Belloy at a lucky moment showed, in his _Siege de
Calais_ (1765), that rhetorical patriotism had survived the Seven
Years' War; he was supposed to have founded that national, historic
drama which the President Henault had projected; but with the _Siege
de Calais_ the national drama rose and fell. Laharpe (1739-1803) was
the latest writer who compounded classical tragedy according to the
approved recipe. In the last quarter of the century Shakespeare became
known to the French public through the translation of Letourneur.
Before that translation began to appear, JEAN-FRANCOIS DUCIS
(1733-1816), the patron of whose imagination was his "Saint
Guillaume" of Stratford, though he knew no English, had in a fashion
presented Hamlet (1769) and Romeo and Juliet to his countrymen; King
Lear, Macbeth, King John, Othello (1792) followed. But Ducis came
a generation too soon for a true Shakespearian rendering; simple and
heroic in his character as a man, he belonged to an age of philosophers
and sentimentalists, an age of "virtue" and "nature." Shakespeare's
translation is as strange as that of his own Bottom. Ophelia is the
daughter of King Claudius; the Queen dies by her own hand; old Montague
is a Montague-Ugolino who has devoured his sons; Malcolm is believed
to be a mountaineer's child; Lear is borne on the stage, sleeping
on a bed of roses, that he may behold a sunrise; Hedelmone (Desdemona)
is no longer Othello's wife; Iago disappears; Desdemona's
handkerchief is not among the properties; and Juliet's lark is
voiceless. Eighteenth-century tragedy is indeed a city of tombs.

Comedy made some amends. Before the appearance of Regnard, the actor
Baron, Moliere's favourite pupil, had given a lively play--_L'Homme
a bonne Fortune_ (1686). JEAN-FRANCOIS REGNARD (1655-1709) escaped
from his corsair captors and slavery at Algiers, made his sorry
company of knaves and fools acceptable by virtue of inexhaustible
gaiety, bright fantasy, and the liveliest of comic styles. His
_Joueur_ (1696) is a scapegrace, possessed by the passion of gaming,
whose love of Angelique is a devotion to her dowry, but he will console
himself for lost love by another throw of the dice. His _Legataire
Universel_, greedy, old, and ailing, is surrounded by pitiless rogues,
yet the curtain falls on a general reconciliation. Regnard's morals
may be doubtful, but his mirth is unquestionable.

Dancourt (1661-1725), with a far less happy style, had a truer power
of