A hundred and fifty years ago,one of the most celebrated
names in. the French literary world was that of Jean-Francois Ducis.
His plays were read by everyone of culture, performed in the best theatres,
and the author claimed as a direct and worthy descendant of Corneille,
Racine and Voltaire. To-day, his plays are half forgotten, and himself
little more than a name.The fact that after enjoying brilliant success
for more than half a century, plays should fall into such complete
obscurity rouses the curiosity of the student to know why it should be
so: and the fact that most of the tragedies are adaptations of
Shakespeare gives them a greatly added. interest,at least for the English
reader. Why should Ducis have made $hakespeare his model? Why should he
have tried to adapt him, and how did he do it? Sheer curiosity to know
what he made of the English poet first impels one to read the plays, and
in the reading, a host of other problems suggest themselves and deepen
the interest a hundredfold.
The first feeling that rises is one of profound astonishment.
What could have made anyone thus deform and alter a writer whom he
admired enough to make him his model? From the plays, one turns to the
letters and the life-story to find what manner of man Ducis was: and his
character stands out vividly at once. He was a poet, romantic and
independent,fascinated by all that was striking and dramatic; as a man,
pure and upright, a strange mixture of gentleness and rugged independence.
This abundantly explains why Shakespeare became his delight and his
inspiration; but it only deepens the mystery as to why he should so have
deformed him, altering plot, characters, tone and style. Some other
influence must have been as strong, or stronger than his romantic
admiration for Shakespeare: the influence was that of the age in which
he lived and the dramatic tradition he had inherited from his
predecessors.
And so the question becomes a wider one than the work of one man. The conception of tragedy that dominated the work of writers in
England and in France; the particular tastes and ideas of the audiences
for which Ducis wrote, and which he must perforce please; these were the
things that from outside influenced Ducis, and modified his own tastes
and ideas. A study of them at once concentrates the attention on the
particular set of rules and conventions known as the Classical Tradition;
and it becomes evident that it was this tradition which set a great
gulf between English and French tragedy, and. forced Ducis to adapt
Shakespeare as he did before he could ;present him to a French public.
Most of the changes he made were out of respect for an authority which
Shakespeare neglected entirely. Nevertheless, at the time when Ducis
wrote, this tradition was tottering to its fall, - the proof of it was
that he dared to adapt Shakespeare at all for a French audience. New
ideas more in keeping with Ducis's own literary tastes were beginning
to find favour, and the most outstanding character of Ducis's work is
that it was a desperate effort to reconcile two opposites - French and
English tragedy, old authority and new inspiration. In this lay the
secret of its success in a transition age: and in this the reason of its
failure in an age which no longer seeks to reconcile two ideals so different, but accepts both,and renders to each the homage it deserves.
To understand the adaptations of Ducis, therefore, the first thing
essential is to realise clearly the nature of this French tradition that
by its steadily increasing influence separated so widely French from
English tragedy,its rise in the 17th century, and its gradual dissolution
in the 18th. The first two chapters are therefore concerned with the
history and influence of the Classical Tradition,and the position in
which it stood when Duds was writing: the remaining chapters are a study of the particular example of its influence afforded by the works
of Ducis. Each adaptation is analysed separately, and an attempt is made
to trace the conflicting influences of the traditional French system
of classical tragedy and. the romantic drama of Shakespeare. It is not
without general interest because of its bearing upon the difficult
question of the Classical Tradition in Tragedy; and it has the
particular interest of the study of a very charming personality, that
despite the inferiority of his literary work inspires in the modern reader the same respect and sympathy as in the men of his own day.