The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03

SCENE VIII

COUNTESS TERZKY (with a light).

Her bed-chamber is empty; she herself

Is nowhere to be found! The Neubrunn too,

Who watch'd by her, is missing. If she should

Be flown—but whither flown? We must call up

Every soul in the house. How will the Duke

Bear up against these worst bad tidings? O

If that my husband now were but return'd

Home from the banquet!—Hark! I wonder whether

The Duke is still awake! I thought I heard

Voices and tread of feet here! I will go

And listen at the door. Hark! what is that?

'Tis hastening up the steps!

SCENE IX

COUNTESS, GORDON

GORDON (rushes in out of breath).

 
                       'Tis a mistake!
 

'Tis not the Swedes—Ye must proceed no further

Butler!—O God! where is he?

GORDON (observing the COUNTESS).

Countess! Say—

COUNTESS.

You are come then from the castle? Where's my husband?

GORDON (in an agony of affright).

Your husband!—Ask not!—To the Duke—

COUNTESS.

 
                 Not till
 

You have discover'd to me—

GORDON.

 
                     On this moment
 

Does the world hang. For God's sake! to the Duke.

While we are speaking—

[Calling loudly.]

Butler! Butler! God!

COUNTESS.

Why, he is at the castle with my husband.

[BUTLER comes from the Gallery.]

GORDON.

'Twas a mistake—'Tis not the Swedes—it is

The Imperialists' Lieutenant-General

Has sent me hither—will be here himself

Instantly.—You must not proceed.

BUTLER.

 
                            He comes
 

Too late.

[GORDON dashes himself against the wall.]

GORDON.

O God of mercy!

COUNTESS.

 
                    What too late?
 

Who will be here himself? Octavio

In Egra? Treason! Treason!—Where's the

Duke?

[She rushes to the Gallery.]

SCENE X

Servants run across the Stage, full of terror. The whole Scene must be spoken entirely without pauses.

SENI (from the Gallery).

A bloody, frightful deed!

COUNTESS.

What is it, Seni?

PAGE (from the Gallery).

O piteous sight!

[Other servants hasten in with torches.]

COUNTESS.

What is it? For God's sake!

SENI.

 
                            And do you ask?
 

Within, the Duke lies murder'd—and your husband

Assassinated at the Castle.

[The COUNTESS stands motionless.]

FEMALE SERVANT (rushing across the stage).

Help! help! the Duchess!

BURGOMASTER (enters).

 
                What mean these confused
 

Loud cries that wake the sleepers of this house?

GORDON.

Your house is cursed to all eternity.

In your house doth the Duke lie murder'd!

BURGOMASTER (rushing out).

Heaven forbid!

1ST SERV.

Fly! fly! they murder us all!

SECOND SERVANT (carrying silver plate).

 
              That way! the lower
 

Passages are block'd up.

VOICE (from behind the Scene).

Make room for the Lieutenant-General!

[At these words the COUNTESS starts from her stupor, collects herself, and retires suddenly.]

VOICE (from behind the Scene).

Keep back the people! Guard the door!

SCENE XI

To these enter OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI with all his train. At the same time DEVEREUX and MACDONALD enter from out the Corridor with the Halberdiers.—WALLENSTEIN'S dead body is carried over the back part of the stage, wrapped in a piece of crimson tapestry.

OCTAVIO (entering abruptly).

It must not be! It is not possible!

Butler! Gordon!

I'll not believe it. Say no!

[GORDON, without answering, points with his hand to the body of WALLENSTEIN as it is carried over the back of the stage. OCTAVIO looks that way, and stands overpowered with horror.]

DEVEREUX (to BUTLER).

Here is the golden fleece—the Duke's Sword—

MACRON.

Is it your order—

BUTLER (pointing to OCTAVIO).

 
                    Here stands he who now
 

Hath the sole power to issue orders.

[DEVEREUx and MACDONALD retire with marks of obeisance. One drops away after the other, till only BUTLER, OCTAVIO, and GORDON remain on the stage.]

OCTAVIO (turning to BUTLER).

Was that my purpose, Butler, when we parted?

O God of Justice!

To thee I lift my hand! I am not guilty

Of this foul deed.

BUTLER.

Your hand is pure. You have

Avail'd yourself of mine.

OCTAVIO.

 
                            Merciless man!
 

Thus to abuse the orders of thy Lord—

And stain thy Emperor's holy name with murder,

With bloody, most accursed assassination!

BUTLER (calmly).

I've but fulfilled the Emperor's own sentence.

OCTAVIO.

O curse of Kings,

Infusing a dread life into their words,

And linking to the sudden transient thought

The unchanging irrevocable deed.

Was there necessity for such an eager

Dispatch? Couldst thou not grant the merciful

A time for mercy? Time is man's good Angel.

