1 - Schiller's Gestures: Origins and Contexts

Summary

THERE IS NO SIMPLE ANSWER to the question of where Schiller's striking use of gesture comes from. When he came to write drama at the end of the 1770s, the Sturm und Drang had already had its heyday. But Schiller adopts many features of the Sturm und Drang style of drama, particularly with regard to gesture, and blends them with others that have their roots in his own more specific situation and interests. This style very rapidly became Schiller's own. Although he stopped writing plays for a period of ten years and, when he began writing again, wrote in a style that had many striking differences from that of his earlier phase, there are important elements of continuity in the use of gesture, and certain key gestures that occur again and again. It is therefore of interest to examine the roots of Schiller's dramatic style, focusing on gesture. These roots can be found in his early life, upbringing, education, and reading. Scholars have on the whole tended to oversimplify this question and have singled out one aspect as primary, but it is more fruitful to consider the interplay of the diverse strands that bear on the evolution of gesture and stagecraft in Schiller's dramas.

Schiller's Upbringing

The comment about Schiller's relationship to language that reaches back furthest into the early years of his life was made by Schiller's eldest sister Christophine, who recalled how he loved to climb on a chair in front of his siblings and friends and preach to them. It is also recorded that Schiller wanted to become a preacher.