THE 
 
 MODERN FRENCH DRAMA.
 
 THE MODERN 
 
 FRENCH DRAMA 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUSTIN FILON 
 
 TRANSLATED BY JANET E. HOGARTH 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 W. L. COURTNEY 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED 
 
 1898
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 P.VOK 
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 I. THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER . . 5 
 II. NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. . . . 44 
 
 III. THE THEATRE LIBRE 84 
 
 IV. EOUND ABOUT THE THEATRES . . .132 
 
 V. THE NEW COMEDY 174 
 
 VI. THE NEW COMEDY (continued) . . .217 
 VII. THE EEVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE 261 
 
 2G84250
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 M. FILON'S Essays on the French Drama seem 
 to require no other introduction to a British 
 public than can be contained in a formal expla- 
 natory note. Those who have read M. Filon's 
 books, his studies of prominent English states- 
 men, his novels, above all, his essays on the 
 modern English stage, originally contributed to 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes, will know how keen 
 and clear is his critical insight and how skilful 
 is the manipulation of his materials in order 
 to produce the impression which he desires. 
 Without doubt, in his papers published in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, he did a substantial 
 service to his countrymen, for he was able to 
 explain to them a fact which, through incurious- 
 ness or unfamiliarity, they were apt to ignore
 
 viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that modern England possessed a stage, supported 
 by dramatic writers of ability, independence, and 
 originality. When the papers on the English Stage 
 first appeared in book form, I asked M. Filon to do 
 something of the same kind of service for English 
 readers as he had already done for his kinsmen 
 across the Channel, and illustrate in the pages of 
 the Fortnightly Review some of the main principles 
 and tendencies underlying the contemporary 
 drama in Paris. The conditions in the two cases, 
 I was aware, were not parallel ; for I think we 
 may flatter ourselves that we know more about 
 French drama and French literature in London 
 than our neighbours know about literary or 
 dramatic movements in England. But it is one 
 thing to be acquainted with individual plays, and 
 quite another thing to understand the course of 
 theatrical development ; and although we speak 
 glibly enough of Augier, of the younger Dumas, 
 of Hervieu, of Lemaitre, and still later play- 
 wrights in the French capital, we can hardly 
 without assistance understand the relations which 
 they bear to one another, or comprehend the links 
 of sympathy or antagonism which connect the
 
 INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 various schools. A work like that of M. Filon 
 gives us, as it seems to me, an important and 
 valuable picture. We may agree with some of 
 the details or may disagree. But in either case 
 we know where we are, and our criticism gains a 
 new aim and meaning. 
 
 According to M. Filon there are five distinct 
 movements which explain the modern French 
 Stage, or rather five classifications which we may 
 adopt to interpret its principles and its methods. 
 In the first of these comes the older theatre of 
 Scribe and Sardou, based on a knowledge of 
 theatrical technique, proud above all to produce 
 the "piece bien faite." To that succeeds the 
 school of Dumas and Augier, adopting the 
 machinery of their predecessors but paying 
 more attention to psychological considerations, 
 and insisting on the portrayal of character as of 
 primary importance. Thus, to use the French 
 nomenclature, we arrive at the " piece a these," 
 the source and origin of all those " problem 
 plays " which had a brief and meteor-like career 
 amongst ourselves. Then follows the curious 
 movement connected with the genius of M.
 
 x INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Antoine and the Theatre Libre. The problem 
 play, like the well-constructed play, is apt to get 
 into certain mechanical and stereotyped grooves, 
 and the spirit which, for want of a better name, 
 we call the spirit of Naturalism, inaugurates a 
 revolt, bringing with it a newer, more natural, 
 and more spontaneous style of acting, in itself 
 an almost incalculable advantage. We have 
 had nothing correspondent to this in London, 
 for our experiments in a free theatre have, 
 with a very few exceptions, only resulted in 
 productions formless, irregular, and bizarre. 
 The sequel to the movement in Paris may yet, 
 however, be represented amongst ourselves. In 
 process of time the younger French writers 
 discovered that the theatre cannot succeed 
 without certain dramatic conventions, as neces- 
 sary and as inevitable in the art of Thespis as 
 their analogues have proved to be in the history 
 of Literature. These dramatic conventions, which 
 only inexperienced authors have ever supposed 
 to be irritating and unnecessary obstacles to 
 their industry, began to reappear in Paris at 
 first surreptitiously, afterwards, as psychology
 
 INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 gained ground, more openly in such dramatists 
 as De Curel, Hervieu, and Lemaltre. 
 
 We have got now to the latest phase of French 
 dramatic art, which is nothing more nor less 
 than a real romantic revival. Good, noble, and 
 unselfish characters make their re-appearance. 
 It is recognised that the great body of theatre- 
 goers, who are, perhaps, more conservative than 
 any other section of our modern democratical 
 societies, desire to be emotionally moved by 
 Virtue, and to be emotionally repelled by Yice. 
 There is nothing in our own Metropolis which 
 the pit and the gallery more instinctively 
 admire than the triumph of Goodness and the 
 defeat of Evil ; or if this poetic justice be deneo 1 
 them, they at all events require to be slicwr i 
 that, whether they succeed or fail, honesty, justice, 
 and loving kindness are their own exceeding 
 great reward. In Paris the underlying human 
 forces which make for what is pure and beautiful 
 have blossomed forth into the poetical dramas of 
 Le Chemineau and Cyrano de Bergerac, in both 
 of which, though in the last more obviously 
 than the first, the spectator sees, and loves to
 
 xii . 1NTROD UCTION. 
 
 see, the old romantic ideals of his youth triumph- 
 ing over all that is sordid and ugly in a late 
 and materialistic age. 
 
 At the date when I am writing, M. Jean 
 Bichepin's Le Chemineau has already made its 
 appearance in an English guise at Her Majesty's 
 Theatre, while Cyrano de Bergerac, with M. 
 Coquelin in the title-role, is announced at the 
 Lyceum. It is a tempting subject of inquiry 
 whether in London, too, we shall get in our theatres 
 a resurrection of the romantic and poetical drama. 
 Many indications seem to point that way. Thea- 
 trical productions, as a rule, follow movements in 
 novelistic literature, and just as the problem 
 )lap- came as the attendant upon the problem 
 jAioral, so the undeniable popularity of literary 
 romance at the present day may be succeeded 
 by a similar phenomenon on the stage. It is 
 always unsafe to prophesy, however, and at the 
 end of the theatrical season of 1898 it seems more 
 than usually perilous. For some little time past, 
 so far as the theatre is concerned, we have been 
 moving in a dim world of uncertain ideals ; our 
 authors themselves seem not to know what to
 
 INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 aim at, because neither their audiences nor the 
 dramatic critics give them any guidance. At 
 the time when the problem play was rife, Mr. 
 Pinero produced the one characteristic and con- 
 spicuous drama which has been seen in modern 
 years on London boards. The Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray was a wonderful achievement because it 
 summed up in itself and represented in enduring 
 form characteristic tendencies in our period. 
 It was a much more remarkable triumph than La 
 Dame aux CameUas, for while Dumas wrote with 
 a certain boyish exuberance his defence of the 
 courtesan, Mr. Pinero's tremendous indictment of 
 the courtesan was composed in the maturity of 
 his powers. Since then, however, he has produced 
 nothing typical with the exception, perhaps, of 
 The Princess and the Butterfly, which, with many 
 obvious defects and unnecessary episodes, was, 
 nevertheless, a study in the kind of fantastic 
 comedy of which we have had few examples since 
 Shakespeare. The other and more familiar type 
 of comedy, the comedy of manners, has been bril- 
 liantly illustrated by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones 
 in that admirable piece, The Case of Rebellious
 
 THE 
 
 MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 IN the summer of 1895 the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes had just begun to publish my studies of 
 the modern English stage, which have attracted 
 some little notice and roused a certain amount 
 of controversy on both sides of the Channel. 
 The Editor of the Fortnightly Review thereupon 
 suggested that I should write a similar series of 
 articles on the modern French drama for English 
 readers. In spite of the attractiveness of the 
 proposal, my first instinct was to decline a task 
 for which I did not feel myself properly qualified. 
 I had several excellent reasons. The first, 
 which makes any enumeration of the others un- 
 necessary, was my complete ignorance of the 
 modern French theatre. In my early youth I 
 had been a most zealous and enthusiastic habitue 
 
 B
 
 , THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 of our leading theatres, but stress of circumstance 
 had exiled me from the world which I loved, 
 and I had never returned to it. It will hardly 
 be credited that for exactly a quarter of a cen- 
 tury I had not set foot in the Come"die Francaise. 
 Not one single Englishman of culture who travels 
 on the Continent could be said to stand where I 
 stood two years ago. What right had I, then, 
 to offer myself as a guide to people whose know- 
 ledge went far beyond mine ? 
 
 Still, I paused to take counsel, and good coun- 
 sellors came to my assistance. After all, was 
 the disqualification absolute ? On the contrary, 
 might one not see in it the distinct leading of 
 destiny? To experience the full shock of an 
 impression, one must return after a long absence. 
 Then the image of the past in all its clearness, 
 completeness, and precision, rises up in the 
 memory to confront the image of the present, 
 and the result is a vivid illuminating realisation 
 of those slow, invisible processes of transformation 
 which are for ever working themselves out both 
 in nature and in Art. If I am the Epimenides, 
 the Eip Tan Winkle, of the French drama, my
 
 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 3 
 
 astonished awakening may be worthy of notice, 
 since an awakening is always sincere, and aston- 
 ishment is often instructive. 
 
 The very manner in which I had to approach 
 my subject suggested the adoption of a plan and 
 method exactly contrary to that adopted in my 
 work on the English drama. In France I was 
 addressing a public ignorant even of the existence 
 of the modern English stage, and sufficiently 
 under the sway of ancient prejudice to be dis- 
 posed to deny that it existed. I was obliged to 
 go back half a century, and to retrace all the 
 different stages through which the English drama 
 has been slowly evolving. There is no such 
 necessity now. My readers will all admit with- 
 out discussion that throughout this century the 
 French theatre has not only been in existence, 
 but that its existence has been not inglorious ; 
 it is not a history that they want, but a picture. 
 
 This, as it happens, is the only thing that 
 I can offer them. Compare that outline sketch 
 of the theatre of Dumas and Augier which re- 
 mains vividly impressed on my memory, with 
 the impression which I have just received of
 
 4 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the dramatic world of 1898 authors, managers, 
 artists, critics, public, and all that appertains 
 to it and you have my book. Between the 
 two I must insert, by way of the requisite means 
 of transition, a few suggestions as to the origin 
 of the chief features in the existing movement. 
 I shall leave out all that the English reader 
 is likely to know already. I shall also leave 
 out exceptions and eccentricities, literary mon- 
 strosities and abnormalities. The foreign reader 
 has neither time nor inclination to acquire more 
 than a very little information about the mazes 
 of his neighbours' literature. All the more neces- 
 sary is it that that little should be substantial, 
 well chosen, easy of assimilation, and so con- 
 densed that the intellectual nourishment which 
 it contains is in inverse proportion to its bulk.
 
 I. 
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 
 
 ONE must first fix the limits of this age. Where 
 did the work of Dumas and Augier begin and 
 end ? I can give a very definite answer to this 
 double question. The period in our dramatic 
 history which I wish to describe by this name 
 is bounded by two abortive movements. The 
 Eomanticism of 1825 1845 gave France a school 
 of poets and tried vainly to give it a theatre. 
 From 1875 to 1890 Naturalism, which had 
 created a new form of novel, sought to establish 
 itself on the stage : it failed, as Eomanticism had 
 failed before it. The thirty or forty years which 
 intervened between these two unsuccessful 
 attempts belong to Augier and Dumas, their 
 contemporaries and their disciples. 
 
 At first Dumas had not yet appeared on the 
 scene, and Augier, still quite a young man,
 
 6 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 had only attained a second or third place in 
 that school of common sense which was first 
 and foremost a protest against Eomanticism. A 
 protest, be it observed, a trifle blind and narrow- 
 minded, since in Hugo's case it confounded the 
 great lyrical poet with the half -developed dra- 
 matist. People had forgotten that the Eoman- 
 ticism which appealed urbi et orbi in the preface 
 to " Cromwell " was but the successor of an 
 earlier Eomanticism, which had found expression 
 in Stendhal's pamphlet, Racine and Shakespeare. 
 The world seemed ignorant of the fact that 
 before becoming Christian and Gothic, the 
 Eomanticists had proposed to return to historical 
 truth and local colour, and above all to psycholo- 
 gical analysis. They were but seeking to hand 
 on the tradition of Arnaud, Picard, Andrieux, 
 the Duvals, Soumet, Casimir Delavigne, and the 
 whole classical group of the Eestoration. It was 
 no literary revolution, merely a reaction, a rever- 
 sion. Like the emigrants of 1815, they had 
 learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Hugo 
 was another Bonaparte : we had escaped from his 
 influence as from a nightmare, and congratulated
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 7 
 
 ourselves that we could so quickly obliterate the 
 last trace of the usurper's passage. 
 
 This was a bad beginning. Augier took part 
 in the crusade of mediocrity against genius, and 
 was not above the somewhat mean and petty 
 sentiments which animated his companions. As 
 I have just said, he was not the first amongst 
 them ; even fifteen years afterwards people were 
 still asking whether FranQois Ponsard, the author 
 of Lucrece and the Lion Amoureux, was not the 
 greater man of the two. Augier was no stranger 
 to all the faults of the common-sense school. He 
 wrote in a style which had borrowed its false 
 air of antiquity from the older comic writers. 
 To suppose yourself to belong to the " grand 
 siecle," because you season your dialogue with 
 "Yous vous moquez," a j'enrage } " "la peste 
 soit du fat," and other such phrases borrowed 
 from Moliere, Eegnard, and Marivaux, is in 
 itself one of the most innocent of literary fads. 
 Unfortunately for Augier the archaic character 
 of his phraseology was not in keeping with the 
 modernity of his sentiment. At no time in his 
 life had he the faintest glimmering of the his-
 
 8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 torical sense ; there is no more Hellenism about 
 his Cigue than there is Latinity in his Joueur de 
 Flute. He had clearly no other reason for 
 writing these plays than the wish to protest, 
 with Ponsard, against the German and mediaeval 
 tendencies of the opposite school by stamping 
 his work with a Grecian temple in opposition 
 to a Gothic cathedral. The scene of Diane is 
 laid in the age of Bichelieu, but it bears no 
 mark of its date except its costumes and a few 
 political allusions. Shorn of its powder and 
 patches, we should forget that the action of 
 Philiberte takes place in the eighteenth century. 
 Augier could not even carry his imagination 
 back fifteen years to a time which he knew per- 
 fectly well. Compare the Effr antes with the Fils 
 de Giboyer, and you will see that there appears 
 to be no difference between 1845 and 1858, 
 between the period of his youthful efforts and 
 the society in which his riper years had been 
 spent. Still, lack of the historic sense is a fault 
 which can be remedied by letting the past alone 
 and choosing a subject from one's own immediate 
 surroundings. It is a graver error to surround
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 9 
 
 the bourgeois mind and bourgeois society with a 
 poetic halo altogether out of keeping. Augier 
 shared this mania, which was common to all his 
 friends, and carried it further that any of them. 
 The party of the Left Centre, the " happy 
 mean " of French opinion, imposed this con- 
 dition upon the authors of the common- sense 
 school if they wished to be acknowledged as its 
 favourite interpreters. Snobbishness is well 
 known to adopt all sorts of disguises. When a 
 tradesman had grown rich and wanted his por- 
 trait painted he liked to see a thoughtful, im- 
 perious figure, with one hand thrust into his 
 waistcoat and the other behind his back in the 
 traditional attitude of Napoleon. Of course 
 Dupont and Durant were charmed to hear them- 
 selves declaiming verses like an Agamemnon, 
 a Mithridates, or an Orosmane. The vers aux 
 bourgeois were part of the spoils of '89, and, like 
 all other spoils, the middle class intended to keep 
 a firm grip upon them. From 1845 to 1860 
 they were given their fill of poetry. 
 
 Was Augier a poet ? Certainly not ; but 
 hidden away in the furthest and most ideal recess
 
 io THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 of his nature lurked a secret spring of song. A 
 few couplets there are of his, half-tender, half- 
 sad, which I can never hear without a little 
 thrill of pleasure. Now and again his coarser 
 humour borrowed the changing hues of De 
 Musset's capricious fancy ; in one of those hours 
 he composed L* Aventuriere. Played to empty 
 benches during the most troublous days of 1848, 
 this charming comedy, retouched by the author, 
 has contrived to survive. It has become, in a 
 sense, classic, and deservedly so. You can still 
 see the bourgeois and the Bohemians of the time, 
 but they take the stage in such gallant guise 
 that what they have to say genuinely deserves to 
 be said in verse. 
 
 I cannot conscientiously mete out the same 
 praise to G-alriette or to La Jeunesse, which, 
 nevertheless, were great successes at the time, 
 and still command traditional respect. They 
 are antiquated both in form and in substance. 
 
 There are perhaps a dozen lines of real poetry 
 in La Cigue, as many in Philiberte, and a 
 hundred or perhaps more in L> Aventuriere. As 
 to La Jeunesse, prose itself could hardly be more
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 11 
 
 prosaic. Certainly there is a lower depth still, 
 for we have Le Fruit Defendu and La Considera- 
 tion ; but Augier had already struck a suffi- 
 ciently false note when he j ustified the existence 
 of Camille Doucet. At all costs the bourgeoisie 
 had to be made poetical, but the only result was 
 to make poetry bourgeois and to kill it in the 
 process. The idea of making verses trip from the 
 tongues of Dupont and Durant had perforce to 
 be abandoned. 
 
 Although the movement suffered shipwreck 
 in this quarter, it succeeded elsewhere and 
 developed beyond all expectation. I said just 
 now that it was a struggle between mediocrity 
 and genius : the victory lay with mediocrity. 
 ]STor is this a matter either for surprise or for 
 regret. Genius was in the wrong, and it was 
 the mediocre people who were clinging most 
 closely to our traditions, and who had the 
 clearest conception of the future towards which 
 thought in France was tending. France is a 
 nation of Eealists ; she was born Eealist, pre- 
 destined thereto by some freak of atavism, since 
 in her there lives again the genius of the Latin
 
 12 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 people. Eealism inspired her fabliaux and 
 romances in the Middle Ages ; a Eealist she 
 remained from century to century with her 
 Montaigne, her Bossuet, her Voltaire, her 
 Merimee; she is a Eealist in religion and 
 in poetry, she carries her Eealism into the very 
 domain of the ideal, for to her Eealism is a mode 
 of existence rather than a method of thought. 
 Though diverted at times from this path, she 
 returns to it. After 1850 the French mind 
 made a vigorous and universal effort to grasp 
 the living reality in everything, and to escape 
 from the bondage of symbols and abstractions. 
 Many things combined to favour such an effort. 
 There was first the bankruptcy of the opposite 
 party, and then the great silence which had fallen 
 on politics. "L'Empire, c'est la paix!" said 
 Napoleon III. in a famous speech : and in spite of 
 a few wars, too distant or too quickly over to 
 disturb the active life of the nation, I am inclined 
 to hold that, after all, the saying proved true. 
 At all events it was so for the literary world. 
 As I had often occasion to notice, no sovereign 
 has ever had more respect for talent. Augier
 
 THE A GE OF DUMAS AND A UGIER. 1 3 
 
 had cause to know this. When an unintelligent 
 Minister wanted to stop the Mis de Criboyer, the 
 Emperor was appealed to by the author; he 
 annulled the censor's decision, and Giboyer said 
 his say. Louis XIY. had, in like manner, pro- 
 tected the author of Tartufe ; Augier recalled 
 the fact in his preface, and it was thought that 
 the comparison was in itself the highest com- 
 pliment which gratitude could suggest. 
 
 Ah! those were glorious days. The critics 
 who belittle them, or who reproach the men of 
 the time with their thirst for pleasure, forget to 
 add that the thirst for knowledge was no whit less 
 keen. Both, indeed, spring fundamentally from 
 one and the same mental condition, which pro- 
 duces different effects according to the nobility or 
 vulgarity of men's minds. What efforts were 
 made ! What victories were won ! Eenan gave 
 back to history the immense tracts which theology 
 had wrested from it, Sainte-Beuve was preparing 
 the road for Taine, whose mission it was to raise 
 criticism into a system, and to make it the key- 
 stone of all knowledge, the science of all sciences. 
 Pasteur was building up his apparatus in that
 
 H THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 humble laboratory in the Eue d'TJlm whence so 
 many discoveries were destined to issue. A 
 boundless enthusiasm was abroad, a limitless 
 confidence. It seemed as if science would prove 
 all-powerful, would solve every question, answer 
 every need, satisfy every yearning after know- 
 ledge, realise every dream of humanity. Poetry 
 could do nothing but abdicate, doubly suspect as 
 it must perforce confess itself, for it had not only 
 grovelled in the depths of Classicism, but had lost 
 its way in endeavouring to follow the flight of 
 the Eomanticists. It took refuge in small gather- 
 ings of the faithful, where it could serve as a 
 consolation to the discontented, and an intel- 
 lectual exercise to those virtuosi who were to be 
 nicknamed the Parnassiens. The novel, on the 
 other hand, was attacking the most important 
 questions and invading every region of existence. 
 Instead of sending verses home from the land of 
 his exile, Yictor Hugo issued a novel in eight 
 volumes. Every year the Revue des Deux Mondes 
 gave its readers a new work by George Sand. 
 Whilst humourists of the second rank, such as 
 Miirger and Champfleury, were describing remote
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 15 
 
 corners of the provinces or the manners of the 
 Quartier Latin, Gustave Flaubert was laboriously 
 composing the pages of Madame Bovary. Eealism 
 was supreme on the stage, but only that modified 
 form of Eealism which does not seek to rob the 
 drama of its twofold function as a work of art and 
 an instrument of moral education. From 1852 
 onwards Alexandre Dumas brilliantly justified 
 his claim to stand side by side with Augier. 
 Towards the close of the first decade of the 
 Empire, Monsieur Garat, the Pres St. Gervais, and 
 the Pattes de Motiche had illustrated Victorien 
 Sardou's astonishing power of manipulating 
 a dramatic intrigue. The fierce war which 
 Theodore Barriere was waging against vice and 
 stupidity in the Filles de Marbre and the Faux 
 BonshommeSj and even in the Jocrisses de 
 V Amour, seemed to herald the rise of a new but 
 an ill-tempered Moliere. Henri Meilhac, Parisian 
 first and Frenchman second, was sketching the 
 manners of studio and smoking-room with his 
 admirable lightness of touch, and immortalising 
 those little peculiarities of speech and sentiment 
 which are but the passing fashion of a day.
 
 r 6 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Labiche, with his more solid and sober gifts, 
 was unwittingly raising farce to the level of 
 comedy by drawing pictures of bourgeois life as 
 true and genial as they are genuinely comic. 
 Octave Feuillet was transferring the heroes and 
 heroines of his novels to the stage, and with 
 them the chivalrous dream of moral refinement, 
 the nervous and exquisite melancholy, belonging 
 to his innermost nature. However enamoured 
 a society may be of realistic effects, in its 
 moments of reaction it will seek such outlets of 
 emotion as inevitably as a happy woman will 
 indulge in occasional outbursts of tears. For 
 two hundred nights an audience of journalists, 
 financiers, cocodettes, and even cocoUes wept over 
 the misfortunes of the Jeune Homme Pauvre. 
 
 But let me leave Octave Feuillet to his novels, 
 Labiche to his vaudevilles, and Meilhac to the 
 brilliant fantasies or the parodies which he has 
 made so peculiarly his own ; as for poor Barri^re, 
 he fell by the road halfway up the hill of glory. 
 Yictorien Sardou is, I think, so well known in 
 England, where numbers of his pieces have been 
 successfully adapted, that I may leave him out of
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 17 
 
 this study. I acknowledge that he mastered his 
 trade more completely than any other dramatist, 
 and that if I wanted to point out the excellences 
 of that form of dramatic art in which Scribe 
 was a past master, Victorien Sardou must be 
 accorded the foremost place. But I take a 
 different point of view. The theatre only in- 
 terests me in so far as it is related to the history 
 of ideas and sentiments. I have nothing to 
 learn from M. Yictorien Sardou, nor will my 
 grandchildren have much, as to the thoughts and 
 feelings of the men and women of our time. He 
 is not a representative writer. In Sardou I only 
 find Scribe, whereas in Augier and Dumas, over 
 and above Augier and Dumas I find a whole 
 epoch, a society, and a habit of thought which 
 lasted in France for thirty years. 
 
 I was at school (in 1860) when I first saw 
 Augier and Dumas. Augier, with his bright 
 brown eyes and massive brow, created an im- 
 pression of strength and solidity. The leading 
 feature of his face was the large hooked nose, 
 which the Eomans regarded as a sign of sarcastic 
 humour. What struck me most in Alexandre 
 
 c
 
 1 8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Dumas fils, Was the discovery that he was both 
 so like and so unlike his father. How could 
 that half-blanched negro, with puffed- out over- 
 hanging cheeks, have produced the fine gentle- 
 man, whose every point proclaimed the man 
 beloved of women ? Yet the features were the 
 same, though emphasized, refined, and idealised. 
 When a stranger was presented to him, he 
 looked searchingly, almost sternly, at him, his 
 face softening or darkening according to the im- 
 pression received. He seemed a man whose 
 judgments were sudden and instinctive, prompted 
 by impulse or antipathy ; and his plays, like his 
 prefaces, bore traces of his quick sensibility. 
 When I met him again, fifteen years later, at 
 the baths in the mountains of Auvergne, his 
 curly hair had turned grey, his complexion had 
 grown muddy and bilious, and the expression of 
 his blue eyes alternated between fierce disdain 
 and quiet pity. The author of the Demi-Monde 
 had given place to the author of the Femme de 
 Claude. Augier I never saw again, except on 
 a certain winter night, when I stood before 
 his bust in the Place de POde'on. A ray of
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 19 
 
 moonlight shivered across his forehead, and there 
 was a smile on his lips, as if he had just lighted 
 upon the mot which closes Le Gendre de M. P airier. 
 As writers for the stage these two men intro- 
 duced no innovations. They accepted, without 
 dispute or modification, the form and the prin- 
 ciples of dramatic architecture adopted by Scribe. 
 It was a strange enough mixture when one 
 comes to think of it, a sort of pot-pourri of every 
 known style. The older critics distinguished 
 three kinds of comedy, the comedy of character, 
 the comedy of manners, and the comedy of 
 intrigue, instanced as it might be in UAvare, 
 Les Fdcheux, and Les Fourberies de Scapin. You 
 will find this distinction constantly made use of 
 by Desire Nisard in his Histoire de la Litter ature 
 Franqaise, which in 1860 was still the law and 
 the prophets. Scribe had amalgamated these 
 three forms of comedy with the bourgeois drama 
 invented by Diderot, and made an actual reality 
 by Sedaine. The first act was to be given up to 
 explanation, with a final scene in which the 
 action opened ; then after oscillating between 
 good and evil fortune, like a game of chess
 
 20 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 in which the chances are evenly balanced, the 
 fourth act as a rule the Acte du Bal crowded 
 the stage with supers and culminated in some 
 scandal, a duel, or a similar event in prospect. 
 The fifth act put everything straight, and ended 
 with a proper distribution of rewards and pun- 
 ishments. The first act was invariably bright ; 
 during the succeeding acts the action passed 
 from comedy to drama by imperceptible grada- 
 tions, and the final note was a note of tender, 
 or playful, serenity, a feeling of having had a 
 lucky escape something like the famous verdict : 
 Not guilty , but don't do it again. It was left to 
 psychology and social satire to clothe the bones 
 and muscles of the play with living flesh, and 
 to convert it into a unity. If the comedy of 
 manners and the dramatic intrigue fell apart, the 
 play had failed ; if the two elements were per- 
 fectly fused, the play was a good one. There 
 was no other criterion. 
 
 It would convey an incomplete idea of the 
 somewhat trivial complexities of this method if 
 I omitted to mention that each act had to con- 
 tain at least one great scene, composed according
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 21 
 
 to certain fixed rules. The play arose out of the 
 development of one or more characters acting 
 upon each other, the scene out of the develop- 
 ment of a situation. The scene, like the play 
 itself, had its working up, its catastrophe, and 
 its conclusion; it was, as it were, a complete 
 and separate creation within another creation, a 
 work of art included in another work of art, just 
 like those delicate lace- like ivory cups that 
 Chinese sculptors carve and fit one within 
 another in a diminishing series. 
 
 Even that is not all, for there is the parallel 
 intrigue, which Scribe had borrowed from the 
 Eomantic drama, or, if you prefer it, the Shake- 
 sperian drama, and adapted to his own purposes. 
 This second intrigue, sad if the first was gay, or 
 gay if the first was sad, might recall the first by 
 way of refutation or parody, contrast or reflection ; 
 it might transpose it into another key, or it might 
 take a directly contrary line. The two parallel 
 intrigues began by being perfectly distinct, and 
 ended by converging and contributing each their 
 share to the denouement. If all the threads were 
 not gathered up, the critics counted the author
 
 zi THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 a novice ignorant of his trade, and sent him back 
 to study good models. 
 
 Augier and Dumas had nothing to urge 
 against such an arrangement. This form suited 
 them as well as any other for conveying their 
 ideas. Besides, they saw one thing clearly which 
 escapes our younger writers for the stage, 
 namely, that intrigue is not only indispensable 
 to the spectator's amusement, but that it is of 
 the very essence of psychological development. 
 Characters cannot be studied in repose like in- 
 sects under a microscope. They have not even 
 arrived at self-consciousness, they might almost 
 be said to have only a provisional, potential 
 existence, until the moment when they come into 
 contact and into conflict with events or with 
 other characters. I will take a striking example. 
 The drama of the French Eevolution threw into 
 relief thousands of existences which, without it, 
 would have passed into nothingness and oblivion. 
 If there had been no revolution, Collot d'Herbois 
 would have remained a mere strolling player; 
 Marat a veterinary surgeon ; Legendre a butcher ; 
 Chabot a Capuchin friar ; Hoche a sergeant of
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 23 
 
 the guard; Fouch would have been whipping 
 the little scholars of the Oratorians; Talleyrand 
 reciting the Mass without a particle of faith in 
 it ; Kobespierre and Carnot, the one a third-rate 
 lawyer and the other an obscure captain, would 
 have gone on exchanging trivial verses in the 
 Academy of the Eosati ; Bonaparte, put on half- 
 pay because of his evil reputation, would have 
 died of fever in a corner of his native island, 
 remembered only as a troublesome neighbour, a 
 somewhat undisciplined officer, and a rather 
 ridiculous author. But the drama in which 
 their lot was cast revealed to us their power for 
 good or evil. So, too, with an imaginary drama. 
 As long as a human being has been neither loved, 
 betrayed, nor given cause for jealousy, as long as 
 he has never been called to be the ruin or the sal- 
 vation of other human beings, to fall or to retrieve 
 a fall, to pardon or to take vengeance, it is useless 
 to study him, he is nothing but a blank page. 
 
 Augier and Dumas were willing, therefore, to 
 accept Scribe's conception of dramatic form. 
 Superficially their plays do not differ sensibly 
 from his, but what is primary with them was only
 
 24 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 accessory with him, and what he employed as 
 means to an end became with them an end in itself. 
 Scribe gave us studies of character and pictures of 
 manners for the sake of writing plays ; Augier and 
 Dumas wrote plays for the sake of studying cha- 
 racter and painting manners. Thence it was but a 
 step to what we call in modern parlance the "pro- 
 blem play." Augier never took the step ; he 
 never ventured beyond political and social satire. 
 A problem implies a paradox. The defence of 
 conjugal love, for example, is perfectly simple; 
 but the redemption of the courtesan brings the 
 "problem " straightway to the fore. Hence the 
 world imagined a problem in Dumas' very first 
 piece La Dame aux Camelias, wherein he was 
 really only giving vent to his youthful ardour 
 in a storm of passion and tears. This unjust 
 accusation proved itself a just presentiment, and 
 taught Dumas his vocation. What he had been 
 wrongfully accused of doing in the Dame aux 
 Camelias, he did of set purpose, and in a burst 
 of enthusiasm, in the Demi-Monde, the Question 
 cP Argent, the Pere Prodigue, the Fits Naturel, 
 above all in the I dees de Madame Aulray and the 
 plays which followed.
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 25 
 
 Into this ready-made mould, which I have 
 described, and with hardly any alteration, Augier 
 and Dumas poured their wit and their philosophy. 
 Their wit first and foremost, for both were amply 
 dowered with it. Augier's was the merrier; 
 Dumas' the more original and suggestive. The 
 former was an adept in the art of making 
 epigrams, whilst the latter had a weakness for 
 tirades. A whole school of actors and actresses 
 arose with a talent for the effective delivery of 
 an epigram or a tirade. I don't mean to say that 
 the French artists of the time had no other merit ; 
 many had completely mastered the art of creat- 
 ing a character, and some of their creations have 
 remained traditions of the stage. "When they 
 had lighted upon the character, for which 
 their physical endowments rendered them most 
 fitted, they repeated it in play after play, made 
 the most complete study of it, and brought it to 
 a veritable pitch of perfection. Such a part was 
 created by Paulin Me*nier at the Boulevard, in 
 his Pere Martin, his Escamoteur, and his Chopart 
 in the Courrier de Lyon. Provost, of the Theatre 
 Fra^ais, and Geoffrey, of the Palais Eoyal, did
 
 26 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the same for different types of the species bour- 
 geois. There was Samson, again, in the Marquis 
 de la Seigliere and all similar parts, and Lafont, 
 of the Gymnase, with his irresistibly graceful im- 
 personation of an aged Don Juan. From all these 
 the public asked nothing better than that they 
 should go on as they were. And I reserved a 
 special place in my gallery of remembrance for 
 Lafontaine, the actor who most deeply stirred my 
 youthful enthusiasm. I can still see his high 
 forehead shining with intelligence, his expressive 
 eyes, his fascinating kindly smile. He could be 
 both excellent and execrable in one and the same 
 part, and was the only actor whom I ever saw 
 vary his effects and abandon himself to inspira- 
 tion when actually on the stage. 
 
 But the artists of those days were first and 
 foremost astonishing elocutionists. One went to 
 the Vaudeville simply to hear Fargueil in the 
 Manage tfOlympe exclaim, "J'aurais le maxi- 
 mum," with an accent which brought a shudder- 
 ing recollection of the Old Bailey. In the 
 Efrontes one waited for Provost and his " Que 
 voulez-vous ? J'aime la gloire," or Madame
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 27 
 Plessv's "Mais bats-moi done," or Samson's "De 
 
 * * 
 
 mon temps, on avait Dieu," just as a little later 
 the world crowded to hear Tamberlik's high C. 
 These mots came thick and fast throughout the 
 dialogue, and the audience never wearied of them. 
 They were repeated in the press and in society, 
 and they made the success of the piece. 
 
 Even after making almost all their characters 
 brilliant, and putting epigrams into the mouths 
 of absolute imbeciles, the authors were far from 
 having exhausted their resources. It became 
 the custom to introduce a character who had 
 nothing to do but to make brilliant comments, 
 and whose task it was to explain everything and 
 to pass judgment upon everything in the half- 
 serious fashion of a reviewer. But was this 
 character really invented by Augier or Dumas ? 
 "Was it not a revival in another form of Moliere's 
 Ariste, the light sarcastic Uagueur replacing the 
 gentle pedant of the older comedies? And to 
 go back still further, are not both reminiscences 
 of the Chorus of antiquity ? 
 
 Dumas employs this device with even greater 
 freedom than Augier. The drama seems at first
 
 28 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 sight the most impersonal of all forms of literary 
 art : the showman's place is to remain hidden 
 behind his puppets. But Dumas could not so 
 efface himself and relinquish his own personality, 
 and for my own part I rejoice in his incapacity, 
 for I can no longer conceal the fact that what I 
 love best in his plays is just himself. What do I 
 care if he did violate the rules of his art? I 
 hate your impassive people ; I like to feel a heart 
 beating behind novel or drama, more especially 
 such a noble heart. Consequently and this is 
 a cardinal point Dumas threw his whole heart 
 and soul, his very self, into his work. He is on 
 the stage in the person of Olivier de Jalin 
 (Demi- Monde), or Kyons (L 1 Amides Femmes\ or 
 Eemonin (U Etr anger e\ or ten other characters, 
 observing, directing, and criticising his own play, 
 except where the critic happens to be merged in 
 the lover. And this is why he loses himself in 
 his work, whilst Augier contrives to remain 
 apart. Augier did no more than enshrine his 
 conception of life in his plays; Dumas poured 
 into them his very life itself. 
 
 Augier' s dramatic work might be summed up
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 29 
 
 as a crusade against wealth and a defence of mar- 
 riage. The social question, as it was then under- 
 stood, was very simple. What modus vivendi 
 could be established between the aristocracy of 
 finance and the aristocracy of birth ? What 
 place could be found for the nobility in modern 
 society ? Clearly they might become soldiers or 
 agriculturalists, or even, at a pinch, sons-in-law, 
 if due precaution were exercised. Which side 
 does the author really espouse? I leave Le 
 Gendre de M. Poirier out of account, because 
 there is something of Jules Sandeau in that play, 
 and Jules Sandeau was always a little tainted 
 with a sort of belated royalism. But even in the 
 other plays it looks rather as if Augier were 
 disposed to give the marquises the finest parts. 
 Still, like a clever man who tries to propitiate 
 every section of the public, he always placed a 
 type alongside of his antitype, virtue by the side 
 of vice, Yerdelet, the modest, sober bourgeois, 
 beside Poirier, the bourgeois eaten up with vanity, 
 just as he contrasts the Due de Montmayran, who 
 dons a volunteer's helmet and goes off to the 
 African wars, with the Marquis de Presle, who
 
 30 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 runs riot with his wife's dowry ; or again, Ser- 
 gines the estimable journalist, with Yernouillet, 
 who is utterly unscrupulous. Such skilful de- 
 vices serve to disarm criticism, but serve also to 
 confuse the moral. Still, it does not need any 
 very long process of reflection to discover the 
 author's intention. Bourgeois at heart, he can 
 only castigate the bourgeoisie somewhat after the 
 method of Sancho Panza when undergoing his 
 self-inflicted discipline. He wills not the death 
 of the sinner, but rather that he should be con- 
 verted and live. He believed in the future of the 
 middle classes, and had no desire, like so many 
 modern reformers, to deprive them of riches and 
 power, but merely to cure them of certain ugly 
 faults, the faults of parvenus, which he took upon 
 himself to correct. Let them learn to place 
 honour above money, to recognise that devotion 
 and self-sacrifice are the price that must be paid 
 for greatness and power. He is so sure that 
 the middle-class ideal will rise from generation 
 to generation that he does not hesitate to make 
 children teach their parents. It is not enough 
 for young Charier that his father makes full
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 31 
 
 retribution to all the creditors belonging to an 
 old and forgotten bankruptcy ; lie must immolate 
 himself upon the altar of fate, and make atone- 
 ment for the luxuries and pleasures to which he 
 thinks he had no right, by embracing the hard- 
 ships of a soldier's life. And how does Mdlle. 
 Poirier win back her faithless scion of nobility ? 
 By three acts of disinterestedness, which might 
 be not unfairly called three acts of folly ; by 
 paying debts which are not really due, by tearing 
 up a letter which might prove a useful weapon in 
 a law court, and by sending her husband to fight 
 a duel, the very cause of which is an offence 
 against herself. All this is, of course, exag- 
 gerated, but, like all his contemporaries, Augier 
 believed firmly that on the stage honesty must 
 assume heroic proportions, and the moral be writ 
 so large that it could be read from every part of 
 the house. Actors of antiquity mounted on stilts 
 and spoke through speaking trumpets ; Augier' s 
 moral philosophy followed their example. 
 
