William Tell
Der alte Urstand der Natur kehrt wieder,
Wo Mensch dem Menschen gegenübersteht;
Zum letzten Mittel, wenn kein andres mehr
Verfangen will, ist ihm das Schwert gegeben.
_'William Tell'_.
Schiller's last play, like his first, was inspired by the Goddess of
Freedom, but what a difference between the wild-eyed bacchante of the
earlier day and the decorous muse of 'William Tell'! There the frenzied
revolt of a young idealist against chimerical wrongs of the social
order; here a handful of farmers, rising sanely in the might of union
and appealing to the old order against intolerable oppression. There the
tragedy of an individual madman; here the triumph of a laudable
patriotism.
'Tell' is a fresh illustration of its author's versatility, for nothing
more different from its immediate predecessors could easily be imagined.
It is also the most thoroughly human among his plays, and the only one
that does not end upon a tragic note. Finally it is the most popular,
though the most loosely articulated,--a fact that shows how little the
permanent interest and classical prestige of a dramatic production
depend upon its satisfying the ideal demands of critical theory.
It was noted casually in the preceding chapter that rumor began to be
occupied with speculations about Schiller's 'Tell' before he had
seriously thought of writing a play on the subject. In the summer of
1797 Goethe had revisited Switzerland and brought back with him the idea
of a narrative poem about William Tell. He discussed the matter with
Schiller, incidentally telling him much about the Forest Cantons.
Possibly he may have suggested, in the presence of a mutual friend, that
the theme had dramatic possibilities,--which would account sufficiently
for the aforesaid rumor. Finding his supposed plan the subject of
curious gossip, Schiller was led to look more closely into the subject.
He read Tschudi's 'Chronicon' and found it Homeric and Herodotean in its
simple straightforwardness. The legend fascinated him and he began to
see in it the material of a popular drama that should take the
theatrical world by storm. He was eager for such a triumph, and the more
so because 'The Bride of Messina', as staged by Iffland in Berlin, had
met only with an equivocal success: many were pleased, but there was a
plenty of adverse comment. Iffland was now the director of the Royal
Prussian Theater, and thus in a position to serve the interests of
Schiller, whom he devotedly admired. It was therefore worth while for a
man who had chosen to be a dramatic poet, and whose income depended upon
his popularity, to forego further experimentation with unfamiliar
art-forms and set about supplying that which would interest average
human nature.
Work began in the spring of 1803 and proceeded very steadily during the
ensuing months. The letters of the period express unbounded confidence
in the nascent play. It was to be a 'powerful thing which should shake
the theaters of Germany', and a 'genuine folk-play for the entire
public'. Honest Tschudi continued to be the great source, but other
writers were read and excerpted. Schiller took infinite pains with his
local color, noting down from the books all sorts of minutiae that might
aid his imagination. Take for illustration the following jottings from
Fäsi and Schleuchzer, two of his subsidiary authorities:
There are mountains that consist entirely of ice--_Firnen_; they
shine like glass and get their isolated conical shape from the
process of melting in the summer.--Clouds form in the
mountain-gorges and attach themselves to the rocks; herefrom
prognostication of the weather.--View from on high when one stands
above the clouds. The landscape seems to lie before one like a great
lake, from which islands stand forth.--In the summer, cascades
everywhere in the mountains.--Chamois graze in flocks, the picket
(_Vorgeis_) piping in case of danger.--Weather signs: Swallows fly
low, aquatic birds dive, sheep graze eagerly, dogs paw up the earth,
fish leap from the water. 'The gray governor of the valley
(_Thalvogt_) is coming'; when this or that mountain puts on a cap,
then drop the scythe and take the rake.--Peculiarity of a certain
lake that it draws to itself persons sleeping on its bank.
A large amount of such conscientious note-taking, aided by a marvelous
power of visualization, and supplemented also by what Goethe could tell
from personal observation, resulted in a remarkably vivid and accurate
local color. A letter of Schiller's written in December, 1803, tells of
a purpose to go to Switzerland before he should print his play. The plan
was not carried out, but if it had been there would have been little to
change; for 'William Tell' reads throughout like the work of one
thoroughly familiar with Swiss character, topography and folk-lore.
