urce_ a bas!
Et moi qui dans ses voeux trouvais tant de soulas,
Qui du miel _de ses vers_ ai suce la musique,
De sa raison je vois descendre la tunique
Sur moi, malheur!... C'est comme au lointain le tin-tin
De la cloche ... de pres qui se change en tocsin.
De tout ce que j'ai vu conserver souvenance
Et voir ce que je vois! Quelle desesperance!

We are at a loss which to admire most--Ophelia sucking the music from
Hamlet's honeyed verses, or the "sweet bells" whose tin-tin changes to a
tocsin, or the comparison of Hamlet to fine lace, or the "melancholy
ending to a grand epic."

The passage--

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother,

is thus translated:

Nous obeirons, plutot dix fois qu'une. N'est elle pas notre mere?

M. de Chatelain confesses in a note that his translation is not in
accordance with the text, but he adds: "Nous ne concevons pas la penee
ainsi exprimee." It is a good thing for Shakespeare that he has found a
French commentator who understands what he meant to say better than he
did himself.

Ophelia's first exclamation in the mad scene, "Where is the beauteous
majesty of Denmark?" is translated,

De Danemarck ou donc est _la reine jolie_?

Such an epithet applied to the middle-aged and matronly Gertrude, the
mother of the thirty-years'-old Hamlet, is pretty--very pretty, indeed.
A few pages farther on the "bonny-sweet Robin" of Ophelia's song is
supposed by the translator to be a bird, as he thus renders the passage:

Car le gentil Robin n'est un oiseau de proie,
Il fait tout ma joie!

It is also exceedingly amusing to note how the old adjective "whoreson"
bothers M. de Chatelain, who seems to consider it a word of weight and
meaning. The "whoreson dead body" of the gravediggers' scene is turned
into "le cadavre des enfants de nos meres;" and in like manner that
"whoreson mad fellow Yorick" is presented to us as "un fou ne d'une
fille a la morale elastique."

The tragedy of _Hamlet_ by Ducis does no wrong to the manes of
Shakespeare, for though the title-page declares that it is "imitated
from the English," nothing is left of Shakespeare's play save the names
and the fact that Hamlet's father had been murdered before the action of
the drama begins. Hamlet is the reigning king of Denmark, Claudius is
first prince of the blood and father of Ophelia, and Polonius is an
ordinary conspirator. There is no ghost and no gravedigger. Ophelia