SOURCE: " Wilhelm Tell as Political Drama," in Oxford German Studies, Vol. 18-19, 1989-1990, pp. 23-44.

[ In the following essay, Ockenden discusses the place of Wilhelm Tell in the development of political drama following the French Revolution and argues for the importance of the Stauffacher character—"a new kind of political figure who is neither a ruler/statesman, nor an intriguer, nor a professional civil servant. "]

It is not surprising that the later eighteenth century, which witnessed on the German stage the introduction of middle-class figures to drama as the potential arbiters (if often unsuccessful) of their own destinies, and on a wider historical stage the achieving of power by that class in the French Revolution, should have seen the tentative beginnings of political drama. There are two ways, I believe, in which Schiller's Wilhelm Tell is of interest in this development. The first lies in its staging of democratic deliberations, notably in the Rütli scene, and I should like to begin by illustrating how that scene differs from representations of political action in earlier plays, and by considering its place in Schiller's own dramaturgy. The other is the emergence in the play of a new kind of political figure, who is neither a ruler/statesman, nor an intriguer, nor a professional civil servant. This is Stauffacher, whose role I shall examine in the second part of this paper.

I

It is not easy to say exactly what political drama is, or whether it is a helpful category, particularly with reference to German drama in the second half of the eighteenth century. Lessing's Emilia Galotti certainly has political import, and offers that kind of lightly encoded message for the contemporary audience which is a feature of later political dramas in topographical or historical disguise. But is does not tell us much about how politics work. Like other plays of the time, it reminds us that rulers are only human, hélas, and suggests that they are rarely the good fathers to their people they ought to be.¹ Politics as intrigue is revealed to us in Schiller's Fiesco and Kabale und Liebe, and men of authority as bad fathers in the latter and in Don Carlos. In general the drama of the Sturm und Drang is concerned with the problems of how all-too-human rulers wield power, or with social ills, rather than any possibilities of collective decision-making.

The 'Versammlung' in act III scene 1 of Leisewitz's Julius von Tarent, with its semi-circle of subjects around the prince, offers a potential forum for debate; but the outsider figure of the gift-bearing peasant, with whom the audience is invited to identify, marks it as simply a scene of homage. The abject poverty of the peasantry is referred to, but not debated; and the unconsciously ironic comment with which their spokesman declines a reciprocal gift from the prince—'da würde ja aus dem ganzen ernsthaften Wesen ein Puppenspiel'—has no resonance.² Serious discussion is reserved for the subsequent scene, involving only the prince and his two sons.³ A much more remarkable staging of debate had earlier been envisaged by Goethe in the original version of Götz von Berlichingen, namely a session of the 'Reichstag' in Augsburg. In keeping with the impressionistic style of this play, we join the session in mid-flow, and the brief scene contains only a single speech by the Archbishop of Mainz, framed by two pronouncements by the Emperor. The traditional semi-circle around the ruler is indicated by the Archbishop: 'Seht wie die Fürsten umherstehen getroffen wie von einem unvermutheten Strafgerichte';⁴ but the total absence of free discussion, and the impotence of the princes is implied all too clearly by this image of a court of justice. And indeed, the ingenious speech of the Archbishop, ostensibly concurring in Maximilian's wishes while actually restating the common objections to them, is then briskly trumped by the withdrawal of the Emperor on the cynical pretext of not wishing to force the princes' hands. By contrast, a more democratic kind of group is glimpsed in operation later in the same play: the ' Vehmgericht', also staged in a semicircular pattern. But the scene, however dramatically effective, provides little clarity about the status and nature of the proceedings of the secret court.

In much drama of this period, political negotiation and discussion occur in the offstage space, from which characters then 'escape' on to the stage: a smug Antonio, for example, looking forward to a weekend break in Goethe's Torquato Tasso, or a weary Egmont grappling impatiently with his paperwork. It is only when political power begins to move away from the traditional centres of regal courts that a new kind of political action becomes material for drama. Action, that is, which is neither statecraft, where the ruler is observed trying to reconcile personal objectives and feelings with necessity, fate, or the demands of his or her subjects; nor the essentially private manoeuvrings of intrigue, which involve keeping friends and enemies alike in the dark as to one's strategies—and hence often the audience as well, as we can see in Don Carlos. What begins to emerge on to the stage in the aftermath of the French Revolution is a new style of democratic deliberation, such as is presented in Wilhelm Tell.

Goethe's attempts of the 1790s to come to terms with the French Revolution in dramatic terms were essentially tentative, with the exception of Die Natürliche Tochter; and the completed part of that drama is scarcely engaged with politics as such, unlike the grand design for its continuation Goethe sketched.⁵ The prospect of political meetings such as the schema for the second and third acts proposes is an enticing one;⁶ but Goethe (not surprisingly, perhaps) never fleshed out his sketch: the embodying of popular debate in dramatic form remains unachieved. Similarly, his plan to stage a 'Nationalversammlung' in Die Aufgeregten, even if only in burlesque, belongs to that part of the play drafted in 'scenario' form and never fully composed.⁷

If Schiller's later dramas seem to find more of a role for politics, there is not, I believe, any significant attempt in them to dramatise political action, until we come to Wilhelm Tell and the Demetrius fragment. The central scene in Wilhelm Tell, at least in respect of its length and the detail of the stage setting provided, is the Rütli meeting. How, we may ask, does this differ from the decision-making gatherings of the brigands in Schiller's first play, or the debates among the officers in Wallenstein? The confederates consider themselves no less 'outsiders' than the former, they represent different viewpoints no less than the latter.

One important answer lies in the relationship between the stage action and the hypothetical spectator. Let us take, for example, Die Piccolomini. For the most part, what we are privy to are discussions between two or three characters, often explicitly conducted without the knowledge of others. When it comes to a large gathering, such as the feast in act IV, the audience is separated from it by the servants, whose view of the proceedings dominates the foreground. The collective action that follows, the signing of the doctored declaration of loyalty, is removed from the audience by a different device. The drunked mood of the whole, epitomised by Illo, and the secretive nature of the proceedings, are thrown into relief by the two figures who stand downstage, on opposing sides: Octavio who has signed the paper without any intention of fulfilling its oath, and Max who refuses to sign under what seem to him (and hence also to us) inappropriate conditions for serious business. Wallenstein himself, in the third part of the trilogy, holds his political discussions in small groups; even the scene with the Pappenheim cuirassiers, which begins with echoes of a public scene in Goethe's Egmont,⁸ becomes a dialogue between Wallenstein and the corporal as soon as serious business is broached.

Different aspects of dramatised political action may be observed in Maria Stuart. In act II Elisabeth gives audience to opposing sides of a debate without drawing conclusions. The moment for definite action on her part follows when, alone with Mortimer, she attempts to suborn him. Measured by the hirings of bravos we find in Shakespeare, or Buttler's priming of the assassins in Wallenstein, Elisabeth's more devious and 'politic' approach precisely betokens a typical intrigue situation. By the end of the play, Elisabeth's isolation is complete; we have witnessed the whittling away of any possible democratic discussion, and Shrewsbury, as he leaves her for the last time, points out the autocratic, tyrannical path she will now be free to follow.⁹ The contrast with her rival is evident. At the start of the play Maria is being separated from the last vestiges of her queenly rank; her almost total isolation means that intrigue is her only weapon. Her last entrance, in act V, on the other hand, suggests a position of public authority, and the stage direction which requires her distressed supporters to fall back on either side of her creates the semi-circle of a court.¹⁰ The irony, of course, is that she has now put all claim to majesty behind her; for all the wisdom of the subsequent speeches, she is bereft of any effective power.

If, in German drama up to Wilhelm Tell, much of what we might consider to be political action is equatable with intrigue, conducted in tête-à-têtes or small groups, it follows that members of the audience must consider themselves excluded from it. They are no more than eavesdroppers on political decisions, which remain remote and mysterious. This is nowhere more apparent than in the complex intrigues of Don Carlos. In act II scene 2, for example, when Alba is concealed in Philipp's 'Kabinett', the audience is made conscious of overhearing a private conversation between the king and Carlos, and alert to the question of how much of it Alba is able to catch.

