Manchester, 18 May 1859 
6 Thorncliffe Grove 

Dear Lassalle, 

You will have found it somewhat strange that I haven’t written 
to you for so long, the more so since I owe you an opinion on 
your Sickingen. But that is precisely what has kept me from 
writing to you for so long. With the current and universal 
barrenness of fiction I seldom have a chance to read such a work, 
and for years I have never had a chance to read one of this kind 
in such a way that the reading of it resulted in a detailed 
judgment, a precisely stated opinion. The rubbish isn’t worth the 
trouble. Even the few better English novels I read from time to 
time, e. g. those of Thackeray, have never been able to elicit this 
interest in me, despite their undeniable literary and cultural 
significance. But, having lain fallow for so long, my judgment has 
lost most of its edge and I need a good deal of time before I can 
permit myself to express an opinion. Your Sickingen, however, 
deserves better treatment than that sort of stuff and so I’ve taken 
my time. The first and second readings of what is in every sense, 
both as regards material and treatment, a German national drama, 
stirred my emotions to the extent that I was compelled to put it 
aside for a while, the more so as my taste has become so vitiated in 
these lean times that it has reduced me, I’m ashamed to say, to a 
state in which sometimes even stuff of inferior quality inevitably 
has some effect on me at the first reading. So in order to be 
wholly unbiassed, wholly ‘critical’, I put Sickingen away, i. e. 
allowed a few of my acquaintances to borrow it (there are still a few 
Germans here who are more or less knowledgeable about literature). 
Habent sua fata libelli—if they’re borrowed one rarely sets eyes on 
them again, and so I actually had to recover my Sickingen by force. I 
can tell you that, after the third and fourth readings, my impression 
has remained unaltered and, in the knowledge that your Sickingen 
can stand up to criticism, I shall now speak my mind. 
I know that I am not paying you any particular compliment 
when I state the fact that not one of Germany’s present official 
poets would be remotely capable of writing such a play. However, 
fact it is and one all too characteristic of our literature not to be 
voiced. Taking the formal aspect first, your skilful manipulation of 
the plot and the thoroughly dramatic nature of the piece came as 
a very pleasant surprise. Admittedly you have taken a good many 
liberties with the versification but this is more bothersome in the 
reading than it would be on the stage. I should very much like to 
have read the stage version; as the play stands here it could 
certainly not be performed; I have had with me here a young 
German poet (Carl Siebel), a distant relative who hails from my 
neighbourhood, and has had a good deal to do with the stage. He 
may be coming to Berlin as a reservist in the Prussian Guard, in 
which case I may take the liberty of giving him a note for you. He 
thought highly of your play but considered a performance quite 
impracticable by reason of the long speeches in which only one 
actor is occupied while the others may run through their entire 
miming routine 2 or 3 times so as not to stand there like dummies. 
The last two acts give adequate proof that you experience no 
difficulty in making your dialogue brisk and lively and since, with 
the exception of a few scenes (as happens in any play), the same 
thing would seem to be feasible in the first 3, I don’t doubt you 
have taken this circumstance into account in your stage version. 
The intellectual content must, of course, suffer as a result—but 
that’s inevitable, and the complete fusion of greater intellectual 
profundity, of a consciously historical content (both of which you 
ascribe, not without reason, to the German drama), with 
Shakespearean vivacity and wealth of action will probably not be 
achieved—and_ perhaps not even by the Germans—until some 
time in the future. Indeed, that, to my mind, is where the future 
of the drama lies. Your Sickingen is entirely on the right lines; the 
chief protagonists in the action are representative of certain classes 
and tendencies, hence of certain ideas of their time, and derive 
their motives not from the petty appetites of the individual but 
from the very historical current by which they are borne along. 
But there is one advance that might yet be made in that these 
motives should emerge more of themselves, in a live, active, as it 
were spontaneous manner, more through the development of the 
action, while on the other hand reasoned debate (in which, by the 
way, I rediscovered with pleasure your old eloquence before the 
Assizes and the popular meeting) becomes increasingly super- 
fluous. You yourself seem to recognise this ideal as a goal, since 

