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cort, in order to appear before the Senate, he interrupts him with the words,

"Soft you; a word or two before you go."

See here, again, the mighty power of the poet; how much he can indicate by a single stroke. Ludovico shall depart alone, such is Othello's determination; Othello is not to go at all, such is his wish; no one is to dispose of him but himself; he will not hear one remark on this point. He then proceeds, in a strain of dignified sadness:

"I have done the state some service, and they know it;
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice; then must you speak

Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well:

Of one not easily jealous; but, being wrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this."

This said, and after having provided, as far as is possible for him, for his good name, he returns to self-revenge -he turns, with all the lofty pride of his indignant spirit, against that miserable body which he is about to chastise as a rebellious slave, as a ferocious animal which has dared to trample upon its master, and has thereby abandoned him to dishonor; and, seeking for words expressive of the direst insult, which recall at once what he was, and the works of his life, and what he has always most bitterly despised, he says,

"And say, besides, that in Aleppo, once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk

Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him-thus."

We have dilated on the effect produced by this faithful and, we may say, literal translation of "Othello," because this effect seemed to us to augur very favorably for the French theatre. The piece was better played than any of the master-pieces of our dramatic writers is at this time; it has been better judged than any other piece, so far as we know, ever has been; for it has been judged sincerely, without prejudice, without any spirit of partisanship, and each scene has been estimated according to its true value.

If the public will resolutely maintain this freedom of mind, if they will continue henceforth, on every renewed attempt, to applaud only what seems to them to be good, to condemn that which strikes them as bad, to take up an attitude of indifference to things which are in themselves indifferent, it will, by these means, do much for art, and still more for its own gratification. It will save us the annoyance of an inundation of those imitations of the romantic school of the drama which already threaten to supersede the imitations of the classical school. After we have tried, for a hundred years, under a thousand different names, endless variations on the "Andromaque," the 66 Mérope," and the "Zaïre"-variations, however, which are devoid of all the beauties which belong to the originals-we shall be preserved from the misfortune of experiencing, under a thousand other names, and perhaps during another hundred years, mere repetitions of " Macbeth," "Othello," or "William Tell," minus the real beauties of " Macbeth," "Othello," and "William Tell."

The beautiful can never be the result of imitation: what

is really imitated are the defects, the exterior forms, the mannerism of great poets; and when the public, in its unreflecting enthusiasm for great poets, allows itself to applaud even their faults, or merely their mannerism, it is sure to have very soon more than enough of these.

Let those who are attached to the romantic school be well assured that this school will not establish itself among us by means of reversed reproductions of old works of art in a thin, transparent disguise, nor by counterfeits foisted upon us under the pretense of being borrowed. Let them traduce the beautiful productions of foreign literature, line by line; their work will not be thrown away; but, in Heaven's name, let them not produce these as novelties, and present them before us as fruits which are indigenous to their soil. They would not even have the excuse of their colleagues-originality must always be original. And let not the public allow themselves to be dupednever let them applaud a modern author merely because he can dress himself up in the plumage of a great master.

And let the friends of the classic school be well assured, in their turn, that their only chance of safety is in being able to rival the romantic school. It is now already deadit has been slain by the copyists; imitations at second and third hand have filled us with an insurmountable disgust. It will revive-of this there can be no doubt; but its revival must be under a new and transformed appearance, released from the shackles by which it has been unreasonably entangled, free in its movements, prepared to enter upon a new career.

This service must be rendered to it by the existing romantic school.

That will be a happy time when we shall be able to see these two schools flourishing in the presence of each other,

in a reasonable degree of independence, governed, each for itself, by the laws appropriate to its true nature, and distributing with lavish hand the beauties which are their own native growths.

But it will be said, Do you then believe that the classic school has an actual existence-that it is not a mistake, a folly, as has been so often declared? Assuredly, we believe this. Do you think that the romantic school has its laws, and that it does not consist in the abnegation of all laws? Far from it. You do not regard as laws of the classic school those rules about which so much noise has been made? Not at all.

Explain yourself, then. Where is the line of demarkation between the two schools to be drawn? What is your idea of the classic, what of the romantic school? What are those laws of which you speak?

These are questions which we would very gladly answer; but time presses, and the amount of space which can be allotted to us in a review of this kind is already more than exhausted. We must, then, of necessity delay our answer till another opportunity. Moreover, the adherents of the romantic school have now a favorable breeze; and as besides, they do not lack expertness to find pretexts, the occasion will not long be wanting to us.

HISTORICAL DRAMAS.

SHAKSPEARE did not write his historical dramas in chronological order, and with the intention of reproducing upon the stage the great events and characters of the history of England, as they had been successively developed in fact. He had no idea of working on so general and systematic a plan. He composed his plays just according as some particular circumstance either suggested the idea, or inspired the whim, or imposed the necessity of composing them, never troubling himself about the chronology of the subjects, or about the uniform whole which certain works might form. He has introduced upon the stage nearly all the history of England from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, from John Lackland to Henry VIII.; beginning with King Henry VI. and the fifteenth century, then ascending to King John and the thirteenth century, and finally ending with Henry VIII. and the sixteenth century, after having several times transposed the order of both centuries and kings. The following is the dramatic chronology of his six historical dramas, according to his most learned commentators, and among others, Mr. Malone:

1. The First Part of King Henry VI. (1422–1461), composed in 1569. 2. The Second Part of King Henry VI., composed in 1591. 3. The Third Part of King Henry VI., composed in 1591. 4. King John (1199-1216), composed in 1596.

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