There is not a slip of any importance in the entire play. Of course the
conspiring farmers are idealized and their enemies are diabolized; but
all this is so in the saga. Schiller had to deal with a patriotic myth,
and he made no attempt to go behind the romantic veil of tradition; his
purpose being simply to present the poetic essence of the saga as handed
down by Tschudi. And he succeeded admirably. So far as the Swiss people
are concerned, he well deserves the memorial they have placed in his
honor upon the Mythenstein, near the legendary birth-place of their
national independence.
Toward the close of the year 1803 came an interruption, Weimar society
being thrown into a flutter by the visit of Madame de Staël, now on her
famous tour of inspection. It was of course fitting that Schiller, as a
local lion, should take his part in entertaining her; but the voluble
lady was an _Erscheinung_ new to his experience, and with his imperfect
command of colloquial French he was hard put to it to bear up against
the torrent of her conversation. He measured her very correctly at their
first meeting, when they fell into an argument on the merits of the
French drama. 'For what we call poetry', he wrote to Goethe, 'she has no
sense'; nevertheless he gave her full credit for her great qualities, in
especial for a good sense amounting to genius. And she in turn was
pleased with the serious German who argued with her in lame French, not
as one caring to hold his own in a conversational fencing-match, but as
one wishing to convince her of important truths in which he really
believed. It must have been an interesting occasion in a small way, this
first rencontre between Schiller and the lady who was afterwards to
speak of him so nobly and withal so justly in her celebrated book about
Germany. Madame de Staël's sojourn in Weimar lasted some ten weeks, her
portentous gift of speech becoming gradually more and more irksome to
Schiller and Goethe. The social gayeties occasioned by her presence
caused some retardation in the progress of 'William Tell', but on
February 18, 1804, it was completed, and two days later the final
installment was despatched to the waiting Iffland. How eagerly he was
waiting may be inferred from the language used by him after perusal of
the first act, which had been sent him a month earlier:
I have read, devoured, bent my knee; and my heart, my tears, my
rushing blood, have paid ecstatic homage to your spirit, to your
heart. Oh more! Soon, soon, more! Pages, scraps--whatever you can
send! I tender hand and heart to your genius. What a work! What
wealth, force, poetic beauty and irresistible power! God keep
you! Amen.
These high-keyed expectations were not disappointed. The first
performances of 'Tell', in the spring of 1804, were received with
prodigious enthusiasm, and ever since then it has been a prime favorite
of the German stage. It has no characters that can be called great, as
Wallenstein is great, no complexity of plot, no thrilling surprises; and
as for its psychology, a fairy tale could hardly be more simple. That
which has endeared it to the Germans is its picturesqueness and its
passionate zeal for freedom.
The theme of 'Tell' is the successful revolt of the Forest Cantons
against their governors. Three actions that have no necessary connection
with one another--the conspiracy of the cantons, the private feud of
Tell and Gessler, and the love-affair of Rudenz and Bertha--are carried
along together in such a way that all find their natural conclusion in
the final celebration of victory. This feature of the play has often
been criticized as impairing its unity; and certainly, from the
conventional point of view the objection has some force. 'Tell' is a
play without a preponderating hero. We may say that it has three heroes,
or rather five, since among the conspirators interest is pretty evenly
distributed between Stauffacher, Melchthal and Walther Fürst. But in
reality the hero is the Swiss people considered as a unit. Stauffacher
and the other conspirators interest us as representatives of a suffering
population. To portray the suffering and the termination of it through
sturdy self-help is the central purpose of the play. This it is which
gives it an essential unity, notwithstanding the three separate actions.
