The tragedy was that "Cleopatre" in which Mademoiselle Rachel appeared,
after wrangling for some time with the authoress to induce the latter to
give Antony some other name, vowing that _Antoine_ was entirely too
vulgar to be uttered on the stage. The great tragic actress had never
heard of the illustrious Roman, and knew no other Antony but the
_Antoine_ who scrubbed her floors and brought her water. It was a
woman's tragedy, but written by a woman in man's attire, determined to
write a very masculine, vigorous work, but succeeding in producing only
a _plated_ piece, in which everything was puerile, artificial, and
conventional, from the first word to the last line. It was an _olla
podrida_, in which Shakspeare hobnobbed with Campistron, Theophile
Gautier locked arms with Dorat, Plutarch was dovetailed with the
Mantua-Makers' Journal of Fashions. Cleopatra spouted long speeches upon
archaeology, hieroglyphics, the sun, climate, and virtue; Antony was
guilty of _concetti_ in the style of Seneca; Octavia prattled like a
respectable Parisian lady, who takes care of her children when they have
the measles, and hides from them their father's bad habits.
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