bears his daughter Ophelia ; and engages Norceste to go to the King, and relate to him the assassination of the English monarch, for the purpose of observing what effect it would produce on the royal conscience. The third act commences between Polonius and Claudius, (whom we have perhaps prematurely called king,) plotting to prevent the crowning of Hamlet. The second scene of the third act answers to our play-scene; and is exceedingly meagre and wretched, the relation of the English king's death being substituted for our episodic drama. At the end of the act, Ophelia appears, and informs the Queen, that love for her is the cause of Hamlet's madness. The fourth act opens with Hamlet's soliloquy; it is interrupted by the appearance of Ophelia, who, not very delicately, acquaints the prince, that she has disclosed the secret of their loves, and settled the affair with the Queen. He answers very ungallantly, "Le bonheur quelquefois est plus loin qu'on

for the purpose of consulting a sage old man, who is to acquaint him with important tidings. He mentions the rebellion of Cador, against whom Macbeth conducts the royal army, and indulges in presentiments and fears of ill fortune and an untimely end. Ducis is extremely fond of the prophetic mental horrors of the German school. From the second scene, in which the old man appears, we learn that Duncan has committed, secretly, his son Malcolm (supposed dead) to the care of this old man, (Sevar,) that he may be out of the reach of Cador. Duncan inquires of the character and education of his son ;-this is a poor and useless imitation of the original scene between Macduff and Malcolm. At the end of this act is a Variante, to be used or not, ad libitum ; in which the three witches make a brief appearance, and hint at the conflict then engaged. The second act takes place near Macbeth's castle, which "doit être d'un caractere terrible," as we are informed. Except one or two scenes of little import, it passes between Macbeth and his lady, (Fredegonde.) The former has just returned; he relates his having met with the witches, to whom the poet, in obedience to the usual bad taste of the French with respect to imaginative propriety, gives a classic and incongruous occupation.

"Dans les flancs entr'ouverts d'un enfant égorgé,

Pour consultér le sort, leur bras s'etait plongé."

He could not understand a Scotch

witch, without metamorphosing her into a Roman augur. Fredegonde tempts Macbeth to aim at the crown. In the last scene of the act, Duncan and Glamis enter, and are conducted to their apartments. Act the third, Fredegonde urges Macbeth to murder Duncan, saying, that she had consulted Iphyctone, who declared he should be king. They do not know Malcolm to exist, but suppose Glamis alone between them and the throne. Fredegonde still urges Macbeth-the dialogue between them is very fine, and literally taken from Shakespeare. He is about to perpetrate the crime, when interrupted by the cry of "To arms! Cador has attacked the castle!"

Act fourth commences between Macbeth and Fredegonde, after the murder of the King. The people enter, and

offer the crown to Macbeth, but with the proviso then fashionable,

“Que tu n'es rien ici qu'un premier citoyen."

Then follows an imitation of our banquet scene. Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo-becomes distracted-and his lady disperses the company. Sevar introduces Malcolm as the son of the late king. The fourth act concludes with a soliloquy of Fredegonde, meditating the destruction of the new-found Malcolm.

Act 5th-Macbeth soliloquizes-is repentant, and professes his intention to restore the crown to the young prince. Fredegonde walks in her sleep, and reveals her criminal acts and purposes. This scene is supposed to be one of Mademoiselle George's finest pieces of acting. There are two catastrophes to the play, which the actors may choose between ;-in one, Macbeth confesses the King's murder, and restores the crown; while it appears that Fredegonde, in her sleep, has stabbed her own son, mistaking him for Malcolm ;-in the other, assassins, employed by Fredegonde, are made to fall into a similar mistake, and stab Macbeth for Malcolm. O' my faith, were the French versifier living, we should indite him on the Maiming Act. The Irish never houghed cattle in a more cruel style than Ducis does Shakespeare.

The Othello," which is the chef d'œuvre of Ducis, was first acted in 1792. It is accompanied by a preface, which we should at first suspect to have been addressed to his countrymen in a tone of bitter irony; but upon examining it, we find it merely to consist of stupid flattery. It tends to il lustrate the natural tenderness of French hearts, and the impossibility of their sitting spectators of the cruel and ferocious Othello. Unluckily, this was written in 1792. They who could bear and enjoy the cold-blooded massacre of two millions of their fellowcountrymen, could not sit to behold Othello! They who-but we must not grow angry. One of the men of taste of that day, who was also, by the bye, an Academician, wrote a pamphlet, in which he proposed a vast saving to the nation. The proposal was, that the human carcases daily butchered should not be thrown to waste, but VOL. XI.

