The text of Moore’s poem, the
mélange of Berlioz and Swanton-Belloc, provides yet more evidence of the man’s remarkable memory, which allowed him to quote the Latin and French classics, the French moderns, and Shakespeare, ten of whose twelve tragedies he seems to have known, in full, or in part, by heart. The ones he knew best are those he saw in 1827, at the Odéon, with Harriet Smithson in the leading roles, and those that he read in the anonymous translations found in the brochures published in the Place de l’Odéon by Madame Vergne. (We shall speak more of those editions in chapters 11 and 12, devoted to Shakespeare, which is why he gets short shrift here.) Very few of Madame Vergne’s pocket-sized editions have been preserved. The anonymous translator of
Romeo and Juliet used the 1748 Garrick ending of the play that inspired our composer. Following the great eighteenth-century actor in having Juliet awaken before the poison does Romeo in, Berlioz, for that moment, set down some of the most ecstatic music of his entire catalogue (I am thinking of bars 90–147 of
Roméo au tombeau des Capulets).
1 NBE 18:265–274. On that page of the play, in act 5, we read: “Romeo is thy husband; I am that Romeo. Nor all the opposing powers of earth or man shall break our bonds or tear thee from my heart” (“Roméo est ton époux; je suis ce Roméo. Et tous les pouvoirs réunis de la terre, et des hommes, ne pourraient rompre nos nœuds et t’arracher de mon cœur”). Those are not the words of Shakespeare, but those are the words Berlioz knew.
The same anonymous translator made a number of cuts in
Romeo and Juliet, just as she or he did in
Hamlet,
Othello,
Macbeth,
Lear,
and
Richard III,
and these would have infuriated the composer, even though the aesthetic and ethical matters regarding the “updating” of Shakespeare, now more fiercely debated than in Berlioz’s day, will never be settled once and for all. (In Ian McEwan’s witty novel
Nutshell, published in 2016, the author has the Hamlet story narrated by an omniscient fetus alive in Gertrude’s womb! What would Berlioz—or Shakespeare—make of that?) Let me say that I have been surprised that the Shakespeare scholars have not yet identified the translator of the Madame Vergne editions that were so important to Berlioz’s bewitchment by the Bard. That translator’s identity was apparently well hidden at the time, because if he had been able to do so, Berlioz would surely have outed him or her, no doubt with rage. “The translators are such asses,” wrote Berlioz to his old friend Humbert Ferrand on October 28, 1864, in a letter I shall have occasion to quote again; “I’ve corrected in my copy I don’t know how many silly errors of Monsieur Benjamin Laroche, and yet it is he who is the most faithful and least ignorant of the lot.”
2 CG 7:139.“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action”: Hamlet’s advice to the players, imitated in Lélio ou Le Retour à la vie, would have been Berlioz’s advice to the translators, too. Easier said than done.