On Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets. Ellis' and Ritson's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances. Godwin's Life of Chaucer. Todd's Ed (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 edition. Excerpt: ... MOLIERE. Foreign Quarterly Review, 1828. It will be universally admitted, that in tragic performances nothing can be more distinctly different than the laws which regulate the French and English stage. The dissimilarity is so great, that a native of either country, however candid or liberal, must have studied with some attention the literature of the other, to enable him, not merely to relish, but even to endure the tragedies of the neighbouring kingdom. A Parisian critic would be shocked at the representation of Hamlet au natvrel, and the most patient spectator in a Drury Lane audience would incur some risk of dislocating his jaws with yawning, during the representation of a chef-d'oeuvre of Racine or Corneille. This difference betwixt the taste of two highly civilized nations is not surprising, when we consider that the English tragedy existed a hundred years at least before the French, and is therefore censured by our neighbours as partaking, to a certain extent, of the barbarity and grossness of the age of Queen Elizabeth. The two great tragedians of France, on the contrary, had the task of entertaining a polished and highly ceremonious court, whose judgment was at least as fastidious as it was correct, and in whose eyes a breach of etiquette was a more formidable crime than any deficiency in spirit or genius. Thus the English stage exhibited in word and in action every "change of many coloured life," mingled the tragic with the comic, the ludicrous with the horrible, seized hy storm on the applause of the half-startled, half-affrighted audience, and presented to the judgment, like Salvator's Augers' Edition of Moliere, 9 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1819-27; and the Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Moliere.--Par J. TasCHEREau.Paris, ...