At the point where rulers and those in power are no longer the unquestioned centres of drama, groups which function as focusses of mediation between audience and stage action, and as sources of independent comment, assume greater significance. One of these is the crowd, another, an ancient device Schiller sought to revive, is the chorus. Goethe makes telling use of the crowd in Egmont. The opening scene establishes several characters who will be parties to debates in acts II and IV: the populace may lack effective power, but they can at least express independent political views. This is made clear at the beginning of act II, where the crowd that has gathered 'steht truppweise' and is provocatively addressed by Vansen as an assembly: 'Ihr seid auch versammelt, steckt die Köpfe zusammen. Es ist immer redenswert'.¹¹ Vansen then leads discussion until Egmont arrives to quell the tumult; at this point the stage direction 'alle stehen um ihn herum' marks the transition from debate to a scene of homage to the wise ruler.¹² In Schiller's plays, by contrast, the crowd is often no more than a voiceless offstage force, such as can be summarily quietened by Alba in Don Carlos and by Shrewsbury in Maria Stuart.¹³ The broad canvas of Wallensteins Lager makes virtuoso use of crowd figures as representatives of different viewpoints; but when they are finally united in a semi-circle, and in choric singing, it is not a political view they share as the curtain falls, only blind allegiance to the idea of fighting.

Schiller's revival of the Greek chorus was not, at least to begin with, concerned with involving the audience in the stage action. When, in his introductory essay to Die Braut von Messina, he comments that the 'confidant' of French neo-classical drama had arrogated the role of chorus, he is clearly talking about a device for enlightening the audience rather than invoking its participation.¹⁴ Schiller also talks of the chorus as 'eine lebendige Mauer... die die Tragödie um sich herumzieht, um sich von der wirklichen Welt abzuschliessen': an image which vividly implies the separation of audience from action.¹⁵ Goethe on the other hand, in considering the Sophoclean chorus to have taken on 'das Amt eines berufenen und willkommenen Zuschauers' implies that the audience can at least, through the medium of the chorus, undertake reflection upon the action.¹⁶ A different perspective is proposed by Körner's suggestion that Gordon in Wallensteins Tod and Shrewsbury in Maria Stuart fulfil something of the role of the Greek chorus, since he is referring specifically to figures with whom the audience can identify.¹⁷ But the practice of Schiller's use of the chorus in Die Braut von Messina invites no such identification. We see the warlike supporters of two opposing factions, who are totally turned in upon the dramatic action.

An important change in this position is suggested by the draft sketches for another drama, Die Maltheser. Work on this play dates back to 1793 or earlier, and by October 1795 Schiller was determined to employ a chorus in it.¹⁸ At earlier stages in its planning, Schiller saw this chorus as a vehicle for contrasting 'realistic' and 'idealistic' views of the position facing the knights of Malta; as helpless commentators (in Greek style) on a situation they cannot influence; and as confidants for the central character, La Valette¹⁹—a function emphasised by the notion of entrusting the chorus role to a single actor.²⁰ However, at a late stage, in 1803, Schiller was envisaging a chorus of sixteen 'geistliche Ritter', forming two halves of a semi-circle on the stage, explicitly encompassing the other knights, but also suggesting a link with the audience.²¹ They remain apprehensive commentators and passive confidants of La Valette, mocked by the warlike knights for their views, but they are nonetheless capable of expressing independent political views and judgements. They are no longer a 'living wall' closing off the tragedy; unlike the chorus in Die Braut von Messina, they represent the community as a whole rather than any one of the rebellious groups that have formed among the knights. They speak as repositories of the history and best traditions of the order; from that position they are capable of criticising the Grand Master himself. Though they are essentially 'unkriegerisch and ohnmächtig', they make a decisive contribution to the putting down of rebellion by their appearance onstage armed with spears; at a crisis, they have emancipated themselves from a purely passive role.²²

It would be idle to suppose that at any stage Schiller intended to entrust the chorus of Die Maltheser with democratic powers of decision-making. The finished play would have demonstrated how a community, when challenged by an external threat, can rediscover its essential strengths and purposes; the Grand Master, 'Vater seines Ordens',²³ was to emerge as a strong enlightened ruler, transcending the factions in the order. The parallel with countries responding to the contemporary challenge of the French Revolution is plain. Nonetheless, the role of the chorus suggests that an essentially weak group, representing good sense and reforming politics, can influence the course of affairs as well as offering a source of identification for the audience; as such this chorus would have had affinities with the confederates in Wilhelm Tell.

The unfinished drama with which Schiller was occupied at the time of his death, while not employing a chorus, gives a direct view of political debate. The 'Reichstag' scene in the Demetrius fragment, the meeting of the Polish parliament in Krakow, reveals a remarkable confidence in the ability of the stage to encompass such proceedings. By his bold decision in late February or early March 1805 to place this scene first in the play,²⁴ Schiller is clearly foregrounding the political context within which Demetrius's actions are to be understood.²⁵ At a still later stage of composition, in what was to be the final version of the scene before Schiller's death, the playwright added the note which I have italicised below to the stage direction describing Demetrius's entry into the 'Reichstag':

(Demetrius tritt ein . . . Alsdann stellt er sich so, dass er einen grossen Theil der Versammlung und des Publikums, von welchem angenommen wird dass es im Reichstag mit sitze, im Auge behält und dem königlichen Thron nur nicht den Rücken wendet.)²⁶

With this stage direction, the audience is crucially emancipated, and asked to consider itself as part of the political process shown on stage. The scene stands in contrast to Schiller's sketch for the hero's entry into Moscow, where the spectators of his triumph were to be represented not only by actors, but also by figures painted on to the stage flats: a revealing reversal of any kind of emancipation.²⁷ For whereas in Krakow a parliamentary system is still operating, Demetrius's entry into Moscow marks his accession to autocratic power.

The staging of large-scale meetings such as the National Convention and the Revolutionary Tribunal is one of the features which suggests that Dantons Tod is 'political drama'. In this respect, we can see that Büchner has a precursor in Schiller's 'Reichstag' scene as much as in 'Victor Hugo, whose Cromwell brings the entire English parliament, inter alios, on to the crowded stage of its fifth act. Büchner does not idealise political processes: his cynical depiction of the fickle crowd is dramatically no less interesting than the rhetoric of the leaders. But Schiller portrays with equal realism the deliberations in Krakow. The despairing Sapieha, whose lone stand is undermined by self-interest and arranged votes, can only conclude: 'Verstand ist stets bei wengen nur gewesen'.²⁸ But this in no way undermines the significance of the stage direction I have referred to, which implies that the audience's perspective should not be that of a conventional ('Aristotelian') public, but rather that of the Brechtian spectator reviewing political events with a judicious eye.

In Wilhelm Tell, it is not so evident as in the opening scene of Demetrius that 'die Szene wird zum Tribunal', in the sense that the audience is invited to consider itself a party to debate.²⁹ However, it is worth recalling that during the writing of this play Schiller, in his letters, referred to it as a 'Volksstück' and as 'volksmässig'; he was clearly conscious of the play's potential audience, and was concerned about its reception both in Germany and in Switzerland.³⁰ Axel Gellhaus has traced the development from the 'closed' type of chorus Schiller employs in Die Braut von Messina to the 'open' scenes of Wilhelm Tell with reference to Schiller's experience of theatre audiences in Lauchstädt in July 1803.³¹ Certainly it is striking to contrast the comment about the earlier play made by Schiller in April of that year: '. . . wobei ich mehr an mich selbst als an ein Publicum ausser mir dachte',³² with his enthusiasm in July for the 'new audience' he had witnessed in Lauchstädt, and his resolve to write 'viel bestimmter und zweckmässiger' for the theatre as a result.³³ What Schiller seems to be aiming at in Wilhelm Tell is, in the words of his essay on the employment of a chorus in tragedy, the presentation of 'das Volk' as neither 'rohe Gewalt', nor as 'Staat' (an 'abgezogenen Begriff) but as 'die sinnlich lebendige Masse'.³⁴

I believe that the Rütli meeting, and the play's final scene (notwithstanding its brevity), can be regarded as important steps towards the staging of democratic deliberations.³⁵ The confederacy is effectively founded by the trio who meet in act I, scene 4, a scene which is introduced with Fürst's nervous warning 'Wir sind umringt von Spähern' (460)³⁶ and which, with its inner room and eavesdropper, creates an atmosphere of intrigue. At the end of that scene, the three men swear a solemn oath which anticipates that taken by the larger gathering on the Rütli. The Rütli meeting itself also begins with a specific reference to a conspiracy of criminals (1102-03); but gradually that feeling is overcome, as the scene moves literally from darkness to light.