To leave no interval between the sentence,

And the fulfilment of it, doth beseem

God only, the immutable!

BUTLER.

 
                               For what
 

Rail you against me? What is my offense?

The Empire from a fearful enemy

Have I deliver'd, and expect reward;

The single difference betwixt you and me

Is this: you placed the arrow in the bow:

I pull'd the string. You sow'd blood, and yet stand

Astonish'd that blood is come up. I always

Knew what I did, and therefore no result

Hath power to frighten or surprise my spirit.

Have you aught else to order; for this instant

I make my best speed to Vienna; place

My bleeding sword before my Emperor's throne,

And hope to gain the applause which undelaying

And punctual obedience may demand

From a just judge.

[Exit BUTLER.]

SCENE XII

To these enter the COUNTESS TERZKY, pale and disordered. Her utterance is slow and feeble, and unimpassioned.

OCTAVIO (meeting her).

O, Countess Terzky! These are the results

Of luckless unblest deeds.

COUNTESS.

 
                  They are the fruits
 

Of your contrivances. The Duke is dead,

My husband too is dead, the Duchess struggles

In the pangs of death, my niece has disappear'd,

This house of splendor, and of princely glory,

Doth now stand desolated: the affrighted servants

Rush forth through all its doors. I am the last

Therein; I shut it up, and here deliver

The keys.

OCTAVIO (with a deep anguish).

O Countess! my house, too, is desolate.

COUNTESS.

Who next is to be murder'd? Who is next

To be maltreated? Lo! the Duke is dead,

The Emperor's vengeance may be pacified!

Spare the old servants; let not their fidelity

Be imputed to the faithful as a crime—

The evil destiny surprised my brother

Too suddenly: he could not think on them.

OCTAVIO.

Speak not of vengeance! Speak not of maltreatment!

The Emperor is appeased; the heavy fault

Hath heavily been expiated—nothing

Descended from the father to the daughter,

Except his glory and his services.

The Empress honors your adversity,

Takes part in your afflictions, opens to you

Her motherly arms! Therefore, no farther fears;

Yield yourself up in hope and confidence

To the Imperial Grace!

COUNTESS. (with her eye raised to heaven).

To the grace and mercy of a greater Master

Do I yield up myself. Where shall the body

Of the Duke have its place of final rest?

In the Chartreuse, which he himself did found

At Gitschin, rests the Countess Wallenstein;

And by her side, to whom he was indebted

For his first fortunes, gratefully he wish'd

He might sometime repose in death! O let him

Be buried there. And likewise, for my husband's

Remains, I ask the like grace. The Emperor

Is now the proprietor of all our castles.

This sure may well be granted us—one sepulchre

Beside the sepulchres of our forefathers!

OCTAVIO.

Countess, you tremble, you turn pale!

COUNTESS (re-assembles all her powers, and speaks with energy and dignity).

 
                          You think
 

More worthily of me than to believe

I would survive the downfall of my house.

We did not hold ourselves too mean to grasp

After a monarch's crown—the crown did fate

Deny, but not the feeling and the spirit

That to the crown belong! We deem a

Courageous death more worthy of our free station

Than a dishonor'd life.—I have taken poison.

OCTAVIO.

Help! Help! Support her!

COUNTESS.

 
                      Nay, it is too late,
 

In a few moments is my fate accomplish'd.

[Exit COUNTESS.]

GORDON.

O house of death and horrors!

[An OFFICER enters, and brings a letter with the great seal. GORDON steps forward and meets him.]

 
                                      What is this?
 

It is the Imperial Seal.

[He reads the address, and delivers the letter to OCTAVIO with a look of reproach, and with an emphasis on the word.]

To the Prince Piccolomini.

[OCTAVIO, with his whole frame expressive of sudden anguish, raises his eyes to heaven.]

[The Curtain drops.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: Thomas: The Life and Works of Schiller, p. 330.]

[Footnote 23: Permission The Macmillan Co., New York, and G. Bell &

Sons, London.]

[Footnote 24: A great stone near Lützen, since called the Swede's Stone, the body of their great king having been found at the foot of it, after the battle in which he lost his life.]

[Footnote 25: Could I have hazarded such a Germanism as the use of the word after-world, for posterity—"Es spreche Welt und Nachwelt meinen Namen" might have been rendered with more literal fidelity:—Let world and after-world speak out my name, etc.]

[Footnote 26: I have not ventured to affront the fastidious delicacy of our age with a literal translation of this line,

 
                           werth
 

Die Eingeweide schaudernd aufzureger.]

[Footnote 27: Anspessade, in German Gefreiter, a soldier inferior to a corporal, but above the sentinels. The German name implies that he is exempt from mounting guard.]