you draw a distinction between stage drama and literary drama; I 
admit that Sickingen could be turned into a stage drama along the 
lines indicated, difficult though this would be (for it is truly no 
mean accomplishment). The characterisation of the protagonists is 
linked with this. You quite rightly oppose the cheap individualisa- 
tion now prevalent, which amounts to nothing more than petty 
intellectual fireworks and is an essential characteristic of ineffectu- 
al imitative literature. At the same time it seems to me that a 
person is not characterised merely by what he does, but also by 
how he does it; and in this respect it would, I think, have done the 
intellectual content of the play no harm had clearer distinctions 
and stronger contrasts been drawn between individual characters. 
The characterisation of the ancients no longer suffices today, and 
it is here, I think, that you might to your own advantage have paid 
rather more attention to the importance of Shakespeare in the 
historical development of the drama. But these are minor points 
which I bring up only to show you that I have also concerned 
myself with the formal aspect of your play. 

Now, as regards the historical content, you have presented what 
to you were the two most important aspects of the movement of 
that period very vividly and with justifiable reference to subse- 
quent developments: the national aristocratic movement rep- 
resented by Sickingen, and the humanist-theoretical movement, 
with its more extensive ramifications in the theological and 
ecclesiastical field, the Reformation. The scenes I like best are 
those between Sickingen and the Emperor and between the 
Legate and the Archbishop of Trier (here, in the contrast 
between the narrow-minded German prince of the church and the 
worldly Legate with his aesthetic and classical culture and political 
and theoretical foresight, you have, too, pulled off a nice piece of 
individual characterisation which nevertheless stems directly from 
the representative character of the two protagonists); in the scene 
between Sickingen and Charles the characterisation is also very 
striking. However, in making Hutten tell his life-story, the content 
of which you rightly describe as essential, you have chosen a 
desperate means of introducing that content into the play. Also of 
great importance is the conversation in Act V between Balthasar 
and Franz during which the former remonstrates with his master 
about the genuinely revolutionary policy he should have followed. It 
is here that the real tragedy becomes apparent; and, precisely 
because of this significance, it seems to me that it should have been 
rather more strongly indicated as early as Act III, in which there 
are several opportunities for this. But again I digress. 

