on are shut to the
romanticists. A company of English actors who attempted to give some of
Shakspere's plays at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1822 were mobbed. "The
hisses and cat-calls began before the performance, of which it was
impossible to hear a single word. As soon as the actors appeared they
were pelted with apples and eggs, and from time to time the audience
called out to them to talk French, and shouted, '_A bas Shakspere! c'est
un aide de camp du duc de Wellington_.'" It will be remembered that in
our own day the first representations of Wagner's operas at Paris were
interrupted with similar cries: "_Pas de Wagner_!," "_A bas les
Allemands_!," etc.

In 1827 Kemble's company visited Paris and gave, in English, "Hamlet,"
"Romeo and Juliet," "Othello," and "The Merchant of Venice." Dumas went
to see them and described the impression made upon him by Shakspere, in
language identical with that which Goethe used about himself.[36] He was
like a man born blind and suddenly restored to sight. Dumas' "Henry
III." (1829), a _drame_ in the manner of Shakspere's historical plays,
though in prose, was the immediate result of this new vision. English
actors were in Paris again in 1828 and 1829; and in 1835 Macready
presented "Hamlet," "Othello," and "Henry IV." with great success.
Previous to these performances, the only opportunities that the French
public had to judge of Shakspere's dramas as acting plays were afforded
by the wretched adaptations of Ducis and other stage carpenters. Ducis
had read Shakspere only in Letourneur's very inadequate translation
(revised by Guizot in 1821). His "Hamlet" was played in 1769; "Macbeth,"
1784, "King John," 1791; "Othello" (turned into a comedy), 1792.
Mercier's "Timon" was given in 1794; and Dejaure's "Imogenes"--an
"arrangement" of "Cymbeline"--in 1796. The romanticists labored to put
their countrymen in possession of better versions of Shakspere. Alfred
de Vigny rendered "Othello" (1827), and Emile Deschamps, "Romeo and
Juliet" and "Macbeth."

Stendhal interviewed a director of one of the French theatres and tried
to persuade him that there would be money in it for any house which would
have the courage to give a season of romantic tragedy. But the director,
who seemed to be a liberal-minded man, assured him that until some stage
manager could be found rich enough to buy up the dramatic criticism of
the _Constitutionnel_ and two or three other newspapers, the law stude