Introduction
“William Tell” is a deeply popular work by Schiller, imbued with enlightened democratic ideas. It uses historical material to depict the life of the people and their struggle for independence. The essence of the dramatic conflict is the confrontation between Hessler and Tell: an irreconcilable conflict between freedom and tyranny, natural rights and unjust social laws, and the free individual and oppressive power). The composition of the play “William Tell” is characterized by mass scenes, polylogues of several characters, and voluminous monologues of the characters. This composition of the work recreates a complex historical era. The play is the people’s voice, reflecting their aspirations and ideals. “William Tell” was devoted to the theme of the revolt of foreigners, in which the motif of tyranny sounds with the same strength and conviction. As much as the author of “William Tell” emphasized the exceptional cruelty of Hessler and the exceptional pain inflicted on Tell’s parental heart, the whole point of this heroic drama affirms the right of the people to rebel, to overturn their destiny.
Discussion
In his drama William Tell, Friedrich Schiller reworked the plot of an old Swiss chronicle about the archer Tell, the hero of the folk legend The Swiss Revolt against Austrian oppression (13th century), returns the reader to the freedom-loving theme of Schiller’s early dramas. However, the struggle for freedom is shown here as a national cause. In The Tell, there is no division into “heroes” and “masses,” which was clear in Wallenstein. Each participant in “The Oath at Rutley” is an individual and an expression of popular protest. Initially quiet, reserved, and even avoiding participation in the plot against the Austrians, Tell gradually transforms into a popular fighter and avenger of the cruel Austrian ruler. The turning point in his soul comes under the influence of Governor Hessler’s monstrous demand to knock down an apple on his son’s head. This image of Schiller, which sums up his “classical period,” is free of the exaggerated pathetic and fierce passions of his first dramas and the focus on moral introspection characteristic of the tragedies of his later period.
Diving into the distant past and the life of the medieval peasant community, Schiller grasped the meaning of the phenomena of modern history. By depicting a little local world, he wanted to look out from this narrowness of the local characteristics to the prospects of human development. This is how one looks from a narrow ravine into the vast expanse of the immense plain ahead. With greater thoroughness and love, he recreated the Swiss landscape, almost untouched by man, and these patriarchal settlers with the narrowness of their views, with their conservatism and superstitious veneration of the “good old times,” to then show how in these simple-hearted, patient people awaken the readiness to fight, the awareness of their social rightness, their human dignity. William Tell himself is as humble as this peculiar Swiss “freeman. A man of powerful noble soul movements, but meek in heart and accustomed to obedience – such is this peculiar hero, a son of the people, but by no means their leader. An Alpine hunter, he wanders a lot in the mountains, communicates little with people, and rarely thinks about the life of his community.
All of Tell’s humility does not save him from Hessler’s severe punishment and merciless mockery. Through his own experience, Tell learns what Austrian domination means. The man who had the cruelty to demand of him, a peaceful villager who had not even gone to the RĂĽttli gathering, should not live, nor should the power that had placed over Tell and his fellow villagers such an atrocity exist. The drama’s hero swears to himself to destroy Hessler, and, an unwilling witness of the new crime of the Focht – his mockery of the helpless mother and her children – with all the more faith in his rightness, he executes the hated protĂ©gĂ© of Austria. With a firm hand and clear conscience of his people, Tell kills Hessler, thereby signaling a revolt to the united Swiss cantons: “We are one people – we will act as one”(Schiller, 1845, p. 48). The author shows that this action was necessary for the people to feel that the time had come for change. Hessler’s assassination provided the impetus for a revolution that gave hope to the people.
With the confident hand of a realist artist, Schiller recreated the historical and local flavor of a distant era – his William Tell is in no way the bearer of the author’s views. However, Schiller was forced to resort to this drama to an old, already rejected creative method – the deliberate exposure of the political tendency of his idea. What, if not a direct mouthpiece of the spirit of the times, are the words of the ruling baron, the dying old man of Attinghausen: “How can a peasant dare to perform such a feat without the support of chivalry?” (Schiller, 1845, p. 74). Of course, the feudal lord of the fourteenth century could not speak such words, – but Schiller was too important to outline the prospects for the further development of humanity, which were opened to him from the narrowness of the local characteristic. He now believed in the fruitfulness of changing social formations in immortal life, abolishing the once necessary historical forces (the nobility, feudalism) and replacing them with other forces, also subject to change, until the working man finally becomes a complete master of the land.
The voluntary emancipation of the serfs by Attinghausen’s nephew Rudenz only complements the dying baron’s words. The apotheosis in praise of the apt marksman Tell grows into an apotheosis of a people freed from oppression. “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” – These are the last words of this drama, the protagonists of which are the people on their way to a happy life (Schiller, 1845, p. 135). The belief in the people, in their ability to implement the national unification on a democratic, truly popular basis – this is the pathos that animates “William Tell”; this is the result of Schiller’s thoughts on the fate of his homeland. Characteristically, Schiller called William Tell not a tragedy but a drama.
Having created a drama dedicated to the liberation of the people from foreign oppressors by the people themselves, Schiller consciously emphasizes the difference in the nature and results of this popular democratic liberation from the results to which the French bourgeois revolution led – to the endless wars of conquest, to the seizure of foreign lands, to the denial of freedom and national independence of weaker peoples (O’Donoghue, 2021). Schiller alludes mostly to tyranny and tyrannicide during the French Revolution. This characteristic was used to describe corrupt political systems. With its incorporation of combative language during the radicalization of the French Revolution, tyranny and tyrannicide took on new significance. When Hessler’s persona emerged as the primary barrier to freedom, tyranny, and tyrannicide became essential ideas in revolutionary movements. The same thing occurred during the French Revolution when the populace sought to remove the monarch because he stood in the way of a tranquil existence.
The dynamics of William Tell are a movement of thought and action, but not of the soul. Throughout the play, there is no change in the characters: the virtuous villagers are still virtuous, and the cruel villain is still cruel. In the confined space of the alpine mountains and valleys lives a closed time. The heroes of the drama long for the old, so there is no clear-cut boundary between past and present; they seem to merge. For the inhabitants of the mountains, the future is equated simultaneously with the long past and the present. When the play’s finale suggests that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will remember Tell’s shot and the Swiss victory, the present is already perceived as the future past. However, into this two-dimensional harmony, the alien or new – these words are synonymous in the play – bursts in and destroys it. This is why Tell’s murder of Hessler is an accent in the play, hardly fitting into it.
Conclusion
Thus, the murder of a tyrant, the emperor’s appointee, does not arouse any sad feelings or reflections in anyone, including the tyrant Tell. Schiller saw in “Tell” a new literary genre, a score of popular festive action to commemorate the day of the long victory over tyranny. In the play, Schiller moves from a tragic perception of history to a renewed faith in the optimistic resolution of human history. In William Tell, Schiller glorifies nothing more than a defensive bourgeois revolution in the name of old rights violated by the authorities.
References
O’Donoghue, A. (2021). On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order. Cambridge University Press.
Schiller, F. (1845). William Tell. J. Burns.