![]() ![]() But that is where popularity becomes problematic. ![]() Tell was something for everybody, then (who could be against it, other than totalitarian regimes, such as Hitler's ) - and something for all seasons. Schiller himself had hoped that Tell would appeal to the “heart and senses” and be “effective on stage,” in other words, that it would be a “Volksstück,” “für das ganze Publikum.” Whether taking such hints or not, audiences have usually experienced the work as a celebratory play or a festive event, a Festspiel jubilating about the victory of a popular sort of idealism that restores the sovereignty of the people with unfailing aplomb. No wonder at least one critical intellectual, Swiss as it happens but no doubt speaking for many others, fantasized about a “Schiller without Wilhelm Tell” (Muschg). W ilhelm T ell (1804) - unique in Schiller's oeuvre in that it is subtitled “Schauspiel” - has always been taken to be the most easily accessible of Schiller's plays, appealing primarily, if not exclusively, to children and the Swiss, to opera lovers appreciating the son et lumière, as well as to connoisseurs of familiar quotations, and, just possibly, to aficionados of kitsch, be they naïve or sophisticated. ![]()
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