The theme is an inspiring one, and the modern world owes Schiller an
immense debt for presenting it in austere simplicity, unincumbered with
any dubious or disturbing philosophy. One cannot help loving so good a
lover of freedom; for the sentiment does honor to human nature,
notwithstanding some latter-day indications that it is going out of
fashion. It may not be the highest and holiest of enthusiasms for the
individual,--we give our best homage rather to self-surrender,--but if
any political emotion is worthy of a lasting reverence, it is that one
which attaches men to the motherland and leads them to stand together
against an alien oppressor. Sometimes it may be well, in God's long
providence, that a weak or a backward people should be absorbed or ruled
by a stronger power; but the sentiment which leads it to fight against
absorption or subjugation is none the less admirable. And when the
foreign domination is reckless and inhuman, standing for nothing but
vindictive malice and the greed of empire; and when the victims of the
misrule are strong in the simple virtues of the poor, we have the case
in its most appealing aspect.
This is the case that is presented in 'William Tell',--the most notable
drama in modern literature upon the theme of national resistance to
foreign tyranny. Its influence in Germany as a classic of political
freedom--during the Napoleonic era and later, when it was a question of
setting a limit to domestic absolutism--has been immense. And there is
really no danger of its losing its potency; for it appeals to a
sentiment which, while it may wax and wane with the movements of the
_Zeitgeist_, is now wrought into the heart-fiber of all the occidental
nations, and not least of all--contrary to an opinion widely accepted in
this country--of the Germans.
The uppermost thought of Schiller, then, was to win sympathy for freedom
and the rights of man; yet in 'William Tell' we have nothing to do with
any species of cloud-born idealism. The bearers of the message are not
fantastic dreamers, like Posa; they do not call themselves ambassadors
of all mankind, or citizens of the centuries to come. They are a plain,
practical folk, whose wishes do not fly far afield and who attempt
nothing that they cannot carry through. They are not in the least given
to fighting for the sake of fighting; on the contrary, the thought of
bloodshed is abhorrent to them. All they wish is to be allowed to pursue
their peaceful, partriarchal industries, as their fathers did before
them, under laws of their own devising. But things have come to such a
pass that their lives, their property and the honor of their women are
not safe from the malice, cupidity and lust of their rulers. And even
under such conditions the thought of a radical revolution does not occur
to them: they do not rise against the overlordship of the emperor, but
only against the brutal tyranny of the governors who disgrace him. Their
final triumph opens no other vista of change than that, in the future,
another emperor will send them better governors. Thus the upshot of the
whole revolution is simply a provisional demonstration of Stauffacher's
proposition that 'tyrannical power has a limit'.
This seems, at first, like a rather lame vindication of the sacred
majesty of freedom, especially when we reflect that the whole question
at issue is not a question of independence at all, but merely whether
the cantons will give up their _Reichsunmittelbarkeit_,--and with it
certain old customs to which they are attached,--in order to become
vassals of the House of Hapsburg. Were they willing to do that,--so it
is said by Rösselmann at the Rütli meeting,--all their troubles would
end forthwith; the cruel governors would deal kindly with them, would
'fondle' them. If this is so,--and other passages confirm the saying of
the priest Rösselmann,--then it is patent that the conduct of Gessler is
not the aimless brutality of a brute, but a policy deliberately pursued
for the purpose of terrorizing the cantons into an acceptance of
Hapsburg overlordship. And this in turn throws its own light on the
character of Gessler. Only a blockhead would try to gain such an end in
such a way. This, however, is only another way of saying what has often
been pointed out, that Gessler is simply a fairy-tale tyrant, copied
very closely from Tschudi; a sort of typical bad man, whom the saga,
after inventing him out of nothing, has made as black as possible in
order the more clearly and strongly to justify the revolt. And yet, in
the play, Gessler never becomes entirely ridiculous; he does not seem a
caricature of humanity,--perhaps because history teems with governors
and viceroys who have exercised their little brief authority very much
in his spirit, even if they have failed to commit his particular
atrocities.
These last considerations are meant to light up the fact that the effect
of the play does not, after all, depend mainly upon its vindication of
any political doctrine. We are nowhere in the region of abstractions.
The sympathy that one feels for the insurgents is in no sort political,
but purely human; it is of the same kind that one might feel for a
community of Hindu ryots in their efforts to rid themselves of a
man-eating tiger. Only in the play this sympathy is very much
intensified by the picturesque lovableness of the afflicted population.
