Public-domain ebook
by Victor Hugo
Language: en1,225 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Plays/Films/Dramas·Biographies·Essays, Letters & Speeches
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #53490.
The work is Victor Hugo’s expansive tribute to Shakespeare, framed as “Apropos to Shakespeare.” It begins with a declaration of purpose: to introduce a new translation of the bard and to explore the artistic and moral questions his legacy raises. Hugo immediately situates his own reflection within a vivid, almost theatrical description of a bleak house on a French island, where an exiled family debates the meaning of exile and the son declares his intention to translate Shakespeare. From this atmospheric opening the book unfolds into a multipart study, first charting Shakespeare’s life, then his genius, his works, and the broader cultural currents of his age, interspersed with essays on other great minds and on art, science, and criticism. The opening thus signals a blend of biography, literary criticism, and philosophical meditation, all rooted in Hugo’s 19th‑century perspective on the playwright’s enduring influence.
Hugo’s voice is grand and rhetorical, echoing the Romantic‑era prose of his French contemporaries while weaving in classical allusions and vivid, sometimes baroque, imagery. The style is dense, lyrical, and often digressive, reflecting the author’s belief that art must confront the “complex questions of art and civilization.” Readers who relish a richly textured, essayistic approach to literary history, particularly those interested in the 19th‑century French reception of Shakespeare, or who enjoy a blend of biography, cultural commentary, and philosophical discourse, will find this work rewarding.
The opening · free to read
The true title of this work should be, "Apropos to Shakespeare." The desire of introducing, as they say in England, before the public, the new translation of Shakespeare, has been the first motive of the author. The feeling which interests him so profoundly in the translator should not deprive him of the right to recommend the translation. However, his conscience has been solicited on the other part, and in a more binding way still, by the subject itself. In reference to Shakespeare all questions which touch art are presented to his mind. To treat these questions, is to explain the mission of art; to treat these questions, is to explain the duty of human thought toward man. Such an occasion for speaking truths imposes a duty, and he is not permitted, above all at such an epoch as ours, to evade it. The author has comprehended this. He has not hesitated to turn the complex questions of art and civilization on their several faces, multiplying the horizons every time that the perspective has displaced itself, and accepting every indication that the subject, in its rigorous necessity, has offered to him. This expansion of the point of view has given rise to this book.
Hauteville House, 1864.
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![Cover of Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 1 of 2]
Including the Biography of the Poet; Criticisms on His Genius and Writings; A New Chronology of His Plays; A Disquisition on the on the Object of His Sonnets; And a History of the Manners, Customs, and Amusements, Superstitions, Poetry, and Elegant Literature of His Age](/covers/53625.jpg)
![Cover of Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2]
Including the Biography of the Poet; Criticisms on His Genius and Writings; A New Chronology of His Plays; A Disquisition on the on the Object of His Sonnets; And a History of the Manners, Customs, and Amusements, Superstitions, Poetry, and Elegant Literature of His Age](/covers/53626.jpg)