The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

In France, anybody who likes may be a marquis, and whosoever arrives from the corner of some province, with money to spend and a name ending with Ac or Ille, may say, "a man such as I, a man of my quality," and may show sovereign contempt for a mere merchant. The merchant so often hears his occupation spoken of with disdain that he is fool enough to blush for it. Yet I cannot tell which is the more valuable to the State—a well-powdered lordling, who knows precisely at what hour the king rises, and at what hour he goes to bed, and who assumes airs of loftiness when playing the slave in a minister's ante-chamber; or a merchant who enriches his country, issues from his office orders to Surat and Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of the world.

V.—Tragedy and Comedy

The drama of England, like that of Spain, was fully grown when the French drama was in a state of childishness. Shakespeare, who is accounted to be the English Corneille, flourished at about the same time as Lope de Vega; and it was Shakespeare who created the English drama. He possessed a fertile and powerful genius, that had within its scope both the normal and the sublime; but he ignored rules entirely, and had not the smallest spark of good taste. It is a risky thing to say, but true nevertheless—this author has ruined the English drama. In these monstrous farces of his, called tragedies, there are scenes so beautiful, fragments so impressive and terrible, that the pieces have always been played with immense success. Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ultimately condones their defects. Most of the fantastic and colossal creations of this author have with the lapse of two centuries established a claim to be considered sublime; most of the modern authors have copied him; but where Shakespeare is applauded, they are hissed, and you can believe that the veneration in which the old author is held increases proportionately to the contempt for the new ones. It is not considered that he should not be copied; the failure of his imitators only leads to his being thought inimitable. You are aware that in the tragedy of the Moor of Venice, a very touching piece, a husband smothers his wife on the stage, and that when the poor woman is being smothered, she cries out that she is unjustly slain. You know that in "Hamlet" the grave-diggers drink, and sing catches while digging a grave, and joke about the skulls they come across in a manner suited to the class of men who do such work. But it will surprise you to learn that these vulgarities were imitated during the reign of Charles II.—the heyday of polite manners, the golden age of the fine arts.

The first Englishman to write a really sane tragic piece, elegant from beginning to end, was the illustrious Mr. Addison. His "Cato in Utica" is a masterpiece in diction and in beauty of verse. Cato himself seems to me the finest character in any drama; but the others are far inferior to him, and the piece is disfigured by a most unconvincing love-intrigue which inflicts a weariness that kills the play. The custom of dragging in a superfluous love-affair came from Paris to London, along with our ribbons and our wigs, about 1660. The ladies who adorn the theatres with their presence insist upon hearing of nothing but love. The wise Addison was weak enough to bend the severity of his nature in compliance with the manners of his time; he spoilt a masterpiece through simple desire to please.