SOURCE: " Wilhelm Tell as Political Drama," in Oxford German Studies, Vol. 18-19, 1989-1990, pp. 23-44.

In the following essay, Ockenden discusses the place of Wilhelm Tell in the development of political drama following the French Revolution and argues for the importance of the Stauffacher character—"a new kind of political figure who is neither a ruler/statesman, nor an intriguer, nor a professional civil servant. "

It is not surprising that the later eighteenth century, which witnessed on the German stage the introduction of middle-class figures to drama as the potential arbiters (if often unsuccessful) of their own destinies, and on a wider historical stage the achieving of power by that class in the French Revolution, should have seen the tentative beginnings of political drama. There are two ways, I believe, in which Schiller's Wilhelm Tell is of interest in this development. The first lies in its staging of...