Part 4 — THE PRESENT ROMANTIC SCHOOL OF FRENCH LITERATURE.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ HAMLET.

We have often taken occasion to express our opinion on the present romantic school of French literature, as opposed to what may be designated as the classical literature of that country. We think that the French have succeeded better in their old vocation than in their new one, and that with all their vivacity and sprightliness they are not a very romantic people. The romantic school of France is not of national growth; but has been transferred from England and Germany, both in prose and poetry. There is nothing in the character of the French that is romantic, their imagination resembling much more that of the Greeks and Romans, and their love of glory being much more classical than that of any modern notion. To an Englishman, an American, or a German, French stage logic appears absolutely destitute of interest or meaning, but to a Frenchman it is eminently full of truth and significance, though the subjects are, with but few exceptions, taken from ancient history. Racine’s Achilles and Agamemnon are true Frenchmen, and his Alexander much more resembles Louis XIV., Conde, Turenne, or Napoleon, than Shakspeare’s Brutus resembles Charles Fox, or his Julius Cæsar, Oliver Cromwell. The English and the German poets depict men; the French only Frenchmen, though the hero of the play be a Roman or a Greek; and hence their old literature, as we may now call it, is eminently national. There is no incoherence in Achilles calling Iphigenia “Madame,” nor in her calling him “Monsieur;” for if Achilles and Iphigenia had spoken French to each other, as they are obliged to do on the French stage, they could not, without a gross breach of politeness, have used any other title in addressing each other. It is sufficiently classical that Achilles should call Iphigenia “Madame,” considering that she was but betrothed to him. In modern language she would have been called “Mademoiselle.”

Those who imagine the language of Racine and Voltaire unnatural and forced, need but acquaint themselves with the French people, and they will soon perceive that even the French people of the present day think, feel and act through the Greek idiom, and in conformity with their classic models. Not the Greeks in the Morea, or in Syria, who are nothing but Turks and Jews and Frank rabble, without a country, and without national associations, but the Parisians are the true representatives of the Greeks among the moderns.

Even in common life, in their harangues in the Chambers, in the pleadings of their lawyers, the charges of their judges, and, to a certain extent, even in their periodical writings, the French are admirably classical, even at the expense of cogent reasoning; that is, they are modern Greeks and Romans, and resemble them also in their national character. We have, of course, no reference to the Spartans; but to the Athenians the French bear a goodly resemblance, and, as far as that goes, they are decidedly agreeable—though Heathens in more than one sense of the word. No modern people are as much alive to wit, sarcasm and epigrammatic conversation as the Parisians—and there is no other mob in Europe as much capable of relishing a joke, or a witticism, or of being inspired by a happy impromptu as the canaille of the French metropolis. With all its fierce and ungovernable passions, it is capable of noble and generous emotions, and of practicing, at least for a time, a degree of self-denial which is bordering on the classical. No modern people lives as much in public as the French, or is as much dependent on popular applause—none is so keenly alive to national renown, none so fond of pleasure, of dramatic amusements, of the arts. Louis Philippe thought his throne and his dynasty less in danger from the opposition press, than from the genius of caricaturists. The spirit of the latter the people seized in an instant, and the passions excited by them were truly ungovernable. Hence the public sale of caricatures was one of the first things interdicted by the September laws.

With the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, the French romantic school of literature was ushered into existence; the three Coriphaes of which were De Lavigne, De Lamartine, and Chateaubriand. Schiller, Young, and Milton, seemed to have been their models; but the modern prose writers soon followed the lyric poets in their imitations of the romantic schools of England and Germany; and we have since had French pupils of Fielding, Smollet, Hoffmann, and Jean Paul Richter. Eugene Sue at first imitated Fennimore Cooper; but he soon gave into the “tendency novels,” on the Miss Martineau style of treating political and domestic economy. But his great genius, and the rich resources of his imagination, soon made him shoot by his dull originals, and he has since grappled successfully with religion, morals, and politics; in all which combats he may be said to have come out victorious; for he has nearly, if not altogether, annihilated his antagonists.

The Feuilleton literature which has grown in proportion to the decline of essays and memoirs, has opened a new field to the romantic pens of France, and has made that style of writing popular with the masses. Since then the abuse of it has passed all bounds; half a dozen writers have absorbed the Feuilletons of all the large sheets published in the capital—so that talents less known and appreciated must content themselves with some feudal tenure under one of these literary lords; for it must not be imagined that writers like Sue, Alexandre Dumas, Soulié, &c., do their own works, or are put to the necessity of even inventing the incidents of their stories. All this is done for them by their literary vassals, who work for five francs a day, while their masters, who occasionally correct the phraseology of some chapter, but whose principal business it is, when matters come to a crisis, to furnish the dénouement and the conclusion, to which they put their name, receive hundreds of thousands for their contributions.

But what the feudal writers of the romantic school of France have not attempted till lately was to imitate Shakspeare on the stage. Hitherto the modern dramas of Victor Hugo were more in the melo-dramatic line, and as such admirably adapted to the taste of the frequenters of the theatre de la Porte St. Martin. But Victor Hugo was a brave man, and with the popularity acquired among the masses, soon forced his way to the French academy, as Lucien Bonaparte, at the head of his grenadiers, forced the legislative assembly of the republic to close its sessions. He got in and seated himself, and has since had strength enough to draw some of his best friends after him, notwithstanding all the opposition of the classic Molé, who has even pronounced a discourse against Alfred de Vigny.

