"Du wagst es, meine Worte zu deuten?" Unreliable Evidence on Schiller's Stage

This article examines Schiller's use of documents on stage in 'Wallenstein' and 'Maria Stuart', arguing that his engagement with sources as a historian decisively influenced his treatment of writing in the dramas. The problems he encountered as a historian he translated into the theatre, where characters, and occasionally even the audience, are unsure of the written word’s validity. Sight is considered as an alternative to writing, but is also found to be unreliable. Finally, Schiller's notion of the sublime ('das Erhabene') is shown to have turned the impossibility of certain factual knowledge into a virtue.