The Robbers
1781
The play that made Friedrich Schiller an overnight sensation and scandalized 18th-century Germany. Written when he was just 21, "The Robbers" erupts from the Sturm und Drang movement like a blast of raw fury against everything polite society held dear. Two brothers. One father. A whole corrupt world tearing itself apart. Karl, the elder son, abandons his aristocratic inheritance after witnessing the rot at the heart of German nobility. He flees to the Bohemian forests and gathers a band of outlaws around him, men who begin as righteous rebels against injustice but gradually become something darker. Meanwhile, Franz, the younger brother, stays behind and schemes his way into their father's good graces through lies and manipulation, all while seething with jealousy and ambition. The old Count Moor, deceived and dethroned, suffers the anguish of a father who cannot save either of his sons. What follows is a relentless exploration of what happens when the powerful are corrupt, when the just have no recourse, and when brother turns against brother. Schiller offers no easy answers. Karl is both righteously indignant and ruthlessly violent. Franz is outwardly virtuous and inwardly monstrous. The audience is left to sit in that moral discomfort, and it never lets go.
