Intrigue and Love

Intrigue and Love, sometimes Love and Intrigue, Love and Politics, or Luise Miller (German: Kabale und Liebe, pronounced [kaˈbaːlə ʔʊnt ˈliːbə] ^ⓘ; literally "Cabal and Love") is a five-act play written by the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller. His third play, it was first performed on 13 April 1784 at Schauspiel Frankfurt. The play shows how cabals and their intrigue destroy the love between Ferdinand von Walter, a nobleman's son, and Luise Miller, daughter of a middle-class musician.

Ferdinand is an army major and son of President von Walter, a high-ranking noble in a German duke's court, while Luise Miller is the daughter of a middle-class musician. The couple fall in love with each other, but both their fathers tell them to end their affair. The president instead wants to expand his own influence by marrying off his son Ferdinand to Lady Milford, the duke's mistress. However, Ferdinand rebels against his father's plan and tries to persuade Luise to elope with him. The president and his secretary Wurm (Ferdinand's rival) concoct an insidious plot, arresting Luise's parents for no reason. Luise declares, in a love letter to the Hofmarschall von Kalb, that only by death can she obtain her parents' release. Luise is also forced to swear an oath to God to state she wrote this letter (actually forced on her) of her own free will. This letter is leaked to Ferdinand and deliberately evokes jealousy and vengeful despair in him.

Luise tries to get released from her oath by suicide, dying before Ferdinand and restoring their love's innocence, but her father puts a stop to this by putting massive moral and religious pressure on the couple. This means she has only silence and the lie required by the oath to counter the charges against her. Luise is released from her secrecy by death, revealing the intrigue to Ferdinand and forgiving him, and Ferdinand reaches out his hand to his father at the moment of his death, which the President interprets as his son's forgiveness.

In a subplot, Lady Milford is shown in a position between the middle and upper classes, in love with Ferdinand. She is confronted with Luise's pure and simple love for Ferdinand. Despite Lady Milford's love for him, they are intent on marriage and withdrawing from the world of the court.

In 1784 Schiller published his theoretical work The Theatre Considered as a Moral Institution, whose central idea was to present tragedy as a means of theodicy, with theatre's mission being to show the restoration of divine justice onstage. This righteousness is visible in Intrigue and Love, since ultimately, its final court of appeal is not secular justice but God himself. Schiller saw education as another function of theatre, to bring the audience to catharsis to complete their education and so make the theatre a "moral institution". He saw its most important function, however, as to mediate between freedom and necessity, showing an idealised version of the individual's struggle with and victory over social, moral and religious constraints onstage.

Intrigue and Love belongs to the era of Sturm und Drang and is categorised as a bourgeois tragedy, a genre attributable to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Lessing's own Emilia Galotti is a key influence on it. Tragedy had previously been limited to the nobility, through the Ständeklausel or "estates clause", but Lessing's genre opened it to the world of the German middle classes. Intrigue and Love has as its dominant motif the conflict between the middle-classes and the nobility in middle-class pride and aristocratic snobbery, with universal humanity at its centre, charged with open political grievances. In it, individual interests, subjective feelings and the demand for freedom from a class-ridden society's constraints are powerful drivers for the characters and ultimately lead to disaster. Schiller was personally aware of the pain of love across the classes, through his love for Charlotte von Wolzogen (sister in law of Caroline von Wolzogen – Caroline was sister of Charlotte von Lengefeld, who would later become Schiller's wife).

Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg had just arrested Schiller and banned his works, in punishment for his unauthorised departure to attend the premiere of his play The Robbers. Thus, in September 1782 Schiller fled the Duke's sphere of influence, moved to Mannheim and started work on Intrigue and Love as a response to this arbitrary injustice. This can be seen in some of the play's themes:

Schiller makes use of an elevated style, pathos and hyperboles in order to describe the cynical and cold world of the court. The integrated French passages serve the uncovering of the court with its empty conversations and inclination for glamorous appearances. The President's speech is polished, calculated and imperatively arrogant. Secretary Wurm can be understood as a smaller copy of him. Kalb's speech can be seen as parallel to Mrs. Miller's speech. Kalb talks stupidly, unnatural and affected, often using the wrong expression.