ciled; and the Moor, exulting in his newly
recovered happiness, pardons Iago. The curtain falls on a dazzling
scene of domestic bliss.

Ducis frankly acknowledged that he was guilty of a somewhat strained
interpretation of Shakespeare's tragic scheme, but he defended himself
on the ground that French refinement and French sensitiveness could
not endure the agonising violence of the true catastrophe. It is,
indeed, the fact that the patrons of the Comedie Francaise strictly
warned the adapter against revolting their feelings by reproducing the
"barbarities" that characterised the close of Shakespeare's tragic
masterpiece.

If so fastidious a flinching from tragic episode breathe the true
French sentiment, what, we are moved to ask, is the significance of
the unqualified regard which Ducis and his countrymen profess for
Shakespearean drama? There seems a strange paradox in the situation.
The history of France proves that Frenchmen can face without quailing
the direst tragedies which can be wrought in earnest off the stage.
There is a startling inconsistency in the outcry of Ducis's French
clients against the terror of Desdemona's murder. For the protests
which Ducis reports on the part of the Parisians bear the date 1792.
In that year the tragedy of the French Revolution--a tragedy of real
life, grimmer than any that Shakespeare imagined--was being enacted in
literal truth by the Parisian playgoers themselves. It would seem that
Ducis and his countrymen deemed the purpose of art to be alone
fulfilled when the artistic fabric was divorced from the ugly facts of
life.

A like problem is presented by Dumas's efforts in more pacific
conditions to adapt Shakespeare for the Parisian stage. With his
friend Paul Meurice Dumas prepared the version of _Hamlet_ which long
enjoyed a standard repute at the Comedie Francaise. Dumas's ecstatic
adoration for Shakespeare's genius did not deter him, any more than
Ducis was deterred by his more subdued veneration, from working havoc
on the English text. Shakespeare's blank verse was necessarily turned
into Alexandrines. That was comparatively immaterial. Of greater
moment is it to note that the _denouement_ of the tragedy was
completely revolutionised by Dumas. The tragic climax is undermined.
Hamlet's life is spared by Dumas. The hero's dying exclamation, "The
rest is silence," disappears from Dumas's version. At the close of the
play the French translator makes the ghost rejoin his so