The thigh's the limit


Simon Callow salutes a cultural invasion
 
Shakespeare Goes to Paris: How the Bard Conquered France
by John Pemble
256pp, Hambledon & London

"O Shakespeare! Shakespeare!" exclaims Lélio in The Return to Life, Berlioz's curious sequel to the Symphonie Fantastique, "how dazzling the impression your genius creates!" In his journal, the composer exclaims, with even less reservation: "Thou alone art the God worthy of artists." Like many of his contemporaries, he had been overwhelmed by his first experience of the plays on stage in English in 1827 and 1828, when a hastily assembled ad hoc company, comprising some of the greatest actors of the day, had performed Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Lear, and Othello at the Odéon Theatre in Paris.

Kemble was too old for Hamlet and Edmund Kean somewhat the worse for wear; the Lear was a comic hopelessly out of his depth, and though Macready did better with his impressive Othello, it was a hitherto undistinguished young Irish actress called Harriet Smithson in the roles of Ophelia and Juliet who swept all before her, establishing Shakespeare as an overwhelming force. Berlioz fell desperately in love with both of them, unrelentingly badgering Smithson into marrying him. The marriage ended disastrously, but his relationship with Shakespeare proved rather more durable. However uneven the standards of the English visitors, and however bastardised the texts they played - using the standard 17th and 18th-century bowdlerisations and rewritten endings - they were a revelation to their audiences, suggesting an approach to theatre, and perhaps to life itself, that set the upcoming generation of young French Romantics on fire.

Full review at guardian.co.uk >>>

Posted: Tue - April 26, 2005 at 02:31 PM        

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