Othello ou le More de Venise, tragédie...
Authors of source text
Contributions
- Jean-François Ducis
- translator
Related resources
- is other edition
- Othello, ou le More de Venise, tragédie par le citoyen Ducis: Représentée, pour la première fois à Paris; sur le Théâtre de la République, le lundi 26 novembre 1792, l'an premier de la République translation has translation has paratext has other edition
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Notes
“Went to see Othello, not translated but only ‘taken from the English’. Poor Shakespeare! I felt for him. The French tragedy is a pitiful performance, filled with false sentiment. The Moor whines most abominably and Iago is a personage of a very pretty morality. The author apologises for softening the villainy of the latter character, as well as for saving the life of Desdemona, and substituting a happy termination in place of the sublime and terrible conclusion of the English tragedy, by saying that the humanity of the French nation, and their morality, would be shocked by such exhibitions.
I admire a nation that will guillotine 60 people a day for months, men, women and children, and cannot bear the catastrophe of a dramatic exhibition. Yet certainly the author knows best, and I have had occasion repeatedly to observe that the French are more struck with any little incident of tenderness on the stage a thousand times than the English, which is strange! In short the French are a human people, when they are not mad, and I like them with all their faults, and the guillotine at the head of them, better a thousand times than the English, and I like the Irish better than either, and as no one can doubt my impartiality I expect my opinion will be received with proper respect and deference by all whom it may concern. I have nothing to add.”
Entry from Theodore Wolfe Tone's diary (16 March 1796).