under duress, the lover is made to suspect his sweet-
heart's fidelity; and she, though innocent, is prevented
by scruples of conscience from undeceiving him. In a
jealous fury he gives her poison and then partakes of
it himself. The mischief is wrought not so much by
the wickedness of the great, albeit that comes in for a
share of the responsibility, as by the obstinate class
prejudice, amounting to a tragic superstition, of the
heroine and her father. Many of the details were taken
over by Schiller from his predecessors; but he so im-
proved upon them, so vitalized the familiar conflicts
and situations, and threw into his work such a power
of genuine pathos, caught from the pathos of real life,
that 'Cabal and Love' still stands out as a notable
document of the revolutionary epoch. The epoch pro-
duced many bourgeois tragedies, but Schiller's is much
the best of them all. Before we look at it more closely
it will be worth while to glance at the history of the
type in Germany.

The tragedy of middle-class life first took root, as is
well known, in England. It was in 1732 that Lillo
brought upon the Drury Lane stage his acted tale of
George Barnwell, the London 'prentice who is beguiled
by a harlot, robs his master, kills his uncle and ends his
career on the gallows, to the great grief of the doting
Maria, his master's daughter. The prologue tells how
the experiment was expected to strike the public of
that day:

The Tragic Muse sublime delights to show
Princes distrest and scenes of royal woe;
In awful pomp majestic to relate
The fall of nations or some hero's fate;

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