When Schiller left Württemberg for the Palatinate he was embarking on two of the most difficult years of his life. He found he was not welcome at the Mannheim theatre. Dalberg himself was absent. Schiller and Streicher were fearful that Württemberg soldiers were searching for them, and so they left Mannheim for Frankfurt and then Oggersheim, living there incognito. Schiller tried meanwhile to negotiate from a distance with Dalberg. He had worked hard on his second play, Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua (The Conspiracy of Fiesco in Genoa), in time for his flight from Stuttgart so that he would have something to offer Dalberg. The latter, however, at first turned it down, then suggested it might be performed, and then finally rejected it again, whereupon Schiller, hard-pressed financially, sold the manuscript to the publisher Schwan, who had first brought Die Räuber to Dalberg's attention. From late November 1782 to July 1783 Schiller had to fall back on the help of a Stuttgart friend, Henriette von Wolzogen, who had offered him refuge on her country estate at Bauerbach near Meiningen. There he lived in considerable isolation under the name of Dr Ritter, working on his third play Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) and planning his fourth, Don Carlos, while maintaining contact with Dalberg.

By July 1783 Dalberg was sufficiently convinced of Schiller's value to the theatre, and that there was no political embarassment to be feared from engaging a Württemberg fugitive, to offer him on Schiller's next visit to Mannheim a contract for one year as theatre playwright with the task of delivering three plays.