From a lecture delivered at the Lyceum Theatre in London, 1899.

THERE is no more striking exemplification of the occasional stupidity of clever men than Voltaire’s letter to the French Academy, read aloud by D’Alembert on August 25th, 1776. That protest against Shakespeare to a corporation to whose judgment Cardinal de Richelieu, Pierre Corneille, and George Scudéri had submitted “Le Cid,” is a monument of narrow-minded and absolutely ridiculous criticism. Voltaire, who loved, understood, and imparted to Frenchmen a knowledge of English literature at a time when—as he himself alleged—France knew nothing of England but the name of Marlborough and the doggerel song, “Marlbrook s’en va t-en guerre,” Voltaire, who had translated Milton, Pope and Dryden, complimented Locke, and praised Newton, analyzed in that memorable letter “Macbeth,” “Othello,” and “Hamlet,” applying to those masterpieces the critical process which an obscure Boulevard journalist might to-day apply to a drama of the Ambigu or the Porte Saint-Martin. He went so far with his facile pleasantries, aimed at “Billy” Shakespeare, that D’Alembert advised him to suppress certain offensive sentences, and eventually did not read his friend’s letter to the Academy in its entirety.

  This episode goes to prove what enormous progress has been achieved by the knowledge and, I may say, the cult of Shakespeare among intelligent Frenchmen in the course of a century—say, from 1776 to 1876. Voltaire admitted that Shakespeare, “low, unruly, and absurd as he was, displayed sparks of genius.” Voltaire gave himself credit for audacity when he declared that “in this obscure chaos, composed of murder and buffoonery, heroism and turpitude, vulgar chatter and great interests, there were natural and striking features.” Features!

  A hundred years later Victor Hugo proclaims Shakespeare “the master of drama, one of those demigods before whom men bow down, one of the forces and glories of nature.” The proscribed poet was gazing at the sea from the Guernsey beach, and his son, François Victor, suddenly asked him how the long, slow, dull hours of exile might best be utilized?

  “Translate Shakespeare,” replied his father. “I will contemplate the ocean!”

  Thus Victor Hugo invested Shakespeare with the grandeur, power, charm, music, storminess, infinite seduction, and infinite terror of the sea. He was, indeed, an ocean of thought—an ocean which reflected heaven itself. The nineteenth-century poet was endowed with a far more open mind, a far more vigorous understanding than the eighteenth-century philosopher. But one must do Voltaire the justice to admit that although he criticized Shakespeare with a silly vivacity which smacks more strongly of the dramatic author’s professional jealousy than of critical justice, he also frequently sang his praises with convincing fervor. He did even better, for he imitated Shakespeare. Voltaire’s “Mort de César” and “Zaïre” are timid but genuine Shakespearean adaptations. That admirable musician, Gounod, said to me one day, while listening to some of the “Faust” melodies, miserably droned out by a peripatetic barrel-organ: “You can hear, my dear friend, that we composers only reach popularity by the way of calumny!” I am tempted to say that Voltaire was one of the first to make Shakespeare known to us, and to popularize him in France—as the organ grinder popularized Gounod—by calumniating him.

  Let me—quite temperately—defend Voltaire, who has been accused of despising Shakespeare, whereas the only acceptable pieces of Voltairean drama were borrowed from the plays of the author of “Hamlet.” The truth is that Voltaire bows down as deeply as anybody before Shakespeare’s genius. While pointing out his defects he places him side by side, in admiring appraisement, with Newton and—perhaps ironically—with Frederick II. Now in Voltaire’s opinion, Newton was “the sublime man!”

  All men of genius resemble one another in some particular respect. Molière and Shakespeare, for instance—two misanthropes whose disappointed love takes the form of bitter irony. The Jacques of “As You Like It,” it has been well said, is an Alceste of the Renaissance. But he himself has a brother—an elder brother in respect to anger and hatred—Timon of Athens. Misanthropy incorporate never gave utterance to such eloquent curses as Timon hurled against mankind. Never did incensed prophet rain down upon social corruption more scathing invectives.

