SOURCE: “Villainy and Guilt in Schiller's Wallenstein and Maria Stuart,” in Deutung und Bedeuntung: Studies in German and Comparative Literature Presented to Karl Werner Maurer, edited by Brigitte Schuldermann, Victor G. Doerksen, Robert J. Glendinning, and Evelyn Scherabon Firchow, Mouton and Co., 1973, pp. 100-17.

In the following essay, Wells discusses the problem of how we are to understand the guilt and villainy of the heroes and antagonists in Wallenstein and Maria Stuart, and notes that Schiller places less and less emphasis on villainy as a source of tragic catastrophe in his later works.

Schiller believed that the effect of tragedy is greatest when both the hero and his opponent have an arguable moral case.¹ This paper sets out to ascertain to what extent he succeeded in Wallenstein and Maria Stuart in fulfilling this requirement. Scholars still disagree concerning the apportionment of guilt between hero (or heroine) and antagonist...