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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

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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.