Shakspeare and His Times — Reading Notes

Translation as a Lens on Shakespeare's Style

Guizot's central claim is that Shakespeare 'is excellent in substance, but deficient in form.' He praises the playwright's ability to discern 'the instincts, passions, ideas—indeed, all the inner life of man,' yet criticizes his characters' language as 'often fastidious, strange, excessive, and destitute of moderation and naturalness.' This dual judgment is not mere opinion; Guizot grounds it in the specific qualities of English versus French. English, he writes, 'readily admits the lofty flights, and even the wild excesses, of the poetic imagination,' while French demands 'elegant sobriety' and 'severe and delicate precision.' A literal translation makes Shakespeare's defects more offensive; a free rendering robs him of 'wealth, force, and originality.' Guizot thus frames his own editorial task as a negotiation between fidelity and adaptation, a problem he claims no translator has fully solved.

The Machinery of Death in <em>Hamlet</em>

Guizot's analysis of Hamlet focuses on the pervasive presence of the dead king. He observes that the murdered monarch 'is always there, sometimes present himself, sometimes present to the thoughts, and in the language of the other personages.' Every character, from the guilty to the indifferent, is 'constantly concerned about him.' Guizot points to the gravedigger who dates his career from the day 'the late king had gained a great victory,' and who unearths the skull of Yorick, the jester of 'that spectre, who issues at every moment from his tomb.' These details, he argues, all 'concur to maintain, diffuse, and strengthen the sole, general impression of death.' He credits Shakespeare with a 'two-fold genius' as both philosopher and poet, equally skilled in 'filling the stage with uproarious movement' and 'penetrating and bringing to light the inmost secrets of the human heart.'

Defects and the Demands of Art

Guizot does not shy from cataloguing what he sees as Shakespeare's flaws, particularly in Hamlet. He notes 'the accumulation and confusion of useless personages and interests,' 'long and subtle developments of a reflection or an idea which it would be proper for the personage to indicate en passant,' and a 'fantastic mixture of coarseness and refinement of language' that gives 'factitious and pedantic forms even to the truest feelings.' These defects, he says, 'abound in Hamlet.' Yet he refuses to dwell on them, stating he will 'neither give myself the painful satisfaction of proving this assertion, nor will I omit to state it.' His conclusion is measured: 'In point of genius, Shakspeare has perhaps no rivals; but in the high and pure regions of art, he can not be taken as a model.' This tension between admiration and critical distance defines Guizot's approach throughout.

Readers approaching Shakspeare and His Times should expect a French critic's perspective that is both historically situated and analytically sharp. Guizot writes as an editor who has wrestled with Shakespeare's text in translation, and his observations on language, structure, and character are grounded in that practical experience. The essay rewards attention to its specific claims about how Shakespeare's effects are achieved—and where they falter—rather than seeking a comprehensive biography or literary history.

Reading Guizot’s notes, I kept thinking how translations carry a writer’s voice across strange waters, changing it yet somehow preserving its pulse. The way he lingers on Hamlet’s quiet, unraveling mind felt like a shared secret. That same ache of fate and intimacy lives in Oedipus King of Thebes Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes — A Reader’s Guide, where every word seems to know where it’s going before I do.