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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 errorsmistakes 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 le___ 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 of 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 crop of bitter finish. 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 lame & 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 aspidient 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 Tourneux 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 is was "no true love;" - that the soliloquy "To be or not to be" is improper & uncivilised
that of the king "O my offence is rank' he calls contradictory, unconnected, ill-prepared
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Identifier: | JB/110/125/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 110. |
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sir john bowring |
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