Shakspeare and His Times

In continuation of the Essay on the Life and Works of Shakspeare, I have published, in this volume, a series of Notices of his principal dramas, and an Essay on Othello and Dramatic Art in France in 1830, which the Duke De Broglie inserted, at that period, in the "Revue Francaise," and which he has kindly allowed me to include in this volume. Those Essays constitute, in some sort, proofs in support of the ideas which, in 1821, I endeavored to develop regarding the nature of dramatic art in general, and the particular and diversified forms which it has assumed among those nations and in those ages in which it has shone with greatest brilliancy: an art so powerful and attractive, that, in all times and at all places, in the period of its infancy as well as in that of its maturity—of its glory as well as of its decline—it has ever remained invincibly popular, and has never ceased to charm all men either by its master-pieces or by its sparkling bluettes.

Guizot.
Paris, June 10, 1852.

Contents.

Shakspeare And His Times	[9]
Shakspeare's Tragedies
Romeo and Juliet	[161]
Hamlet	[174]
King Lear	[185]
Macbeth	[192]
Julius Cæsar	[208]
Othello	[216]
Shakspeare In France	[228]
Shakspeare's Historical Dramas	[295]
King John	[297]
King Richard II.	[304]
King Henry IV.	[312]
King Henry V.	[320]
King Henry VI.	[322]
King Richard III.	[334]
King Henry VIII.	[340]
Shakspeare's Comedies:
The Merchant of Venice	[343]
The Merry Wives of Windsor	[348]
The Tempest	[354]

Voltaire was the first person in France who spoke of Shakspeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian genius, the French public were of opinion that Voltaire had said too much in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude as they were coarse.