It may indeed be fairly objected that, in view of what is to come later, the Carlos of the first act is a little too soft even for the sentimental age. We are required to have faith in his heroic capacity for enterprises of great pith and moment. But after his first dialogue with Posa it is as difficult for the reader or spectator to trust him as it is for King Philip. His lacrimose raptures over so simple a thing as a youthful friendship; his abject confession of despair and dependence; his long-drawn-out revelation of a sick heart, and his morbid craving for sympathy in a passion which he himself feels to be abominable,--all this suggests a cankered soul of which there can be little hope. Hamlet greets the returning Horatio with the simple words: Sir, my good friend. I'll change that name with you. The corresponding passage in Schiller runs: Can it be? Is't true? Is't possible? 'Tis really thou. I press thee to my heart and feel the beat Of thine omnipotent against my own. Now all is well again.--In this embrace The sickness of my soul is cured. I lie Upon my Roderick's neck. One does not see how such pitiful weakness is all at once to be converted into manly strength by the mere arrival of a friend; wherefore that fine saying of Carlos which closes the first act, Arm in arm with thee, I hurl defiance at my century, sounds a trifle bombastic. So again at his first meeting with Elizabeth, Carlos is distressingly mawkish. She pictures him, in pitying indignation, as succeeding to the throne, undoing his father's work and at last marrying herself. Then he exclaims in sudden horror: Accursed son! Yes, it is over. Now 'Tis over. Now I see it all so clearly, and much more of the same purport. But how strange that he should have brooded for eight moons over his passion without ever having considered how it might appear to the object of it! His talk here suggests a mental inadequacy which one is hardly prepared to see change all of a sudden into heroic resolution.