SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE. On an April day, in 1616, a group of mourners stood round an open grave in the noble church at Stratford-on-Avon. Within that grave lay the crowned king of all dramatic literature - William Shakespeare. Notwithstanding that distinction, there seems to have been nothing in circumstance or ceremony to distinguish the occasion. They who there mourned the poet dead, were of those who had been best loved by the poet, living. He required no other following, he desired no nobler place of sepulture. To this day, the epitaph high above his head claims for him the right to sleep on there in peace, undisturbed. , There lies the burden of fifty-two years of life. Not a long life, counted by days. But life is not to be counted by days, but by deeds. He lives the longest who achieves the most. Ego me metior non ætatis spatio sed gloriâ,' as Alexander says in the historical romance, De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, of Quintus Curtius Rufus. Of the man and the poet who thus passed away, there has been some diversity of opinion. A few persons have affected to doubt whether Shakespeare ever lived at all. Others, allowing him his life, have denied him his works. Finally, some sceptical and critical judges, granting to Shakespeare both his life and his works, are inclined to believe that the works were not especially popular during the author's lifetime, nor altogether worthy of the quasi-idolatry rendered to the works and their author in our own. The truth is, that the greatness of Shakespeare was both asserted and disputed by his contemporaries. Side by side with the ill-natured spurt of Green, we have the testimony of Meres, who, in 1596, speaks of Shakespeare as being, among the English, the most excellent in both kinds (comedy and tragedy) for the stage. Only two years later, Gabriel Harvey ' wrote these words: “The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece and his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to please the wiser sort.' The same year furnishes a second competent witness, Barnefield, who confessed the charm of Shakespeare's "honey-flowing vein,' and who asserted that Venus and Adonis had placed the author's name in Fame's immortal book. Marston, the third worthy witness, in the year 1598, states that there was 'nought'then playing but the our woful story of poor Juliet and Romeo. We further learn that young lawyers were looking into Shakespeare's plays when they should have been studying Coke; and in The Return from Parnassus (1600), the author, after referring to plays from University pens, utters the joyous cry, “Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down !' Davies of Hereford (1610) calls him good Will’and“ English Terence.' About the same period, an anonymous writer bore witness to the popularity of Shakespeare, in the words : ‘Believe this; when Shakespeare is gone, and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition. Those who would investigate the whole body of evidence as to Shakespeare's popularity in his lifetime and during subsequent years may consult Dr. Ingleby's Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse. On the strength of the scattered evidence there brought together, they will certainly agree with the verdict of good Charles Knight, that Skakespeare lived in the hearts of the people; it may be added, of the people of all conditions, from the wiser sort,' who valued him as a great dramatic writer, down to the ostler at the inn at Pie Corner, who had a literary taste and boasted of possessing Lucrece and Venus and Adonis among his pamphlets.' Since the day when Shakespeare was laid to his rest in Stratford Church, he has, through his works, put a girdle round about the earth. The nation that came last within the magic circle to render homage to the magician, was the nation that is geographically nearest to us. But, on this point, France is not without apology, or even justification. Let us consider what may be said in her behalf. In the sixteenth century the Muses gave more than one brilliant son to England. Shakespeare and Marlowe were born probably in the same year, 1564. Ten years later, Ben Jonson first saw the light, in Westminster, 1574. In two years more, Fletcher came into the world, 1576, joined (again at a distance of ten years) by his noble colleague, Beaumont, 1586, a year later than Massinger. Ford was born in the same year as Fletcher, 1576. Now, here are above halfa-dozen dramatic writers, contemporaries, the like of whom was not then to be seen in the world, nor has been seen together in England since. When he who was king among them all died in 1616, the Muses were only just beginning to furnish tuneful dramatic sons to France. The seventeenth century was the era of glory, as far as the poetry of the drama is concerned, for that country. In the year in which Shakespeare passed away, there was a boy in the Jesuits' school, in his native city of Rouen, whose name was Pierre Corneille. He was then ten years of age. Very early indeed in life, accident made of him a dramatist. There was, in that same city of Rouen, a young man, Corneille's old schoolfellow, who was deeply in love with one of the youthful beauties of a city' once famed for daughters so richly endowed. The lover introduced his friend to the lady, whose 6 name was Milet; and very soon the lady showed more regard for the friend than for the lover. The consequent course of things took such a dramatic character that young Corneille shaped the incidents into a comedy, which he called Mélite. It is not a very remarkable play; but it is one of those weak things which only a young fellow of genius is likely to produce. Corneille, however, left the lady in Rouen, 'for good and all,' and came up to Paris with the comedy in his pocket. Mélite is acted, in 1628, with such success that one company did not suffice to satisfy public curiosity. It was played every afternoon on two stages. Years after, Corneille said of it: • Mélite is not written according to rule, because I was ignorant of any.' He alluded to the Aristotelian rules of unity-of time, place, and action ; and it is to be regretted that Corneille came to know and to accept them; to insist on their being observed, yet to be for ever on the point of evading them. However, on the French stage at that period only one of the unities was observed—that of time. Every piece was required to be within the four-and-twenty hours ;' but Mélite broke into a second day! Corneille was now a briefless barrister. He wrote comedies, by the produce of which he slenderly lived and generously maintained other members of his family. Richelieu had him for a while as one of his poetical secretaries; but as the secretary criticised when he ought to have polished his master's verses, he lost his place. He had written balf-a-dozen comedies which are not much better than the Cardinal could have written, and which few people even read now, before his tragedy of Médée, in 1635, gave promise of a man. In the following