About the work
Friedrich Schiller's „Don Carlos, Infante of Spain" was written in 1783-87 and premiered in Hamburg in 1787. The five-act „dramatic poem" — Schiller's longest drama — interweaves family tragedy with political freedom-drama at the Spanish court of Philip II. Verdi's opera „Don Carlos" (1867) is based on this play.
Plot
Spain, c. 1568. The young Don Carlos, son of King Philip II, loves his stepmother Elisabeth of Valois — who was originally promised to him but, for political reasons, married his father. Carlos confides in his friend the Marqués de Posa. Posa has larger plans: he wants to make the Infante the liberator of the Netherlands suffering under Spanish rule. Posa ingratiates himself with the king and becomes Carlos's confidant. Princess Eboli, a court lady, secretly loves Carlos; when he ascribes her love letters to Elisabeth, she intrigues out of jealousy with the king and the Grand Inquisitor. King Philip is given Carlos's and Posa's letters. Posa, to save Carlos, takes the guilt upon himself and is shot in Carlos's prison cell on Philip's orders. Carlos vows to continue Posa's work — to support the Dutch uprising. At a secret farewell from Elisabeth, Carlos is surprised by the king and the Grand Inquisitor. Philip hands his own son over to the Inquisition: „Cardinal, I have done my part. Do yours."
Cultural significance
Don Carlos is Schiller's most ambitious drama and his profession of political freedom. Posa's famous plea „Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit!" („Give us freedom of thought!") is one of the most-quoted lines in German literature. The protagonist was the model for Romantic hero-loser types of the nineteenth century. Verdi's opera differs in many details — especially in the ending, where in Verdi Carlos is carried off by a monk's apparition. Peter Stein's production (1989, Berlin Schaubühne) is a classic.