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Calderon would also be welcomed with the loud plaudits of the mob saying and so they deserve
to be.
I believe, however, that Moratin never read Shakespeare - his translation
of Hamlet is made at second hand. The fine poetry of this wonderful drama is turned
into lame prose - & the errors mistakes are innumerable. "I am sick at heart" is rendered, "My heart is
delicate' "See! it walks away" by 'Dost thou see? it goes as if it dispersed us."
He cross it tho' it blast me." by "The terror freezes me, I'll go forth to the encounter.' Such
misconceptions as these seen thro the play, - but to give a more correct idea of the
manner in which the poet has been presented to the Spanish public, I give will enable a verbal translation
of one of Hamlet's sublime soliloquies.
"O if this too solid mass of flesh could yield & liquify dissolved into a shower of tears! or if the Almighty
"had not disfixed his Cannon against self homicide! O God - O my God! how wearied am I with every
"thing - how annoying, insipid & vain I deem the pleasures of the world! I will have nothing, nothing
"of it; it is a rude uncultivated field, abounding only with gross of bitter fruits. That this should
"happened within two months after his death! - no - not so much - not two months. That excellent
"King compared to whom this is like a Satyr to Hiperion; - so loving to my mother that he
"did not allow the daring celestial breezes to mark her cheek. O heaven & earth - why as I
"preserve my memory? She, who showed herself as loving as if possession had increased desire.
"And notwithstanding, in a month - Ah! I must would not think of it. Frailty! thou hast the
"name of woman! In the short space of a month, and even before the shoes were worn out in which
"like Niobe, bathes in tears, she accompanied the body of my sad father - yes she, she herself.
"Heavens! a wild beast, incapable of reason & of language would have shown a more durable sorrow.
"She has, in a word, married my uncle, my father's brother; but no more like him than I am
"like Hercules. In a month - her eyes yet red with her perfidious tears, she married. O criminal
"haste - to go so hurriedly to fix occupy an incestuous bed. This is not good - nor can it produce good -
"Break thou in pieces, my heart, for my tongue must be severed."
This is the tame & cold & feeble version - the version of Shakespeare. And there are the
chaps critics who call our great master "barbarous, extravagant, intolerable." The above passage
serves too to introduce the following comment:
"To paint the Omnipotent hurling his thunderbolts on men, would be nothing new, - but to
him firing off a piece of artillery is novelty with a vengeance - Observe too also that
in the time of Hamlet there were neither cannons nor gunpowder"
Of the same character is Voltaire's note on the passage
"He may not as unvalued persons as,
"Carve for himself"
That a heir to a throne is not accustomed to carve for himself, - but to have his victuals carved
for him.
Yet Moratin reserves Le Tourneur for his vicious renderings, & what he calls his successful efforts to
beautify his original idol. For mercy's sake, kind gentlemen, leave our Shakespeare
alone.
The notes afford matter for a thousand observations. He will have it that Hamlets was is
"no true love;" - that the soliloquy "To be or not to be" is improper & uncivilised
that of the King "O my offence is rank &c.' he calls contradictory, unconnected, ill-prepared
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