Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/322

 of Monaldeschi, the unholy love of Queen Marguerite in "La Tour de Nesle," and the profanity of "Don Juan" forget not only the "horrors" of the old classic tragedies, which Dumas duly studied, but also the passages in "Titus Andronicus," in "Macbeth," in "Richard III.," and other plays, which no stage-manager would dare to present to the public to-day? For in more than one respect the Romantic movement in France, in the early part of last century, corresponds with the Elizabethan era in our literature. We have neither the desire nor the ability to present an elaborate comparison here: it is sufficient to note that political and social conditions favoured a reaction towards passion and action in poetry, drama, and romance, and this has been well shown by Dumas himself in his preface to "Cointe Hermann," in which our author explains and defends the outcomes of his first dramatic period. He had taken part, as Castelar truly says, "in that war of giants, the struggle for the poetry of nature against the poetry of the Académie, breaking the chains of all literary codes, and loudly proclaiming liberty; ardent and daring even to folly, like a hero in the war of his age against past ages."

286 Why, we may fairly ask, should critics take eager note of the excesses of the young dramatist and ignore his second and last periods, when experience