Maria Stuart

In the organizer's words:

When Schiller sat down to write his Mary Stuart in 1799, more than 50 tragedies had already been written about the fate of the Scottish queen, who had been executed in 1587 on the orders of her aunt, Queen Elizabeth I of England.

What still makes his play interesting today is not so much the panorama of historical events in the century of the Reformation, which Schiller incorporates in numerous allusions. In a letter to Goethe, Schiller himself recommends leaving these parts to the "thoughtful and instructed reader" and deleting them for performances on stage, as there "the subject matter is sensual anyway".
What is more interesting is how this author of 1799 draws two complex, powerful female characters in a patriarchal world. With all his literary skill, Schiller zooms in very closely on his two main characters, on their fears and longings. He portrays the political rivals as simultaneously erotic competitors in a duel that ends with the death of one of them, but from which the survivor does not emerge victorious.