393-1

Prej kësaj koke, ku vendosën mollën, Liri e re më e mirë do të blerojë. E vjetra shembet, kohët po ndyshojnë, një jetë e re po lulëzon gërmadhash. Atdheut besnik, shiko t’i rrish pranë, E ta pushtosh me gjithë zemrën tënde; kjo është e forta rrënjë e forcës sate. Atje në vend të huaj, qëndron vetëm, si i dobëti kallam që thyen shqota.

Santi primeres lectures ***

Like many other medieval folk-heroes, the early-14th-century Swiss freedom-fighter William Tell turns out to have left little or no solid evidence to prove that he ever existed — the earliest written mentions of his name are about a century after his supposed lifetime, while many of the stories told about him have suspiciously close parallels to much older mythological sources. Nonetheless, he has long been an important symbol of Swiss national identity, and he achieved pan-European status as an icon of liberty around the time of the French Revolution.

Schiller half-jokingly claimed that he had started writing his play in 1803 to put an end to the persistent rumours that he was working on a play about William Tell — in practice the impetus seems to have come mostly from his wife Charlotte, who had a long-standing interest in Swiss culture, and from Goethe. Schiller himself never visited Switzerland, but one of the first things he did when he started work on the play was to order a large-scale map of the Vierwaldstättersee. The stage directions show clear traces of this geographical interest: we are told exactly which mountains should be visible in the background of each scene. For the details of the Tell legend, Schiller mostly followed Aegidius Tschudi's Chronicle, written in the late 16th century. The first performance was in Weimar in March 1804, and the play was published in October of that year.

With his historian's hat on, Schiller introduces a couple of interesting nuances into the story. One aspect of this is a careful attempt to make a distinction between legitimate rebellion against a (local) ruler who oversteps his constitutional authority and wrongful attempts to usurp the divinely appointed authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. Throughout the play, the rebels make it clear that they are only seeking to restore their constitutional rights, and in the penultimate scene Tell turns away the man who has come to him for help after assassinating the Emperor Albrecht. Obviously, that is meant to be relevant to the situation in Germany at the time of writing, and also to the post-1789/post-1776 world more generally. Another nuance is the way he keeps Tell apart from the political leaders of the rebellion: he is a man of action whose personal bravery is an inspiration for others, a decent ordinary man pushed beyond the limits of toleration by an arrogant ruler, but he doesn't make speeches or take part in the Oath on the Rütli, contrary to most Swiss versions of the story.

The play is Schiller's only full-length drama not framed as a tragedy: in the title it is simply "Schauspiel" (a play). Where The bride of Messina only had five named characters, it has about forty. As well as the usual serious debates between political leaders, there are a number of big, set-piece crowd scenes with lots of different things going on at once, much as in Wallenstein's Camp. Especially interesting is the scene (III:iii) where Gessler's men-at-arms, Friesshardt and Leuthold, arrest Tell and are set upon by an angry crowd — Schiller showing us how fragile authority is when it is only based on force — and the gratuitously complex scene in the hollow way in Act IV, when Tell is setting up to assassinate Gessler and all sorts of passers-by (including a complete wedding party) threaten to get in the way.

Of the Schiller plays I've read, this is the one that I can most easily imagine working well on a stage, although it would be an expensive and complex one to produce, and of course it comes with its own historical baggage because of the way it has been adopted as a kind of nationalist ritual by the Swiss. (Hitler also loved it at one point, but is said to have lost interest somewhat when he realised people were identifying him with Gessler...) ( )

I learnt to read thanks to a fortnightly magazine called Story Teller that was around in the early 80s – it was one of those publications that came with a cassette taped to the front cover, on which various celebrities of the day could be heard reading out fairytales and children's stories, while you read along in the lavishly-illustrated magazine. Frankly, every child deserves to grow up listening to Brian Blessed bellow out The Elves and the Shoemaker, or Joanna Lumley politely explain Gulliver's Travels.

One of my favourite stories – indeed one of my strongest memories of childhood – was William Tell, which drew on the inspired combination of Tom Baker and Gioachino Rossini (together at last). Of course I didn't know who Tom Baker was then, I just knew I loved the way he enunciated ‘Gessler's black heart’ with such relish; and I certainly didn't know who Rossini was – I probably assumed the Overture was just something they'd come up with for the sake of the Story Teller recording – I only knew that the music got me so riled up that, afterwards, I used to charge around the house in some frenzy, trying to liberate the airing cupboard from the Habsburg Austrian yoke.

If you have a spare few minutes, treat yourself here.

So anyway. Though Schiller had a lot to live up to by the time I finally got around to reading him, his play also found fertile ground. And though I am the least nationalistic person imaginable, I have always had a soft spot for tales of national freedom or independence. This one is put together with consummate skill, different scenes and conversations echoing each other very deftly. The poetic flourishes are well translated in my edition by William F Mainland in the 70s.

The herald cries his summons to the lists,
But no sound comes to these sequestered valleys;
I only hear the melancholy note
Of cowbells and the dreary ranz des vaches.

There is an interesting tension in the treatment of the central character, who is often discussed but not often on stage. Perhaps it comes from the fact that Schiller, as a professional historian, knew only too well that Tell probably never really existed; Schiller the historian and Schiller the dramatist have, perhaps, slightly different ideas about how large a role he should play. Much of his dialogue consists of regurgitated proverbs, as though he's merely a personification of general folk wisdom – most of it revolving around the theme of self-sufficiency, which is something of a recurring motif here, for people as well as for countries.

I find national myths like this weirdly moving – not so much the original story as the way it has captured the imaginations of so many generations of people. I'm determined to get down to the open-air staging of the play that's put on every summer outside Altdorf, where these legendary events actually ‘happened’. Until then I'll make do with the words on the page – supplemented, natch, by regular doses of Tom Baker. ( )