Racine has several passages in his tragedies which perhaps have rather too much naiveté for the dignity of the cothurnus; for instance in the answer of Agamemnon to Achille in the tragedy of Iphigénie:
Puisque vous le savez, pourquoi le demander?
A poet of to-day would be quizzed for a line like the above, but who dare venture to point out any defect in an author of whom Voltaire has said and with justice too, that the only criticism to be made of him (Racine) would be to write under every page: "Admirable, harmonieux, sublime!"
The costume and the decorations at the Théâtre français are so strictly classical and appropriate in every respect, that it is to me a source of high delight to witness the representation of the favourite pieces of Racine, Corneille, Molière and Voltaire, which I have so often read with so much pleasure in the closet and no small quantity of which I have by heart.
The next piece I saw was the Cinnna of Corneille; and here it was that I beheld Talma for the second time. I was of course highly pleased, tho' I was rather far off to hear very distinctly; this was, however, no very great loss, as I was perfectly well acquainted with the tragedy. Talma's gestures, his pause's, his natural mode of acting gave a great relief to the long declamation with which this tragedy abounds. When this tragedy was given it was during the time that poor Labédoyère's trial was going on, and the allusions to Augustus' clemency were eagerly seized and applauded. It was hoped that Louis XVIII would imitate Augustus. Vain hope!
I have seen Phèdre; the part of Phèdre by that admirable actress Mlle Duchesnois, who performs the part so naturally and with so much passion that we entirely forget the extreme plainness of the person. She acts with far more feeling and pathos than Mlle Georges. I shall never be able to forget Mlle Duchesnois in Phèdre. She gave me a full idea of the impassioned Queen, nor were it possible to depict with greater fidelity the "Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée," as in that beautiful speech of Phèdre to Oenone wherein she reveals her passion for Hippolyte and pourtrays the terrible struggle between duty and female delicacy on the one hand, and on the other a flame that could not be overcome, convinced as it were of the complete inutility of further efforts of resistance and invoking death as her only refuge. I was moved even to tears. I am so great an admirer of the whole of this speech beginning "Mon mal vient de plus lorn" etc., and ending "Un reste de chaleur tout prêt à s'exhaler," that I think in it Racine has not only united the excellencies of Euripides, Sappho and Theocritus in describing the passion of love, but has far surpassed them all; that speech is certainly the masterpiece of French versification and scarcely inferior to it is that beautiful and ingenuous confession of love by Hippolyte to Aricie. What an admirable pendant to the love of Phèdre! In Hippolyte you behold the innocence, simplicity and ingenuousness of a first and pure attachment: in Phèdre the embrasement, the ungovernable delirium of a criminal passion.
I have seen Mlle Duchesnois again in the Mérope of Voltaire and admire her more and more. This is an admirable play. The dialogue is so spirited; the agitation of maternal tenderness, and the occasional bursts of feelings impossible to be restrained, render this play one of the most interesting perhaps on the French stage, and Mlle Duchesnois gave with the happiest effect her part in those two scenes; the first wherein she supposes Egisthe to be the person who has killed her son; in the other where having discovered the reality of his person, she is obliged to dissemble the discovery, but on Egisthe being about to be sacrificed she exclaims "Barbare, c'est mon fils!" The part of Egisthe was given by a young actor who made his appearance at this theatre for the first tune, and he executed his part with complete success (Firmin, I think, was his name). Lafond did the part of Polyphonte and did it well. At this tragedy many allusions were caught hold of by the audience according as they were Bourbonically or Napoleonically inclined; at that part of Polyphonte's speech wherein he says:
Le premier qui fut Roi fut un soldat heureux.
Qui sert bien son pays n'a pas besoin d'ayeux.
Thunders of applause proceeded from those who applied it to Napoleon. At the line:
Est il d'autre parti que celui de nos rois?