The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Part 22

What the spectator sees, says one writer who is in the main an admirable expounder of Schiller, is "gigantic Fate striding over the stage. He sees a wild, tyrannical race, burdened with ancestral guilt, turning against its own flesh and blood.... He is made to feel that the self-destruction of this race is nothing accidental, that it is a divine visitation, a judgment of eternal justice p.r.o.nounced against usurpation and lawlessness, that it means the birth of a new spiritual order out of doom and death."[127] But is this what is actually seen? Is it not rather true that Schiller makes but little out of the matter of ancestral guilt? We hear, it is true, that the old prince was of an alien stock that had won the sovereignty of Messina with the sword and held it by force. But this is no very appalling crime as the world goes, and especially as the world went in the Middle Ages. One hardly thinks of William of Normandy, for example, as a revolting criminal deserving of the divine wrath. Then we hear, too, that the old prince had appropriated to himself a wife who was 'his father's choice'. But the whole matter is disposed of in two or three choral lines which leave not even a clear, much less a strong impression. There are no data for an ethical judgment. We are not told wherein the superior right of the father consisted. For aught we know the son may have had the better claim, and the father's curse may have been only the impotent scolding of a disappointed dotard. It is difficult to see anything here which can rationally warrant eternal justice in extirpating the race. And when we pa.s.s from the presuppositions to the play itself, we see that none of the characters except Don Cesar does anything seriously blameworthy.

If then it were clearly the central purpose of Schiller to justify the moral government of the world, or to exhibit the workings of an august Fate in itself worthy of reverence, we should have to admit that he has missed the mark; for the fate that he represents is not worthy of reverence at all. But what is the central fact of the play, as seen by the unsophisticated spectator who has never read the Greek poets nor heard of the house of Labdacus? Evidently it is the murder expiated by a voluntary death. A high-minded youth knowingly kills his brother in a moment of blind rage, because he thinks that his brother has deceived him. When he learns the truth, and learns also of the old dreams and prophecies, he feels that he too must die. Here is the real tragedy,--in the resolution of Don Cesar and his steadfast adherence to it in the face of his mother's and his sister's entreaties. The apparatus of dreams and prophecies and fate is meant to work upon the mind of Don Cesar rather than upon that of the spectator. Superst.i.tion adds to the burden of his remorse until it becomes unbearable and death appears the only road to peace:

Dying I bring to naught the ancient curse, A free death only breaks the chain of fate,

In a prefatory essay upon 'The Use of the Chorus in Tragedy' Schiller defended his innovation and incidentally set his heel upon the head of the serpent of naturalism. True art, he insisted, must have a higher aim than to produce an illusion of the actual. Its object is not to divert men with a momentary dream of freedom, but to make them truly free by awakening and developing the power of imaginative objectivation. Nature itself being only an idea of the mind, and not something that appears to the senses, art must be ideal in order to represent the reality of nature. To demand upon the stage an illusion of the actual is absurd, since dramatic art rests entirely upon ideal conventions of one kind or another. Therefore, so the argument goes on, it was well when a poetic diction was subst.i.tuted for the prose of every-day life, and the next great step is to reintroduce the chorus and thereby 'declare war openly and honestly against naturalism in art'. The chorus is likened to a 'living wall which tragedy builds about itself in order completely to shut out the actual world and to preserve for itself its ideal domain, its poetic freedom'.

In consonance with these ideas we have a chorus divided into two parts, one consisting of the elderly retainers of Don Manuel, the other of the younger retainers of Don Cesar. These two semi-choruses take a certain part in the action. On the one hand they are like the materialized shadows of their respective leaders, having no will of their own. When the brothers compose their feud and embrace each other, the semi-choruses do likewise,--which comes perilously near to the ridiculous. On the other hand the semi-choruses have a horizon of their own and perform, to a certain extent, the old function of the ideal spectator. They comment in sonorous strains upon present, past and future, and upon the high matters of life and death and fate.

