In France. Voltaire’s strictures.
In France Shakespeare won recognition after a longer struggle than in Germany. Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) plagiarised ‘Cymbeline,’ ‘Hamlet,’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in his ‘Agrippina.’ About 1680 Nicolas Clement, Louis XIV’s librarian, allowed Shakespeare
imagination, natural thoughts, and ingenious expression, but deplored his obscenity. [348a] Half a century elapsed before public attention in France was again directed to Shakespeare. [348b] The Abbé Prévost, in his periodical ‘Le Pour et Contre’ (1733 et seq.), acknowledged his power. But it is to Voltaire that his countrymen owe, as he himself boasted, their first effective introduction to Shakespeare. Voltaire studied Shakespeare thoroughly on his visit to England between 1726 and 1729, and his influence is visible in his own dramas. In his ‘Lettres Philosophiques’ (1731), afterwards reissued as ‘Lettres sur les Anglais,’ 1734 (Nos. xviii. and xix.), and in his ‘Lettre sur la Tragédie’ (1731), he expressed admiration for Shakespeare’s genius, but attacked his want of taste and art. He described him as ‘le Corneille de Londres, grand fou d’ailleurs mais il a des morceaux admirables.’ Writing to the Abbé des Fontaines in November 1735, Voltaire admitted many merits in ‘Julius Cæsar,’ on which he published ‘Observations’ in 1764. Johnson replied to Voltaire’s general criticism in the preface to his edition (1765), and Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in 1769 in a separate volume, which was translated into French in 1777. Diderot made, in his ‘Encylopédie,’ the first stand in France against the Voltairean position, and increased opportunities of studying Shakespeare’s works increased the poet’s vogue. Twelve plays were translated in De la Place’s ‘Théâtre Anglais’
(1745-8). Jean-Francois Ducis (1733-1816) adapted without much insight six plays for the French stage, beginning in 1769 with ‘Hamlet,’ his version of which was acted with applause. In 1776 Pierre Le Tourneur began a bad prose translation (completed in 1782) of all Shakespeare’s plays, and declared him to be ‘the god of the theatre.’ Voltaire protested against this estimate in a new remonstrance consisting of two letters, of which the first was read before the French Academy on August 25, 1776. Here Shakespeare was described as a barbarian, whose works—‘a huge dunghill’—concealed some pearls.