is quite satisfied with the unheroic manner of his taking-off. The subordinate characters of the piece are hardly worth discussing at any length. The elder Moor is a mere nonentity,--a dummy in a rocking-chair would have done as well. Evidently Schiller was concerned to make the way as easy as possible for the clumsy villainy of Franz. A more vigorous father, he may have felt, would have necessitated a more subtle and plausible intrigue, which would have diverted attention from the main issue of the contrasted sons. The heroine Amalia has always been recognized, and was immediately recognized by Schiller himself, as the weakest character in the play. But posterity's criticism is hardly that formulated by him, namely, that we miss in Amalia the 'gentle, suffering, pining thing--the maiden.'[27] Of gentle, suffering, pining things there is no dearth in the German drama, and they were not in Schiller's line. Nearly all of his women are made of heroic stuff, and we honor him not the less for that. No one should blame Amalia for boxing the ears of Franz or drawing the sword upon him: it is unladylike conduct, but very good storm-and-stress realism. What one must deplore, however, is the general mental inadequacy that is paired with this spasmodic energy of scorn. Common sense is not the highest of dramatic qualities, but a modicum of it would have made Schiller's first heroine, to say the least, more interesting. She has no power of initiative and seems made only to be duped. Her inability to recognize her lover in the fourth act is a terrible strain upon one's patience. Indeed the whole love-affair between her and Karl is utterly un-human. What can one think, for example of a pair of ecstatically faithful lovers to whom it has evidently never occurred to write to each other? Here, if anywhere, one recalls Schiller's oft-quoted observation that he had attempted in 'The Robbers' to depict human beings before he had seen any.[28] Aside from his acquaintance with Franziska von Hohenheim, and an occasional nearer view of the coy maidens of the _école des demoiselles_, the female sex and the grand passion were for him only bookish mysteries.