 Augier had been a student at the College 
 Henri IV., where the Orleans Princes were among 
 his companions. In this ancient and famous in-
 
 32 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 stitution he had imbibed the teachings of the 
 philosophy known as eclecticism, which Yictor 
 Cousin was then forcing upon the university with 
 all the authority of a dictator. This philosophy, 
 borrowing as it did from Plato and Leibnitz, 
 Descartes and Kant, without disdaining the 
 rather unimaginative psychology of the worthy 
 Eeid and his successors, steadfastly maintained 
 the existence of a personal God distinct from the 
 natural order which He created and which He 
 preserves, the spiritual character of the soul and 
 its immortality, the theory of innate ideas, of 
 free-will and responsibility, the double catalogue 
 of works of mercy and justice, the rewards and 
 punishments of a future life. It allowed dogma 
 to shroud itself in a veil of possibility, and got on 
 very well without it ; it went so far as to give a 
 provisional denial to the theories of miracles, and 
 contrasted natural religion with theology. This 
 is the philosophy which I feel throughout 
 Augier's work. 
 
 Consequently he looked upon life as a desirable 
 thing, and thence arose his respect for the exalted 
 role of the mother. Himself the best of sons, he
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 33 
 
 has drawn a sweet and touching picture of mater- 
 nity in his Maman Guerin, whose instinct discerns 
 and baffles every rascally device. Motherhood, 
 even when illegitimate, sanctifies, in his eyes, 
 every woman who accepts its burdens; witness 
 Madame Bernard in the Fourchamlault. But it 
 was the defence of marriage which inspired him 
 more than anything else. His very first play 
 disclosed his sentiments on this point. In 
 ancient Athens itself, the very spot where the 
 courtesan was the intellectual companion of man, 
 and a married woman was nothing more than a 
 servant and a machine for bearing children, he 
 laid the scene of a play which glorified married 
 life and the one exclusive bond of love that 
 unites the man for ever to one woman and the 
 woman to one man. He was not content with 
 fidelity after marriage : he would have a young 
 man keep faith beforehand with her who was as 
 yet unknown to him, but who, on her side, was 
 guarding for him alone the innocent treasure of 
 her thoughts. Listen to the despairing regrets 
 of the man who lacked foresight and patience, 
 and had failed to keep his heart pure, as be- 
 
 D
 
 34 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 seemed the temple, which the divine guest was 
 to enter : 
 
 "Ah ! maudite a jamais soit la premiere femme, 
 Qui de ce droit chemin a d6tourn6 mon ame ! 
 Maudit soit le premier baiser qui m'a seduit ! 
 Maudit tout ce qui m'a loin du bonheur conduit ! " 
 
 Thus Fabrice in I? Aventuriere, and it is no idle 
 curse. "La femme sans pudeur," it is said in 
 another play, " n'est pas plus une femme que 
 1'homme sans courage n'est un homme." Crush 
 her underfoot without mercy as you would a 
 snake. This is what the old Marquis does in the 
 Manage d" 1 Qlympe, it is what Fabrice comes near 
 to doing in U Aventuriere, and it is the idea sug- 
 gested to the spectator's mind by the denouement 
 of the Lionnes Pauvres. And who is it that 
 speaks in this key and delivers these merciless 
 sentences ? Instead of a French dramatist of the 
 Second Empire, you might imagine the speaker a 
 Stubbes, a Stephen Gosson, a Prynne, or some 
 voice still more remote, belonging to those fierce 
 primitive societies where adultery was punished 
 with death. Yet side by side with these out- 
 bursts of severity there breathes a strange ten-
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 35 
 
 derness for the vagabond, the ill-regulated, and 
 the irresponsible, whose failures are due to weak- 
 ness, ignorance, or frivolity. Forgiveness is 
 never far off, and it needs but a tear to obtain it. 
 Herein Augier parts company with the Puritans 
 only to draw closer to the Gospel. 
 
 The author of I? Aventuriere is no frigid pro- 
 fessor of morals, but a passionate lover of virtue. 
 You find the same passion in Dumas, but his 
 genius tends to pessimism ; enthusiasm for good 
 becomes a fierce hatred of evil. And, in his eyes, 
 the evil-doer is not he who violates the law, but 
 he who inflicts suffering upon a loving heart. 
 Woman fills the whole stage in his theatre, just 
 as she fills his thoughts and his whole life. Man 
 plays only a secondary part; he is a satellite 
 revolving round the principal luminary. By his 
 conduct towards woman he must stand or fall ; 
 but by what rule shall she be judged ? Let her 
 only love much and all her sins shall be forgiven 
 her by Dumas. All virtue comes to her through 
 love, or rather, love in her constitutes virtue. 
 "II faut aimer," says Madame Aubray, "n'im- 
 porte qui, n'importe quoi, n'importe comment,
 
 36 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 pourvu qu'on aime ! " The chief test of a 
 woman's sincerity is found in her devotion to her 
 child, whether this child be born in wedlock or 
 in lawless love. And as Madame Aubray says 
 again in this play which is so poor a play and 
 so admirable a book " Jusqu'a ce qu'elle soit 
 mere, la femme pent errer ; elle pent ignorer ou 
 reside le veritable amour et le chercher a tort et 
 a travers. A partir de 1'heure ou elle a un 
 enfant, elle sait a quoi s'en tenir. Si elle se 
 soustrait a ce devoir, c'est qu'elle est de'cide'ment 
 sans coeur." Against a final judgment like this 
 there can hardly be any appeal; but wait a 
 moment here is a sentence which opens the 
 door to the fullest indulgence. " II n'y a pas 
 de mechants, pas de coupables, pas d'ingrats ; 
 il n'y a que des malades, des aveugles et des 
 fous." 
 
 Madame Aubray goes beyond Dumas. If we 
 want to get his point of view, we must seek it 
 in Olivier de Jalin and M. de Eyons. The latter 
 christens himself " L'Ami des Femmes"; the 
 former is their enemy. Both these characters 
 are to be found in Dumas' own nature. With
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 37 
 
 Ryons he holds out his hand to the "woman who 
 has not yet fallen though she is trembling on 
 the brink, or to the woman already fallen but 
 striving to retrieve her fall. For the other sort 
 of woman, the " fille " who is a courtesan by 
 birth and by instinct, in the person of Olivier de 
 Jalin he shows no sort of chivalry or considera- 
 tion; he crushes her even more brutally than 
 Augier. If need be the judge will turn execu- 
 tioner. " Tue-la ! " is the conclusion of the 
 famous pamphlet, and it is also the denouement 
 of the Femme de Claude. If he does not kill 
 her, he kills her accomplice ; if he spares both, 
 he implants in our souls so bitter a disgust for 
 feminine prostitution and masculine baseness 
 that the effect is far greater than the spectacle 
 of the most terrible vengeance could ever have 
 produced. Hitherto the sort of morality which 
 is a matter of feeling rather than of actual fact 
 has hardly been understood in England. I took 
 occasion to mention this apropos of Sydney 
 Grundy's plays, to which Puritans take so much 
 exception, although to my mind they are 
 eminently healthy and invigorating. On the
 
 38 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 other hand, they applauded Eobertson's denoue- 
 ments, although Eobertson never suggested any 
 rule of conduct, unless it were a stupid one, 
 such as that the poor are of more moral worth 
 than the rich. Nevertheless, he took good care 
 to endow his heroes with this world's goods in 
 the closing scene, which deprived his precept of 
 all its value. If you read La Princesse Georges 
 your whole soul will revolt against its denouement, 
 and I myself have great difficulty in reconciling 
 my mind to it. The greatest sinner goes un- 
 punished ; the faithless husband is delivered from 
 an infamous mistress, and has but to step back 
 again across the threshold of conjugal felicity ; 
 the deceived husband is about to be led away to 
 prison as a murderer ; the betrayed wife may in- 
 deed forgive, but she will suffer all her life; 
 young Fondette gives his life as the price of his 
 service in the courts of love. He has a mother, 
 and that mother, whom I have never seen and do 
 not know, but who interests me and wins my 
 love solely because she is a mother who has lost 
 her child, will suffer keenly enough to make me 
 detest this ending to the play. And that half-
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND ALGIER. 39 
 
 comic, half-tragic figure of Cigneroi, in the Visile 
 de JVoces, whose love for his former mistress is re- 
 awakened by imagining the different ways in which 
 she may have betrayed him, and whom Dumas 
 sends home again with his pretty sleeping baby 
 and his smiling and innocent young wife, at the 
 end of that short act which contains so many 
 revelations as to the ugly depths of our moral 
 nature. What does all this matter ? Why need 
 we trouble ourselves about the seeming injustice 
 of fate, if only justice sits enthroned within, if 
 our minds are set in the right direction, if we 
 share the author's vigorous and laudable indig- 
 nation against these people and all their works ? 
 It is the righteous indignation of saints and 
 philosophers, it represents all that is best in us ; 
 it is the salt of the earth, the leaven of sudden 
 heroism, and is it not thereby also the inspirer 
 of patient virtue ? 
 
 I have recognised Dumas in Olivier de Jalin 
 and de Eyons, and I find him also in the person 
 of Eemonin in H Etr anger e. The man is always 
 the same, never weary of analysing and expound- 
 ing the female heart. He sets forth his classifi-
 
 40 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 cation in the first act, and begins all over again 
 in the second ; if there were ten acts we should 
 have ten lectures by Remonin. De Jalin and de 
 Eyons were men of the world : Re'monin is a 
 savant. " L' Amour, c'est de la physique ; le 
 mariage, c'est de la chimie." Here comes in the 
 famous "theory of vibrions" Shall I confess 
 that I rather misdoubt Dumas' physics and 
 chemistry ? They seem to me more curious than 
 exact, more striking than profound. But the 
 change indicates an important fact the fact 
 that since the author's youth the world had ad- 
 vanced and that psychology was on the high road 
 to becoming a science. 
 
 I doubt whether there could be a great man 
 nowadays who was not a bit of an Anarchist. 
 Alexandre Dumas treated our upper classes with 
 the contempt that they deserve ; he abuses them 
 in the style of Eousseau and Tolstoi. " Notre for- 
 tune n'estpas a nous," says Madame Aubray's son. 
 " A qui done est-elle ? A tous ceux qui en ont 
 besoin." So much for property ; as for the insti- 
 tution of marriage, Dumas might be said to have 
 attacked it, but only for the same good reasons
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 41 
 
 which led Augier to defend it. He wished to see 
 divorce established that marriage might be 
 strengthened and purified ; he reached his goal, 
 but it has proved only a halting- place. In short, 
 all the great problems that occupy our minds and 
 fill them with feverish anxiety are to be found in 
 the writings of the last twenty years of his life. 
 I should add that although, like his contempo- 
 rary, he seeks to base the moral law upon natural 
 sentiments, he keeps the higher sanction in 
 reserve. 
 
 The defeat of 1870 left an open wound ever 
 bleeding in the hearts of the two dramatists. 
 Augier in Jean de Thommeray gives us an aristo- 
 cratic young libertine for whom the place of the 
 Palais Royal becomes the way to Damascus. The 
 sight of his father passing by at the head of a 
 regiment of volunteers works his instant con- 
 version : he throws himself into the ranks and 
 demands a musket amidst cries of "Vive la 
 France." How far preferable to this theatrical 
 scene is the simple exhortation addressed by 
 Claude to his disciple in the silence of his labor- 
 atory : "Homme de vingt ans, qui as peut-etre
 
 42 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA, 
 
 encore quarante ans a vivre, que viens-tu me 
 parler de chagrins d' amour ? C'etait bon autre- 
 fois. Et ton Dieu qu'il te faut retrouver ? Et ta 
 conscience qu'il te faut e*tablir ? Et ta patrie 
 qu'il te faut refaire?" Solemn words, full of 
 a sublime severity : I pity the Frenchman who 
 can hear or read them unmoved, 
 
 These are your light-hearted triflers, your cor- 
 rupters of youth ! Ah ! you will love them when 
 you know them, but to know them you must get 
 rid of the censorship, which puts you to bed like 
 children just when grown-up people are begin- 
 ning to discuss their affairs seriously. And you 
 must also get rid of a certain ill- met race of 
 adapters who disfigure these essentially French 
 plays by Anglicising them instead of giving them 
 to you just as they were written. It is easy to 
 criticise and amend Augier's and Dumas' dra- 
 matic system, and to blame their use of wit and 
 epigram, but moralists they are and must remain, 
 and it would not be difficult to show that they 
 share that honour with Barriere, Feuillet, La- 
 biche, and Meilhac himself yes, even Meilhac. 
 Frenchmen have always had a liking for intro-
 
 THE AGE OF DUMAS AND AUGIER. 43 
 
 spection and for philosophising about their senti- 
 ments and passions ; by such exercises they have 
 acquired that quickness and subtlety of mind, 
 and also that gift of emotion, which have drawn 
 down upon them the reproach or the envy of 
 other nations. In their sermons, their novels, 
 their historical writings, this moralising-^endency 
 is for ever reappearing. The moralists represent, 
 in short, the flower of our genius, the very essence 
 of France. Dumas is one of the greatest, and if 
 the day ever dawns when his pieces are no longer 
 played, a volume of his sayings must be placed 
 on the same shelf with rascal's Thoughts, with 
 Montaigne's Essays, and with the Maxims of 
 Larochefoucauld.
 
 II. 
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAQE. 
 
 THAT still numerous body of persons who wit- 
 nessed the struggle against the Prussians and 
 the tragedies of the Commune must admit, if 
 they are sincere, that they expected to see 
 France emerge from her terrible experiences 
 completely changed. Would she be better or 
 worse ? In any case she would be different ; the 
 future would see another nation with other ideas, 
 other manners, and a wholly different conception 
 of literature and art. The soul of the people had 
 been stirred to its very depths, the upheaval had 
 been so complete that nothing could henceforth 
 stand where it stood before. Each individual 
 felt as if he had lost a dearly loved friend; 
 surely, then, the collective existence, which is 
 after all but a combination of separate exist- 
 ences, must be affected by so great a change ! 
 I shared this impression myself. When I
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 45 
 
 revisited Paris during those days of heavy stupor 
 and angry humiliation which intervened between 
 the two sieges, I could hardly recognise the city. 
 No carriages, no beautiful dresses, not a sign of 
 luxury. Nothing but pale faces, sombre colours, 
 ragged and dirty uniforms, sadness and poverty 
 on every side. Could this be going to last ? 
 Were the Athenians to turn Spartans ? Should 
 we henceforth be a nation of austere and silent 
 workers, a people with one fixed idea, and a 
 burning contempt for all that it had formerly 
 adored ? I was soon to be enlightened. By the 
 autumn of 1871 Paris had already almost re- 
 gained the aspect with which I had been familiar 
 in the days of the Empire. The sight of it 
 reminded me of that saying of Linneeus, which 
 contains the germ of the whole theory of evolu- 
 tion, " Natura non facit saltus." It is one of 
 those truths, as true as truth itself, upon which 
 the human mind can safely rest, and upon which 
 I base my faith. No, nature does not proceed 
 by leaps and bounds ; the crisis of an hour works 
 no greater change in a society than it does in an 
 individual.
 
 46 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Everything, then, appeared to resume its 
 accustomed course, and to be as it was on the 
 eve of the catastrophe. If there was a shade of 
 difference noticeable, it was only a vaguely 
 retrospective and archaic tendency on the part of 
 the ruling class. Old men who had been sulking 
 in corners, some for eighteen years and some for 
 forty, crept out of their retreats to stretch their 
 old limbs and sun themselves in the fresh air 
 of the Place d'Armes, now that Versailles had 
 resumed its supremacy. The Marquis de la 
 Seigliere was again governing France in conjunc- 
 tion with M. Poirier. "Worthy M. Poirier ! how 
 the world had laughed at his announcement that 
 he would become a peer of France in 1848 ; but 
 the laughter died away when he was created 
 perpetual senator in 1875. All the world knows 
 that this revolution came very near to a restora- 
 tion. Who knows whether the monarchy would 
 not have been actually re-established, if the 
 descendant of the kings had been willing to drape 
 the banner of Austerlitz round the standard of 
 Ivry and Fontenoy? The fate of literature, 
 under these conditions, could easily have been
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 47 
 
 foreseen; it was like taking up a book again 
 after a passing interruption at the very page and 
 line, nay, the very word where it had been laid 
 down. The war had given birth to an infinity 
 of publications, memoirs, defences, revelations, 
 recriminations, schemes of revenge and patriotic 
 songs. Gradually the torrent of printed matter 
 dried up. In the theatres the same actors went 
 on playing the same pieces or pieces very like 
 them before the same audiences, and such talent 
 as rose to the surface was modelled on the pattern 
 that had found favour in the eyes of the preced- 
 ing epoch. 
 
 First the artists. I will take a few names 
 amongst those whose success was most striking. 
 For fifteen years Celine Chaumont, whom people 
 in England will probably remember, held the 
 place on our stage which is now filled by Bejane. 
 I saw her make her debut when she was almost a 
 child in VAmi des Femmes at the Gymnase. She T 
 was Dejazet's favourite pupil, but she combined 
 the lightness and playfulness of Dejazet's " vieille 
 France " style with that dose of modern realism 
 which her audience demanded. What did she
 
 48 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 represent ? Parisian and feminine esprit in its 
 perfection. She had a genius for underlining, 
 but she ended by underlining everything, which 
 is as good as underlining nothing. Her elocu- 
 tion was so studied that she almost made her 
 hearers weary of the art which had delighted 
 Society in the days of the Second Empire. Her 
 theatrical forbears were Dupuis and Daubray 
 Dupuis the successor of Shakespeare's fools, 
 Daubray the embodiment of geniality. The 
 authors who wrote parts for them, and the public 
 which applauded them, forgot the characters that 
 they were meant to represent; they could see 
 and hear nothing but Dupuis or Daubray. 
 Madame Judic had the same sort of success ; 
 the actress was everything, the role nothing. 
 To utter enormities, or to commit them with the 
 most ingenuous air in the world, was Madame 
 Judic's speciality ; deprive her of that and you 
 robbed the good people of Paris of one of their 
 chief pleasures. In every piece written for her 
 there was one particularly risky situation or 
 costume, some refrain, some mot, some gesture, 
 which brought down the house; it was the
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 49 
 
 crowning moment. Smart people timed them- 
 selves to arrive for it and went away after it, 
 delighted with the artist and thoroughly pleased 
 with themselves. 
 
 Madame Bartet was suddenly revealed to the 
 Parisian world on the first night of Fromont 
 jeune et Risler aine a play based upon Alphonse 
 Daudet's famous novel. She played Desiree, the 
 little flower-girl with fairylike fingers, whom 
 every one loves except the one man for whose 
 love she craves. It was as imperishable a 
 creation as DescleVs Froufrou. Never had the 
 sorrows of love, the pain and sacrifice which it 
 demands of its lowly victims, been represented 
 on the stage with such grace and delicacy. If 
 my memory is to be trusted this was in 
 September, 1876, and for twenty years Madame 
 Bartet has been repeating her impersonation of 
 loving sorrowful resignation, always with the 
 same grace and the same success. When I saw 
 her in La Loi de VHomme, my neighbour in ) 
 the stalls said to me, "That is not the real 
 Bartet, our own Bartet that we know ; for the 
 first time in her life she is angry and in 
 
 E
 
 50 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA, 
 
 revolt." The phrase only told me what I knew 
 already, that the generation of 1876 judged 
 dramatic ability by precisely the same standards 
 as the preceding generation. Audiences of that 
 day merely asked of an artist to be herself, 
 always herself, under different names. They 
 liked her to assume one invariable attitude, to 
 repeat the same intonations, and never to weary 
 of expressing the same shade of the same 
 sentiment. One single condition they imposed, 
 perfection in this particular mode of expression. 
 It was thus that, according to Victor Hugo, 
 Greek art condemned 
 
 "Les nymphes a la honte et les faunes au rire." 
 
 Clearly, all this does not apply to exceptional 
 artists such as Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt, 
 who combine a strikingly original and individual 
 temperament with a rare power of assimilation 
 and metamorphosis. This double gift will 
 assure them lasting supremacy on the stage, 
 whatever changes may occur in the public taste. 
 Nevertheless, just consider how much of Sarah's 
 success especially in her earlier parts was due
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 51 
 
 to her eyes, her smile, her woman's charm, the 
 indefinable grace that she brought into all her 
 parts, and that voice, that famous golden voice, 
 which has been belauded to the verge of ridicule, 
 and yet can never be lauded enough. It would 
 be difficult to exaggerate its importance, for it 
 has changed all the modulations of the feminine 
 voice, not only on the stage but in ordinary 
 conversation. 
 
 Theatrical tradition remained intact, and every 
 rising talent was forced into the ancient groove. 
 The same names were always on the bills 
 Dumas, Augier, Labiche, Meilhac, and Gondinet. 
 Towards the end of the decade 1870-1880 two 
 or three Yaudevillistes made their appearance 
 Hennequin, Paul Terrier, Bisson. They were 
 adepts in the art of shuffling a woman out of 
 sight, bandying a husband about, driving a 
 mother-in-law into a fury, and making three 
 intrigues revolve round the same personage. 
 They often had as many as five doors to a salon, 
 every one of them indispensable to the action 
 of the play. Le Proces Vauradieux and Les 
 Dominos Roses promised a long lease of life to
 
 52 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 that class of writers who produced Le Chapeau de 
 paille d' Italic and La Mariee du Mardi Gras. In 
 the higher kind of comedy one name had made 
 considerable progress, the name of M. Edouard 
 Pailleron. 
 
 He was- or rather is, for he is mercifully very 
 much alive still and in full possession of his 
 gifts a man of the world and a rich man, which 
 caused him to be mistaken for an amateur. His 
 first efforts took the form of those little rhymed 
 nothings that people call " gems," or " pearls," 
 or " miniature masterpieces," without setting 
 the smallest value upon them. But after a 
 series of successes which culminated in 1881 in 
 Le Monde ou Von tfennuie, M. Pailleron won 
 deserved recognition as a dramatic satirist, a 
 moqueur of the first rank, a painter as faithful 
 as he was amusing of the absurdities of high 
 life. He stands unrivalled as the delineator of 
 that particular world which is the home of 
 society pedants, where the virus of academic 
 politics pollutes the air, where society harangues 
 and gives lectures or elegant disquisitions, and 
 creates deputies and "immortals" between two
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 53 
 
 cups of tea. If Le Monde ou Von s'ennuie ever 
 disappeared from the contemporary stage, which 
 is most unlikely, it would still be a priceless 
 document in the history of manners. No one 
 ever thought of saying that M. Pailleron's work 
 was unreal; on the contrary, he is accused, at 
 any rate in this particular instance, of having 
 been truthful to the verge of indiscretion, if not 
 betrayal. I do not wish to discuss the question. 
 Since M. Pailleron will not have it so, we will 
 not say that Bellac is a portrait; he is certainly 
 not a caricature. To my mind he represents a 
 combination of the Trissotins and the Tartufes ' 
 of his class and of his age, for the Church has 
 no monopoly of Tartufes. Philosophy and art 
 have their own, and so too have politics and 
 religion. In 1881 philosophical and artistic 
 Tartuferie consisted in professing a vague sort 
 of idealism, and gently titillating the feminine 
 mind with the languid subtleties of a somewhat 
 silken sort of rhetoric. Bellac did this to per- 
 fection. There are some phrases in his speech in 
 the second act which his supposed prototype of 
 the Sorbonne might not have been adverse to
 
 54 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 accept, if he had had the offer of them ; just as 
 Oronte's sonnet might very well have been ap- 
 propriated by one of the real precieux who con- 
 tributed to the Guirlande de Julie. This is the 
 mark of the great satirists, who touch the really 
 high levels of comedy : they, and they only can 
 both chastise and spare their victims, and can 
 heap coals of fire upon an enemy's head by 
 handing him back his weapons. 
 
 M. Pailleron's wit and power of observation 
 are entirely modern, but I cannot say as much 
 for his dramatic architecture. In this respect 
 he is not merely the pupil of Dumas and Augier, 
 he traces his descent through Sardou right back 
 to Scribe. In Le Monde ou Von s'ennuie the 
 intrigue turns on a letter, lost by somebody, 
 found by everybody, and giving rise to a double 
 misunderstanding. Some people make a mis- 
 take about its authorship, and others about its 
 destination. The most trivial incidents which 
 may serve to prolong the imbroglio, or to aggra- 
 vate it, are strained to their utmost limits, and 
 lead to a never-ending chain of fresh entangle- 
 ments, stretching from the first scene to the last.
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 55 
 
 There is the same complication woven out of 
 petty details in IS Age Ingrat, and in Les Faux 
 Menages. In La Souris one and the same man is 
 adored or courted by four women, and the way 
 in which their love makes them perform strange 
 evolutions round about him recalls a favourite 
 French game for children. In Cabotins the 
 action moves on five parallel lines, corresponding 
 to these five questions : 1. Will Grignoux re- 
 cover his daughter ? 2. Will Pierre marry 
 Valentine ? 3. Will Pegomas become Deputy ? 
 4. Will Laversac get into the Institute ? 5. 
 Will Madame de Laversac be able to keep the 
 friend who has cost her so much ? But though 
 M. Pailleron delights us with his wit, his 
 dramatic problems leave us unfortunately quite 
 unmoved. Then why state the problems ? 
 What is the good of these laboured quiproquos 
 and these theatrical devices which we are unable 
 to believe in ? Does even their author believe 
 in them? Is he really convinced, heart and 
 soul, that salvation cannot be attained without 
 explanations and complications, a catastrophe 
 and a denouement, without working up a situation
 
 56 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 and introducing parallel intrigues, in short, 
 without all those vaudeville devices leading up 
 to melodramatic scenes ? I fear not. Characters 
 in his plays are made to strike an attitude in 
 two or three tirades, and to fire off a few 
 epigrams like so many projectiles, out of that 
 carefully calculated store with which the author 
 has stuffed his pouch beforehand, and are then 
 allowed to utter the veriest nothings until their 
 creator wants them again for the denouement. 
 They are like useless puppets, left limp in a 
 corner, with their arms and heads all tumbling 
 about, until the showman picks up the threads 
 again and makes them dance. M. Pailleron is 
 a sincere enough artist when he is drawing his 
 characters, but he becomes artificial as soon as 
 he has to make them act ; whereby we see that 
 he belongs to that stage, inevitable in the his- 
 tory of every school, when method has usurped 
 the place of inspiration. Art, like every other 
 form of creed, has become seriously diseased when 
 the priest is even more incredulous than the 
 faithful. 
 
 What did it profit Dumas and the admirers of
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 57 
 
 the " well-constructed " play that they held all 
 the points of vantage and gained victory upon 
 victory ? They were but Pyrrhic victories after 
 all, for the forces of naturalism were pursuing 
 their relentless advance, and threatened speedily 
 to overtake their opponents. To ignore the 
 triumph of naturalism in fiction would at this 
 time of day be merely childish. For a long 
 time it was scouted and repudiated, confined, ; in 
 fact, to a narrow circle of doubtful repute. Too 
 fine-drawn to please the multitude, it was too 
 brutal for the fastidious. According to the older 
 critics it could hardly so much as claim to have 
 roused curiosity or occasioned scandal; even 
 that poor sort of success was denied to it. Those 
 incomparable artists, the brothers Goncourt, 
 gained nothing but a dubious notoriety ; Flau- 
 bert could only point to one really popular 
 book, Madame Bovary. The world laughed at 
 Salammbo, and shrugged its shoulders at L 1 Edu- 
 cation Sentimentale. Even the first few volumes 
 of the Rougon-Macquart series failed to bring 
 their author to the front. Towards 1876, how- 
 ever, fashion began to play a part in the matter ;
 
 S 8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRA MA . 
 
 then the question became a burning one and the 
 great battle began. The unprecedented success 
 of L'Assommoir, Nana, and Germinal had its 
 counterpart in the similar and certainly equal 
 success of Fremont et Risler, Le Nabob, Les Rois 
 en Exil, and Numa Roumestan. Daudet, when 
 all is said and done, remains Daudet a poet, an 
 artist, a dreamer, a favoured child of those lands 
 which the sun kisses, where every sound is 
 music and every landscape a picture, where 
 observation is a weariness and invention a 
 delight. Nevertheless many of his pages, and 
 those not the least fine, might be claimed by the 
 naturalists. His contribution to the success of 
 the school was quite as great as that of its chief 
 nay, perhaps, even greater. Still the world 
 went back to Flaubert and the Goncourts to 
 find the real originators of the movement ; how- 
 ever much they had been misconstrued, they 
 were its veritable masters, and yet even Flaubert 
 and the Goncourts counted Stendhal as their 
 progenitor. Poor Stendhal! In 1866 I saw a 
 great heap of manuscript scrawled over in his 
 picturesque handwriting lying neglected in a
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 59 
 
 corner of the library at Grenoble. These manu- 
 scripts, which three generations had despised, 
 have been religiously collected, page by page, 
 and given at length to the public.. It is a 
 striking fact, this resurrection of a much-mis- 
 understood genius, at the very date which he 
 had himself assigned to his posthumous fame. 
 
 It would not be difficult to show that, three or 
 four times before in our intellectual history, we 
 had passed by a natural affinity through a phase 
 of naturalism, and that though we have left it 
 behind we shall assuredly return to it. Again, 
 by converting the Rougon-Macquart series into a 
 weapon against the fallen regime, M. Zola enlisted 
 existing political passions upon his side. Doubt- 
 less the Empire had fallen, but imperial society 
 still survived ; both in the Chamber and in the 
 salons its representatives were making common 
 cause with returned wanderers from Frohsdorff 
 and Twickenham. Their final defeat following 
 upon the sixteenth of May, the retreat of 
 Marshal MacMahon and Jules Ferry's anti- 
 clerical campaign coincided with the triumph of 
 Zola and Daudet. It was more than a mere
 
 60 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 coincidence. The author of the Rougon-Macquart 
 took care to give his work a democratic character 
 in harmony with the new demands. He was no 
 longer satisfied with idealising the working 
 classes by introducing a few members of the 
 proletariat, and then towards the final pages 
 either raising them to the ranks of the bourgeoisie, 
 or making them unnaturally happy in their 
 virtuous poverty after the cunning fashion which 
 had found favour in middle-class literature. It 
 was no longer a question of painting the ideal 
 poor, but the real poor in all their misery, their 
 passion, and their strength. "My book," said 
 the Master of Medan, speaking of L* Assommoir, 
 " is the first that really smacks of the people." 
 It was the bible of the nouvelles couches. 
 
 But what about the fastidious? Were they 
 holding their noses all this time ? There are no 
 really fastidious people left, only a set of literary 
 snobs, greedy for subtle and rare sensations. 
 When the first shock is past, they are quite 
 ready and willing to wallow in the mire. They 
 vilified M. Zola, but they bought him. They 
 put him on the index, but only after they had
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 61 
 
 read him. Then they murmured, more to excuse 
 themselves than to do honour to him, "After all, 
 he is a great artist ! " 
 
 Now Naturalism was applying M. Taine's 
 principles and methods to the analysis of modern 
 life, and that with the most unflinching severity. 
 In every detail of its work, as well as in the 
 work as a whole, it laid stress on the complete 
 subjection of the individual to those three fatal 
 forces heredity, instinct, and environment. 
 When it had found the " master passion " in a 
 character, there it halted, and insisted upon the 
 subordination of all other moral qualities to this 
 leading quality; the characters which it intro- 
 duced into its novels were, consequently, simple 
 characters, cut all in one piece, incapable of 
 modification, admitting of no transformation, but 
 working out their development to the bitter end. 
 In such a literature morality counts for nothing 
 and art for very little. 
 
 There was not much gaiety about it. George 
 Sand, who belonged to an earlier epoch, confesses 
 that for several days after reading Jack she could 
 not so much as hold a pen. For my own part I
 
 62 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 have never got to the end of one of M. Zola's 
 novels without experiencing a horrible crushing 
 sense of suffocation, as if I were being buried 
 alive and the earth was pressing upon my mouth. 
 No, there was no gaiety about it, but this very 
 fact gave the naturalists their opportunity. 
 France was sad. In the first place defeat had 
 made us gloomy and anxious, and then we had 
 lost the " soft pillow " of the faith that for 
 centuries had lulled our infant slumbers; no 
 sooner had we lost it than we began to look back 
 to it with yearning regret and to extol its sooth- 
 ing power. As to science, it was not keeping the 
 promises which after all it had never made, but 
 which we in our madness had promised ourselves 
 in its name. As the Latin poet has said 
 
 " Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri 
 Jussit." 
 
 And as we pursued our way within narrow limits 
 and under a gloomy and lowering sky, we could 
 but bow our heads and fix our eyes on the 
 ground. Why look up to heaven if it were 
 empty ? Schopenhauer, from the darkness of his
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 63 
 
 German grave and the obscurity of his still more 
 German books, held out a hand to the author of 
 Germinal ; pessimism, whose mission it always is 
 in the Jong run to bring so many minds back to 
 mysticism, was for the moment lending a helping 
 hand to the fortunes of Naturalism. 
 
 One question presented itself for solution. 
 Naturalism had overrun the whole field of fic- 
 tion ; would it also establish itself on the stage ? 
 
 Augier and Dumas had been borne up at the 
 outset of their career by the tide of realism which 
 issued in Naturalism ; but they had been speedily 
 checked in their onward course by the rocks of 
 theatrical conventions, considered inviolable, and 
 also by the fact that their temperament in no 
 wise impelled them in that direction. Eealism 
 in the mise-en-scene ? Certainly, as much as you 
 please ! A real fire on the hearth, a velvet-piled 
 carpet on the floor, the room properly furnished, 
 real champagne and real chickens on the dinner- 
 table nothing could be better. Dresses which 
 helped the actresses to pose as real women of 
 fashion ? By all means. Dialogue a little more 
 like ordinary conversation ? Well, perhaps. On
 
 64 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 this point the two differed. Dumas' dialogue is 
 admirably smooth and natural when he does not 
 happen to be either preaching or theorising, but 
 then he so often is ! As for Augier, I know 
 nothing so pleasantly artificial, or so antiquated, 
 from a literary point of view, as the style of Les 
 Effrontes and Le Fils de Giboyer. Augier has 
 lately been called a realist, but it is not difficult 
 to give the sum-total of all the realism in his 
 plays. It consists of one scene in the Manage 
 tfOlympe^ the character of Seraphine in the 
 Lionnes Pauvres, and the character of Maitre 
 Guerin in the piece which bears his name, for all 
 the surrounding personages belong clearly to the 
 world of chimera and convention. Eealism plays 
 a much larger part in Dumas' work. Monsieur 
 Alphonse is almost pure Naturalism, and the 
 " almost " would be " quite " but for the denoue- 
 ment, which reverts enthusiastically to an opti- 
 mistic idealism. Dumas adored reality, and would 
 have been an admirable observer and delineator 
 of life if he had only had less genius. But 
 who can prevent a man from creating when 
 he was born to create? Who can limit the
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 65 
 
 invention of a Balzac, a Dickens, a Stevenson, a 
 Dumas fits ? 
 
 When Naturalism threatened to invade his own 
 particular domain of the theatre he advanced 
 boldly against the enemy, and devoted several 
 prefaces to his discomfiture. Eeality, as he said, 
 is really only the dramatist's rough material, his 
 point of departure, not his goal. Dramatic art 
 consists in treatment and interpretation. Now 
 Naturalism neither interprets its material nor 
 subjects it to any process of treatment, and if it 
 transfers a drama from the pages of a novel to the 
 stage, it omits all those explanations which are 
 so necessary to the spectator. A character in a 
 Naturalist play has no right to analyse his mo- 
 tives in presence of the audience; indeed, how 
 could he, when he does not know them himself? 
 He is cut all in one piece ; what he is in the first 
 scene he remains up to the end. Then what be- 
 comes of development, and how can there be 
 anything unforeseen, or any interest ? The play 
 either ends badly, or pretends to simulate life by 
 having no end at all. But although a Frenchman 
 may indulge in pessimism beside his own hearth, 
 
 F
 
 66 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 it appears to be an established fact that when two 
 thousand Frenchmen are brought together in a 
 theatre they at once become optimists ; they 
 refuse to go to bed until they have seen the 
 deliverance of love and virtue, or at least until 
 they have strewn a few flowers upon their bier. 
 This, I think, is what English people call " poetic 
 justice " ; it costs nothing, and it gives a world of 
 pleasure. In one word, a Naturalist play is not 
 " constructed," and comes to no conclusion ; 
 hence it is neither a work of art nor a lesson in 
 morality, whereas a good play ought to be both. 
 If Naturalism succeeds in capturing the theatre, 
 the theatre will cease to exist. 
 
 That was the line of argument in the camp of 
 Dumas and Sardou. It must be admitted that the 
 woeful and often signal failure of the most well- 
 known novels of the Naturalist School, when 
 transferred to the stage, seemed to justify the sort 
 of reasoning that I have just summarised. But 
 who could say whether the real reason of these 
 misadventures might not be found in the simple 
 fact that the great novelists had no sort of under- 
 standing of the theatre ? We must see how
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 67 
 
 Naturalism was handled by a dramatic writer, an 
 experiment first undertaken by M. Henry Becque. 
 A very curious case this of M. Henry Becque, 
 especially to any one who has been asleep, like 
 myself, for twenty years. When I closed my 
 eyes there was something almost grotesque about 
 M. Becque's position. He was knocking at the 
 doors of all the theatres with manuscript plays 
 that were hastily returned to him, and when he 
 did succeed in getting a play put on the stage, 
 people laughed till their sides ached. The ex- 
 perience marked an epoch and became proverbial ; 
 all the world was saying, "rire comme a Michel 
 Pauper." When I reopened my eyes to the gas- 
 light and my ears to the gossip of the theatrical 
 world I was rather astonished to learn that M. 
 Henry Becque was a master, the head of a school, 
 much debated, but largely followed and imitated ; 
 that M. Lemaitre was comparing him with Mo- 
 liere, and that he had come forward as a candidate 
 for the French Academy without provoking either 
 scandal or mirth. Can M. Henry Becque's pre- 
 sent admirers be right? Well, really, I think 
 that they may. Then were we all wrong when
 
 68 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 we refused to take him seriously ? By no means. 
 I have just re-read Michel Pauper. It remains 
 what it always was a drama full of violent ex- 
 aggerations, a mad sort of play, heavy withal and 
 so vulgar in style ! The language put into the 
 mouths of the characters positively strikes one 
 dumb ; the play is an altogether unique specimen 
 of that exasperating banality which is so often 
 imputed to poor M. Ohnet. A young girl, who 
 has been assaulted, informs us of the accident in 
 an antithesis which would have made my pro- 
 fessor of rhetoric shed tears of joy : " He asked 
 of his own will what he could not obtain from 
 mine." At what possible epoch and in what sort 
 of society did people ever talk like that ? I can 
 only picture to myself a group of old fogies whose 
 one means of communication with the spirit of 
 their age is the perusal of the Petit Journal, and 
 who meet thrice a week on a fourth floor looking 
 out into a courtyard in a blind alley somewhere 
 about Batignolles or the Marais to play bezique 
 or picquet. Let a tragedy supervene, and they 
 will have no way of expressing their emotions 
 except by recalling a few fragments of phrases
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 69 
 
 heard and only half understood in their youth. 
 They will give you Bouchardy, combined with 
 the insipidity of their ordinary speech, and the 
 result will be pretty nearly the dialogue of Michel 
 Pauper. But no; Bouchardy is decidedly too 
 modern, Bouchardy represents Eomanticism 
 brought down to the level of the illiterate spec- 
 tator of 1840. M. Becque's style is much older 
 than that. Here and there I have discovered 
 phrases embedded in it which struck terror to my 
 soul fossilised epigrams of immemorial age, 
 mots which date from before Madame Cottin. 
 
