For, after all, the expedients just spoken of do not hit the mark exactly, in the sense of making the heroine responsible for her own fate. They bring in some new and exciting complications, which, however, do not affect the course of events at all. The catastrophe would have been just the same without them. This, nevertheless, is something that one does not see until we reach the end and look back. Before the two queens come together it seems as if the meeting might be a turning-point in Mary's fate; and this appearance is all that Schiller aimed at. In a letter to Goethe he spoke of this scene as 'impossible', and he was curious to know what success he had had with it. By this he meant, seemingly, that the futility of the scene, as affecting Mary's fate, was predetermined by the nature of the subject[121]. Mary was to die; it was impossible to make Elizabeth pardon her or treat her claims with Indulgence. And yet it was necessary to create the illusion of great possibilities hanging upon this interview of the two queens. This was a very pretty problem for a playwright, and the skill with which it is solved by Schiller is the most admirable feature of the whole piece. The scene is not great dramatic poetry, for there is too little of subtlety in it,--we are simply placed between light and darkness, as one critic says,--but it is the perfection of telling workmanship for the stage. The preparation for the scene begins back in the first act, where Mary declares to Mortimer that Leicester is the only living man who can effect her release. When she produces her picture and sends it to him for a token of her love, we begin to share her premonition that something may indeed be hoped for if her cause is taken up by the powerful favorite of Elizabeth. The lyric passages at the beginning of the third act fix attention altogether upon Mary's longing for mere physical freedom. There is no room for the suspicion that she wishes to use her liberty for any political purpose whatever. She appears as a noble sufferer whose whole being is absorbed in the delirious joy of breathing once more the free air of heaven. She surmises rightly that her unwonted liberty to walk in the park is due to Leicester, and she imagines that greater favors are in store for her: They mean to enlarge the confines of my prison, By little favors to lead up to greater, Until at last I see the face of him Whose hand shall set me free forevermore. And the hope seems reasonable. May not the queen of England--so one is inclined to speculate--be moved to pity? May she not be persuaded that policy is on the side of mercy? May she not at least postpone the execution of the death-sentence and gradually increase her prisoner's liberty?