Don Carlos (Schiller)
Jun. 26th, 2018 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahniberiandoctor made the mistake of asking me what I thought of Schiller's Don Carlos (I read the Gutenberg translation available here (all quotes are from here), and, well, here we are. Surprising no one, I have Lots of Thoughts about it. I guess my takeaway is that I liked the play a lot and would LOVE to see it performed; on the other hand, there's a reason the opera is the version everyone remembers and the play isn't. [eta 7-5-18, wow, now that I reread that it sounds terrible, and anyway selenak has a very different viewpoint in comments -- and also I should actually see the play.] The play is a lot more complicated plot-wise, with a mad plethora of secret letters and conspiracies against other characters, and also a lot more complicated character-wise, especially in regards to the Marquis of Posa (honestly the entire play should probably have been called The Tragedy of the Marquis of Posa, but we'll get to that). The opera, on the other hand, distills all these secrets and conspiracies and complex characters down into more fundamental emotional truths, it seems to me, and there's a deep sympathy for all the characters which is sort of present in embryonic form in the play but isn't brought out quite as clearly. Being me I'm going to focus on the character differences, bringing the plot in when it's relevant to character (which is a lot, actually). I think this will make sense if you are familiar with the opera, and might not if you're not (since I don't discuss the plot in chronological order).Carlos and the Marquis de Posa
(I have been having a hard time figuring out what Posa's name is in Schiller -- the translation I think calls him Roderigo a couple of times -- anyway, he's just going to be Schiller!Posa vs. opera!Rodrigo. In general I will use Italian names for the opera and Anglicized for the play.)
Schiller's Carlos is a pretty sympathetic guy. He makes some poor judgment calls, including that same ill-advised mooning after Elisabeth (although he gets a better scene afterwards, see below), and also he is a little too trusting -- but, I mean, that's not necessarily a bad character trait in general (although a dangerous one, for him), and in general he's a good guy, thoughtful and idealistic, and I got the distinct sense that yeah, once he'd gotten a bit older (and, okay, a little less emo) he'd probably be a very good king and Posa's not wrong to sacrifice himself for that possibility. (I mean, Posa is still wrong about a ton of things, and Don Carlos is still a tragedy, but King Carlos VI could have worked out.) To be fair, he's still a rather emo mishap-prone character -- one of the hilarious bits is when Eboli, quite understandably, tells Carlos that she knew he was in love with her because he stole her glove (while they were playing at cards with the Queen) and left a cute romantic note inside it, because he is sufficiently failboaty that he can't tell the difference between her gloves and the Queen's. But overall, this Carlos is now my headcanon for (ahistorical) Don Carlos in general -- I liked him rather better than the opera version, where some of the changes and interpolations, I feel, have made Carlo into a weaker character --
--a big thing for me in the opera is the auto-da-fe scene, which doesn't actually arise in Schiller. (I guess this is lifted from some other play about Don Carlos?) The whole raising a sword against the King part happens, but very differently in Schiller. There, it's something Carlos does only after Posa's death, and only to highlight his words about how guilty the King is to have killed Posa. Carlos even says, "Put up your swords! What! Think you I am mad?" and after he's had his (very long) say, he says, "Here is my sword, for you are still my king." All very sane and noble, no overt rebellious (and/or crazy!) statement at all like opera!Carlo's when he gets pushed just a little too far, which is underlined by everyone in the opera, including opera!Rodrigo, singing, "His sword, before the King? The Infante is outside of himself! [insane!]"
The auto-da-fe scene in the opera is amazing theater with amazing ensemble, so, I mean, worth it for that alone, but really it works exceedingly well to make Rodrigo a lot more viscerally sympathetic of a character. In Schiller, instead of taking Carlo's sword to prevent a swordfight between Filippo and Carlo (so that there's practically no doubt that basic loyalty to both of them forces Rodrigo to do what he does), Posa just flat-out arrests Carlos once given the power by the King to do so -- to keep him from talking to Eboli (more on this later) -- which makes a whole lot less sense in general. I mean, it makes a little sense, because Carlos is inclined to trust Eboli more than Posa thinks he should -- but still this really doesn't cast Schiller!Posa in the best light.
