We must lay the proper weight upon this phase if we wish to comprehend the further development of the tragedy.  Arrived in Berlin he hurries at once to the Elector, and places at his feet three flags captured from the enemy.  The Elector asks him sternly whether he was in command at Fehrbellin, and when the Prince, in astonishment, replies in the affirmative, he orders his sword to be taken from him.  It had been reported to the Elector that the Prince was wounded, and before knowing definitely whether Homburg or Colonel Kottwitz-whom he believed to be also capable of the deed-had led the cavalry into battle before receiving the order, the Sovereign had declared that the commanding officer was to be summoned before a court-martial and condemned to death without respect of person.  Now he simply carries out the sentence.  The Prince does not comprehend in the slightest; he would find it just as natural if the trees should begin to speak and the stones to fly.  He must indeed obey, but as he gives up his sword, he declares bitterly that if his “Cousin Frederick” wishes to play the role of Brutus, he will not find in him a son who reveres him even under the executioner’s ax.  That is all the more natural, as he is conscious of what he felt and did on the battlefield in the moment when he received the news of the death of his present judge.  His friends try to calm him.  The Elector pays no attention to his passionate behavior, but with calm majesty reads the inscriptions on the Swedish flags, and the Prince is led off to prison.  The noblest style is maintained throughout this scene, which would have delighted the English of Shakespeare’s day.

In the third act we find the Prince somewhat changed, but not to any great extent.  After thinking over the matter in solitude he has finally grasped that the Elector could not allow the violation of his express command to pass without some sort of punishment.  But is it not sufficient punishment for him to have spent some days in prison, and does he not, moreover, deserve a reward because he entered it voluntarily and did not strangle the jailer?  Therefore he knows positively that the first person to visit him will announce that he is free, and when his friend Hohenzollern enters his cell, he exclaims “Well, then, I’m free of my imprisonment.”  But when the latter examines his position with very different eyes, when, by producing a series of threatening facts each one more ominous than the other, he gradually silences the Prince’s emotion, which demonstrates exactly what the Elector can do and what he cannot do, when he even tells him at last that the death warrant is about to be brought for signature to the Elector’s cabinet, the Prince finally loses his foolish feeling of security, and then of course he goes to the opposite extreme.  Nay, when the anxious Hohenzollern further informs him that the Swedish ambassador, who has arrived on the occasion of the peace negotiations, would ask the hand of the Princess of Orange for his master, but that the Princess seems to have made her choice already and thus is apparently thwarting the Elector’s plan, and when he asks the Prince if he is not in some way tangled up in all this, the latter cries out despairingly “I am lost,” and hurries off to the Electress to entreat her to intervene in his behalf.