CHAPTER IV.
An eminent man of our day, a celebrated historian a powerful orator, one of the former translators of Shakespeare, is mistaken, according to our views, when he regrets, or appears to regret, the slight influence of Shakespeare on the theatre of the nineteenth century. We cannot share that regret An influence of any sort, even that of Shakespeare, could but mar the originality of the literary movement of our epoch. "The system of Shakespeare," says the honourable and grave writer, with reference to that movement, "can furnish, it seems to me, the plans after which genius must henceforth work." We have never been of that opinion, and we have said so as far back as forty years ago.[1] For us, Shakespeare is a genius, and not a system. On this point we have already explained our views, and we mean soon to explain them at greater length; but let us state now that what Shakespeare has done, is done once for all,—it is impossible to do it over again. Admire or criticise, but do not recast. It is finished.
A distinguished critic who lately died,—M. Chaudesaigues,—lays a stress on this reproach: "Shakespeare," says he, "has been revived without being followed. The romantic school has not imitated Shakespeare. In that it is wrong." In that it is right. It is blamed for it; we praise it. The contemporary theatre is what it is, but it is itself. The contemporary theatre has for device, Sum non sequor. It belongs to no "system" It has its own law, and it accomplishes it. It has its own life, and it lives it.
The drama of Shakespeare expresses man at a given moment. Man passes away; that drama remains, having for eternal foundation, life, the heart, the world, and for surface the sixteenth century. That drama can neither be continued nor recomposed. Another age, another art.
The theatre of our day has not followed Shakespeare any more than it has followed Æschylus. And without reckoning all the other reasons that we shall note farther on, how perplexed would he be who wished to imitate and copy, in making a choice between these two poets! Æschylus and Shakespeare seem made to prove that contraries may be admirable. The point of departure of the one is absolutely opposite to the point of departure of the other. Æschylus is concentration; Shakespeare is diffusion. One must be much applauded because he is condensed, and the other because he is diffuse; to Æschylus unity, to Shakespeare ubiquity. Between them they divide God. And as such intellects are always complete, one feels in the condensed drama of Æschylus the free agitation of passion, and in the diffuse drama of Shakespeare the convergence of all the rays of life. The one starts from unity and reaches a multiple; the other starts from the multiple and arrives at unity.
This appears strikingly evident, particularly when we compare "Hamlet" with "Orestes,"—extraordinary double page, obverse and reverse of the same idea, and which seems written expressly to prove to what an extent two different geniuses, making the same thing, will make two different things.
It is easy to see that the theatre of our day has, rightly or wrongly, traced out its own way between Greek unity and Shakespearian ubiquity.
[1] Preface to "Cromwell."