In general, even though Schiller!Posa clearly does love and is committed to Carlos and liberty, there's also a component to his character that is indeed manipulative and a zealot in a way that opera!Rodrigo really is not -- Schiller!Posa is a much more complex character. The opera libretto has cut all the problematic bits, including his manipulative arresting of Carlos, as above, but also problematic bits of Posa's speeches — for example, where he admits to the Queen that he encouraged Carlos' love for her because he thought it would inspire Carlos to be a better person. (Go Mery/du Locle/Verdi for discarding that, I'm just saying, because ugh!)
The manipulativeness also manifests in Schiller!Rodrigo also never actually telling Carlos about any of his Sekret Plans regarding Carlos' papers and such. In the play, in lieu of the auto-da-fe, Schiller!Posa actually shows Carlos' papers to the King minus a problematic letter-from-the-Queen, in order to clear Carlos' name with respect to having had an affair with her. He has a whole monologue where he ruminates about how he's being secretive, and things might well have turned out very differently had he actually just bothered to tell Carlos that he wasn't going to give the King the problematic letter. Because Carlos, understandably, thinks he's shown the King everything, and he is thinking along these lines:
CARLOS (lost in deep thought).
And from me
Has he concealed all this? And why from me?
(We all wonder this, Carlos!)
CARLOS.
He loved me—loved me greatly: I was dear
As his own soul is to him. That I know—
Of that I've had a thousand proofs. But should
The happiness of millions yield to one?
Must not his country dearer to him prove
Than Carlos?
It turns out this is not true, or at least not provably true, but Carlos can hardly be blamed for thinking so. (And indeed Posa says later, " I have created in my Carlos' soul/ A paradise for millions!" and one might suspect that if his creation hadn't turned out so well, that he might have not loved Carlos so well...?)
Indeed Posa's secret plans drive all the rest of the action of the play: Carlos, understandably worried that the Queen might be in trouble if Rodrigo is betraying him, goes and talks to Eboli to try to get her to get him in to warn the Queen. Posa, alarmed by this (because he does not trust Eboli), bursts in and arrests Carlos ("He is mad! He raves! Believe him not!" in another bit where the opera version makes Rodrigo look WAY more sympathetic). But it's too late, Posa thinks: Carlos has already told Eboli he loves the Queen. Then Posa basically sees no way out but to frame himself as in love with the queen and get assassinated by Philip. GAH. Just writing that out makes me so frustrated with Schiller!Posa, and more in love with opera!Rodrigo, who is basically forced into all his actions by his love and his fidelity. I guess the one thing is that Schiller!Posa does realize that he screwed up -- a bunch of his pre-death speech to Carlos is admitting it:
And blinded by my vain desire to end
My enterprise alone, I kept concealed
From friendship's ear my hazardous design.
This was my fatal error! Here I failed!
I know it. My self-confidence was madness.
(Yes, Posa. Yes, it was.)
In the opera, things are again simplified by cutting the whole secret-letters-to-King plot and replacing it with the auto-da-fe -- opera!Rodrigo clearly didn't know he was going to take Carlos' sword before the second where it actually happens, and although he does keep secret that he's thinking about framing himself with Carlos' papers, I claim it's a mixture of a) he's not actually sure he will have to use them (1), and b) he may fear Carlos talking him out of it (which he's right to fear).
Oh, here's another small but good example from earlier in the play:
MARQUIS: Do you go to Flanders?
CARLOS: No!
MARQUIS: Alas! my blighted hopes!
I am just saying that opera!Rodrigo would never say that! (Although he cares just as much about Flanders as Schiller!Posa, he might talk about the blighted hopes of Flanders, or worry about Carlo.)
Part of Posa's zealousness is that he's an ardent reformer. He has a really (really) long monologue to the King about Freedom and Reform, so long that it's honestly a little reminiscent to me of those Ayn Rand 30-page-long heroic philosophical monologues (okay, it's not nearly that long, and both Schiller and Rand would turn in their graves to be compared to each other, but it's got that same flavor of "oh boy, author got super interested in the philosophical treatise and forgot about the action for a while").