  Here Alceste is far surpassed. The two geniuses, moreover, depict themselves in their respective works. Molière studies a man; Shakespeare humanity. Alceste is a misanthrope; Timon is misanthropy itself.

  Shakespeare’s torrents of rage may be easily accounted for by the fact that he lived at a time when men bore with difficulty “the burden and heat of the day.” The pains suffered during heavy and sinister hours are reflected in the lamentations of his personages. The gloomy story of his age underlies his work. He wrote, so to speak, as one wading through blood; and he suffered, though not of his personal ills, for fortune had come to him with maturity of years. The poet might have allowed himself to lead a happy life; but could he? The man of imagination was also a man of conscience. It did not suffice him, as Taine will have it, to obey the genius that inspired him with terrible drama or sparkling comedy, manifesting the ghost of Banquo, or the chariot of Queen Mab. He insisted upon raising his voice in protest on behalf of the weak and oppressed, and in crying out aloud for justice.

  The historian of English literature, as unjust to Shakespeare as he was to Sterne, either did not or would not see that Shakespeare was a humanitarian. The poet’s eminent commentator turned a deaf ear to the appeals he addressed to the future; heartrending ejaculations, which resounded like consolatory anachronisms in Elizabeth’s time, when the headman’s ax was constantly imbrued in English blood.

  Was Shakespeare a democrat? I am inclined to think so. In “King Lear,” for instance, there are outbreaks which shed sudden light upon his inmost thoughts. The king, destitute and straying about the country in the rain with his fool and one faithful follower, takes refuge in an empty hovel. His thoughts turn towards the poor wretches whom he had erstwhile treated as beggars, and whom, in his misery, he recognizes as his brethren.

  Lear—that is Shakespeare—thus recommends self-sacrifice and preaches pity, inspired not only by heaven’s decree, but with a profound love of justice. At other times Shakespeare, with cruel irony, shows us the dust of Alexander stopping a beer barrel. He goes still further, e.g.:—

  Louis XIV. would have been extremely surprised had Molière taken the liberty of putting such realism as this into words. Molière, however, did not indulge in these infernal pleasantries. He was more reasonable and less formidable than Shakespeare, while every whit as human. His Tartuffe, to my mind, is a greater hypocrite than Iago, whose contrivances are somewhat clumsy. Again, I might compare, for instance, Harpagon with Shylock; or, rather, the women created by the genius of the supreme English and French dramatists. In the latter case I should venture to say that if Shakespeare’s women—the offspring of dreams and magic spells—are made to be worshiped, Molière’s women, delicious in their simplicity, reasonableness, and grace, are made to be espoused. But why compare, and why prefer? Let us admire and love.

  A few months ago, in the presence of its author, M. Jean Aicard, I was conducting a rehearsal of the last translation of Shakespeare produced in France—that of “Othello.” While the eternally thrilling drama was being acted on the stage—while Desdemona, surrounded by captains, soldiers, and Cypriotes, was awaiting her tempest-tossed consort, another storm seemed to be brewing between two great nations made to esteem and love one another, and to strive in common throughout the world in the cause of progress and liberty. In a word, Fashoda just then cast its shadow over our Shakespearean rehearsals, and the latest translator of “Othello,” admiring like myself the great poet of sempiternal passion and pain, said to me:—

  And in fact while disquietude darkened the horizon, Shakespeare, everlasting Shakespeare, was drawing towards each other the publics of France and England by the agency of one of his master works. The dead man, entombed centuries ago, was mobilizing troops who were the soldiers of Art, and who—from Mounet-Sully down to the humblest “super” of the Venetian senate—took arms to fight for his glory. I admired that histrionic legion, stirred to action by the posthumous will of genius, those men of to-day, moved by passions of the sixteenth-century man, those artists of another race interpreting, resuscitating, revivifying the work of a profoundly English genius which belongs to all nations; and I said to myself: “Nothing is finer, nobler, and greater than dramatic art.” Just as heaven is the same for all men, art is the same for all nations. Genius is the great reservoir of human peace.