It is here, in the picture of land and people, that Schiller's mature
art, which had brought him to a sovereign mastery of stage effects, may
be said to win its greatest triumph. One may describe his method, fairly
if somewhat paradoxically, as that of romantic realism. What a
masterpiece of exposition we have in the opening scenes! The beautiful
lake, at precisely its most fascinating point; the fisher-boy, all
careless of the great world, singing his pretty song of the smiling but
treacherous water; the herdsman and the hunter, announcing themselves
above on the rocks in characteristic songs, and then conversing for a
moment about the weather and their employments; the sudden arrival of
Baumgarten with his tale of wrong and vengeance; the storm on the lake,
and the hurried dialogue between the cautious fisherman and the
stout-hearted Tell, who 'does what he cannot help doing'; the building
of the hateful Zwing-Uri; the death of the slater and Bertha's curse;
the grief and fury of young Melchthal, and, finally, the solemn covenant
for life and death of the three leaders,--what variety and animation are
here, and what a wealth of realistic detail! And how perfectly
convincing it all is,--not a false note anywhere, nor a note that is
held too long! Well might Goethe characterize this exposition as 'a
complete piece in itself and withal an excellent one'. The first act of
'Tell' is one of the best first acts in all dramatic literature.
It is quite true that the exposition seems to promise somewhat more than
is afterwards fulfilled. One who is familiar with Schiller's usual
method naturally expects that something will come of the rescue of
Baumgarten; but nothing does come of it except to throw a side-light
upon the general situation and to bring out the character of Tell.
Again, one expects to see more of Dame Gertrud, the 'wise daughter of
noble Iberg'. One looks for her to reappear under circumstances that
shall give her something important to do and shall put her sagacity and
courage to the test. It is not the habit of Schiller to introduce such
weighty personages at the beginning of a play and then drop them. To
understand him in this instance one has but to remember that his hero is
always the Swiss people. The Stauffachers, as a shining example of
thrift and virtue; their dignified and influential position in the
community; their fine new house that has roused the venomous jealousy of
Gessler,--all this is part of the situation, and it is the situation
that counts. And how superbly the picture is completed by the meeting at
the Rütli! Such an old-fashioned parliament, held of necessity under the
stars and in the darkness of night, but with all possible regard to the
ancient forms, was not only a novel and a picturesque idea in itself,
but it was the best device which could possibly be imagined for bringing
sharply into view the whole character of the Swiss, in its winsome,
patriarchal simplicity.
Here again, however, we have a radical departure from Schiller's usual
method; for what is actually done at this seemingly important meeting
is, after all, in itself rather insignificant, and without direct
influence upon the subsequent course of events. The conspirators decide
to do nothing immediately, but to wait for a favorable opportunity
during the Christmas season, some seven or eight weeks ahead. This
determination obviously involves a halt in the dramatic action, so far
as the conspiracy is concerned. In dealing with this difficulty,
Schiller departs from his ordinary method of concentration and allows
himself to be guided by the epical character of Tschudi's narrative. The
result is that we have, somewhat as in Goethe's 'Götz von Berlichingen',
a succession of dramatic pictures, rather than a drama bound together by
a severe logic. In the third and fourth acts we hear no more of the
conspirators,--aside from some expressions of regret for the delay,--and
attention is concentrated upon Tell, who has hitherto taken no part
except to rescue Baumgarten and to refuse his coöperation at the Rütli,
on the ground that he is not the man for a confab, and that 'the strong
man is mightiest alone'.
The character of Tell, as depicted by Schiller, has been the subject of
much criticism, the strictures relating more particularly to his
shooting the apple from his son's head, and then to his subsequent
assassination of Gessler. There is an oft-quoted opinion of Bismarck,
which may be quoted again, since it expresses so well a thought that has
no doubt occurred, some time or other, to most readers and spectators of
the play. Busch makes Bismarck say, under date of October 25,
1870:
It would have been more natural and more noble, according to my
ideas, if, instead of shooting at the boy, whom the best of archers
might hit instead of the apple, he had killed the governor on the
spot. That would have been righteous wrath at a cruel demand. I do
not like his hiding and lurking; that does not befit a hero--not
even a bushwhacker.
