Among all classic
translations of the classic works of the world, I know of none that for
absolute mastery and perfect triumph over all accumulation of obstacles,
for supreme dominion over supreme difficulty, can be matched with the
translation of Shakespeare by Francois-Victor Hugo; unless a claim of
companionship may perchance be put in for Urquhart's unfinished version
of Rabelais. For such success in the impossible as finally disproves the
right of "that fool of a word" to existence--at least in the world of
letters--the two miracles of study and of sympathy which have given
Shakespeare to the French and Rabelais to the English, and each in his
habit as he lived, may take rank together in glorious rivalry beyond
eyeshot of all past or future competition.
Among the essays appended to the version of Shakespeare which they
complete and illustrate, that which deals with the play now in question
gives as ample proof as any other of the sound and subtle insight brought
to bear by the translator upon the object of his labour and his love. His
keen and studious intuition is here as always not less notable and
admirable than his large and solid knowledge, his full and lucid
comprehension at once of the text and of the history of Shakespeare's
plays; and if his research into the inner details of that history may
seem ever to have erred from the straight path of firm and simple
certainty into some dubious byway of theory or conjecture, we may be sure
at least that no lack of learning or devotion, of ardour or intelligence,
but more probably some noble thought that was fathered by a noble wish to
do honour to Shakespeare, has led him to attribute to his original some
quality foreign to the text, or to question the authenticity of what for
love of his author he might not wish to find in it.
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