Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/243

 RACHEL 367 selle Rose Cheri. His "Chandelier" having met with success, Rachel applied to De Musset for a play. She was offered, it seems, " Les Caprices de Mari- anne," but meantime the poet's "Bettine" failed, and the actress distrustfully turned away from him. An undertaking to appear in the " Medea " of Legouve 1 landed her in a protracted lawsuit. The courts condemned her in damages to the amount of two hundred francs for every day she delayed playing the part of Medea after the date fixed upon by the management for the commencement of the rehearsals of the tragedy. She paid nothing, however, for the management failed to fix any such date. M. Legouve was only avenged in the success his play obtained, in a translated form, at the hands of Madame Ristori. In lieu of " Medea " Rachel produced " Rosemonde," a tragedy by M. Latour de St Ybars, which failed completely. Other plays written for her were the " Valeria " of MM. Lacroix and Maquet, in which she personated two characters — the Em- press Messalina and her half sister, Lysisca, a courtesan ; the " Diane," of M. Augier, an imitation of Victor Hugo's " Marion Delorme ;" " Lady Tartuffe," a comedy by Madame de Girardin ; and " La Czarine," by M. Scribe. She ap- peared also in certain of the characters originally contrived for Mademoiselle Mars, such as La Tisbe in Victor Hugo's " Angelo," and the heroines of Dumas's "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle" and of " Louise de Lignerolles" by MM. Le- gouve and Dinaux. The classical drama of France has not found much favor in England and America. We are all, perhaps, apt to think with Thackeray disrespectfully of the " old tragedies — well-nigh dead, and full time too — in which half a dozen charac- ters appear and shout sonorous Alexandrines for half a dozen hours ; " or we are disposed to agree with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that their drama, being fundament- ally insufficient both in substance and in form, the French, with all their gifts, have not, as we have, an adequate form for poetry of the highest class. Those who remember Rachel, however, can testify that she breathed the most ardent life into the frigid remains of Racine and Corneille, relumed them with Prome- thean heat, and showed them to be instinct with the truest and intensest passion- When she occupied the scene, there could be no thought of the old artificial times of hair powder and rouge, periwigs and patches, in connection with the characters she represented. Phedre and Hermione, Pauline and Camille, inter- preted by her genius, became as real and natural, warm and palpitating, as Con- stance or Lady Macbeth could have been when played by Mrs. Siddons, or as Juliet when impersonated by Miss O'Neill. Before Rachel came, it had been thought that the new romantic drama of MM. Hugo and Dumas, because of its greater truth to nature, had given the coup de grdce to the old classic plays ; but the public, at her bidding, turned gladly from the spasms and the rant of " An- gelo " and " Angele," " Antony " and " Hernani," to the old-world stories, the formal tragedies of the seventeenth century poet-dramatists of France. The actress fairly witched her public. There was something of magic in her very presence upon the scene. None could fail to be impressed by the aspect of the slight, pallid woman who