SOURCE: “The Stage Considered as a Moral Institution,” in Friedrich Schiller: An Anthology for our Time, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1959, pp. 263-83.

[In the following essay, which was first delivered as a lecture in 1784, Schiller asserts that theater serves a crucial moral function in society, and sets out in detail its sphere of influence and range of effects on human life, calling it “a school of practical wisdom, a guide through social life, an infallible key to the most secret passages of the soul.”]

The stage owes its origin to the irresistible attraction of things new and extraordinary, to man's desire for passionate experience, as Sulzer has observed. Exhausted by the higher efforts of the mind, wearied by the monotonous and frequently depressing duties of his profession, satiated with sensuality, man must have felt an emptiness in his nature that was at odds with his desire for constant activity. Human nature, incapable either of remaining forever in an animal state or of devoting itself exclusively to the more subtle work of the intellect, demanded a middle condition which would unite these two contradictory extremes; a condition that would ease the hard tension between them and produce a gentle harmony, thereby facilitating the mutual transition from one to the other. This function is performed by the aesthetic sense or the appreciation of beauty.

Since it must be the first aim of the wise legislator, when faced with two effects, to choose the higher, he will not be content merely to have disarmed the impulses of his people. He will also endeavor, if possible, to use these tendencies as instruments for higher plans and convert them into sources of happiness. To this end he selected the stage as the best means of opening an endless sphere to the spirit thristing for action, of feeding all spiritual powers without straining any, and of combining the cultivation of the mind and the emotions with the noblest entertainment.

The man who first made the statement that religion is the strongest pillar of the state; that without religion law itself would be deprived of its force, has, perhaps, unknowingly supplied the stage with its noblest defense. The very inadequacy and unreliability of political laws that make religion indispensable to the state also determine the moral influence of the stage. This man meant to imply that, while laws revolve around negative duties, religion extends her demands to positive acts. Laws merely impede actions that might cause the disintegration of society. Religion prescribes actions that tend to consolidate the structure of society. Laws control only the external manifestations of the will; actions alone are subject to them. Religion extends her jurisdiction to the remotest corners of the heart and traces thought to its deepest source. Laws are smooth and flexible, as changeable as mood and passion. The bonds of religion are stern and eternal.

Even if we assume, as indeed we cannot, that religion possesses this great power over every human heart, will it, or can it bring to perfection all of human culture? On the whole, religion (I am separating here the political aspect from the divine) acts mainly on the sensual part of the people. It probably has an infallible effect only by way of the senses. It loses its power if we take this away. And how does the stage achieve its effect? Religion ceases to be anything for most men if we remove its images, its problems, if we destroy its pictures of heaven and hell. And yet they are only fantasy pictures, riddles without a solution, terrifying phantoms and distant allurements.

What strength religion and law can gain when they are allied with the stage, where reality can be viewed as living presence, where vice and virtue, happiness and misery, folly and wisdom pass in review before man in thousands of true and concrete pictures, where Providence solves her riddles, ties her knots before our eyes; where the human heart, on the rack of passion, confesses its subtlest stirrings; where every mask is dropped, every painted cheek is faded, and truth, like Rhadamanthus, sits incorruptibly in judgment.

The jurisdiction of the stage begins where the domain of secular law comes to an end. When justice is blinded by gold and revels in the wages of vice; when the crimes of the mighty scorn her impotence and the dread of human power has tied the hands of legal authority, then the stage takes up the sword and the scales and drags vice before a dreadful tribunal. The entire realm of fantasy and history, the past and the future are at its beck and call. Bold criminals, who have long since turned to dust, are summoned to appear before us by the all-powerful voice of poetry and to reenact their shameful lives for the instruction of a horrified posterity. Like impotent shadow figures in a concave mirror, they unfold before our eyes the terrors of their own century, and we heap imprecations upon their memory in an ecstasy of horror. Even when morality is no longer taught, even when there is no longer any faith in religion, even when law has ceased to exist, we will still shudder at the sight of Medea as she staggers down the palace steps, the murder of her children having taken place. Humanity will tremble with wholesome horror and each man will secretly congratulate himself on his own good conscience when he sees that frightful sleepwalker, Lady Macbeth, washing her hands and hears her challenge all the perfumes of Arabia to obliterate the loathsome smell of murder. As surely as a visual representation has a more powerful effect than a dead text or a cold narrative, so the stage exercises a more profound and lasting influence than morality and law.

