Don Carlos (play)

Historical tragedy by Friedrich Schiller

Don Carlos (Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien, ) is a (historical) tragedy in five acts by Friedrich Schiller; it was written between 1783 and 1787 and first produced in Hamburg in 1787.

The title character is Carlos, Prince of Asturias and the play as a whole is loosely modeled on historical events in the 16th century under the reign of King Philip II of Spain. Don Carlos is a Prince of Spain, given to the Spanish Inquisition by his father (who also wants to marry Carlos' lover) due to his Libertarian creeds. Another great Romantic character is the Marquis of Posa dying for the liberty of the Dutch Republic as well as ruling Catholic Spain during the Reformation and the Counter Reformation.

In 1982, Lesley Sharpe argued that with Don Carlos, Schiller moved away from character based drama, and that the play's universe "casts a shadow of ambiguity" on its characters because of the complexity of the situation.

According to Schiller himself, the two main criticisms of Don Carlos were that it lacked unity and that the actions of the Marquis Posa were implausible. In Briefe über Don Carlos (1788), he himself claimed that two acts is too little time for a gradual development of Philip's trust in Posa. Schiller did defend Posa's actions with arguments from character. though according to The Guardian's Michael Billington, Tynan was actually writing about Schiller's play Mary Stuart (1800) after seeing a 1958 performance of that work at The Old Vic. Sharpe claimed that Schiller's defenses of Posa are unsuccessful because the play is not character based in the first place, though she also said that Schiller's overall discussion of the play ultimately does "less than justice [ ] to the play as a work of art". MacDonald's adaptation was first staged in Edinburgh in 1995. It is a verse translation in iambic pentameter; Mary Carole McCauley wrote, "MacDonald creates a sense of ease within his 10 syllable metric lines by using modern idioms, and what the translation lacks in a certain lush richness, it may make up for in accessibility."

Jeffrey L. High (CSULB) has found influences of Schiller's plays on the screenplays for several Hollywood films, and in particular suggests a close correspondence between Don Carlos and the screenplay for Star Wars (1977).