given as Shakspeare had written it. He spoke with admiration of the individuality of Shakspeare's characters, and the varied play of his language, giving such a scope for familiar touches of pathos and tenderness and natural outbreaks of emotion and passion. "All this," he observed, "requires quite a different style of acting from the well-balanced verse, flowing periods, and recurring rhymes of the French drama; and it would, doubtless, require much study and practice to catch the spirit of it; and after all, added he, laughing, "I should probably fail. Each stage has its own peculiarities which belong to the nation, and can not be thoroughly caught, nor perhaps thoroughly appreciated by strangers."
[To the foregoing scanty notes were appended some desultory observations made at the time, and suggested by my conversations with Talma. They were intended to form the basis of some speculalations on the French literature of the day, which were never carried out. They are now given very much in the rough style in which they were jotted down, with some omissions and abbreviations, but no heightenings nor additions.]
The success of a translation of Hamlet in the Théâtre Français appears to me an era in the French drama. It is true, the play has been sadly mutilated and stripped of some of its most characteristic beauties in the attempt to reduce it to the naked stateliness of the pseudo-classic drama; but it retains enough of the wild magnificence of Shakspeare's imagination to give it an individual character on the French stage. Though the ghost of Hamlet's father does not actually tread the boards, yet it is supposed to hover about his son, unseen by other eyes; and the admirable acting of Talma conveys to the audience a more awful and mysterious idea of this portentous visitation than could be produced by any visible spectre. I have seen a lady carried fainting from the boxes, overcome by its effect upon her imagination.