Schiller's argument on the use of the chorus, while interesting in its way, does not now sound very convincing; perhaps because we have come to have less faith than he had in the possibility of settling such questions by abstract reasoning. Forms of art spring out of local and temporal conditions; they have their exits and their entrances. Now and then a reversion to some earlier form may prove acceptable, but in general it can have only a curious or antiquarian interest. The man of reading, who knows his Greek poets, will be glad to have seen once or twice in his life a genuine Greek play,--preferably in the Greek language, with all the accessories as perfect as possible. Next to that he will enjoy a perfect imitation, like the first portion of Goethe's 'Helena'. But just in proportion as he is permeated by the Greek spirit he will feel the spuriousness of Schiller's so-called chorus. For the effect of the Greek chorus depended not so much upon the meaning of the words as upon the sensuous charm of the music and the dance. To sacrifice these is to sacrifice that which is most vital and leave only the simulacrum of a chorus. Some small effects in the line of the picturesque can be achieved by means of costuming, marching and grouping, but the rest can be nothing but elocution,--a frosty appeal to the ethical sense, offered as a surrogate for the witchery of song and rhythmic motion. One may be pardoned for thinking that a good ballet would have served the purpose better.

The reader of the play, however, is not disturbed by any considerations of this kind. For him the choruses are simply poetry,--admirable poetry, for the most part, in Schiller's very best vein. What a wealth of imagery and what a splendor of varying rhythms! And how cunningly the gorgeous diction twines itself, like ivy about a bare wall, concealing the nakedness of commonplace and giving an effect of n.o.ble sententious wisdom! This is and must remain the great value of 'The Bride of Messina',--to delight the reader with the charm of its style. Schiller's plea for the chorus pa.s.sed unheeded save by the philologists. His example was not imitated; indeed he himself probably had no serious hope that it would be. On the other hand, there did spring up in the next two decades a most luxuriant crop of so-called fate-tragedies, which, with their horrors, ba.n.a.lities and puerilities, soon brought the species into contempt and made it fair game for the telling satire of Platen. The fashion,--a thoroughly bad fashion in the main,--was undoubtedly set by 'The Bride of Messina'; but we cannot make Schiller answerable for the hair-raising and blood-curdling inventions of Werner, Houwald, Mullner, Grillparzer and Heine.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 127: Kuno Francke, "Social Forces in German Literature,"

page 394.]

CHAPTER XX

William Tell

Der alte Urstand der Natur kehrt wieder, Wo Mensch dem Menschen gegenubersteht; 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 G.o.ddess 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 cla.s.sical 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 ill.u.s.tration the following jottings from Fasi and Schleuchzer, two of his subsidiary authorities:

There are mountains that consist entirely of ice--_Firnen_; they shine like gla.s.s 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 Stael, 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 n.o.bly and withal so justly in her celebrated book about Germany. Madame de Stael'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 r.e.t.a.r.dation 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, sc.r.a.ps--whatever you can send! I tender hand and heart to your genius. What a work! What wealth, force, poetic beauty and irresistible power! G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionate 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 Furst. 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 st.u.r.dy 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, uninc.u.mbered 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 G.o.d'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 cla.s.sic 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 amba.s.sadors 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 pa.s.s that their lives, their property and the honor of their women are not safe from the malice, cupidity and l.u.s.t 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 va.s.sals of the House of Hapsburg. Were they willing to do that,--so it is said by Rosselmann at the Rutli meeting,--all their troubles would end forthwith; the cruel governors would deal kindly with them, would 'fondle' them. If this is so,--and other pa.s.sages confirm the saying of the priest Rosselmann,--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 n.o.ble Iberg'. One looks for her to reappear under circ.u.mstances 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 Rutli! 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 'Gotz 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. .h.i.therto taken no part except to rescue Baumgarten and to refuse his cooperation at the Rutli, 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 n.o.ble, 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 Kussnacht.

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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sing, of many and many a pa.s.sage 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 rea.s.serted 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, a.s.sert 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns 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 n.o.bility. The two scenes in which he appears are in themselves admirable.

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