German musical composers who have worked on Shakespearean themes,
Mendelssohn (in 'Midsummer Night's Dream'), Schumann, and Franz Schubert
(in setting separate songs) have achieved the greatest success.

In France. Voltaire's strictures.

In France Shakespeare won recognition after a longer struggle than in
Germany. Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) plagiarised 'Cymbeline,'
'Hamlet,' and 'The Merchant of Venice' in his 'Agrippina.' About 1680
Nicolas Clement, Louis XIV's librarian, allowed Shakespeare imagination,
natural thoughts, and ingenious expression, but deplored his obscenity.
{348a} Half a century elapsed before public attention in France was
again directed to Shakespeare. {348b} The Abbe Prevost, in his
periodical 'Le Pour et Contre' (1733 et seq.), acknowledged his power.
But it is to Voltaire that his countrymen owe, as he himself boasted,
their first effective introduction to Shakespeare. Voltaire studied
Shakespeare thoroughly on his visit to England between 1726 and 1729, and
his influence is visible in his own dramas. In his 'Lettres
Philosophiques' (1731), afterwards reissued as 'Lettres sur les Anglais,'
1734 (Nos. xviii. and xix.), and in his 'Lettre sur la Tragedie' (1731),
he expressed admiration for Shakespeare's genius, but attacked his want
of taste and art. He described him as 'le Corneille de Londres, grand
fou d'ailleurs mais il a des morceaux admirables.' Writing to the Abbe
des Fontaines in November 1735, Voltaire admitted many merits in 'Julius
Caesar,' on which he published 'Observations' in 1764. Johnson replied
to Voltaire's general criticism in the preface to his edition (1765), and
Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in 1769 in a separate volume, which was translated
into French in 1777. Diderot made, in his 'Encylopedie,' the first stand
in France against the Voltairean position, and increased opportunities of
studying Shakespeare's works increased the poet's vogue. Twelve plays
were translated in De la Place's 'Theatre Anglais' (1745-8).
Jean-Francois Ducis (1733-1816) adapted without much insight six plays
for the French stage, beginning in 1769 with 'Hamlet,' his version of
which was acted with applause. In 1776 Pierre Le Tourneur began a bad
prose translation (completed in 1782) of all Shakespeare's plays, and
declared him to be 'the god of the theatre.' Voltaire protested against
this estimate in a new remonstrance consisting of two letters, of which
the first was read befor