The attitude of the towns and the princes at that time is likewise 
portrayed more than once with great clarity, thereby pretty well 
exhausting what might be called the official elements of the 
movement as it then was. But something upon which I should say 
you had failed to lay due emphasis are the non-official, plebeian 
and peasant elements, with their concomitant theoretical represen- 
tation. In its own way the peasant movement was just as national, 
just as hostile to the princes, as that of the aristocracy, and the 
colossal dimensions of the struggle in which it succumbed contrast 
most significantly with the levity with which the aristocracy, leaving 
Sickingen in the lurch, gave itself up to its historical calling of 
sycophancy. Even allowing for your concept of the drama which, 
as you will have seen, is rather too abstract, not realistic enough, in 
my opinion, I should say that the peasant movement deserved 
closer attention; certainly, the peasant scene with Joss Fritz is true 
to type and the individuality of this ‘agitator’ is very accurately 
portrayed but, relative to the aristocratic movement, it does not 
represent with sufficient force what was then already a surging 
torrent of peasant agitation. In accordance with my view of the 
drama, which consists in not allowing the ideal to oust the real, or 
Schiller to oust Shakespeare, the introduction of society’s plebei- 
an section, so wonderfully colourful at the time, would have 
provided material of a quite different kind with which to animate 
the play, an incomparable backdrop for the national aristocratic 
movement going on down-stage, which would itself thus appear 
in its true light for the first time. What bizarre portraits does this 
period of dissolving feudal ties not bring forth! Vagabond beggar 
kings, hungry mercenaries and adventurers of all kinds—a 
Falstaffian backdrop which, in a historical play in this sense, must 
needs be even more effective than in Shakespeare! But apart from 
that, I should say more particularly that neglect of the peasant 
movement is what has led you to give an incorrect idea, or so it 
seems to me, of one aspect of the national aristocratic movement 
also, while at the same time allowing the truly tragic element in 
Sickingen’s fate to escape you. In my view, it never occurred to the 
bulk of the nobility then subject directly to the emperor to form an 
alliance with the peasants; their dependence on the income 
deriving from oppression of the peasants did not admit of this. An 
alliance with the towns would have been rather more feasible, but 
this did not come about either, or only in isolated instances. The 
national aristocratic revolution could, however, only have been 
effected by means of an alliance with the towns and the peasants, 
particularly the latter; and to my mind the tragic element lies 
precisely in the fact that this essential condition, alliance with the 
peasants, was impossible; that the policy of the aristocracy was 
therefore necessarily petty; that at the very moment when the 
aristocracy sought to take its place at the head of the national 
movement, the bulk of the nation, the peasants, protested against 
its leadership and hence ensured its downfall. To what extent 
there is any historical foundation for your assumption that 
Sickingen really did have some contact with the peasants, I am not 
able to judge, nor is it in any way relevant. So far as I can recall, 
by the way, whenever Hutten’s writings are addressed to the 
peasants, they skate over the ticklish question of the aristocracy 
and seek to focus the peasants’ wrath primarily on the clergy. But 
in no way do I dispute your right to portray Sickingen and Hutten 
as though it had been their intention to emancipate the peasants. 
However, this immediately presented you with the tragic con- 
tradiction whereby these two found themselves placed between the 
aristocracy on the one hand, who definitely did not want this, and 
the peasants on the other. Here, in my view, lay the tragic clash 
between the historically necessary postulate and the impossibility 
of its execution in practice. By discarding this element you reduce 
the tragic conflict to the fact that Sickingen does not join battle 
straight away with Emperor and Empire, but with one prince 
only (although here too your tact rightly leads you to introduce 
the peasants), while his downfall is made to ensue from nothing 
more than the indifference and pusillanimity of the aristocracy. 
This would, however, have been quite differently motivated had 
you laid more stress at an earlier stage on the mounting peasant 
movement and the mood.of the aristocracy, inevitably grown more 
conservative as a result of the earlier Bundschuh and Poor Konrad 
movements. All this, incidentally, represents only one way in 
which the peasant and plebeian movement might be brought into 
the play; one could think of at least ten others which would be just 
as good, if not better. 

As you can see, I am judging your work by a very high 
standard, indeed the highest there is, from both the aesthetic and 
the historical point of view, and the fact that I have to do so in 
order to raise an objection here and there will provide you with 
the best proof of my appreciation. Between ourselves criticism has, 
of course, for years been necessarily as outspoken as possible in 
the interests of the party itself; but this aside, it is always a great 
pleasure to me and all of us when we are given fresh proof that 
our party, irrespective of the field in which it makes an 
appearance, invariably does so with distinction. And that is what 
you, too, have done on this occasion. 

In other respects it would seem that world events are about to 
take a truly delectable course. It would be difficult to imagine a 
better basis for a thorough-going German revolution than that 
provided by a Franco-Russian-alliance. The water has to be right 
up to our necks before we Germans are gripped en masse by the 
furor teutonicus; and this time we would seem to be in sufficient 
danger of drowning. Tant mieux. In such a crisis all existing 
powers must necessarily be ruined and all the parties crumble one 
after another, from the Kreuz-Zeitung to Gottfried Kinkel, and 
from Count Rechberg to ‘Hecker, Struve, Blenker, Zitz and 
Blum’; in such a struggle the moment must necessarily come 
when only the most ruthless and resolute party is in a position to 
save the nation and, at the same time, the conditions be given 
which alone make it possible to jettison completely all the old 
trumpery— internal dissension on the one hand and, on the other, 
the Polish and Italian appendages which are the legacy of Austria. 
We must not cede an inch of Prussian Poland and what...