Katana VentraIP

Don Carlos (play)

Don Carlos (German: Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien,[nb 1][1] German pronunciation: [dɔn ˈkaʁlɔs ɪnˈfant fɔn ˈʃpaːni̯ən] ) is a (historical) tragedy in five acts by Friedrich Schiller; it was written between 1783 and 1787 and first produced in Hamburg in 1787.

Don Carlos

Friedrich von Schiller

Carlos, Prince of Asturias
Philip II of Spain
Duke of Alba
Elisabeth of Valois
Princess of Eboli
Marquis of Posa

German

Drama

Spanish Court at Aranjuez

Plot[edit]

The title character is Carlos, Prince of Asturias and the play as a whole is loosely modeled on historical events in the 16th century under the reign of King Philip II of Spain. Don Carlos is a Prince of Spain, given to the Spanish Inquisition by his father (who also wants to marry Carlos' lover) due to his Libertarian creeds. Another great Romantic character is the Marquis of Posa dying for the liberty of the Dutch Republic as well as ruling Catholic Spain during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

Ambiguity in depiction[edit]

In 1982, Lesley Sharpe argued that with Don Carlos, Schiller moved away from character-based drama, and that the play's universe "casts a shadow of ambiguity" on its characters because of the complexity of the situation.[2]

Reception[edit]

According to Schiller himself, the two main criticisms of Don Carlos were that it lacked unity and that the actions of the Marquis Posa were implausible. In Briefe über Don Carlos (1788[3]), he himself claimed that two acts is too little time for a gradual development of Philip's trust in Posa. Schiller did defend Posa's actions with arguments from character.[2]


Rudiger Gorner claimed in Standpoint that Kenneth Tynan once criticized Don Carlos as "a Spanish tragedy composed of themes borrowed from Hamlet and Phèdre",[4] though according to The Guardian's Michael Billington, Tynan was actually writing about Schiller's play Mary Stuart (1800) after seeing a 1958 performance of that work at The Old Vic.[5] Sharpe claimed that Schiller's defenses of Posa are unsuccessful because the play is not character-based in the first place, though she also said that Schiller's overall discussion of the play ultimately does "less than justice [...] to the play as a work of art".[2] Gorner argued that the "sheer musicality of Schiller's verse" is shown by such works as Don Carlos, as well as The Robbers (1781) and Intrigue and Love (1784).[4]

1844 opera by (libretto Leopold Tarentini, London)

Michael Costa

1847 opera by (libretto Giorgio Giacchetti, Milan)

Pasquale Bona

1850 opera by (libretto Francesco Maria Piave, Venice) (this version was entitled "Elisabetta di Valois")

Antonio Buzzolla

1862 opera by (libretto Leopold Tarentini, Naples)

Vincenzo Moscuzza

1867 & 1884 by Giuseppe Verdi (libretto Joseph Méry & Camille du Locle, Paris, Italian translation by Achille de Lauzières and Angelo Zanardini, Milan; German translation by Julius Kapp and Kurt Soldan)

Don Carlos and Don Carlo

Several operas have been composed on the basis of the play:

(PDF). London: W. Miller. 1798.

Don Carlos, Prince Royal of Spain: An Historical Drama from the German of Frederick Schiller

Boylan, R. D. (2007). Don Carlos. DoDo Press.  978-1-4065-3895-3. Reprint of an 1872 translation.

ISBN

Sy-Quia, Hilary Collier; (2008). Don Carlos and Mary Stuart. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-954074-7. Reprint of a 1996 translation (out-of-print).

Oswald, Peter

(2005). Don Carlos. Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-857-8. Poulton's adaptation was directed by Michael Grandage in a well-reviewed staging.[6][7]

Poulton, Mike

(2006). Schiller: Volume Two: Don Carlos, Mary Stuart. Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-84002-619-1. MacDonald's adaptation was first staged in Edinburgh in 1995. It is a verse translation in iambic pentameter; Mary Carole McCauley wrote, "MacDonald creates a sense of ease within his 10-syllable metric lines by using modern idioms, and what the translation lacks in a certain lush richness, it may make up for in accessibility."[8]

MacDonald, Robert David

Influence on English-language literature and film[edit]

Jeffrey L. High (CSULB) has found influences of Schiller's plays on the screenplays for several Hollywood films, and in particular suggests a close correspondence between Don Carlos and the screenplay for Star Wars (1977).[9]

Cultural depictions of Philip II of Spain

Stevens, Robert (12 November 2004). . World Socialist Web Site. Review of a 2004 production in Sheffield, England of Mike Poulton's adaptation from the German, along with an extended discussion of the play's history.

"Schiller's Don Carlos: the 'light and warmth' of a timeless play"

Archived 5 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine

University of Oxford production of Don Carlos at the Oxford Playhouse, 18–21 Feb. 2009

Media related to Don Carlos (Friedrich Schiller) at Wikimedia Commons