A respected villager’s son prevents Gessler’s men from stealing oxen. Tempers rise when Gessler metes out extreme punishments. He demands that the peasants bow down to the stick. Then, in a condescending display, he sets a cap upon a stick and declares that this stick represents the king. Gessler sends many to jail-so many that he builds a massive new prison to hold more of the peasantry. The King of Austria has sent Gessler to control the three Swiss cantons, or states, to prevent the possibility of an uprising. Tell directs the waters to take the peasant to safety, saying that the lake is more likely to take pity on him than the cruel Governor. Tell observes a peasant rowing across Lake Lucerne in the middle of a storm the Governor’s men, who cannot cross the waters with their horses, pursue the peasant. Tell makes an enemy of Hermann Gessler, governor over the Swiss cantons and portrayed as little more than a petty tyrant. The action begins in the early fourteenth century. The drama is known as Wilhelm Tell in Germany. Schiller, a historian, was inspired by his wife, Lotte, who knew something of Swiss history and legend, to write the play. Friedrich Schiller’s William Tell is an 1804 German drama based on the legend of Swiss archer William Tell, set against the backdrop of the medieval Swiss movement towards independence from the Habsburg Empire.
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