Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Stuttgart Reclam 1994
Description
"Set in fifteenth century Switzerland this play is based on a legend characteristic of the Austrian domination period. Schiller exhibits enthusiasm for freedom and natural life in this historic play. The story unfolds on Lake Lucerne with the fateful enmity of the tyrant Gessler, Governor of the Swiss cantons, and William Tell, an obscure huntsman, trying to row to safety a peasant who is pursued by the Governor's horsemen."
User reviews
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Seldom does a play include fewer scenes or lines for the title character, yet Wilhelm Tell is in few scenes and has relatively little to say in this great play, the last completed, by Friedrich Schiller. Yes, there is the famous scene where Tell refuses to bow to the "hat", the symbol of repressive
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Habsburg power, and is in turn forced to shoot the apple off his son's head. And there is the ultimate act which makes him a patriotic hero when he kills the Governor Gessler, the imperial representative hated by Tell's fellow countrymen and women. Beyond that the scenes in this play demonstrate the importance of those countrymen and their closeness to the land and traditions of their forefathers. This is a powerful romantic drama about the desire for freedom, but it is also an Arcadian idyll that presents the best of nature. It seems almost Rousseauian in the opening scenes that are set in a seeming "state of nature". Eden like as the country may be it is also beset by tyranny from the dreaded imperial Hapsburg empire. We see the attraction this life has for Ulrich von Rudenz, the nephew of Baron von Attinghausen. While Attinghausen is a patriot his nephew is attracted to the other side and is brought back to support his countrymen only through the intervention of his love for young Berta. The importance of Berta and Lady Gertrud in their influence over the men closest to them is worth noting. Schiller's play, the culmination of his dramatic art, is a joy to read. While the large cast and number of different scenic locations make this a difficult work to stage I could not help thinking that we are overdue for a cinematic traversal of this tremendous literary resource. Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
Like many other medieval folk-heroes, the early-14th-century Swiss freedom-fighter William Tell turns out to have left little or no solid evidence to prove that he ever existed — the earliest written mentions of his name are about a century after his supposed lifetime, while many of the stories
Schiller half-jokingly claimed that he had started writing his play in 1803 to put an end to the persistent rumours that he was working on a play about William Tell — in practice the impetus seems to have come mostly from his wife Charlotte, who had a long-standing interest in Swiss culture, and from Goethe. Schiller himself never visited Switzerland, but one of the first things he did when he started work on the play was to order a large-scale map of the Vierwaldstättersee. The stage directions show clear traces of this geographical interest: we are told exactly which mountains should be visible in the background of each scene. For the details of the Tell legend, Schiller mostly followed Aegidius Tschudi's Chronicle, written in the late 16th century. The first performance was in Weimar in March 1804, and the play was published in October of that year.
With his historian's hat on, Schiller introduces a couple of interesting nuances into the story. One aspect of this is a careful attempt to make a distinction between legitimate rebellion against a (local) ruler who oversteps his constitutional authority and wrongful attempts to usurp the divinely appointed authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. Throughout the play, the rebels make it clear that they are only seeking to restore their constitutional rights, and in the penultimate scene Tell turns away the man who has come to him for help after assassinating the Emperor Albrecht. Obviously, that is meant to be relevant to the situation in Germany at the time of writing, and also to the post-1789/post-1776 world more generally. Another nuance is the way he keeps Tell apart from the political leaders of the rebellion: he is a man of action whose personal bravery is an inspiration for others, a decent ordinary man pushed beyond the limits of toleration by an arrogant ruler, but he doesn't make speeches or take part in the Oath on the Rütli, contrary to most Swiss versions of the story.
The play is Schiller's only full-length drama not framed as a tragedy: in the title it is simply "Schauspiel" (a play). Where The bride of Messina only had five named characters, it has about forty. As well as the usual serious debates between political leaders, there are a number of big, set-piece crowd scenes with lots of different things going on at once, much as in Wallenstein's Camp. Especially interesting is the scene (III:iii) where Gessler's men-at-arms, Friesshardt and Leuthold, arrest Tell and are set upon by an angry crowd — Schiller showing us how fragile authority is when it is only based on force — and the gratuitously complex scene in the hollow way in Act IV, when Tell is setting up to assassinate Gessler and all sorts of passers-by (including a complete wedding party) threaten to get in the way.