At the centre of the Rütli group there is no monarch, but the fire which the confederates have kindled themselves. Their proceedings are guided by a chairman freely elected for the occasion. Discussion is open to all, as are the votes by which decisions are taken. The men stand in what is evidently a semi-circle, since the stage direction (after 1149) allots centre, right and left positions to the three cantons. But the formation is repeatedly referred to in stage directions as a 'ring'-implying not that there are actors with their backs to us, but rather that the full circle is made up by the audience, understood as participants in the discussions.³⁷ Rösselmann's claim: 'Wir können gelten für ein ganzes Volk' (1110) thus has dramaturgical as well as political implications.³⁸

The involvement of the audience is also heightened by the use of music at the end of this scene, which accompanies the departure of the confederates in a manner which has been wittily described as 'ein elektrisierender "Salto mortale" in die Opernwelt'.³⁹ This musical conclusion might seem to anticipate the end of the fourth act, where the Brothers of Mercy form a semi-circle round the dead Gessler and chant a baroque dirge.⁴⁰ However, contrast rather than parallel seems to be Schiller's intention here; as implied by Stüssi's cynical comment: 'Die Raben steigen nieder' (2836), the Brothers are associated with death and darkness, marking the end of an evil world rather than a new beginning.⁴¹ Schiller's direction in the Berlin manuscript that the Brothers 'umringen den Leichnam' emphasises the fact that the audience is being closed off from the action at this point, not invited to share in it.⁴² The conclusion of the Rütli scene on the other hand is accompanied by music (not opera) specifically directed at the audience: Schiller requires that the stage should remain open after the last confederates have left so that the audience can enjoy it together with the spectacle of the rising sun and its full symbolic implications.⁴³ The audience, having earlier been given the sense of being the first to arrive on the scene—the natural prospect, including the 'Mondregenbogen', is presented before the first confederates appear and comment upon it—are thus as it were the last to leave.

Music returns in the final scene of the play, where 'die Musik vom Berge', evidently an echo of the opening scene, rounds off the drama. This last scene takes up and widens the visual scope of the Rütli meeting.⁴⁴ The enclosed setting of the latter (for all its prospect of the lake) has been exchanged for the vista of an entire valley floor. The thirty-three original confederates are to be understood as augmented by as many extras as are available to fill the stage; but not haphazardly so: they are to 'group themselves into a whole'. Although there are no deliberations as such in this closing scene, individual concerns are here presented in an open forum. Initially Tell is the focus of popular acclaim, whereby his private act of tyrannicide is incorporated into the community. But he keeps silent; the political action of the scene passes into other hands, in ways which emphasise the transcending of the Rütli debate. At the earlier meeting, the involving of aristocrats in the common cause was regarded with hesitation, and the serf status of some of those attending was stressed. But here Bertha publicly sues for membership of the new confederation, and Rudenz announces the liberation of his serfs. Moreover, the love between this pair, which in act III scene 2 found its locus in another enclosed setting, is now declared openly in front of the people.

If Tell's silence in this scene is remarkable,⁴⁵ we might be equally surprised to hear no concluding word from Stauffacher, the play's most voluble orator.⁴⁶ However, his work is done; the final scene represents in ceremonial form the culmination of all his endeavours. For in this play, Schiller seeks to render the realities of new political life not only by depicting scenes of debate, but also by showing us the character and actions of a new kind of leader. Through Stauffacher, Schiller traces how a wealthy but politically unpractised representative of the emerging middle-class comes to assume authority, in contrast to the traditional hero-figure of Tell, who remains almost to the last an outsider to the community. Stauffacher, as we shall see, is presented with (benevolent) irony; Schiller does not disguise either his self-interest, or his distaste for physical action. He ascribes to him neither a strong political will nor theoretical convictions, but rather manipulative abilities and skilful rhetoric. And yet Stauffacher is not presented critically; whatever his motives, his contribution to the confederate cause is ultimately a central and beneficial one. It is to Schiller's subtle portrait of this character that I should now like to turn.

II

It would not be true to say that German theatre before this play lacks politicians (as distinct from rulers);⁴⁷ but in many cases they recall the old sense of 'politics' connoting 'intrigues', and political figures appear as 'Spieler', either in the sense of gamblers, or of dissembling actors.⁴⁸ Exceptions include those characters named by Körner as 'chorus' figures, in that they attract audience identification,⁴⁹ Gordon and Shrewsbury, particularly the latter, who throughout Maria Stuart is juxtaposed with the statesman as intriguer, Burleigh. Perhaps the most interesting figure is Oranien in Egmont, who, so far from being a gambler, is a shrewd chess-player, capable of disentangling personal interest from responsibility to his people, and endowed with a long strategic view. However, he remains peripheral to that play.⁵⁰ What seems to me to be new about the figure of Stauffacher in Wilhelm Tell is that in him Schiller traces the accession to political responsibility of someone who is not initially a man of power, and is very far from being a professional civil servant.

Stauffacher not only has the largest role in the play; he dominates its political aspects. By his visit to Fürst the confederacy is initiated; he takes effective control of the meeting on the Rütli; in the final act he is the principal spokesman of the confederates. It is remarkable, therefore, that his particular role has rarely been remarked upon.⁵¹ Critics have so successfully merged him with his background that his distinctive views are regularly attributed to 'the confederates', 'the Rütli conspirators' or even 'the Swiss';⁵² some have on occasion gone further in silencing him by attributing his lines to other characters.⁵³ One of the few commentaators to have singled him out was the Marxist writer Plekhanov, in the context of his 1907 discussion of Gorki's Enemies.⁵⁴ He finds Stauffacher, the true agitator and leader of a mass-movement, more admirable than Tell, the individualistic terrorist. However, in representing Stauffacher as a noble radical, who serves the national cause selflessly, Plekhanov seems to me to overlook both the methods and the motives of Schiller's character.

I should like to consider Stauffacher's role under the following aspects. He is not a professional politician from the outset, but rather a man who has to be persuaded into his role. He never loses sight of his own interests, but manages to ensure that these are incorporated into the common goals of the confederates—not by devious intrigue, but by his capacity for leadership and his rhetorical skills. No man of action, he prefers the course of discussion and persuasion and achieves his ends through the activity of others. He recruits Melchthal, spearhead of the confederate enterprise, and at the end of the play he encourages his countrymen to accept, as a decisive blow on behalf of their liberty, the independent action of Tell. While his rhetoric suggests that he is conservatively inclined, what he actually helps to achieve is a radical social change, the triumph of his own (in effect bourgeois) class.

Most of these aspects are implicit in Schiller's initial presentation of the character (in I/2). As well as being a respected member of the community, Stauffacher is shown as a wealthy independent farmer who owns a splendid new house as well as a large herd of cattle; it is he who first formulates the notion which will run through the play that the Swiss are essentially 'ein Volk . . . der Hirten' (304).⁵⁵ Though he is moved by the plight of the forest cantons, he has not considered acting to alleviate it; indeed we first hear him having to be persuaded by Pfeifer to espouse an attitude of opposition to Austrian hegemony, and then urged by his resolute wife to take positive steps.⁵⁶ The conversation with Gertrud makes it plain that Stauffacher would be content to accept the present state of affairs so long as it guaranteed his independence and protected his interests.⁵⁷ The new factor, along with his wife's more aggressive patriotism, which goads him into action is the threat to his possessions he infers from his encounter with Gessler (214-15, 236-37). At the same time, his reservations about unleashing a preemptive revolt concern precisely the danger which a violent uprising would bring to his livestock and house (314-15, 318-19). Only with heavy heart does he finally agree to take up the struggle 'für Heerd und Hof (331).

