child, and a villain withal, contrives to poison the mind of the father,
and to eject the legitimate son from his favour; it will be found
exactly thus in Schiller's famous story of "The Robbers." It must be
acknowledged, however, that foreigners in general have never idolized
Shakspeare, or paid him that devoted adoration, which his countrymen
both pay and think him entitled to. Hear Voltaire's overdrawn and even
paltry criticism of _Hamlet_. "The tragedy of _Hamlet_ is a gross and
barbarous composition, which would not be supported by the lowest
populace in France and Italy. Hamlet goes mad in the second act, Ophelia
in the third; he takes the father of his mistress for a rat, and runs
him through the body. In despair, the heroine drowns herself. Her grave
is dug on the stage, while the grave-diggers enter into a conversation
_suitable_ (!) to such low wretches, and play, as it were, with dead
men's bones! Hamlet answers their abominable stuff, with follies equally
disgusting. Hamlet, with his father and mother-in-law, drink together
upon the stage; they sing at table, afterwards they quarrel, and battle
and death ensue. In short, one might take this performance for the
fruits of the imagination of _a drunken savage_." (_Letters on the
English Nation._)

In another place, this writer says, "Shakspeare had not a single spark
of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama. In one of his _monstrous
farces_, to which he has given the name of Tragedies, we find the jokes
of the Roman shoemakers and cobblers introduced in the same scene with
the orations of Brutus and Antony." (See Voltaire's _Essays on Tragedy
and Comedy_.) Here this rival dramatist again objects to any
introduction of the lower orders on the stage, and seems averse to
whatever is natural, and to depicting life as it is; but if any excuse
is necessary for Shakspeare on this head, we must remember that the
stage was in his time, and indeed is now perhaps, more particularly