Of the Schiller plays I've read, this is the one that I can most easily imagine working well on a stage, although it would be an expensive and complex one to produce, and of course it comes with its own historical baggage because of the way it has been adopted as a kind of nationalist ritual by the Swiss. (Hitler also loved it at one point, but is said to have lost interest somewhat when he realised people were identifying him with Gessler...)
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told about him have suspiciously close parallels to much older mythological sources. Nonetheless, he has long been an important symbol of Swiss national identity, and he achieved pan-European status as an icon of liberty around the time of the French Revolution. Schiller half-jokingly claimed that he had started writing his play in 1803 to put an end to the persistent rumours that he was working on a play about William Tell — in practice the impetus seems to have come mostly from his wife Charlotte, who had a long-standing interest in Swiss culture, and from Goethe. Schiller himself never visited Switzerland, but one of the first things he did when he started work on the play was to order a large-scale map of the Vierwaldstättersee. The stage directions show clear traces of this geographical interest: we are told exactly which mountains should be visible in the background of each scene. For the details of the Tell legend, Schiller mostly followed Aegidius Tschudi's Chronicle, written in the late 16th century. The first performance was in Weimar in March 1804, and the play was published in October of that year.
With his historian's hat on, Schiller introduces a couple of interesting nuances into the story. One aspect of this is a careful attempt to make a distinction between legitimate rebellion against a (local) ruler who oversteps his constitutional authority and wrongful attempts to usurp the divinely appointed authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. Throughout the play, the rebels make it clear that they are only seeking to restore their constitutional rights, and in the penultimate scene Tell turns away the man who has come to him for help after assassinating the Emperor Albrecht. Obviously, that is meant to be relevant to the situation in Germany at the time of writing, and also to the post-1789/post-1776 world more generally. Another nuance is the way he keeps Tell apart from the political leaders of the rebellion: he is a man of action whose personal bravery is an inspiration for others, a decent ordinary man pushed beyond the limits of toleration by an arrogant ruler, but he doesn't make speeches or take part in the Oath on the Rütli, contrary to most Swiss versions of the story.
The play is Schiller's only full-length drama not framed as a tragedy: in the title it is simply "Schauspiel" (a play). Where The bride of Messina only had five named characters, it has about forty. As well as the usual serious debates between political leaders, there are a number of big, set-piece crowd scenes with lots of different things going on at once, much as in Wallenstein's Camp. Especially interesting is the scene (III:iii) where Gessler's men-at-arms, Friesshardt and Leuthold, arrest Tell and are set upon by an angry crowd — Schiller showing us how fragile authority is when it is only based on force — and the gratuitously complex scene in the hollow way in Act IV, when Tell is setting up to assassinate Gessler and all sorts of passers-by (including a complete wedding party) threaten to get in the way.
Of the Schiller plays I've read, this is the one that I can most easily imagine working well on a stage, although it would be an expensive and complex one to produce, and of course it comes with its own historical baggage because of the way it has been adopted as a kind of nationalist ritual by the Swiss. (Hitler also loved it at one point, but is said to have lost interest somewhat when he realised people were identifying him with Gessler...)
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LibraryThing member muddyboy
Yes, this was the classic story of the hero that shoots an apple off the head of his son. Yes. it inspired an opera of the same name from which we music lovers get the William Tell Overture. But the actual play has a lot more pledging, vowing, organizing, traveling and swearing to fight against the
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enemies of freedom than actually doing anything to accomplish those goals. So with that in mind I think I would just go ahead and see the opera and in that way you could enjoy the musical and visual stimulation. Show Less
LibraryThing member JVioland
One of the prominent German figures, Schiller as a playwright promoted democracy. Here, the heroic Swiss huntsman pursues his independent streak while the governor of his canton sees his figure as a threat to his power. You already know the story, but the play delves more into the struggle than
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just the apple on the head of Tell's son. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1804 (original German)
Physical description
126 p.; 15 cm
ISBN
3150000122 / 9783150000120