During this early scene, Stauffacher evidently comes to realise that imperial allegiance will guarantee his independent possessions, whereas the Austrian King (who happens also to be Emperor at this juncture) represents a threat to them. Rudenz's jibe to his uncle: 'den Kaiser / Will man zum Herrn, um keinen Herrn zu haben' (807-08), echoed later by Gessler (2713-14), accurately describes Stauffacher's situation. He may deviously assure Gessler that his new house belongs to the Emperor, but in reality, as Gertrud reminds him, he is 'ein freier Mann auf deinem eignen Erb' (260). His interjection during the Rütli debate: 'Ich trage keine Lehen als des Reichs' (1365) is an unhelpful, even arrogant, remark in the context of the discussion; but it fairly encapsulates the freedom he decides to fight for, and in its precise context (the conservative Fürst has been instructing representative figures from all three cantons to continue discharging their feudal obligations) it expresses the confidence of an independent 'bourgeois' class. Stauffacher therefore commits himself to revolt against the Austrian crown, while insisting that some authority remains essential, provided it protects individual interests. This is the personal credo which he persuades the Rütli meeting to accept as a basis of agreement (1216-26).⁵⁸

Schiller is careful not to idealise Stauffacher by presenting him as the disembodied spokesman of an ideal of freedom. All his contributions to the Rütli meeting, ostensibly addressed to the defining of common goals, in fact ensure that the latter are envisaged through the prism of his own interests and concerns. He makes reference to herdsmen at the start of his historical narrative, and in his concluding speech (1166, 1456), and what he celebrates as the achievements of the Swiss is their civilising and cultivating labours (1260-69); his narrative culminates in the bold assertion of the independent farmer that 'Unser ist durch tausendjährigen Besitz / Der Boden' (1270-71). Schiller's ironic presentation is also evident in the fact that Stauffacher does little to extenuate those cantonal and social differences of which the scene provides examples (1078-82, 1089-90, 1141-42, 1393-96), and which the whole meeting, it might be thought, was designed to overcome. His welcome to the serfs present is oddly patronising (1083-85), and his rehearsal of legend enshrines the primacy of his own canton, Schwyz.

His more tactful political gifts are apparent in an earlier scene, the initial conference with young Melchthal and Fürst (I/4). Here he steers a middle course between the former's anti-aristocratic convictions and the more traditional attitude of the older man (684-700),⁵⁹ and between the desperate resolve of Melchthal and Fürst's caution. Stauffacher in fact controls this discussion as much as he does the larger debate on the Rütli, yet he adroitly maintains that he is only following, on behalf of Schwyz, the lead given by the other two forest cantons (657-58, 683). His main achievement in this important scene is to channel Melchthal's passion into constructive rather than destructive purposes;⁶⁰ in the young man he has found the activist whom he has already been seeking.

Throughout the play Stauffacher himself is disinclined to engage in physical action; he maintains that the mere spectacle of the Swiss in arms will rout their oppressors (1379). This passivity, rather than being simply temperamental, can be interpreted as reflecting his anxieties about the consequences of armed uprising, which he voiced to Gertrud in I/2.⁶¹ But he is also aware that men of action are indispensable to any plan of rebellion. Even before his meeting with Fürst and Melchthal, Stauffacher has attempted to find the executive arm he needs by wooing Tell to the cause (I/3). I shall return later to the contrast of attitudes which underlies that encounter. But it should be noted here that .Stauffacher does not regard as final the rebuff which the huntsman offers to the politician's suit (as a consequence of which Tell makes no appearance on the Rütli), nor does the enlisting of Melchthal seem to satisfy Stauffacher's need. He continues to count on Tell, and the latter's fateful visit to Altdorf in act III is clearly in response Stauffacher's with the his to an invitation reproach to meet confederates.⁶² to Tell after arrest must seem ungenerous (2088), but we can understand it as the dismay of a politician whose plans have gone awry. His next words express clearly his continuing belief that Tell is vital to the confederate action: 'O nun ist alles, alles hin!' (2090).

That Stauffacher is wary of taking direct action himself, and of prompting violence in his own canton which might endanger his material possessions, can be inferred from the conclusion of the Rütli scene. The discussion focusses upon the need to overpower the strongholds held by the Austrian governors (1381-1427) and we expect some reference to those in Schwyz, namely Küssnacht and Lowerz. Instead, Stauffacher draws attention to Gessler as a primary obstacle, and evokes a picture of the tyrant in the guise of a well-defended fortress (1428-32). The rhetorical sleight-of-hand with which the substitutes metaphor for mortar is an evident echo of his earlier meeting with Gessler: 'Da kam . . . / Der Vogt mit seinen Reisigen geritten' (219-20);⁶³ and what Gessler represented on that occasion, we recall, was a threat to Stauffacher's property. On the Rütli, then, Stauffacher appears to invite the assembled company, which has just resolved upon a bloodless coup, to consider the death of the tyrant who rules in his canton as all but essential to the success of their plans; but he makes no proposal to compass it.⁶⁴

It would of course be false to suppose that Tell's assassination of Gessler is a part of Stauffacher's conscious plans; what I think is clear, however, is that the latter is predisposed to accept it as a legitimate part of the confederates' attack upon their oppressors. Meanwhile he continues to prefer caution to action. When the confederates suppose Tell to be a prisoner in Küssnacht, Stauffacher offers Hedwig the assurance that the fortress will be stormed and her husband liberated (2363-64); but this scheme (like the unfinished line in which it is couched) peters out. Indeed, he remains wedded to the Rütli plan of postponing the uprising (2513), and it is only Rudenz's personal determination to rescue Bertha that overturns his view. Hedwig's passionate rejoinder to Stauffacher: 'Ihr alle / Zusammen könnt nicht seine [sc. Tell's] Fesseln lösen' (2369-70) expresses not only her own conviction (see 1534), but one which the confederates, certainly Stauffacher himself, have come to share.

The theme of Stauffacher's inaction is pursued to the last. In act V we witness the destruction of Zwing Uri, and hear of the daring capture of Sarnen and Rossberg, but there is no news of similar exploits in Schwyz. Schiller has in fact deliberately suppressed the information, which he must have encountered in Tschudi's chronicle, that Stauffacher conducted a successful assault on the castle at Lowerz (only the place-name is referred to in the play, 2285).⁶⁵ The implication is clear enough: the overcoming of the 'fortress Gessler', that is, the assassination at Küssnacht, has been sufficient to quell any Austrian resistance to the uprising in Schwyz. Tell has done Stauffacher's work for him, and the contrast between inactive politician and unreflective man of action is thereby preserved.

When Stauffacher joins the jubilant crowd in V/l, there is no hint that he has been taking any active part in the uprising; nor does he refer at this stage to Tell's deed, though he knows of it.⁶⁶ Instead, having taken charge of the stage, he delivers his report of the Emperor's murder. His comments on this event are suggestive: Albrecht's assassins will, he declares, reap no benefit from their crime—

Wir aber brechen mit der reinen Hand
Des blutgen Frevels segenvolle Frucht.
Denn einer grossen Furcht sind wir entledigt,
Gefallen ist der Freiheit grösster Feind . . .

(3015-19)

Taken in isolation, we could read these words as comment on the death of Gessler,⁶⁷ for Tell's 'bloody deed' has indeed removed the 'great fear' which the tyrant evidently represented for Stauffacher; and it was indeed a 'crime' inasmuch as it contravened the confederates' plan to achieve liberation without killing—a plan in which, remarkably, they have otherwise been successful. Of course, Tell was no party to the Rütli agreement; but that has become as irrelevant as the questionable morality of his deed. It is the 'beneficial fruits' which matter.

Hence Stauffacher, leaving any problematic considerations aside, can proceed to canonise Tell as the hero of the hour and the essential achiever of Swiss liberty, hailing him as 'unsrer Freiheit Stifter' and 'Retter von uns allen' (3083, 3087). While it is true that others equate Gessler's death with the country's liberation (see 2820-21, 2855-56, 3088-89), it is in Stauffacher's authoritative words to the assembled Swiss, underlined by the rhetorical structure of the scene, that the legend of Tell the liberator is enshrined. The opportunism of this speech is particularly apparent in the light of Fürst's earlier remark to Melchthal (2912-13), in which a contradictory legend was born: that of the bloodless revolution.

There are various ironies at work here.⁶⁸ Stauffacher's long-nourished plan to rely on Tell for a decisive contribution has been fulfilled beyond any possible expectation, and the politician's rhetoric boldly incorporates into the confederates' success an essentially alien deed.⁶⁹ While at first he appears to be supplying merely the classical function of a messenger, he passes over smoothly into the role of historiographer, providing in a sense the continuation of the legend he narrated on the Rütli, and emphasising the priority which historical record gives to fact over motive. He is further, if not quite in the Brechtian sense, operating as a 'Mitwisser des Stückeschreibers' by emphatically linking together the two strands of action which Schiller, ignoring his sources, had so rigorously kept asunder.

