The most serious blemish in 'William Tell' is the introduction of Johannes Parricida in the fifth act,--an idea which Goethe attributed to feminine influence of some sort.[128] The effect of it is to convert the rugged, manly Tell of the preceding acts into a sanctimonious Pharisee with whom one can have little sympathy. No doubt there is a moral difference between his act and that of Parricida, but it is a difference which one does not wish to hear Tell himself dilate upon. Seeing that the murdered emperor was solely responsible for the brutal governors and thus indirectly for all the woes of Switzerland; and seeing, too, that his death is the only guarantee we have at the end that the killing of Gessler will do any good, and not simply have the effect to bring down upon the land, including Tell and his family, the vengeance of some still more fiendish successor,--considering all this, one would rather not hear those horrified ejaculations of Tell about the pollution of the murderer's presence. They may produce a certain stagy effect of contrast, but the effect was not worth producing at the expense of Tell's character. As for the love-story in 'William Tell', it is hardly of sufficient weight to merit extended discussion. Both Bertha and Rudenz are rather tamely and conventionally drawn, to meet the need of a pair of romantic lovers; they evidently cost their creator no very strenuous communings with the Genius of Art. Their private affair of the heart has nothing to do with the Tell episode and is but loosely related to the popular uprising. Their absence would not be very seriously felt in the drama, save that one would not like to miss Attinghausen as a picturesque representative of the old patriarchal nobility. The two scenes in which he appears are in themselves admirable. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 128: See Eckermann's "Gespräche", under date of March 16, 1831. What Goethe there says, however, is in flat contradiction of the following passage contained in a letter of Schiller to Iffland, written April 14, 1804: "Auch Goethe ist mit mir überzeugt, dasz ohne jenen Monolog und ohne die persönliche Erscheinung des Parricida der Tell sich gar nicht hätte denken lassen."] CHAPTER XXI The End.--Unfinished Plays, Translations and Adaptations Es stürzt ihn mitten in der Bahn, Es reiszt ihn fort vom vollen Leben. _'William Tell'_.