Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:10:24.144Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

III.—Schiller's Tell and the Volksstück

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

There seems to be universal agreement among Schiller's critics that his last drama, Wilhelm Tell, means a serious change of attitude toward the ideal which had guided the poet in its predecessors. Some scholars candidly regret its looseness of form, calling this a mistake which the poet should have avoided. Others endeavor with all possible pains to fit the play into the straight-jacket of the established model, and to justify the poet's willful deviations from the rules he himself had laid down. A third group asserts with much praise that the poet has written a real Volksstück—i. e., in this case, a play for the people—by choosing intentionally a popular style and form, and by making a whole people the hero of his play.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1917

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Forschungen zur deutschen Philologie, Festgabe für Hildebrandt: “Die dramatischen Quellen des Schillerschen Tell,” pp. 224-276.

2 Marbacher Schillerbuch, iii, pp. 64 ff.

3 Ibid., p. 75.

4 Ibid., p. 71.

5 Schiller's Werke, Säkular Ausg., Cotta, xvi, p. xxv.