In writing to Iffland, Schiller had pointed out—all too casually, as some commentators have clearly felt—that Tell's 'Privatsache'⁷⁰ meshes in at the end 'mit der öffentlichen Sache'. But that separation of plot-strands, and their abrupt merging, is surely deliberate; Schiller is indicating that political solutions and bloody violence belong to different worlds. It is the achievement of the politician Stauffacher to absorb the latter into the former, creating the new legend which is celebrated by all in the final scene of the play. Even then, when the crowd hail Tell as 'der Schütz und der Erretter' (3281), there is an ironic ambiguity: is it as 'marksman' or as 'protector' that Tell is seen to be the saviour of his people?⁷¹

Ultimately, then, there is a sense in which Stauffacher wins the argument with Tell which he had seemed to lose in I/3; Tell is finally recruited to his purposes. That initial disagreement, which rises to climaxes of stichomythia (415-21, 432-37), is more than a clash of temperaments. Its essential background is the contrast between two ways of life, which here, as so often, appear to exist in uneasy mutual toleration: from the first Stauffacher is identified with cattle-farming, an activity from which Tell the huntsman explicitly distances himself (1487). There is hence an ironic aptness in Tell's assertion of his willingness to undertake (evidently independent) action if called upon, for he illustrates it in terms of the hunter coming to the herdsman's aid (440).

Tell in Schiller's play is very far from the figure Goethe imagined, that 'Herculean porter' and representative of the people, who through his activity conjoined different centres of communal life.⁷² From the start the huntsman's business is shown to separate him from civilisation, 'die Städte der Menschen' (32). That distance is rehearsed in Tell's dialogue with his son in III/3, and most clearly illustrated in the assassination scene: Tell explicitly sees himself, as isolated hunter, cut off from the world of human intercourse, of merchants and pilgrims, robbers and artists, and notably from the wedding-party. Stauffacher by contrast is a man who lives by a busy high-road, and has contact with townsfolk. We can hear a sense of shock in his announcement that the city of Zürich has shut its gates (to keep out the Emperor's assassins and their pursuers), and equally in his picture of Duke John wandering aimlessly in the mountains, a zone alien to the farmer's natural habitat (2993, 3010). The contrast between Tell and Stauffacher is also highlighted through their encounters with Gessler. To Stauffacher, the tyrant complains: '(Ich) will nicht, dass der Bauer Häuser baue' (231); confronting Tell in Altdorf, he maintains 'Gewaffnet sei Niemand, als wer gebietet' (1977). The farmer's house and the huntsman's crossbow are to Gessler equally irritating signs of 'den kecken Geist der Freiheit' (2783), though the implications they carry are wholly different. However, at the end of the play, with Stauffacher's appointment of Tell as saviour, we can measure the extent to which the bow has been wielded to protect the house; the hunter has indeed come to the farmer's aid.

The contrast between these representatives of different ways of life also embodies a distinction between old and new values. For all his paramount concern with preserving his own possessions, and while he is surely no revolutionary, it would be a mistake to see Stauffacher simply as a conservative. On the Rütli, it is true, he announces no 'neuer Bund' but an 'uralt Bündnis' (1155-56), and Fürst will later take up the same idea (1354-56). This is of course the rhetoric which Gertrud furnishes her husband with in I/2 (245, 257), and which Stauffacher turns into a password when he goes to visit Fürst (512). However, his new house tells us a different story; and his narratives about the past (1166-1202, 1260-74) chronicle above all the ongoing progress of civilisation. Even though the Swiss are concerned with the preservation of their ancient rights, their joint political action constitutes something altogether new, as the dying Attinghausen acknowledges (2416-22): it spells the death of the aristocracy and the rise of bourgeois power. Stauffacher is a citizen of a new world.

Tell on the other hand is associated with an outworn set of values. His very occupation as a hunter evokes a primitive and pre-civilised world, where man in isolation contends against nature rather than co-operating with it.⁷³ It is no accident that in the assassination scene, where he specifically espouses his role as hunter, Tell should feel himself being turned back from his humanity, and aligned with dragons (2572). For elsewhere in the play dragons and other wild animals recall that ancient world which Stauffacher proclaims as having been conquered by the march of civilisation, but which now, as tyranny takes hold, threatens to return (1075, 1262-65, 2134-36). When Stauffacher talks on the Rütli of 'der alte Urstand der Natur', in which 'Mensch dem Menschen gegenüber steht', his words unconsciously anticipate Tell's narrative of his encounter with Gessler (1282-83, 1557). More importantly, they endorse in advance Tell's 'primitive' and independent act of assassination, as being appropriate to the situation which Austrian oppression has engendered.⁷⁴ As a huntsman, Tell is and remains self-reliant, reliant above all on his instincts; by contrast with other potentially unreflective men of action in the play, notably Melchthal, he does not learn to curb his instincts in favour of common objectives.

Finally, however, Tell is seen to become a member of the community—not as a huntsman or loner, but as an equal member of it. He has discarded (whether, as is nearly always assumed, permanently, or not) the symbolic weapon of his old way of life, his crossbow.⁷⁵ By contrast with the huntsman's position in the play's prelude, Tell in the concluding scene meets his compatriots on the level of the farmers, the valley floor; the individual songs of that prelude have become general 'mountain music'. Tell has first been reunited with his family, reintegrated into the bourgeois unit; now he is welcomed into the 'Bund' which he had absented himself from. He does not sue for admission, as Bertha does; he has been appointed to a special place in it by the decision of Stauffacher at the end of V/l. What we see finally welded into the new community, then, is not only the aristocrats and the serfs, but also the outmoded individual heroism of a bygone age which Tell represents. The making of history is superseded by the writing of history, legendary individual deeds by their incorporation into a national myth.⁷⁶

And what of the feelings of isolation from the community which weighed so heavily on Tell in the 'hohle Gasse'? Have they so completely vanished since the successful discharge of his second arrow? Not entirely; we see them depart the stage embodied in the figure of Parricida, who must assume the very role of homeless wanderer which Tell formerly considered to be his destiny. It is more than personal revulsion which leads him to exclude Duke John from the warmth of his hearth, and from the joyful embassy of the united cantons. Parricida the outcast is clearly a scapegoat, dismissed from the family and the national community, indeed from the country itself. As he makes his way towards Papal absolution, he carries some at least of the burden Tell contemplated shouldering in act IV. But he also bears, through his 'archetypal' murder of a close relative, associations of a primitive world Tell now desires to leave behind.⁷⁷

To speculate on Tell's reception of the embassy in the final scene, and of his incorporation into the community, is perhaps not fruitful; his silence at the play's end is Schiller's, too. We can see how there is unavoidably an ironic tone in the ending of Wilhelm Tell. As Stauffacher's last speech foreshadows, future ages will reck little of the inner pangs of individuals who commit, almost unawares and certainly for other reasons, politically significant acts. The judgment of history addresses itself primarily to deeds and their consequences, rather than their well-springs. I have not enlarged here upon 'ironic' readings of Tell; but Stauffacher, it seems to me, is throughout presented in a tone of conscious, if benevolent, irony. The politician keeps his own interests in mind; he consistently avoids the front line of action; but in the end he creates for his countrymen the renewed legend that they need.

A larger irony cannot be denied, namely Schiller's awareness that the hard-won freedom of the Swiss which he was celebrating had recently been forfeited, precisely to the present-day apostles of liberty, the French Revolutionaries.⁷⁸ Serious doubts about the durability of democratic processes seem also to be illustrated by Demetrius, where an initial parliamentary debate gives way to the headlong course run by a deceiving tyrant—indeed, according to one note, the play's conclusion was to forecast a continuing line of such deceivers as rulers.⁷⁹ On the other hand, if we turn to another uncompleted fragment, the remarkable sketches for Die Polizei, we could distil a different message from it. While Argenson, the police-chief, derives his authority from an unseen ruler, it appears that he himself was to function as a benign arbiter and quasi-political helmsman in the affairs of his contemporaries, of all classes.⁸⁰ In Wilhelm Tell, at least, for all the ironies hedging it about, there seems to be some guarded optimism in Schiller's conclusions about the accession to political power of a new class.

