William Tell (play)
Gioachino Rossini's four-act opera Guillaume Tell was written to a French adaptation of Schiller's play.
[1] Friedrich Schiller (who had never been to Switzerland, but was well informed, being a historian) was inspired to write a play about the legendary Swiss marksman William Tell by his wife Lotte, who knew the country from her personal experience.
[1] After his friend, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, had returned from his second journey to the Lake of Lucerne in 1779, Schiller started collecting sources.
[1] The fateful enmity of the tyrant Gessler, Governor of the Swiss cantons, and William Tell, an obscure huntsman, begins during a tempest on Lake Lucerne when Tell braves the angry waves to row to safety a peasant who is pursued by the Governor's horsemen.
His opinion of the bloodthirsty Gessler is shared increasingly by the peasantry as the oppressor fills the old jails, builds a huge new prison at Altdorf for more victims, and sets his cap upon a pole before it, commanding that all who pass must bow to it or pay the penalty of death.
Public anger is fanned into rebellion when Gessler blinds an aged man for a trifling misdemeanor.
A friend of the peasants is the aged Baron of Attinghausen, but his nephew and heir, Ulrich of Rudenz, fascinated by the splendor of Gessler's court and love for Bertha, the Governor's ward, is allied with the tyrant.
The Baron warns Ulrich that Bertha is being used only to bait him, and that the freedom-loving people will prevail in the end, but the youth goes to join Gessler.
While they are together hunting, however, Bertha reveals that she will love him only if he joins in the fight to liberate his own people from Gessler's grip.
Several peasants are trying to rescue him when the Governor's hunting party rides up and Gessler demands an explanation from the huntsman.
For this answer, Gessler orders him bound and taken to the prison at Küssnacht for his threat; but a great storm comes up which proves to be the huntsman's salvation.
Ulrich, who earlier had condemned his master for Tell's ordeal and had declared that to keep silent longer would be treason to his country and his King, has gone over wholly to the side of his people.
But he returns too late to find the old Baron of Attinghausen alive; his uncle has died with this injunction to the peasants: "The day of the nobles is passing.
The new day of the people is at hand ... the flower of chivalry is cut down, but freedom waves her conquering flag on high....
The shaft that killed Gessler ignites the signal fires of revolution, and at daybreak peasants and workingmen are tearing down the prisons.
The first public performance of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell was staged in Weimar under the direction of Johann Wolfgang Goethe on 17 March 1804.
[2] In 2004 Schiller’s play was staged for the first time at the Rütli Meadow (German: Rütliwiese), on the occasion of its 200th anniversary.
Characters portrayed on the Obers and Unters include: Hermann Geszler, Walter Fürst, Rudolf Harras and William Tell.
Jose Rizal, the famous Philippine revolutionary nationalist and author, translated the drama into his native Tagalog in 1886, having drawn much of his literary and political inspiration from Schiller and his works.
[1] Adolf Hitler, who had only narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the young Swiss Maurice Bavaud (who was later dubbed the “New William Tell” by Rolf Hochhuth), is reported to have publicly announced his regret that Friedrich Schiller had immortalized the Swiss sniper William Tell (“Ausgerechnet Schiller musste diesen Schweizer Heckenschützen verherrlichen” – "Of all people Schiller had to glorify this Swiss sniper").
