Räuber. It did not find the favor of theater practitioners Iffland and Gotter, and Schiller himself found it necessary to make changes. The play's ending in particular proved problematic. How was Fiesko to be pushed off a plank into the sea at the harbor in Genoa? In the stage versions Fiesko either survived and became Genoa's happiest citizen, had a dagger plunged into him by Verrina, or, as in Carl Plümicke's version in Berlin, killed himself.