In Order To Inspire A Foreigner With Admiration For Shakespeare, I
Would Not Give Him His Plays To Read Entire,
But I would present him with a
recueil of the most beautiful passages of that great poet; and I am
Sure
he would be so delighted with them that he would readily join in the "All
Hail" that the British nation awards him. Thus you may perceive the
distinction I make between the creative genius who designs, and the artist
who fills up the canvas; between the Poet and the Dramaturgus. I am
probably singular in my taste as an Englishman, when I tell you that I
prefer Shakespeare for the closet and Racine or Voltaire or Corneille for
the stage: and with regard to English tragedies, I prefer as an acting
drama Home's Douglas[46] to any of Shakespeare's, Macbeth alone
excepted; and for this plain reason that the interest in Douglas never
flags, nor is diverted.
In giving my mite of admiration to the French stage, I am fully aware of
its faults, of the long declamation and the fade galanterie that
prevailed before Voltaire made the grand reform in that particular: and on
this account I prefer Voltaire as a tragedian to Racine and Corneille. The
Phedre and Athalie of Racine are certainly masterpieces, and little
inferior to them are Iphigenie, Andromaque and Britannicus, but in the
others I think he must be pronounced inferior to Voltaire; as a proof of my
argument I need only cite Zaire, Alzire, Mahomet, Semiramis, l'Orphelin de
la Chine, Brutus.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 134 of 558
Words from 36433 to 36691
of 151859
