The Piccolomini

by Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Translator)

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Classics

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

People best know long didactic poems and historical plays, such as Don Carlos (1787) and William Tell (1804), of leading romanticist German poet, dramatist, and historian Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.

This philosopher and dramatist struck up a productive if complicated friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe during the last eighteen years of his life and encouraged Goethe to finish works that he left merely as sketches; they greatly discussed issues concerning aesthetics and thus gave way to a period, now referred to as classicism of Weimar. They also worked together on Die Xenien ( The Xenies ), a collection of short but harsh satires that verbally attacked perceived enemies of their aesthetic agenda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...

Reviews

[Legens · Rating 3 out of 5]

The impressions from Wallensteins Lager are now turned into an actual plot! True to the title, it is not Wallenstein from whom that plot stems – rather, he is the immovable center of the whirlwind around him in which his generals and family try to advance their particular positions, especially the eponymous Piccolomini (whose exchange in the fifth act is my personal highlight of the play). Stray observation: Schiller’s protagonists have processed from decisive, but fickle (Karl Moor) over half-decisive, but afraid of commitment to either course (Fiesco) to positively indecisive (Wallenstein).

[Mephistopheles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This does not really pick up until the end, where the conflict snaps into focus. Rather than a trilogy of plays, this is really one long play with a slow, deliberate beginning. It seems to be building toward a catastrophic conclusion in the final play, Wallenstein’s Death

[Scot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schiller has a voice reminiscent of Shakespeare and some of the best Greek tragedies. This is the second in a 3-part series starting with the very short and introductory Wallenstein's Camp and ending with the Death of Wallenstein that tells the story of the intrigue at the end of the German general's life. The focus of this book is the gathering of the sides within the camp splitting between the General and the Emperor with a focus on the Piccolominis... Octavio the father and Max the sun and the split between them. Quite a good read and clearly little known, worth the look up if epic tragedies in the form of a play excite you.