But that zealousness, as it does with his relationship with Carlos, again comes with a side helping of manipulativeness. Practically his first act after he and the King have their big scene where the King decides to trust and honor him is... to intrigue for a rebellion in Flanders, explicitly committing treason. I think we are supposed to cheer for this, but it was just a little much for me, even though my OTP for the opera is Rodrigo/Flanders. Maybe it's the timing, that it literally comes right after the King has declared his trust in him -- Schiller!Posa has no problems with betraying all his trusts, as long as his aims are met, and that bothers me. (Or maybe it's just that I am a little obsessed with Philip-Rodrigo in the opera, ha.)
Opera!Rodrigo is by far my favorite here. I am Totally Okay with
On the other hand, whoa the Carlos/Posa here, pretty much all on Carlos' side. (Schiller!Posa is much more hesitant about even accepting Carlos' friendship -- which is something else I love a lot more about the opera, because I am All About the constant and awesome friendships. It doesn't work nearly as well for me in Schiller.)
When Carlos first sees Posa (analogous to when he first sees him in the opera):
Can it be?
And is it truly thou? O yes, it is!
I press thee to my bosom, and I feel
Thy throbbing heart beat wildly 'gainst mine own.
And now all's well again. In this embrace
My sick, sad heart is comforted. I hang
Upon my Roderigo's neck!
...well then! Tell us how you really feel, Carlos!
Oh, and this gem, which is like it was made for slashers:
CARLOS: What could unseat my Posa from my heart,
If woman fail to do it?
And this!
CARLOS.
And now one other favor let me beg.
Do call me thou!
(I prefer the opera, where
zdenka has informed me that in the French version, Rodrigue himself slips into "tu" when he sees how upset Carlos is. Because opera!Rodrigue is THAT AWESOME <3)Queen Elisabeth de Valois and King Philip II of Spain
Now, in Schiller the Queen is totally awesome and I love her very much. She's a much stronger and more political character than in Verdi, while still having as much integrity and uprightness as Verdi's Elisabeth. She is a player in the whole Flanders political game; about the first thing Posa does when he gets access to the Queen is to talk to her about raising rebellion in Flanders (which she's totally in favor of -- so I guess she's treasonous too, but it doesn't bother me so much with her, I think because the King explicitly says he doesn't care about her political ambitions, and she's cheerfully honest about the stuff he actually cares about, which is whether she was or wasn't talking to Carlos or had a letter from Carlos or...).
She is always trying to shake some sense into basically everyone in the entire play. This includes her very first scene, where both Eboli and the Countess (Mondecar, not Aremberg, for reasons I don't understand) are all "Yay! Heretic burning!" and the Queen, while not pushing the matter, is all "uh, no." The evil conspirators (the Duke of Alva and the priest Domingo) come to try to convince her that Posa's betraying her, but she's all, hmm! I didn't realize you guys were such close friends of mine! She is the greatest. And Posa is not excepted from her perceptive commentary -- there's a wonderful scene where he goes to tell the Queen his plan to sacrifice himself for Carlos, and she is all, "yeah, that's a stupid plan, Posa" but unfortunately it's too late. During the scene where Carlos tries to fling himself on her, opera!Elisabetta retains some of this strength in telling Carlo that it would be a terrible thing to do in terms of his duty to God and father, but Schiller!Elisabeth goes even further in pointing out his duty:
Elizabeth has been your earliest love,
Your second must be Spain. How gladly, Carlos,
Will I give place to this more worthy choice!
(Verdi/Mery/du Locle only lets Carlo say in response, "Ah! Maledetto io son!" (Ah! I am cursed!) but Schiller!Carlos gets a much more repentant speech after that. I mean, opera!Carlo can (and maybe should) be played as repentant there, but it's not quite as clear-cut in the opera to my mind.) While it's implied that if she had her druthers she'd have married Carlos instead of Philip, she isn't nearly as explicit about it, only citing duty (rather than passion) after Carlos presses her a lot, and in general (until the very end of the play) manages to retain more-or-less plausible deniability of what she thinks about Philip (even though we all know, because he's a total jerk -- see below). And in general she is not the melancholy Elisabetta of the opera; in her first scene, she's vivacious and sweet and canny all at once. She's just really great, and basically the equivalent of opera!Rodrigo in her undiluted awesomeness.
