Still, if our actually existing poets were men of the stamp of Racine and Voltaire—if, like those great men, they knew how to animate a deplorably withered frame by lavishing upon it all the treasures of sentiment and of poetry—if, imitating the noble birds of the days of chivalry, they could, like them, although carried on the hand, release themselves from time to time from the straitness of their position, and soar into the clouds with a brilliant and rapid flight, they might win some success. But it is not so; and this is exactly the one inconvenience of a style which flourished a hundred years ago, with which we, the public of to-day, are obliged to remain contented and happy.
Tragedies have been almost all fashioned after one model—all cast so very nearly in the same mode, that any one rather experienced in theatrical progression might boldly foretell the scheme of each scene as it arrived. In the first act there is the narrative of the dream or the storm; the second contains the declaration, the third the recognition, and so on. The Alexandrines march on in stately order, and seem, most of them, to belong to the stock of theatrical properties, as much as the decorations and costumes. The personages have their parts and movements appropriated and determined like the pieces in a game of chess; so much so, that we might call them, for the sake of convenience, by some generic name; for example, the king, the tyrant, the queen, the conspirator, the confidant—almost, as Goëthe has entitled the interlocutors in one of his dramas, the father, the mother, the sister, and so on. What, for instance, does it matter whether the queen, who has killed her husband, be called Semiramis, Clytemnestra, Joan of Naples, or Mary Stuart; whether the royal legislator is called Minos or Peter the Great; whether the usurper is called Artaban, Polyphontes, or Cromwell—when their words and actions, their thoughts and feelings, are always the same, or very nearly so? when they are only so many variations on one necessary plot?
It is said that a young poet, whose name we have forgotten, having borrowed the subject of his tragedy from the history of Spain, and finding himself on this account brought into collision with the censor of the press, took it into his head to transport the scene, by two strokes of his pen, from Barcelona to Babylon, and to carry the events back from the sixteenth century to a period somewhere near the time of the deluge; a plan which succeeded to his heart's content, besides that, as Babylone rhymes to the same words as Barcelone, and is composed of exactly the same number of syllables, there was but little necessity for changing the most vigorous and lofty speeches. We do not guarantee the truth of the story, but we do not think it at all improbable.
Doubtless, this insupportable monotony—the evils and puerilities of so much conventional apparatus—the disgust, the weariness, the satiety which it all excites in such a public as ours—the despondency at seeing nothing true produced for the stage—these causes have constantly led the way to all kinds of innovation. Our public is not to be captivated either by system or by caprice; it is no despiser of really excellent productions; it has no disposition to blaspheme the demi-gods of past times; but, like the little girl, it says, "My good friend, I have seen the sun so often!" Like the grand Condé, it says, "I am quite ready to forgive the Abbé D'Aubignac for not having observed the rules, but I can not forgive the rules which have made him produce such an execrable piece."
In the midst of this perplexity, not knowing what saint to invoke, who can deliver them from this
"Race d'Agamemnon qui ne finit jamais,"
these everlasting bores who, if they are hissed down today in the toga, will reappear to-morrow hooded with a turban; in this perplexity, certain talented critics make their appearance, writers of the rarest ability and of the greatest sagacity, who, with a good-natured smile, address the public in some such terms as these: