Madame Sarah Bernhardt’s appearance in a new French adaptation of Hamlet took place on Saturday, May 20. Her enterprise was distinctly a bold one. The series of performances would necessarily have to cease after June 6, in consequence of the actress’ engagement to appear in London on the 8th. The play could hardly be expected to prove a success from the purely financial point of view. As one critic remarks, it is impossible to make Hamlet Parisian. Moreover, the production of M. Jean Aicard’s version of Othello at the ComÉdie FranÇaise, a splendidly-mounted and finely-acted play, might fairly be thought to have taken off the edge of the public appetite for Shakespearian revivals in Paris. These considerations, however, did not deter Mme. Sarah Bernhardt. No one could ever accuse her of wanting the courage of her opinions. She made up her mind that Hamlet was a part for her to play, and she played it. She was not the first French actress to make the attempt. Mme. Judith and Mme. Lerou had both played the Prince of Denmark with a fair amount of success, and much curiosity was felt as to Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s interpretation of the character. She had already given something like a foretaste of Hamlet in Lorenzaccio, and there are one or two weird incidents in her own career. She has been identified as the actress whom Edmond de Goncourt shows us, in Faustine, watching at a death-bed with professional curiosity, and afterwards utilizing the experience on the stage. Be this as it may, there is a touch of Hamlet’s melancholy philosophy about her daily contact with her own coffin.

The translation of Hamlet has often tempted French literary skill. Dumas and Victor Hugo, each with the assistance of a collaborator, at different times rendered the play in French verse. The adaptation by MM. Samson and Cressonnois, in which Mme. Sarah Bernhardt appeared as Ophelia, was also entirely in verse. Then M. Theodore Reinach translated Shakespeare’s verse into verse and prose into prose. The latest adaptation, carried out by MM. Morand and Schwob for Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, is wholly in prose, and is perhaps the most literal reproduction of the original ever attempted in France. It is so literal that in many cases the English word is used in preference to what might not be a close or satisfactory equivalent in French. Even Victor Hugo’s version, which was accused of being more Shakespearian than Shakespeare, did not go as far as this in the effort for exactitude. As M. Henry Fouquier observes—

“Even in England, Hamlet is never played in its entirety. MM. Morand-Schwob have reduced the original thirty-two scenes to fifteen, but they have shown all possible respect for Shakespeare’s masterpiece, and of all translations made for the stage theirs retains most of the colour of the original, which can never be followed sufficiently closely in verse.”

Whatever may be thought of Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet in England, there can be no possible doubt that it has obtained her full honour in her own country. The Paris critics are not often in accord, but “when they do agree their unanimity is wonderful,” and in all the opinions which have been delivered on Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s latest creation it is impossible to find anything but admiration. She accomplished the rare feat of satisfying every one by her impersonation of a character second to none in its capacity for exciting differences of opinion. There could be no better proof that the fire of genius burns as brightly as ever in Mme. Sarah Bernhardt. In the words of M. Edmond Rostand, who is conspicuous among French literary men for his admiration for Shakespeare—“She never did anything finer. She makes one understand Hamlet, and understand him beyond the possibility of doubt.” M. Henry Fouquier, the eminent dramatic critic of the Figaro, says—

“The enthusiastic reception given to Mme. Sarah Bernhardt by the public on this occasion, a memorable one in the annals of the French stage, was largely due to her clear conception of the character. It was so thoroughly thought out, that Hamlet’s personality was made plain to the public without losing any of its mysterious features. It was said of her, with much truth, that she shed light on the darkness of Hamlet’s mind. She displayed all his contradictory characteristics, and at the same time showed that the contradiction was only apparent. Physically, she was an incarnation of the Hamlet created by Delacroix. Morally and intellectually she analyzed, synthetized, and condensed into one harmonious whole the most complex, if not the most obscure, character in dramatic literature. Her conception of Hamlet is that of Goethe, as we find it expressed in Wilhelm Meister. No one is better qualified to make us understand Hamlet than the creator of Faust. This character has more than one point of resemblance with Shakespeare’s hero, and has a ghost of his own in Mephistopheles, who urges him onward in spite of his scruples and the weakness of his nature. Hamlet, says Goethe, ‘is an oak planted in a valuable vase intended only for flowers. The tree puts forth its roots and shatters the vase. Thus does a pure, noble, and eminently moral nature, devoid of a hero’s physical energy, perish under a burden it can neither sustain nor cast off.’”

M. Gustave Larroumet, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts, who succeeded the late M. Sarcey as dramatic critic of the Temps, writes—

“I am not sufficiently ungrateful to consider that Mounet-Sully’s Hamlet is completely eclipsed, as some well-meaning persons would have us believe. Mounet-Sully showed us a man of terrible but intermittent energy. Sarah Bernhardt gives us a youth under the influence of over-sensitive nerves. The great artiste was never greater. Her defects, such as they are, sink into insignificance before her brilliant talents. Her frequently hard and abrupt diction passed almost unperceived. She was moderate but powerful, ardent but restrained. She threw a flood of light on a particularly obscure character. I do not think that stage art could further go than when, in the play scene, Hamlet holds up a torch to the livid features of his father’s murderer and puts him to flight, howling with terror.”

M. Emile Faguet, of the Journal des DÉbats, says—

“There are so many ways of playing this puzzling part that I shall not venture to criticize Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s rendering. She makes Hamlet sometimes weak and sometimes violent (the latter quality being much more manifest than the former), capricious, and a creature of nerves. The dreamy and melancholy part of Hamlet’s temperament she leaves in obscurity. Still, the result is acceptable. We cannot say either ‘This is exactly as it should be,’ or, ‘This is not the thing at all.’ It depends on one’s point of view. In any case the attempt is interesting and the effect is incontestable. It is impossible to say that the interpretation is indifferent. One must go further and describe it as fascinating. It is something that must be seen. The question whether Hamlet can be played by a woman is now set at rest. It must be admitted that Hamlet, being, as he is, weak, violent, cunning, undecided, and constantly on the brink of losing his wits, is a feminine mind in the body of a young man. Hamlet’s youth cannot be seriously disputed, and whenever we possess a great actress we can permit and even encourage her to try her hand on Hamlet.”

M. Catulle MendÈs, whose opinions, or rather his vigorous way of expressing them, earned him a duel with M. Georges Vanor, and a two-inch-deep puncture in the stomach, is the only critic to agree with the actress in regard to the simplicity of the character. He says—

“RouviÈre played the part like an inspired epileptic, Rossi like a tenor, and Salvini like a philosopher. Mounet-Sully reproduced all the best features of previous Hamlets, and added some inspiration of his own. Now, for the first time, Hamlet stands revealed to us in his real simplicity, as the poet created him. As to Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, it is hard to conceive that any human creature can combine so much instinct and innate intelligence with so much exact knowledge. Mme. Sarah Bernhardt is something more than an accomplished actress or an artist who plays upon the strings of our emotions. She is the incarnation of all gifts and all acquirements. She is the union, hitherto unhoped-for, of all inspiration and all art.”

M. Lucien Muhlfeld, in the Echo de Paris, says—

“Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet is a too learned, too bookish youth, urged to action by an impending calamity. He finds the weight of existence too great for his frail shoulders. To hear Hamlet’s meditations on death through Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s lips is to realize all the vanity of life. She is the greatest of all actresses in the great dramatic masterpiece.”

It is interesting to contrast Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s own opinions on Hamlet with the views expressed in the foregoing criticisms. In conversation with the writer, she scouted the idea that the Prince of Denmark is a complex personality. “I think his character,” she said, “a perfectly simple one. He is brought face to face with a duty, and he determines to carry it out. All his philosophizing and temporary hesitation does not alter the basis of his character. His resolution swerves, but immediately returns to the channel he has marked out for it. I know this view is quite heterodox, but I maintain it.” With a touch of characteristic determination, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt added—“It is just as well to have a decided opinion of one’s own, and adhere to it.”

“Some critics have argued that Hamlet has a feminine side to his character, displayed in his alternate excitement and depression, his terrors and his touches of cruelty. Have you sought to develop this feature?”

“Not at all. That there may or may not be something of the woman about Hamlet, is a question which might give rise to a great deal of argument, but I think his character is essentially masculine, and I have endeavoured to represent it as such.”

Further inquiry elicited the fact that Mme. Sarah Bernhardt had studied the play entirely from French versions, her acquaintance with English not permitting her to grapple with the difficulties of Shakespeare’s text. Perhaps the clearness of French literary form may have revealed to her the hitherto unsuspected simplicity of Hamlet’s character. At any rate, she does not accept the theory that Hamlet was insane. He was merely suffering, she thinks, from the bitterness of a wounded spirit; or, in other words, from that very English complaint, spleen. He thought himself deceived by all around him, and he suspected every one, but he was perfectly sane. Besides, a mad Hamlet would be mere melodrama. As to his age, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt does not agree with the theory that he was at least thirty. Twenty-five would be nearer the mark. In the play he is still a student. His friends are his seniors, and they refer to him as “Young Hamlet.” Polonius and the King speak to him in the semi-indulgent terms such as would be used towards a young man under such circumstances. The Grave-digger, it is true, speaks of Yorick’s skull as having lain in the earth three-and-twenty years, but that is probably one of those slips from which the greatest authors are not free.

“Are you satisfied with the reception of the play?” I asked.

“Perfectly,” Mme. Sarah Bernhardt replied; “and if the verdict is endorsed in London, I shall look back on Hamlet as the greatest success of my career.”

In producing Shakespeare’s masterpiece in the theatre she now occupies—a playhouse in the popular acceptation of the term—Mme. Sarah Bernhardt has not only scored a personal triumph, but is developing a work of education. She is offering the French public something far better and higher than they can see at any other theatre in their country; and at the same time she is carrying out an achievement which no other actress or any actor on the French stage could even attempt. In the words of M. Henry Fouquier—“Whilst the public always derives some benefit from a fine play, if only the vague conception of and desire for an intellectual existence on a higher plane than the sordid necessities of daily life, the actors themselves profit by an acquaintance with anything that is good and original in foreign master-pieces, alien though they may seem to the genius of our race. We cannot too much admire those who, like Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, faithfully interpret the poetry of another people by the light of our own intellectual clearness.”

G. A. R.

1899.

THE END

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