In its earliest phase Schiller's plan looked toward a telling tragi-comedy for the stage, with a plenty of rough humor and caustic satire at the expense of 'high-born fools and scoundrels'. As he worked, the possibilities of his theme developed. An abstract enthusiasm for the rights of man was kindled by honest love of the common people, and by the lingering smart of a personal wrong, into a holy zeal of vengeance. President Walter was painted in colors which were taken largely from the political history and the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the Württemberg court. As this court had its angel of light in soiled garments, Lady Milford was fitted out with the benevolent qualities of Franziska von Hohenheim; and as the portrait grew In firmness its author fell in love with it, like the young Goethe with his Adelheid. When he came to depict the jealousy of Ferdinand, he had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with the green-eyed monster. Thus the play was extracted from the book of life, as Schiller had been able to read it, and that accounts for its vitality. But in his details he is nowhere less original. Not only in the general conception of important characters, but in particular scenes, situations, motives, contrasts and forms of expression, we can see the influence of the literary tradition which he inherited. To show the exact nature and the full extent of this indebtedness would be a tedious undertaking, which would require pages of quotation from works whose chief interest now is that they served as quarry for Schiller. Three or four illustrations will suffice. Our play begins with a scene which at once recalls what was originally the opening scene of Wagner's 'Infanticide'. In both there is a blustering father,--Lessing's Odoardo reduced to the bourgeois sphere,--discoursing with his silly wife upon the dangers that threaten their daughter from keeping aristocratic company. In both the domestic thunderer expresses himself in rough, strong language, and is only made the more furious by his wife's efforts to allay his fears. In Wagner's next scene Magister Humbrecht comes to woo Evchen, just as Schiller's Wurm comes to woo Louise, and we hear that the girl's head has been turned by reading novels. Just so Louise, whose father can scarcely find words to express his detestation of the young baron's infernal, belletristic poison. When Wurm arrives at Miller's and asks for Louise, he is informed that she has just gone to church. 'Glad of that, glad of that', he replies, 'I shall have in her a pious Christian wife'. Here is a reminiscence of the scene in which Lessing's Count Appiani exclaims, on hearing that Emilia has just been at church: 'That is right; I shall have in you a pious wife'. The devout heroine was a hardly less hackneyed figure in the dramatic literature of the time than the blustering father of whom Goethe complained.[53] In Schiller's Louise we have the religious