Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/321

 and Dumas was represented as being haunted, à la Richard III., by the ghosts of the authors from whose "Don Juans" he had borrowed.

"Henri Trois" is now by general consent beyond the reach of this injurious criticism. Of "Antony" Dumas himself in his Mémoires has submitted his own defence to the judgment of posterity. He certainly makes two palpable hits, firstly, in pointing out that the sinners Antony and Adèle do not prosper by their sin, for they live in stress and anguish and die violent and miserable deaths; and secondly, that in "exploiting" adultery as a subject for the stage he treats it in a far more worthy fashion than did Molière, and we may add, than the Restoration and eighteenth century dramatists. With them cuckoldry was a suitable theme for comedy; as the fashionable and amusing pastime of le monde où l'on s'ennuie. In fact, Dumas faithfully follows Shakespeare in "Othello," and "Much Ado about Nothing."

It should never be forgotten, especially by Englishmen, that many of the "horrors" with which Dumas's early plays are filled, are due to an ardent but indiscriminate admiration for Shakespeare. Schiller no doubt is also to blame, but we are obviously more concerned with the Elizabethan playwright. Do those who condemn the murder