Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
History
Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Biography
Mademoiselle Mais, such as La Tisbe in Victor Hugo's "Angelo," and the
heroines of Dumas's "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle" and of "Louise de
Lignerolles" by MM. Legouvé and Dinaux.
The classical drama of France has not found much favor in England and
America. We are all, perhaps, apt to think with Thackeray
disrespectfully of the "old tragedies--well-nigh dead, and full time
too--in which half a dozen characters appear and shout sonorous
Alexandrines for half a dozen hours;" or we are disposed to agree with
Mr. Matthew Arnold, that their drama, being fundamentally insufficient
both in substance and in form, the French, with all their gifts, have
not, as we have, an adequate form for poetry of the highest class.
Those who remember Rachel, however, can testify that she breathed the
most ardent life into the frigid remains of Racine and Corneille,
relumed them with Promethean heat, and showed them to be instinct with
the truest and intensest passion--When she occupied the scene, there
could be no thought of the old artificial times of hair powder and
rouge, periwigs and patches, in connection with the characters she
represented. Phèdre and Hermione, Pauline and Camille, interpreted by
her genius, became as real and natural, warm and palpitating, as
Constance or Lady Macbeth could have been when played by Mrs. Siddons,
or as Juliet when impersonated by Miss O'Neill. Before Rachel came, it
had been thought that the new romantic drama of MM. Hugo and Dumas,
because of its greater truth to nature, had given the _coup de grâce_
to the old classic plays; but the public, at her bidding, turned
gladly from the spasms and the rant of "Angelo" and "Angèle," "Antony"
and "Hernani," to the old-world stories, the formal tragedies of the
seventeenth century poet-dramatists of France. The actress fairly
witched her public. There was something of magic in her very presence
upon the scene.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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