Mortimer is on the whole the most interesting of the subordinate characters. He was obviously suggested by Babington, but the coarse fanatic of history was too repulsive for a proper champion of Schiller's idealized heroine. So the name was changed, and we get an imaginary youth who has been intoxicated by the glamour of the Catholic forms as he has seen them at Rome. The description of Mortimer's conversion,--his sudden resolve to abjure the dismal, art-hating religion of the incorporeal word, and to go over to the communion of the joyous,--is one of the telling declamatory passages of the play. With the sentiment expressed Schiller can have had, in the bottom of his heart, but little sympathy; but his artistic nature had begun to respond to the Romantic propaganda. For the rest, Mortimer is not a very convincing creation. One is a little surprised that a youth who purports to be so very soft-hearted, so very susceptible to the religion of the beautiful, should undertake so jauntily the rôle of murderer. As for his amorous passion, that is credible enough if, in accordance with Schiller's direction, we think of Queen Mary as twenty-five years old. But in that case one's imagination has difficulty with that perspective of years which have accumulated the ancient burden of guilt. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 119: In a letter to Iffland, written June 22, 1800, Schiller directed that his Queen Elizabeth be represented as a woman thirty years old, Mary as twenty-five.] [Footnote 120: The thought is expressed thus by Harnack, "Schiller", page 324: "Der eigentliche tragische Konflikt, der den Helden vor grosze Entscheidungen stellt und endlich in sein Verhängnis hinabreiszt, _fehlt_ in 'Maria Stuart'. Die gefangene Königin befindet sich im Konflikt mit ihrer unwürdigen äuszeren Lage, aber nicht mit sich selbst."] [Footnote 121: Compare, however, Fielitz, "Studien zu Schillers Dramen", page 49.] [Footnote 122: Even Macaulay, who was certainly not the man to be captivated by anything in the scene save its poetry, thought the "Fotheringay scenes in the fifth act ... equal to anything dramatic that had been produced in Europe since Shakspere."--Trevelyan, "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay", II, 182.] CHAPTER XVIII The Maid of Orleans Die Schönheit ist für ein glückliches Geschlecht; ein unglückliches musz man erhaben zu rühren suchen.--_Letter of July 26, 1800_.