Schiller's approach to his material in this play has commonly been related to his theses in Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen.⁸¹ But it can equally be seen as a response to the events of his own time. What the play suggests is that, while the killing of an autocratic ruler may be regrettable, there are circumstances under which it is inevitable; and it may prove the prelude to a better world of bourgeois stability.⁸² Through Stauffacher the values of the farmers, and of the merchants he consorts with, are established, as well as the doctrine that, while civic order requires an (enlightened) authority as its ultimate source of justice, bounds can be set to tyranny (1217, 1275). We also witness the triumph of that principle once rejected by Tell: 'Verbunden werden auch die Schwachen mächtig' (436). It is the exemplary new citizens of the new order, Bertha and Rudenz, who have the last words in Wilhelm Tell; not least, I think, as a sign that the hopes they expressed in III/2 (1706-15) can now be fulfilled. The couple assume a new mode of 'kingship' and 'queenship', and alongside them all men and women are elevated to royal rank. The conviction expressed by Egmont to Alba, the fantasy Posa presented to Philipp,⁸³ have now, in the wake of the French Revolution, become a feasible ideal.

Schiller is in no sense offering an apologia for violence in this play. His dedicatory poem to Dalberg draws a clear distinction between the terror of the Revolution and the uprising of the Swiss,⁸⁴ thereby seeming to echo his thoughts of 1795 in Über die nothwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schöner Formen:

Wie viele giebt es nicht, die selbst vor einem Verbrechen nicht erschrecken, wenn ein löblicher Zweck dadurch zu erreichen steht, die ein Ideal politischer Glückseligkeit durch alle Greuel der Anarchie verfolgen, Gesetze in den Staub treten, umfiir bessere Platz zu machen, und kein Bedenken tragen, die gegenwärtige Generation dem Elende Preis zu geben, um das Glück der nächstfolgenden dadurch zu bevestigen.⁸⁵

Tell is no anarchist with sophisticated justifications; but he does incorporate aspects of that pre-civilised man referred to earlier in the same essay, by returning to the 'wilden Naturstand' and aligning himself for a moment with 'ein wüthendes Tier'.⁸⁶ The fact that a single well-placed shot can, in a moment, prove as effective as protracted political labour or collaborative strategies is an uncomfortable truth, but it is one that Schiller found suggested by his primary source and boldly confronts in his drama. What is important is Stauffacher's ability to incorporate a potentially anarchic deed into the communal endeavour, so that Tell, no longer a solitary champion, can take his place in the final tableau of reconciliation.

Schiller is hence reflecting on the fact that an action such as executing a monarch (the mere echo of which in the play was sufficient to provoke the censors twenty years after the writing of the play)⁸⁷ can have its long-term value. Whether the perpetrators of anarchic deeds act out of persuasion, in self-defence or because ineluctably forced by the processes of history, violence can always be regarded as reprehensible, since it shows mankind returning to a pre-civilised state. Yet it can create opportunities for good by helping to overturn an entrenched system. In a longer perspective, men of goodwill, such as Stauffacher, can appropriate the advantages of such deeds and use them as a starting-point for a new democratic system. Dragon-killers may be closer to their prey than to civilised human beings, but their violent response may be necessary, since one cannot chop logic with dragons; it remains for sensible people to tame the dragon-killers and incorporate them into a more humane order.

Notes

¹ Given the title of this essay, it might seem perverse to give no consideration in it to Bodmer, who wrote an article on 'political tragedy', several examples of the genre (as he understood it), and four short plays on Tell and related materials. On the theoretical essay, see Georg Michel Schulz, Tugend, Gewalt und Tod. Das Trauerspiel der Aufklärung und die Dramaturgie des Pathetischen und des Erhabenen, Tübingen 1988, pp. 137-42; on the 'political dramas', see Anthony Scenna, The Treatment of Ancient Legend and History in Bodmer, Columbia U.P. 1937, especially pp.75-137; on the possible influence of Bodmer's plays on Schiller, see Gustav Roethe, 'Die deutschen Quellen des Schillerschen "Tell"', in Forschungen zur deutschen Philologie. Festgabe für Rudolf Hildebrand, Leipzig 1894, pp.224-276. The fact is that Bodmer's notions of drama are irrelevant to my concern with theatrical presentation here, not least because his plays are expressly designed to be read, not performed. The same cannot be said of Wieland's Lady Johanna Gray, Werke, Hanser Verlag, München 1967, III, pp.7-74, but its political content is negligible. By contrast, it is the lack of any real or legendary historical framework in Lessing's Philotas which seems to disqualify it as an early 'political drama'; see F. J. Lamport, Lessing and the Drama, Oxford 1981, p. 104.

²Sturm und Drang, Dramatische Schriften, 2. Auflage, Heidelberg 1963, I, pp.584-85.

³ The suggestion of Ulrich Karthaus, in Interpretationen. Dramen des Sturm und Drang, Reclam 1987, p. 115, that the sequence of scenes demonstrates the wish of the patriarchal ruler to exercise the same power in his family as in his country, seems to overlook this point.

⁴ Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen I, Werke, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1958, p.124.

⁵ Goethe, Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, 9. Auflage, München 1981 [ =HA] 5, pp.619-23.

⁶HA 5, p.622.

⁷HA 5, p. 196.

⁸ See Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, Weimar 1943ff. [ =NA], 8, pp.259-60, and HA 4, p.394.

⁹NA 9, p.163.

¹⁰ See the subsequent phrase 'im ganzen Kreis', NA 9, pp.141-42.

¹¹HA 4, p.390.

¹²HA 4, p.394.

¹³ See also Fiesco's manipulation of the twelve citizens, identified in that play's first edition as 'Handwerker', NA 4, pp.47-50 and 154-57.

¹⁴NA 10, p.ll. That Schiller's chorus in this play in fact performs an analogous function was pointed out to him by Humboldt; see Dieter Borchmeyer, Tragödie und Öffentlichkeit—Schillers Dramaturgie, München 1973, p. 168.

¹⁵NA 10, p.ll.

¹⁶Goethes Briefe, Hamburg 1964, II, pp.453-54; these comments to Zelter reflect discussions with Schiller during the writing of Die Braut von Messina.

¹⁷NA 38 I, pp.67 and 287.

¹⁸ See the 'Entstehungsgeschichte' notes in NA 12, pp. 374-78. The chorus in Die Maltheser is discussed by Borchmeyer (note 13), pp.169-70.

¹⁹ See NA 12, pp.32 and 41; 41, 43 and 45; 43. The notion that the chorus only has a 'confidant' function seems to me mistaken; see Florian Prader, Schiller und Sophokles, Zürich 1954, pp.54 and 88.

²⁰ This is suggested by the reference to 'eine geistliche Person', as well as by the 'fourth cast-list' with actors' names beside it, which originally offers only one name for the part, by contrast with the 'first castlist' of 1801 with eight actors' names; see NA 12, pp. 57; 59 and 26; 407.

²¹ This plan appears as an alteration to the 'second cast-list' and is spelled out in the fuller description of the chorus entering early in act I. See NA 12, pp.59-60 and 87; and 422 for the dating.

²² On these various points, see NA 12, pp.63-73.

²³NA 12, p.47.

²⁴ See NA 11, pp. 253; and 450, 490 for dating; the importance of the scene is suggested by the copious notes Schiller took for it, both before and after this decision, see NA 11, pp. 65-70, 135, 197-200 and 253-75.

²⁵ A different interpretation is offered by Herbert Kraft in NA 11, p.450.

²⁶NA 11, p.8; the insertion of the later thought is shown in the 'Redaktionen' on p.291.

²⁷ See the stage set plans at NA 11, pp.88 and 219. Although the crowd was to play a role in this scene, it would have been restricted to comment; what they are attending is virtually the 'Einzug eines Eroberers'. See NA 11, pp.219, 184 and 220.

²⁸NA 11, p.23. The corruption and venality of the members of the Reichstag was indicated more strongly in the 'Trinkstube' scene of the first version, NA 11, pp. 192-93. On the figure of Sapieha, see Dolf Sternberger, 'Macht und Herz oder der politische Held bei Schiller', in Schiller, Reden im Gedenkjahr 1959, ed. Bernhard Zeller, Stuttgart 1961, pp.328-29.

