Thunders of applause proceeded from those who applied it to Napoleon. At
the line:
Est il d'autre parti que celui de nos rois?
a loud shout and clapping proceeded from the Royalists; but I fancy if
hands had been shown these last would have been in a sad minority. I have
often amused myself with comparing the Merope of Voltaire with that of
Maffei and am puzzled to which to give the preference. Maffei has made
Polyphonte a more odious and perhaps on that account a more theatrical
character, while Voltaire's Polyphonte is more in real life. In the play of
Voltaire he is a rough brutal soldier, void of delicacy of feeling and not
very scrupulous, but not that praeternatural deep designing villain that he
is represented in the piece of Maffei. In fact Maffei's Polyphonte appears
too outre; but then on the stage may not a little exaggeration be
allowed, just as statues which are destined to be placed in the open air or
on columns appear with greater effect when larger than the natural size?
Alfleri seems to have given the preference to the Merope of Voltaire.
I have seen Talma a second time in the part of Nero in the Britannicus of
Racine; Mlle Georges played the part of Agrippina. Talma was Nero from head
to foot; his very entry on the stage gave an idea of the fiery and
impatient character of the tyrant, and in the scene between him and his
mother Agrippina nothing could be better delineated. The forced calm of
Agrippina, while reproaching her son with his ingratitude, and the
impatience of Nero to get rid of such an importunate monitress, were given
in a style impossible to be surpassed. Talma's dumb show during this scene
was a masterpiece of the mimic art. If Talma gives such effects to his
roles in a French drama, where he is shackled by rules, how much greater
would he give on the English or German stages in a tragedy of Shakespeare
or Schiller!
Blank verse is certainly better adapted to tragedy than rhymed
alexandrines, but then the French language does not admit of blank verse,
and to write tragedies in prose, unless they be tragedies in modern life,
would deprive them of all charm; but after all I find the harmonious pomp
and to use a phrase of Pope's "The long majestic march and energy divine"
of the French alexandrine, very pleasing to the ear. I am sure that the
French poets deserve a great deal of credit for producing such masterpieces
of versification from a language, which, however elegant, is the least
poetical in Europe; which allows little or no inversion, scarce any poetic
license, no enjambement, compels a fixed caesura; has in horror the
hiatus; and in fine is subject to the most rigorous rules, which can on no
account be infringed; which rejects hyperbole; which is measured by
syllables, the pronunciation of which is not felt in prose; compels the
alternative termination of a masculine or feminine rhyme; and with all this
requires more perhaps than any other language that cacophony be sedulously
avoided.