should be broiled and distributed for the food of the poor-yet these men could not tolerate Othello. The preface speaks of the tragedy of Shakespeare as une des plus touchantes, et plus terribles productions dramatiques qu'ait enfanté le génie vraiment créateur de ce grande homme. L'execrable caractére de Iago y est exprimé surtout avec une vigueur de pinceau extraordinaire." This is another sign of French taste. The character of Iago is understood and appreciated; but, as we shall see, that of Othello is apprehended by the imitator not a jot farther than its coarse outline. None of the fine shades of the high-minded and passionate soldier are caught by the imitator-the broad features are given, and indeed are quite sufficient, more than sufficient, for the French muse; but all that we esteem the characteristic beauties of Othello-of that noble ideal of a soldier, is lost upon the perceptions of Ducis-they were to him "mere leather or prunella."

The tragedy opens by an officer relating to the Doge (Moncenigo) the conquest of the rebellious Veronese by Othello. Odalbert (Brabantio) rushes in, plaining the loss of his daughter: Othello soon after enters. The scene is beautifully written, but Othello assumes a pathetic tone of expostulation, which is a poor substitute for the mild yet manly tone of the soldier of Shakespeare. The account of his courtship is closely and beautifully imitated. This act does not depart much from the original, except that Othello and Hedelmone (Desdemona) are not yet married. The second act commences between Hedelmone and her nurse; the former confesses the feeling of presentiment which we have mentioned as a favourite with Ducis. Loredan, son to the Doge, and an old suitor to Hedelmone, is introduced. He requests of her to obtain permission for him to accompany Othello to the war. He also acquaints her, that her father is engaged, from resentment against Othello, in a plot against the state-she entreats Loredan to watch over her father's safety. Towards the end, they are observed by Othello and his friend Pezare. The poetry of the scene between these two is very fine, and altogether original. The following description of the government is much esteemed by the French critics :

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It is curious to observe the attempts of the French dramatists to escape from the critical despotism that hems them in like another cordon sanitaire, and drives them back to rot one upon the traces of another. The translated drama of Falkland, successful this season, was somewhat new. But the very principle of Sylla is a daring innovation, evidently taken from our present taste in literature. "Hitherto," says Jouy, "the pathetic and the terrific have been excited in tragedy by the combat of passions or the fatality of events; I have attempted for the first time to make them spring from the energy of a single character, and to open to the spectator the abysses in the spirit of a superior mortal, and from this solely to derive all the interest of my performance." To this the critics exclaim, "These are not the elements of tragedy, but of biographic dialogue, divided into scenes and acts. You must make choice, M. Jouy, and be either a dramatic historian, or a tragic poet."

The catastrophe of the piece is simply the abdication of Sylla, which is represented in the frontispiece-the figure which purposely resembles Napoleon more than Talma, exclaiming in the words of the piece "J'ai gouverné sans peur, et j'abdique sans crainte." The reader will have perceived that the great interest of the tragedy lies in Napoleon being shadowed forth in Sylla, nor is the resemblance at all covert-Jouy's preface contains a comparison between the Roman and the French dictator. "Children of their own deeds, both ardent partizans of liberty before their individual elevation, both thought they had purchased at the price of victory the right to enslave their countries. One laid violent hold of power, the other received it as a deposit, and used it as an inheritance, &c. The systematic coldness of the two men was in each the result of different principles-in one it was the egotism of vengeance, in the other the egotism of grandeur. The craving after rerenown which devoured them both, entirely withered up the soul of Sylla; that of Napoleon still remained accessible to the pure pleasures and sweet affections of domestic life. Napoleon introduced severity in manners; Sylla's power on the contrary was wasted in debauch, &c. Sylla abdicated the empire, Napoleon lost it. Sylla terminated his days peaceably at Rome, which he had bathed in blood, and in the midst of a people whose fathers he had prescribed. Napoleon died a prisoner to the English, on an isolated rock in the ocean, where he himself marked out the space of his tomb." Talma, we all know, is not unlike Napoleon, but in Sylla the actor has rendered the resemblance most striking, by imitating the bearing, dress, &c. of the late Emperor. His hair is arranged for the same effect, with the top of the head bald-the peculiarity which gained for Napoleon among his soldiery the pet name of "notre petit tondu," and with the solitary lock lying sideways across the forehead. Another allusion is the character of Roscius introduced into the piece, and Talma is even called Roscius in the preface; his familiarity with the dictator, and the good offices thereby performed, bear a striking and honourable resemblance to the great living actor.

