Shakspeare and His Times

by François Guizot

It must be admitted that those of our French critics who were the first to adopt the doctrines of Schlegel have taken care not to go quite so far as he. They were sensible of his exaggerations. They have maintained their former admiration for Racine side by side with their more recent admiration for Shakspeare; and they have persisted in throwing the blame of the mistakes of Shakspeare himself upon the times in which he lived, and upon the rare genius with which Heaven endowed him.

But we must confess, also, that this wisdom has been neither general nor of long duration. To see how the leaders of our modern school express themselves when speaking of the English and the Germans—of Schiller, of Shakspeare, and of Goëthe—we may easily perceive that they occupy, with reference to these writers, the same mental posture which La Harpe occupied with reference to Racine or Voltaire; that while they are quite willing to express censure on a point of trifling importance, they do so on the implied condition that nothing of a serious or fundamental character shall be questioned by them.

For example, in the attempt to present "Othello" in its complete form for the Théâtre Français (an attempt which, moreover, we will applaud from the very bottom of our heart), in this attempt to reproduce "Othello," verse by verse, without any abridgment, except of a part which the police would not have suffered to pass—the part of a girl of vicious life, a part besides which is quite useless, and a crowd of indecent equivoques and disgusting obscenities—who could be persuaded to see in all this a design to offer to the public, not a spectacle interesting on account of its novelty, or curious because of the period to which it carries us back, but an accomplished model of art—a work perfect in all its features?

Well! we will venture to assert that the time for these exaggerations has already passed in France; we will venture to predict that there is in the general good sense of the people—a good sense which the controversies that have been going on for the last fifteen or twenty years have developed and prepared—something which will prove an invincible obstacle to these adorations of individuals, and will prevent them from ever so gaming ground as to become common opinions and recognized doctrines. We have, with some trouble, emancipated ourselves from one extreme—we will not allow ourselves to run heedlessly into its opposite. We have disencumbered ourselves from some thousands of small prejudices—we will not allow ourselves to be swathed in a host of prejudices of another kind.

Every time that the attempt which has just been made at the Théâtre Français shall be renewed (and we hope it may be often renewed—this will be a much more worthy thing than the presentation before us of new and mediocre pieces), the problem which has already been once offered will be repeated—whether the public will consent to abandon the freedom of its judgment in favor of any thing, by whatever sanctions it may be supported—whether many of the things which it is asked to admire it will be contented only to tolerate—whether other things, similarly presented, it will condemn—whether others will be received with admiration, but from new motives, of a more immediate and personal character—whether, so far at least as impartiality is concerned, it will show itself to be superior to its leaders—and whether it will regard what is presented to it from a point of view more elevated than theirs.

We say that this has already been once realized; and we say so, not only because the mass of the public refused to take a decided stand either with the detractors of Shakspeare or with his enthusiastic admirers—this neutrality was rather owing, as we have already explained, to the unsettled state of its ideas and doctrines than to the fear lest they should be compromised—but because the impression which the piece made, in its general effect and in its details, appeared to us to involve a true judgment, an unconscious, not a premeditated judgment, which could only be read on the countenances of the audience, a judgment which did not always square (far from it) with those ideas which the most accredited critics endeavor to give us on the English work, but which was more original, and, in our judgment, more worthy of respect than theirs.

The drama in question is divided into two nearly equal parts; in the first part, which comprises the first two acts and some scenes of the third, the comic element is most conspicuous; the tragic, or to speak more exactly, the dignified, the serious, element only appears once for a brief space; in the second part, on the contrary, the tragic element predominates, the comic only appears in transient flashes.