William Tell was Schiller’s last complete play before his death in 1805. Ten years earlier, he had succeeded in entering into a close intellectual association with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the leading figure in German literature at the time. At one of their meetings, Goethe gave Schiller a detailed account of his travels to and his particular fascination with Switzerland.

Schiller subsequently suggested that Goethe compose either an epic poem or a play on the William Tell legend. Instead, Goethe presented Schiller with his complete Swiss materials, which stimulated the noted historian Schiller to immerse himself in Swiss history and the work recently published by his contemporary Johann Müller. Schiller learned that the legend, possibly myth, of William Tell did not appear in documents until well after the historical period of the play.

A historical play is, of course, not a historical document. In William Tell, Schiller is able to unite the many disparate historical and personal threads into the signal aesthetic achievement of his play, one that stimulates readers today as it did when published more than two centuries ago.

William Tell brilliantly synthesizes classical and Romantic elements in his play. The setting and the idyll intoned by the rustic voices in iambic quatrameter at the opening of William Tell are archly Romantic. This is immediately followed by one of Schiller’s strongest traits: dramatic, Shakespearean blank verse. Schiller gives masterfully convincing voice both to the large assembly scenes and to the intimate ones in his play.

Although Schiller, unlike the well-traveled Goethe, was never outside Germany, he succeeded in providing Switzerland with its national play. He gives compelling life to Swiss archetypes and convincingly depicts their attainment of national independence.

The natural backdrops required by the play make it difficult to present on stage. It is read more often than it is performed. It has, however, proven apt for outdoor productions. It is performed every summer in Switzerland, and at Swiss American festivals around the United States, particularly in Wisconsin.

In a classical play, violence is not shown on stage but is reported by a messenger as having taken place. At first, Schiller conforms to the classical tradition, but from act 1 he begins to prepare the representation of violent actions, first in Tell’s partially hidden shooting of the apple from his son’s head in act 3, then presenting a fully visual act of violence in act 4—Tell’s killing of Gessler. With this, William Tell assumes a characteristic of many of William Shakespeare’s plays: William Tell becomes a problem play, for how can an assassin be presented as a hero?

This question comes to the fore in the final act, which opens with a classical recitation of the brutal murder of the Habsburg emperor. Contrary to history, Schiller has his Swiss assume that the murder of the emperor and Tell’s murder of Gessler have allowed the populace to revolt and allowed Switzerland to become free.

On Tell’s return home from the murder, he finds Duke John, the assassin of the emperor, in his hut, awaiting refuge. An interesting dialect between Tell and John about their respective killings takes place—John’s killing, in Tell’s judgment, had been for personal gain, and Tell’s killing had been to rid Switzerland of a tyrant bent on personal vindictiveness against an innocent citizenry. Tell then notes to John the alpine passes he should take to get to Italy, then to Rome to acquire the Roman Catholic pope’s absolution for his deed.

The reader is left to wonder: Should not Tell, likewise, have to atone for taking a life? By not giving Tell any more lines in the play, Schiller silences him and has the now-assembled Swiss hail him as their deliverer, making him into Switzerland’s national hero and leaving the reader to ponder a Hamlet-like question.