1. Nam id facinus… ‘For I consider this deed memorable primarily on account of the newness of the crime and of the peril.’ The Roman historian Sallust writing of the conspiracy in 63 BC of L. Sergius Catilina.
2. Retz: See Introduction.
3. Robertson: See Introduction.
4. The Hamburg dramaturg: G. E. Lessing (1729-1781). The Hamburg Dramaturgy, a collection of reviews of plays performed on the German stage and containing discussions of general principles of drama, appeared between 1767 and 1769. Lessing argued that the dramatist should remain true to the essential features of characters as known from historical sources.
5. Robbers: Schiller’s first play, Die Räuber, 1781. The hero Karl Moor rebels against his father and expresses his opposition to society through the formation of a band of robbers.
6. This is the only play by Schiller which has a list of dramatis personae containing details of their character and appearance. Schiller no doubt intended this to be helpful to a theatre director and actors.
7. ANDREA DORIA: Doria was not in fact Doge, or a Duke, of Genoa, though he had considerable prestige and power. French dominance of Genoa ended in 1522 with the defeat of Francis I of France at the hands of imperial troops, with Doria, who had previously been loyal to the French, taking Genoa by land and sea. From an old noble Genoese family, Doria had distinguished himself in naval service. The government of the Repulic of Genoa was elected from and by members of the noble families.
8. GIANETTINO DORIA: Gianettino was not in fact the nephew, but the grandson of Andrea Doria.
9. FIESCO: Gian Lugi Fieschi, b. 1523. See Introduction.
10. old German style: Plain and simple in contrast to the courtly attire of the Dorias.
11. MULEY HASSAN: The figure of the Moor is entirely Schiller’s invention, though a similar name was to be found in his sources.
12. LEONORA: Leonore Cibo married Duke Fieschi in 1542, was dispossessed and banished from Genoa with her three-year-old son after the conspiracy.
13. Apollo… Antinous: The Apollo of Belvedere and the Belvedere Antinous (a copy of the statue of Hermes by Praxiteles) were admired in eighteenth-century Germany as models of male beauty and mentioned by Winckelmann in his Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, 1755).
14. Fiesco’s coming: Schiller may have originally intended Fiesco to enter at the end of this scene as some critics suggest; but the fact that it is Gianettino Doria and the Moor who do, may suggest that some scenes can be thought of as taking place simultaneously.
15. sequins: The sequin (zecchino) was a gold coin minted by the Republic of Venice from the thirteenth century onwards.
16. Father of the Fatherland: A title given to Andrea Doria.
17. silhouette: One of several anachronisms in the play; the silhouette was fashionable in the eighteenth century.
18. San Lorenzo: The Roman Catholic cathedral in the centre of Genoa, dedicated to Saint Lawrence.
19. Procurator: Retiring governors and doges were chosen to be procurators, who oversaw the finances and taxes of the town.
20. Signoria: The Signoria, the supreme body of government of Genoa, was composed of eight Governors and the Doge chosen by the Grand Council.
21. Lanterna: The main lighthouse of the city’s port and symbol of Genoa, which stands 117m above sea level, rebuilt in 1543. Gianettino’s yielding to bourgeois constraints on his lust is like the lighthouse of Genoa yielding to the sea shells thrown by small boys.
22. Cibo’s noble daughter: i.e. Leonore Fiesco.
23. peninsula: Schiller may have mistakenly believed that Genoa was a peninsula or be attributing this view to the Moor, who is not the most reliable of characters.
24. twice seventy ears: Hassan apparently has 69 men to assist him, but may be exaggerating.
25. what did that old Roman do: An allusion to the story of Virginius as told by the Roman historian Livy. Virginius stabbed his daughter to save her from being ravished by the Decemvir Appius Claudius. Lessing famously alluded to the story in the final act of his play Emilia Galotti (1772).
26. Election week: The Procurators and Signori were elected twice yearly, the Senators in December and the Doge in January.
27. Coromandel: The Coromandel Coast, the southeastern coastal region of India. The tropical wood of the Coromandel Coast provided the boards for ship construction.
28. Appius Claudius: See above: ‘what did that old Roman do.’
29. my chocolate: An anachronism; chocolate was introduced to Europe in the early seventeenth century.
30. The handkerchief is damp: Cf. Shakespeare Othello Act III, Scene 4.
31. coffee houses: An anachronism; coffee houses appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century.
32. Hanswurst: The coarse and cunning figure of German comedies, particularly popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Gottsched notoriously attempted to banish him from the German stage in the 1730s. By the time Schiller wrote Fiesco the figure was no longer in evidence. His characteristic mark was a bald head. Here, Fiesco is threatening to go from harmless foolery (the fool’s cap) to truly dangerous mischief. The threat and the theatrical vocabulary anticipate his dramatic revelation of his purposes in Act II, Scene 18. It is an instance of the metaphorics of masking and unmasking, pretense and ostensible revelation, of playacting that pervades Fiesco.
33. Via Balbi: One of the main streets of Genoa.
34. the boy Octavius: Julius Caesar’s nephew and adopted son, later called Augustus, whose accession marked the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Empire.
