The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-05-31

Fyep. ne Dublin Magazine.

French
people than that of their island neighbors 1t
would hardly come within the scope of our pre-
cent paper to account for the circumstance,
which we believe will be taken on trust by our
readers, especially by such of them as have made
the transit of the Channel. They have seen that
SIX days OF the week not sufficient Tor the
farlsian Play-goers enjoyment OF Le SpeccdGG1i
he must supplement it by Sunday evening. we
do not envy his sensations at his aWaklnS ON
Monday morning. if ne has any regular employ
ment. We British islanders plume ourselves
on our superior morality when we put ourselves
in comparison with our Gallic contemporaries,
and without doubt the moral exchange between
French and British comedians and directors of
theatres is in favor of the latter. Were every
shadow of restraint to be removed from theatre
cal management in London, Dublin, and Edin-
bureh, no such licentiOus spectacles would ever
be tolerated by the public were exhibited
successively in Paris Immediately after its three
revolutions. In fact, no actors or actresses
known to the British public could ever be in
duced to appear in them.
The interest taken in the drama1 in Paris SO
much exceeding anything witnessed here, it is
not to be wondered at that the French Govern
ment should so long have made a useful engine
of il, and subsidized it with liberal subventions
when it was incapable of supporting itself or
that the great people about the Court have from
the days of COrneille at all times been assiduous
visitors to the green-rooms and the coulisses of
the principal theatres. The people in authority
during the Directory and those who succeeded
them in the Consulate were as assiduous in their
attendance as those who, under the elder regime,
were admitted to the orgies of the Regency and
OF the Court of Louis XIV.
Our object in this paper being merely to notice
some interesting circumstances and characters
of the Partisan stage within the present century,
the reader need not fear the perusal of chroni-
Gle embracing the lives and works of Comeile
Racine, Moliere, and their less known sue
cessors
TALMA AND BoNAPARTE.
The prediction of the First Consul for the
theatre only less strong than his love of arms.
From the epoch of 1892 he and Talma were insep-
arabic, and he passed his evenings in the cou-
lisses of the Theatre Francais More than once the
stage manager asked Talma. ''Who is this young
officer" Napoleon Bonaparte' His name
is not on our stage list" "Don't mind; he is my
friend" "Oh, that's another affair"
If ever emperor or king loved the theatre
that man was Napoleon l. On the battle
field, and in the gallery, pit, and boxes of
the playhouse, it his supreme will to
civilize and render happy all the nations of
the earth. When cOnQuerng and going to con-
quer, he carried about with him his favorite
actors and actresses. When at Erfurth, i'm 1908,
Talma presented every morning to the EN-
peror the play-bill of the ensuing evening. One
morning, as he afterwards related to DR.. VerOn,
when proceeding to the door of Napoeon's re-
ception room, he found himself detained by the
skirt of his coat. "Will you inform the EN-
peror," said the impatient visitor, that | am
here?" This inpatient visitor was the King of
Saxony.
TALMA AND DUMAS.
One of the earliest theatrical performances
witnessed by Alexander Dumas in his youth
was Talma's Hamlet in Ducis'E 'Eadaptation of
the play. 1t was an epoch in his life. What
would it not have been had he seen the Hamlet
of Shakespeare He had read some of the trage-
dies of Coneille and Racine, and found the ex-
ercise rather tresome. The piece was performed
at Soissons by a strolling company but he had
not seen Tama, nor ever had been inside a Paris
theatre, nor heard Shakespeare's name pro-
Hounced.
THE actor" he writes in his Memories, tome
B, who presented Hamlet was tall, pale, and
dark young fellow named Cudot. He had fine
eyes, powerful voice, and such good recollec-
ton of Talma, that when / saw the great trage-
dian in the same part, | thought he was imi-
tating Cudot
"As l was entirely ignorant of the original,
the Hamlet of Ducts, with his fantastic entry,
his apparition, visible to himself only, his argu-
ment with his mother, his solilOquy, the sombre
interrogatory addressed by doubt to death-in
fine, the Hamlet of Ducs appeared a master
piece, and made profound impression me,
full OF ineXplicable sensations of desires with
out object, of mysterious vistas of light of pleas
ing but puzzling IDEAS"
Dumas, on procuring the printed play got it
by heart in three days: and later in time, when
he became acquainted with the original Alex
ander is vain of his knowledge of English), he
could not forget the poor adaptation and this
has always been a source of annoyance to him.
1t was happy morning for young Alexander
when his friend Adolphe introduced him to the
tickets to see him in ''Syla" in the evening.
'Ialma was very shOrt-sghted, so | do not
know whether he saw me or not.
HE was washing his breast. His head was
nearly bald circumstance which rather puz-
lied me, as heard that his hair absolutely rose
on his head at the supposed sight iof the ghost.
1T must be acknowledged that there was
little of the poetical at that moment about
Talma.
Still, when he stood upright with the lower
part OF his body draped in white woollen robe,
and drew corner of it over his shoulder and
breast there was in the movement something
imperial"
Discovering that Alexander was a son of an
old acquaintance, he discoursed awhile with
him, and at parting gave him his hand, which
his visitor would have gladly kissed. His de-
scrlption OF the rest is entirely Dumasian.
with my exalted ideas of the theatre Talma
was god-one unknown It's true as Jupiter was
TO semele-a god who then appeared to me, but
who would be fully revealed in the evening.
''Our hands touched.
80 Talma, if you had been twenty years
younger, or twenty years older!
"All the honor was for me. ! knew the past:
You could not know the future renOwn of ID.
to wiD
If any one could have told you that the hand
which you then held would thereafter write sixty
or eighty dramas, in each of which you who
were seeking for characters all your life would
nave found one which you would eXalt to Won
der, you would not have let off so coolly the
poor young man, all blushing for having had the
honor OF speaking to you-of touching your
hand.
"But how could you have discovered in me- o
Ialma, that oil which was unconscious my
self?"
very sensible query Many a successful
man of letters well Dumas, has been
seized with melancholy at the recollection of
the death of his parents before they could enjoy