The theme of 'Tell' is the successful revolt of the Forest Cantons against their governors. Three actions that have no necessary connection with one another--the conspiracy of the cantons, the private feud of Tell and Gessler, and the love-affair of Rudenz and Bertha--are carried along together in such a way that all find their natural conclusion in the final celebration of victory. This feature of the play has often been criticized as impairing its unity; and certainly, from the conventional point of view the objection has some force. 'Tell' is a play without a preponderating hero. We may say that it has three heroes, or rather five, since among the conspirators interest is pretty evenly distributed between Stauffacher, Melchthal and Walther Fürst. But in reality the hero is the Swiss people considered as a unit. Stauffacher and the other conspirators interest us as representatives of a suffering population. To portray the suffering and the termination of it through sturdy self-help is the central purpose of the play. This it is which gives it an essential unity, notwithstanding the three separate actions. The theme is an inspiring one, and the modern world owes Schiller an immense debt for presenting it in austere simplicity, unincumbered with any dubious or disturbing philosophy. One cannot help loving so good a lover of freedom; for the sentiment does honor to human nature, notwithstanding some latter-day indications that it is going out of fashion. It may not be the highest and holiest of enthusiasms for the individual,--we give our best homage rather to self-surrender,--but if any political emotion is worthy of a lasting reverence, it is that one which attaches men to the motherland and leads them to stand together against an alien oppressor. Sometimes it may be well, in God's long providence, that a weak or a backward people should be absorbed or ruled by a stronger power; but the sentiment which leads it to fight against absorption or subjugation is none the less admirable. And when the foreign domination is reckless and inhuman, standing for nothing but vindictive malice and the greed of empire; and when the victims of the misrule are strong in the simple virtues of the poor, we have the case in its most appealing aspect. This is the case that is presented in 'William Tell',--the most notable drama in modern literature upon the theme of national resistance to foreign tyranny. Its influence in Germany as a classic of political freedom--during the Napoleonic era and later, when it was a question of setting a limit to domestic absolutism--has been immense. And there is really no danger of its losing its potency; for it appeals to a sentiment which, while it may wax and wane with the movements of the _Zeitgeist_, is now wrought into the heart-fiber of all the occidental nations, and not least of all--contrary to an opinion widely accepted in this country--of the Germans.