Here, however, the stage merely assists human justice. A still wider field is open to it. A thousand vices that are tolerated by justice are punished in the theater. A thousand virtues ignored by human law are recommended on the stage. Here it serves as a companion to wisdom and religion. It draws its teachings and examples from this pure source and clothes stern duty in a charming and alluring garb. What glorious emotions, resolutions, passions well up in our souls, and with what godlike ideals it challenges our ambitions! When gracious Augustus, magnanimous like his gods, holds out his hand to the traitor Cinna who already imagines he sees the death sentence on his lips, and says: “Let us be friends, Cinna,”—who among us, at this moment, would not gladly clasp the hand of his mortal enemy in order to emulate the divine Roman? When Franz von Sickingen, on his way to punish a prince and to fight for alien rights, happens to look back and see the smoke rising from the castle occupied by his helpless wife and children, continues on his journey to keep his word—then, how great man rises before me, how small and contemptible the dread power of insuperable destiny!

Vice, as reflected in the mirror of the stage, is made as hideous as virtue is made desirable. When the helpless, childish Lear, out in a stormy night, knocks in vain on his daughters' door; when, his white hair streaming in the wind, he describes the unnatural conduct of his daughter Regan to the raging elements; when at last he pours out his unbearable suffering in the words: “I gave you everything!”: how abominable ingratitude seems to us, how solemnly we promise respect and filial love!

But the sphere of influence of the stage extends still farther. The theater continues to work for our development even in those areas where religion and law will not stoop to follow human sentiments. The happiness of society is as much disturbed by folly as by crime and vice. Experience as old as the world teaches us that in the web of human events, the heaviest weights are often suspended by the most delicate threads; and in tracing actions to their source, we have to smile ten times before revolting in horror once. My list of criminals grows shorter every day of my life, but my list of fools becomes more complete and longer. If the moral guilt of one class of people stems from one and the same source; if the appalling extremes of vice that have stigmatized it are merely altered forms, higher degrees of a quality which in the end provokes only smiles and sympathy, why should not nature have adopted the same course in the case of the other class? I know of only one method of guarding man against depravity, and that is to guard his heart against weaknesses.

We can expect the stage to serve this function to a considerable degree. It is the stage that holds the mirror up to the great class of fools and shames the manifold forms of their folly with wholesome ridicule. The effect it produced before by means of terror and pity, it achieves here (and perhaps more speedily and infallibly) by wit and satire. If we were to judge comedy and tragedy on the basis of their effectiveness, experience would probably decide in favor of the former. Loathing may torture a man's conscience, but he suffers more keenly when his pride is wounded by derision and contempt. Our cowardice causes us to recoil from what is frightening, but this very cowardice exposes us to the sting of satire. Law and conscience often protect us from crime and vice; the ludicrous demands a peculiarly fine perception which we exercise nowhere more than in front of the stage. We may allow a friend to attack our morals and our emotions, but we find it hard to forgive him a single laugh at our expense. Our transgressions may tolerate a mentor and judge, our bad habits hardly a witness. The stage alone is permitted to ridicule our weaknesses because it spares our sensibilities and does not care to know who is the guilty fool. Without blushing we can see our own mask reflected in its mirror and are secretly grateful for the gentle rebuke.

But the stage's broad scope by no means comes to an end here. The stage, more than any other public institution, is a school of practical wisdom, a guide through social life, an infallible key to the most secret passages of the human soul. Self-love and a callous conscience, admittedly, often neutralize its effect. A thousand vices brazenly persist despite its castigations. A thousand good feelings meet with no response from the cold heart of the spectator. I myself am of the opinion that perhaps Molière's Harpagon has never reformed a single usurer, that the suicide of Beverley has saved very few of his brothers from the abominable addiction to gambling, that Karl Moor's unfortunate brigands' story will not make the highroads safer for travelers. But even if we set limits to this effect of the stage, even if we are so unjust as to discount it altogether, is not what remains of its influence still vast enough? Even if the stage neither augments nor diminishes the total number of vices, has it not acquainted us with them? We have to live with these profligates and fools. We must either avoid them or put up with them, undermine their influence or succumb to it. But now they no longer surprise us. We are prepared for their assaults. The stage has revealed to us the secret of finding them out and rendering them harmless. It is the stage that has lifted the mask from the hypocrite's face and exposed the net in which cunning and cabal have entangled us. It has dragged deception and falsehood from their labyrinthine dens and made them show their horrid countenances to the light of day. The dying Sarah may not frighten a single debauchee. All the pictures of the dreadful fate in store for the seducer may not quench his fire. The artful actress herself may be contriving to prevent her artistry from having this effect. Nevertheless we can be thankful that his snares have been revealed to unsuspecting innocence, and that it has been taught by the stage to mistrust his promises and tremble at his vows of love.

