The Robbers

About “The Robbers”

The Robbers is the first dramatic play by German playwright Friedrich Schiller. It was published in 1781 and premiered on 13 January 1782 in Mannheim. The play was inspired by Leisewitz's earlier work Julius of Taranto and was written during the German Sturm und Drang movement. Critics, including Peter Brooks, consider it influential in the development of European melodrama. The play received a strong reaction from its Mannheim audience and made Schiller famous almost immediately. Later, it served as the basis for Verdi's opera I masnadieri. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)