Because Rodrigo and Elisabetta are both such great characters in the opera, I am a total sucker for their interaction, and the play super delivers for me. Schiller!Posa is good friends with Elisabeth -- they seem to know each other pretty well in their scenes together -- and is a huge fan: though it clearly isn't meant as romantic, I think he says more nice things about Elisabeth than Carlos does! Here's a bit where he's telling Carlos that the Queen is so much more awesome than Eboli:
And then I mark the queen. How different, Carlos,
Is everything that I behold in her!
In native dignity, serene and calm,
Wearing a careless cheerfulness—unschooled
In all the trained restraints of conduct, far
Removed from boldness and timidity,
With firm, heroic step, she walks along
The narrow middle path of rectitude,
Unconscious of the worship she compels,
Where she of self-approval never dreamed.
...yeah, we can tell who is worshipping the Queen, Posa!
And even though I didn't like that Posa encouraged Carlos' forbidden love (because -- and the Queen points this out because she is awesome and notices crap -- wtf messing with people's lives and what if she had been less awesome and had fallen (physically speaking) for Carlos? WHAT THEN SCHILLER!POSA?) I loved that Posa acknowledged that it would only work because the Queen was so very awesome -- he really respects the Queen and her integrity. So yeah, that's absolutely part of my opera headcanon too, now, that Rodrigo super thinks the Queen is wonderful. (Although in my headcanon the Queen thinks Rodrigo is great too because he is in the opera, as opposed to Schiller, where she ends up kind of disappointed in him, and it didn't occur to me until right this moment but when she says how disappointed she is, that must be a really terrible moment for Posa, as he admires her so much.)
Schiller's King Philip is... complicated. In many ways he is even more of a jerk than in the opera, which is kind of a feat, really. He's got this whole spy network set up, so that all the protagonists in the play are constantly looking over their shoulders and are worried about what might be reported to him. Carlos has tears in his eyes at one point (while he's trying to get Philip to send him to Flanders) and Philip's all "Boys don't cry, you're such a sissy, of course I can't send you anywhere!" UGH PHILIP. Also (although he has that same paranoid character as in the opera) he doesn't get an awesome aria with a cello to humanize him. (Verdi is so great to his villains!) He does get something out of which that aria was made, but opera!Philip is a lot more, um, empathetic in his version. (Schiller!Philip doesn't seem very worried about whether Elisabeth loves him, for instance.)
Oh, and here's this bit. Count Lerma is a small part but an awesome character, a fundamentally decent guy caught up in all of this drama. Here's an exchange between him and the King:
LERMA: Who has the daring hardihood to breathe
Suspicion on her angel purity?
To slander thus the best of queens——
KING.
The best!
The best, from you, too! She has ardent friends,
I find, around. It must have cost her much—
More than methinks she could afford to give.
OH PHILIP NO, that's all I'm saying.
And then, on the other side -- we get people commenting on how he's weeping over Posa (this happens off-screen) when he thinks Posa has betrayed him, which is a very nice humanizing touch and one that we don't really see in the opera, even second-hand (and which I was wondering about a little). And it's also heavily implied that the tension between Philip and Carlos is in large part because Philip's counselors happen to be Carlos' enemies (because Carlos is one of them new-fangled innovative liberty-loving types), whereas the opera kind of glosses over this and makes it seem like Philip's just paranoid. I think I like the previous better -- it's certainly a more complex motivation, and his councilors are pretty insistently slimy, to the point where you kind of understand how Philip got railroaded into doubting Elisabeth -- but also substantially more complicated to set up, involving more characters (the Duke of Alva and the priest Domingo aren't even mentioned in the opera to the best of my knowledge) and plot. (The interesting thing is that the crime of which she's actually guilty, Flanders rebellion-intrigue, is not one Philip is worried about at all.) And to people who aren't Carlos (and Elisabeth) Philip is actually pretty decent; there's a small but telling scene where the Spanish Armada admiral loses a bunch of ships and is understandably really nervous about telling Philip, and Philip's all "Hey, it's OK, and at least you made it home safely!" which is rather lovely. So yeah. Complicated.