The stage not only makes us aware of men and human character, but also of the grim power of destiny, and teaches us the great art of bearing it. In the web of life chance and design play an equal role. The latter we can direct, to the former we must submit blindly. We have already gained much if an inevitable fate does not find us wholly unprepared, if our courage and our prudence have already been exercised in similar circumstances and if our hearts have been steeled for the blow. The stage presents us with many varied scenes of human woe. It involves us artificially in the troubles of strangers and rewards us for the momentary pain with pleasurable tears and a magnificent increase of courage and experience. It escorts us with the forsaken Ariadne through the echoing passages of Naxos. It descends with us to Ugolino's tower of starvation. In its company we ascend the steps of the frightful scaffold and witness the solemn hour of death. What we have experienced in our souls only as a vague presentiment, we hear on the stage loudly and incontrovertibly corroborated by nature taken by surprise. In the Tower dungeon the queen withdraws her favor from the deceived favorite. In the face of death, the treacherous sophistry of the frightened Moor deserts him. Eternity releases a dead man in order to reveal secrets which cannot be known to the living. The confident villain loses his last ghastly refuge because even the tomb can speak.

But the stage not only familiarizes us with the fate of mankind, it also teaches us to be more just toward the unfortunate and to judge him more leniently; for it is only when we know the full measure of his suffering that we are permitted to pronounce sentence upon him. No crime is more dishonorable than that of a thief, but, even as we condemn him, can we refrain from shedding a tear of compassion for Eduard Ruhberg when we have shared with him the dreadful agony that drives him to commit the deed? Suicide is usually regarded as a crime; but when Mariana, overwhelmed by the threats of an irate father, by her unhappy love and by the terrifying prospect of the convent walls, drains the poisoned cup, who would be the first to condemn this victim of an infamous maxim? Humanity and tolerance are becoming the ruling principles of our age. Their rays have penetrated to our courts of justice and even to the hearts of our princes. How great a share in this divine work belongs to our theaters? Is it not the theater that makes man known to man and discloses the secret mechanism that controls his conduct?

One noteworthy class of men has more cause to be grateful to the stage than any other. It is only here that the great of the world hear what they rarely if ever hear elsewhere: the truth. Here they see what they scarcely ever see: man.

While man's moral development has greatly benefited, and in a variety of ways, from the higher order of drama, his intellectual enlightenment is no less indebted to it. It is in this higher realm that the great mind, the warm-hearted patriot uses it to the best advantage.

Surveying the human race as a whole, comparing nations with nations, centuries with centuries, he sees how the majority of people are chained like slaves to prejudice and opinion which forever deter them from finding happiness, and that the pure rays of truth illumine only a few isolated minds which had perhaps expended their entire lives in order to purchase their little gain. How can a wise legislator enable his people to share in these benefits?

The stage is the common channel in which from the thinking, better part of the people the light of wisdom flows down, diffusing from there in milder rays through the entire state. More correct ideas, purified principles and feelings flow from thence through all the vein of all the people. The mists of barbarism, of gloomy superstition disappear. Night yields to victorious light.

Among the many magnificent fruits of the better stage, I would like to single out two. How universal has the tolerance of religious sects become in recent years! Even before Nathan the Jew and Saladin the Saracen shamed us and preached the divine doctrine that submission to the will of God is not dependent upon our misconceptions of Him; even before Joseph II battled with the dreadful hydra of pious hatred, the stage was engaged in planting the seeds of humanity and gentleness in our hearts. The shocking pictures of heathenish, priestly fanaticism taught us to avoid religious hatred. In this frightful mirror Christianity cleansed itself of its stains.