35. Florentine Venus: The Venus de’ Medici, a life-size Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. Garve thinks this is an anachronism, since it was first mentioned in 1584 (see Garve, 44). Schiller saw a copy of this statue in Mannheim.
36. Unrest once broke out among the citizens of the Animal Kingdom: Schiller’s play abounds with animal imagery. Fiesco’s address to the artisans, an Aesopian fable in which he easily convinces them of the pitfalls of democracy and the necessity of choosing a leader, is clearly inspired by Shakespeare’s use of the body politic metaphor, for example in Coriolanus (Act I, Scene 1), where Menenius calms the people with his Fable of the Belly.
37. criminal Rota: The highest appeals court for all judicial trials in the Catholic Church. The court was named Rota (after Ital. ruota, wheel) because the judges originally met in a round room to hear cases.
38. Nero: According to Suetonius, Nero set Rome alight, and while observing it sang a poem on the ruin of Troy in the tragic dress he used on the stage.
39. the Emperor Charles: The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was in Heilbronn at this time. Schiller has possibly used Bohemia to indicate that he was far away from Genoa.
40. black slate: Fiesco’s name creates a double entendre: Ital. lavagna = slate.
41. Levant: An area on the coast to the West of Genoa.
42. Spinola: A member of a prominent noble family of Genoa mentioned in Schiller’s sources; his role in Gianettino’s plans in Schiller’s play is unclear.
43. Darsena: Part of the inner harbour of Genoa.
44. Four galleys… Rome, Piacenza and France: Fiesco bought four galleys from the Pope and was in correspondence with the French ambassador in Rome. He also had the support of the Duke of Piacenza, the son of Pope Paolo III.
45. Loretto: The town of Loreto, a famous place of pilgrimage, inland from the Adriatic coast in the Marches region of central Italy.
46. beards of the circumcised: The circumcised are the Muslims, that is, the Turks, against whom Fiesco is supposedly fighting.
47. Endymion, chaste Luna: The shepherd prince Endymion, son of Zeus, was loved by the moon-goddess Selena (Luna) who descended nightly from heaven to consort with him.
48. Brutus: The reference may be to Marcus Junius Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar or to his ancestor, the founder of the Roman Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus.
49. Virginia and Appius Claudius: See above, Act I, ‘what did that old Roman do.’
50. Eternal Liar: The Devil; Jn 8, 44.
51. my little Bononi: The Moor is referring to Diana Bononi (see Act II, Scene 15); The count in question is Lomellino. He came to Diana in the night, as Fiesco had said he would (II, 15), and paid for his pleasure by losing the list he had made for Gianettino and that he was carrying on Gianettino’s instructions (II, 14). Bribed by the Moor, acting for Fiesco, Diana stole that list in the course of the night and gave it to the Moor, who now brings it to Fiesco.
52. the peace between France and Spain: The treaty of Crépy concluded by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France at Crépy-en-Laonnois on 18 September 1544 left mercenaries that Fiesco wished to employ idle.
53. Patroclus, too, had to die. Spoken by Achilles to Lycaon, King Priam’s son, whom he is about to slay. Patroclus was Achilles’ friend, whom Hector slew, prompting Achilles to return to battle and eventually to destroy Hector. Iliad, XXI, 107.
54. Sauli, Gentili, Vivaldi, and Vesodimari: Noble families of Genoa.
55. St. Thomas Gate: La Torre di San Tommaso, one of the tower gates on the wall of Genoa, dating from the fourteenth century.
56. fools on the banks of Acheron: Those sitting on the banks of the Acheron, one of the rivers leading to the Greek underworld, waiting to be ferried across by Charon.
57. Sebastiano Lescaro: A person so-named (or Lercaro) appears in Schiller’s sources as an accomplice of Gianettino Doria.
59. the Triple Crown: The Papal Crown or Tiara; Fiesco is referring to his ancestors Pope Innocence III (1443-54) and Pope Adrian V (1276).
60. Genoa lies at your feet: Verbatim from Robertson’s history.
61. Bellona: The ship on which Andrea Doria commanded several expeditions as imperial admiral.
62. I, too, have a wound: Cf. Portia in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 2. Leonore continues to liken herself to Caesar’s wife, whom she mentions explicitly beforehand.
63. Piazza Sarzano: One of the principle piazzas in the centre of Genoa.
64. The Grand and Minor Council of the Republic: Il Consiglio Grande and il Consiglio Minore. See above, Signoria. The Minor Council, consisting of 100 persons, was chosen by and from members of the Grand Council.
65. Ninth Circle of Hell: In Dante’s Inferno, the deepest part of Hell for the worst sinners.
66. Marseille: Verrina, Calcagno and Sacco were banished from Genoa and sailed for Marseille.
67. Atlantic: Schiller wrote: ‘Atlantenmeer,’ the Atlantic Sea. The figure turns on the unlikelihood of lifting Italy from the Atlantic Sea. Whether Schiller in fact believed that Italy lay in the Atlantic Ocean is an open question.
68. Jesuit Cathedral: The Chiesa del Gesù e dei Santi Ambrogio e Andrea, a former Jesuit church near the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa.