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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE. The learned M. Jusserand, who is as entertaining as he is learned, and who has done almost as much as Taine did (although in a very different way) to give a new interest to the history of English literature, has published a book upon the fortunes of Shakespeare among the Frenchmen. The subject of this investigation is so novel, as well as so interesting inherently, that it seems worth while to tell M. Jusserand's story in condensed form, although it has been made fully accessible to English readers. Of course, we all know in its general outline the history of Shakespearian study in France, but few even among students know the interesting details of the narrative which M. Jusserand has illustrated from the wealth of his rich and curious reading, which he has adorned with his piquant style and warmed with his sympathetic ' appreciation' of the greatest poet of the modern world. M. Jusserand introduces his narrative by settingside by side two passages, published respectively in 1645 and 1765, and roughly indicating the limits of the period to which the chief interest of the story attaches, the period during which Shakespeare won his way to the French consciousness. The first extract is from Blaeu's 'Theatre du Monde,' a sort of glorified gaz- eteer, and informs the reader that Stratford is a pleasant little town which owes its entire glory to ' Jehan de Stratford, archeveque de Cantor- bery' and 'Hugues de Clopton, juge a Londres.' One of these worthies, it seems, built a church in Stratford, and the other spanned the Avon with a bridge. To this writer, Shakespeare was less than a name; Stratford had enough of glory in its claim upon the primate and the judge. The other extract is from the ' Encyclopaedia,' and speaks of Stratford in this fashion : ' ...
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