e the French Academy on August 25, 1776. Here
Shakespeare was described as a barbarian, whose works--'a huge
dunghill'--concealed some pearls.

French critics' gradual emancipation from Voltairean influence.

Although Voltaire's censure was rejected by the majority of later French
critics, it expressed a sentiment born of the genius of the nation, and
made an impression that was only gradually effaced. Marmontel, La Harpe,
Marie-Joseph Chenier, and Chateaubriand, in his 'Essai sur Shakespeare,'
1801, inclined to Voltaire's view; but Madame de Stael wrote effectively
on the other side in her 'De la Litterature, 1804 (i. caps. 13, 14, ii.
5.) 'At this day,' wrote Wordsworth in 1815, 'the French critics have
abated nothing of their aversion to "this darling of our nation." "The
English with their bouffon de Shakespeare" is as familiar an expression
among them as in the time of Voltaire. Baron Grimm is the only French
writer who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority to the first
names of the French theatre; an advantage which the Parisian critic owed
to his German blood and German education.' {350a} The revision of Le
Tourneur's translation by Francois Guizot and A. Pichot in 1821 gave
Shakespeare a fresh advantage. Paul Duport, in 'Essais Litteraires sur
Shakespeare' (Paris, 1828, 2 vols.), was the last French critic of repute
to repeat Voltaire's censure unreservedly. Guizot, in his discourse 'Sur
la Vie et les OEuvres de Shakespeare' (reprinted separately from the
translation of 1821), as well as in his 'Shakespeare et son Temps'
(1852), Villemain in a general essay, {350b} and Barante in a study of
'Hamlet,' {350c} acknowledge the mightiness of Shakespeare's genius with
comparatively few qualifications. Other complete translations
followed--by Francisque Michel (1839), by Benjamin Laroche (1851), and by
Emil Montegut (1867), but the best is that in prose by Francois Victor
Hugo (1859-66), whose father, Victor Hugo the poet, published a
rhapsodical eulogy in 1864. Alfred Mezieres's 'Shakespeare, ses OEuvres
et ses Critiques' (Paris, 1860), is a saner appreciation.

On the French stage.

Meanwhile 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' and a few other
Shakespearean plays, became stock pieces on the French stage. A powerful
impetus to theatrical representation of Shakespeare in France was given
by the performance in Paris of the chief plays by a strong company of
English actors in the autum