Undoubtedly such conduct as is here suggested for Tell would be more
'heroic', in accordance with, our conventional ideas of heroism. And the
thing would have been dramatically feasible. We can imagine Tell, for
example, as making sham preparations to shoot at the apple and then
suddenly sending his arrow through the heart of his enemy; and we can
also imagine a further management of the scene such that Tell should
escape with his boy. Thus everything would be accomplished on the public
square at Altorf, in full face of the enemy, which is subsequently
accomplished from the secure ambush by the 'hollow way' near Küssnacht.
Such conduct would have been 'heroic', but the obvious objection to it
is that it would have destroyed the very heart of the saga, which it was
not for Schiller to make over but to render dramatically plausible. It
may be urged, perhaps, that a poet who had made Joan of Arc die in glory
on the battle-field need not have been so punctilious in following the
exact line of Tschudi's story. But the cases are not exactly parallel.
There the alternative was a scene of unmitigated and revolting horror,
which would have destroyed the effect of the tragedy; here it was simply
a question of _when_ Gessler should be killed with an arrow. To make
Tell do just what the saga makes him do, and do it without forfeiting
sympathy, was a delicate problem, which may well have fascinated
Schiller, who is surely the last man in the world to be accused of
holding tame views as to 'heroism'. At any rate he must have felt that a
Tell who should not shoot at the apple and hit it would be simply no
Tell at all.
One who looks closely at the famous scene will not fail to see that it
is very cleverly constructed and that every objection which has been
urged against it is really met in the text. In the first place, Tell is
not, and was never meant for, a hero of the conventional sort. There is
no element of Quixotry about him. He is a plain man, of limited horizon
and small gift of speech. Public affairs do not particularly interest
him. He is a hardy mountaineer, with a strong trust in his own strength
and resourcefulness; a good oarsman and a great shot with the crossbow;
but he makes no fuss about these things. Let it be repeated that he is
not foolhardy. The dangers of the mountain, which bulk so large in the
imagination of his wife, are simply the familiar element of the life
that he loves. He treats her timorous apprehensions with the
good-natured coolness of a man who knows how to take care of himself. He
is affectionate, but not a bit sentimental. All this makes an eminently
natural and consistent character.
Now what must such a character do when required, under penalty of death,
by a brutal tyrant whose power is absolute, to hit an apple on his son's
head? Naturally his first thought is of the child, and he tries to
escape by offering his own life. The reply is that he must shoot or die
_with_ his child. Thus there is no recourse; to refuse to shoot at all
is worse than to shoot and miss. If he kill Gessler on the spot,--and we
must suppose that the thought occurs to him,--he will expose not only
himself but his child and his wife and children at home to the fury of
the troopers. The only safety lies in making a successful shot. And
after all Tell knows that he _can_ make it; it is only a question of
nerve, and he has the nerve if he can only find it. And here comes in an
important touch which is not in Tschudi--the fearless confidence of
Walther Tell in his father's marksmanship. The effect of this is to
touch the pride of the bowman, to clear his eye, and to steady his hand.
It is also a familiar fact that, with strong natures, a terrible danger,
with just one chance of escape, may produce a moment of perfect
self-control while the chance is taken.
The whole scene, in addition to its effectiveness on the stage, is
psychologically true to life. With all deference to the great qualities
of the first Chancellor of the German Empire, one must insist that
Schiller was a better playwright than he and found precisely the best
solution to his dramatic problem.