Interestingly, in Schiller the scene with the Grand Inquisitor comes after Posa's death, and the Grand Inquisitor is all annoyed that Philip killed Posa instead of giving him to the Inquisition. The emotional thrust of the opera scene, in which the Inquisitor demands Rodrigo, and even before Filippo thinks Rodrigo is a traitor, is totally different (although, I mean, the Grand Inquisitor is super scary in all incarnations). Time-shifting the scene, in particular, makes opera!Filippo rather more sympathetic, because he's arguing that he shouldn't give Rodrigo to the Inquisition and we can see the walls closing in around him. In Schiller, in contrast -- see below -- it is meant to show Philip's rage and inflexibility, and so the conflict becomes whether he should have killed Posa himself or given him to the Inquisition, which isn't a position anyone is going to have much empathy for. Although now that I have read Schiller, I have the headcanon that, in the opera, Filippo getting his man to shoot Rodrigo is sort of the last gift he can give him -- not, in fact, giving him over to the Inquisition.
The ending
I'll turn their schemes to mockery. His virtue
Shall be an empty dream—his death, a fool's.
His fall shall crush his friend and age together.
We'll test it now—how they can do without me.
The world is still for one short evening mine,
And this same evening will I so employ,
That no reformer yet to come shall reap
Another harvest, in the waste I'll leave,
For ten long generations after me.
He would have offered me a sacrifice
To his new deity—humanity!
So on humanity I'll take revenge.
And with his puppet [Carlos] I'll at once commence.
*shivers* Though fascinating and I would love to watch this transformation, it's also rather horrible and I'm so glad the opera didn't do this, letting us retain at least a little non-hatred for Filippo.
(This is when he summons the Grand Inquisitor, as noted above, and all of it just underlines his falling into that state where all he wants is vengeance on everyone, Posa most of all.)
The very end of the play isn't at all supernatural -- Carlos disguises himself as the old emperor to sneak in to see the Queen, they have their chat, the King comes in with the Inquisitor. The Queen falls senseless, and Carlos asks if she is dead. (This is never answered.) The king says to the Grand Inquisitor, "coolly and quietly" (this must be fantastically chilling to watch), clearly giving up Carlos (and possibly the Queen, though it isn't even clear if she is still alive) to the Inquisition:
Lord Cardinal!
I've done my part. Go now, and do your own.
In conclusion: a totally decent play, and as plays are, certainly more complex and interesting than the opera in many ways, and I would go see it in a hot second if I ever had a chance, but the opera takes something that's good and intensifies everything SO MUCH into something amazing <3 [haha, lol, past me, it would have been much more accurate and extremely less obnoxious to say that the opera speaks way more to my id; both play and opera are amazing in different ways!]
(1) So I watched 2+ entire Don Carlos without understanding why Posa takes Carlos' papers early in Act III, clearly with the idea in mind to use them to frame himself, but then doesn't actually make the final decision to use them until the quartet scene in Act IV, which is quite a bit later. (Doylistically, it's because the whole papers subplot in Schiller is cut and replaced by the auto-da-fe, so there's no room to mention them until then.) I thought -- and I still think this could be part of it, mind you -- that it was because Philip had finally gone too far in that scene, thus his determination to die after he speaks sternly to Philip. While writing this, it occurred to me that a) one reason could be that he just doesn't want them to be found on Carlo if he does something dumb, which, uh, yeah, it would certainly be a much shorter opera if Carlo had had them at the auto-da-fe; and b) (and I think this is the actual reason) he's waiting to see whether Eboli actually does accuse Carlo and Elisabetta or whether Filippo decides to execute Carlo -- if neither of these things happen, then maybe he doesn't need to move on that plan -- but when he sees what has happened in the quartet scene he knows that he has to do it.
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Date: 2018-09-06 04:04 am (UTC)(Also, TOTALLY IGNORE what I said above about not requesting the opera. I want ALL THE OPERA FIC too! :) And I think I get picky when I'm myself trying to write book canons with a distinctive voice way more than the same thing with other media.)