The drama
even, in order to satisfy the prolixity of their nature, must take all
tongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side by side
with this vulgar prose; more than this, it must distort its natural style
and limits, put songs, poetical devices in the discourse of courtiers and
the speeches of statesmen; bring on the stage the fairy world of opera,
as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with their groves
and meadows; compel the gods to descend upon the stage, and hell itself
to furnish its world of marvels. No other theatre is so complicated, for
nowhere else do we find men so complete."
M. Taine heightens this picture in generalizations splashed with
innumerable blood-red details of English life and character. The English
is the most warlike race in Europe, most redoubtable in battle, most
impatient of slavery. "English savages" is what Cellini calls them; and
the great shins of beef with which they fill themselves nourish the force
and ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutions
work in the same groove as nature. The nation is armed. Every man is a
soldier, bound to have arms according to his condition, to exercise
himself on Sundays and holidays. The State resembles an army; punishments
must inspire terror; the idea of war is ever present. Such instincts,
such a history, raises before them with tragic severity the idea of life;
death is at hand, wounds, blood, tortures.
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