Alexandre Dumas, the Créol of the Isle of Bourbon (the French use the term Créol as a sort of embellishment to a Mulatto) is the greatest literary factotum of France now living. He imitates every thing—history, comedy, tragedy, novels, and romance, and will with great difficulty be kept from “the forty” qui en savant comme quatre.^[1] His Monte Christo is an imitation of “The Wandering Jew;” his Age of Louis XIV. and XV., an important commentary on Voltaire; but his chef d’œuvre we have now before us;—it is nothing less than a new version of Shakspeare’s Hamlet!

The present Feuilleton literature of France is, properly speaking, the commercial or shop-keeper literature of the day, in which a few thoughts abstracted from some greater works are carefully spun out and disposed of at retail prices; or, to use a still better figure, a ragout with all sorts of spices, but made from a piece of meat which has served to appease the appetite of hundreds. There is a perfect dearth of ideas in all of them, and a morbid desire for ornament. The form is everywhere more valuable than the substance—the elegance of style superior to the naked thought. It is the process of the gold-beater, who, with a single grain of that precious metal, covers the backs of a whole library.

The taste for Shakspeare is, in France, of recent origin. Since the performance of Macready on the French boards, Parisian audiences have become acquainted with ghosts, witches, and the whole laboratory of philosophical superstition in which the British bard surpassed all others, ancient and modern. Still Shakspeare remained unintelligible or unpalatable to many, notwithstanding the learned reviews of the Revue de deux Mondes, and the Revue de Paris, both of which strove to show that though in point of abstract genius Shakspeare may have possessed more than Racine, Voltaire, and Corneille put together, still he lacked that scenic arrangement, and that peculiar close connection between cause and effect which distinguishes the dramatic works of France. “Shakspeare’s Hamlet is a philosophical dissertation,” said a French writer, “in a dramatic form.” “There is no reason for Hamlet’s madness”—“none in the world for Ophelia’s ravings, who ought to spurn the taunts and insults of her coward lover,” &c.

All these criticisms have moved Alexandre Dumas to try his hand at the work, and to correct the logic and dramatic arrangement of “the British savage, who occasionally found a pearl on a dunghill.” The work of the French Creole is admirable of its kind; but equally “unintelligible” in regard to the scenic arrangements. Hamlet is as much a coward in the French play as he is in the English, only a little less philosophical; and instead of Laertes and the king being killed, the queen poisoned, and what not, the ghost takes charge of eternal justice and finishes them off himself. Why he does not do so, in the first act, immediately after his appearance, is an enigma; but as that would have saved the remaining four acts—which would not have answered the views of Alexandre Dumas—it was necessary that Hamlet—the only character who survives in the French play—should do some courting, and the queen and king some talking and feasting, all according to the rules of the French drama. We cannot refrain, by way of a rich treat, from giving the readers of the magazine the closing scene of Dumas’s play. It will speak for itself, and save us the necessity of further comment.

Hamlet, the Ghost, the King, Laertes, Gertrude, Courtiers.

Hamlet. L’ombre! l’ombre!

Viens voir tes meurtriers mourir, fantôme sombre!

King. (Under Hamlet’s hand.) A l’aide!

Hamlet. (To the Courtiers on a sign of the Ghost.)

Laissez-nous.

(Hesitation among the Courtiers.)

Il n’en ferait pas deux! Le feu roi, n’est ce pas?

Roi de votre existence et de votre agonie?

Il sied qu’entre nous cinq la pièce soit finis.

Sortez—tous! (All intimidated slowly leave the stage.)

A présent, vous trois, le voyez-vous?

Laertes. Dieu puissant! Le roi mort!

King. Mon père!

Gertrude. Mon époux!

Laertes. Grâce!

Ghost. Oui ton sang, trop prompt t’entraina vers l’abîme,

Laërte, et le seigneur t’a puni pour ton crime;

Mais, tu le trouveras; car il sonde les cœurs,

Moins sévère là-haut. Laërte prie et meurs.

(Laertes dies.)

Gertrude. Pitié! Pitié!

Ghost. Ta faute était ton amour même

Pauvre femme! et Jésu vous aime quand on aime!

Va, ton cœur a lavé ta honte avec tes pleur;

Femme ici, reine au ciel, Gertrude éspère et meurs.

(Gertrude dies.)

King. Pardon!

Ghost. Pas de pardon! va meurtrier infâme

Va; pour ton crime affreux, dans leur circle de flamme

Satan et les enfers n’ont pas trop de douleur;

Va, traitre incestueux, va!—désespère et meurs!

(King dies.)

Hamlet. Et moi, vais-je rester triste orphelin sur terre,

Et respirer, cet air imprégné de misère?

Tragédien choisi pour le courroux de Dieu,

Si j’ai mal pris mon rôle, et mal saisi mon jeu,

Si, tremblant de mon œuvre, et lassé sans combattre,

Pour un que tu voulais j’en ai fait mourir quatre,

Oh! parle, est-ce que Dieu ne pardonnera pas:

Père, et quel châtiment m’attend donc?

Ghost. Tu vivra!

One can see that Dumas snatches a grace beyond the reach of the usual drama. The ghost acts the part of the Lord’s messenger, and pronounces sentence on each culprit. The queen is “a woman here,” and “an angel there;” because she loved much—the king is too well served in going to the devil, Laertes dies with some hope of salvation; but Hamlet lives to repent of his sins; having by his cowardice killed four persons instead of one! This is French stage logic. As to the language it is the most trite and commonplace, that one can hear in front of the theatre from the hackmen; and the tragic muse is certainly not that one of the hallowed nine which particularly favors the author of Monte Christo.

F. J. G.