Rudenz

Rudenz’s closing appearance makes his change public: arriving alongside Bertha, he salutes the peasantry and then declares that all his serfs are free. The announcement follows Bertha’s offer of her hand to a free Swiss man, joining their personal future to the end of serfdom on Rudenz’s lands.

Final Appearance

Rudenz enters with Bertha while the crowd is gathered around Wilhelm Tell. He salutes the peasantry, a gesture that places him in direct acknowledgment of the assembled people. As the mountain music continues, Bertha embraces Hedwig; when the music stops, she steps into the centre and offers her hand to the young man, describing their union as that of a free Swiss maiden and a free Swiss man.

Bertha and the Peasantry

The scene gives Rudenz a place beside Bertha at the public close of the drama. Her embrace of Hedwig and her declaration precede his own announcement, setting the personal union within a broader communal celebration. Rudenz’s salute to the peasantry is his visible gesture toward that community; the scene presents him not apart from the people but among them.

Emancipation and Ending

Rudenz’s decisive act is his declaration that, from that moment, all his serfs are free. The scope is explicit: he frees those held in serfdom on his own lands. His words turn the scene’s language of freedom into a concrete change in status, while placing responsibility for that change in the hands of a former lord. Music resumes and the curtain falls, ending the play with Rudenz’s emancipation of his serfs alongside the public celebration.