²⁹ Still less, of course, in the sense the young Schiller would have intended, see NA 20, p.92.

³⁰ See especially NA 10, pp.369-73 and 385-86. Borchmeyer (note 13, pp. 189-92) points out the essentially public nature of most of the scenes in the play, and argues that the chorus function is here assumed by the 'Volk'.

³¹ Axel Gellhaus, 'Ohne der Poesie das Geringste zu vergeben', in Genio huius loci, Dank an Leiva Petersen, ed. Dorothea Kuhn and Bernhard Zeller, Wien-Köln-Graz 1982, pp.l11-26.

³²NA 32, p.32.

³³NA 32, pp.48-49.

³⁴NA 10, p.12.

³⁵ Schiller may have been encouraged in this direction by the Weimar performance of Julius Caesar, which made such a strong impression on him while he was working on Tell. See NA 10, p.372, and the comments in Paul Steck, Schiller und Shakespeare, Frankfurt 1977, pp. 179-81. The staged senate meeting in Shakespeare's act III is not, of course, as grand as those in Ben Jonson's Sejanus, nor does the play have any choric role comparable to Jonson's Arruntius.

³⁶ I have used line references from the Nationalausgabe, volume 10, even though they differ from the numbering in many texts between lines 446, where the question of the Meister Steinmetz is allotted a separate line, and 2074, where this text omits a question by Rösselmann usually included in versions of the play.

³⁷ The fact that the confederates in this scene are envisaged as standing in two rows, one behind the other, only the front row carrying torches, is an hierarchical consequence not of Schiller's political thinking, but of the professional distinction he draws between actors and extras, see NA 10, p.382.

³⁸ The words are a striking echo of those in Schiller's letter to Goethe some years earlier (7 April 1797), about the use of the crowd in Julius Caesar, which he had just been reading.

³⁹ J. H. Tisch, 'Schiller und die Schweiz', in Proceedings of the Australian Goethe Society, 1963-65, p.90; Gellhaus (note 31), p. 124, modifies this to 'einem fast opernhaften Effekt'. Tisch (p.89) recalls Schiller's plan to write an opera, and Julius Bab's comment on Tell as a 'prachtvolle grosse Oper', as well as noting the 'Singspiel'-like effect of the opening scene.

⁴⁰ See Gellhaus (note 31), p. 124.

⁴¹ The impression that these figures belong to a past age is only superficially contradicted by the anachronism noted by William F. Mainland in his edition of the play (Macmillan, 1968), p. 159.

⁴²NA 10, p.488.

⁴³ On this symbolism, see Dieter Borchmeyer, 'Urn einen anderen Wilhelm Tell für die Schule bittend' in Der Deutschunterricht 35 (1983), I, pp.86-7. It is notable that Iffland's political reservations, in his lengthy comments to Schiller (though they apply to the rhetoric of the dying Attinghausen and to the Parricida scene as well as to Stauffacher's stirring words on the Rütli), by presupposing a direct effect on the public, pay tribute to Schiller's implied involvement of his audience (NA 10, pp.454, 455, 459-60).

⁴⁴ A concluding scene which would function as 'ein zweites Rütli' was something Schiller considered while working on the play (NA 10, p.413).

⁴⁵ See F. J. Lamport, The silence of Wilhelm Tell', Modern Languages Review 76/4 (October 1981), pp.857-68.

⁴⁶ Iring Fetscher, in 'Philister, Terrorist oder Reaktionär', in Literatur und Kritik, ed. Walter Jens, Stuttgart 1980, pp.217-43 (p.230), appears to attribute to Plekhanov (see note 54) a protest at the fact that Tell has more lines in the play than Stauffacher. Plekhanov makes no such protest; even including Tell's monologue, he speaks over one hundred lines fewer than Stauffacher.

⁴⁷ Types of civil servant (Marinelli and Weislingen, Machiavell and Questenberg) could be considered in this light, as well as figures with larger horizons such as Vansen, Posa and Octavio Piccolomini.

⁴⁸ See Octavio's use of the word 'Spiel' in Wallenstein, NA 8, p.215, and Terzky's identification of Wallenstein as 'Spieler', NA 8, p.94. Comments on politics and intrigue in the early Schiller are given in Sternberger's stimulating article (note 27 above, pp.315-19).

⁴⁹ See note 16 above.

⁵⁰ On the Egmont/Alba scene, which confronts gambler and intriguer, see F. J.Lamport in Publications of the English Goethe Society XLIV (1974), pp.44-45; for a contrary view, tracing ideas of the French revolution in Alba's views, see Dieter Borchmeyer, 'Altes Recht und Revolution in Schillers "Wilhelm Tell"', in Friedrich Schiller. Kunst, Humanität und Politik in der späten Aufklärung, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski, Tübingen 1982, pp.76-82.

⁵¹ Notable exceptions include Mainland (note 41) and G. W. McKay, 'Three scenes from Wilhelm Tell', in The Discontinuous Tradition. Studies in honour of E. L. Stahl, ed. P. F. Ganz, Oxford 1974, especially pp.106-08 and 110.

⁵² See, for examples spanning the last eighty years, Robert Petsch, Freiheit und Notwendigkeit in Schillers Dramen, Munich 1905, pp.272-73, and Gonthier-Louis Fink, 'Schillers "Wilhelm Tell", ein antijakobinisches republikanisches Trauerspiel', in Aufklärung I (1986), pp.69-70.

⁵³ Gert Sautermeister, Idylle und Dramatik im Werk Friedrich Schillers, Stuttgart 1971, p.95, lends to Attinghausen Stauffacher's words in line 303, and Fink, (note 52) p.75, gives line 2363 to Melchthal.

⁵⁴ Georgi Plekhanov, Kunst und Literatur, Berlin 1955, pp.841-45.

⁵⁵ The anachronism of this locution, also employed by Schiller in his dedicatory poem to Dalberg (NA 10, p.468) has been noted by Max Frisch in his Wilhelm Tell für die Schule, Frankfurt 1971, where he points out that the confederate leaders were 'Grundeigentümer' (pp.64-65). Oskar Seidlin, in 'Das Vorspiel zum Wilhelm Tell', in Untersuchungen zur Literatur als Geschichte. Festschrift für Benno von Wiese, Berlin 1973, p.125, understands such references as rhetorical; but it is important to see the function of the rhetoric. Schiller is as aware as Stauffacher himself of his true status in the community.

⁵⁶ On the importance of Gertrud, and other women figures in the play, see Edith Braemer, 'Wilhelm Tell', in Studien zur deutschen Klassik, ed. Edith Braemer and Ursula Wertheim, Berlin 1960, pp.304-06.

⁵⁷ The contrast of Stauffacher and Tell is indicated in the scenes between them and their wives, which echo two consecutive and contrasting scenes in Julius Caesar, act II, one between Brutus and Portia, the other between Caesar and Calpurnia.

⁵⁸ The only exception to obedience to the Emperor which Stauffacher mentions arose, significantly, from a dispute over grazing rights (lines 1244-55).

⁵⁹ Borchmeyer (note 50) p.97 asserts on the other hand that Stauffacher supports Melchthal's hostility to the nobles.

⁶⁰ See the suggestive interpretation of lines 639-40 by Mainland (note 41), p. 131.

⁶¹ That the wealthy farmers are reluctant to risk their possessions by undertaking action is the telling accusation made by Melchthal at lines 632-34.

⁶² This may be inferred from Tell's declaration at lines 1520-21, followed by his evasive explanation to Hedwig at line 1578 and his refusal to delay the visit, clearly not just a social call; also from the prompt arrival on the scene (III/3) of all three leaders.

⁶³ There is a further echo in the Altdorf scene, where Stauffacher is intimidated by the 'forest of lances' (line 1969).

⁶⁴ Baumgarten, who appears willing to take up the challenge, will be occupied in his own canton when the uprising begins; Tell on the other hand, whose name is mentioned almost casually at this point, ranges freely across the forest cantons, as we see.

⁶⁵Wilhelm Tell Rowohlt Klassiker 224/5, Hamburg 1967, p.137.