 To be perfectly ignorant of your own times, of 
 the manners that prevail, the language that is 
 spoken, the art that is cultivated and admired, of 
 all that gives tone and commands success in 
 society and literature, is sometimes a very great 
 source of strength. M. Becque had that 
 strength. Many men who isolate themselves in 
 this fashion from the intellectual movement of 
 their day die before their time, devoured by 
 anger and poisoned by bitterness. Not so M. 
 Becque. As the common folk say in Paris, " II 
 ne s'est pas fait de bile"; he was never at a loss
 
 7 o THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 for amusement, for he made quite as merry over 
 the world as the world could over him. Like 
 Horace's peasant, he waited for the river to cease 
 flowing, and lo and behold, the river dried 
 up ! 
 
 He might have sought to learn from Scribe the 
 secret of the "well-constructed" play; he, the 
 hundredth in succession to Dumas fits, might have 
 tried his hand at a " problem play," with a happy 
 ending ; he preferred to spend the leisure of a 
 rejected author in re-reading Moliere and in 
 observing life. Moliere and Life ; surely two 
 pretty good masters ? They appear to have 
 taught M. Becque that nothing interests us or 
 amuses us so much as to see people unconsciously 
 engaged in a blind pursuit of their own advan- 
 tage or passion whithersoever it leads them, or to 
 hear them reveal themselves "without wishing 
 it or knowing it," in phrases whose true bearing 
 they fail to catch. Note that even the hypocrites 
 use such phrases ; otherwise we should not know 
 that Tartufe was Tartufe until he unmasked. 
 Now take one of these characters and place him 
 in a situation which brings his besetting sin, his
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 71 
 
 master passion into play. Then leave him to 
 himself; don't, on any account, interfere, or you 
 will spoil everything. No complication, no 
 catastrophe, nothing but the development of 
 character. Above all, no intervention on the 
 part of Providence. In the fourth act of 
 UEtrangere Eemonin tells us that he is expect- 
 ing something. " The gods will come," he says, 
 and assuredly in the fifth act something does 
 happen and the gods appear. Well, in M. 
 Becque's plays the gods never appear ; men get 
 along as they can. How does one know when 
 the play is over ? Why, the curtain falls. And 
 when does the curtain fall ? When the author 
 has drawn out of his characters all that they 
 are capable of in a given situation. This, in its 
 main outlines, is the dramatic system whose 
 masterpieces so far have been Les Corbeaux and 
 La Parisienne. 
 
 Death has made a sudden incursion into a 
 Parisian family, and carried off the head of the 
 house in the full tide of his activity, before he 
 had time to set his affairs in order. The widow 
 and the three daughters of the dead man are
 
 72 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 thereby left exposed to all the criminal devices 
 which are made possible by the settlement of a 
 much encumbered property. The crows swoop 
 down upon them their father's partner, the 
 lawyer, the architect, the tradespeople. The 
 four women would be simply devoured if the 
 eldest girl did not happen to find favour in the 
 eyes of one of the birds of prey, old Teissier. 
 She marries this detestable individual to save 
 her mother and sisters ; she marries him without 
 any tears or fuss, sans faire d'histoires, for she is 
 a practical girl, and this sort of sacrifice is 
 common enough in France. Do the audience 
 insist upon a conclusion? Well, if the crows 
 are upon you, you must seek the protection of 
 the biggest and blackest, so that he may make 
 short work of the others. Teissier says naively 
 to Marie, "Ah, my poor child, since your 
 father's death you have been surrounded by 
 rascals ! " But let it not be forgotten that of 
 all the rascals, he has been the most greedy and 
 the most dangerous. 
 
 That is M. Becque's idea of comedy, and those 
 are the sort of phrases he indulges in ; monstrous
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 73 
 
 utterances which seem perfectly simple to those 
 who utter them. These mots abound in La 
 Parisienne. Clotilde has a husband and a lover ; 
 she proposes to make them both happy, to be 
 both a good wife and a good mistress, and to 
 carry on her quiet little menage a trois with the 
 most careful regard for appearances. She ap- 
 propriates three days a week to temperament : 
 the rest belongs to family life, to society, to 
 "duty," to virtue. It is a cold-blooded, com- 
 fortable, commuted sort of adultery, which thinks 
 itself respectable, because it has gone on a long 
 time an adultery which reasons and calculates 
 and moralises and goes to mass. u You would 
 not wish," says Clotilde to Lafont, " to have a 
 mistress with no religion. It would be horrible!" 
 She reproaches him for his lukewarmness in the 
 relationship which her fancy has invented for him. 
 " You do not love my husband, you do not love 
 my husband." And he defends himself hotly 
 against this original accusation. If she has 
 some fancy over and above the recognised lover, 
 she justifies it in her own eyes by making it 
 serve the advancement of her husband. Listen
 
 74 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 to the virtuous indignation of the lover, who, 
 under these circumstances, is a hundredfold more 
 marital than the husband himself: " Eesist it, 
 Clotilde ; that is the only honourable course, and 
 the only course worthy of you ! " These phrases 
 made the first audiences who heard them gnash 
 their teeth ; now they are often compared with 
 Moliere's epigrams. You can smile if you like, 
 but you may also weep. La Parisienne is an 
 example of that disagreeable kind of vaudeville 
 which could be converted into a serious drama 
 by a mere nothing a note left on a table, or 
 the sudden opening of a door. Les Corleaux^ 
 unlike the plays of Dumas and his school, is a 
 serious drama, which comes very near to ending 
 in comedy. 
 
 This would be the moment for holding M. 
 Becque up to public reprobation in the sacred., 
 name of morality, but it is useless to count on 
 me for that purpose. My own view is simply 
 this. Marriage, as we see it nowadays, defaced 
 and corrupted by modern life, seems to me almost 
 as contemptible as adultery. Restore its sincerity, 
 its pristine beauty and sublimity, and I shall be
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 75 
 
 in the front rank of its defenders. Our morality 
 has been so perverted and dragged in the mire 
 by our system of compromise, that it cannot, 
 perhaps, serve any higher purpose than the 
 ignoble ends of a Clotilde and a Lafont. I 
 for one shall not expend the thousandth part of 
 a drop of ink in defending either the institution, 
 or the social order which is reared on such a 
 basis. 
 
 There remains the question of artistic merit. 
 To my mind M. Becque's rupture with conven- 
 tion and theatrical devices is by no means so 
 complete as he says and as he wishes us to believe. 
 Take Les Corbeaux for example. I could twit 
 M. Becque with a certain episode which intro- 
 duces a suggestion of somewhat conventional 
 melodrama into a corner of his very realistic 
 .play, a reminiscence of the ill- fated Michel Pauper. 
 But I prefer to attack the play directly and in 
 virtue of M. Becque's own principles, for up 
 to a certain point I am ready to recognise those 
 principles as sound, valid, and far-reaching. 
 Four women are imprisoned in a circle, whence 
 there is no possible escape, alone with the birds
 
 76 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 of prey. They have nothing in the shape of a 
 man to defend them. Why ? Because M. 
 Becque has elected to send the son to his 
 regiment, and because he has also been pleased 
 to make the fiance of one of the girls a wretched 
 coward. In default of such natural defenders, 
 salvation might have been sought in some other 
 incident ; Marie, for instance, might have proved 
 attractive to a different sort of man, or the 
 much-talked-of estate might have tempted another 
 speculator to make a higher bid, and the crows 
 would have been forced to fly away without their 
 dinner. The gods don't always come, but, after 
 all, they do come sometimes. In any case life is 
 for ever creating diversions, which thwart all kinds 
 of projects, the schemes of rogues as well as those 
 of honest men. M. Becque arrests the march 
 of events so as to leave the field clear for the 
 unfolding of his characters. He is within his 
 rights as a dramatic author. I only want to 
 prove that even he subjects that raw slice cut out 
 of life to some sort of culinary process, before 
 calling upon us to swallow and digest it. 
 
 Still, there is quite enough that is fresh and
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 77 
 
 daring in Henry Becque's system, and in his 
 dramatic work to justify the assertion that he 
 has created something. He has really begotten 
 a child, and, as Musset says : 
 
 "C'est d6j& bien joli quand on en a fait un." 
 
 Only I could have wished the baby to receive 
 a prettier name from its godfathers and god- 
 mothers. Too late, for La Parisienne and all 
 the plays of that school have been christened 
 comedie rosse. 
 
 This word " rosse" is of Spanish origin : and, 
 like almost every word that changes its nation- 
 ality, it acquired a depreciatory and offensive 
 sense when it crossed the Pyrenees, testifying 
 thereby to the stupid contempt which different 
 nations feel for one another. Perhaps, too, the 
 name of Don Quixote's horse contributed some- 
 what to the suggestion of insult attaching to 
 the French expression. However that may 
 be, a " rosse " is a jade or a screw, and in this 
 sense, during the seventeenth century, the word 
 crept into literary use, for I remember both 
 a line of Scarron and one of Boileau in which
 
 78 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 it occurs. In the present century the word 
 
 was first applied to a certain sort of woman 
 
 an insult so vile that it must first have occurred 
 
 to some stable boy who had had a quarrel 
 
 with his mistress. From the wine shop it 
 
 passed to the smoking-room, since there are 
 
 moments when even a man, who prides 
 
 himself on his good breeding, will behave 
 
 like a drunken coachman. In such moods he is 
 
 glad enough to cast words savouring of the 
 
 gutter or the shambles in the face of the woman 
 
 whom he no longer loves, to revenge himself for 
 
 ever having loved her. Once she had every 
 
 charm, now she has every vice. She is a liar 
 
 and a deceiver, she has no heart, she is "une 
 
 rosse " or simply "rosse," for the word may be 
 
 both substantive and adjective. It only remained 
 
 for the poor degraded word to be applied to a 
 
 literary style, and this application has now been 
 
 made. The comedie rosse is not only a comedy 
 
 which gives the heroine a villainous part ; rosserie 
 
 extends to all the characters, and, in fact, consists 
 
 in simple lack of conscience. Rosserie is a 
 
 vicious sort of ingenuousness ; it represents the
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 79 
 
 state of mind of people who have never had any 
 moral sense, and who are as much at home amid 
 impurity and injustice as a fish is in the sea. It 
 is a sort of childlike and heavenly repose in an 
 atmosphere of corruption, which suggests a 
 travesty of the Golden Age a world in which 
 all our principles of morality are reversed, and 
 where, in the words of Milton's Satan, evil has 
 become good. This reign of evil is inaugurated 
 without any noisy revolution, with out any apparent 
 change in family or social relations, or in ordinary 
 conversation ; it is brought about by a gradual 
 diversion of modern ideas from their original 
 source, until they end by justifying all the crimes 
 against which they were at first directed. 
 Imagine a society which retains the Decalogue 
 as its moral code and guides its actions by the 
 Seven Deadly Sins. 
 
 I said just now that we had a kind of literature 
 to which the name rosse may be applied. I ought 
 to have said that we had two. Indeed, I think 
 that the chanson rosse preceded the comedie rosse. 
 Mdlle. Yvette Guilbert has done much to shed 
 lustre upon this kind of song, which, thanks to
 
 80 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 her, has become an article of export. That 
 curious talent of hers was displayed upon a 
 London stage, together with her characteristic 
 costumes and attitudes, and the Gigolos and 
 Gigolettes have no further secrets for those who 
 saw Yvette at the Empire. I do not wish to 
 force the point, but, as Eenan is said to have 
 admired her and paid her compliments, I am 
 justified in mentioning her as a symptom. 
 
 The chanson rosse first saw the light at the 
 Chat Noir^ that far-famed Chat Noir which has 
 been almost eclipsed by its innumerable imitators 
 but which maintained its pre-eminence for ten 
 years. At first it was merely a wine shop in 
 Montmartre, the resort of the poets and painters 
 of the quarter. They formed a more amiable 
 and better bred Bohemia than the Bohemia of 
 old, less addicted to smashing window panes or 
 tying cats by their tails to bell ropes, and less 
 enamoured of brutal nocturnal frolics, but more 
 revolutionary in their views on art and literature 
 than the Bohemia of Miirger and Champfleury. 
 "Passant, sois moderne," was the significant 
 legend inscribed over the door, and before they
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 81 
 
 had well crossed the threshold, the proprietor of 
 the place, Eodolphe Sails, a man of fine phrases 
 and large gestures, pelted distinguished visitors 
 with such stupefying sentences as " Montmartre, 
 the brains of Paris, is proud to clasp its sons to 
 her bosom." The visitors sat down ; and waiters, 
 dressed like members of the Institute, rushed to 
 serve the new comers. This prostitution of the 
 venerable green - sprigged frock - coat of the 
 Academy shows pretty clearly the contempt felt 
 for classic art, Vart poncif or pompier, as it was 
 called. The Chat Noir had unwittingly become 
 a theatre the dwellers in it contributed their 
 personality and their wit. Men of the world 
 crowded to these strange spectacles; all Paris 
 was there listening to Meusy, Emile Goudeau, 
 Mac Nab, and Jean Eamsan singing their own 
 songs, babyish refrains, military ballads, neo- 
 Hellenic odes, idylls of the barriers, which, for 
 all their apparent triviality, contained incredible 
 refinements of literary virtuosity. Then came 
 the Chinese shadow dances of Caran d'Ache, who 
 could defile before you the whole drama of the 
 great Napoleon, with nothing but a luminous 
 
 a
 
 8z THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 circle a few inches in diameter and some silhouettes 
 cut out in tin and moving behind a piece of 
 calico. 
 
 Another day you had the temptation of St. 
 Anthony according to Flaubert a stupendous 
 philosophical comedy embracing the whole of 
 modern life, and Jules Lemaitre, sitting before 
 these suggestive shadows, thought of the shadows 
 passing to and fro in Plato's cave. On another 
 evening, Willette the Watteau of Montmartre, 
 but a Watteau who never finished his drawings 
 because he preferred to retain the flou, the 
 vaguely fluctuating outlines of a dream brought 
 his friends to the Chat Noir to see a rope-dancing 
 pantomime which displayed his beloved Pierrot 
 under the strangest aspect, together with a 
 columbine of an entirely new type, destined to 
 replace GreVin's Parisienne grisette, just as she 
 in her turn had displaced Marcellin's type, the 
 successor of the Parisienne according to Tony 
 Johannot. A face with a fugitive pallor, and a 
 modest, caressing grace, half mocking, half sad, 
 hair falling over her eyes, and arms of exquisite 
 slenderness, feet encased in black silk stockings
 
 NATURALISM ON THE STAGE. 83 
 
 and dear little shoes, shooting up like rockets in 
 a whirlwind of muslin and lace, the famous 
 " dessous" which fill so large a place in the 
 dreams of bachelors and the budget of married 
 men. Tinchant, the poetical pianist, was the 
 orchestra, Eodolphe Salis explained the tableaux 
 in a Charentonesque style ; pictures, words and 
 music helped out each other's meaning and 
 blended in a harmonious whole. What suggestive 
 veins of raillery, what new ideas were to be met 
 with, and what wild theories were broached in 
 those early gatherings at the Chat Noir I Now, 
 if ever, was the moment to set about some serious 
 undertaking, and in due time appeared the 
 Theatre Libre to make the attempt.
 
 III. 
 
 THE THEATEE LIBEE. 
 
 ON a chilly October evening in 1887, a few cabs 
 from the heart of Paris painfully crawled up the 
 street to Montmartre, and a handful of men, care- 
 fully buttoned up in thick overcoats, peered about 
 them and plunged with no little hesitation into a 
 narrow, very muddy, and dimly lighted alley. 
 Hovels to right and left, in front an indistinct 
 vision of a staircase. This was the place. The 
 cabs brought the fashionable world which hungers 
 after literary novelties; the buttoned-up men 
 were critics who came to worship or to spurn 
 the nascent art in its cradle. In default of a star, 
 these great-coated Magi were reduced to asking 
 their way at the wine- shop in the Place Pigalle ; 
 at least that was the fate which befell M. Jules 
 Lemaitre, who has given the emotions awakened 
 by the journey a permanent place in literary
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 85 
 
 history. Do you want more precise details ? The 
 doubtful-looking alley had a name no less high- 
 sounding than the Passage de PElysee des Beaux- 
 Arts, and the Theatre Libre, on that particular 
 evening, had its local habitation at No. 37. 
 
 A word or two as to its material resources. 
 The spectators were all subscribers with season 
 tickets, and were, therefore, almost as much at 
 home as the members of a club. The mere fact 
 of taking no money at the doors freed the theatre 
 from all the regulations which govern public 
 entertainments. In the eye of the law, the 
 Theatre Libre was not a theatre at all ; conse- 
 quently its promoters were quite at liberty to 
 bid defiance to the Censorship. Besides, as no 
 piece could be played more than three times, it 
 was not necessary to secure the continued 
 attendance of the average playgoer. Provided 
 that something new or startling, and hitherto 
 unknown, was presented to the few hundred 
 rich cockneys, whose curiosity served to support 
 the venture, all would go well ; and, under these 
 conditions, daring was not only desirable but 
 absolutely necessary. There was one drawback
 
 86 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 which had not been foreseen, but which, in the 
 long run, made itself felt. The house was so 
 entirely composed of friends or avowed enemies, 
 of the initiated or scoffers, that it seldom gave a 
 frank or spontaneous verdict. There is not, and 
 there never can be, any real success except that 
 which is attested by the vulgar pence of the 
 vulgar public ; but it took a little time for the 
 world to find that out. 
 
 The name of the manager of the Theatre Libre, 
 a comparatively unknown actor called Antoine, 
 was soon to be in the mouths of all Paris. He 
 was more than brusque in speech and manner, 
 violently dictatorial in fact, and the strangest of 
 bedfellows, as those whom necessity forced to 
 associate with him were quick to perceive ; but 
 he possessed that degree of self-confidence and 
 contempt for his predecessors which appears to be 
 the first requisite for an innovator. "What did he 
 mean to do ? First of all to upset all traditions of 
 acting and mise-en-scene. In his eyes the stage 
 ought to be, as Ibsen said, merely a room with 
 one partition knocked down so that the spectators 
 can see what is going on in it. Thence it follows
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 87 
 
 that all the action cannot be carried on with the 
 actor's face to the audience. Antoine, indeed, 
 very often turned his back, and people laughed 
 long and loudly. To a great many of the clever 
 folk of Paris, Antoine's back-turning repre- 
 sented the Theatre Libre. For all that, this 
 back had its own way of acting, and was very 
 significant in certain situations. The lesson 
 was by no means lost upon the artist world, 
 quick to understand and to imitate ; and in this, 
 as in many other respects, Antoine's unavowed 
 or unconscious disciples included actors much 
 superior to himself, who took good care to profit 
 by his example, and at the same time to tone 
 down what was aggravating and aggressive in 
 his methods. 
 
 Antoine had no special gift for the studied 
 delivery of effective phrases, after the fashion of 
 the Samsons and Eegniers, but he set to work to 
 discover the dominant characteristic which con- 
 stituted the essential unity of any human being : 
 some one of the deadly sins, perhaps at least 
 one which lends itself to dramatic purposes, such 
 as avarice, pride, luxury, egotism ; and, above all,
 
 88 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the love of life and the fear of death. When he 
 had once grasped this leading feature, every 
 word, every movement, every glance, was made 
 to translate it into a form that could be felt. A 
 method so sustained and intense created an im- 
 pression strong enough to supply the place of 
 all the manifold explanations of Dumas' and 
 Augier's plays. Seeing is sometimes more than 
 understanding, and those who saw Antoine as 
 Morel in Leon Hennique's Esther Brandes can 
 never recall it without a shudder. From the 
 very first scene we knew the man could not live, 
 that his malady was a sort of petrifaction of the 
 heart, and that the fatal termination, which was 
 inevitable, might be brought on prematurely by 
 any violent emotion. It was impossible, looking 
 at Antoine, to forget for a single moment that 
 heart turning into stone, or to escape from 
 the agonising fear lest the deadly emotion, 
 which constantly threatened, should descend like 
 the blade of the guillotine. One saw the doomed 
 man struggling against physical pain, or yielding 
 to it in pure abjectness, alternating between 
 confidence and bitterness, passion and lamenta-
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 89 
 
 tion, weak tenderness and fierce egotism. One 
 felt his deliberate efforts at calmness, his false 
 resignation, his sincere illusions, the way in 
 which his whole moral nature had shrunk, and 
 been warped and deformed, by the fear of on- 
 coming death. It was at the close of an 
 evening like this that M. Emile Faguet, at that 
 time dramatic critic to the Soleil, discovered in 
 M. Antoine " some of the elements of a great 
 actor." 
 
 Eound him gathered a troop of mere school- 
 boys and schoolgirls made living by his strong 
 personality. The feeling of having a cause to 
 advance, and a systematic campaign to carry on 
 a series of battles, that is to say, to be fought 
 on ground chosen beforehand, and under the eyes 
 of a select audience gave their acting, as the 
 same critic assures us, a certain "fire and con- 
 centration " that would never have been found 
 elsewhere. 
 
 What was to be attempted with these tools ? 
 Antoine's programme was perfectly definite. He 
 knew very well what he wanted, and still better 
 what he did not want. Nothing could be more
 
 90 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 explicit or more valuable, as a means of dis- 
 closing both his sympathies and his antipathies, 
 than a letter written by him in 1894 to M. 
 Camille Fabre. He gave an enthusiastic welcome 
 to a MS. play submitted to him by this young 
 author, whom he called " one of the most gifted 
 and best-balanced minds of the age." It was a 
 long time, he told him, since he had had "such 
 a mouthful to nibble at " ; nevertheless he made 
 reservations, foresaw a the objections which the 
 advanced critics would not fail to raise." His 
 sketch of M. Fabre' s manner paints him to the 
 life. " Your method is Becque's, and you en- 
 shrine your very curious conception in the anti- 
 quated forms of Dumas and Sardou. There is the 
 fag-end of a problem in your first act, and your 
 two parallel threads you borrow, very likely 
 without knowing it, from the author of La 
 Haine" (Sardou). But Antoine gave unqualified 
 praise to " the firm outlines of the figures and 
 characters." It is amusing to notice that this 
 "mouthful" which Antoine was so happy to 
 " nibble at " he never attempted to play. But 
 the piece survives, and so does the letter it is
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 91 
 
 the syllabus of the Theatre Libre. Above all, no 
 compromise with the school of the "well con- 
 structed " play, the play with explanations and a 
 gradual working up. No subplot, no problem, 
 no contrasts, no moral : nothing but implacable 
 reality and unflinching unity. The drama is a 
 mere procession of human types, a gallery of 
 walking portraits. As for situations, why trouble 
 about them ? They arise quite naturally out of 
 the most ordinary circumstances of life : the rela- 
 tions subsisting between members of the same 
 family ; a marriage, coming into an inheritance, 
 a bankruptcy, or the vulgarest form of adultery 
 any one of these is quite enough. Life offers us 
 such adventures at every step, but the stage, up 
 to now, has presented them in the falsest light 
 possible, because dramatic authors might as well 
 have waited for the Greek Kalends as tried to 
 perform the impossible feat of " creating " situa- 
 tions. 
 
 I have largely reconstituted the repertoire of 
 the Theatre Libre by collecting some sixty plays, 
 a good half of which belong to the school of 
 Henry Becque, that is to say, the School of
 
 92 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Naturalism modified to suit the requirements of 
 the stage. Amongst the most distinguished of 
 this group of authors, the first places must be 
 assigned to Jean Jullien, Pierre Wolff, Leon 
 Hennique, George Ancey, Brieux, and Camille 
 Fabre, for M. Antoine consoled the last-named 
 for his first discomfiture by playing a very 
 striking play of his, L 1 Argent. Not that these 
 authors formed a coterie quite as distinct as the 
 Eomantic school of the Place Eoyale in 1830 ; 
 indeed, they very possibly did not know one 
 another ; but they breathed the same air, fed on 
 the same ideas, and drank of the same springs on 
 their journey towards the same point on the 
 literary horizon. There is such a family likeness 
 between their plays, and such a community of 
 system and intention, that they seem like a con- 
 tinuation of each other. A feature, which has 
 been indicated or outlined in an earlier play, 
 is corrected and completed in a second, and I 
 do not think that it would be very difficult to 
 analyse the class as a whole, just as one might 
 analyse a single play by picking out here and 
 there some detail, or character, or phrase, or
 
 t THE THEATRE LIBRE. 93 
 
 fragment of a scene from the most striking works 
 of the school and the period. By those I under- 
 stand the plays which do sincerely aim at what is 
 new or what is best ; I leave out of account the 
 formless productions which are nothing but an 
 insult to men of sense. The first thing that sur- 
 prises us is the absence of all exposition. "No 
 exposition ! "What an omission, what a blow to 
 the dramatic authors brought up in the school of 
 Scribe ! The exposition had served not only to 
 reveal the initial situation one scene would have 
 done for that but to present the characters in 
 such a fashion that there would be no need to 
 come back to them ; the rest of the play followed 
 as necessarily as the conclusion of a syllogism 
 from the juxtaposition of the major and minor 
 premiss. The author expended upon it all the 
 talent and brilliancy that he could muster; 
 the first act was generally given up to it, and 
 sometimes the second and third. Indeed, it 
 contained the play in embryo ; it announced 
 it and related its substance like the ancient 
 Prologue. It was often as much superior to 
 the play itself as the mountebank's speech at
 
 94. THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the door is to the spectacle provided inside the 
 booth at a fair. 
 
 There was nothing of this sort at the Theatre 
 Libre. Far from enlightening us, the first act 
 generally led us completely astray. Take, for 
 example. La Serenade, by Jean Jullien. When 
 the wife of a watchmaker, seated behind her 
 counter, tells us that she " thirsts for the ideal " 
 and longs for " the love of a poet," and when we 
 see that this poet is a pretentious usher, who 
 teaches her little boy the Latin declensions, we 
 imagine ourselves in for a vaudeville, and are 
 convinced that the shade of Labiche hovers over 
 us. In the second act we plunge into pure 
 drama, and what a drama I It touches the 
 borders even of incest, and we ask ourselves how 
 the author is going to get out of the difficulty 
 without wholesale butchery. But just as we are 
 beginning to take these jewellers in earnest, as if 
 they were Atrides or Labdacides, lo and behold, 
 they think better of it and get reconciled. The 
 guilty mother marries her daughter to her lover, 
 and they all drink champagne to the health of 
 the future couple. In fact, we have slipped back
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 95 
 
 into farce in the most lamentable fashion possible. 
 There is the same shock in M. George Ancey's 
 play, La Dupe, only he manages it more skil- 
 fully, and his intention to make merry at our 
 expense is less openly visible. We first assist at 
 what in matrimonial slang is called an ''inter- 
 view," one of those meetings which experts in 
 such matters know how to bring about between 
 a girl in search of a husband and a young man in 
 search of a dowry. Albert Bonnel makes the 
 usual fatuous remarks, and we quite understand 
 that the poor girl takes a dislike to him. We 
 are spared none of the silly phrases that are 
 likely to occur in such a conversation. "The 
 cold is really abnormal. I don't know if it 
 means to last." According to the old logic of 
 the stage, the man who asked such a question 
 was invariably a good fellow, and no one had 
 any doubt as to the fate which awaited him 
 when he married. But M. George Ancey re- 
 verses the probabilities. In the second act we 
 find Adele married to Albert, and it is she who 
 is madly in love with him, and he who deceives 
 her. This utterer of solemn platitudes turns
 
 96 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 out to be a monster, a humorous monster withal, 
 full of gaiety and lively chatter. He jokes with 
 his mother-in-law, and makes her laugh till she 
 cries, before robbing her of her money. And 
 we took him for a harmless simpleton ! 
 
 I am amazed, but not altogether displeased, 
 for, after all, astonishment is half the pleasure 
 one expects to get out of the theatre, and, like 
 all my contemporaries, I am tired of those over- 
 logical plays, in which everything is clear from 
 the very first scene, and the action runs as 
 smoothly as a tramcar on rails. The French are 
 well known to have sometimes insisted upon the 
 distinction between tragedy and comedy with a 
 rigour which the Greeks would not have under- 
 stood, and which has never been known in Eng- 
 land. In our age the distinction has disappeared, 
 and I have pointed out that in Dumas' and 
 Augier's composite plays drama often succeeds 
 comedy in one and the same play. But such 
 poetical license in theatrical matters must follow 
 the German gastronomic maxim which allows 
 wine after beer but forbids beer after wine. The 
 two elements must alternate in an invariable
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 97 
 
 order. The peculiarity of the Theatre Libre, as 
 we have just seen, consists in the reversal of this 
 order ; but it also consists in the mixture of 
 comedy and tragedy in one and the same charac- 
 ter. You have laughable rogues and tragic 
 idiots ; you have, in short, the idea of transient 
 absurdity substituted for that of permanent 
 absurdity. The same individual makes us laugh, 
 and then tremble, and then laugh again. He 
 passes from one phase to another, though pre- 
 serving his identity, and rings the changes 
 between the awe-inspiring and the grotesque. 
 Nothing like this had ever been seen on any 
 stage, except Punch's stage or Shakespeare's, 
 the only two really complete and comprehensive 
 forms of drama which we possess. None but 
 children and philosophers can both laugh and 
 cry over the same things and the same people. 
 
 M. George Ancey's La Dupe might be read 
 by those who are not too much hampered by 
 English ways of thinking, as a specimen of 
 naturalist art and the Gospel according to 
 Henry Becque. No one can fail to recognise a 
 certain power in this fantastic and complicated 
 
 H
 
 9 8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 sketch of a personage, who poses before his 
 victims, who claims their admiration, and who is 
 a complete master of comfortable vice and of the 
 art of sparing himself the trouble, never the 
 shame, of lying. He complains to his wife of 
 his mistress's extravagance, just as he complains 
 to his mistress of his wife's exactingness. He is 
 amiable and placid, has a joke or a song on his 
 lips, as long as he gets money ; but he becomes a 
 perfect monster when it is refused. "What a 
 flood of rage and hate pours forth, what a stream 
 of low, venomous, and cruel insults, when this 
 beast in human form is let loose ! I believe the 
 type a real one, I must sorrowfully admit that I 
 even believe it common. How many homes, 
 which appear almost happy, conceal like depths 
 of grief and degradation ! 
 
 By no means all the writers for the Theatre 
 Libre can draw character with such clear and 
 firm lines as M. George Ancey. Many either 
 have not the gift, or allow it to lie unused. 
 Look at M. Leon Hennique's Esther Brandes, 
 which belongs to the class of enigmatical plays. 
 I have already mentioned it as one in which
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 99 
 
 intrigues both of love and of self-interest are 
 carried on round a dying man. In the middle of 
 it all is stationed a frigid and mysterious old 
 maid, with a piece of knitting or embroidery in 
 her hand on all occasions. She sees everything, 
 superintends everything, brings affairs to their 
 proper termination, and never gives her own 
 ideas on the subject. "What does she want ? 
 To save her young sister, or to ruin her ? To 
 protect her against her own impulses, or to rob 
 her of her lover ? At the last I grasp the fact 
 that she has killed her brother-in-law in con- 
 sequence of a sudden impulse, so that he may 
 not bequeath a hundred thousand francs to 
 a stranger ; but I am not at all clear as to the 
 person she is working for, and I could not say 
 whether she has really been the good or the evil 
 genius of the family. If I complained of this 
 uncertainty to the author, he would probably 
 reply that it is so because it is so, and that I had 
 no right to any explanation. Life is as it may 
 be ; it has no need to justify itself for being 
 what it is. 
 
 M. Jullien goes further in La Serenade. The
 
 ioo THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 wretch who seduces Madame Cottin and her 
 daughter is a perfect nonentity, a model of 
 banality, I had almost said of vulgar conven- 
 tionality. There is nothing remarkable about 
 him except a rather flowery style of talking, a 
 discreet combination of the novel of fine senti- 
 ments and a specimen piece of college rhetoric. 
 The hero of La Dupe was at least a somebody ; 
 this man is a mere nobody. We were used to 
 the idea that a great criminal could be "a 
 character," and it is rather hard to get rid of the 
 notion. Still, it has got to be done, and though 
 the symptom is a serious one, there is nothing 
 surprising about it, for whereas Dumas' and 
 Augier's dramatic work corresponded, as I 
 pointed out, to Cousin's philosophy, Becque and 
 his disciples try to bring their work into line 
 with the philosophy of Taine. The result is the 
 complete disappearance of human personality : it 
 is the death of the ego, its reabsorption into the 
 non-ego. 
 
 Be it understood that I am here speaking of 
 the ego viewed as an independent cause and a 
 free agent, of the ego that wills, not the ego that
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 
 
 101 
 
 feels. That ego is located in the skin, and the 
 purely animal form of egoism, which is its 
 resultant expression, asserts itself boldly enough 
 in the plays of the Theatre Libre. You can 
 hear it bursting out just as you hear your dog 
 squeal when you tread on its toes, or your cat 
 when she is on her way to a rendezvous on the 
 roofs. Moreover, the Theatre Libre represents 
 almost exclusively the class which is generally 
 considered the most egotistic, the petite bourgeoisie. 
 What is really remarkable is that there is 
 nothing to indicate whether we are in Paris or 
 the provinces. The way in which the literary 
 world of thirty years ago idolised the civilisation 
 of the boulevards is absolutely unknown amongst 
 the younger men. To them Paris is nothing 
 but a vast assemblage of houses, a place with a 
 number of churches, banks, schools, cafes; the 
 Boulevard sinks into a street planted with trees, 
 much too brightly lighted, and far too crowded. 
 As a symbol the Boulevard is played out. The 
 dramatis personce of the Theatre Libre are either 
 real provincials, or Parisian provincials, who 
 wear themselves to death in a lifelong struggle to
 
 joz THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 amass a few five-franc pieces. Their dream is to 
 buy an estate, some hideous building, which 
 travesties a Gothic castle or a Chinese pagoda, and 
 culminates in a belvedere with coloured glass in 
 its windows, commanding "a beautiful view." 
 On Sunday they play at bowls in shirt sleeves, 
 whilst the railway whistle shrieks in the middle 
 of the air from Lakme which their daughter is 
 strumming. 
 
 Menages d' artistes, written by M. Brieux, shows 
 me clearly that the literary Bohemian, for all his 
 aspirations towards a higher life and an ideal of 
 independence, belongs, at any rate in the person 
 of his wife, to this petty prosaic business world. 
 This world is very close to the people; but 
 yesterday it was one with them, at any rate its 
 relations were, if not itself. It preserves their 
 sentiments and way of talking, even when its 
 fortune is made. M. Albert Bonnel is the 
 manager of an insurance company with a salary 
 of 30,000 francs a year; but when he insults 
 and beats his wife, after having ruined, and 
 betrayed her, wherein does he differ from the 
 working man, who does the same when he comes
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 103 
 
 home drunk on Monday evening? Some sort of 
 equilibrium between the two extremes of the class 
 is indeed maintained by the fact that some are 
 sinking down by reason of their own weight, the 
 inherent heaviness of their nature, and the in- 
 curable coarseness of their desires, whilst others 
 are ceaselessly impelled by an unquenchable 
 ambition to rise. This ambition, which is cha- 
 racteristic of our democratic age, has never been 
 better painted than in Blanchette, another piece 
 by M. Brieux, which has in it the elements of a 
 masterpiece. 
 
 Blanchette is the daughter of a village tavern- 
 keeper. She has been educated in a boarding 
 school for " young ladies," the daughters of the 
 bourgeoisie. She has passed her examination as a 
 teacher and won her diploma. Pere Eousset has 
 this bit of official paper framed and hung up in 
 the most conspicuous place in his tavern. He 
 obliges every person who enters to admire the 
 magic parchment, and his respect for his daughter 
 verges on adoration. She knows everything, 
 understands everything ; she can give lessons to 
 all the world ; the schoolmaster himself would
 
 104 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 not dare to dispute with her. But when Pere 
 Rousset perceives that the situation, to which in 
 his eyes the famous diploma gives her a right, 
 halts by the way, even if it is ever coming at all, 
 he turns round abruptly and completely, with all 
 the blind fury of the savage who insults and 
 breaks his fetish, if it has not sent rain and fine 
 weather as he wanted them. He is as hard and 
 brutal to his daughter as he had been admiring 
 and respectful. "Ah! miserable good-for- 
 nothing, you shall serve the customers, and let us 
 have no idling about it ! " And when she resists, 
 he turns her out of the house. She is abandoned 
 to chance, a prey to every temptation and every 
 form of suffering. One more declassce in the 
 Paris streets, who will be forced to sell her love 
 for bread, since she cannot live on her diploma. 
 Yet these people are not all wicked. Here comes 
 in one of the ideas which inspire this school of 
 play-writers : fate and society are the sole causes 
 of the sins of individuals. 
 
 The same conception recurs in all the serious 
 work of that group at that period. We feel that 
 the world has woke up in a fright during the
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 105 
 
 night and discovered that the pillars upon which 
 it rests are rotten and ready to be swept away by 
 a subterranean inundation. All our principles 
 are falsified, our institutions perverted, our ideas 
 somehow distorted. Morality, whether public or 
 private, has been entirely reversed, and now seeks 
 to justify and conceal the wrongs and the degra- 
 dations that it ought to expose. There is a per- 
 petual discord between principles and practice. 
 Our father tells us to respect the goods of others 
 whilst he is ceaselessly engaged in robbery. Our 
 mother orders us to tell the truth, and lies from 
 morning till night. This deceit and chicanery 
 gradually poisons our whole being; we are for 
 ever talking of reason, virtue, pity, but our 
 hearts are full of nothing but base and sordid 
 self-interest. Do you know why Madame Yiot 
 in the first act of La Dupe decides to marry 
 her daughter to Albert Bonnel, and why she is 
 in such a hurry to see the marriage accomplished ? 
 Don't be taken in, whatever you do, by the ' 
 weighty and sentimental, or specious and touching 
 considerations that she puts forward. This is the 
 true reason : she has taken a suite of rooms for
 
 iob THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 herself, and she -wishes to hand over the end of 
 her lease to her future son-in-law. If she is to 
 lose nothing the marriage must take place before 
 the April quarter. To deny the possibility, nay, 
 the probability, of such a scheme is to know very 
 little of the French petite bourgeoisie ; it is a small 
 matter and rather comic, but the misery of a life- 
 time is the outcome of it. 
 
 "La famille, c'est Pargent," says one of the 
 characters in the play with this title which M. 
 Fabre had played at the Theatre Libre. It 
 depicted the members of a family manoeuvring 
 round its chief as he made his will. Interest 
 divided them, then brought them together, and 
 dispersed them again, and again united them. 
 They do not admit their evil designs even to 
 themselves, for the very good reason that they 
 are unconscious of them. JSfor do they say with 
 Eacine's Narcisse : 
 
 " Pour nous rendre heureux, perdons les mis^rables ! " 
 
 No one ever did say that, not even Narcisse, and 
 it was very naif of us to go on so long admiring 
 such psychology. The members of the Eeynard
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 107 
 
 family are neither cynics, properly so-called, nor 
 genuine hypocrites. Madame Eeynard has Tiad 
 a lover for fifteen years, and her conscience has 
 got hardened because the affair is of such long 
 standing. Her daughter Mathilde, who is on 
 the point of taking a lover herself, is not a whit 
 more disposed to be lenient to her mother's fault 
 on that account. Eoux, who stirs up Mathilde 
 to denounce her mother, thinks himself the most 
 honest fellow in the world. When he has 
 secured the infamy in question he embraces 
 Mathilde tenderly: "Dear little woman, how 
 charming you are ! " Then, having completely 
 demolished his mother-in-law, he perceives that 
 it is to his interest to set her on her legs again. 
 Which he does, but taking good care to make 
 the gift revocable, and reserving to himself the 
 power of withdrawing every concession which he 
 has made. There is no display of ill-feeling, 
 only the precautions which a careful man takes 
 for the future, nothing more. His views on 
 social respectability, the happiness of living in 
 unity, and the duties of religion are honest and 
 plausible. You would say as much yourself in
 
 io8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 | a similar case. The family almost goes down on 
 its knees to entreat the adulterous woman to 
 remain by the hearth which she has outraged, 
 but which she alone is now in a position to save 
 from ruin. She makes conditions, and they are 
 accepted, but with a secret resolution to break 
 through them. All these people, who have 
 insulted, robbed, and betrayed each other, and 
 whose hearts are filled with evil thoughts, pro- 
 pose to resume their life together, until a wretched 
 sum of 2,000 francs fans the dying quarrel 
 into a flame. Just at that moment luncheon 
 is announced. " Let us go in," says the father ; 
 "we can talk of this again after lunch." And 
 that is the end. One knows that they will go 
 on chained together, perpetually distrusting one 
 another and disputing with one another. What 
 they were yesterday they will be to-morrow. 
 
 These few examples serve to show the prin- 
 cipal tenets of this school. The authors were 
 young, some of them had talent, very many were 
 quite sincere in their hatred for the art of the 
 preceding generation, and on a great many 
 points they had right on their side as against
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 109 
 
 the principles of Dumas and Augier. Their 
 philosophy was sound and well thought out, 
 their view of life and society cruel but just. 
 Nevertheless the school has failed, and after a 
 few short hours of stormy notoriety it fell into dis- 
 credit, almost into oblivion, even before the Theatre 
 Libre had closed its doors. Its chief standard 
 bearers have vanished or become converted to 
 another style. Death has thinned the ranks fast 
 during the last few years, and the grass is already 
 green on the grave of dramatic naturalism. 
 
 This defeat is due, in the first place, to what 
 M. Brunetiere called the bankruptcy of natur- 
 alism in fiction. Bankruptcy might be thought 
 rather a hard word, were it not for the memory 
 of the proud hopes and magnificent promises of 
 its outset. It has only taken ten years to 
 exhaust its apparently boundless popularity, and 
 ten more years to scatter the Me"dan school 
 in every sense of the word. Guy de Maupas- 
 sant is no more, Huysmans has retired into 
 learned seclusion and the microscopic investiga- 
 tion of certain special milieux^ Edouard Eod has 
 diverged very far from his original starting point,
 
 no THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 and the public's stubborn refusal to read the 
 works of Paul Alexis does it infinite honour. 
 Even M. Zola has greatly changed. More than 
 half the pages of La Debacle and Rome have 
 nothing in common with naturalism, nay, are 
 almost its negation. 
 
 Besides, even if that peculiar form of natur- 
 alism, which M. Becque's pupils had imposed 
 upon the Theatre Libre, was no longer borne on 
 by the mightv intellectual tide from without, it 
 
 / o %/ 
 
 had its own inherent source of weakness, its 
 germs of dissolution. After all, it may be im- 
 possible to construct plays without situations, or 
 characters, or a conclusion. Still, nothing did so 
 much harm to the naturalist plays as the inepti- 
 tude of their partisans. Every criticism of that 
 day shows us how insensible the public was to 
 the hidden meaning of the plays, or to such 
 traits of nature as they contained ; it was merely 
 on the look-out for risky phrases, which it 
 greeted with acclamation. !No art could resist 
 such stupid admiration ; it is a disgrace even to 
 have deserved it. If the author like M. de 
 Gramont in Rolande set up the image of Good
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. HI 
 
 opposite that of Evil, the company received it 
 coldly, and became delirious in their delight over 
 objectionable scenes. Their laughter deprived 
 the satire of all bitterness, and converted what 
 had come near to being a sermon into an impure 
 form of amusement. 
 
 But the rising generation, which had been 
 given Germinal and La Terre for its moral and 
 literary pabulum, was already giving place to a 
 still younger generation, which devoured Bour- 
 get's novels and the articles of the "Vicomte de 
 Yogue. A wave of passionate curiosity, like 
 that which about 1825 threw France into the 
 arms of Goethe and Byron, now swept it towards 
 Tolstoi and Dostoieffsky, Ibsen and Bjornson. 
 After the Eussians the Norwegians; after the 
 Norwegians the Germans. The women of the 
 " monde ou Ton s'ennuie" threw themselves into 
 the movement. You heard a woman talking 
 about " giving her soul a Norwegian colouring" 
 when probably she had no soul at all. Others 
 saw the drama of the future in Maeterlinck's 
 symbolism and expected VIntrme to wake in 
 them the same kind of shudder that their grand-
 
 ri2 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 fathers had found in the Nouvelles Extraordinaire^ 
 of Edgar Poe. Stendhal's admirers severed 
 themselves from the naturalist school, and the 
 psychological noVel triumphed all along the 
 line. Mysticism came to its own again, in 
 accordance with the reaction against the ex- 
 cesses of realism which it was easy enough 
 to foresee. The world lost itself in that 
 vague and neutral region stretching from 
 Charcot to Madame Blavatsky j people talked 
 hypnotism, suggestion, telepathy, till they got to 
 talking miracles. Eepublican society underwent 
 a curious evolution. Its leaders had not all had 
 fathers ; but they had almost always sons and 
 daughters, and were beginning to have grand- 
 children. That is the fatal moment. When 
 men sit looking complaisantly at their families, 
 they bethink them that there is a great deal to be 
 said for heredity. Their wives develop a thirst 
 for what is respectable, even for what is chic, and 
 draw insensibly closer to the aristocracy of birth, 
 which has lost nothing by the Republic ; it has 
 gained on the contrary, for old parchment has 
 acquired an enormous value in Yanity Fair since
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. i 1 3 
 
 the manufacture of it has come to an end. A 
 political event has favoured this fusion of classes. 
 A very clever Pope perceived that though the 
 union of the throne with the altar profited both 
 while both remained erect, it was but a snare 
 and a delusion when the altar alone remained 
 intact and the throne lay in the dust. It is not 
 meet to bind the living to the dead; therefore 
 the Sovereign Pontiff hastened to cut the cords. 
 Since then the priesthood has acted as mediator 
 between the aristocracy and the ruling classes, 
 and the Church has become neutral ground. 
 Thither the world flocks, as it flocks to the Opera 
 Comique, for matrimonial " interviews." The 
 daughter of M. le Ministre sits at a ball or a 
 charity meeting side by side with a La Tremoille, 
 and his son has his coat cut after the fashion 
 prescribed by the Prince de Sagan. This is what 
 is called "the new spirit," or better still, "the 
 return to religion." 
 
 Like every other form of evolution, it has its 
 counterpart in literature. Whilst the churches 
 provide spectacles accompanied by opera singers 
 and processions like those of the Biche au Bois, 
 
 i
 
 114- THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the theatres even those of the Foire play 
 mysteries after the manner of Oberammergau. 
 Neither the writers of these mysteries, nor the 
 actors, nor the public which goes to see them are 
 inspired either by the spirit of parody or of 
 devotion. They are as far removed from Vol- 
 taire as from Veuillot. Religious emotion is to 
 them only an artistic sensation like any other ; 
 they try its flavour and exploit it, and then they 
 go back to the filthy dens of Montmartre, where 
 the police make periodical raids calculated not to 
 put its frequenters to too great inconvenience. 
 Their Christianity is a Christianity a la Baude- 
 
 v ~ 
 
 laire, lulled by bells and soothed by incense, 
 seeing in the Magdalen only another " dame 
 aux camelias," whose golden hair, borrowed 
 from Flemish art, awakens beautiful dreams. 
 At bottom this section of society remains pro- 
 foundly sensual. In practice it is more pagan 
 than Eome in the year 200, and when Tolstoi 
 sets before it the Christian ideal in its pristine 
 severity, it recoils with horror and demands a 
 cold douche or even a strait waistcoat for the 
 man who has dared to frighten it.
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. us 
 
 We have seen the fixed and exclusive charac- 
 ter of Antoine's ideas with regard to dramatic 
 literature. Nevertheless he did not fail to throw 
 the doors of his theatre wide open to all the 
 opposing streams and the currents crossing in the 
 air which might give birth to germs. Traditions 
 and original plays, in verse and prose, symbolic, 
 exotic, archaic developments, all found favour 
 in his eyes. He played the forgotten pieces of 
 yesterday alternately with the famous pieces of 
 to-morrow, and even old plays which by virtue 
 of their age had grown young again. He it was 
 who allowed Paris to become acquainted with 
 Leon Tolstoi's Power of Darkness and Ibsen's 
 Ghosts. He gave us Le Pain du Peche, a some- 
 what strongly flavoured Provencal legend by 
 Aubanel, translated and dramatised by Paul 
 Arene; La Heine Fiammette, too, by Catulle 
 Mendes, a fantastic drama with a suggestion of 
 Shakespeare about it; and Matapan, by Emile 
 Moreau, a learned and ingenious revival of the 
 kind of burlesque so dear to Theophile Gautier. 
 He was not daunted by the extreme difficulty of 
 staging the dramatic panorama of the French
 
 n6 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Kevolution, reconstructed from contemporary 
 documents, and called by the Goncourts La 
 Patrie en Danger. It is assuredly not fitted for 
 the theatre, and the heroes of the drama look as 
 much like dwarfs straying about on an enormous 
 canvas as the characters in La Debacle. But it 
 was a good thing to give the public and the 
 critics an opportunity of judging it ; and after 
 all, even a mere tentative effort of the De Gon- 
 courts teaches the world more than a success of 
 Sardou's. The playbill of the Theatre Libre 
 sometimes on one and the same evening included 
 a comedy in the style of Musset, a fantasy a la 
 Banville, and a historical play, such as La Mort 
 du Due tfAnguien, by Ldon Hennique. In face 
 of a menu so varied and, one may even say, so 
 appetising, critics forgot the fury which had been 
 roused by the fumisteries lugubres of M. Jullien 
 and M. Alexis, and allowed themselves to be 
 appeased. They were even forced to admit that, 
 but for Antoine, they would often have found it 
 difficult to fill their weekly column. The recog- 
 nised theatres were eternally playing the same 
 pieces and stereotyping pretended successes.
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 117 
 
 " There is really only one theatre in Paris at this 
 moment," says M. Faguet, who will hardly be 
 suspected of a weakness for innovations, " and it 
 is the Theatre Libre." This pronouncement jus- 
 tifies the importance that I have felt constrained 
 to assign to M. Antoine. 
 
 I have mentioned the psychological school. 
 The most gifted and interesting writer which it 
 brought to light was Francois de Curel, whose 
 very name seems to indicate an old family with 
 many provincial links. His work, as it proceeds, 
 suggests a proud, concentrated, rather wild 
 nature, which had spent the decisive moments of 
 its youth partly in some solitary corner amongst 
 primitive folk, and partly in some circle of ex- 
 treme intellectual refinement in Paris. Such a 
 contrast produces a complicated and bizarre 
 moral nature, exceedingly difficult to decipher, 
 and an intellectual development remarkable for 
 its harsh and bitter, almost evil, character, the 
 more alarming in its recklessness and violence 
 for the very restraint and coolness which it pre- 
 serves. There may, perhaps, be a foundation 
 still more deeply laid ; M. de Curel may, perhaps,
 
 n8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA, 
 
 hide his sensitiveness beneath his irony, just as 
 he hides his irony under the subtle and delicate 
 correctness of his style. If he ever rises to a 
 height of greatness which gives the public a 
 right to demand his self-revelation, and if he can 
 succeed in gratifying them without making 
 himself ridiculous, his will be a curious mind 
 to study. 
 
 Les Fossiles was played in November, 1892, 
 at the Theatre Libre, a sombre play with never a 
 smile in it. Death hovers ceaselessly over it 
 and finally makes its presence felt in the most 
 mournful and solemn fashion, for the fifth act is 
 played around a corpse like the first act of 
 Richard III. In its own fashion it asks and 
 answers the same question as that cheerful 
 comedy Le Gendre de M. Poirier : what is to 
 become of the old noblesse, and what part can it 
 play in our modern social order ? After half a 
 century of democracy, including twenty years of 
 Republican government, such a question stiH 
 needed, and still needs, to be asked. I have 
 already pointed out some of the reasons which 
 gave it actuality.
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 119 
 
 The Due de Chantemelle, who has passed his "TT 
 life in his own estates seducing peasant girls and ' 
 killing boars, has but one idea in his brain and 
 one single article in his moral and religious creed 
 pride of race. The idea has been transmitted 
 to his son Eobert and his daughter Claire, but 
 in an idealised form. Claire breathes into it all 
 the passionate sorrow of a soul that has never met 
 with love and is pining away in solitude ; Eobert 
 interprets it with the delicate generosity and 
 prophetic insight of a mind open to all the needs 
 of the modern world. To him the nobility is 
 sacrifice : let the old aristocracy resume the 
 career of self-devotion, and it will again become 
 worthy to lead society. Thus to all three natures, 
 although for different reasons, the highest and 
 most imperative duty is to perpetuate the race 
 of Chantemelle. "With the father it is sheer 
 unreasoning pride : he is a solid block of 
 prejudice almost imposing in its massive sim- 
 plicity, at any rate in the eyes of those who 
 think a dolmen more beautiful than a Greek 
 temple. With the daughter it becomes a worship 
 of the past, with the son a tender looking forward
 
 120 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 to the future. Unhappily, Eobert is a prey to a 
 mortal disease, and with him the race will become 
 extinct. But he has had a child by his sister's 
 companion, and he confides the episode to his 
 mother, simply with the idea of securing his 
 mistress's welfare, not of making reparation for 
 his fault. That is one of the cruel, though perhaps 
 legitimate, strokes whereby M. de Curel shows us 
 the difference between a romantic dreamer and 
 an honest man. What use will the Duchess make 
 of this confidence ? It gives her a secret and 
 profound shock of pleasure : she had thought 
 Helene her husband's mistress. Alas ! we, the 
 audience, know that her fear was not groundless, 
 and that the Duke had indeed been Helene's 
 earliest seducer. So that the child well, in any 
 case, the child is a Chantemelle, and the Duke, 
 instead of being overwhelmed by a sense of his 
 guilt, draws himself up and ordains that Eobert 
 shall marry Helene, and the name be perpetuated. 
 Claire, who knows the frightful secret, Claire, 
 with all her purity and nobility, accepts this 
 infamous solution. When an accident reveals all 
 to Eobert, he dies of the blow, but only after
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 121 
 
 ratifying his father's act and regulating its 
 remotest consequences in a will and testament 
 inspired by the most grandiose and chimeric 
 dreams. The Duchess submits in her turn, and 
 before the mystery of death, between the bier 
 of Robert and the cradle of the last of the 
 Chantemelles, the whole family become reconciled; 
 they kneel around their chief, who strikes almost 
 a pontifical attitude. Claire's untiring guardian- 
 ship will force Helene to fulfil her duty to the 
 child, the last hope of the race. 
 
 The play is vigorous and closely knit ; it has 
 its poignant moments, and, in spite of the repul- 
 siveness of its subject, it is not without a certain 
 austere grandeur. Once in the third act, when 
 there is a pause in the action, we are somewhat 
 astonished at coming across a lyrical passage. 
 The world of the sea, peopled by the labouring 
 waves, which rise up, find their own level, and 
 sink away without a moment's pause, symbolises 
 democracy ; the forest plunging its roots into the 
 soil and rearing its branches ever higher towards 
 heaven is the heaped-up mass of accumulated 
 life, the shadowy silence of the immovable tradi-
 
 122 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 tion of the ages in one word, the aristocracy. 
 Whether in keeping or not, this is a remarkable 
 passage. 
 
 UEnvers d'une Sainte is another of M. de 
 Curel's plays, also played at the Theatre Libre, 
 in which the heroine, Julie Eenaudin, loves a 
 man who returns her love, but forgets her and 
 marries another girl. Julie revenges herself by 
 causing the young wife to fall from a plank into 
 a ravine. Jeanne is lifted up dying : she divines 
 the truth, and calling her rival to her bedside 
 forgives everything. She does not die, but she 
 gives birth prematurely to a little girl, and, as 
 the result of this accident, she cannot a second 
 time become a mother. Julie takes the veil, and 
 for more than twenty years teaches in the school 
 of the Sacre Coaur at Yannes. All the world 
 praises her piety and goodness ; she is known as 
 " la sainte." In reality, the convent takes the 
 place of the prison which she had so richly de- 
 served. Henri dies ; and Julie gets released from 
 her vows and returns to the world. She will 
 hardly feel the change, for the pious household 
 kept by her mother and aunt is a sort of sister-
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. u 3 
 
 hood where the talk is all of " good works "and 
 of " offices." She arrives calm, cold, smiling, 
 joyless, emotionless, into the midst of the tender 
 fluttering attentions of the old women. She 
 meets Jeanne again. Jeanne is a good and simple 
 soul, who desires to be Julie's friend, and admires 
 the beauty and sustained perseverance of her 
 long penitence. Perhaps, too, she is attracted to 
 her by the common bond of their love for the 
 same person. Why should they not talk together 
 of their memories of Henri? Why not mingle 
 their tears ? But Julie only wishes to know if 
 Henri u thought of her." Jeanne replies very 
 frankly, " Yes, at first." The ghost of Julie was 
 for ever rising between her and her husoarcf . 
 Then she told him all, the abortive crime ard itri 
 consequences. Julie imagines that from that 
 moment Henri cursed her memory. A portrait 
 of her, found at the bottom of a fountain, and 
 doubtless thrown there by him, finally convinces 
 her that the man she loved died hating her. 
 Hence her second crime. To avenge herself on 
 Jeanne, she will take Christine away from her 
 mother by breaking off the marriage arranged
 
 124 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 for her, and impelling her towards a religious 
 life. And the crime would have been accom- 
 plished had not Christine's fiance and Jeanne her- 
 self fought vigorously against it, and the girl 
 herself been awakened from her momentary 
 hypnotism. The fury of the pretended saint is 
 only appeased, however, when she learns that the 
 thought of her had been cherished by Henri to 
 the last, and that the portrait, which had been 
 the chief cause of her mistake, had been thrown 
 into the fountain by Jeanne herself in a fit of 
 passionate jealousy. Then and only then she 
 humbles herself, as the proud in spirit do humble 
 themselves, sustained by the certainty of having 
 -conquered. She returns to the convent, but hers 
 vis rot the nature that will ever there find true 
 repentance. The word hypocrisy is only once 
 breathed throughout the play, and truly there is 
 no question here of hypocrisy. Julie Eenaudin 
 is no hypocrite ; she is a violent and passionate 
 soul fully conscious of its own impulses, and 
 showing an alarming degree of moral shameless- 
 ness when she reveals herself in her conversations 
 with Aunt Noemi. Of sighs, devout intonations,
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 125 
 
 flat and pious phrases, not a trace. If the damned 
 talk religion, their talk must be like hers. 
 
 The setting of the play is that clerical milieu 
 which Balzac had already painted in exaggerated 
 colours^ a world of gentle, innocent, narrow- 
 minded folk, an atmosphere of exhausted per- 
 fumes and faded colours, a sort of spiritual 
 potpourri of sanctity, much inferior to the holiness 
 which blossoms under the free air of heaven, but 
 with a scent and a charm of its own. Here and 
 there, especially in the third act, there are strange 
 circumstantial passages, almost like confidences, 
 which give us to understand that the religious 
 life is an artificial life, a wonderful fragile illusion 
 kept going by odd little makeshifts, but inca- 
 pable of withstanding the smallest contact with 
 reality. Yet all these women are angels. M. de 
 Curel, who leaves us in doubt as to his real 
 opinion of the French aristocracy, is equally 
 enigmatical with regard to the religious idea. 
 His view seems to accord with that of many of 
 the men of his time: " Science is true in itself, 
 but it only produces vanity and egotism, often of 
 a monstrous kind. It is impossible to believe in
 
 n6 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 religion, but without it there can be neither 
 goodness, nor virtue, nor happiness." 
 
 EEnvers cPune Sainte is one of the best plays 
 that the psychological school has yet produced, 
 and much might reasonably have been expected 
 of its author. But such pieces of his as have been 
 played at the other theatres have not come up to 
 these expectations. " You are a thinker, a writer : 
 such gifts do not pay on the stage. Cheer up, 
 you see things in too gloomy a light. Be frivo- 
 lous and witty, that is what the public wants, 
 especially in the first act." I could almost put 
 my finger on the idiots who talked to him in that 
 strain. M. de Curel has something better than 
 wit, but wit he has not. Where he meant to be 
 light and pleasant, he only succeeded in being 
 deplorably vulgar. He is nothing if not serious, 
 and if that is forbidden him, he must give up the 
 game. " We are quite too amusing ! " exclaimed 
 the two daughters of Madame de Grecourt in 
 L* Invitee, but they make a mistake ; M. de Curel 
 is wholly incapable of drawing girls who are 
 " quite too amusing," he must leave that to Henri 
 Meilhac, Jules Lemaitre, and Henri Lavedan.
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE, iz 7 
 
 L 1 Invitee, La Figurante, L 1 Amour Erode were, 
 to my mind, more than disappointing, for they 
 showed the weaknesses and gaps in the work of 
 an artist who had cast a glamour over me in Les 
 Fossiles and EEnvers tfune Sainte. Of V Amour 
 Erode I shall say nothing, because I was utterly 
 unable to understand it. U Invitee is a play which 
 starts from an impossibility and does not succeed 
 in arriving anywhere. A wife, who has learned 
 that her husband is deceiving her, leaves his 
 house, and for fifteen years lives far away from 
 France. She thus allows the world in general to 
 think her mad, and her husband to believe her 
 guilty. Her two little girls she leaves behind to 
 be brought up as they can, which is very badly. 
 One fine day she comes back. Out of curiosity ? 
 As a joke ? In answer to an invitation from her 
 husband, who thinks that he has something to 
 forgive, and that it is to his interest to do it ? I 
 don't know ; but assuredly it is not maternal 
 feeling which brings her back, for she is perfectly 
 cool, and almost ironical. M. de Curel's is a 
 remarkable philosophy : it sings the praises of 
 atavism and makes light of the tie of blood. In
 
 iz8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the last scene Madame de Grecourt says to her 
 husband, " You followed your passions and you 
 were unhappy. I refused to gratify mine and 
 I am unhappy." Whence follows the highly 
 original conclusion that, whatever one does, one 
 is unhappy. 
 
 La Figurante did not please me any better. A 
 politician wants to marry a young girl who will 
 keep his house and let him keep his mistress. He 
 finds one who accepts the bargain, but does not 
 stick to it. She was ugly to begin with, and her 
 first care is to make herself beautiful. The states- 
 man falls in love with his wife, and his mistress 
 departs with a broken heart, only happily there 
 turns up an aged husband to pick up the pieces. 
 The subject of the play is distinctly unsavoury, 
 and more in harmony with eighteenth- century 
 manners. A writer of that period would have 
 converted it into a lively and impertinent im- 
 broglio, gliding over its uglier features and laying 
 stress on the fact that all comes right in the 
 end. It might have been called Francoise, ou le 
 Triomphe de la Modes tie. But the modernity of 
 M. de Curel's treatment brings out both the im-
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 129 
 
 probability and the unpleasantness of the subject. 
 I have a poor opinion of Eepublican Ministers, 
 but I don't go so far as to believe that the port- 
 folio of Foreign Affairs can be bandied about by 
 two such absolutely silly women, or that it would 
 occur to any one to offer it to a contemptible fool 
 like Henri de Renneval, who behaves like a per- 
 fect simpleton between the mistress that he is 
 weary of and the wife that he adores. The mis- 
 tress is the one creature that interests me, and 
 she is the only one of the four accomplices who 
 suffers. 
 
 I am forced to admit that, besides having no 
 wit, M. de Curel has hardly any imagination, 
 that his observation is seldom accurate, and that 
 his dialogue is neither easy, nor natural, nor 
 lifelike. He is "literary "in the worst sense 
 of the word, for, in matters theatrical, it is worse 
 to write badly than not to write at all. His 
 sole gift is his ability for analysing a given 
 situation comprising three or four persons, and 
 extracting from it the innumerable shades of 
 sentiment, whether simultaneous or successive, 
 which it holds in solution. No emotions by the 
 
 K
 
 130 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 way, no capricious fancy, no happy thoughts, 
 none of those sudden impulses which reveal life 
 and do away with the necessity of explaining it. 
 I cited UEnvers cPune Sainte as one of the best 
 productions of the psychological school ; I must 
 now cite I? Invitee, La Figurante, and I? Amour 
 Erode as examples of the excesses to which this 
 school is prone. 
 
 My desire to follow out M. de Curel's develop- 
 ment has made me lose sight of the Theatre 
 Libre ; now I come back to it just in time to see 
 it close its doors after a career of more than eight 
 years. Every one knows that M. Antoine did not 
 make a fortune at the Theatre Libre. When he 
 was appointed Director of the Odeon, together 
 with the journalist Paul Ginisty, the Minister 
 said to him, " I accept you, M. Antoine, with all 
 your consequences." It was a bold and intelli- 
 gent step. "We thought that the second French 
 theatre would become a glorified and State- 
 supported Theatre Libre, but for some reason or 
 another the Antoine-Ginisty duumvirate did not 
 last. After a year's absence M. Antoine 
 reappeared before a Parisian audience at the
 
 THE THEATRE LIBRE. 131 
 
 Theatre des Menus Plaisirs, assisted by his 
 former collaborators, led by M. Frai^ois de Curel 
 and M. Brieux. It was the return from Elba of 
 the dramatic world ; may it not culminate in a 
 Waterloo ! But, however this new campaign may 
 turn out, I have proved, I think, the right of the 
 Theatre Libre to an important place in the 
 evolution of our stage. The brave little theatre 
 has had its day and done its work. Its decisive 
 experience has resulted in the reductio ad 
 absurdum of certain theories which will never 
 reappear, and it has sown seeds destined to 
 spring up and flourish in the drama of to-day.
 
 IY. 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATEES. 
 
 EIGHTEEN months ago, when I once more began 
 to haunt the Paris theatres, I found them pretty 
 much as I had left them five-and-twenty years 
 back. Indeed, I could only wonder that I was 
 not more astonished. Can a quarter of a century 
 really make so little impression upon scenes 
 frequented nightly by the palpitating, fluctuat- 
 ing life of the most inquisitive and capricious 
 nation in the world ? One felt it even before 
 one had entered. There were my old friends, 
 the ticket mongers, ready to lay hands on me 
 and drag me off to some wretched little cafe or 
 wine-shop on the pretext of selling me an 
 "excellent stall." The transaction, which has 
 rather a shady look, is carried on on behalf of 
 the authors, who take this means of selling their 
 complimentary tickets. If it is an abuse, it
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 133 
 
 ought to be done away with ; if it is a recognised 
 privilege, why not exercise it in a regular and 
 honourable fashion ? 
 
 But I have fallen into the hands of the 
 ouvreuses I beg their pardon, the placeuses. 
 They have changed their name but not their 
 physiognomy or their nature. My coat and hat 
 are snatched away, and will be thrust on to my 
 knees during the last entr'acte " to avoid the 
 crowd " ; in other words, to levy their tax more 
 conveniently. 
 
 Boxes, which are almost a thing of the past 
 in English theatres, are still in favour here, 
 rising three or four deep from the ground floor 
 all round the house. The hot air mounting up 
 makes the top ones unbearable, whilst from the 
 lower ones, which are stuck right down behind 
 the pit, you see the stage much as you might see 
 the sky from the depths of a tunnel. One would 
 be comfortable enough in the stalls, although the 
 incline is less well managed than in England, but 
 for the new feminine craze for large hats. When 
 the two bunches of feathers just in front of 
 me lean confidentially towards each other, they
 
 134 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 hide the whole stage from the footlights to the 
 flies. 
 
 I ask for V EnW acte, the programme-journal 
 of former days, and am told that it is dead ; but 
 in its place I am given an elegant little book 
 tied with green ribbon. It is an excellent adver- 
 tisement for the paper called V Illustration, and 
 it contains portraits of actors and actresses, with 
 little scraps of biography. 
 
 The theatres are still too brilliantly lighted, 
 both in the intervals and during the performance 
 a custom which mars the scenic effect, and 
 also induces a less collected frame of mind in the 
 spectator. One cannot yet escape seeing the 
 vacant, surly faces of the orchestra, or, if one is 
 in the first row, hearing their silly remarks. 
 The claque has migrated to the upper regions, 
 but it still makes its wearisome presence felt. 
 At intervals the heavy, mechanical clap of sixty 
 paid hands swells out and dies away, hailing a 
 mot, punctuating a tirade, marking the place 
 where the author thinks he has said a clever 
 thing, or the actor fancies he has made a hit. 
 The public suffer this as patiently as ever;
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 135 
 
 indeed, their own applause seems to me tardier 
 than when I was young. 
 
 It is not strange, when one comes to think of 
 it, that there should have been so little change 
 in the theatrical world, for it is still governed by 
 the same men and animated by the same spirit. 
 The Theatre Francais is ruled by an order 
 signed by Napoleon at the Kremlin in 1812, 
 and known as the Moscow Decree. Here is 
 another fact which ought to convince foreigners 
 that, for all our revolutionary fanfaronades, we 
 are an essentially conservative and routine- 
 loving nation. What a piece of folly it is that 
 men who knew nothing of the stage could force 
 it to conform to their cherished dream of bureau- 
 cratic centralisation. The system is excessively 
 complicated. First the pensionnaires engaged on 
 the ordinary conditions, and distinguished from 
 the societaires, who, in addition to their fixed 
 salary, receive a share in the returns. Then 
 an infinity of grades, ranging from those who 
 receive a twelfth or sixteenth fraction of a share 
 up to those who have a whole share! Part- 
 nership ensures a pension, but imposes such
 
 136 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 stringent conditions that very many artists pre- 
 fer to sacrifice it all for freedom. 
 
 The Comedie Franchise is often engaged in 
 litigation, worth nothing even when it is suc- 
 cessful. Add to that the bitter rivalry between 
 the various grades of that curious artistic hier- 
 archy, with its gradual advance towards seniority 
 and its failure, sometimes, to give talent its due 
 recognition. Such rivalry gives birth to disputes, 
 all the more difficult to settle because modern 
 roles do not correspond to the older definitions of 
 " parts." Above this aristocracy of the societaires 
 there is the oligarchical dictatorship of the Comite 
 de lecture, which, in secret conclave, accepts or 
 rejects the plays submitted to its judgment. Two 
 readers, chosen outside from amongst the most 
 experienced critics and theatrical experts M. 
 Paul Ferret and M. Edouard Carol fill the post 
 for the moment look through all the manuscripts 
 sent in, and save the valuable time of the Com- 
 mittee by weeding out mad and impossible plays. 
 It need hardly be said that authors already known 
 to the house are spared these preliminaries and 
 come at once before the final judges. Ever since
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 137 
 
 I was old enough to read newspapers there has 
 been a perpetual running fire of complaints and 
 sarcasms directed against the Eeading Committee 
 of the The'atre Francais, from the days of Casimir 
 Delavigne down to M. Emile Bergerat. Above 
 all these lesser people is the Administrator- 
 General, the most wretched and impotent of 
 men unless, like M. Jules Claretie, he retrieves a 
 false situation by prestige, by strength of will, 
 by patience and tact. Such machinery could 
 hardly have been expected to work forty-eight 
 hours ; but it has gone on working eighty-five 
 years. 
 
 The action of Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt 
 seems to indicate that the Comedie Francaise will 
 be hard put to it to retain actors of genius. I am. 
 not even sure that it is a paradise for good artists 
 of the second rank; but, on the other hand, 
 third-rate people flourish and grow fat in these 
 prebendal stalls of the drama. They make up 
 for lack of talent by presence and traditions, 
 perhaps a little too much of them. They cannot 
 forget for one moment that they are " the first 
 comedians in the world," but by being too careful
 
 ij8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 to remember it themselves they risk having it 
 forgotten by the audience. 
 
 I have already spoken of my admiration for 
 Madame Bartet, though I regret that she is con- 
 demned] to perpetual elegiacs. Mdlle. Keichem- 
 berg, la petite doyenne, is the sole survivor of the 
 days when I had the entree of the Com^die. 
 Then I did not care for her at all, but last winter 
 I thought her charming. How fresh and young 
 her voice is compared with Mdlle. Brandes and 
 Mdlle. Marsy ! I admit that I was disposed to be 
 rather exacting in Mdlle. Marsy's case; I had 
 heard so much of la belle Marsy. Moreover, the 
 authors who wrote parts for her seemed to think 
 that her astonishing loveliness would cover all 
 improbabilities and explain every land of folly. 
 Certainly I thought Mdlle. Marsy beautiful, but 
 utterly lacking in that indefinable quality of 
 magnetism, poetry, charm, with not the very 
 smallest je ne sais quoi. How could she love, 
 weep, suffer, say subtle things that touch the 
 soul, be convincing in the part of a young girl ? 
 As for Mdlle. Brandes, I shall wait for a better 
 opportunity of judging her. I saw her in one of
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 139 
 
 those twin comediettas which M. Edouard Pail- 
 leron united somewhat arbitrarily and fantasti- 
 cally, under the rather incomprehensible title 
 Mieux vaut Douceur et Violence. The moral of 
 the first is that a wife who wants to win back a 
 faithless husband, or a husband on the verge of 
 betraying her, should get into a passion ; whilst 
 the second indicates that she ought to do quite 
 the contrary, and the climax of bewilderment is 
 reached when Violence is played first and Douceur 
 at the end of the evening. Certainly these two 
 sketches a la Yercousin would hardly have 
 secured M. Pailleron's election to the Academy. 
 Violence was played by Mdlles. Brandes and 
 Marsy, and between them a young man, M. De- 
 helly, with now and again an echo of Delaunay's 
 voice, but with a nervous trick of trembling which 
 soon became wearisome. The trio reminded me 
 of some very tolerable provincial theatre in a pre- 
 fecture of forty thousand souls, where there is a 
 bishop and a Court of Appeal. But the interpre- 
 tation rose to a distinctly higher level in Douceur, 
 thanks to Mdlle. Eeichemberg and M. de Feraudy 
 a charming comedian, a comedian born, in
 
 HO THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 every respect worthy to uphold the traditions of 
 the theatre and to create precedents of his own. 
 
 In modern comedy I made acquaintance with 
 M. le Bargy and M. Leloir, who seemed very 
 intelligent actors, but I could not discover in 
 them any note of originality. Perhaps that was 
 the fault of their parts. M. le Bargy is appa- 
 rently " the man of the world," as Bressaut was 
 thirty-five years ago. Only Bressaut created a 
 type worthy of the careful study of the gentlemen 
 of his time ; M. le Bargy merely reproduces, with 
 marvellous exactness, the dominant type. 
 
 I would rather say nothing about a great artist 
 like Mounet Sully, seeing that any praise which I 
 could offer, after an incomplete study of his great 
 gifts, must necessarily fall far short of his deserts. 
 Every one combined to assure me that he was ad- 
 mirable, that it was a pure joy to see and hear him 
 in the great parts, into which he pours his whole 
 soul. It seemed to me that the almost identical 
 treatment of classical tragedy and romantic drama 
 at the Theatre Francais tended to bring the two 
 closer together. Once they had totally opposite 
 traditions, but in time they will be united. The
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 141 
 
 same artists play Phedre and Euy Bias very 
 nearly in the same fashion. They think that 
 they do well in breathing a little life and human 
 feeling into the cold marble of classical drama. 
 But they are wrong. Tragedy has a life of its 
 own, and a special form of sensibility which 
 needs a special mode of utterance. Leave it as 
 it is, it is an insult to modernise it ; to infect it 
 with our modern life is a sure means of killing 
 it. You do not ask of a statue that warm blood 
 should flow in its veins. Sint ut sunt, aut non 
 sint. 
 
 I spent a Sunday afternoon at the Theatre 
 Fra^ais, and saw I? Avar e and Monsieur de Pour- 
 ceaugnac. Coquelin cadet was Pourceaugnac. I 
 need hardly say that he acted like the excellent 
 comedian that he is, but without exerting him- 
 self. M. Laugier, as Harpagon, did not remind 
 me either of Provost or Talbot, both of whom I 
 have seen in the part. He has none of the spon- 
 taneity and originality of the first, but he is much 
 less lugubrious and much more master of himself 
 than the second, who appears to have thought 
 Harpagon an alarming personage to be painted
 
 H* THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 in the darkest colours. M. Truffier played 
 Maitre Jacques and Sbrigani very conscientiously. 
 The Nerine and Frosine of Mdlle. Kalb and Mdlle. 
 Fayolle showed, or rather suggested, that the 
 traditions of Augustine Brohan have not yet 
 quite fallen into oblivion. Some very good actors 
 played quite small parts ; M. Laugier was the 
 first doctor, and M. de Feraudy drawled out the 
 thirty lines which constitute the apothecary's 
 part. This admirable custom, which prevails no- 
 where else, is the greatest mark of respect that 
 can be paid to the masters of dramatic literature, 
 and is one of the most effective ways of main- 
 taining the art of interpretation at a high level. 
 
 The matassinSy with their instruments, were 
 there in full force, and pursued M. de Pour- 
 ceaugnac with no great air of conviction as far as 
 I could see, but with all the proper solemnities. 
 They passed down into the house, and all trod 
 on my toes as they ran through the orchestra 
 their foolish heads peeping through the 
 prompter's box and suddenly withdrawn to 
 dodge the blows which echo through the house, 
 the fat man disguised in woman's clothes, the
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 143 
 
 grotesque dancers kicking up their heels to their 
 nightcaps, were all terribly like a pantomime at 
 the Folies-Bergere. Nothing was wanting but 
 the Hanlon-Lees. 
 
 Moreover, it was a regular Folies-Bergere 
 audience. Two monkey-faced Brazilians sitting 
 beside me were humming and munching all the 
 time. Three Germans behind me were follow- 
 ing the play with a book. The wise and witty 
 utterances fell perfectly flat ; but the horseplay 
 was greeted with never-ending peals of childish 
 laughter. "When Harpagon exclaimed "I would 
 rather see my daughter dead ! " there was a 
 little murmur of protestation which entertained 
 me vastly, and set me thinking as to whether I 
 had any right to laugh at these good people. 
 Why should they not think that Harpagon was 
 going a little too far ? If we had not been 
 taken quite young and made to swallow all 
 these phrases at an age when one can digest 
 anything if we looked at L'Avare with as open 
 a mind and as unbiassed a judgment as we 
 bring to the consideration of new plays, might 
 we not very well say, "Here is a pupil of
 
 144 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 M. Becque's, much cleverer than his master, but 
 ready to exaggerate all his audacities? This 
 father, who would rather see his daughter dead 
 than give her a dowry ; these children, con- 
 spiring to rob and deceive their father and to 
 set him at defiance ; surely they all belong to 
 the comedie rosse, and rosse with a vengeance ! 
 Here is a drama which takes more liberties than 
 the Theatre Libre ! " As for the monologue 
 about the stolen casket, which has been trans- 
 lated almost word for word from Plautus, 
 sincerity would compel us to admit that it is 
 as bad as it can possibly be, and that there is 
 not one touch of brightness or naturalness in the 
 whole scene. 
 
 The Odeon, like the Comedie Francaise, is a 
 subsidised theatre, but unaffected by the famous 
 decree of Moscow. Governmental interference 
 confines itself to nominating the manager, and 
 now and again granting an " ordre de debut " 
 to some young tragedienne who has friends in 
 official circles. Further, two nights a week 
 must be reserved for old-established plays and 
 for the productions of new writers ; so that the
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 145 
 
 subscribers can reckon upon a varied bill. I 
 thought the Oddon very prosperous and full of 
 life, altogether different from, what it was in my 
 youth. In those days no one ever went there 
 except on great occasions, such as the first 
 night of Gaetana. Parisians living on the right 
 bank of the river spoke of the Odeon as a some- 
 what unknown and badly-lighted place. So it 
 was ; there was a mournful sound even about 
 the applause as it echoed through an empty and 
 melancholy house. A generation earlier things 
 were even worse. Nadaud makes the etudiante 
 in his Lettre a VEtudiant say 
 
 " Et 1'on joua la pauvre piece 
 Devant trois polytechniciens, 
 Treize claqueurs, une ne"gresse 
 Et puis nous deux, tu t'en souviens." 
 
 The times have changed. I saw one of 
 Marivaux' plays rattled off most vigorously by a 
 very intelligent company. I saw Jean Eiche- 
 pin's Le Chemineau admirably played to a 
 crowded and enthusiastic house. I had not the 
 pleasure of applauding Mdlle. Tessandier, but 
 I was much struck by Madame Segond Weber.
 
 146 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Having only seen her once, I cannot of course 
 tell how far she can vary her effects. Her voice 
 that evening was rough and tired, and if that is 
 its normal condition, her artistic gifts must 
 suffer some limitation. But her dramatic per- 
 ception is both pure and powerful; she is sincere, 
 she is human, she stirs some secret spring in us, 
 and she is more capable of achieving something 
 great than any other contemporary French 
 actress except Sarah Bernhardt. But apart from 
 that, the Odeon is doing well. What with its 
 modern nights and its classical nights, its legion 
 of brilliant lecturers, and the marked favour 
 shown to it by the academic world, which is 
 both more numerous, more active, and more 
 influential than it used to be, it has a brilliant 
 future before it. 
 
 Unlike the London theatres, which are almost 
 all in the hands of actor-managers, who monopo- 
 lise their own stage and order a part as if they 
 were ordering a coat, we have quite a large 
 assortment of different kinds of managers. One 
 is a journalist with ideas ; another an actor, but 
 an actor who has ceased to act ; a third an
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 147 
 
 author who has by no means ceased to write 
 but whose plays are played by his neighbours ; 
 a fourth is a man of business whose name sug- 
 gests that his ancestors inhabited the Holy Land 
 before the destruction of the Temple. We have 
 also a manager whose wife acts, though he does 
 not act himself. And, finally, the actor-manager 
 is worthily represented, as all will agree, by 
 Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt. I do not know 
 whether Sarah Bernhardt has made money at 
 the Eenaissance, but I know that she has done 
 good service to the cause of art. As to Coquelin 
 he has already reigned several years at the Porte 
 Saint Martin, and he ended his dramatic season 
 in 1897, with a hundred representations of Colonel 
 Roquebrune, when he made his audience shout 
 Vive VEmpereur as fervently as they shouted 
 Vive le Roi to his Duguesclin. "When he is 
 playing George Ohnet or Deroulede before a 
 Porte Saint Martin audience, one loses a few of 
 the finer shades, but on the other hand the actor's 
 talent grows, his voice acquires new vibrations 
 irresistible in their resonance and emotional 
 power. What tragic force lay hidden in the
 
 i 4 8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 comedian of old days, and with what a com- 
 manding touch he now sweeps the whole gamut 
 of emotion ! 
 
 In one of the intervals of Colonel Roquelrune 
 we knocked at the glass door which opens out 
 of the public greenroom on to a private staircase. 
 It opened, and in a few moments we were in 
 Coquelin's dressing-room a very light room, 
 soberly furnished, but in excellent taste, con- 
 taining a table strewn with papers and a large 
 white marble toilet apparatus. The man himself 
 is so simple and genial, so straightforward and 
 open-handed ; his words are as ready as his 
 thought is quick. An obliging guest showed 
 him some autographs, a medal struck in 1870, 
 and a few other antique and modern curiosities 
 which he examined like a connoisseur. Then 
 the talk drifted to the stage, and the way in 
 which he pulled a play to pieces and reconstructed 
 it in five minutes showed me that in such a 
 manager and such an interpreter a dramatic 
 author would find an invaluable collaborator. 
 No one ever gave me a stronger impression of a 
 great artist than Coquelin that evening. I felt
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 149 
 
 as if I were talking, not to a contemporary, but 
 to the ghost of Kean or Talma called back by 
 magic from the spirit world. Twice a message 
 was brought to him, " Monsieur, may we begin ? " 
 " Directly, directly," and Coquelin resumed his 
 discourse with a freedom of gesture and a tone 
 of conviction. At last the house got restive, 
 we took our leave, and the actor shook hands 
 with us as he put on his Colonel's uniform. 
 I had hardly got back to the house before I 
 heard his magnificent voice thundering on the 
 stage. 
 
 I spoke just now of the Eenaissance, the 
 elegant theatre given up to the operettas of 
 Strauss and Lecocq, before the reign of Sarah 
 Bernhardt. In those days people went there 
 to applaud Mdlle. Jeanne Granier; they still 
 go to applaud her, but in a different capacity. 
 Then she sang, now she acts. The former diva 
 of operetta has come out as a comedian. The 
 Avatar of Madame Judic's dreams has been 
 realised by Jeanne Granier. She has appeared 
 as Claudine Eozay, the heroine of a piece called 
 Amants, by M. Donnay, which I shall have
 
 1 50 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 occasion to speak of later on. It reveals a 
 section of the demi monde undealt with by 
 Dumas, the demi monde bourgeois, into which 
 his Baronne d'Ange never entered. The come- 
 dienne contributed much to the success of the 
 play, and the author recognised this by dedicat- 
 ing it to her. With her pretty, caressing ways, 
 and her enchanting little air of maternal wisdom, 
 towards her lover, Jeanne Granier proved the 
 best possible interpreter of those delicate sensual 
 natures, sweet and tender even in their infidelity, 
 adroit and prudent even in the abandonment 
 and exaltation of love. To these women passion 
 is no enduring condition, but a critical moment. 
 When the moment is past they are safe, they 
 and all that surrounds them. Mdlle. Granier 
 has identified herself with this purely Parisian 
 type of character. 
 
 If we look in at the Palais Eoyal we shall 
 find Mdlle. Lavigne as triumphantly successful 
 as ever. She is " Lavigne" to. the habitues of 
 the theatre a familiarity which means glory. 
 Whether politician, poet, or artist, a man only 
 becomes a somebody when he ceases to be
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 151 
 
 Monsieur. Lavigne, then, has created a new 
 type of feminine character, the pretty grotesque. 
 These things can't be explained, one must go 
 and see them, and go too without loss of time. 
 For, in all human probability, Mdlle. Lavigne 
 will cease to be pretty long before she ceases 
 to be grotesque, and then we shall only have 
 an excellent duenna, such as we had once in 
 Thierret and Boisgoutier. 
 
 The Vaudeville and the Gymnase are united 
 under the same management, but I do not think 
 that the inventors of that combination have 
 much to be proud of. Since the combined 
 companies only contain one artist calculated to 
 draw, Madame Kejane, to make a proper use of 
 her power of attracting audiences the manage- 
 ment ought to commission a young author with 
 no false prejudices to write plays so arranged 
 that the artist could, on one and the same 
 evening, run from the Chaussee d'Antin to the 
 Boulevart Bonne Nouvelle, and appear in the 
 first act at one theatre, in the second at the 
 other, and so on, without either piece suffering 
 unduly from her momentary eclipse. "Will
 
 1 52 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the managers try the experiment ? I make 
 them a present of the suggestion. In the 
 actual state of the case one of the two theatres 
 flourishes, whilst the other vegetates. This 
 reminds one of the fate of the Siamese twins, 
 when one of them fell ill and seemed likely to 
 die. And the denouement will be the same in 
 both cases amputation. 
 
 The unquestionable beauty of Madame Jane 
 Hading does not suffice to draw an audience to a 
 theatre which remembers Eose Cheri, Victoria 
 Lafontaine, and Aimee Desclee, and which was 
 taught only yesterday by Madame Pasca what is 
 really meant by a lady. There are gifts which 
 remain at a provincial level even after twenty 
 years of Paris. 
 
 At the Vaudeville, Eejane makes bad plays 
 good, and turns all the lead that is brought her 
 into gold. I only saw her three times in 
 Madame Sans- Gene, Lysistrata, and La Doulour- 
 euse, but that was enough to assure me of her 
 popularity. When she came on the stage the 
 house woke up and the scene brightened just as 
 if the footlights had been turned up. "Where
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 153 
 
 does she get that power, that intimate sympathy, 
 that perfect understanding with her audience, 
 which makes her able to convulse them by a 
 mere wink or an " Ahem " ? Is it her beauty ? 
 Certainly not. She is not pretty, one might 
 even say . . . but it is more polite not to say it. 
 To quote a famous mot, " she is not beautiful, 
 she is worse." Her queer little face catches hold 
 of you, by both the good and bad elements in 
 your nature. All the intelligence, the devotion, 
 the pity of a woman are to be read in her won- 
 derful eyes, but below there is the nose and 
 mouth of a sensual little creature, a vicious, 
 almost vulgar, smile, lips pouted for a kiss, but 
 with a lingering, or a dawning, suggestion of 
 irony. Moreover, she is exactly the reigning 
 type, the type that one meets constantly on the 
 Paris pavements when the shop girls are going 
 to lunch. If you happen to be born marquise or 
 duchesse you copy the type, and the result is all 
 the more piquant. 
 
 Has Kejane a temperament of her own, a 
 nature peculiar to herself, or is she just a monkey 
 with an incomparable power of imitating every
 
 154 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 sort of character ? If I shut my eyes I some- 
 times think I can hear the nasal intonation, the 
 little squeaky voice which belonged to Celine 
 Chaumont. A minute later this voice has the 
 cadence, the sustained vibration, the artistic 
 break, with which Sarah Bernhardt punctuates 
 her diction, and the transition is so skilfully 
 managed that all these different women the 
 woman who mocks, the woman who trembles, 
 the woman who threatens, the woman who 
 desires, the woman who laughs, and the woman 
 who weeps seem to be one and the same woman. 
 For the matter of that I have set myself a 
 problem which I should not be able to solve 
 even with the help of Edjane herself. Let us 
 be content with what lies on the surface. I am 
 inclined to think that her resources consist of a 
 host of petty artifices, each more ingenious and 
 more imperceptible than the last. If one studied 
 her secret one might draw up a whole set of 
 rules for the use of comediennes. 
 
 These little profile drawings of artists give a 
 very fair idea of the figures that one may expect 
 on the second plane. I used in old days to go
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 155 
 
 to the Ecole Lyrique, in the Kue de la Tour 
 d'Auvergne, which was managed by Eicour. 
 This good fellow, who boasted that he had 
 endowed France with many great artists, had 
 certain invariable methods of discovering and 
 classifying vocations. He ranged the nez-re- 
 trousses on his right, the Greek and Eoman 
 noses on his left. He made the first lot pro- 
 nounce a word which he had invented, "ele- 
 gante," and the second lot a word, also of his 
 own invention, " superbatandor." It was the 
 masonic test according to which he gave his 
 decision. "My child, you are a tragedienne, and 
 you will play comedy." If poor Ricour were to 
 come back to the world he would have to change 
 his test. There is now a kind of drama suited 
 to the nez-retromses, that is to say, for those who 
 cannot say " superbatandor," only it is passion 
 transposed into another key. The difference 
 consists chiefly in the social milieu and physical 
 characteristics. After testing their qualifications, 
 a modern Eicour would probably say to his 
 pupils, " You will be a mistress in the grand 
 style, a cosmopolitan great lady, and you a
 
 156 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 bourgeoise of the Boulevard Malesherbes with 
 a lover." They would not listen, and each 
 would choose a model for herself amongst the 
 queens of the theatre. , The Conservatoire, which 
 is the ante-chamber and nursery of the theatrical 
 world, is full of would-be Bartets, Bejanes in 
 embryo, and Sarahs in miniature. An actress' 
 talent is often simply a question of fantastic 
 dilettantism or of chic. She aims at originality 
 instead of studying nature, and every day gets a 
 little further off from the real sincerity which 
 fascinated us in Descle*e, and which makes the 
 acting of Eleonora Duse so touching. 
 
 The prevailing type amongst actors indicates 
 the change which has taken place in the national 
 manners. One feels that all the world has gone 
 through the conscription. Little turned - up 
 waxed moustaches, closely cropped hair brushed 
 backwards, well-fitting clothes, head up, chin in 
 the air, eyes looking haughtily down from under 
 lowered eyelids, and a stiff soldierly gait, are 
 apparently the qualifications needed in a beloved 
 object. All this militarism is nevertheless only 
 a matter of externals, with no effect upon diction
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 157 
 
 or ideas. For the matter of that these lady 
 killers have not, at first sight, anything very 
 seductive about them. Lafont, Bressaut, Berton 
 pere, Delaunay, took endless trouble to justify 
 the mad things that were done for their sake. 
 Now, apparently, the love of women for men does 
 not need any explanation. Men are loved because 
 fate wills it so. They are not handsome, they 
 do not seek to please, they have no soft tones in 
 their voice, no caressing looks. They are men, 
 that is enough. I do not regret the jeune 
 premier, that stupid and tiresome personage 
 who, for two hundred years, has dragged out a 
 weary existence in all our plays and comedies. 
 However, there are still men who are lovers by 
 character and by profession. Such, for example, 
 is Sir George Lamorant, Mr. Pinero's Butterfly, 
 so well acted by Mr. George Alexander. During 
 my voyage of discovery amongst the Parisian 
 theatres. I did not meet with one single actor who 
 appeared to be made for these parts, or who had 
 any idea of training himself for them. That state 
 of things will continue throughout the reign of 
 the new psychology which I have already spoken
 
 IS8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 of in connection with the Theatre Libre, and 
 which makes Don Juan a domestic dupe, a 
 subject for feminine exploitation. 
 
 I think that we can now pretty well appre- 
 ciate the situation of the younger dramatic 
 writers, the matter with which they have to 
 deal, the difficulties that they will encounter, and 
 the resources at their disposal. On the one hand 
 you have a theatrical world which has hardly 
 changed for five-and-twenty years, artists brought 
 up in old traditions, managers who want to make 
 money, and who think that for this purpose old 
 recipes are safer than modern tendencies. Their 
 public is somewhat contemptuous, sleepy, in- 
 different, both philistine and blase* ; it comes to 
 the theatre now, as of old, to be amused, to have 
 its feelings stirred, and, above all, to have its 
 senses titillated. This public has to be lured 
 away from feats of horsemanship, American 
 gymnasts, Japanese jugglers, Italian clowns, 
 women who eat fire or smoke under water, or 
 dance on a rainbow, or twist their bodies about 
 like a piece of live indiarubber in short, from all 
 the eccentricities and immodesties of the circus
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 159 
 
 and of the music hall. But, for all that, this 
 public has its moments of sentimental weakness 
 and its sudden outbursts of morality. On the 
 other side stands a little group, small in number, 
 but eager to make its voice heard, and pushing 
 the world on without knowing exactly where it is 
 going, or what it wants, or what it thinks, except 
 that Dumas and Augier are blockheads, and that 
 their theatre is quite antediluvian. This group 
 has turned in succession towards naturalism, 
 symbolism, and pure psychology. It has sought 
 salvation in Henry Becque, in Maeterlinck, and 
 in Ibsen everywhere rather than in Dumas; 
 and whilst it goes on shouting its reiterated 
 anathemas in all the literary societies, in all the 
 offices of the little unreadable reviews, in the 
 artists' cafes of Montmartre and of the Boulevard 
 Saint Michel, the managers whisper in the ears 
 of the authors : " Give us something like the 
 work of Dumas fils, or, if you can, Dumas pere ; 
 that would be better still for our pockets." 
 Assuredly, I say again, the position of dramatic 
 authors is not enviable. 
 
 What is criticism doing to help us ? Dramatic
 
 160 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 criticism in Paris is a very numerous, very 
 complicated, and very flourishing hierarchy. At 
 the head of it stand those grave and reverend 
 signers, the Monday feuilletonistes. They have 
 often several days to reflect in before giving their 
 decision. It is only on Sunday evening that the 
 printer expects their twelve columns, which are 
 often far too narrow for the variety and import- 
 ance of the matters demanding treatment. But 
 after the full weeks come the weeks of leanness. 
 Sometimes there is nothing to fill up the twelve 
 columns with but a farce at the Theatre Dejazet, 
 and sometimes nothing at all. In the summer, 
 between the Fair of Neuilly and the re-opening 
 of the Ode'on, there are some terrible months to 
 get through. At moments like these M. Jules 
 Lemaitre, when he was critic of the Debats, sat 
 down courageously to re-read his " Lamartine " 
 and to give us his impressions of it. Another 
 time he set himself a little problem and worked 
 out several solutions, each contradicting the last, 
 as is the habit of his subtle mind. The question 
 was, who could have seduced Marceline Des- 
 bordes-Yalmore, a young actress born at Douai
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 161 
 
 towards the end of the last century, who wrote 
 bad verses in her maturer years, and who has 
 recently had a statue erected to her, much to her 
 i n J ur y> as if we were overstocked with marble 
 for chimney-pieces or bronze to make pennies 
 with! M. Emile Faguet never wrote so charming 
 a theatrical criticism as on a certain day when he 
 had absolutely nothing to say. 
 
 These elegant exercises, however, are not 
 suited to all the world. They need a certain 
 grace, a command of literary artifices, a readiness 
 and subtlety of mind which few writers possess : 
 and, to be quite frank, it is perhaps not to be 
 desired that this art of talking, and talking so 
 well, for the sake of saying nothing should make 
 further progress amongst us. There is something 
 just a little bit absurd, when one comes to think 
 of it, in this weekly feuilleton, with its enormous 
 variation in matter and its utter absence of 
 variation in dimensions. Besides, papers which 
 pride themselves on actuality cannot make their 
 readers wait an entire week, for the account 
 of a premiere. That is why the Figaro, the 
 Gaulois, the Journal, and all the papers which 
 
 M
 
 162 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 make literary and fashionable news more 
 prominent than political dissertations, publish 
 their critical article on the day after the 
 representation. The reader opens his paper, 
 whilst his coffee or his chocolate is getting cold, 
 and finds the account of the play only six or 
 seven hours after the curtain has fallen on the 
 last scene. He likes to imagine the devoted 
 critic perspiring over his nocturnal task and 
 feverishly covering page after page, to be carried 
 off still wet by the printer's devil. But about 
 that there is a little illusion. The critic generally 
 writes his account of the first night twenty-four 
 hours before it takes place, as he leaves the 
 dress rehearsal. If the subject has already been 
 treated by a French or foreign writer, an hour 
 spent at the National Library will be very useful 
 to corser the article. At a pinch, if one is not 
 very fastidious, and if one is writing for people 
 who are still less so, one contents oneself with 
 turning over the pages of the editorial Larousse. 
 Given imagination and wit, there are other 
 resources still. M. Catulle Mendes, for example, 
 one evening last winter had to tell the public
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 163 
 
 the story of Jean Bichepin's Le Chemineau. Le 
 Chemineau is the eternal vagabond, the incor- 
 rigible wanderer whom nothing can keep in one 
 place, and nothing can steady neither interest, 
 nor love, nor paternity, not even happiness and 
 who in the end will take to the road again until 
 he falls and dies in a ditch. Ah ! what a 
 mysterious attraction that high road exercises 
 over the hearts and imaginations of men ! Many 
 are slaves to it all their lives ; all have felt its 
 power, and yielded to its influence in their youth, 
 and here we have M. Catulle Mendes arraigning 
 the high road, questioning it, making it yield 
 up the secret of its strange power. The article 
 is charming, and I am far from complaining of it, 
 but it is clear that that page was written before- 
 hand. We brethren of the pen can recognise 
 each other in our writings, just as masons 
 recognise each other in bricks and plaster. I 
 have made a close examination of a critical article 
 signed by a well-known name. I find 133 lines 
 dating from the day before and 14 \ which might 
 have been written on leaving the theatre. Hence 
 it follows that if the Monday criticisms are a trifle
 
 1 64 THE MODERN FRENCH DRA MA . 
 
 stale, the others are certainly a little "previous." 
 I have paid no attention to the "Soiriste," to 
 " Monsieur de 1'Orchestre," or to all the host of 
 literary hacks and reporters who have to describe 
 the scenery and dresses, and to gather up for 
 the public the gossip of the greenroom and the 
 corridors. All these people follow close on the 
 heels sometimes tread on the toes of criticism, 
 which is so much taken up with defending itself 
 against them that it almost forgets to pursue its 
 own trade. 
 
 Clearly this has nothing to do with the masters 
 of the feuilleton. At their head stands our 
 excellent Francisque Sarcey, whom we call ' l cher 
 maltre " and, more familiarly still, " mon oncle." 
 Englishmen will understand quite well what that 
 name means. It implies a sort of paternity, 
 more indulgent but, at the same time, more clear- 
 sighted, without responsibility, but also without 
 illusions. Uncle Sarcey has no passionate pre- 
 judices, only a few harmless manias which are 
 very well known in Paris, and which give great 
 amusement. If Sarcey's "Dadas"came to an 
 end, there would be a sensible blank in Parisian
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 165 
 
 conversation. He has his own ideas with regard 
 to the chief problems of dramatic art, and his own 
 view of every kind of style, every author and 
 artist. He has his views as to the proper hour 
 for beginning, and the price of places, and on all 
 these questions, big and little, he is in the habit 
 of going straight ahead to his solution. Dumas, 
 who recognised in him both his adversary and 
 his friend, foreseeing, perhaps, that his literary 
 memory would have no better defender, had the 
 justice to say of him that " he always gives his 
 impressions resolutely and frankly, even when 
 they are contradictory." This perfect indepen- 
 dence, this absolute honesty which cannot be 
 moved an inch by the warmest and best-founded 
 personal sympathy, and which is untouched by 
 any consideration of vanity, kindliness, or self- 
 interest, is the dominant and most characteristic 
 quality of Francisque Sarcey. Add to that a 
 wide culture strengthened by forty years of study 
 and experience, and an easy natural wit bubbling 
 up spontaneously both in speech and writing. 
 Moreover, he has remained one of the public, 
 even one of the well-disposed public. Wonderful
 
 1 66 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 to relate he is still a lover of tlie theatre, in spite 
 of the number of evenings that he has spent there. 
 He may have seen some farce of Bisson's ten 
 times, and yet the tenth time "he shakes with 
 laughter in his corner." Another evening it is 
 a melodrama " which goes straight to his heart." 
 To have impressions and the power of expressing 
 them seems quite a simple thing; nevertheless 
 there are very few men capable of it. 
 
 Sarcey, in his literary and somewhat bourgeois 
 fashion, represents the good sense and logic which 
 has made the fortune of French wit, but which 
 nowadays is, perhaps, something of an obstacle to 
 its growth and development. He is full of good- 
 will and sincere desire to understand and welcome 
 newcomers ; but " the well- constructed play " is 
 bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh ; it has 
 become, in his case, second nature. His one test 
 is logical sequence, and in spite of himself he 
 comes back to that even when he wishes, and 
 intends, to employ another. If he were pressed 
 to give it up, he might reply, like Choppart in 
 the Courrier de Lyon, "It is my head that you 
 are asking me for." Even if Sarcey, in an excess
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 167 
 
 of good-will and kindliness, were disposed to 
 make the sacrifice, I hope that no one would be 
 imprudent, or cruel, enough to accept it. 
 
 M. Sarcey makes his personality felt by the 
 outspokenness and energy of his convictions. M. 
 Lemaitre has won his way by the subtle irony 
 and graceful ease of his scepticism. He interrupts 
 himself now and again to say, " Eeally I almost 
 meant that " ; and sometimes, when he comes 
 to the end of his reasoning, and is within an inch 
 of concluding, he overturns his argument with a 
 stroke, and decides that perhaps the very opposite 
 is really true. He has a secret for making this 
 sort of pastime attractive a secret which is his 
 very own, for he made his would-be imitators 
 repent of their temerity. 
 
 Only once has he shown himself violent and 
 positive when he was bent on the slaughter of M. 
 George Ohnet. M. Ohnet was making capital pro- 
 gress towards becoming a great writer. He had 
 just got into the Eevue des Deux Mondes, and he 
 was on the high road to the Academy. But, in 
 the nick of time, M. Lemaitre cried, " "Who goes 
 there ? " and charged and defeated the enemy.
 
 1 68 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Doubtless it is well from time to time to be 
 reminded that notoriety is not fame, and that all 
 printed paper is not literature ; but was it really 
 worth while to put a cord into M. George Ohnet's 
 hands and to tell him to hang himself before the 
 statue of Flaubert ? If M. Lemaitre wanted a bit 
 of hangman's rope, could he not with all his re- 
 sources have found some other means of procuring 
 the desired talisman ? Moreover, M. Ohnet did 
 not hang himself, though, if he had done it, 
 he could not have been more dead to literature ; 
 there is less life in him now than in many actual 
 corpses. It is a terrible proof of the power 
 exercised by Lemaitre at a given moment over 
 the public in general and the younger generation 
 in particular. He showed it in another and less 
 edifying instance. He demolished Eenan and 
 set him on his legs again in three days a 
 charming amusement but a dangerous example. 
 Who knows whether at this moment there is not 
 some little boy playing ball in the Luxembourg 
 Gardens, who in his turn will demolish M. 
 Lemaitre ? It would not be so very difficult, for 
 he is by no means cut all in one piece, and the
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 169 
 
 bits are not very closely fitted. Besides, who 
 would put him together again ? 
 
 His successor on the Debate, M. Emile Faguet, 
 is a man of a very different temperament. He 
 is a most fertile writer with his eye everywhere 
 and his finger in everything. He makes nothing 
 of taking the measure of a man, disentangling 
 the leading idea of a play, and constructing or 
 overturning a dramatic system. I am always a 
 little staggered by the honesty of conjurers, and 
 it would in no way surprise me if M. Faguet, 
 with his marvellous intellectual dexterity, were 
 tempted to be a bit of a sophist. But no, he is 
 the very impersonation of good faith. He makes 
 every effort to understand the ideas of the younger 
 writers so as to instil a little method and unity 
 and intelligence into their productions. He 
 makes loyal objections and accepts them with his 
 characteristic phrase : " I am quite ready, for 
 my part. You know that in art I welcome what- 
 ever is offered to me provided that it succeeds." 
 It is a very wide formula, but not without a 
 suspicion of some ironical arriere pensee, like M. 
 Brunetiere's advice to the symbolists, " Gentle-
 
 i yo THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 men, pray produce masterpieces." "Will the 
 younger generation accept M. Faguet as their 
 spiritual director ? I wish they may, but I am a 
 little uncertain. Possibly they are a little afraid that 
 even he retains a certain habit of mind stronger 
 even than his good- will. To put it shortly, his gown 
 is a little disquieting. M. Faguet is a professor. 
 
 Sarcey, Lemaitre, Faguet three professors ! 
 They betray themselves, not by pedantry they 
 have not a shadow of it but by their worship of 
 time-honoured models, and by the unwearying 
 zeal with which they always go back to the works 
 of the masters of the seventeenth century when 
 they want instances to point their morals. Are 
 there no critics, then, who are not professors? 
 Of course there are, but even they seek their ideal 
 in the past. They are as confirmed Shakespeareans 
 or Hugolaters as the others are Eacinians and 
 Molieristes. In short, there are two sorts of vieux 
 jeu, the romantic and the classic, and neither can 
 guide young authors towards a new form of art. 
 
 My account of theatrical criticism would be 
 incomplete if I said nothing about oral criticism, 
 which flourishes everywhere, but more especially
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. 171 
 
 at the Bodiniere and at the Classical Thursdays 
 of the Odeon. This Bodiniere is a long room, open- 
 ing out of a still longer gallery, and affording a 
 favourable field for conversation. All Paris has 
 passed through it. It makes trial of men, ideas, 
 styles, systems; people play, harangue, sing 
 sometimes all three together and it is no unusual 
 thing to see a lecturer in a black coat escorted by 
 a pretty little artist, a sort of living vignette to 
 his text. At the Bodiniere strength wastes itself 
 in all directions, but at the Odeon it has for ten 
 years been patiently and intelligently directed to 
 the revival of forgotten works a sort of literary 
 taking stock of the riches of our earlier drama. 
 More than a hundred plays have already been 
 resuscitated, each accompanied by an explanatory 
 lecture reconstructing the milieu in which it was 
 produced, defining and classifying it, and up to a 
 certain point passing judgment on it, but with 
 all due deference to the public as the judge in 
 the last resort. MM. Saroey, Lemaitre, Brune- 
 tiere, and Chantavoine led the way, and they 
 have been followed by a whole generation of 
 young orators. On the day when I went to
 
 1 72 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the Odeon M. Eugene Lintilhac was lecturing, 
 and the play selected was Marivaux' Le Prince 
 Travesti. The audience was very unlike what I 
 had found at the matinee of the Fran$ais. It 
 was an audience of habitues, very lively and talk- 
 ative ; a murmur of conversation rose from the 
 boxes, the orchestra was packed with actresses 
 and blue stockings, and the pit was full of students 
 and schoolboys, both literary and mischievous. 
 Exactly at half-past one they began shouting for 
 the lecturer by his Christian name, "Eugene, 
 Eugene ! " The curtain rose and Eugene appeared. 
 He gave us an elegant discourse, well arranged, 
 full of matter, agreeably delivered, and just of the 
 right oratorical warmth, neither too hot nor too 
 cold. It was important to make us anxious to 
 see the play, but it was also important to prove 
 that Eugene was not stupid, and that he knew 
 very well where his author's shoe pinched. 
 Marivaux is an unrivalled delineator of the dawn 
 of love. Once and once only, in Le Prince Travesti, 
 he tried to paint love in its maturity, with its 
 tears, its struggles, its storms ; he slipped from 
 idyl into melodrama. But it was a mistake,
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE THEATRES. .73 
 
 and a mistake which explains why the play 
 was consigned to oblivion, and why it will return 
 there to-morrow. Away with it for a century ! 
 
 I am surprised that no English manager has 
 yet thought of transferring these classical matinees 
 to London, and reviving three centuries of the 
 stage, from Gorloduc and Gammer Gurtorfs Needle 
 to the comedies of Douglas Jerrold. Certainly, 
 neither artists, nor lecturers, nor the public, would 
 fail to answer to the call. It would be delightful. 
 
 It would be delightful, but it would be no use 
 counting on it to mould or ripen the drama of 
 to-morrow. There is nothing for young authors to 
 learn from these lectures at the Ode*on ; they are 
 merely pious family gatherings for dusting dra- 
 matic relics, valueless to all except those who have 
 inherited them. So that young authors are left 
 to themselves in the midst of a chaotic collection 
 of worn-out models and rough sketches, solicited 
 on every side by the most diverse and contradic- 
 tory tendencies, and exhausting themselves in 
 attempts to conciliate the incompatible, or endea- 
 vouring to be themselves and yet unable to find 
 those selves when they look for them.
 
 y. 
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 
 
 WE have touched on Jules Lemaitre, the critic, 
 but we must dwell at much greater length upon 
 Jules Lemaitre, the dramatic author. The two 
 men are not, after all, so very different ; they 
 only appear so at the first glance, because the 
 qualities of the one have become the defects of 
 the other, and vice versa. But upon reflection 
 the dualism vanishes, and there remains only 
 Jules Lemaitre, the moralist. For I must 
 reiterate the truth, which seems to have as- 
 tonished some of my readers ; we are a nation 
 of psychologists and moral philosophers. This 
 very characteristic, indeed, makes us from time 
 to time fall a stage behind other nations, for 
 whilst we are studying our own minds, they 
 are taking action and making progress; even
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 175 
 
 their literature is a literature of discovery and 
 advance. 
 
 Both his age and his early education, which 
 dates back to the last years of the Empire, make 
 Jules Lemaitre belong to the past. He assumed 
 the toga virilis when Dumas and Augier were 
 Consuls, From them he received those first 
 theatrical impressions which determine a youth's 
 vocation and give a permanent turn to his 
 literary bent. Both as student at the Ecole 
 Normale and as professor, he belonged to a 
 society, and a select society. For ten years he 
 wrote in a paper where tradition is all powerful, 
 and recently he has been admitted to the 
 Academy, the most reactionary and most essen- 
 tially aristocratic body in France. His lines are 
 cast, therefore, in a society of the most dominant 
 and absorbing character, in spite of the easy 
 liberalism of its principles and its ingratiating 
 cordiality. In such surroundings the most in- 
 dependent mind can hardly help being moulded 
 into a certain shape. On the other hand, M. 
 Jules Lemaitre has seen everything, read every- 
 thing, and understood everything. Schopen-
 
 1 7 6 THE MODERN FRENCH DRA MA . 
 
 hauer, Tolstoi, Ibsen, have passed before the 
 prism of his mind, casting images which dwindle 
 and vanish and break into a thousand colours. 
 From his stall as a critic he has seen the death 
 of one school and the birth of another. He has 
 borne witness to the faults of the " well-con- 
 structed play," with its over-elaborated intrigues 
 and its abuse of wit. He has assisted at the 
 bankruptcy of the naturalist school and taken 
 note of its causes. He has said, "This is good, 
 that is less good. This may be taken, that is 
 worth nothing, the other might be taken with a 
 makeweight." And in this wise he has arrived 
 at eclecticism. 
 
 All his plays hitherto have been experiments. 
 He gave us political and social satire in Le 
 Depute Leveau, psychology in Le Manage Blanc, 
 more psychology, but pitched in quite another 
 key, in Le Pardon, something very like a 
 comedie-rosse in L* Age difficile, a little academic 
 jesting in La Bonne Helene, and lastly in Les 
 Rois, a modern tragedy containing all the 
 qualities of a historical play except its history, 
 and even that might be there perhaps if one
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 177 
 
 made diligent search till one found it. His first 
 piece, RSvoltee, stands alone as being of every 
 style and every sort ; but that has nothing to 
 do with eclecticism. It is just a "first play," 
 sketched out, thrown aside, taken up again and 
 finished, then despised, but picked up and re- 
 modelled, carried about in one's portfolio for 
 long enough after being carried still longer in 
 one's head. Crowded into it haphazard are all 
 the thoughts, feelings, and experiences, between 
 the twentieth and thirtieth year, reminiscences 
 (literary and personal), tears, theories, hates, 
 dreams, loves, disillusionment, fury, all that 
 makes up youth ! 
 
 Revoltee contains one character and one situa- 
 tion. A woman in society has in her youth 
 committed a fault, which she has succeeded in 
 concealing. From afar she has watched over 
 the child born of that fault, but without reveal- 
 ing herself, letting the child suppose her a 
 friend of its mother's. The girl is grown up 
 and married to a professor with gifts and a 
 future. But Helene, either because of her 
 secret birth or because of her husband's position, 
 
 N
 
 i 7 8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 has all the thirst for luxury and for emotions, 
 which her modest means can never satisfy. It 
 is quite true that, owing to the peculiar constitu- 
 tion of Parisian society, the wife of a professor 
 gets an insight into high life without being able 
 to play a part in it. She belongs to the aristo- 
 cracy of intelligence, which in many ways and 
 in many places rubs elbows with the aristocracies 
 of birth and money. She can cherish the illusion 
 that she is of the elect up to the moment when 
 the countess, or the banker's wife, gets into the 
 carriage and drives off, bespattering passers-by 
 like herself, as she trudges back to her fifth-floor 
 apartment. If she is to go to a ball, even in a 
 dyed dress and a few shabby trinkets, her hus- 
 band must slave away with his pupils from 
 morning till night. It is all very well to go on 
 telling her that he is a man of solid worth ; you 
 can't love a slave, and a slave has no time to 
 make love. Is that all? No, the worst vexa- 
 tions and the bitterest stings are just those with 
 no definite name and no assignable cause, diseases 
 whose effects one can see clearly enough without 
 being able to state the cause, or the seat of the
 
 THE NE W COMEDY. 1 7 9 
 
 evil, or its remedy. Helene is in revolt revolt 
 against everything against life, against society, 
 against religion, against the husband who loves 
 her too much, yet does not love her enough, 
 against the mother who gave her all these 
 cravings and affinities, with nothing that can 
 answer to them. When this mother at last 
 reveals herself and stretches out her arms, the 
 daughter, instead of falling into them, stands 
 feeling her pulse and questioning herself, and 
 then, finding that she feels nothing, refuses the 
 scene of effusion expected of her. This is hard 
 enough for poor Madame de Voves, who thought 
 that she had expiated her fault ; but it is harder 
 still to face the absolute and contemptuous 
 condemnation that falls from the lips of her 
 son. When she has forced herself to a half- 
 confession in the hope of interesting him in 
 Helene, and is pleading the cause of the guilty 
 mother, she only encounters the pitiless argu- 
 ments of a virtue that will make no sort of 
 allowance, the virtue of a moralist of twenty -five 
 years old. She has to pursue her sad avowal 
 to the bitter end. In the indifference of her
 
 i8o THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 daughter and the contempt of her son she finds 
 her own punishment. 
 
 It is impossible to listen to Jules Lemaitre's 
 Helene without being forcibly reminded of Au- 
 gier's Gabrielle. The same nameless unrest, the 
 same aversion for any man who works, no matter 
 whether it be at science or at law. Probably 
 Helene looked upon the volume of Euclid lying 
 on the drawing-room table much as Gabrielle 
 looked upon " that fat ugly book," the Code. I 
 don't blame M. Jules Lemaitre for returning, in 
 1890, to the psychology of the woman who is 
 bored, or for individualising and dating her by 
 means of new and special features. The thing 
 was done long before Augier did it, and will be 
 done again long after M. Jules Lemaitre. But it 
 is a real misfortune that he could find no other 
 conclusion than his predecessor's. To regain his 
 wife's love, the Professor like the Lawyer has 
 to abandon, nay, even to belie his own character ; 
 for a few short hours the poor little bourgeois 
 must draw the sword and play the gallant as 
 principal in a duel, must flaunt himself, in fact, 
 in heroic guise. I3y to-morrow the hero will
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. ,gi 
 
 have vanished, and the Professor gone back to 
 professing " If A B C be a triangle " ; and where 
 will Helene's heart be then ? 
 
