Der Zuschauer

Voltaire, lived in exile in Great Britain from 1726 to 1729. In 1734 he published his Philosophical Letters, or, Lettres anglaises. Containing letters on Quakers, on Parliament, Commerce, Inoculation with smallpox, Newton, Decartes, Bacon, and a System of Gravitation, they are written from acute observation, with witty insight, and at times, absurd wrong-headedness. They are a delight. Below we offer some extracts from the two letters, On Tragedy and On Comedy. We will remind you that Voltaire saw himself, chiefly as a dramatist.

“The English already had a theatre, as sis the Spanish, when the French still had nothing but portable stages. Shakespeare, who was cinsidered the English Corneille, flourished at about the time of Lope de Vegga. He had a strong and firtile genius, full of naturlness and sublimity, without the sllightest spark of good taste or the least knowledge of the rules.”

“I am going to tell you something rash but true, namely that the excellence of this author ruined the English theatre.”

“You know that in the tragedy of the Moor of Venice, a most touching play, a husband stangles his wife on the stage, and while the poor woman is being strangled, she shrieks that she is dying most underservedly. You are not unaware that in Hamlet gravediggers dig a grave, swallowing drinks and singing popular songs, cracking jokes typical of men of their calling about the skulls they come across. But what will surprise you is that these stupidities should have been inimated in the reignn of Charles II, which was the age of politeness and the golden age of the art.”

We will spare you much of Voltaire’s translations into French of some of the great soliloquies. “To be or not be,” in the German, robustly “Sein oder nicht sein.” Voltaire’s “free” translation goes to a rhyming, meandering couplet”
“Demmure; il faut choisir, et passer a l’instnat
Dela vie a la mort, ou de l’etre au neant.”

“The plays of the English tragic writers, almost all barbarous, quite lacking in good taste, order and plausibility, have amazing flashes amid this gloom. The style is too bombastic, too far removed from nature, too much copied from Hebrew writers who are themselves so full of Asiatic hot hair.”

“But also it must be admitted that the stilts of the figurative style upon whcih the English language is raised do lift the spirit very high, although with an irregular gait.”

“The first Englishman to create a reasonable play written end to end is the illustrious Addison. His Cato of Utica is a masterpiece in diction and beauty of verse.”

Since [Addison] play have become more regular, people try harder to please and authors more correct and less outrageous. I have seen recent plays very regular but frigid.”

“It seems as though up to now the English have been born to creat only irregular things of beauty.The brillant monstrosities of Shakespeare are a thousand times more pleasing than modern conventionality.”

From On Comedy:

“This author [a comic writer Shadewell] was pretty well looked down on in his own timel; he was not the poet of the best people, his plays, enjoyed for a few performances by the mob, were scarned by all men of taste and resembled so many plays I have seen in France
which draw crowds and offended reders, fo which it could be said: Tout Paris les condamme, et tout Paris les court.”

On behalf of our fellow editor, Mr. Shadewell, we can only descrfibe the above as pompous, ignorant, and wrong-headed. We for instance far prefer Shadwell to Congreve. Klinger, Grabbe, Degot, et al.

Having discussed Shadewell, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve at somewhat less of a level than might warant the term thick desccription, Voltaire sums up thus:

“For the rest, don’t ask me to go into any detail about these English plays of which I am such a champion, nor to report a witticism or joke of Wycherley or Congreve; humor cannot be translated. If you want to understand English comedy there is no other way but go to London, stay there three years, learn English properly and go to the play everyday. I don’t get mcuh pleasure from reading Plautus and Aristophanes–why? Because I am neither Greek nor Roman. The subtleties of verbal quips, allusions, topicality are all lost on a foreigner.”

Various and numerous observers have now written in to report seeing our man, Herr Doktor Stanely Richardson, reading in the Disel Cafe in Davis Square. He was said by most to be reading A.J. Ayer’s book, Thomas Paine; although some have said it was Heinrich Mann’s Zwischen den Rassen; one even argued it was Celine’s Mort a Credit. We are, here on Guam Island, simply glad to know he has somehow reconstituted himself after spontaneous combustion, and hope to see him ripen into an old raunchy cheese before his translation from this material life.

The Editors

We have received a report, involving spontaneous combustion, regarding our Northeast Corridor correspondent, Stanley Richardson. It seems he was noticed by various of our spies reading through copies of The Examiner and taking notes on the opera criticism of Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, et al, when he disapeared in a cloud of white smoke. This was in the Tisch Library at Tufts University. His books, notes, and writing remained, but no sight of this young man we call Hothead or Roman Candle Red. Why has he left us? Where did he go? Opera is not worth a candle to our rueful amazement and concern. Let us know, Dear Readers, if you have learned anything.

The Editors, Der Zuschauer

Dear Readers,
We have yet to locate the said Dr. Stanely R. Richardson. It has been suggested by the unruly C.D. Grabbe, fondly, that he may have cooked some bad redfish, frozen and from Bahia; more over that he imbibed too much Icelandic ale with Auden and MacNeice. If nothing else we will find the body eventually. And you can count our complete election records.
Yours truly,
Shadewell
Inchbald
John Dennis