During his two years' sojourn in Dresden Schiller was mainly occupied with the editing of a magazine, the _Thalia_, and with the completion of _Don Carlos_, the first of his plays in blank verse. Hitherto he had written with his eye on the stage, and in the savage spirit of the Storm and Stress. Now, however, the higher ambition of the dramatic poet began to assert itself. His views of life were changing, and his nature craved a freer and nobler self-expression than was possible in the "three hours' traffic of the stage." He had begun _Don Carlos_ at Bauerbach, intending to make it a love-tragedy in a royal household and incidentally to scourge the Spanish inquisition. Little by little, however, the centre of his interest shifted from the lovesick Carlos to the quixotic dreamer Posa, and the result was that the love-tragedy gradually grew into a tragedy of political idealism with Posa for its hero. As finally completed in the summer of 1787, _Don Carlos_ had twice the length of an ordinary stage-play and, withal, a certain lack of artistic unity. But its sonorous verse, its fine phrasing of large ideas, and its noble dignity of style settled forever the question of Schiller's power as a dramatic poet. The third act especially is instinct with the best idealism of the eighteenth century. After _Don Carlos_ Schiller wrote no more plays for some nine years, being occupied in the interval chiefly with history and philosophy. His dramatic work had interested him more especially in the sixteenth century. At Dresden he began to read history with great avidity and found it very appetizing. What he most cared for, evidently, was not the annals of warfare or the growth of institutions, but the psychology of the great man. He was an ardent lover of freedom, both political and intellectual, and took keen delight in tracing its progress. On the other hand, play-writing had its disadvantages. Thus far it had brought him more of notoriety than of solid fame, and his income was so small that he was dependent on Körner's generosity. To escape from this irksome position he decided to try his fortune in Thuringia. Going over to Weimar, in the summer of 1787, he was well received by Herder and Wieland--Goethe was just then in Italy--and presently he settled down to write a history of the Dutch Rebellion. His plan looked forward to six volumes, but only one was ever written. It was published in 1788 under the title of _The Defection of the Netherlands_ and led to its author's appointment as unsalaried professor of history at the University of Jena. He began to lecture in the spring of 1789.