Mary Stuart [Paperback]

Friedrich Schiller (Author), Eric Bentley (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2000

Many have told the tragic tale of Mary Queen of Scots - it is irresistible - but none more powerfully than Friedrich Schiller. Like Mary Stuart herself and the legends which pursued her to her death, Schiller's drama continues to captivate the modern imagination nearly two centuries later. Eric Bentley's lean, forceful rendering of the German masterpiece will command the attention of theatre audiences for years to come.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In the global literary cannon, Friedrich Von Schiller wears the label of Germany's Shakespeare. His drama, penned in the year 1800, recounts the tumultuous days leading up to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots under the authority of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Contemporary British playwright Peter Oswald has won tremendous acclaim for his translation of Von Schiller's play, which L.A. Theatre Works recently staged. Given such wide shifts across centuries, languages and oceans, the audio performance offers a remarkably relevant story line for 21st-century America. The angst-ridden Queen Elizabeth, played by veteran actress Jill Gascoine, ponders the very real threats of sabotage and insurgency as she moves toward a decision that smacks of pre-emptive capital punishment for political purposes. As she awaits her fate, the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots, played by ER's Alex Kingston, must contend both with overzealous followers on their way to certain martyrdom and complicated romantic double-crossing worthy of Desperate Housewives. Both astute history buffs interested in intellectual speculation and more casual listeners simply in the mood for catty monarch-vs.
monarch banter will find themselves transfixed. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 105 pages
• Publisher: Applause Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0936839007
• ISBN-13: 978-0936839004
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 4.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #711,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > British & Irish > 19th Century
  • #10 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > History > Europe > Scotland
  • #14 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > German

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece, April 17, 2005

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mary Stuart (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)

A brilliant psychological drama. Schiller begins with presenting Mary as the epitome of passion and misguided sincerity, with Elizabeth as the epitome of rational calculation and statecraft. With superb plotting, he stages their confrontation to emphasize their common features and with elements of role reversal. The confrontation essentially purifies their original characters, heightening the contrast between passion and calculation. I don't read German but this translation contains a great deal of eloquent language and an appropriately Shakerspearean flavor.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What to do?, January 1, 2010

By 

H. Schneider "Hamlet" (Pandistan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mary Stuart (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Friedrich Schiller wrote this drama about the power struggle between Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scotland after he finished the Wallenstein trilogy, his Thirty Years War drama. He finished MS in 1800 and it had a triumphant stage premiere shortly afterwards, in Weimar. Schiller was by now `over' his Sturm und Drang period and had become a co-leader of classicism, teaming up with Goethe. He said of this play that he had had enough of war and heroes and soldiers, he was looking more for passionate humanity than for history. Consequently he wrote a credible drama about semi-fictional characters. As long as you don't confuse this with historiography, the method is fine with me.

The drama focuses on Mary's last 3 days, beginning with her verdict in the first of five acts. Mary does not recognize the authority of the court. She sees herself as a state guest, the legitimate queen of another country who had come to England asking for shelter. She had fled Scotland after her own murderous activities had made her unsafe there. In England she had been put in jail, now since 19 years.

Her imprisonment is motivated by the fact that she would have been able to claim a possibly better right to England's throne than the current job holder. In other words, Elizabeth has reasons to fear her, especially in view of her Catholic backing in France and Spain. Apart from that personal motive, Elizabeth has the pressure from her court that fears a return to a Catholic ruler. On the other hand there may be benefits in a milder rule.

Mary's state of mind in captivity is ambivalent: she resents the treatment that she is given, hopes to be able to talk to Elizabeth and reach an understanding, but at the same time she is haunted by her own conscience about her past murder of her husband at home.
The trial against her is however about something else. She is accused of having tried to conspire with England's enemies to usurp the throne. Mary feels innocent in that respect and even her captors are aware that the trial itself was not following proper procedure.

Schiller weaves a conspiracy of an attempted jail break involving some double-dealing noblemen. But the true high point of the play is a personal confrontation between the two lionesses. Pride, jealousy, fear, humiliation come into play. Mary wins the battle and loses the war. Elizabeth had been of a split mind, but Mary's aggressive and offensive behavior towards her leaves her no choice. Still she tries to escape direct personal responsibility for ordering an execution - in vain.

The plot in Schiller's version probably has as many holes as a sieve, historically, but as a human confrontation it works very well. The language has matured since the puerile enthusiasm of some earlier plays. There is also, luckily, no morality tale, no attempt to manipulate the audience to whatever good cause. The play has been staged recently in London, to much acclaim, and traveled to the Broadway from there. Which goes to show that Fritz is not entirely mummified. His claim to the Shakespeare equivalent throne in Germany was much enhanced with MS.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My German Friends ..., November 4, 2010

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Mary Stuart: A Tragedy (Paperback)

... have told me again and again that Shakespeare has been translated beautifully in their language, by Schiller and others, and holds the stage effectively in translation. I'm too nice a guy ... really! ... to challenge that perception, but I read German well enough to KNOW that neither Schiller's nor Goethe's plays have been successfully translated into English. If the translations are anything close to literal, they sound impossibly stiff and bewigged in the resulting "18th C" lingo. If they are loosely adapted, aside from the fact that they'll come out 30-50% shorter, they lose all poetic splendor. The former sort will require more footnotes than most of us can tolerate; the latter will have the reader wondering why such bland stuff can be regarded as classic.

On stage, however, there isn't even a moment's choice between the literal and the adapted. Mary Stuart is easily the Schiller drama best suited to an anglophone audience. After all, it portrays "our" beloved Elizabeth 1, though in a far-from-flattering guise as a jealous narcissistic tyrant egged toward villainy by her religious fanatic councilors. But a literal translation, especially one that attempts versification, will put even an audience of scholars into catatonic slumber. I know. I've slept through the emotional fifth act of several such stagings.

Recently I viewed an 'adaptive' staging, done without any costuming and with only rudimentary modern-furniture sets. The language, nevertheless, was moderately suggestive of Elizabethan protocols; that is, it was not updated into 20th C slang. The thespians include one Englishman among six Californians. I could have been snobbish about the diction but I chose not to be, considering myself lucky to be able to hear and comprehend the dialogue. The drama worked. The tragedy was poignant. The issues of conscience versus duty were vividly impressed upon the audience. Stripped of its poetic grandeur, however, the play was no more 'powerful' than many political films or TV dramas. It was a California audience, and therefore the subtle "Karl Rove" manner of the rigid villain Lord Burleigh drew some appreciative gasps and grunts. The directors' notes in the program asserted the 'universality' of the play, and I believe most of the audience readily "got the point" that opportunism and ethical government are never compatible. Too bad the crowd didn't include any of the newly elected Tea Party Congresspeople!

This translation, like most, is hard slogging. But it's as good as any other, better than most, giving me some justification for five-starring it. I doubt that many anglophones will ever approach Schiller unless they have an interest in the German language, German culture, or in the several grand operas that have been composed with librettos that butcher Schiller's play into Italian doggerel.