Martin W. Walsh
The Urner Tellenspiel of 1512: Strategies of Early Political Drama
Volume 34.2, Summer 2000
The early sixteenth-century text known as the Urner Tellspiel or Tellenspiel (The Canton Uri Tell Play) has been called the earliest political drama of the German language.1 Given Switzerland’s role as the avant-garde of Western democracy, it might well be considered the first purely secular, political drama of Western Europe. As the first theatrical treatment of the Wilhelm Tell saga, it is naturally overshadowed by its illustrious descendant, the great romantic drama of Schiller. Even in its own century this anonymous “folk” drama was recast into a more respectable literary form by Jakob Ruf of Zurich. It is this 1545, post-Reformation version that has received the lion’s share of critical attention among scholars of the early Swiss stage. My purpose here will be to examine the earlier play, this first-ever “political drama.” I shall be asking some basic questions. How might the piece have been realized? What were its original intentions? What dramatic strategies did it employ?
Notes
1 Max Wehrli, ed., Das Lied von der Entstehung der Eidgenossenschaft/ Das Urner Tellenspiel. Quellenwerk zur Entstenhung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, Abteilung III, Band 2, Erster Teil (Aarua: H. R. Sauerlander & Co., 1952). Other edition consulted: Jakob Baechtold, ed., Schweizerische Schauspiele des sechszehten Jahrhunderts (Zürich: J. Huber, 1893). All translations are the author’s own, preparatory to a fully rhymed, English acting version. For early Swiss history and Tell mythos see E. Bonjour, H. S. Offler, and G. R. Potter, A Short History of Switzerland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); W. D. McCracken, The Rise of the Swiss Republic [1901] (New York: AMS Press, 1970); Wilhelm Oechsli, History of Switzerland, 1499-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922); Anton Gisler, Die Tellfrage: Versuch ihrer Geschichte und Losung (Bern: K. J. Wyss, 1895); and the richly illustrated Tell: Werden und Wandern eines Mythos, ed. Lilly Stunzi (Bern/Stuttgart: Hallwag Verlag, 1973).
_________________________________________________________________________________
| Comparative Drama home | Contact the Editors | Reproduction Permission |
| Subscriptions and Back Issues | Submission Guidelines | Links |
| Current Issue | Upcoming Issues | Essay and Contributor Index |