Tell Takes on Franco: Alfonso Sastre's Reception of Schiller's Last Play

Author: Tully, Carol

Source: Publications of the English Goethe Society, Volume 75, Number 1, March 2006 , pp. 59-68(10)

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Abstract:

Schiller's last play, Wilhelm Tell, has long been acknowledged as a clarion call for the values of freedom and social justice. Completed in 1804, the play's treatment of the Tell myth resonated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, indeed, still has relevance today in a world where the warnings of history are often ignored. It is then entirely appropriate that Schiller's play should provide another playwright, this time working in Fascist Spain, with the material for a damning attack on a dictatorial police state. This paper will examine Alfonso Sastre's metatheatrical adaptation of Schiller's piece in his 1955 play Guillermo Tell tiene los ojos tristes (William Tell has sad eyes). Examination of the piece reveals a critique of both state and opposition set against an unthinkable turn of events as Sastre explores an alternative outcome: Tell as infanticide.

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/174962806X99649

Publication date: 2006-03-01

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