SOURCE: “Necessity and Freedom,” in Friedrich Schiller's Drama: Theory and Practice, The Clarendon Press, 1954, pp. 126-54.

In the following essay, Stahl discusses Schiller's last plays, Die Braut von Messina, Wilhelm Tell, and the fragment Demetrius, and finds in them several new features—notably the exploration of the tension between necessity and free will, the external rather than the internal compulsion of characters, and tragic action based on the transformation of the hero's character—that indicate a shift in style and emphasis in Schiller's dramatic works and a development in his notion of tragedy.

The new features of Schiller's last plays are striking enough to make us question once more how far his theory of tragedy may assist in the interpretation of his creative work. Whereas the theory is unthinkable without the notion of a single hero, neither Die Braut von Messina nor Wilhelm Tell possesses an individual protagonist...