nding 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 cooeperate, 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 t