Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was one of the most influential of all
playwrights, the author of deeply moving dramas that explored human
fears, desires and ideals. Written at the age of twenty-one, The Robbers
was his first play. A passionate consideration of liberty, fraternity
and deep betrayal, it quickly established his fame throughout Germany
and wider Europe. Wallenstein, produced nineteen years later, is
regarded as Schiller's masterpiece: a deeply moving exploration of a
flawed general's struggle to bring the Thirty Years War to an end
against the will of his Emperor. Depicting the deep corruption caused by
constant fighting between Protestants and Catholics, it is at once a
meditation on the unbounded possible strength of humanity, and a tragic
recognition of what can happen when men allow themselves to be weak.