Shakespeare et arrangée par Georges Sand. Représentée à la Comédie In both of these plays Jaques receives the especial care of the good ladies of sentiment. Georges Sand in her Preface repeats the old criticisms of Shakespeare in the right vein of classicism, pretty much in the superior tone of Viscount Lansdowne, who handled The Merchant of Venice in such cavalier fashion. "Tous ceux qui connaissent Shakespeare savent bien que si la robe du poète est partout richement brodée, elle est parfois jetée sur l'épaule du dieu avec une négligence et une audace qui ne sont plus de notre temps et que notre goût ne supporterait pas. . . . Il foulait anx pieds l'ordre, la sobriété, l'harmonie et la logique." Georges Sand, therefore, like others before her, felt it necessary to re-model the whole structure of the play, submitting it to those rules of order, sobriety, harmony and logic. As You Like It is hardly to be recognized in the Comme ll Vous Plaira which was represented at the Comédie Française. A further grievance of the gifted authoress is more original: "Shakespeare marie tout le monde, et quelques uns le plus mal possible; la douce Audrey avec le grivois Touchstone (!) et la dévouée Célie avec le détestable Olivier." Hinc illae lacrimae! We are approaching the capital charge: "Quoi qu'il en soit, j'ai pu sauver les plus belles parties de l'oeuvre d'un oubli complet (!) et saisir au vol cette magistrale figure de Jacques, l'Alceste de la Renaissance. ... J'avais tendrement aimé ce Jacques. et j'ai pris la grande libérté de le ramener à l'amour, m'imaginant de voir en lui le même personnage qui a fui Célimène pour vivre au fond des forêts et qui trouve là une Célie digne de guérir ses blessures. C'est là mon roman à moi dans le roman de Shakespeare. Georges Sand here wraps the noble dignity of Jaques, the kindly cynic, in the flowing romantic cloak of some Byronic and petulant poseur. He marries Celia, while Oliver is strenuously sent to the right-about; he is made happy and recovers his optimism, The Roman tic Jaques regenerated, heart and soul, rehabilitated (to use the cant Romantic phrase) by the tender love of Celia. "Le grivois Touchstone" is dismissed by his Audrey, who fitly marries the stupid, but honest shepherd, William. Georges Sand seems to have lacked completely and lamentably that sense of humour and that instinct of profound psychological verity which alone can help us to understand the depths and the caprices of Shakespeare's muse. In the play of Henry the Fourth Shakespeare took up the history of England again almost at the point where he had left it at the death of Richard II (1400); two years later, to be exact. It is written in two parts, which form, however, but one play, cut up into two simply because it was too long for one, as Dr. Johnson very justly said. That dramatic unity fails which is so notably characteristic of Richard II. In Richard II, Shakespeare treats only the catastrophe of the reign, and the play has therefore a real plot, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It hangs organically together, forming a complete whole, a dran a with unity of action, and so is immeasurably superior in construction at least to the often morepraised Edward the Second of Marlowe, for example. Henry the Fourth is no less inferior in this respect. It is a mere Chronicle Play, and what unity it possesses is due to the central figure of the King whose reign it portrays, an illusive unity like that of Tamburlaine. It is nevertheless the most complete example of Shakespeare's dramatic art in the handling of history. Nowhere else does he infuse such a sparkle of warm life into the dry bones of the past. Here is no mere galvanising into mechanical action, but a veritable resurrection from the dead. Living and breathing on the stage we see the people of England, King, princes, lords and common folk, playing their parts in the story of two hundred years ago. A host of vivid characters pass before our eyes. A chronicle Play. King Henry the Fourth we see, still the indomitable Boling- King Henry. broke of old, but ageing rapidly, worn out by the cares of state, Glendower Hotspur. restless and vigilant, struggling with a constant tide of revolt, Glendower is a wild, proud Welshman, a notable warrior and a dreamer, full of superstitions and of belief in magic. "I can call spirits from the vasty deep. He has an inordinate pride and confidence in himself, his destiny and his star. The very earth trembled when he was born. "These signs have marked me extraordinary, And all the courses of my life do show I am not in the roll of common men. This Celtic Napoleon will bear to be checked by no man save one, one stronger than himself, one who is "as peremptory as he is proud-minded," Percy Hotspur. Hotspur is the type of the errant knight of the Middle Ages, chivalrous and possessed of a burning lust for honour. He is never at home save in armour, ever smelling battle from afar. He is an egotist, and brutally frank in language and manner, brushing aside impatiently alike the " skimble-skamble stuff" of Glendower and the somewhat untamed caresses of his northern bride. Prince Henry describes him in a few words. "I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work!' 'O my sweet Harry!' says she, 'how many hast thou killed to-day?' 'Give my roan horse a drench.' says he; and answers Some fourteen,' an hour after, 'a trifle!' a trifle!'" He is destined, a knightly Ajax, to delive rmany huge blows, and, careless of all things save honour and esteem, to find at last an honourable grave on the field of glory, fighting desperately to the last. He meets his death very appropriately at the worthy hands of Henry, Prince of Wales. Just as Glendower's more dreamy, though ardent nature found Hotspur its master in sheer brute force and will-power, so Hotspur in his turn meets a stronger man in the person of Henry, who possesses those qualities of intellect and of steady purposefulness which he lacks himself. The Prince of Wales, the future Henry the Fifth, hero of Azincourt, and idol of the English people is, in some sort, the complete man, and certainly Shakespeare meant to represent him as such. He is endowed with a strong, practical brain, is of noble and generous instinct, as brave as a lion, and an excellent soldier and leader of men. Besides all this he recommends himself to jovial fellows by an immense zest in life. He is full of lively animal spirits, witty himself, and a great lover of a jest. As a young man he sowed his wild oats to some considerable purpose, gathering round him in the taverns of London a fine band of harum-scarum rogues. In the play of Henry the Fourth Shakespeare presents him surrounded by these faithful and disreputable comrades, drinking, laughing and ruffling it in taverns, on the high-roads, and elsewhere. The chief of this band of cheerful scamps is a most notable person, Sir John Falstaff, Knight, beyond doubt the most comic character in all literature, upon whom Shakespeare lavished lovingly all the wealth of his unique humourous genius. Each successive history-play of Shakespeare shows more and more familiarity and freedom in his treatment of the subject. Richard the Third presents on the stage nothing but lords and ladies, kings and princes, and that almost exclusively in verse. Henry the Sixth shows Jack Cade and his crowd only because of the political role they play. The idea of representing history from a dual point of view comes later. History as mirrored not only in the lives of the great, but also in the lives of the common folk, pictures of London taverns and of the people in them, couched Prince Henry. The realistic |