William Tell Told Again

A complaint about taxes earns Arnold of Melchthal a dip of his finger in the Governor’s boiling oil—and an extra charge for its use. In Hermann Gessler’s Switzerland, even protest comes with a bill.

Long before hotels and Englishmen’s Mont Blanc photographs, Switzerland is under Austrian rule, and Gessler has found a tax for nearly everything, from sheep to jam. His subjects’ polite appeals go nowhere; his threats are backed by a kind-faced executioner, a steaming cauldron, and a tambourine for collecting fees. Then William Tell, master archer, refuses to bend to the Governor’s rule, and Gessler finds a crueler way to test him. Wodehouse retells the legend with straight-faced absurdity, where tyranny is dreadful—and its paperwork somehow worse. What will Gessler demand of the man who will not be cowed?

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