_ Et moi, vais-je rester, triste orphelin sur terre,
A respirer cet air impregne de misere?...
Est-ce que Dieu sur moi fera peser son bras,
Pere? Et quel chatiment m'attend donc?
_Le Fantome._ Tu vivras.
Such defiant transgressions of the true Shakespearean canon as those
of which Ducis and Dumas stand convicted may well rouse the suspicion
that the critical incense they burn at Shakespeare's shrine is
offered with the tongue in the cheek. But that suspicion is not
justified. Ducis and Dumas worship Shakespeare with a whole heart.
Their misapprehensions of his tragic conceptions are due,
involuntarily, to native temperament. In point of fact, Ducis and
Dumas see Shakespeare through a distorting medium. The two Frenchmen
were fully conscious of Shakespeare's towering greatness. They
perceived intuitively that Shakespeare's tragedies transcended all
other dramatic achievement. But their aesthetic sense, which, as far as
the drama was concerned, was steeped in the classical spirit, set many
of the essential features of Shakespeare's genius outside the focus of
their vision.
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