A hundred and fifty years ago,one of the most celebrated names in. the French literary world was that of Jean-Francois Ducis. His plays were read by everyone of culture, performed in the best theatres, and the author claimed as a direct and worthy descendant of Corneille, Racine and Voltaire. To-day, his plays are half forgotten, and himself little more than a name. The fact that after enjoying brilliant success for more than half a century, plays should fall into such complete obscurity rouses the curiosity of the student to know why it should be so: and the fact that most of the tragedies are adaptations of Shakespeare gives them a greatly added. interest,at least for the English reader. Why should Ducis have made Shakespeare his model? Why should he have tried to adapt him, and how did he do it? Sheer curiosity to know what he made of the English poet first impels one to read the plays, and in the reading, a host of other problems suggest themselves and deepen the interest a hundredfold. The first feeling that rises is one of profound astonishment. What could have made anyone thus deform and alter a writer whom he admired enough to make him his model? From the plays, one turns to the letters and the life-story to find what manner of man Ducis was: and his character stands out vividly at once. He was a poet, romantic and independent,fascinated by all that was striking and dramatic; as a man, pure and upright, a strange mixture of gentleness and rugged independence. This abundantly explains why Shakespeare became his delight and his inspiration; but it only deepens the mystery as to why he should so have deformed him, altering plot, characters, tone and style. Some other influence must have been as strong, or stronger than his romantic admiration for Shakespeare: the influence was that of the age in which he lived and the dramatic tradition he had inherited from his predecessors. And so the question becomes a wider one than the work of one man. The conception of tragedy that dominated the work of writers in England and in France; the particular tastes and ideas of the audiences for which Ducis wrote, and which he must perforce please; these were the things that from outside influenced Ducis, and modified his own tastes and ideas. A study of them at once concentrates the attention on the particular set of rules and conventions known as the Classical Tradition; and it becomes evident that it was this tradition which set a great gulf between English and French tragedy, and. forced Ducis to adapt Shakespeare as he did before he could present him to a French public. Most of the changes he made were out of respect for an authority which Shakespeare neglected entirely. Nevertheless, at the time when Ducis wrote, this tradition was tottering to its fall, - the proof of it was that he dared to adapt Shakespeare at all for a French audience. New ideas more in keeping with Ducis's own literary tastes were beginning to find favour, and the most outstanding character of Ducis's work is that it was a desperate effort to reconcile two opposites - French and English tragedy, old authority and new inspiration. In this lay the secret of its success in a transition age: and in this the reason of its failure in an age which no longer seeks to reconcile two ideals so different, but accepts both,and renders to each the homage it deserves. To understand the adaptations of Ducis, therefore, the first thing essential is to realise clearly the nature of this French tradition that by its steadily increasing influence separated so widely French from English tragedy,its rise in the 17th century, and its gradual dissolution in the 18th. The first two chapters are therefore concerned with the history and influence of the Classical Tradition,and the position in which it stood when Duds was writing: the remaining chapters are a study of the particular example of its influence afforded by the works of Ducis. Each adaptation is analysed separately, and an attempt is made to trace the conflicting influences of the traditional French system of classical tragedy and. the romantic drama of Shakespeare. It is not without general interest because of its bearing upon the difficult question of the Classical Tradition in Tragedy; and it has the particular interest of the study of a very charming personality, that despite the inferiority of his literary work inspires in the modern reader the same respect and sympathy as in the men of his own day.