'Your Excellency's very kind proposal on the subject of the _Robbers_, and such other pieces as I may produce in future, is infinitely precious to me; the maturing of it well deserves a narrower investigation of your Excellency's theatre, its special mode of management, its actors, the _non plus ultra_ of its machinery; in a word, a full conception of it, such as I shall never get while my only scale of estimation is this Stuttgard theatre of ours, an establishment still in its minority. Unhappily my _economical_ circumstances render it impossible for me to travel much; though I could travel now with the greater happiness and confidence, as I have still some _pregnant ideas_ for the Mannheim theatre, which I could wish to have the honour of communicating to your Excellency. For the rest, I remain,' &c. From the second letter we learn that Schiller had engaged to _theatrilise_ his original edition of the _Robbers_, and still wished much to be connected in some shape with Mannheim. The third explains itself: 'Stuttgard, 6th October 1781. 'Here then at last returns the luckless prodigal, the remodelled _Robbers_! I am sorry that I have not kept the time, appointed by myself; but a transitory glance at the number and extent of the changes I have made, will, I trust, be sufficient to excuse me. Add to this, that a contagious epidemic was at work in our military Hospital, which, of course, interfered very often with my _otia poetica_. After finishing my work, I may assure you I could engage with less effort of mind, and certainly with far more contentment, to compose a new piece, than to undergo the labour I have just concluded. The task was complicated and tedious. Here I had to correct an error, which naturally was rooted in the very groundwork of the play; there perhaps to sacrifice a beauty to the limits of the stage, the humour of the pit, the stupidity of the gallery, or some such sorrowful convention; and I need not tell you, that as in nature, so on the stage, an idea, an emotion, can have only one suitable expression, one proper tone. A single alteration in a trait of character may give a new tendency to the whole personage, and, consequently, to his actions, and the mechanism of the piece which depends on them.