[Footnote 28: I have here ventured to omit a considerable number of lines. I fear that I should not have done amiss, had I taken this liberty more frequently. It is, however, incumbent on me to give the original, with a literal translation.

 
  Weh denen, die auf Dich vertraun, an Dich
  Die sichre Hütte illres Glückes lehnen,
  Gelockt von deiner geistlichen Gestalt.
  Schnell unverhofft, bei nächtlich stiller Weile
  Gährts in dem tückschen Feuerschlunde, ladet
  Sich aus mit tobender Gewalt, und weg
  Treibt über alle Pflanzungen der Menschen
  Der Wilde Strom in grausender Zerstörung.
 

WALLENSTEIN.

 
  Du schilderst deines Vaters Herz. Wie Du's
  Beschreibst, so ist's in seinem Eingeweide,
  In dieser schwarzen Heuchlers Brust gestaltet.
  O, mich hat Höllenkunst getäuscht! Mir sandte
  Der Abgrund den verflecktesten der Geister,
  Den Lügenkundigsten herauf, and stellt' ihn
  Als Freund an meiner Seite. Wer vermag
  Der Hölle Macht zu widerstehn! Ich zog
  Den Basilisken auf an meinem Busen,
  Mit meinem Herzblut nährt ich ihn, er sog
  Sich schwelgend voll an meiner Liebe Brüsten,
  Ich hatte nimmer Arges gegen ihn,
  Weit offen liess ich des Gedankens Thore,
  Und warf die Schlüssel weiser Vorsicht weg,
  Am Sternenhimmel, etc.
 

LITERAL TRANSLATION

Alas! for those who place their confidence on thee, against thee lean the secure hut of their happiness, allured by thy hospitable form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation.—WALLENSTEIN. Thou art portraying thy father's heart; as thou describest, even so is it shaped in his entrails, in this black hypocrite's breast. O, the art of hell has deceived me! The Abyss sent up to me the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend by my side. Who may withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glutfull at the breasts of my love. I never harbored evil toward him; wide open did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise foresight. In the starry heaven, etc.—We find a difficulty in believing this to have been written by Schiller.]

[Footnote 29:

 
  This is a poor and inadequate translation of the affectionate simplicity
  of the original—
  Sie alle waren Fremdlinge; Du warst
  Das Kind des Hauses.
 

Indeed the whole speech is in the best style of Massinger. O si sic omnia!]

[Footnote 30: It appears that the account of his conversion being caused by such a fall, and other stories of his juvenile character, are not well authenticated.]

[Footnote 31: We doubt the propriety of putting so blasphemous a statement in the mouth of any character.—T.]

[Footnote 32: This soliloquy, which, according to the former arrangement; constituted the whole of Scene IX., and concluded the Fourth Act, is omitted in all the printed German editions. It seems probable that it existed in the original manuscript from which Mr. Coleridge translated.—Ed.]

[Footnote 33: The soliloquy of Thekla consists in the original of six-and-twenty lines, twenty of which are in rhymes of irregular recurrence. I thought it prudent to abridge it. Indeed the whole scene between Thekla and Lady Neubrunn might, perhaps have been omitted without injury to the play.—C.]

[Footnote 34: These four lines are expressed in the original with exquisite felicity—

 
  Am Himmel ist geschäftige Bewegung.
  Des Thurmes Fahne jagt der Wind, schnell geht
  Der Wolken Zug, die Mondessichel wankt,
  Und durch die Nacht zuckt ungewisse Helle.
 

The word "moon-sickle," reminds me of a passage in Harris, as quoted by Johnson, under the word "falcated." "The enlightened part of the moon appears in the form of a sickle or reaping-hook, which is while she is moving from the conjunction to the opposition, or from the new moon to the full: but from full to a new again, the enlightened part appears gibbous, and the dark falcated."

The words "wanken" and "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or pedantic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"—literally, The Draft, the Procession of clouds; freely—The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward in swift stream.]

[Footnote 35: A very inadequate translation of the original—

 
  Verschmerzen werd' ich diesen Schlag, das weiss ich,
  Denn was verschmerzte nicht der Mensch!
 

LITERALLY.

 
  I shall grieve down this blow, of that I'm conscious:
  What does not man grieve down?]
 

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION TO WILLIAM TELL

BY WILLIAM H. CARRUTH, PH.D.