Errors in education might be combated in the stage with equal success. We are still awaiting the play that will deal with this significant subject. Because of its effects, no subject is of more importance to the state than this, and yet no institution is so at the mercy of the illusions and caprices of the citizenry as education. The stage alone could pass in review the unfortunate victims of careless education in a series of moving, upsetting pictures. Our fathers might learn to abandon their foolish maxims; our mothers might learn to love more wisely. The best-hearted teachers are led astray by false ideas. It is still worse when they pride themselves on a certain method and systematically ruin the tender young plant in philanthropinums and hothouses.

Likewise the chiefs and guardians of the state—if they knew how to do it—could use the stage to correct and enlighten popular opinion of government and the governing class. The legislating power might speak to those subject to it in foreign symbols, might defend its actions before they had time to utter a complaint, might silence their doubts without appearing to do so. Even industry and inventiveness might draw inspiration from the stage if the poets thought it worth while to be patriotic and if princes would condescend to hear them.

I cannot possibly overlook the great influence that a good permanent theater would exercise on the spirit of a nation. By national spirit I mean opinions and tendencies which are common to the people of one nation and differ from those of other nationalities. Only the stage can produce this accord to so great a degree because it takes all human knowledge as its province, exhausts all situations of life, and sheds light into every corner of the human heart; because it unites all sorts and conditions of people and commands the most popular road to the heart and understanding.

If a single characteristic predominated in all of our plays; if all of our poets were in accord and were to form a firm alliance to work for this end; if their work were governed by strict selection; if they were to devote their paintbrushes to national subjects; in a word, if we were to see the establishment of a national theater: then we would become a nation. What linked the Greek states so firmly together? What drew the people so irresistibly to the stage? It was the patriotic subjects of their plays. It was the Greek spirit, the great and consuming interest in the republic and in a better humanity that pervaded them.

The stage has another merit which I especially delight in mentioning, because the stage now seems to have won its case against its persecutors. The influence upon morals and enlightenment that we have so far claimed for it has been doubted. But even its enemies have admitted that it is to be preferred to all other luxuries and forms of public entertainment. Its services in this respect, however, are more important than is usually conceded.

Human nature cannot bear the constant, unrelenting grind of business. Sensual delight dies with gratification. Man, surfeited with animal pleasures, weary of long exertion, tormented by an unceasing desire for activity, thirsts for better and finer amusement. If he does not find it, he will plunge headlong into debauchery which hastens his ruin and destroys the peace of society. Bacchanalian carousings, the ruinous games of chance, a thousand revelries hatched by idleness become inevitable unless the legislator knows how to guide these tendencies in his people. The businessman is in danger of becoming a miserable hypochondriac in return for a life he has generously devoted to the state. The scholar is likely to sink into dull pedantry, the common man becomes a brute.

The stage is an institution where pleasure is combined with instruction, rest with exertion, amusement with culture. Not a single faculty is strained to the detriment of another, no pleasure is enjoyed at the expense of the whole. When grief gnaws at our hearts, when melancholy poisons our solitary hours, when the world and business have become repulsive to us, when our souls are oppressed by a thousand burdens and the drudgery of our profession threatens to deaden our sensibilities, the stage welcomes us to her bosom. In the dreams of this artificial world, we can forget the real one. We find ourselves once more. Our feeling reawakens. Wholesome passions stir our slumbering nature and the blood begins to circulate in our veins with renewed vigor. Here the unhappy man dispels his sorrow in weeping over that of another. The happy become more sober and the overconfident more cautious. The sensitive weakling learns to stand up to the tough demands of manhood. The unfeeling brute experiences human feeling for the first time.

And finally, what a triumph for you, oh nature—nature so often trampled underfoot, who has just as often risen again—when men from all corners of the earth and every walk of life, having shed their shackles of affectation and fashion, torn away from the insistent pressure of fate, united by the all-embracing bond of brotherly sympathy, resolved in one human race again, oblivious of themselves and of the world, come closer to their divine origin. Each enjoys the raptures of all, which are reflected on him from a hundred eyes in heightened beauty and intensity, and in his breast there is room for only one sensation: the awareness that he is a human being.