 Le Depute Leveau aimed at being a complete 
 study of actual political conditions, or, at any 
 rate, of what they were six years ago, for the 
 situation changes quickly. The artist had covered 
 his whole canvas. Instead of one deputy we had 
 three : the Eadical, the man of the nouvelles 
 couches ; the Liberal of the Left Centre ; and the 
 Member of the Eight, the man of monarchical 
 and aristocratic traditions. The first represented 
 the primitive sap, the strength which resides in 
 the people, the second the intelligence that 
 belongs to the bourgeoisie. And what did the 
 third represent ? Honour, the spirit of chivalry ? 
 Mon Dieu ! no. He represented nothing but 
 chic, truly a mighty power ! Socialism was not 
 so much as suggested, an omission which un- 
 doubtedly contributed to make the piece soon 
 seem antiquated. It corresponds very imperfectly 
 to the actual situation, to the present relation of 
 parties and grouping of social forces. Besides, I 
 think, I am hardly mistaken in supposing that
 
 1 8 2 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the deputy, as material for the drama or the 
 novel, is played out. These people have ceased 
 to be interesting. France is weary of them. 
 
 Moreover, one must admit that the play had 
 quite enough faults of its own, without having to 
 struggle against extraneous disadvantages. Only 
 one of the three deputies is alive, both the others 
 are mere lay figures. The gentleman of the Left 
 Centre has a pretty gift of talking, but he does 
 nothing. From the first scene to the last he has 
 only one attitude and one phrase. The gentleman 
 of the Eight is an exasperating nonentity ; he 
 has only one scene, and he makes nothing out of 
 it. His wife is the real deputy ; she might have 
 been a living being, but she only succeeds in 
 being the stage grande dame, just a part for 
 Madame Hading, all gowns and smiles. M. Jules 
 Lemaitre might, without much difficulty, have 
 found some better models, and some rather more 
 interesting and complex types amongst the older 
 French society. 
 
 Leveau is only partially successful. Is it 
 vanity, or is it passion, which throws him at the 
 feet of that insipid Marquise? Or is it both?
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 183 
 
 Is lie not abusing the right of the heart to be 
 " a simpleton," to quote a celebrated lover? He 
 is a little childish and absurd when he talks 
 about love, but he is himself again when he gets 
 into a passion, and he is really superb in the 
 fourth act, when he turns upon his allies of 
 yesterday and denounces the party that has 
 proved so fatal to him. Madame Leveau is what 
 she needs must be, a querulous stranger from the 
 provinces, utterly devoid of tact or charm. She 
 confides in the first comer, and her whining 
 complaints are perfectly endless. She gets on 
 our nerves, and pretty nearly disgusts us out- 
 right, when she laments out loud, and in her 
 daughter's presence, the rupture of conjugal inti- 
 macy. But what a good, honest soul she is after 
 all, and how gallantly she defends her name, and 
 her home, and the rights of her child ! How 
 that tongue-tied, ignorant woman imposes silence 
 upon the tribune, whose very profession is elo- 
 quence ! The petite bourgeoisie of France, with 
 its honourable absurdities and its unlovely virtues, 
 has seldom been better depicted on the stage, but 
 perhaps the very truth and moderation of the
 
 iS 4 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 portrait account for its apparent dulness and 
 indefiniteness, and the soporific effect which it 
 creates on the spectators. Madame Leveau is a 
 character for a novel. 
 
 The fact is that at heart M. Lemaitre is bored 
 with the study of the primitive desires of an un- 
 cultivated parvenu. In Le Manage Blanc, which 
 he first carried to the Rue Eichelieu, he found 
 a subject far better suited to his delicate talent. 
 Down in a quiet corner of that Mediterranean 
 coast, which combines the poetry of health 
 restored with the attractions of a life of pleasure, 
 where some come to live faster and others to die 
 more gently, a mother is living with her two 
 daughters, one beautiful and full of health, the 
 other a fascinating little creature on the verge of 
 the grave, whose love of life and power of loving 
 seem only quickened by the approach of death. 
 Everyone crowds round Simone, and is eager to 
 gratify her lightest whim. The three women 
 have planned their whole way of living in the 
 hope of saving or prolonging that cherished life. 
 As for Marthe, she is well ; what more can she 
 ask ? She is not interesting. What matters it if
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 185 
 
 her five-and- twenty years and her wonderful 
 beauty (it was Mdlle. Marsy who played the part, 
 the inevitable Mdlle. Marsy !) waste away in a 
 solitude, where they can never attract the atten- 
 tion of a husband ? 
 
 However, there is one man in this household 
 whose presence is a little agitating to the two 
 girls. He is a world-weary melancholy creature 
 who has loved much and philosophised more. 
 His sensual nature has been appeased and fined 
 away but not extinguished, and it has left room 
 enough in his soul for pity to slip in. For a 
 man of his age and temper there is but one 
 problem left to solve, one rare sensation which 
 can still attract him. Of the two girls whom 
 chance has thrown in his way he sees only one, 
 the one whom death is claiming, and it occurs 
 to him to give the poor doomed child the illusion 
 of one day's bliss. He will marry Simone. 
 The way in which he makes his declaration to 
 the young girl, persuades the mother, and 
 silences the doctor's scruples, is indicated with 
 that supreme cleverness which foresees every 
 objection and lifts every rock out of the path.
 
 1 86 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Simone seems to receive new life. She has for- 
 gotten that she had just been speaking of 
 marrying her sister to M. de Tievre, and that 
 she had almost entrapped Marthe into an avowal. 
 Perhaps, then, she is not thought beyond hope 
 since she is to be married? The wish to live 
 returns with the joy of loving. 
 
 They are married. But how is M. de Tievre 
 going to play his part of husband-nurse ? Will 
 he keep up the illusion and complete the good 
 deed ? Indeed, is it a good deed ? If it could 
 be said that to the pure all things are pure, might 
 one not say with even greater show of reason 
 that to those who have lived mainly by the 
 senses, all things are sensual, even pity and 
 devotion. We needs must end by grasping this 
 truth, even if we have not already felt it ; there 
 is something besides abnegation, charity, sacri- 
 fice, in this intimacy between a man, who knows 
 too much of life, and a child, who knows it not 
 at all, who believes herself a wife because she is 
 married, and reveals all her maiden heart to her 
 husband. For all M. Lemaitre's discretion, he 
 might have shown a little more, and I can assure
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 187 
 
 him that the Theatre Francais is doing him a 
 service, when it omits certain words and phrases, 
 whose meaning is a little too clear. Even from 
 the point of view of art pure and simple, some 
 ideas gain by being only suggested. 
 
 This strange intimacy which won that blase 
 heart by its very strangeness, becomes sensibly 
 warmer, as the young wife seems to take firmer 
 hold upon existence. False situations are the 
 sweetest of all, and this singular husband and 
 wife would have gone on enjoying their oddly 
 constituted happiness, made of reticences and 
 misapprehensions, if the cry of real living 
 passion, the cry of a soul in pain, had not 
 broken the charm. Who uttered the cry? Who 
 but Marthe, whom all have forgotten, and who 
 could not take back her love, nor give up the 
 hope of being loved. M. de Tievre falters for 
 a moment before the love that he has awakened 
 in the heart of this beautiful girl, Simone sees 
 the weakness, and it kills her. 
 
 Le Pardon is a very fine work, and some 
 admirers of M. Lemaltre prefer it to all his 
 others. Certainly he never displayed to better
 
 1 88 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 advantage his real mastery of the art of expres- 
 sing the fine shades and gradations of human 
 emotion. Nor has he ever better vindicated 
 his title to stand beside Dumas as a moralist. 
 But it must be admitted that M. Lemaitre's 
 morality would scarcely serve as a code of rules 
 for ordinary conduct. Morality ought to be 
 something as solid and as capable of resistance as 
 the umbrella of a countryman going to market, 
 but M. Lemaitre's morality is at best only the 
 elegant en tout cas of a pretty woman on her 
 way to the Grand Prix. What will become of 
 this supple, flexible, subtle, almost voluptuous 
 view of life, when confronted with the hail of 
 human passion and the soft, persistent, and pene- 
 trating rain of human sophistry ? Take the 
 case of Georges and Suzanne. Apparently to 
 repent is easy enough, but to pardon almost 
 impossible, unless one has oneself been guilty 
 of the same fault. Then, indeed, in absolving 
 the other sinner one absolves oneself, and it is 
 so easy to be indulgent in one's own case. The 
 idea is paradoxical, but not quite new. Dumas 
 dealt with it in Francillon. But here it is the
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. ,89 
 
 woman who has sinned first. She is allowed to 
 return to wedded life, only to be tortured by 
 stinging questions, humiliated by cruel memories 
 and still more cruel comparisons, and insulted 
 by constantly recurring doubts. So it goes on 
 until the day, when a certain lady who has 
 played the dangerous part of counsellor, accepts 
 the still more dangerous part of consoler. Are 
 the husband and wife at daggers drawn again ? 
 On the contrary, they are reconciled for good 
 and all. The husband's adultery annuls the 
 wife's; the two faults are both cancelled at 
 once, like two equal quantities on two sides of 
 an equation. 
 
 There, only much more delicately handled, you 
 have the inevitable denouement of the Theatre 
 Libre : " I am worth nothing, and you are not 
 worth very much, let us kiss and be friends ! " 
 M. Lemaltre was still more " theatre-libre " in 
 L'Age difficile; but at the eleventh hour he 
 repented, like the penitent thief, and exactly 
 at a quarter to twelve we found ourselves 
 floating in pure optimism and all the virtues. 
 What with her husband, an adventurer, and
 
 i go THE MODERN FRENCH DRA MA . 
 
 her father, an old knight of the pavement, 
 whose moral sense has entirely evaporated in 
 thirty years of fete, Yoyo is a highly amusing 
 little rascal, but as repulsive as the heroines of 
 M. Jean Jullien and Paul Alexis. M. Jules 
 Lemaitre is amazingly witty. If he had been 
 born five-and-twenty years sooner he would 
 have been called Edmond About, fifty years 
 sooner Prosper Merime'e. Consequently there 
 must be in him a strain of heroism, else he 
 would not write plays in which wit can have 
 no place, unless he is inspired by the very legiti- 
 mate, if coquettish, desire to prove his possession 
 of other and still more precious gifts. Anyhow, 
 with the exception of a few stray sayings in 
 the first act of Revoltee and the first act of Le 
 Depute Leveau, M. Lemaitre' s spectators had 
 been deprived of that original vein of wit which 
 gave such delight to his readers. But through- 
 out Li Age difficile there is a ceaseless flow of 
 wit without in any way detracting from his 
 delicate moral perception. The explanation 
 between the faithless Pierre and his wife, Jeanne, 
 at the beginning of the second act is perfectly
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 191 
 
 delightful, and would be a masterpiece of truth 
 and comedy if its admirable beginning did not 
 tail off into pedantic and somewhat wearisome 
 argument. But to explain the title of the play, I 
 must say one word about the principal character 
 the character that makes the play. Which 
 is the difficult age ? The sixtieth year. Doubt- 
 less this age is not difficult to the man who 
 understands how to grow old, and who has been 
 careful to lay up a store of affection for the time 
 of life which cannot hope to gather in fresh 
 harvests. But it is a difficult age for the old 
 bachelor, who consoles himself with left-handed 
 paternity, and is forced to intrude upon other 
 people's happiness if he is to win any for himself. 
 When he sees that he is de trop, he rushes head- 
 long into another danger; Yoyo. These two 
 syllables suggest such a mingled aroma of 
 childishness and corruption that I need not go 
 on. What can save him from Yoyo ? The 
 friendship of a pure and innocent woman, rising 
 out of the dead ashes of the past, and ready to 
 resume a dream rudely broken off thirty years 
 ago. Placed between the saint and the good-
 
 192 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 for-nothing, he chooses the saint. But, unfortu- 
 nately, she is infinitely less real and life-like 
 than the other, and one fancies that Yoyo will 
 live longer in the memories of spectators of all 
 ages. This denouement is all very good and 
 proper, but I fear that it is not much better than 
 that of Le Pardon. 
 
 I am nowise discouraged by the fact that 
 Les Rois met with a sufficiently cold reception 
 from the public. Probably it is M. Lemaitre's 
 best play, and except, perhaps, Le Mariage 
 Blanc, the play most within his compass. It 
 begins like one of Dumas' pieces. Some by- 
 standers, who never reappear, put us au courant 
 with the situation and the characters. The 
 second act has a new exposition, meant to intro- 
 duce us to Prince Otto, after all rather a minor 
 character, and Acts III. and IV. contain the 
 action of the play, which took so much setting 
 in motion. For the ordinary spectator the piece 
 is practically at an end with the death of the 
 hero, and, but for the presence of Sarah Bern- 
 hardt, the fifth act would have received scant 
 attention. Yet, both in thought and expression,
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. i 93 
 
 this fifth act contains gems of the very finest 
 water. Save for the character of Prince Otto, 
 who is obviously borrowed from contemporary 
 history and treated in naturalistic fashion, the 
 play is a tragedy. All the personages, from 
 the king down to the old huntsman, belong to 
 the heroic world, and utter sentiments a little 
 more magnificent than natural. In reading Les 
 Rois I felt something of that deep and noble 
 emotion which was awakened in me many years 
 ago by the words of that sublime dreamer, the 
 Marquis of Posa, in Schiller's Don Carlos. 
 Doubtless the day will come when the works 
 which stirred our hearts and moved our inmost 
 being will seem cold and affected to future 
 generations, when Les Rois will be listened to 
 with the pious respect that we pay to Polyeucte 
 and Athalie. We are in perfect agreement as 
 to the beauty of their form ; we fully expect 
 noble thoughts, fine phrases and outbursts of 
 passion, and never trouble ourselves as to 
 whether or not they are really " dramatic" in 
 the narrow sense in which that formula was used 
 from 1840 to 1890. By that time the faults in 
 
 o
 
 194- THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the construction of Les Rois will trouble no one, 
 and the conclusion, which now seems confused, 
 will be as clear as day, when historic evolution 
 has done its work. Then we shall know that the 
 struggle between monarchy and democracy is 
 indeed a struggle without an end, that kings no 
 longer possess the power to rule, nor the right 
 to devote their lives to their subjects, nay, not 
 even the right to abandon those rights. They 
 
 have but one last sad dutv, to await the end, 
 
 >/ 1 > 
 
 crowned and sceptred, maintaining intact that 
 inheritance of the past, which is doomed to pass 
 away with them. 
 
 "We assisted at M. Brieux' brilliant debut 
 amidst the writers for the Theatre Libre, with 
 Blanchette and Menages & Artistes. He is 
 accused by some of having greatly changed, 
 whilst others see in this change matter for 
 congratulation. Personally, I do not think the 
 transformation as complete as people suppose. 
 If M. Antoine had looked closer, he would have 
 discerned both in Blanchette and in Menages 
 d' Artistes the germ of the problem play, the
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. i 95 
 
 very name of which was enough to give him a 
 fit. M. Brieux has since taken firmer ground 
 as a critic and a satirist, a very different attitude 
 from that of the anatomical impassive artist 
 demanded by the naturalist school. He has had 
 the audacity to draw conclusions. And why 
 not? If it is an interesting problem, why not 
 an interesting play ? Must we, as an excellent 
 critic said recently, forbear to present any idea 
 on the stage until it has penetrated into people's 
 souls and become a sentiment, or even until this 
 sentiment has become a passion ? Is it not 
 enough that the sentiment should be a passion 
 to the writer of the play, as the equality of the 
 sexes was to Dumas fils ? Can a drama turn 
 on nothing but the passions themselves ? Can- 
 not its subject be the birth of those sentiments, 
 which originate in ideas, in the conflict of 
 interests, or the laws of society ? To my mind 
 such a drama is both possible and much to be 
 desired. 
 
 But the writer of such a play, a play which 
 instead of dealing with the private caprices of 
 So-and-so, attacks professions, classes, institu-
 
 1 96 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 tions, the principles of conduct that govern 
 society, needs to be something more than an 
 ingenious satirist endowed with observation and 
 wit. He must have studied and reflected much, 
 he must be a man of robust convictions and per- 
 fectly sure of himself. He must neither miss his 
 aim, nor strike at random, nor attack everything 
 at once, nor involve in one common satire the 
 guilty, the ignorant, the blundering, and those 
 whose only crime is to have failed. M. Brieux 
 has aimed his shafts successively at popular 
 education (Blanchette), at art (Menaces d* Artistes)) 
 at science (L' Evasion] ^ at universal suffrage 
 (L ^Engrenage], and at charity (Les Bienfaiteurs] . 
 So much the worse for him, if we refuse to be- 
 lieve him, and so much the worse for us, if we 
 laugh with him, for all these things are really 
 good, and we need to preserve them. Oh ! I 
 understand; M. Brieux is not jeering at them, 
 he is only criticising those who abuse them and 
 carry them to excess, who travesty them and 
 apply them to false and foolish uses. No doubt, 
 but the drama demands clear issues, and a frank 
 adoption of a side. The "who knows?" the
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 197 
 
 " perhaps," the "yes or no," so appropriate to a 
 fanciful discourse on philosophy, are of no account 
 on the stage. M. Brieux runs a risk of being 
 misunderstood, and, as a rule, when one is mis- 
 understood, one has failed altogether to under- 
 stand oneself. That has been his fate in at least 
 one instance, Les Bienfaiteurs. This play con- 
 tains some excellent comic episodes, which 
 abundantly prove the writer's talent, especially 
 when it is a question of presenting popular types. 
 But taken as a whole it is disconcerting and 
 almost irritating. At the outset we have much 
 pleasure in making the acquaintance of the engi- 
 neer Landrecy and his wife. He has invented a 
 beautiful scientific apparatus, and he has certain 
 ideas about the relations between capital and 
 labour, which seem honest and sound. His wife 
 is full of pity for every sort of suffering. Both 
 wish to do good, and are prepared to try and do 
 it. But they lack one thing, a little money. Lo 
 and behold it descends upon them. A brother of 
 Madame Landrecy's, whose family had forgotten 
 him, and who seemed to have forgotten them, 
 turns up with his hands full of millions. He will
 
 1 98 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 lend his aid to the double experiment. Lan- 
 drecy can set his invention going in his works, 
 and can invite his workpeople to share its 
 profits. Madame Landrecy can realise her 
 schemes for the relief of the sick and poor, 
 and the reformation and elevation of the fallen. 
 But things do not turn out as they had hoped, 
 and the public, which had bestowed such 
 hearty approval upon their beautiful dreams, 
 shares their disappointment, and is saddened and 
 almost humiliated by their failure. It is easy 
 enough to see that the mistaken, misguided, and 
 misdirected benevolence of Madame Landrecy 
 and her friends, often favour sham repentance to 
 the detriment of honest industry, that electoral 
 ambition, and the rivalry of schools, parties, and 
 society mingle with charity and mar it, that it 
 gives the flirt her opportunity, that it calls into 
 existence an ugly class of hypocrites, the offi- 
 cials, the red-tapists of charity. We see these 
 " benefactors " much abashed by the suicide 
 which they could not hinder, crowding officiously 
 round the corpse and attempting sophistical 
 exculpations. Certainly these are some of the
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 199 
 
 sins of charity. Admit for the moment a pal- 
 pable absurdity, namely, that these sins counter- 
 balance and neutralise all the good that is done 
 in the world ; still there is Landrecy. His 
 invention was genuine, and his economic theory 
 that the workmen should share in the profits 
 was sound and reasonable. What evil had he 
 done ? None, but that he believed in the good- 
 ness and intelligence of the people, and that he 
 had been a little stiff and petulant with his obsti- 
 nate workmen, when he found out his mistake. 
 Then why involve him in his wife's disgrace and 
 oblige the young man to listen to a lecture, which 
 he has not deserved ? Simply because M. Brieux 
 is not content with attacking one problem, which 
 is too much for him, but must needs attack two, 
 the extinction of pauperism and the organization 
 of labour, nothing less than that ! It is too much 
 for one single evening, it would even be too 
 much for one single life. "What are we told about 
 charity ? That we ought to practise it, but that 
 it is very difficult indeed to practise it rightly ; 
 that charity does not consist in giving alms ; that 
 we must treat those whom we benefit as human
 
 200 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 beings, and " convey our benefit in friendly 
 words," &c. But Landrecy and his wife, and 
 all of us knew that after the first Act, and even 
 perhaps before a child of the male sex named 
 Eugene Brieux had been inscribed on the civil 
 registers. I can see clearly the moral that 
 egoism will deduce from this play, a nice, easy 
 moral complete abstention. And it will be a 
 pity, for goodness is worth much even when mis- 
 placed, and devotion, even when unenlightened ; 
 it is better, to quote M. Faguet's witty phrase, 
 to do good ill than to do ill well. 
 
 If the position maintained in Les Bienfaiteurs 
 is not clear enough, that of H Evasion is much 
 too clear. It is more than a satire it is a frantic 
 attack upon science. Pseudo science ? No, real 
 science, the science which we are accustomed to 
 respect, and ought to respect. In the first place, 
 it is a little unfair to personify science in a 
 doctor. Forced as he is by his profession to make 
 it an article of commerce, he is tempted to certain 
 compromises which diminish and degrade it. He 
 may be a great savant and at the same time a 
 great charlatan, and let us admit at once that
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 201 
 
 Dr. Bertry is both. But just as Catholics count 
 the Mass valid although the priest is unworthy, 
 science remains science in spite of the un- 
 worthiness of her representative. 
 
 There are many points on which M. Brieux 
 has failed to understand his great adversary. He 
 has made war upon her without completing his 
 equipment. If he had made a careful study 
 of the writings of Francis Galton, whose name 
 he quotes twice, he would recognise the fact of 
 regression, and he would know that selection 
 corrects heredity instead of intensifying it, 
 because it constantly tends to approximate to the 
 normal type. Nevertheless, speaking generally, 
 Dr. Bertry's theory of the transmission of in- 
 stincts is true, and it is a theory which conflicts 
 with the idea of freewill, upon which our society 
 is based, and which is indispensable to our creeds 
 and codes. It might indeed harmonize with the 
 Calvinist and Jansenist doctrine of grace, or even 
 be confused with it, but, I ought to add, that no 
 view could be more antagonistic to the tendencies 
 which prevail in France. M. Brieux relied on 
 this disposition on the part of his audience for
 
 202 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 his success, and lie was within his rights as a 
 dramatic author. But I begin to rub my eyes 
 when I see the Academy solemnly crowning 
 M. Brieux' play. What did it mean to reward ? 
 The play or the problem ? Certainly the play is 
 not good, but the problem is detestable. In any 
 case, its approval of M. Brieux' work put it in 
 the awkward position of appearing to challenge 
 its sister Academy of Sciences. Let the two 
 ancient dames decide as best they can the 
 standing quarrel between Fatalism and Liberty. 
 
 Literature has no part in M. Brieux' success. 
 The Greeks and Eomans can claim no share in 
 the formation of his very modern mind. He 
 clothes his thought in the first words that occur 
 to him, the language of everyday talk or of 
 journalism. He is no literary artist, and if he 
 tried to be, he would probably only succeed in 
 attaining the sort of eloquence which made M. 
 Ohnet's reputation. After all, as Labiche proved, 
 one can write excellent plays without a word of 
 literature. M. Brieux' wit is robust and gay. 
 Even when gloom and cruelty were in fashion he 
 could never quite succeed. This was a great
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 203 
 
 defect in Antoine's eyes, but, after all, it is a 
 quality in ordinary theatres. Of course, he has 
 been guilty of a few blunders. Now and again 
 a scene opening with a simple and lifelike situa- 
 tion, and up to a certain point skilfully worked 
 out, comes to an abrupt end, or loses itself in 
 dissertations and declamations, or turns round, 
 without rhyme or reason, and plunges into frantic 
 melodrama. But every day will see him more 
 master of his trade, and already he has few equals 
 in putting a story on the stage. I was tempted 
 to parody old Sylla's epigram, and to say that I 
 see several Sardous in this young man. But 
 then I went to see Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont. 
 It is a leap backwards, a return to the savage 
 and pessimist traditions of the Theatre Libre 
 to the play which is no play, only a procession of 
 characters; to the denouement which is no d^noue- 
 ment, but an angry confession of impotence. 
 There is no movement in the drama, it never 
 advances a single step. Of M. Dupont's three 
 daughters the saint will remain a saint without 
 faith, the courtesan will remain a courtesan 
 without love, the daughter unhappily married
 
 204 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 will remain unhappily married, and go on cursing 
 her husband, and proposing to deceive him. 
 There is no end to their trials, no cure for their 
 ills. It is a universal and absolute condemnation 
 of the existing social order. 
 
 Strange to say, at the very moment when 
 M. Brieux was giving us this ominous and 
 despairing fourth act of Les Trois Filles de M. 
 Dupont, he had just tacked on an optimist ending 
 to Blanchette, which seems much to the taste of 
 the public. Which side of M. Brieux will win : 
 the quick, energetic personality, the combative 
 nature that can only find solace and serenity in 
 the joy of fighting ; or the gloomy, disintegrating 
 melancholy of the decadent group, who try to 
 monopolise him ? I incline to the first hypo- 
 thesis. Whatever school may reign, and from 
 whatever quarter the wind may blow, every mind 
 follows its own bent and works with its own 
 gifts. These things are governed by the same 
 law that rules the changes of fashion. Though 
 skirts be long, have no fear for the woman with 
 a pretty foot; nor if fringes come down to the 
 nose, for her with a pretty forehead. Both will
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 205 
 
 find some way of displaying their natural advan- 
 tages, however much the fashion of the moment 
 may be against them. 
 
 Doubtless this is why M. Henri Lavedan's wit 
 has captivated a generation which is for ever 
 depreciating that quality and pretending to get 
 on very well without it. If I am not mistaken, 
 Henri Lavedan's maiden effort consisted of some 
 little society dialogues which appeared in La Vie 
 Parisienne, work of a kind, charming in itself but 
 not of yesterday, nor even of yesteryear, for are 
 not Theocritus' Syracusan Women and Lucian's 
 Dialogues of Courtesans delightful examples ? 
 "Without going so far back, one may mention the 
 success achieved thirty years ago by Henri 
 Meilhac's sketches. But there is a marked 
 difference in one respect between M. Lavedan 
 and his predecessor. Meilhac was the faithful, 
 ingenious, ironical, and much-amused delineator 
 of the gay world of Paris, which he loved, and 
 out of which he could not live. "With Henri 
 Lavedan it is more often guesswork than obser- 
 vation. He never plays with his model, either
 
 206 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 before or after the sitting, as some artists do; 
 indeed, has he any models ? Is he not one of 
 those writers who can construct a whole scene or 
 a character out of a chance phrase overheard in 
 passing ? In short, he has more invention, more 
 humour, and more of the unexpected about him, 
 he is more human and more profound than his 
 predecessor, and underlying the mockery, one 
 can feel in him more than in any other writer of 
 his time, emotion, goodness, tenderness, a great 
 respect for all that is pure, a great pity for all 
 that is weak. I think that, in spite of the 
 excessive freedom of his portraiture, he would 
 find friends in England. But how could one 
 translate that inimitable style, so delicate and 
 artistic in its disorder and disarray, with its 
 fantastic grammar and amazing slang, its abbre- 
 viations, its brusquerie, its almost imperceptible 
 suggestions breaking off into phrases, which 
 strike one dumb. Some smart fellow will doubt- 
 less presume to try. Even Tartarin has been 
 translated ! 
 
 M. Lavedan has not been so misguided as to 
 attempt to transfer any of those Tanagra-like
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 207 
 
 figures, half doll, half statuette, from the idyls of 
 the decadence, to which they belong, to the 
 stage where they would be almost invisible. In 
 his plays, proportion, relief, attitudes, everything 
 is regulated according to the old laws of thea- 
 trical optics. His style also becomes broader and 
 more emphatic. But there is the same psy- 
 chology, the same boldness in attack, and even 
 greater vividness. Le Prince d'Aurec had a 
 brilliant success, all the more brilliant because 
 it gave rise to burning controversies. The older 
 aristocracy complained bitterly of the libel, all 
 the more because it came from the son of one of 
 their most energetic defenders. As a matter of 
 fact, M. Henri Lavedan is the son of M. Ldon 
 Lavedan, whose proud, unbending character and 
 high-minded genius command universal respect. 
 But did the father's forty years' record of honour- 
 able devotion and political fidelity bind the son 
 to a cause, which has since passed out of the 
 region of facts to that of memories ? The ques- 
 tion is easy enough to answer, but to my mind 
 it ought not even to have been asked. I see in 
 Le Prince d'Aurec a friendly warning ; not a
 
 208 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 hostile gibe. What charge would an enemy 
 bring against the French noblesse ? That it clings 
 convulsively to its traditions. But M. Lavedan's 
 charge is just the opposite, that it forgets them. 
 
 The Prince d'Aurec is the modern gentleman 
 whose creed can be summed up in two words, to 
 be chic and to go the pace. Half-a-century ago 
 a man so placed and with similar tastes married 
 M. Poirier's daughter. That is what the prince's 
 father, the Due de Talais did. He took to wife 
 Mdlle. Piddoux, who had the glory of being 
 duchess at the price of a few millions and an 
 infinite deal of domestic humiliation. In her 
 old age and widowhood, and with a son who 
 promises to be worse than his father, she has 
 betaken herself to aristocratic snobbishness and 
 the veneration of parchments. And it is amus- 
 ing to hear a Pie*doux talking with enthusiastic 
 and devoted respect of traditions and ancestors, 
 whilst a d'Aurec makes merciless fun of every- 
 thing of the kind. "We laughed at the good lady 
 through two acts, all unconscious that we should 
 have to admire her at the denouement. 
 
 The Prince has an immense fund of wit
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. tog 
 
 because M. Lavedan has endowed him with his 
 own. One cannot help joining in his gibes at 
 the class and party to which he belongs, the 
 last remnants of the Gothic age, the few sur- 
 viving adherents of the throne and altar. But 
 he is not content with gibes ; he raises money 
 on his title deeds and heirlooms. A hundred 
 years ago on that famous night of the 4th 
 August, in which the d'Aurecs must have borne 
 their share, the French noblesse offered up their 
 privileges on the altar of their country ; he on 
 the contrary prefers to carry them to the pawn- 
 broker. He sells the sword of the Constable 
 d'Aurec as if it were an ordinary piece of bric-a- 
 brac ; he sells his friendship to a certain Jewish 
 Baron, who by advancing him considerable sums 
 has gradually become his master, and what is 
 more serious, the master of the princess, for 
 precisely similar reasons, since she also is in 
 his debt. 
 
 Why a Jew ? I do not think that M. Lavedan 
 intended for one moment to take part in the 
 odious and preposterous crusade that has been 
 waged these ten years back against the Israelitish
 
 2 1 o THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 element in Parisian society. De Horn represents 
 the power of money. Now money has neither 
 creed nor country, but it is an abstract power 
 which needs to be reinforced by a living passion, 
 and that passion needs to be given a human 
 countenance. The Jew immediately occurs to 
 the imagination, the Jew with his mysterious 
 psychology, his unchangeable type subsisting 
 through the ages, his deep undying ancestral 
 hatreds, which make him in this dawn of the 
 twentieth century the avenger of the tortures of 
 the twelfth and thirteenth. The Jew ever since 
 the days of Marlowe and Shakespeare has 
 haunted the artistic imagination. Shylock is an 
 obsession second only to Hamlet. To me Baron 
 de Horn seems merely a Shylock in lavender 
 kid gloves, concealing his rage under the cool 
 exterior of a gentleman, but a figure to strike 
 terror in the scene where he too comes to claim 
 the pound of human flesh, that has been offered 
 him as a pledge. The princess is his destined 
 prey, and her beauty is to pay his debt. There 
 is the wild beast's thirst, the slave's hope of 
 vengeance, but with it all a deeply-laid scheme
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 2 1 1 
 
 of policy. A d'Aurec the mistress of a de Horn, 
 the conjunction is symbolical of the prostitution 
 of one aristocracy to another ; it will fix both for 
 us and for those who come after us a really 
 critical and decisive moment in the history of 
 manners. The victims, alive to their danger, 
 struggle like wild things caught in a trap ; it is 
 a splendid and horrible spectacle, but it is all in 
 vain. They could never escape if the old duchess, 
 who, Pie*doux though she be, is the only member 
 of the family with the soul of a d'Aurec, had not 
 stripped herself so as to purchase the right to 
 rout the intruder. But it is only a stage denoue- 
 ment after all. De Horn keeps the Constable's 
 sword, that sword which is symbolical of warlike 
 courage and devotion to the common weal, the 
 old ideal of chivalry, the source of the greatness 
 and strength of the ancient noblesse. All is lost, 
 even honour. 
 
 M. Lavedan has combated the objections that 
 have been made in an odd little act, which 
 is scarcely more than a polemical article in 
 dialogue, and which he has called, following 
 Moliere, la Critique du Prince tfAurec. The
 
 2 1 2 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA . 
 
 sole charge to which he might perhaps plead 
 guilty, is that of not having indicated where, in 
 his opinion, lies the only hope for the restoration 
 of the ancient aristocracy. Instead of allying 
 itself with the fungous growths of the Bourse, 
 and begging for a share in the great financial 
 swindles of the day, let it gain new strength 
 from work, and let it seek less for the reward 
 that work brings, than for the virtues which it 
 fosters. That is the idea represented by M. 
 Lavedan in Les Deux Noblesses. The action of 
 the second play is placed forty years later than 
 that of the first. For an almost new-born child 
 must be given time to grow to manhood, and to 
 have, in his turn, a grown-up son. Consequently 
 Le Prince d'Aurec, which seemed to us to cor- 
 respond so closely to the social symptoms of 1890 
 that it might well have been called Le Fils du 
 Gendre de M. Poirier, must be relegated to a 
 remote past, where it will very likely seem an 
 anachronism. We are the more disconcerted 
 because the play that is assigned to our own 
 days seems much older, both in idea and in 
 its selection of characters. The Marquis de
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. ^ 1 3 
 
 Touringe is another Marquis de la Seigli^re ; 
 we have gone back to the days when a nobleman 
 of ancient family found it a hard task, and a 
 sacrifice of caste, to marry a roturier's daughter. 
 We might get over that first shock, if the funda- 
 mental idea of the play afforded firm standing 
 ground. But it does no such thing. The son 
 of that Prince d'Aurec, who scandalised us and 
 amused us so greatly, has been brought up in 
 America, and has voluntarily abjured both his 
 name and title. He is M. Eoche " the French 
 petroleum king," and he is so well satisfied with 
 the change, and so set on remaining one of the 
 people, that he conceals the secret of his birth 
 from his own son, and this when a revelation 
 would remove every obstacle to a marriage which 
 the young man ardently desires. An enemy 
 accepts the task of making the disclosure, but 
 with a result that contradicts all his hopes. For 
 the workmen, who were just about to strike, 
 change their minds at once. They are gratified 
 by their master's rank, and shout at the top of 
 their voices, " Yive le Prince d'Aurec ! " Those 
 workmen are not far wrong, and seem to enter
 
 2 1 4 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 into M. Lavedan's idea of the rehabilitation of 
 the old noblesse by work, much more than the 
 hero of the play or the daughter of the Marquis, 
 who, when she enters her new family circle, 
 declares that she wishes to bear the plebeian 
 name of Madame Henri Eoche. But that is no 
 rehabilitation, it is an abdication. The chain of 
 tradition is broken, shattered for ever. The 
 Eoches may win a place by their merits in the 
 first rank of the new society, but the d'Aurecs 
 are no more. There will always be an aristo- 
 cracy, that is to say a ruling class, but there will 
 be no more noblesse, that is to say an exclusive or 
 semi-exclusive caste, handing on from generation 
 to generation a certain ideal of honour and 
 devotion, a body of unchangeable rights and 
 duties. M. Lavedan's play if plays have any 
 influence on social evolution could only teach 
 the old aristocracy one lesson, how to die nobly. 
 But they could not if they would. A class 
 cannot take refuge in suicide ; it is not given to 
 it, as to an individual, to die at a stroke. 
 Neither the night of the 4th of August, nor 
 the law of 1848, which abolished titles, put an
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 215 
 
 end to the existence of the noblesse. It cannot 
 escape the ignominy of gradual atrophy and 
 progressive degradation. Democratic snobbish- 
 ness even now offers it a last chance. It will 
 live from hand to mouth as it did during the 
 days of the emigration, when one of its members 
 made a livelihood out of his superior skill in 
 mixing salads. It will give lessons in deport- * 
 ment to banker barons and political parvenus. 
 It will polish them up, and they will keep it 
 from starvation. So much for its future. 
 
 Les Deux Noblesses had another defect over 
 and above the weakness of its plot; only at 
 rare intervals was there any suggestion of the 
 author's charming and fantastic humour. It 
 was the fault of the subject. But we get M. 
 Lavedan back again in Viveurs, one of the great 
 successes of the theatrical season of 1895-6. As 
 we passed from the fitting-rooms of a great 
 couturier to the big supper-room of a restaurant, 
 we were introduced to the gay world, not the 
 professionals they are bored and gloomy enough 
 but the mad crowd of pleasure-seekers, those 
 who work by day and live by night, a strange
 
 2i 6 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 crowd, where the feminine element is represented 
 by young girls partly compromised, and married 
 women who have no more reputation to lose. 
 Half frightened, half amused, we looked on at 
 the giddy farandole led by Bejane with inimit- 
 able brio. In the second act she jumped over a 
 table to get back to her lover. All through the 
 piece she jumped over all our old ideas of 
 decorum and bourgeois morals. But at the end 
 she owned herself conquered, she confessed her- 
 self guilty, and the skill of the actress, aided by 
 that of the author, made this highly artificial 
 conversion both touching and convincing. For 
 all that it was a mere trick, and I think that M. 
 Lavedan is called to higher things. Who knows 
 whether it will not rest with him to put honest 
 folk on the stage again ? * 
 
 * Catherine, which was played so successfully at the Theatre 
 Francois in February last, has fully justified these anticipations. 
 At the same moment Le Nouveau Jeu, which has been running 
 over a hundred consecutive nights at the Varietes, showed that 
 Lavedan was a greater master than ever in the art of lifelike 
 portraiture, and had lost none of his knowledge of the ways and 
 humours of the gay world.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE NEW COMEDY (continue^). 
 
 THE most striking and original amongst the 
 younger men who have come to light during the 
 last five or six years, the two who sound a really 
 new note in dramatic literature, are Paul Hervieu 
 and Maurice Donnay, and I do not think that 
 any critic with a love of antithesis has ever 
 lighted on a contrast more strongly marked. 
 Hervieu and Donnay are as absolutely opposed 
 as will and temperament; laborious effort and 
 improvisation ; shadow and light ; winter and 
 summer; north and south; hatred and love of 
 life. Both look on at the same world, but the 
 one with the eyes of a Stoic, the other of an 
 Epicurean. In that eternal question of marriage, 
 adultery, divorce, from which neither our stage 
 nor our society can escape ; in that duel between 
 the sexes which, in our days, has become so
 
 zi 8 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 strongly accentuated, Hervieu is the declared 
 defender of the rights of the woman, Donnay the 
 crafty advocate of the failings and passions of the 
 man. To put the matter in a nutshell, I think 
 that the law has seldom been better attacked than 
 by the first, or love better defended than by the 
 second. 
 
 A few years ago I met M. Paul Hervieu in a 
 newspaper office. I remember a pale, interesting, 
 finely-cut face, suggesting the idea of nervous 
 energy in repose, grave, almost melancholy eyes, 
 no shadow of a smile, no suspicion of a gesture, 
 an even, colourless, indifferent voice, nothing 
 affected or irritating, but an evident determina- 
 tion to keep himself to himself, and not to wear 
 his heart upon his sleeve. This was before M. 
 Hervieu' s first success, when his name was 
 scarcely known to anyone except brethren of the 
 trade. An eminent artiste, who holds a high 
 place in Parisian society, was, if I am not 
 mistaken, one of the first to understand him, and 
 to introduce him. His novel, Flirt, was much 
 read. It was such an attractive title, and the 
 book did more than justify the promise of the
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 219 
 
 title. I remember that it pleased women of the 
 world because it was so delicate in form, and said 
 very audacious things very prettily. Moreover, 
 it was lighted, up here and there by those touches 
 of mischief which they like, without ever falling 
 into that coarser mirth which they detest. This 
 veiled gaiety disappeared in the succeeding 
 novels. J confess that I was very much bored 
 by these, and that I understood very little of 
 them. M. Hervieu seemed to me to be develop- 
 ing a dismal preciosity. His efforts to evolve a 
 style were scarcely happy ; moreover, what is 
 the use of torturing words, trampling on old 
 phrases, and disturbing our minds in a hundred 
 ways, if, after all, the idea that one is trying fala 
 convey remains formless and vague ? Wist is, 
 the Sphinx without its enigma ? I was just 
 admitting that M. Hervieu had struck a bad vein 
 and was in great danger of deserving the praise 
 of idiots, when his dramatic successes filled me 
 with surprise and delight. His three plays one 
 played at the Vaudeville, two represented at the 
 Fran9ais lifted him at once to the first rank, 
 and showed the world that he was master of a
 
 220 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 dramatic manner, as clear, as outspoken, as easy 
 to define, as his style in fiction was subtle, 
 tortuous, and disconcerting. 
 
 Les Paroles Restent was M. Paul Hervieu's 
 first appearance on the stage. This is the plot : 
 the Marquis de Nohan, a soldier and a man of 
 the world, has met, in the East, Mdlle. Eegine 
 de Yesles, the daughter of a diplomatist. Misled 
 by certain appearances, he believed this young 
 girl to be engaged in a guilty intrigue. He told 
 the story under the seal of most intimate 
 confidence to a woman whom he loved, and 
 she circulated it throughout Parisian society. 
 Kegine's reputation was gone. She remained in 
 ii'gixarance of the fact, but the man, who was the 
 Gfcaise of the evil, both knew it and deplored it. 
 Not only did he break off all relations with the 
 wretched woman who had let out the secret, but 
 he fell deeply in love with his victim. To com- 
 plete his remorse, he learns that the circumstances 
 which deceived him admit of quite a natural 
 explanation, and that Eegine, for all the freedom 
 of her manners, is purity itself. There is only 
 one way of repairing his fault, and giving the lie
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 221 
 
 to the reports which he has set on foot. It con- 
 sists in marrying the woman whom he has 
 calumniated. Therefore he decides to tell her his 
 love, but at the same time to confess his fault. 
 These two confessions, the first so easy if only it 
 had not to be followed by the cruel second, make 
 up a very touching scene, although it is spoilt in 
 some parts by the mannerism, the laboured 
 subtlety of expression, all too frequent in M. 
 Hervieu's novels. The Marquis de Nohan, who, 
 as I have just said, has the two confessions to 
 make, wants Engine de Yesles to decide which 
 ought to come first, just as in the Chamber 
 members dispute the Order of the day. "Suppose 
 that a man is in a situation like this with a girl 
 whom he loves," then simplifying the case and 
 coming nearer to the truth " suppose that I am 
 that man." In his mortal trouble, in his strange 
 desire to be both understood and not understood, 
 he stammers out some ridiculous, scarcely intel- 
 ligible phrases. "Don't you think that a woman's 
 unhappiness can only come from one single thing 
 from a person ? " When Kegine, half stifled 
 by emotion, cries out, "My friend, my friend,
 
 222 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 you hurt me!" then corrects herself "No, 
 that is only a way of speaking because there are 
 no words to express that one feels something 
 better than good," I feel a great desire to burst 
 out laughing, both at the expression which is so 
 awkward, and at the idea which is so ambiguous, 
 so twisted, so artificial. But I remember the 
 curious perversity of the human heart, which 
 never says frankly all that it means ; instead of 
 the simple and direct, it prefers the oblique, the 
 complex. That is what made the fortune of Eu- 
 phuism and Marivaudage. Moreover, the situation 
 here is so embarrassed that the style can hardly 
 fail to feel the effects. At length the truth is 
 out, and the scene, as M. Hervieu has written it, 
 ends pretty much as might have been expected. 
 Begine de Vesles does not accept the reparation 
 which is offered her. It is precisely because she 
 loves her calumniator that she suffers retrospec- 
 tively in her pride and in her love. In the first 
 moment of passion she adopts as her champion 
 an enigmatical personage, whose character and 
 sentiments are never explained to us. There is 
 a provocation given and a duel; de Nohan is
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 223 
 
 dangerously wounded. His danger brings Begine 
 to his side, forgiving all. He will be cured, 
 doubtless, and they will be happy. No, for the 
 world has not said its last word. As the pro- 
 verb says, *' Les paroles restent." The infamous 
 story is repeated once again in public. De 
 Nohan hears it, and the shock costs him his life. 
 This denouement belongs to the purest melo- 
 drama. M. Hervieu, in Les Paroles Restent L , has 
 borrowed a few weapons from the inexhaustible 
 arsenal of Scribe and his followers. The duel, 
 the will which serves to exhibit the beautiful 
 sentiments of the hero and heroine we know all 
 that, and we have made up our minds that we 
 want no more of it. The author has also been 
 reproached for letting so many characters hover 
 about in the background, just as Dumas did, a 
 method hurtful to unity, by which I mean the 
 only true and necessary unity, unity of impression. 
 But M. Hervieu might have replied that these 
 secondary characters are only the Hydra's heads, 
 the fragments of that formidable and mysterious 
 entity, which delights to devour reputations and 
 shirks all responsibility. Don't try and banish
 
 224 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA, 
 
 these people from the piece, for they play a much 
 more important part in it than the pale figure of 
 de Nohan. 
 
 M. Hervieu did better than answer. Three 
 years later, in Les Tenailles, he gave us a play 
 exempt from these faults. Not only does it show 
 a considerable advance on the last play, but it 
 seems to improve as it goes on. At the beginning 
 there are a few tortuous, subtle sentences; in 
 the final act all is bitter, concentrated, poignant. 
 Irene Fergan has been married for ten years to a 
 man whom she does not love. Why does she cherish 
 a grudge against him ? Just because he has not 
 known how to make himself loved. She is told 
 that she will love him when she is married. " It 
 was not I who was married ten years ago, it was 
 the other woman that I was then." But she does 
 not tell us all. She loves Michel Davernier, the 
 celebrated traveller, who, on his side, cherishes a 
 great heroic passion for her. Will she yield to 
 him like so many other women, who take a lover 
 and preserve the outward appearance of virtue ? 
 Will she lie, deceive, smile in the face of the man 
 whom she detests ? No, rather a thousand times
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 225 
 
 divorce. She goes straight to her husband and 
 tells him of her resolution. But Robert Fergan 
 does not see the matter at all in the same light, 
 neither does the law. He explains to her with 
 his calm and cruel irony that you cannot go and 
 say to the judges, "This man and I thought we 
 loved one another. We made a mistake. We 
 desire to be set free." What grievance will she 
 allege ? adultery, ill-usage, serious insult ? 
 Nothing of the sort exists, and consequently it 
 cannot be proved. Moreover, there must be a 
 motive. "Well," cries Irene, "we will invent 
 one." That, I think, is what the English law 
 calls " collusion." Our law, less far-sighted and 
 less strict, leaves the door open to these little 1 
 conspiracies. But in such a case the husband 
 must be the accomplice to the wife. Now Robert 
 Fergan had no intention of getting a divorce. 
 " And if I run away ?" "I will have you brought 
 back by the gendarmes." " And if I disgrace 
 your name?" "I will keep you all the same." 
 Thus, according to the French law, which 
 regulates marriage and divorce, the wife is the 
 prisoner of the husband, and must remain such at 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 her jailor's good pleasure. That is the first 
 situation, the first striking moment of the play. 
 This is the second. Ten years have elapsed. 
 The victim has apparently become resigned, and 
 the husband and wife seem to have lived together 
 on fairly good terms, away from the world, in a 
 lonely country place, where M. Fergan has 
 chosen to shut up his wife. A child has been 
 born, little Rene, and it is on his account that 
 the struggle begins again. The father has decided 
 to send him to school ; the mother means to keep 
 him at home. Every argument has been ex- 
 hausted on both sides, and it rests with M. 
 Fergan to insist on getting his own way. " He 
 belongs to me, his father." " You are not his 
 father," and she confesses that on one occasion, 
 maddened by her galling chains, she had put 
 aside all generous scruples and had yielded to the 
 man she loved. The child is hers, hers only. 
 But here Fergan remembers the law, which puts 
 the child into his hands. What is he thinking 
 of? some cowardly vengeance ? She cries shame 
 upon him. Can a civilised man make a victim of 
 a child, appease his wounded pride by sacrificing
 
 THE NEW COMEDT. 
 
 227 
 
 a weak, helpless creature who, for ten years, he 
 has thought to be his own flesh and blood ? At 
 that moment little Kene* crosses the stage, and 
 the mere sight of him decides the question. 
 
 FERGAN. You are right. I cannot harm him. It will be 
 enough if I teach myself not to love him. (decisively) You 
 will take him away. You will start at once with him. 
 
 IRENE. I will not start. 
 
 FERGAN. What? 
 
 IRENE. I will not consent to be thrust out of doors. For 
 rny son's sake I will sacrifice nothing of his regular position, 
 of the consideration attaching to his legal birth. 
 
 FERGAN. Then I shall force you. 
 
 IRENE. No. 
 
 FERGAN. The divorce that you were so anxious for, I now 
 wish for and demand. 
 
 IRENE. I no longer accept it. My youth is past ; my 
 hopes are dead ; my woman's future is at an end. I refuse 
 to change the whole course of my life. I wish for nothing 
 more than to remain to the end where I am as I am. 
 
 FERGAN. You want me to put up with you ? 
 
 IRENE. You must ! You have nothing against me but my 
 own confession. 
 
 However he revolts, he still protests. What, 
 a whole life together face to face, always, always ? 
 What sort of existence will he lead ? And she 
 answers, "The same that I have led for ten
 
 228 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 years." u But," lie cries, "you are guilty and 
 I am innocent." "No, we are only two miser- 
 able people, and misery knows none but equals." 
 La Loi de VHomme, played during the winter of 
 1897 at the Come'die Fra^aise, has much affinity 
 with Les Tenailles. The same concentration, the 
 same severity of style, the same contempt of petty 
 devices. Like Les Tenailles, La Loi de VHomme 
 is a violent attack upon the law with regard to 
 marriage and divorce. Like Les Tenailles^ La 
 Loi de VHomme consists of two situations, which 
 are opposed, or, to speak more exactly, of one 
 and the same situation reversed. In the first act 
 the wife is at the mercy of the husband ; in the 
 third the husband must surrender to the wife. 
 Only the first of these two plays gave the mind 
 the same kind of satisfaction which arises from a 
 neat proposition followed by its contrary, or from 
 a well-worked out algebraical equation. The same 
 law furnished the key with which the former 
 prisoner locked up her jailor. In the new play, 
 the law, as conceived and framed by men, the 
 same law which furnished Irene Fergan, the 
 adulteress, with so excellent a retort, can do
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 229 
 
 nothing to give freedom to Laure de Baguais, 
 who is an honest woman. Deceived by her 
 husband, she has discovered in his writing-desk 
 some conclusive letters, and she learns from the 
 very lips of the representative of authority that 
 these letters can do nothing for her. She wants 
 to have the lovers surprised, but she shrinks 
 back from the stupid and ignoble formalities with 
 which the law has surrounded the proof of le 
 flagrant delit when it is a question of masculine 
 infidelity. Consequently, she must content her- 
 self with an amicable separation. She will have 
 the shame of remaining the wife of an adulterer, 
 and the grief of feeling that he has a share in her 
 daughter. As for him, he will keep his mistress. 
 The years pass. Little Isabelle de Raguais 
 has grown up. She in her turn loves and is 
 loved. Andre* d'Orcien would be worthy of her, 
 but his mother is the mistress of M. de Raguais. 
 Imagine the disgust, the supreme revolt of the 
 poor mother, who seems to see her daughter torn 
 away from her and given to the woman who has 
 already robbed her of her husband. Will she 
 consent to one of those hideous compromises
 
 2 3 o THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 which oblige the victim and the executioner to 
 live side by side in the same family ? Impossible. 
 Here, again, M. de Eaguais has an ally in the 
 law, always the law of man ! He can virtually 
 ignore his wife's wishes and disregard her veto. 
 But M. d'Orcien and his son, Andre*, are men of 
 honour and men of heart, and the idea of forcing 
 themselves into a family, or of a daughter 
 marrying against her mother's wishes, is alien 
 to their private code. M. d'Orcien insists on 
 seeing Madame de Eaguais in the presence of his 
 own wife and of M. de Eaguais. He must have 
 a free consent, or a refusal with reasons given. 
 Here is Madame de Eaguais' opportunity for 
 vengeance ; she will tell the truth to the injured 
 husband, and force a confession from the guilty 
 pair. 
 
 Is she right, or is she wrong ? That question 
 was discussed over the sweetmeats at all the five 
 o'clock teas of Paris, which gave me occasion to 
 remark that the esprit de corps, formerly so 
 powerful among women, is a thing of the past. 
 Some threw Laure de Eaguais overboard out of 
 cowardice, to please the lord and master, to
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 231 
 
 whom they had decided to show indulgence at 
 all costs. Others, on the contrary, abandoned 
 her in the name of the maternal affection which 
 Laure sacrificed to her vengeance ; and others, 
 because they were wily birds, full of resource 
 and armed at all points for the struggle, so that 
 with or without the law of man they had a 
 thousand ways of slipping off the yoke under 
 which Paul Hervieu's heroine succumbed. There 
 are blundering, stupid women, and Madame de 
 Eaguais was one of them ; she did not know 
 how to make herself loved ; she did not know 
 how to make herself obeyed. She had nothing 
 on her side, as she said herself, but her " tears 
 and her claws." She made use of them ; she did 
 well. "Why pardon the guilty, who remain un- 
 repentant in their crimes ? 
 
 But I come back to the play. The situation 
 is now in the hands of M. d'Orcien, who in a few 
 seconds, and under our very eyes, has to pass 
 through all the phases of an evolution which 
 would require long hours, weeks, months, per- 
 haps years. But this concentration of psycho- 
 logical development is the distinctive, permanent,
 
 232 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 and inevitable condition of the stage. Call it a 
 convention, if you will; but it is a convention 
 which is the very life of tragedy. Consequently, 
 M. d'Orcien, though he gives way at first to an 
 alarming outburst of anger, grows calmer when 
 he thinks of his son, the only being whom he can 
 still love. In the name of Andre* and Isabelle, 
 those two innocent creatures whose hearts and 
 lives would be broken by an exposure, he pro- 
 poses, or rather he insists, since he has the 
 right to insist, that there shall be silence, peace, 
 oblivion. Clearly there can be no question here 
 of drinking champagne and forming one single 
 household, as at the end of La Serenade. If M. 
 Hervieu had dreamed of anything so brutal, I 
 should never have forgiven him, and I should 
 never have forgiven myself for taking his play 
 seriously. But nothing of the sort happens. The 
 great world, like the world of diplomacy, knows 
 how to bring about reconciliations which are not 
 intimacies, and if some silences are base, others 
 are heroic. 
 
 I will not allo^ that La Loi de VHomme is 
 much inferior to Les Tenailles. I am infinitely
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 233 
 
 more interested in Laure de Eaguais, who is only 
 a silly woman, than in Irene Fergan, who is a 
 very decided minx. The solution of La, Loi de 
 VHomme is much less neat than that of Les Ten- 
 ailles, but it is more human ; and for my part I 
 should be disposed to like the piece just because 
 of that denouement which has been so much 
 criticised. But M. Hervieu does not care to 
 have his pieces liked. They make no attempt to 
 win sympathy, indeed, they rather repel it. They 
 plunge us into lamentable situations, yet we do 
 not shed a single tear. The writers of an older 
 generation observed, M. Hervieu experiments. 
 What do I mean by experimenting? I mean 
 observation in specially chosen conditions pre- 
 pared beforehand isolation, so to speak, of the 
 psychological phenomenon from the thousand 
 circumstances which might obstruct it, or falsify 
 it, or complicate it. So he imitates the physicist, 
 who studies the fall of bodies in a void so as to 
 arrive at the true laws of gravity and attraction ; 
 or the naturalist, who binds up the muscle in a 
 rabbit so as to observe the separate action either 
 of the motor apparatus or the apparatus of sensi-
 
 234 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 bility. That is to say, he practises abstraction, 
 or science, no longer as a matter of reasoning, but 
 as a matter of practice. 
 
 M". Hervieu thereby condemns himself to loss 
 of imagination and of wit. He deprives himself 
 of the aid of rhetoric and of poetry. Psychology 
 itself gives him nothing but a starting point, it- 
 does not give him characters. The secondary 
 figures are nothing but shadows, and as to those 
 which move in the foreground, they have only 
 one sentiment and one attitude. Apart from 
 their position as husband and wife, they are 
 anything you like. They can only be realised by 
 an effort like that required to conceive points 
 without dimensions, surfaces without thickness, 
 or bodies without weight. It is a hard, uncom- 
 promising kind of art, born of weariness and 
 giving birth to it. M. Hervieu goes straight on, 
 dragging us behind him ; he never stops to 
 gather a flower by the way. He will neither 
 accept nor seek for those happy turns of expres- 
 sion which made Dumas and Augier such 
 delightful companions. No ; he seems to despise 
 anything like naturalness in dialogue, although,
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 235 
 
 after all, there is nothing wrong in it. However 
 poor, limited, stiff, his vocabulary may be, he insists 
 on making it poorer, stiffer, more contracted he 
 positively revels in it. In spite of the force of 
 his ideas, and the soundness of his thesis, will 
 the public ever be on familiar terms with these 
 gloomy plays, this anatomy of the drama ? 
 Certainly a biological experiment has an interest 
 of its own, but to feel pleasure one must be 
 presented with life itself. Now this is exactly 
 what M. Maurice Donnay has once or twice 
 succeeded in presenting. 
 
 The first actors at his disposal were some 
 Chinese shadow dancers at the Chat Noir. 
 These artistes, cut out in tin, had a definite 
 influence on M. Donnay's dramatic career. 
 They accustomed him to dare and say anything. 
 At the Chat ISToir he had a show represented 
 called Ailleurs, which did not spare our public 
 men or our institutions, and also a little archaic 
 burlesque, Phryne, which was played in Feb- 
 ruary, 1891, but was not printed until 1894, 
 with a dedication to feu Patin. Patin, good 
 honest man, was in his time a Professor at the
 
 236 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Sorbonne, Perpetual Secretary to the Academic 
 Francaise, and the author of the Tragiques Grecs. 
 "Would he have accepted this enfant terrible, who 
 claimed him as a parent this rather unex- 
 pected and compromising pupil, who descended 
 upon him from Montmartre ? He is now in a 
 world which I have every reason to believe a 
 better world, since it is impossible to imagine 
 a worse one than this. Consequently, the answer 
 to the question belongs exclusively to the 
 domain of table-rapping and automatic letter 
 writing. But I am inclined to think that if 
 he had read Phryne, the few hairs that he had 
 when I knew him would have stood straight 
 up on his bald and polished yellow pate. 
 
 M. Donnay kept to the same vein in writing 
 Lysistrata, which is a very free adaptation of the 
 Ecclesiasousai and the Eirene of Aristophanes. 
 This time, instead of a luminous circle on a 
 piece of white calico, M. Donnay could disport 
 himself on the vast stage of the Vaudevilk, and, 
 in place of punched-out silhouettes, it was in- 
 terpreted by beautiful girls, beautifully dressed. 
 The transparency of the muslin would of itself
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 237 
 
 have attracted the crowd; but M. Donnay added 
 words worse than muslin. His work was like 
 the musical burlesques of forty years ago, Orphee 
 aux Enfers, Li Belle Helene, or the burlesques 
 of Burnand and Byron, in so far as it put very 
 modern sentiments into the mouths of antique 
 characters. "When the sentimental courtesan 
 prefaces her false confidences by the words, 
 "Daughter of a superior officer," . . . or when 
 we see the snobs of Athens having their linen 
 washed at Corinth, just as Bourget's Parisians 
 send theirs to London, we have in an accentuated 
 degree the vulgar kind of comedy that gives you 
 Plato hailing an omnibus for the Gates of Hell, 
 or Jupiter calling out to Ixion, whose palace is 
 on fire, "Are you insured?" But Lysistrata 
 differs from these ancient farces in not being a 
 parody. It is no attack upon heroic literature 
 or heroic art. It contents itself with grafting 
 Parisian Hague upon the Hague of Athens, and, 
 after all, the two are not so very different. The 
 author gets his effects not from the disparity, 
 but from the similarity of manners and senti- 
 ments, which is no impossibility. . Moreover,
 
 238 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 here and there he has given the piece a poetical 
 colouring, just as Aristophanes did, a feat which 
 would have heen as difficult for Cremieux and 
 Halevy as for Byron and Burnand. No nation 
 ever equalled the Greeks in the art of describing 
 young, elegant, smiling depravity and adorning 
 sensuality with a thousand graces. That im- 
 moral, delightful form of art we once possessed 
 and then lost. M. Donnay learnt it from the 
 Greeks by the aid of Patin, and has restored 
 it to us again. 
 
 The young author completed his course of 
 irony at the Chat Noir. At the same time, like 
 all the Frenchmen of his age, he must have 
 noted the movement of the Theatre Libre, 
 although he does not seem to have written any 
 play for M. Antoine. Without committing 
 himself to any system or counter system, he 
 picked up by the way certain ideas which 
 accorded with his kind of wit. For example, 
 that life is a sort of mystification. We live for 
 the most part in full comedy; now and again 
 we rise to serious drama; then we relapse into 
 comedy, or, at least, to the realm of terre-d-terre,
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 239 
 
 everyday material, mechanical existence, where 
 every sky is dull and grey. His three modern 
 plays, Pension de Famille, Amants, and La 
 Douloureuse, follow this type, and unfold their 
 action in the order which I have just indicated. 
 But when the authors of M. Antoine's school 
 tried to prove to him that the best play is a play 
 that is no play, he did not believe a word of it, 
 and reserved to himself the right of being clever 
 when he found an opportunity. He was no less 
 incredulous when he was told that wit is an 
 element fatal to comedy, for he had a good store 
 of that kind of merchandise, and he had every 
 intention of placing it on the market. Above 
 all, he saw quite clearly that the cardinal error 
 of the Theatre Libre was that of placing sensual 
 love on the stage just at the moment when it 
 was degenerating into a morbid habit, the disease 
 of love, which Stendhal omitted, or, rather, 
 which he justifiably eliminated, from his formal 
 classification. But before it descends to that 
 degenerate level, has it not had its glorious 
 hour of freshness, its springtide of blossom, its 
 share of what we call in France " la beaute du
 
 2fo THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 (liable"? Immoral, if you please; but pleasant 
 to the eyes for all but Puritans. Will not such 
 a strain command a hearing ? The innumerable 
 editions of Pierre Loti answer in the affirmative. 
 This kind of sensualism Loti has depicted with 
 as profound and serious a conviction as if it 
 were a religion, with a wonderful art, breathing 
 all the poetry that is in us and around us, an 
 art that is almost innocent in its ardour and 
 simplicity. Imagine Loti, a child of the Boule- 
 vards, and making his debut at the Chat Noir ; 
 take away his painter's palette, and give him 
 in its place the humour of Gavroche, and you 
 will have something very like Maurice Donnay. 
 
 He had only risen to half his proper stature 
 in Pension de Famille. The scene was laid in 
 one of those cosmopolitan hotels on the Eiviera, 
 the characters were men and women in search of 
 adventure, drawn hither from all parts of the 
 world in the hope of stimulating their worn-out 
 nerves by some new freak of fancy. The events 
 were merely some trifling incidents of the table 
 tfhote. Then in the midst of this atmosphere, 
 which gradually becomes charged with amorous
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 241 
 
 electricity, there is a sudden explosion, but after 
 all no one is wounded, the scandal miscarries, 
 the revolver misses fire. But whether it is that 
 M. Donnay presumed too much on his skill in 
 handling so many threads at once, or whether 
 the public is weary of these series of types 
 and combinations of petty intrigues, Pension de 
 Famitte did not have a very long run. To make 
 up for it, Amanis filled the bills for a long time 
 at the Eenaissance, and I know that whenever 
 one mentions this play to a Parisian, his eyes 
 light up with the memory of a vivid, delicious 
 sensation. Each generation has one book which 
 it cherishes tenderly, one play dear above all 
 others, in which the reader, or the spectator, 
 identifies himself with the hero, one work which 
 for ten or fifteen years fixes the language of love. 
 To be young and to discover it, is to be thrown 
 into a fever, and to see it again is to experience 
 a softening of the heart and a gentle melancholy. 
 When at last it gives place to new successes, one 
 feels inclined to say with Miirger's lover, " 
 ma jeunesse c'est vous que 1'on enterre!" I 
 think that Amants will be that play, for all who 
 
 R
 
 242 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 had reached the age of love when it was played, 
 for the lovers on their promotion in 1895. But 
 that number is swelled by so many precocious 
 boys and belated elders. 
 
 I said something about the milieu of the play, 
 when I was speaking of Jeanne Granier. She 
 played the principal part with Lucien Guitry, 
 who is not unknown in London. When the 
 curtain rises on Claudine Eozay's drawing-room, 
 the representation of " Guignol " has just come 
 to an end. The children and their mammas are 
 delighted, the mammas very elegant, the children 
 dressed in a pronounced English style and under 
 the care of a " Miss " and a " Fraulein," whose 
 efforts to keep them in check are wonderfully 
 ineffective. There is respectability in the air 
 respectability of a rather artificial and superficial 
 kind. As if to put us off the scent the Prefect 
 of Police is in the drawing-room as an invited 
 guest. However, we begin to sniff a somewhat 
 doubtful odour. "We understand by certain 
 phrases that these women are not married, that 
 these children are not children like our own, 
 and that the Prefect has come to amuse himself.
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 243 
 
 In fact, this is the demi-monde, the world of 
 sham menages, temporary fidelity, and, virtue for 
 a season. To give us a picture of these femmes 
 entretenues, struggling to live like excellent 
 bourgeoises is in itself piquant, it becomes still 
 more piquant when we turn to society nowadays 
 and see a crowd of silly excitable women, whose 
 longing for Bohemianism leads them into a 
 hundred follies. 
 
 Here M. Donnay has employed the same 
 device used by Arthur Pinero in that master- 
 piece of the present English stage, The Second 
 Mrs. Tanqueray. Just as Paula is more or less 
 repeated and parodied by Lady Orreyd, who 
 represents the absurdities and vulgarities of 
 the married courtesan, the supernumeraries in 
 Amants are left to bring out clearly the practical, 
 domesticated courtesan, the courtisane popote, 
 who knows how to look after her tradesmen, 
 keep her accounts, and educate her children. 
 We feel that for all Claudine's greater delicacy 
 of mind, she sees life after all, just as these 
 women see it. Hidden away in the bottom of 
 her heart there is something of the man of busi-
 
 244 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 ness. Like all Parisian women she is a born 
 arithmetician, and with it all she is kind, she 
 would not make any one suffer ; she adores her 
 child, and she cherishes an attachment for its 
 father, which is the result of habit, gratitude, 
 sympathy, and I shall add respect, if the word 
 may be forgiven. Yes, but she can love, and 
 although she knows very well what that leads 
 to, she has not the strength to turn her back 
 upon it, or to be vexed, when she hears the first 
 notes of the music. From the very beginning, 
 although she makes a show of resistance for 
 form's sake, we know that she will not repulse 
 Vethenil. One wonders what will happen. Will 
 they be denounced, will they be surprised? 
 Doubtless there will be another woman, jealousy, 
 a duel, someone will kill someone else, perhaps 
 every one will die. You are quite mistaken: 
 they will not be denounced ; they will not be 
 surprised ; they will be jealous, but as usual, 
 jealous for no reason at all, or for absurd reasons 
 which can only end in those thousand little no- 
 things that make up the history of love. Nothing 
 will happen, and no one will die. Someone will
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 245 
 
 marry someone else, but it will not be Vethenil 
 who marries Claudine. 
 
 The whole play is nothing but the history of 
 a liaison, the evolution of love. First act : they 
 meet ; they like each other ; they flirt ; they 
 discuss the love which the one does not wish to 
 feel, and the other feels already. Second act : 
 they are in love; they talk nonsense; they 
 quarrel and make it up again. Third act : they 
 are still in love ; they break with one another ; 
 they suffer ; they come together again. Fourth 
 act : their love is stronger and deeper, yet they 
 separate with a great rending of hearts, which is 
 in itself supreme happiness. Yerily this fourth 
 act is dangerous to see and hear; it is the 
 paroxysm, the acute crisis, the heroic moment 
 when any sacrifice, any madness seems possible. 
 Claudine, for all her prudence, is ready to forget 
 everything rest, future, fortune, even her child. 
 Those passionate farewells, this solitude, this 
 Italian night, this nature made for love is all too 
 much for nerves strung to breaking point. The 
 man is wiser, perhaps because a suspicion of
 
 246 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 melancholy satiety is already to be felt in his 
 wisdom. What separates them finally ? A coup 
 de theatre ? lSTo, simply the coachman, " If 
 monsieur does not wish to miss the train, he has 
 only just time." In the fifth act they meet 
 again, but cured, and they philosophise gently, 
 sadly, tenderly over the past. 
 
 Is there nothing but love, then, in the play ? 
 There is everything, a whole crowd of things, 
 when one comes to think of it. Francueil's 
 journey ; the history of two pastrycooks, the false 
 Alexandrine who is the good one, and the true 
 who is the bad one ; a discussion about the worth- 
 lessness of servants; a toast; a fable in verse, 
 varying from five to twenty-two feet in a line. 
 Princess Soukhimiliki and her music-hall songs ; 
 a receipt for making "cocktail"; an anecdote 
 about an Irishwoman, who belonged to an 
 orchestra of Hungarian ladies, and was the 
 mistress of the Siamese ambassador ; a whole host 
 of things, which do not serve the action of the 
 piece. And that is the reason why M. Donnay 
 has thrust them into his play. If these details 
 did serve the action of the play, he would be
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 247 
 
 taking a leaf out of Scribe's book or Sardou's, and 
 they are hopelessly out of date. 
 
 As to the sentiments of Claudine and Vethenil, 
 we can follow without a shadow of eifort their 
 capricious and yet fatal development. They deal 
 in self-analysis, whilst all the time laughing at 
 " that confounded mania for self-analysis which 
 possesses us." But their psychology is never 
 pedantic or emphatic. The only reproach that can 
 be brought against them is that sometimes they 
 are too subtle and too witty. Here is a charac- 
 teristic fragment. Claudine is scolding Vethenil 
 very prettily for his ill-humour, which springs 
 from his secret jealousy of the lover en litre. 
 " If you are disagreeable, you must not be angry 
 with me, it is not his fault." Note the mischief 
 hidden in these three possessive pronouns, which 
 I have emphasised. M. Donnay's style is loose, 
 somewhat disordered, but it is an elegant disorder, 
 like that of a pretty woman who has put on a 
 peignoir to be more at her ease, but who is not the 
 less pretty for that quite the contrary. M. 
 Donnay's careless, fantastic method contains, 
 perhaps, not very much art, but, at all events,
 
 248 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 much artistic instinct. He is more of a literary 
 artist than any of our other dramatic authors, 
 Lavedan, perhaps, being bracketed equal, and 
 Lemaitre, of course, hors concours. 
 
 Many writers are capable only of one single 
 work, into which they put their whole soul, all 
 their talents, all their invention, till there is 
 nothing left. People asked, some anxiously, 
 others hopefully, if by chance Amants would 
 not be M. Donnay's only play. La Douloureuse, 
 which I saw in 1897, has not altogether dis- 
 pelled the anxiety of M. Donnay's admirers, but 
 neither has it altogether contradicted the hopes of 
 his rivals. It is a badly-constructed, ill-conceived 
 play, with some parts of the highest merit. The 
 first act forms a play by itself. It is a light- 
 heartedly cruel picture of the "Panama Group," 
 and its different states of mind. We have an 
 outpouring of alarming cynicism, and also an 
 exhibition of four little girls, singing, dancing, 
 twirling and what not. Then the officers come 
 to arrest M. Ardan, the banker, who is giving a 
 party that evening according to the immemorial 
 custom of bankers, ready to take the final leap.
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 249 
 
 He asks to go into his dressing room, and there 
 blows out his brains. The thing is whispered in 
 the drawing-room, but supper is served, and, ma 
 foi, the world sups. 
 
 In the second act the play begins. No, not 
 yet; first of all we must join in the discussion as 
 to whether a woman, deceived by the man she 
 loves, ought to resent it, or to pardon it. The 
 Second Empire, represented by Madame Leformal, 
 debates the question with the Third Republic, 
 personified in Helene Ardan. Apparently the 
 wife of the Second Empire overlooked everything 
 in her husband, only she forgot to instil religious 
 principles into her children, and without re- 
 ligion there is no resignation. This is why the 
 daughter of this indulgent mother is an out-and- 
 out rebel. In the fourth act, be it observed, she 
 will prove as forgiving as her mother, whence it 
 follows that all this comparative psychology of 
 the two generations means nothing at all. It is 
 a complete absurdity, and we must go to the 
 Vaudeville of 1897 to learn that the cocodettes of 
 1867 were " be'nisseuses." In any case, they 
 were not fools, and I can assure M. Donnay that
 
 2so THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 they would make short work of the champions of 
 the new generation in less time than it takes me 
 to write it. 
 
 At last all these people go off. I take out my 
 watch. It is a quarter past ten, and the real 
 play was just about to begin. Helene Ardan, 
 whose husband paid his debts with a couple of 
 ounces of powder, has been for a long time in love 
 with Philippe Lamberty. She is only waiting 
 for the end of her widowhood to marry him. It 
 is a fatal delay, for it allows Gotte des Trembles, 
 who is bored by her husband's neglect, to make a 
 dead set at Philippe. They are in the garden one 
 evening ; Gotte is pretty and disturbing, because 
 she herself is disturbed. Philippe is a man. I 
 am in a desperate fright, but suddenly Philippe 
 pulls himself together and explains to the poor 
 little goose how base it would be to deceive her 
 friend, the noble Helene, so happy, so devoted, 
 so trusting. And the poor little goose thanks the 
 moralist effusively. 
 
 I do not know, my dear sir, if you ever found 
 yourself alone in a park at sunset with a young 
 woman whose wrists burnt your fingers, and
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 251 
 
 whose ideas of duty were getting into a mist. I 
 am quite sure that in that case you also preached 
 her a little sermon. And what happened then ? 
 One of two things. Either you went away, and 
 the little woman for the rest of your natural life 
 was your mortal, irreconcilable enemy, or you 
 stayed, and the temptation was renewed on the 
 next day, until you succumbed. Philippe chose 
 the second alternative, or rather, we have first 
 one, then the other. Gotte triumphs, but only 
 for an instant. Philippe is horror-struck at his 
 own downfall, and with the cowardice which 
 characterises our sex, he lets his accomplice feel 
 this. Then Gotte revenges herself by revealing 
 to Philippe that Helene had another lover before 
 him. That confidence has the foreseen and 
 desired effect. Philippe, the culprit, poses as 
 the victim, the avenger, whilst Helene is crushed 
 to the earth by his reproaches. But how did he 
 guess, how did he know ? One person only 
 could have told him Gotte ! In a lightning 
 flash Helene has understood. What, at the very 
 moment when he was faithless to her, he is 
 overwhelming her with his jealousy and his
 
 252 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 contempt. " Now, really, that is funny, too 
 funny." And when they have said everything 
 insulting, heart-rending, cruel that they can 
 think of, they stand looking at one another, 
 haggard, broken. How will this terrible scene 
 end ? Just as it would end in real life. "What 
 time is it after all this ? " murmurs Helene, as 
 if awakening from a dream. " Seven o'clock, 
 and I am dining out ! I shall look pretty ! 
 ( Going up to the glass and speaking very low.) 
 Ah, my head ! (Arranging her hair and putting 
 on her hat with convulsive, feverish fingers. He 
 wraps her cloak around her shoulders. They look 
 at one another.) Who is that coming in ? 
 Andre? I do not want to see him." Philippe. 
 " Then go out through the studio." And she 
 goes out without a word. How many men and 
 women among the audience can recall similar 
 scenes in their secret history which ended very 
 much like that ! Strictly speaking, the play 
 might have ended there, but M. Donnay insists 
 on showing us the two lovers reconciled, 
 softened, happy. Only to reach that result he 
 thought that he must transport them far from
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 253 
 
 Paris to the blue shore of the Mediterranean. 
 The scene of Pension de Famille was laid in a 
 suburb of Mce ; and in the fourth act of Amants 
 we were on the shore of an Italian lake ; whilst 
 the fourth act of La Douloureuse takes us to the 
 pines of Cap Martin. We cannot but take note 
 of that irresistible instinct to call in nature as an 
 ally, and to turn to those sunny lands where 
 life is easier and love more indulgent. How- 
 ever, M. Donnay must take care; he is too 
 fond of travelling over the line of the P.L.M. ; 
 next time, perhaps, the public may take 
 umbrage. 
 
 What is there in the fourth act ? Absolutely 
 nothing. M. Donnay has stuffed it full of use- 
 less things, some of them in very bad taste. 
 The act might have been written in one single 
 sentence. " We are not worth very much, let* 
 us forgive one another ; let us love one another, 
 and let us try not to yield to temptation." 
 Moreover, that sentence sums up the whole 
 philosophy of M. Donnay, and, I fear, the whole 
 morality of his age. 
 
 It is all very well to talk about expiation.
 
 2 S4 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 La Douloureuse reminds one of the bill that the 
 waiter offers you at the end of a good dinner. 
 We saw how Gaston Ardan paid his bill with a 
 pistol shot, but did that pistol shot compensate 
 the people whom he had ruined? Gotte's bad 
 behaviour was largely due to the systematic 
 neglect and infidelity of her husband, but I do 
 not see that he was punished. As for Philippe, 
 his expiation consists of two months' solitude 
 at Cap Martin, which is a pleasant enough form 
 of penance. I cannot forbear to notice the 
 unpardonable recklessness with which the author 
 in the last act drags in the name of an illustrious 
 and revered Princess to support his doctrine of 
 expiation. She, Monsieur, only paid for the 
 crimes and follies of others, and that, I think, 
 is the final condemnation of this pretended justice 
 of fate. 
 
