In this translation and modification of the original play, Hamlet's mother stabs herself before the audience, a catastrophe hitherto unknown on the grand theatre, and repugnant to the French idea of classic rule.
The popularity of this play is astonishing. On the evenings of its representation the doors of the theatre are besieged at an early hour. Long before the curtain rises, the house is crowded to overflowing: and throughout the performance the audience passes from intervals of breathless attention to bursts of ungovernable applause.
The success of this tragedy may be considered one of the triumphs of what is denominated the romantic school; and another has been furnished by the overwhelming reception of Marie Stuart, a modification of the German tragedy of Schiller. The critics of the old school are sadly alarmed at these foreign innovations, and tremble for the ancient decorum and pompous proprieties of their stage. It is true, both Hamlet and Marie Stuart have been put in the strait waistcoat of Aristotle; yet they are terribly afraid they will do mischief, and set others madding. They exclaim against the apostasy of their countrymen in bowing to foreign idols, and against the degeneracy of their taste, after being accustomed from infancy to the touching beauties and harmonious numbers of Athalie, Polyeucte, and Meropo, in relishing those English and German monstrosities, and that through the medium of translation. All in vain! The nightly receipts at the doors outweigh, with managers, all the invectives of the critics, and Hamlet and Marie Stuart maintain triumphant possession of the boards.
Talma assures me that it begins to be quite the fashion in France to admire Shakspeare; and those who can not read him in English enjoy him diluted in French translations. It may at first create a smile of incredulity that foreigners should pretend to feel and appreciate the merits of an author, so recondite at times as to require commentaries and explanations, even to his own countrymen; yet it is precisely writers like Shakspeare, so full of thought, of character, and passion, that are most likely to be relished, even when but partially understood. Authors whose popularity arises from beauty of diction and harmony of numbers are ruined by translation; a beautiful turn of expression, a happy combination of words