Jouy is a liberal. He wrote for the Minerve, and writes at present for the Miroir and Constitutionel-these tendencies, of course, bring down upon him the old school in politics and literature. From this we prophesy much advantage; the revolution and the upset of opinions preceding and subsequent to it, created a new order of judgment and taste, with respect to every thing, but poetry-every other compartment of literature was regenerated. And the regeneration of the muse might perhaps have followed, had not Buonaparte stepped in, and completely shut up her temple. But if liberality in poetie criticism should come to be united, through the zeal of opponents, with liberality in political bias, the consequence will be (a consummation devoutly to be wished for) that originality and unfettered passion will become popular in verse, as well as independent principles in prose. Too much stress on both sides has been laid on the unities a decent observation of them never shackles a poet of genius: it is not the confining of the tragic muse to the unities that cripples her, it is the confining her to generalities, and forbidding her to represent individual passion.

The preface to Sylla sets out, by way of precaution, in protesting against the dramatic taste of the English and

German schools; as this is merely a ruse to deceive his readers into enfoying the very thing which he abuses, we pass it over, merely applauding the author for his ingenuity. But the classification of the French drama is too interesting to be omitted.

"With us, the only people who are elèves of the Greeks, the drama is naturally divided into three classes: manners, intrigue, and character. And this classification, so simple, so real, is no less applicable to tragedy than to comedy. The comedies of manners are, Turcaret, the Femmes Savantes, the Precieuses Ridicules, the Philosophe sans le savoir, &c. &c.; the tragedies of manners are, the Orphelin de la Chine, Bajazet, Britannicus, Alzire, in which Racine and Voltaire had for the principal object to paint the manners of the people, amongst whom passed the action of the drama. The Marriage de Figaro is the chef d' œuvre of the comedy of intrigue, the tragedy of intrigue has for its single example the sublime enigma of Héraclius. Voltaire has infused all the ardour of the passions into Zaire and Tancrède, which are but tragedies of intrigue, happily modified by a slight delineation of manners. The comedy of character is the highest of dramatic conceptions; hence the Tartuffe and the Misanthrope, in which the genius of Moliere has surpassed the very summit of his art, remain above all comparison. To seize a character in its ensemble, to drag, in the forcible expression of Locke, the monster from his cavern, to sound the human heart, and develope it in a single character, under all its phases, in its force, and in its weakness, in its pride, and in its shame-what a task-what a glory for a poet to fulfil !

"The tragedy of character has been half intended, dimly shadowed forth by Racine in the person of Nero, nevertheless there is but a trace, an exquisite sketch, in the midst of a composition of altogether another order. The Mahomet of Voltaire might also be considered as a tragedy of this class, if historical truth had not been sometimes sacrificed to high philosophic thought in this admirable representation. The character of Auguste, in the tragedy of Cinna, is more historical; but in the midst of the passions and events, of which Auguste is the pivot, though not the cause, Corneille

reserved but a single monologue to the developement of this character."

There could not well be devised a more pernicious classification, and it proves that the originality and freedom of this author in the drama, is more owing to his genius than his taste. First of all, we exceedingly regret to be informed, that the chefd'œuvres of the French stage, the Örphelin de la Chine, Bajazet, Britannicus, and Alzire, have, for their principal object, to paint the manners of the nations in which they pass-if this be the case, the tragedies must be intolerably stupid: Sir Walter himself could not compose an interesting romance even, if manners were not a very subordinate object in the performance. In the second place, how inadequate must be the classification, that excludes Zaïre and Tancrède, and leaves them between two kinds, neither one thing nor the other. From what the author says about the comedy of character, and the momentary burst of eloquence which he indulges in on the subject, we instantly see, that there is the point of perfection for the French drama-that the flow of the poetic tide has stopped there, and has not yet reached what he calls the tragedy of character:-in short, from this sentence, as from a free confession, we learn that the French have no great tragedy. This is a truth, which however convinced of we were ourselves, yet certainly we never expected to see it thus leap, as an inevitable corollary, from the sentence of a French critic. He allows that the French possess no tragedy of character, and consequently in the consideration of the minor species, the comedy of character, he expends the acme of his panegyric. Further, we perceive from the passage quoted, that they are not only without tragedy of character, but without even an idea of what it is, or should behistorical truth, and consequently subservience of imagination, being considered the grand requisite, for failing in which even the "Mahomet" falls under the critical ban. We (or more properly I) entered upon the study of the French drama with an ardent wish to bestow upon it an admiration equal to that paid to our own-I swallowed an immense dose of anti-prejudice, which went further than mere neutralizing its opposite, for it became in itself a prejudice, and a strong one