And so of the later scene in the 'hollow way'; there is nothing wrong
with it, unless it be the great length of the soliloquy. The killing of
an enemy from an ambush, without giving him a chance for his life, is of
course somewhat repugnant to our ideas of chivalry. We think of it
instinctively as the deed of a savage, and not of a man with a pure
heart and a good cause. But it must be remembered that such ideas are
themselves conventional, and that we have in 'Tell' a reversion to
primitive conditions in which 'man stands over against man'. Gessler has
forfeited all right to chivalrous treatment, and Tell is no knight
engaged in fighting out a gentleman's feud. What is he to do? For
himself, perhaps, he might take the chances of a fugitive in the
mountains, but he cannot leave his wife and children exposed to
Gessler's vengeful malice. There is no law to which he can appeal, the
only law of the land being Gessler's will. In such a situation, clearly,
there is no place for refined and chivalrous compunctions, or for
ethical hair-splitting. Tell does what he must do. He is in the position
of a man protecting his family from a savage or a dangerous beast, and
is not called upon to risk his own life needlessly. Every reader of the
old saga instinctively justifies him. His conduct is not noble or
heroic, but natural and right.
If this is so, however, there would seem to be no pressing need of his
long soliloquy. He being _ex proposito_ a man of few words, his sudden
volubility is a little surprising, though it should be duly noticed that
the soliloquy is not a self-defense. There is no casuistry in it. Tell
does not argue the case with himself, like one in doubt about the
rightness of his conduct. That is as clear as day to him, and he never
wavers for a moment. But he has time to think while waiting, and his
soliloquy is only his thinking made audible. Delivered with even a
slight excess of declamatory fervor, the lines are ridiculously out of
keeping with Tell's character; but they can be spoken so as to seem at
least tolerably natural,--as natural, perhaps, as any soliloquy. And
this is true, let it be remarked in passing, of many and many a passage
in Schiller. To some extent, very certainly, his reputation as a
rhetorician is due to the histrionic spouting of lines that do not need
to be spouted. To some extent, but not entirely: for even in 'Tell' his
old fondness for absurdly extravagant forms of expression sometimes
reasserted itself. Thus what can one make of a plain fisherman who talks
in this wise about a rainstorm?
Rage on, ye winds! Flame down, ye lightning-bolts!
Burst open, clouds! Pour out, ye drenching streams
Of heaven, and drown the land! Annihilate
I' the very germ the unborn brood of men!
Ye furious elements, assert your lordship!
Ye bears, ye ancient wolves o' the wilderness,
Come back again! The land belongs to you.
Who cares to live in it bereft of freedom!
The most serious blemish in 'William Tell' is the introduction of
Johannes Parricida in the fifth act,--an idea which Goethe attributed to
feminine influence of some sort.[128] The effect of it is to convert the
rugged, manly Tell of the preceding acts into a sanctimonious Pharisee
with whom one can have little sympathy. No doubt there is a moral
difference between his act and that of Parricida, but it is a difference
which one does not wish to hear Tell himself dilate upon. Seeing that
the murdered emperor was solely responsible for the brutal governors and
thus indirectly for all the woes of Switzerland; and seeing, too, that
his death is the only guarantee we have at the end that the killing of
Gessler will do any good, and not simply have the effect to bring down
upon the land, including Tell and his family, the vengeance of some
still more fiendish successor,--considering all this, one would rather
not hear those horrified ejaculations of Tell about the pollution of the
murderer's presence. They may produce a certain stagy effect of
contrast, but the effect was not worth producing at the expense of
Tell's character.
As for the love-story in 'William Tell', it is hardly of sufficient
weight to merit extended discussion. Both Bertha and Rudenz are rather
tamely and conventionally drawn, to meet the need of a pair of romantic
lovers; they evidently cost their creator no very strenuous communings
with the Genius of Art. Their private affair of the heart has nothing to
do with the Tell episode and is but loosely related to the popular
uprising. Their absence would not be very seriously felt in the drama,
save that one would not like to miss Attinghausen as a picturesque
representative of the old patriarchal nobility. The two scenes in which
he appears are in themselves admirable.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 128: See Eckermann's "Gespräche", under date of March 16,
1831. What Goethe there says, however, is in flat contradiction of the
following passage contained in a letter of Schiller to Iffland,
written April 14, 1804: "Auch Goethe ist mit mir überzeugt, dasz ohne
jenen Monolog und ohne die persönliche Erscheinung des Parricida der
Tell sich gar nicht hätte denken lassen."]