Mary Stuart

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Friedrich Schiller built this superb drama around the conflict - and fictitious confrontation - between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. Schiller was profoundly shaken by the failure of the French Revolution and devoted many of his greatest works to debating the true nature of freedom. Here, in scenes alternating between the palace of Westminster and the prison at Fotheringhay, he shows us a captive heroine rising above her suffering to gain in insight and spiritual depth. The deceitful and indecisive Elizabeth, trapped by the cruel demands of Realpolitik, can achieve worldly victory only at a terrible moral cost. Schiller's early plays are full of violent actions and language, but he later adopted a far more restrained and formal style to try and capture the emotional essence of complex events. Perhaps more than any of his other tragedies, Mary Stuart achieves a perfect balance between the 'classical', 'Shakespearean' and 'romantic' elements of his genius.

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Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), along with his friend Goethe, was one of the major figures of European Romanticism. Famed for his high poetic tragedies on historical subjects, his works inspired the writings of Coleridge and Shelley.