year, when he produced the immortal tragedy-or rather tragic drama-Le Cid, French playgoers acknowledged that in Corneille they had not merely got a man, but a master of his art. Shakespeare had been just twenty years dead, when this new foundation of the French stage was so solidly laid. • Beau comme le Cid' became a popular expression of comparison. Lines from the play became popular quotations. Small critics Alung dirt at the author, and Cardinal Richelieu, who wanted to pass for the first dramatic poet in France, was powerful and paltry enough to induce the Académie to censure the Cid as immoral and irreligious ! The master had yet to ascend higher, and the steps by which he was led to the summit of dramatic glory were made in his three tragedies, Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte. The last (and some think the grandest) was represented in the season 1639-40. Corneille then descended with the majesty of a great king; still glorious, but with diminished strength. This descent began with Pompée, 1641, a tragedy, the hero of which, like the heroine, Peace, in the drama of that name by Aristophanes, never opens his mouth. But Corneille mounted again by the production of his comedy of character, Le Menteur, first acted in 1642. In the remaining years, he gave to the stage Théodore Vierge et Martyre, Rodogune (the author's, but not the public's, especial favourite), Héraclius, Andromède, Don Sanche d'Aragon, which was a great success till the great Condé sneered at it, and then, to be of the same way of thinking as so illustrious a personage, the public neglected, if they did not hiss it. In 1650, Nicomède proved that the author could scale the great heights when he chose; but the tragedy is a political essay, to be read and thought over, rather than to be listened to-except as a series of lessons on government. Corneille lived on till 1684, poor, neglected, and adored. The Academy grudgingly opened its doors to him—who, if he had not illustrated all sides of humanity, as Shakespeare had done, had so treated the heroic side as to stand worthily, on that account, near Shakespeare himself. Corneille was, for a brief season, contemporary with Shakespeare; six years after whose death was born, in Paris (1622), that young Poquelin who assumed the name of Molière, and became the second of the three dramatic glories of France. Like Corneille, Molière was a pupil in a college of the Jesuits. When, after a strolling life, he settled in Paris, he brought with him most of the plays of which we now know him to be the author, but none of his masterpieces. Molière's career in the French capital extended from 1658 to 1673. In the two years, 1666 and 1667, he produced the two dramatic pieces which have, so to speak, made him immortal, namely, Le Misanthrope and Tartufe. Had he been the author of the latter play only, his dramatic place would be at the head of all the writers of comedy in the world. At his death, in 1673, his satire had made itself so stingingly felt, that the Church refused to honour his body with funeral rites, and a curé de Paris amiably expressed his regret that the author of Tartufe had not been burnt alive, like John Huss! Shakespeare had been dead three-and-twenty years, when Racine was born (1639) at La Ferté Milon, on the Ourcq. Seventeen years younger than Molière, the same year saw them both winners of the crown of dramatic glory. In 1667, the year of Tartufe, Racine's Andromaque proved that he who had gracefully rhymed the Thébaïde and Alexandre le Grand, had received the true inspiration, and that France possessed a successor to Corneille worthy of equal (perhaps of greater) honour. Racine more immediately challenged Corneille when he produced Mithridate, and he somewhat boldly touched the shield of Molière with his comedy Les Plaideurs. The public pronounced the comedy a failure till the Grand Monarque' declared it to be a success, and France has accepted the criticism. As to the contest between Corneille and Racine, Mme. de Sévigné thought she was the interpreter of public opinion when she protested that neither Racine nor coffee would long be thought much of in France ! This protest, however, has not been endorsed by the dramatic judges of that nation. The above-named three great dramatic writers, who lived and died within the seventeenth century, were the real founders of the French stage and drama. They naturally won a homage from their countrymen which, quite as justly, continues to be paid to them. But to neither of the glorious three nor to their contemporaries was a name known—that of Shakespeare—which is now as familiar to the intellectual portion of France as those of Corneille, Molière, and Racine, and which is, for the most part, as greatly honoured. On the other hand, the names and the works of the three great French dramatists were familiar to playgoers and to the stage in London while those great dramatists yet lived. Corneille's Cid, slightly altered in the translation, was acted before Charles the First and Henrietta Maria in 1640, just before the English stage and Monarchy were suppressed by the Puritans in power. The Cid was among the first plays that Charles the Second and his Queen went to see acted in the public theatre after the Restoration. Pepys says it was delightful to read, but a dull thing to see acted. To the matchless Orinda's translatior. of Corneille's Horace, played at Court, the little Duke of Monmouth spoke the prologue. The play (the last act of which was translated by tuneful Denham) had a great run on the Court stage. Another version, at Drury Lane, was set down by Pepys as “a silly tragedy.' Polyeucte 6 was translated for readers. Katherine Philips (Orinda) translated Pompée with such dramatic success that Lord Orrery, in execrable verse, assured her that Corneille, if he could read it' (to which he was certainly not equal), 'would deem the copy greater than the original.' 6 Later came a new translation by four fine gentlemen, Buckhurst, Sedley, Godolphin, and Waller. This version was treated with critical sourness by Orinda ; and Pepys, reading it as he was rowed from the Custom House to Deptford, declared that it was a mean play, and the words and sense not extraordinary. On the other hand, the diarist, who saw an English version of Corneille's Héraclius at the Duke's Theatre, says that it was an excellent play, and that he saw it to his great content. The English stage also took Corneille's Menteur, which, under various forms, has come down to the present day, and is now made to live and amuse by the perfect acting of Mr. Charles Mathews. Dryden has judged the original. "The most favourable to it,' he says, “ would not put it in comparison with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's'. In 1677, five years before Corneille died, his name was first pronounced on the English stage in the epilogue to Dryden and Lee's version of Edipus, which they (and chiefly Lee) built up out of Seneca and Corneille. The subject was there said to be A weight that bent e'en Seneca's strong Muse, |