François Guizot

“ Thus Orosmane, the proud sultan, who, a moment before, was speaking of war and conquest, expressing his alarm for the fate of the Mussulmans, and blaming the sloth of his neighbors, now appears as neither sultan nor warrior; he forgets all else, and becomes only a lover. Assuredly, Othello is not less passionate than Orosmane, and his passion will be neither less credulous nor less violent; but he does not abdicate, in an instant, all the interests, and all the thoughts, of his past and future life. Love possesses his heart without invading his whole existence. ”

“ Nevertheless, it contains all these, and all these are revealed in it; and, in rapid succession, each object in its turn moves the imagination, occupies the attention, and disappears, leaving no trace behind but a confused emotion of pleasure and an impression of truth, to which we dare not either refuse or grant our belief.
"This drama," says Warburton, "is one of the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination, peculiar to Shakspeare, which soars above the bounds of nature, without forsaking sense; or, more properly, carries nature along with him beyond her established limits." ”

“ It is, in truth, the Duke of York, a personage of whose incapacity and nullity we are informed by history, whom Shakspeare has selected to represent this ever-ardent devotedness to the man who governs, this facility in transferring his obedience from rightful to actual power, and vice versa, merely allowing himself, for his honor, to shed a few solitary tears on behalf of the monarch whom he has abandoned. To any one who has not witnessed the sport of fortune with empires, this personage would be only comic; but to any one who has beheld such changes, does he not possess alarming truthfulness? ”

“ Shakspeare's Macbeth is brilliant only by his warlike virtues, and especially by his personal bravery; he has only the qualities and the defects of a barbarian; brave, but not a stranger to the fear of peril when he believes in its proximity; cruel and sensitive by fits and starts; perfidious through his inconstancy; always ready to yield to any temptation that presents itself, whether it lead to crime or to virtue—he displays, in his ambition as well as in his criminality, that character of thoughtlessness and mobility which belongs to an almost savage state of civilization. ”

“ We no longer hear of a Moor, a lieutenant, an ensign, and a woman, the victim of jealousy and treason. We behold Othello, Cassio, Iago, and Desdemona real and living beings, who resemble no other, who present themselves in flesh and bone before the spectator—all entwined by the bonds of a common position, all carried away by the same event, yet each having his own personal nature and distinct physiognomy, and each co-operating to produce the general effect by ideas, feelings, passions, and acts which are peculiar to him, and result from his individuality. ”

“ Thus the poet creates, and such is poetical genius. Events, and even positions, are not what he deems most important, or what he takes delight in inventing; his power aims at exercising itself otherwise than in searching after incidents of a more or less singular character, and adventures of a more or less touching nature; it manifests itself by the creation of man himself; and when it creates man, it creates him complete, armed at all points as he should be, to suffice for all the vicissitudes of life, and to present the aspect of reality in every sense of the word. ”

“ Macbeth has fully made up his mind to crime; no link binds his conduct any longer to virtue; and yet who can doubt that, in the character of Macbeth, side by side with the passions which stimulate him to crime, there still exist those inclinations which constitute virtue? The mother of Hamlet has set no bounds to her incestuous love; she knows her crime and boldly commits it; her position is that of a shameless culprit; but her soul is that of a woman capable of loving modesty, and finding happiness within the bounds of duty. ”

“ If it be generally requisite that the subject of tragedy should be taken from the history of the great and powerful, it is because the strong impressions which it aims at producing upon us can only be communicated to us by strong characters, incapable of succumbing beneath the blows of an ordinary destiny. It is in the development of high fortune and its terrible vicissitudes that the whole man appears, with all the wealth and energy of his nature. Thus the spectacle of the world, concentrated in an individual, is revealed to us upon the stage ”

“ It is doubtless necessary that the crowd should throng to behold those dramatic works of which you desire to make a national spectacle; but do not hope to become national if you do not unite in your festivities all those classes of persons and minds whose well-arranged hierarchy raises a nation to its loftiest dignity. Genius is bound to follow human nature in all its developments; its strength consists in finding within itself the means for constantly satisfying the whole of the public. ”

“ In comedy, events, being of less magnitude than the passion which they excite in man, derive a laughable importance from this passion; in tragedy, being more powerful than the means which man has at his disposal, they move us by the exhibition of his grandeur and his weakness. The comic poet invents them freely, for his art consists in originating, in man himself and his absurdities, those events by which man is agitated. This invention is rarely a merit in the tragic poet, for his work is to discern and exhibit man and his soul in the midst of the events to which he is subjected. ”

“ Shakspeare himself is not only a great poet, but a profound philosopher, whose thoughts have sounded, down to their lowest depths, all the mysteries of the world, and all the intricacies of the human soul. Not only are his pieces in the highest degree effective, but they are composed with a marvelous and irreproachable art; every thing, whether it be great or small, finds its proper place and its just estimate in his writings. ”

“ Nothing is foreign to the impression but that which destroys it; it nourishes itself, and gains greater power from every thing that can mingle with it. The prattle of young Arthur with Hubert becomes heart-rending from the idea of the horrible barbarity which Hubert is about to practice upon him. We are filled with emotion by the sight of Lady Macduff lovingly amused by the witty sallies of her little son, while at her door are the assassins who have come to massacre that son, and her other children, and afterward herself. ”

“ Thus moved by all that moves us, Shakspeare obtains our confidence; we yield ourselves in security to that open soul in which our feelings have already reverberated, and to that ready imagination which is as much illumined by the splendid sun of Italy as darkened by the sombre fogs of Denmark. Dramatic in the portraiture of a mother's gambols with her child, and simple in the terrible apparition which opens the first scene of "Hamlet," the poet is never unequal to the realities which ho has to delineate, or the man to the emotions with which he wishes to imbue our hearts. ”

“ Still, if our actually existing poets were men of the stamp of Racine and Voltaire—if, like those great men, they knew how to animate a deplorably withered frame by lavishing upon it all the treasures of sentiment and of poetry—if, imitating the noble birds of the days of chivalry, they could, like them, although carried on the hand, release themselves from time to time from the straitness of their position, and soar into the clouds with a brilliant and rapid flight, they might win some success. ”

“ This is an enterprise, the difficulties of which have hitherto, perhaps, been maturely considered by no one. We have seen how much art and effort was employed by Shakspeare to surmount those which are inherent in his system. They are still greater in our times, and would unvail themselves much more completely to the spirit of criticism which now accompanies the boldest essays of genius. It is not only with spectators of more fastidious taste, and of more idle and inattentive imagination, that the poet would have to do, who should venture to follow in Shakspeare's footsteps. ”

“ Who can not catch a glimpse, in this story, of the tragic poet inspired by the sight of death, even in an animal, and striving to render it imposing or pathetic? Who can not picture to himself the scholar of thirteen or fourteen years of age, with his head full of his first literary attainments, and his mind impressed, perhaps, by some theatrical performance, elevating, in poetic transport, the animal about to fall beneath his ax to the dignity of a victim, or perhaps even to that of a tyrant? ”

“ And with the admirable good sense of genius, in order to render the exhibition of so sombre a disease not only endurable, but attractive, Shakspeare has endowed the sufferer himself with the gentlest and most alluring qualities. He has made Hamlet handsome, popular, generous, affectionate, and even tender. He was desirous that the instinctive character of his hero should in some sort redeem human nature from the distrust and anathemas with which it was laden by his philosophic melancholy. ”