Professor of Comparative Literature, Leland Stanford University

William Tell is the last complete drama written by Schiller, finished February 18, 1804, in the author's forty-fifth year and something over a year before his death. After this he completed only a pageant, The Homage of the Arts, although he was occupied with many plans for other plays, including Demetrius, founded on the career of the Russian pretender of this name, of which he left the first act. William Tell is the last of Schiller's five great dramas, a series beginning with Wallenstein, written within nine years, constituting, along with his ballads and many other poems, the work of what is called his "third period." This period was preceded by Schiller's chief prose works and the historical and philosophical studies preparatory thereto, together with considerable reading of Greek and English classics, notably Homer and Shakespeare. The influence of his historical and critical studies and of this reading is evident in the dramas: Wallenstein, Maria Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, The Bride of Messina, William Tell. But of these, William Tell stands apart in several ways.

For all of them Schiller made careful preliminary studies, but for none in such detail as for Tell. He had not only a remote historical material to deal with, but also a land and customs which he had never seen and which nevertheless he wished to present with great fidelity. His chief source was the Swiss chronicler Tschudi, of the sixteenth century, from whom he took not only the main features of his action, but many touches of scenery and much actual phraseology. In addition he studied the Swiss historian Johannes von Mueller, maps and natural histories of Switzerland, and received also some oral notes from Goethe, to whom, in fact, he owed the original suggestion of dramatizing the story of William Tell.

Unlike the other dramas of Schiller's last period, William Tell has no plot in the technical dramatic sense. There is no snare of circumstances laid which forces a hero, after vain attempts to elude or unloose it, to tear his way out at the cost of more or less innocent lives. We see the representatives of three small, freedom-loving democracies pushed beyond endurance by the outrages of tyranny, pledging mutual support in resisting these encroachments upon their liberties, and carrying out a successful resistance, aided by the wholly fortuitous assassination of the tyrannical emperor. We see, as a single instance of these oppressions, the arrogant caprice of the bailiff Gessler in demanding homage to the Austrian hat, his jealousy of the freeman Tell expressed in imposing as a penalty for neglected obeisance the shooting of an apple from his little son's head, the successful meeting of this test, and in turn Tell's vengeance through the exercise of this same prowess in shooting Gessler as he rides home through the Hohle Gasse. Mingled with these elements we see the patriotic support of the common people by a native noblewoman, Bertha von Brunneck, and her successful effort to win to this cause, through his love for her, the young Baron von Rudenz, whose uncle Attinghausen, always loyal to his people, hears in dying the news of his nephew's conversion, while with his last breath he prophesies the triumph of liberty. These three threads are woven into a single pattern through the element of the common cause. This is the unity of the action, which many critics have found wanting in the play. Moreover these three plans of action coöperate, if not by deliberate foresight, yet by coincidence of time and purpose, and in some measure by common personages.

The theme of William Tell had been used as early as the sixteenth century in one of the early popular pageants with which the modern German drama begins. These pageants occupied the whole of several days in presentation and employed, including all supernumeraries, as high as three hundred people. Schiller knew the old Tell Play and imbibed something of its spirit. He uses masses of populace in William Tell as in no other of his plays except the Camp of the Wallenstein trilogy. It may be that the influence of the old popular play together with the nature of his material led him to dispense here with the unity of action, the plot, and the expression of tragic guilt, which may be found in all his other later plays.

Along with keen appreciation, such as A.W. Schlegel's comment: "Imbued with the poetry of history, with a treatment true to nature and genuine, and, considering the poet's unfamiliarity with the country, astonishingly correct in local color," William Tell met from the first much adverse criticism. This applied first of all to the looseness of connection already cited between the various elements of the action, and further, to the supposed superfluousness of the Parricide episode in the Fifth Act, to the alleged unnaturalness of Tell's long speeches and to the ignoble nature of his assault upon Gessler from ambush. The last was given the poet in the legend of Tell, which in general he took over with pious reverence as authentic history. The Parricide episode was introduced, partly because it was actually there in history and helped to complete the victory of the peasants' cause, partly in order to give a better color to Tell's own act, as being less prompted by selfish considerations. The criticism of Tell's speeches, whether his pithy, epigrammatic sentences in Act I, Scenes 1 and 3, and elsewhere, or his long monologue in Act IV, Scene 3, applies to the whole constitution of the conventional stage with just as much validity against Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar and Hamlet as against William Tell. True, it is not plausible that Tell recited 100 lines of beautiful poetry while lying in wait for Gessler; neither is it likely that Prince Hamlet talked to himself in pentameters.

In general this play is more objective than Schiller's other plays, and this was a quality which he admired in Goethe's work and strove for in his own. Despite the technical criticisms, we find that the play is filled with beautiful descriptions and noble sentiments nobly expressed. On the stage most of the scenes are exceedingly fascinating and effective. These beauties are quite sufficient to hide the lack of unity, and the total effect with the majority of the people is a high esthetic and ethical gratification. The play has remained one of the most popular pieces on the German stage and has had an incalculable effect in the cultivation of national feeling.

* * * * *

WILLIAM TELL