Reading Order
William Shakespeare Reading Order
William Shakespeare (1864) by Victor Hugo is one of the greatest critical works in the French language — a philosophical essay on the nature of genius, ostensibly about Shakespeare but in reality a sustained argument about the role of the poet in human history. The work was written as the preface to Hugo's son François-Victor Hugo's complete translation of Shakespeare, but it far exceeds the occasion: it develops into a meditation on what Hugo calls the 'génies' (geniuses) of human history — Homer, Aeschylus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Job, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare — and argues that these figures are not merely literary but prophetic, that they are the conscience and the voice of humanity at its highest moments of self-understanding. The work is not literary criticism in the modern sense — Hugo is not interested in close reading or historical context — but it is one of the most powerful statements of the Romantic theory of genius and its social function, and it is written in Hugo's most sustained and magnificent prose. The work also contains, in passing, some of the most memorable critical phrases in French — 'Shakespeare est un génie' is the whole argument distilled, and the surrounding elaboration is a masterpiece of critical prose.
Where to start
William Shakespeare can be read independently of any knowledge of Shakespeare's works — it is about the nature of genius rather than about specific Shakespeare plays. Read Part I ('Génies') for the theory, then the middle sections for the application. The work is available in complete French editions and in English translation.
Complete William Shakespeare Book List
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William Shakespeare
Victor Hugo·1864·Available in French in the Massin Complete Works and in standalone editions. Translated into English as William Shakespeare by Melville B. Anderson (1864) and by other translators. - Buy
Les Contemplations
OptionalVictor Hugo·1856·Hugo's great lyric collection written in the same period of exile — the poetic counterpart to the theoretical argument of William Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Hugo's argument about the genius in William Shakespeare?
Hugo's central argument in William Shakespeare is that the great creative geniuses of human history — his list includes Homer, Aeschylus, the Hebrew prophets, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, and Shakespeare, with Shakespeare as the culmination — are not primarily artists but prophets, the voices through which humanity comes to understand itself at its highest moments of clarity. The genius is not a craftsman who produces beautiful objects but a medium through which the spirit of the age, the spirit of the people, and ultimately the spirit of humanity itself speaks. This is a continuation of the theory of the poet's function that Hugo develops throughout his career ('Fonction du poète' in Les Rayons et les ombres, the prefaces to the novels and plays), but developed here at the greatest length and with the greatest sophistication. The argument has a democratic and republican dimension: the genius speaks for the people, who cannot speak for themselves in their suffering and aspiration, and the genius's work is therefore not the property of the educated elite but belongs to all of humanity. This is why Hugo is suspicious of the academies and the official literary culture — they domesticate genius and deprive it of its prophetic function. The argument explains a great deal about Hugo's own practice: his deliberate courting of a mass readership, his use of spectacular theatrical effects, his ambition to write works that would be read by the entire French nation.
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