⁶⁶ To assert that Tell's deed 'löst den Bundesschwur erst aus' (Werner Kohlschmidt, 'Tells Entscheidung', in Schiller, Reden im Gedenkjahr 1959, Stuttgart 1961, p.87), and 'erst . . . die Rütlimannschaft in Bewegung setzt' (Borchmeyer, in discussion, in Verlorene Klassik?, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski, Tübingen 1986, p.323), thereby acting as a 'Fanal des Volksaufstandes' (Benno von Wiese, Friedrich Schiller, Stuttgart 1959, p.771) seems to me to misread the succession of events indicated by the play, as well as to ignore the contribution of Stauffacher to the 'incorporation' of that deed.

⁶⁷ The words 'reine Hand' clearly foreshadow Tell's own asseverations of innocence to Parricida at line 3180. The suggestion made by Roethe (note 1), pp.254-55, that it may have been Bodmer's plays which prompted Schiller to introduce doubts about the morality of Tell's deed, raises questions too various to pursue here.

⁶⁸ The question of whether or not there is irony in this play is perhaps a basic interpretative issue. I agree with Lesley Sharpe, Schiller and the historical character, Oxford 1982, p. 171, and Mainland (note 41), pp.xxv-xxvi. Others, including Lamport (note 45), p.867, and by implication G. A. Wells, who sees Tell as a 'relatively simple work' ('Schiller's Wilhelm Tell and the Methodology of Literary Criticism', Oxford German Studies 16 (1985), p.46)) have expressed doubts on this score. The tone of Schiller's letter to Wolzogen during the composition of the play, if not, as Mainland opines, sarcastic, is at least ironic (NA 10, p.372).

⁶⁹ Ideas that Tell's deed merges with the confederates' action 'ohne Umweg' (Gerhard Storz, Der Dichter Friedrich Schiller, Stuttgart 1959, p.409), or 'gleichsam durch Zufall' (Fink, see note 42, p.78) or even as the result of a happy historical conjunction (Gert Ueding, 'Wilhelm Tell', in Schillers Drama. Neue Interpretationen, ed. Walter Hinderer, Stuttgart 1979, pp.287-88), seem to me equally to underrate Stauffacher's contribution. More remarkable are attempts to identify Tell totally with the confederates, as suggested by Hans-Günther Thalheim's view that any Swiss could have carried out his deed ('Notwendigkeit und Rechtlichkeit der Selbsthilfe in Schillers "Wilhelm Tell"', Goethe-Jahrbuch 18 (1956), p.240), which itself seems at odds with Thalheim's presentation of Tell as a fully conscious revolutionary on p.224; and by Gerhard Kaiser's claim that 'Tell ist der Geist des neuen Bundes . . . er ist das Volk' ('Idylle und Revolution. Schillers "Wilhelm Tell'", in Deutsche Literatur und Französische Revolution, Göttingen 1974, p.99).

⁷⁰NA 10, p.374. See E. L. Stahl, Friedrich Schiller's Drama, Oxford 1954, p.142 on the 'serious technical difficulties' resulting therefrom, and p. 145 on the 'unresolved contradiction', as Stahl sees it, of Stauffacher's hailing of Tell as saviour. These are among the objections raised by one of the earliest critics of the play, an anonymous Swiss (see Rowohlt text, note 5 above, p.225).

⁷¹ Schiller draws attention to this ambiguity by introducing the figure of Stüssi the 'Flurschütz', whose attitudes and role are presented in strong contrast with Tell's in IV/3. See Kaiser (note 69), p. 108 (though his judgment on Stüssi seems unduly harsh).

⁷²HA 10, pp.468-69. See also Biedermann, Gespräche III, pp.392-93. The word 'Demos' indeed presents Tell as the epitome of the ordinary people, though Goethe envisaged him as unconcerned about 'Herrschaft noch Knechtschaft'. Mainland, (note 41) in his comment on line 1800, points out that Schiller's Tell is a 'free man', but his social status is not more clearly defined. Mainland also comments (p.li) on Schiller's early thought that Tell should be a member of the embassy to the Emperor (see NA 10, p.400); by rejecting it, Schiller maintained Tell's absolute isolation from the community.

⁷³ On Tell as hunter, see Braemer (note 46), p.381; Ueding (note 59), pp.280-81, and particularly Borchmeyer (note 50), p.97. It is a nice irony that the only other 'hunter' we see in the play, Rudenz, should imagine he has cornered his personal prey in the sublime landscape of III/2, whereas in fact Bertha has decoyed him there in order to turn on him. She reorients his course of 'nach der leichten Freude jagen' (793) in a new and positive direction.

⁷⁴ See Mainland (note 41), pp.lviii-lix on the parallels and differences between the idea expressed here and the Tell/Gessler encounter in the mountains. In the context of Stauffacher's narrative of advancing civilisation, and in a speech which is urging exceptional measures to confront exceptional circumstances, it is hard to construe any positive sense in the 'Natur' referred to here. See the doubts expressed by Borchmeyer (note 50, pp.90-91) about Kaiser's arguments (note 59, p.94).

⁷⁵ By contrast with the sword, symbol of justice (2907), of aristocratic power (2030, 2490) and of considered and justified rebellion (see numerous references during the Rütli scene), the axe is established from the start as a tool of summary revenge (86-87, 97); hence its mention by Gertrud is an index of her radical appeal to Stauffacher (312). The axe is then linked to the crossbow as a 'Notgewehr' (644-46), indicating that the bow, the hunter's natural weapon, belongs to a 'precivilised' period.

⁷⁶ I am conscious of leaving aside here the question of what development Tell himself undergoes. The moment at which he accepts that he is a part of an historical process, identified by McKay (note 51, p. 109) as occurring in the Parricida scene, is placed by Sautermeister (note 53, pp.97 and 151) in the monologue. I believe there is a sense in which Tell accepts an historical role as early as line 2300; but in his monologue Tell seems precisely to exclude that perspective.

⁷⁷ Sautermeister (note 53, p. 165) sees Tell as Duke John's 'rescuer'; but we should notice that Tell twice (3228 and after 3280) refuses to take his hand, which would be (as at 744) a sign of brotherhood.

⁷⁸ See NA 10, p.372.

⁷⁹NA 11, pp.225-26.

⁸⁰ See NA 12, pp.91-99 for the relevant sketches. Subsequent sketches appear to be rather for a comedy set in the provinces; see the editorial comment on p.457.

⁸¹ The relating of this play to Schiller's philosophical ideas has been a dominant tendency in recent criticism, as exemplified by Fritz Martini, 'Schiller: Wilhelm Tell, der ästhetische Staat und der ästhetische Mensch', in Geschichte im Drama-Drama in der Geschichte, Stuttgart 1979, pp.277-306; Sautermeister (note 53) follows much of Martini's argument. Perhaps its most extreme statement is to be found in Karl Heinz Kausch, 'Das Politische als Kunstform in Schillers Schauspiel Wilhelm Tell', in Nationalismus in Germanistik und Dichtung, (Dokumentation des Germanistentages in München 1966), ed. Benno von Wiese and Rudolf Henss, Berlin 1967. Among contrary voices may be noted the distinction offered by Lamport (note 45, pp.861-62) between Schiller the dramatist and Schiller the philosopher.

⁸² See Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Kant und Schiller als Zeitgenossen der französischen Revolution, 1985 Bithell Memorial Lecture, Institute of Germanic Studies, London 1986, especially pp. 16-17.

⁸³HA 4, p.430 and NA 6, p.191. The political position Schiller reflects in Wilhelm Tell, at a distance from both the ancien régime and the Revolution, can be seen as typical of Weimar classicism in general. See Dieter Borchmeyer, '". . . Dem Naturalism in der Kunst offen und ehrlich den Krieg zu erklären .. .". Zu Goethes und Schillers Bühnenreform', in Unser Commercium. Goethes und Schillers Literaturpolitik, ed. Wilfried Barner, Eberhard Lämmert and Norbert Oellers, Stuttgart 1984, pp.351-70, especially pp.366-67.

⁸⁴NA 10, pp.468-69.

⁸⁵NA 21, p.26. The italics are Schiller's own. See Wolfgang Wittkowski's comments on this 'neglected essay': 'Selbstinszenierung und Authentizität des Ich in Schillers Drama', in Das neuzeitliche Ich in der Literatur des 18. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ulrich Fülleborn and Manfred Engel, München 1988, pp. 110-11.

⁸⁶NA 21, p.22.

⁸⁷ See Mainland (note 41), p.xxii.