 "Do not let us bring suffering upon those that 
 love us." In the general shipwreck of creeds 
 and principles that is the only thing left to 
 guide M. Donnay's heroes through life; all 
 beyond is doubt and darkness. There is 
 nothing good except joy, nothing evil except
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 255 
 
 suffering. When M. Donnay wrote that line in 
 Phryne, which assuredly does not smack of the 
 midnight oil 
 
 " H^las ! Eros nous mene, et rien ne prouve rien " 
 
 he was giving utterance all unconsciously to a 
 whole philosophy, a complete conception of life. 
 I see no sign that he has changed. 
 
 I might add other names to the list of new 
 writers whose work I have been studying in 
 some detail. M. Gustave Guichet, for example ; 
 M. Guimon ; M. de Porto-Kiche, the author of Le 
 Passe ; M. Abel Hermant, a clever and forcible 
 novelist, who produced La Meute for the Eenais- 
 sance, and more recently La Carriers and Les 
 Transatlantiques for the Gymnase ; M. Pierre 
 Valdagne, who made his deHbut at the Theatre 
 Libre, and has since appeared at the Odeon, in 
 La Blague; others besides who show evidence 
 of talent, and who are trying to shake off the 
 tyranny of old formulas. But I do not think 
 that any of them would furnish me with cha- 
 racters which I have not already observed 
 amongst the writers at this moment in the first
 
 2 5 6 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 rank. They would not add anything to the 
 provisional definition of what I have called, 
 after M. Faguet, M. Larroumet, and others, the 
 "new comedy." I said just now "provisional 
 definition," and I know that these two words 
 are at open war with one another. I also feel 
 how difficult it is to include under the same 
 definition, literary temperaments, as diverse as 
 Lemaitre and Brieux, Hervieu and Donnay 
 seem to be at first sight. But if we hesitated 
 to define life we should never define anything, 
 since everything lives and moves, everything 
 is progressing and advancing. The very diversity 
 of mankind helps the critic instead of embar- 
 rassing him. For the very fact that they have 
 many points of contact and agreement shows 
 him that all are driven by the same wind, 
 and forced to converge by the same intellectual 
 current. 
 
 This is what I seem to see. 
 
 Let us first of all consider the construction of 
 plays. Intrigue is simplified and reduced to a 
 minimum. Instead of " placing " the characters 
 upon the stage, the first act is employed in ex-
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 257 
 
 plaining the milieu,, the setting of the action. If 
 this description is unnecessary, because the milieu 
 is well known to everybody beforehand, the first 
 act sets the action in motion. But the action is 
 nothing except character painting, and instead of 
 this occupying the first act, it now occupies all 
 the acts. So that, as M. Faguet has remarked, 
 we get back to the art of Moliere and his imme- 
 diate successors, that is to say, to living portraits. 
 And when several of these types are grouped 
 before us, we have no longer a portrait but a 
 picture. As for incident, all that does not spring 
 from the play itself and the interplay of cha- 
 racter is eliminated, just as all circumstances 
 alien to the phenomenon under observation are 
 eliminated from a scientific experiment. I 
 purposely dwell upon this comparison. The 
 spectator who used to give all his attention to 
 the complexity of the intrigue, now gives it to 
 the psychological complications. His reason is 
 called into play instead of his memory, but he 
 is still obliged to collaborate with the dramatic 
 writer, and necessarily so, for there will never be 
 a real drama without this collaboration. There 
 
 8
 
 258 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 must still be preparation where preparation is 
 needed, and explanation where explanation is 
 called for, but for the most part the writer con- 
 fines himself to suggestion. Those witty lookers 
 on who passed judgment upon the play whilst it 
 was in progress, and who embodied the author's 
 ideas, those brilliant roles a cote, which some- 
 times eclipsed the hero and heroine, have vanished 
 altogether. That is to say, the chorus of antiquity 
 has been banished from the scene, at any rate, 
 until it is fetched back again. But what has 
 become of wit which was formerly so necessary ? 
 It is not excluded, but it is no longer de rigueur. 
 It still figures in the menu of the evening, but only 
 as a hors d'ceuvre, or as a condiment. Love has 
 once more been granted the licence to be witty 
 that it had lost since the days of Marivaux. As 
 for the denouement, it must do the best it can. 
 So much the better if it can prove something, so 
 much the worse if it proves nothing. At any 
 rate, in that case it will prove that the author has 
 made a bad choice, for all good subjects lead up 
 of themselves to a conclusion. The only thing 
 absolutely forbidden is that the author should
 
 THE NEW COMEDY. 259 
 
 interfere. No coup de theatre, no deus ex 
 machina, no intervention of fortune, no chastise- 
 ment falling from Heaven, nothing that can 
 suggest a farce or a melodrama. Thereby we are 
 conforming to the aesthetic principles of the 
 Theatre Libre, but in all other points we are 
 leaving it behind and drawing closer to the old 
 dramatic architecture, which prevailed from 1830 
 to 1880. For example, we have preserved the 
 peripetie, that is to say, towards eleven o'clock, 
 or a quarter-past eleven, at the end of the penul- 
 timate act, the action comes to a crisis and we 
 reach the high- water- mark of emotion. A whisper 
 goes through the audience : " How on earth will 
 they get out of it ? " and here peeps out the little 
 finger of Scribe, 
 
 Such is the new, or more or less new comedy, 
 a slightly hybrid and bastard variety, which the 
 professors are beginning to patronise, because 
 they have been assured that it is only a revival 
 of the "comedy of character" associated with 
 Moliere, and therefore, in their eyes, the highest 
 expression of dramatic art. Some of them be- 
 lieve it, others pretend to believe it. At any
 
 260 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 rate, this form has the merit of being very wide 
 and elastic. You can put into it what you like. 
 M. Hervieu and M. Brieux have fitted a problem 
 play into it; M. Donnay a sensual novel; M. 
 Lavedan a picture of manners, a social study ; M. 
 Lemaitre, his dramatic experiences of every kind. 
 It is not in itself either moral or immoral; it 
 lends itself to the Attic imagination of Mont- 
 martre ; perhaps to-morrow some Puritan may 
 make it a vehicle for a sermon. Reactionary, 
 bourgeois, anarchist, it is capable of anything. 
 Even from a purely artistic point of view its 
 tendencies are not yet clearly denned. It is only 
 masterpieces that fix a style and make it definite. 
 Then, but only then, the form will be perfect and 
 nothing more can be done but break it up to 
 make new ones, and so deliver the masterpieces 
 from that fate, at once the cruellest degradation 
 and the height of glory, cheap and unlimited 
 reproduction.
 
 VII. 
 THE EEVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 
 
 I HAVE tried to indicate the new tendencies 
 which have come to light during the last five or 
 six years in comedy proper, and the authors who 
 are its principal exponents. Throughout the 
 period, melodrama and vaudeville have remained 
 pretty nearly at a standstill. There is no need, 
 I think, to give English readers any account of 
 our melodramas. Many of them still cross the 
 Channel : they are amongst the wares which we 
 manufacture and export with some success. But 
 in France melodrama seems to be losing ground. 
 It still holds the field at L'Ambigu and the 
 Theatre de la Ke'publique ; but it has lost the 
 Gaite, and only makes an intermittent appear- 
 ance at the Chatelet and the Porte Saint Martin. 
 It has not forsaken the ancient tracks, and I have 
 never heard that M. Decourcelle, the author of
 
 2 62 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Les Deux Gosses, treats the methods and pro- 
 ductions of M. d'Ennery, the author of Les Deux 
 Orphelines, with the contempt evinced for Scribe 
 and Sardou by neophytes in other branches of 
 the drama. Clearly there has been some evolu- 
 tion even in melodrama. Up to the middle of 
 the century characters, situations, style, mise-en- 
 scene belonged alike to the realm of fancy. But 
 the melodrama of to-day is half idealist, half 
 realist, that is to say it consists of vulgarity and 
 impossibility in nearly equal proportions. No 
 sort of observation in the moral delineation of 
 the characters, good or bad ; no suspicion of 
 probability in the procession of events ; but a 
 scrupulous imitation of life in dialogue, in 
 scenery, in all the accessories of the mise-en- 
 scene. In short, the old style of the Martain- 
 villes and Pixe'recourts has vanished, but the 
 system remains intact. 
 
 The same want of movement appears in the 
 vaudeville and all its numerous sub-varieties. 
 This word "vaudeville" is deceptive. Formerly 
 it signified a play interspersed with rhyming 
 couplets, scarcely differing from the modern
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 263 
 
 operetta; now it includes all that the English 
 mean by a word which has a very clear and 
 definite signification, "farce." Labiche and 
 Meilhac had done much for that inferior kind of 
 play. The one based it upon a thoroughly sound 
 observation of human nature and conduct amongst 
 the middle classes ; the second found a mine of 
 wealth in the world of pleasure. They have had 
 numberless successors: Alexandre Bisson, the 
 author of Le Lycee de jeunes filles, Le Depute de 
 BomUgnac, La Famitte PontUquet^ Paul Ferrier, 
 Albin Yalabregue, Maurice Desvallieres, George 
 Feydeau, Leon Gaudillot, as well as the younger 
 comic writers brought to light by the Theatre 
 Libre, George Ancey and Courteline, the lucky 
 author of Boubouroche. Thanks to their efforts, 
 France and the nations dealing in French 
 markets, are assured of a laugh at any rate for 
 some time to come. These gentlemen have 
 plenty of wits, but a thirst for novelty does not 
 seem to trouble them. The innocent young girl, 
 who moves through the most doubtful situations 
 without so much as perceiving them, the serious 
 gentleman who goes in for dissipation on the sly,
 
 264 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 adultery approached, as Moliere approached it, 
 from its grotesque side, electoral platitudes, the 
 meanness of the political world raised to the 
 height of caricature, the new military turn given 
 to French manners by compulsory service, are 
 some of the themes round which the imagina- 
 tion of the Yaudevillistes seems never weary 
 of playing. The deputy and the magistrate are 
 frequently their victims, but their favourite butt 
 is the mother-in-law, whether tyrannical or 
 sentimental. She it is for whom they reserve 
 the most biting of their epigrams, not from any 
 motive of personal vengeance, nor even from 
 comic instinct, but out of pure respect for 
 tradition. It has been understood in France 
 for several centuries that husbands, doctors, and 
 mothers-in-law are proper objects of ridicule. 
 
 The canvas of the play is as invariable as the 
 types themselves. The farce is composed according 
 to certain rules, very much like the cookery recipes 
 of the cuisiniere bourgeoise. First, a good definite 
 misunderstanding, or even two, or three, BO that 
 by the end of the last act but one everything is 
 turned topsy-turvey, and not a soul can distin-
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 265 
 
 guish Ms left hand from his right. The whole 
 secret of this kind of play lies in a nutshell ; 
 someone is hunting for something from eight 
 o'clock till midnight and must on no account 
 find the person or object of his search until five 
 minutes to twelve. The ideal farce makes the 
 hunted individual be himself looking for another 
 individual, who pursues a third, who is chasing 
 a fourth, and so on, until the last is left trying to 
 catch up the first, which completes the circle and 
 gives an unlimited acceleration of speed to the 
 gyrations of the play. Even with the inevitable 
 five doors, one room no longer suffices. We must 
 have a house with several stories, staircases, 
 roofs, balconies, to give room for this curious 
 chase. You have seen A Night Outj which is 
 the last effort of the French genius in this line. 
 I admire these beautiful productions, as indeed I 
 ought ; but I am obliged to confess that we have 
 got back to the memorable Chape au de paille 
 cPItalie, and have thereby lost the whole advance 
 made by Labiche and Meilhac. There were some 
 touches worthy of Labruyere in Celimare le bien 
 aime and in Le Voyage de Perrichon ; the first
 
 266 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 act of La Cagnotte was a chapter from Balzac ; 
 whilst Les Curieuses was like an instantaneous 
 photograph, stereotyping both the language 
 and manners of the cocodettes of 1867. What 
 can anyone find in the farces of our own 
 day except a sort of artificial merriment manufac- 
 tured by mechanical processes out of materials 
 which have already been used, much as you make 
 white paper out of waste paper. Ill betide a 
 man imprudent enough to seek for information 
 about our moral and social condition ! 
 
 I can imagine a learned lecturer of Borneo or 
 Tahiti, in the year 4000 after Christ, prefacing 
 his remarks on La Famille Pontbiquet somewhat 
 in this fashion. It will be included that year 
 with the Miles Gloriosus and the Ecclesiazousai in 
 the B.A. course, for looking down the centuries, 
 Bisson would appear first cousin to Aristophanes 
 and Plautus. " Gentlemen," he will say, "we 
 see by La Famille Pontbiquet, that at the end of 
 the nineteenth century, the professors of the 
 Lycee Charlemagne at Paris, had mistresses 
 amongst the actresses of the Folies Bergere; 
 and when these ladies were themselves hanging
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 267 
 
 to a trapeze, they picked up a man by his waist- 
 belt between their teeth, and made him whirl 
 round in this position two hundred times a 
 minute." From this fact he will proceed with 
 admirable logic to deduce the character of 
 the intellectual and moral education received 
 at the Lycee Charlemagne. Perhaps, in the 
 meanwhile, you will feel tempted to do the 
 same. 
 
 An attempt has recently been made to revive 
 pantomime, not the stupid magnificent spectacle 
 which invades half the London theatres towards 
 Christmas, and puts literature to flight, but the 
 true pantomime for here the French tongue 
 has the advantage, both in clearness and etymo- 
 logythe drama in which not a word is spoken, 
 but the meaning is conveyed by facial movement, 
 glance, attitude, or gesture. It is the most 
 artistic of all kinds of acting, and, even though 
 mute, one of the most literary because one of 
 the most suggestive. It requires the greatest 
 amount of reflection and the truest inspiration, 
 as well as cleverness, patience, and taste in the 
 highest degree. This pantomime, once so dear
 
 268 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 to Gautier and Banville, has fallen into disuse 
 since the disappearance of the great mimics 
 Kalpestri, Paul Legrand, and the immortal 
 Deburau, whose floury hand I had the 
 honour of shaking thirty years ago, when I was 
 dramatic critic at Grenoble. A young girl, 
 Felicia Mallet, tried to use the marvellous flexi- 
 bility of her face and figure in the revival of 
 pantomime. She gained much applause, but 
 the art which she cultivated so successfully has 
 not a large enough clientele to fill a theatre for 
 any length of time. One cannot live on panto- 
 mime, and Felicia Mallet changed her trade, like 
 the grasshopper in the fable. Nowadays she 
 understudies Yvette Guilbert. 
 
 I have spoken of the stupid magnificent English 
 pantomime. For an equivalent to its stupidity 
 and magnificence we must go to our old Feerie. 
 Poor Feerie! It is in a very bad way. One 
 evening last winter I was crossing the Place du 
 Chatelet It was dark, almost deserted, and 
 swept by the storm. Some men, sheltering in a 
 cafe, rushed out upon me. They were ticket- 
 mongers, and they offered me a stall at such an
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 269 
 
 extraordinarily low price, and implored me to 
 buy it in such despairing tones, that I must 
 have had either a very lean purse or a very hard 
 heart to resist them. I wonder whether I could 
 not have got my stall for nothing if I had held 
 out a little longer. However I gave way, and I 
 assisted at a few scenes from La Biche au Bois. 
 I saw once more the indulgent king and his 
 imbecile major-domo, the charming princess and 
 her faithful Girofle'e, the queen Aika and her 
 minister, the terrible Mesrour. I also saw the 
 warriors in silver helmets shining under the electric 
 light, and the fairies, with their tunics slit up on 
 the left hip and their right arms outstretched, strik- 
 ing attitudes and mouthing their utterances with 
 the most melodramatic modulations. They were 
 no longer the same women (the fairies of my youth 
 must by now be concierges or nurses), but they 
 had the same smile, they uttered the same idiotic 
 jests, together with a few new ones not less idiotic, 
 and they sang the same silly words although the 
 tunes were new. I should have fallen asleep, if 
 the cold of the great empty theatre had not kept 
 me awake. Before ten o'clock, I sought my couch,
 
 270 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 without waiting for the unfortunate princess to 
 recover human form. 
 
 It has been said " What is to hinder us from 
 putting new life into the Feerie by introducing 
 passion, poetry, real wit and real music ? " The 
 man who said this was a man of taste and talent, 
 called M. Albert Carre. He is an actor, an 
 author, and a theatrical manager ; since the 
 death of Carvalho, he has directed the Ope'ra 
 Comique, and he was formerly associated with 
 M. Porel in the direction of the Gymnase and 
 the Yaudeville. He seemed to have everything 
 in his favour, and he had taken care to accumu- 
 late on his side all the chances that a skilled 
 man can command. La Montague Enchantee was 
 played last summer at the Porte Saint Martin ; 
 but it was not a success. 
 
 Amongst the extra-literary productions I 
 had almost said anti-literary the Revue is the 
 most successful. It first saw the light in 1840, 
 and has gone on flourishing ever since. It sub- 
 sists upon two things : indecency and actuality. 
 You cannot call it drama, it is merely journal- 
 ism in dialogue and action, only journal-
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 271 
 
 ism studiously divested of everything novel or 
 serious. Not only do all the Revues of the same 
 year resemble each other, which would be quite 
 natural, but all the Revues of all years are just 
 alike, which is very curious. For it means that 
 every year, whether fateful, glorious, or insignifi- 
 cant, the year of a comet or of a revolution, of 
 a victory or a defeat, of an exhibition or of the 
 cholera, must furnish the same quantity of gaiety 
 and the same number of jests, couplets, and 
 clownish tricks. If the manufacturer of a Revue 
 attacks serious matters such as labour disputes, 
 anti-Semitism, or the emancipation of women, it 
 is only to produce comic effects, which would 
 not arise naturally out of these questions. There 
 are some years so full of mournful events and 
 delicate problems, that they afford no subject at 
 all. Then he takes refuge in nonsense, which is 
 why the Revues of 1896 and 1897 seemed to me 
 exactly like those that I used to see when I was 
 a schoolboy. For the Eussian alliance read the 
 English alliance; for Colonial expansion, free 
 trade, and you have the whole difference. But 
 a Revue, like a Feerie, is no fit subject for criticism.
 
 272 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 If the public is content, there is nothing more to 
 be said. 
 
 After all, the evil is not very great. Since 
 there can be no question of literature in such a 
 connection, neither the decay of the Feerie, nor 
 the hopeless mediocrity and the incurable insig- 
 nificance of the Revue need disturb us very much. 
 There is something much sadder and more inter- 
 esting in the bankruptcy of two kinds of plays, 
 which, in the seventeenth and nineteenth cen- 
 turies, formed a notable part of our intellec- 
 tual wealth I mean tragedy and .the poetical 
 drama. Speaking of the stage traditions which 
 prevail at the Theatre Frangais, I ventured to 
 remark that the excellent actors of the Maison 
 played Hugo and Eacine in the same style and - 
 according to the same methods. In their eyes, 
 as well as in the eyes of the public, and even of 
 the authors, the line of demarcation between 
 tragedy and romantic drama has disappeared. 
 Both are plays in verse containing parts for 
 Mounet Sully : contemporary ignorance knows 
 no more, and does not care to ask. 
 
 Nevertheless classical tragedy and romantic
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 273 
 
 drama are essentially incapable of fusion, for 
 tragedy is a thing apart which was brought to 
 perfection two centuries ago, and which it would 
 be more prudent not to touch. It was admir- 
 ably adapted to the intellectual faculties and 
 requirements of those days. "With us it is out 
 of place, and we are not at home in it. A 
 tragedy is neither a poetical conception nor an 
 imitation of real life. It is a moral theorem 
 starting from certain psychological bases, and 
 moving rigorously towards a conclusion. Not 
 that it is beyond the realm of truth ; one cannot 
 get outside truth. On the contrary, it draws its 
 material from the most intimate sentiments of 
 the heart, but viewed as a geometrician views 
 -points, lines, surfaces, and cubic contents. So 
 that a tragic hero resembles ourselves just about 
 as much as an ideal cube resembles a biscuit 
 tin. Classical tragedy, like geometry, admits of 
 no approximations } it must be either perfect or 
 ridiculous. It must needs be a masterpiece in 
 two senses, a triumph of logic in its subject, and 
 of eloquence in its form. 
 
 In the poetic drama, on the contrary, the first 
 T
 
 274 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 necessity is freedom of inspiration ; the premises 
 may be false, and the conclusion either absent or 
 unreasonable, but if it has stirred and fascinated 
 us, it is so far good. The drama draws its very 
 life from caprice, imagination, illusion, and the 
 more it deceives us the better we love it. It 
 does not, like tragedy, give us ideal truth, but 
 nature writ large. Thus, whilst tragedy is the 
 triumph of reason, drama is the triumph of 
 imagination. There is the same difference in the 
 form ; tragic verse must be eloquent, dramatic 
 verse ought to be, above all, poetical. 
 
 Anyone who accepts my definitions will easily 
 understand why tragedy and drama remain as 
 distinct in the critic's crucible as oil and water 
 poured into the same vase. A few years ago we 
 had, and, I think still have, a writer amongst us 
 who devotes himself to tragedy. His name is 
 Alexandre Parodi, and he used to be seen drink- 
 ing his mazagran at the cafe of the Theatre 
 Fransais. Rome Sauvee was a real tragedy, and 
 as such had a real success ; but I do not know 
 that this success led to anything except parodies 
 of Parodi : certainly the author himself never
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 275 
 
 succeeded in repeating his first inspiration. Last 
 summer we had a Frgdegonde at the Theatre 
 Fran9ais, the work of M. Dubout, a banker of 
 Boulogne-sur Mer. It may be noted as a char- 
 acteristic fact that to write a tragedy in 1897, 
 one must needs be a banker. Did not the school 
 of Pope amongst you come to an end with a 
 banker ? When tragedy no longer affords poets 
 a living, it is itself driven to live upon bankers. 
 The theatres, which lend themselves to these 
 attempts, are not exactly flourishing, as was 
 attested by the financial report lately submitted 
 to the Socie*taires of the Eue Eichelieu. This 
 report confirms the sad results of Fredegonde 
 upon the receipts, and such a confirmation is not 
 without its critical value. M. Dubout brought 
 an action against M. Lemaitre for having said in 
 print that his play was badly constructed. He 
 should have brought another against M. Claretie 
 for having confessed that it cost more than it 
 brought in. 
 
 This is the leading situation in M. Dubout's 
 play. Fre'de'gonde has come to confess to Bishop 
 Pretextat, but her confession is an act of sacrilege
 
 276 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 and bravado. She reveals both her past and 
 future crimes ; she tells him what means she is 
 taking to insure the death of the young Me'rovee, 
 her enemy and son-in-law. Pre*textat longs to 
 prevent this assassination, but can only do so by 
 violating the secret of the confessional. The 
 man in him awakes under the priest's frock, and 
 he is impelled to put an end to the wretched 
 woman with his own hands, even in the holy 
 place. He would have yielded to the temptation, 
 had not the chant of the Miserere, rising and 
 falling in the depths of the church, reminded 
 him that he is the minister of the God who said 
 " Thou shalt not kill." This situation is more 
 violent than really strong. It is not tragedy, it 
 is melodrama. In reality Fredegonde is only a 
 melodrama with literary pretensions, taken hap- 
 hazard from the famous Recits of Augustin 
 Thierry. 
 
 There is nothing more painful for a sick man 
 who might be cured, than to be linked with a 
 corpse, whose resuscitation is hopeless. The 
 first thing necessary for the revival of the drama, 
 is its separation from tragedy. But that is not
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 277 
 
 a sufficient remedy, or rather it is no remedy at 
 all, for it merely attributes to the drama the 
 purely negative merit of not resembling tragedy. 
 Whence shall it draw inspiration? Whence 
 shall it steal the spark destined to kindle it into 
 flame ? Many writers have invoked the muse of 
 patriotism; in less than twenty years we have 
 had one Vercingetorix, and several Jeannes 
 d'Arc. As we curse the English, we think of 
 the Prussians, and as we offer our hatred and 
 admiration to a fantastic Julius Csesar, we see in 
 him the combined incarnation of Moltke and 
 Bismarck. M. De'roulede added to this literature 
 half memory, half suggestion a Bertrand 
 Duguesclin and a Mort de Hoche, which contained 
 one very fine scene. Other writers, following 
 the pure romantic tradition, took refuge in the 
 Middle Ages, with which the poetic drama has, 
 in a sense, identified itself ever since Victor 
 Hugo. The seventeenth century had a profound 
 contempt for the Middle Ages, for the childish- 
 ness of their chronicles, the coarseness of their 
 fabliaux, the platitudes and the incredible tedious- 
 ness of their romances. Since 1825 we believe,
 
 278 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 or pretend to believe, that in the Middle Ages 
 the stream of poetry has a never-failing source. 
 This is the only fable of romanticism which has 
 survived its author ; nowadays it is one of our 
 dearest delusions, one of our idola fori, as Bacon 
 would have said. There are two kinds of 
 Medievalism, the one historical, or semi-histori- 
 cal, and the other a web of mysticism and fable, 
 the age of the Eound Table and the Holy Grail. 
 The first gave M. de Bornier his Fille de Roland, 
 M. Armand Silvestre plunged into the second, 
 and brought back his Tristan de Leonnois. 
 
 Other writers have appealed to the religious 
 sentiment, amongst them three distinguished 
 poets, M. Grandmougin, M. Haraucourt, and 
 Mo Edmond Eostand. I shall -explain presently 
 who M. Edmond Eostand is. M. Haraucourt is 
 one of our greatest lyrical poets, whose place in 
 the academy would be beside Sully- Prudhomme, 
 and Jose-Maria de Heredia. He yields to none 
 in the nobility of his thought, the width of his 
 view, the pure music of his versification. His 
 prose also is very fine, and I remember a certain 
 preface of his the work of a literary artist and
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 279 
 
 a philosopher. He wrote a mystery play of the 
 Passion which was played during Holy Week. 
 M. Eostand produced another for the Eenais- 
 sance, La Samaritaine, " a Gospel in three 
 tableaux," which gave complete satisfaction to 
 M. Catulle Mendes. A somewhat disquieting 
 testimony ! One would willingly exchange all 
 the qualities in which these gentlemen are so 
 rich, and which, in such a connection, almost 
 amount to faults, for that one single faculty, 
 which sufficed the lowly and simple writers of 
 the true miracle plays, the faculty of faith and 
 of worship. Our poets have not even always 
 possessed reverence and tact. 
 
 Another group of writers have invoked 
 Shakespeare. He is the god of M. Catulle 
 Mendes and of M. Emile Bergerat, both men 
 of many gifts (M. Bergerat is the Caliban of 
 the Figaro), both poets, both sons-in-law of 
 Theophile Gautier, and hence Shakespearians by 
 right of alliance if not of birth. For in the days 
 of Eomanticism the cult of Shakespeare was an 
 act of faith, and it is still included in the creed 
 of all who have survived the wreck of the
 
 28o THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 School. Did not Yictor Hugo write, " J' admire 
 tout dans Shakespeare, je 1' admire comme une 
 brute"? 
 
 Is this a good plan? I dare not give a 
 decision. "Whichever way one looks at it, it is 
 an excellent thing to admire Shakespeare, but to 
 imitate him is another matter. If the fellow- 
 countrymen of the author of Hamlet can scarcely 
 succeed, it is hardly probable that he will yield 
 all his secrets to foreigners, and those Neolatins. 
 Many of the aspects of Shakespeare, perhaps the 
 greatest, elude us, and must always elude us. 
 Yet our dramatic writers think that they have 
 imitated Shakespeare, when, forsooth, they have 
 written an irregular, fantastically constructed 
 play, with a multiplicity of intrigue, in which 
 all the characters talk like poets. 
 
 There is one literary fiction on which we set 
 great store, because it is very useful for nat- 
 tering the democracy, and nowadays everyone 
 who courts popularity whether a minister on 
 his probation, or a budding academician fawns 
 upon the democracy, just as two centuries ago 
 they would have fawned upon the monarch, I
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 281 
 
 mean the charming idea that poetry has its real 
 dwelling place in the heart of the people. There 
 is nothing more false, and we all know it per- 
 fectly. Those who have penetrated to the bottom 
 of this vaunted heart of the people have found 
 nothing but jealousy, malice, and greed. The 
 workman hates both his master and his trade; 
 the peasant loves his land more than his chil- 
 dren, he has no eyes for the natural beauty in 
 the midst of which he lives. Beggars are neither 
 philosophers nor poets ; for one Villon and one 
 Hege'sippe Moreau you can count innumerable 
 idle, cowardly, envious souls who have never 
 conceived one pure or noble thought. Yes, we 
 know all that, but we will not admit it. The 
 workman in cities scarcely allows us any illusions 
 on his account, he takes a cynical pride in expos- 
 ing his moral degradation. But a little prestige 
 still clings to the peasant ; he is so far off and he 
 says so little. One always credits silent people 
 with deep thoughts, ruminating looks so much 
 like dreaming. The peasant, standing mute in 
 the midst of magnificent surroundings, uncon- 
 sciously borrows dignity from the living poetry
 
 282 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 that shines round about him, and bathes him in 
 a light that never was on sea or land. That is 
 why we still read La Mare au Diable, La Petite 
 Fadette, Francois le Champs, and all those abso- 
 lutely fantastic and deceptive books. Take the 
 Virgilian paradox about the man of the fields, 
 and rejuvenate it by a skilful method which I 
 shall presently explain; add to it another and 
 rather more modern paradox, borrowed by the 
 Bohemian Lafontaine from the Bohemian Villon. 
 If they are to be believed, the grasshopper, 
 which dances and sings, has a better heart than 
 the thrifty and laborious ant. True goodness, 
 true pity, are found not in the labouring man, 
 who sweats and strives all day in workshop or 
 office, but in the vagabond who prefers a life 
 of contemplation, feasts his eyes on the blue 
 sky, and indolently exposes his body to the 
 biting wind as readily as to the caressing summer 
 breeze. He has nothing, yet he is ready to 
 share everything, a curious kind of logic, the 
 irony of which seems to escape some minds. 
 On these two fascinating delusions, the virtue 
 of primitive folk and the charity of vagabonds,
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 283 
 
 M. Jean Kichepin has founded all his dramas, 
 especially his famous Chemineau. 
 
 At length arose a young poet, the Edmond 
 Eostand whom I mentioned just now. He asked 
 nothing from anyone else. He simply said to 
 himself that a drama, into which he could throw 
 his passion, his intellect and his youth, all the 
 poetry with which he was overflowing, would be 
 a magnificent drama, a drama sparkling with fire- 
 works. He wrote Cyrano de Bergerac, and carried 
 it to Coquelin, who accepted it and put it upon 
 the stage, with what success you know already. 
 
 We have had, therefore, plays hailing from 
 every part of the literary horizon, and springing 
 from the most diverse sources. Beware of apply- 
 ing a uniform code of criticism to them, or of judg- 
 ing them a priori according to the ideas which I 
 have just summarised, and which merely serve 
 as a point of departure. Do not attempt, more- 
 over, to guess which have succeeded and which 
 have failed ; you will probably get wrong. Many 
 of the plays were coldly received and promptly 
 forgotten, some had a partial success, others were 
 received with transports of enthusiasm. Why ?
 
 284 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 A question of talent, that is all, neither a question 
 of method nor of school. Spiritus fiat ubi vult. 
 Now and again, a piece founded upon a vague or 
 false conception, a work of art with most obvious 
 defects, has produced, and still produces, an 
 immense effect. Simply because the author, in 
 certain parts of it, has introduced the kind of 
 poetry calculated to stir an assemblage of several 
 hundreds of people, to awaken in them that 
 fleeting sense of the exquisite and the sublime 
 which belongs to the music of the great masters, 
 when sung by great artists. It is this which 
 raises Le Chemineau of Eichepin and the Cyrano 
 of Eostand above their compeers. 
 
 The sun of Africa shone upon M. Jean Eichepin 
 in his cradle. Then the vicissitudes of life trans- 
 ported him to one of those Flemish cities, sleep- 
 ing under their belfry towers, which have been 
 so admirably described in English by Walter 
 Pater, and by George Eodenbach amongst our- 
 selves. At first he followed beaten tracks, and 
 was a show pupil at the Lycee of Douai, where 
 they still preserve some pages of his work, more
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 285 
 
 estimable than admirable. He next entered the 
 Ecole Normale, perhaps the least favourable soil 
 in the world for the cultivation of poets, plants 
 which can only grow like wild flowers under the 
 free air of heaven. After his school days, M. 
 Eichepin tried several short cuts to glory, and 
 created a legend before he had achieved a reputa- 
 tion. The brasseries of the Quartier Latin were 
 wont to see him in strange guise, with velvet 
 coat, red silk sash, close-fitting breeches, high 
 boots and soft felt hat. As ring-master, gymnast, 
 amateur athlete, he is said to have accompanied 
 a travelling circus on its provincial tours, and 
 to have drawn crowds by certain exceptional 
 "turns." He wrote a play called Nana Sahib 
 for Sarah Bernhardt, which was sufficiently 
 worthless, but he had it played at the Porte 
 Saint Martin, and in the embroidered tunic of a 
 Hindoo prince, he expired every evening on the 
 top of a funeral pyre, in the arms of the famous 
 tragedienne. Then he went home, asked his 
 wife's pardon, and for a year or two seemed to 
 wish to be forgotten. But on the contrary, this 
 retreat merely set a seal upon the legend. There
 
 286 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 are some people who would even enter the mon- 
 astery of La Trappe, if they thought that it would 
 be a good advertisement, and who keep silence 
 simply to get themselves talked about. Some 
 day I intend to collect all these recipes and to 
 publish them as a set of maxims, I? Art d'etre 
 celebre by an Inconnu. 
 
 But it is not enough to collect a crowd of 
 fools round one by more or less wilful eccentricity. 
 If one has nothing to show them, they go off in 
 a huff and are in no hurry to come back. Happily 
 this was not M. Eichepin's fate. He might have 
 dressed like you and me, he might have gone to 
 bed at ten o'clock, got up at six, and taken his 
 dejeuner and his dinner at regular hours ; none 
 the less he would have been a great poet, the 
 poet of Les Gueux and La Mer. Perhaps even 
 a greater, for all his fire, his passion, his in- 
 tellectual electricity would have been kept for 
 his verses. 
 
 He wrote some novels, which I beg to be 
 excused from admiring. They annoy me by a 
 deplorable mixture of the most outrageous realism 
 with an idealism, which amounts to madness.
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 287 
 
 They are symbolism sauce Zola. As to M. 
 Kichepin's plays, up to now they have been little 
 more than attempts at melodrama, with here and 
 there flashes of poetry. But suddenly, in Le 
 Chemineau, M. Richepin compelled both the 
 friends and the enemies of his genius to join in a 
 chorus of admiration. Like everybody else, I 
 succumbed to the extraordinary charm of the 
 play, and wondered all the time what it was that 
 delighted me. 
 
 The harvest is coming to an end on Maitre 
 Pierre's farm. All has gone very well, thanks 
 to a devil of a fellow, whose songs and jests have 
 kept every one in good humour. Whence does 
 he come ? from everywhere and nowhere. What 
 is he called ? He has no name he is simply le 
 Chemineau. 
 
 " Oui, Chemineau, pas plus ! Un passant, un benhomme 
 Qui mene tout, la joie et la peine, en chantant." 
 
 Yes, and the pain of other people too. Toinette, 
 the little servant of Maitre Pierre, has not been 
 able to steel her heart against him. When the 
 harvest is over, the insinuating vagabond de-
 
 288 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 parts with his eternal song on his lips, and the 
 poor deserted girl would have been left to bear 
 her grief and her added load of shame, had not 
 Francois, the head servant, an honest fellow with 
 whitening hair, come forward to protect her and 
 to be a father to the Chemineau's child. 
 
 Life has now become unexpectedly sweet to 
 Toinette. Her son has grown up into a good 
 workman. He cultivates the land in the place 
 of Francois, who is chained to his chair by 
 paralysis. All would be well if Toinette's son 
 and Maitre Pierre's daughter had not taken it 
 into their heads to fall in love. Maitre Pierre is 
 wealthy, proud, and avaricious. Not only will 
 he never consent to the marriage, but he has 
 sworn to ruin Fra^ois and all his family. Toinet, 
 in despair, frequents the wine shops, and the 
 house, so long peaceful and prosperous, is filled 
 with gloom. At this moment the Chemineau 
 reappears, brought back by chance to the place, 
 which he does not recognise. The sight of 
 the misfortunes, of which he was the cause, 
 awakens in him first memory, then tenderness, 
 then conscience, and lastly, a wish to do right.
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 289 
 
 How will he manage to get over Maitre Pierre ? 
 Partly by doing him a service, partly by intimi- 
 dating him, for the Chemineau can play the 
 sorcerer to perfection. So well, indeed, that in 
 a trice the lovers are married, Toinette is com" 
 forted, and old Francois dies in peace. A noble 
 opportunity for the Chemineau to become a good 
 peasant like the rest, and to find his happiness 
 amongst the happy. A fine idea ! and what 
 about the great high road which is ever calling 
 him and drawing him with a resistless fascina- 
 tion? On a certain Christmas Eve, whilst the 
 women are at the midnight mass, and a fat goose 
 is roasting on the hearth for the watchnight 
 supper, whilst the waits outside are singing 
 carols, the wanderer slips out into the night : 
 
 " Va Chemineau, chemine." 
 
 He must work out his destiny to the end, he can 
 only stop to die. 
 
 That is the play. Its subject is one which 
 would be readily accepted, but not exactly hailed 
 as a " find." The secret of its success must, 
 therefore, be sought elsewhere. Perhaps I was 
 
 u
 
 2 9 o THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 the victim of the actors' art ? Certainly the 
 Odeon Company has not for years back appeared 
 to greater advantage than in Le Chemineau. Still, 
 it did not contain any of those sovereign artists 
 who rivet the spectator and make him for the 
 moment suspend any thought of criticism. What 
 made me unhesitatingly accept those fictions, 
 which do not convince me, that primitive good- 
 ness, that innate poetry, that deep simple soul o f 
 the people, in which I do not believe, in which 
 no one believes ? How could I ever listen for a 
 moment to those peasants talking in verse, still 
 less be moved by their talk ? I wonder, I ask 
 myself the question, and even when I find the 
 answer, I am still more surprised than before. 
 M. Eichepin fairly got hold of me. He reduced 
 my objections to nothing by employing those 
 very methods which exasperated me in his 
 novels, by combining idealism and realism. That 
 is rather a humiliating discovery for the critics, 
 and it ought to cure them of the exaggerated 
 confidence which they are tempted to repose in 
 preconceived formulas. In the domain of litera- 
 ture, especially in that of poetical drama, there
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 291 
 
 is no such thing as good or bad, it all depends 
 upon the particular case and the hour. An old 
 Vaudevilliste, who was helping me years ago to 
 bolster up a scenario, and to whom I pointed out 
 the absurdities that we should have to encounter, 
 replied with a comic grimace, " Either one has 
 talent, or one has not." Generally, it is the 
 second alternative, one has no talent. But M. 
 Eichepin has talent, and that in no stinted 
 measure. 
 
 First, there are his lines, miracles of flexibility 
 and elasticity. They break at pleasure into as 
 many fragments as there are syllables, to convey 
 the rough, brutal, laconic speech of the peasant. 
 They contain the most commonplace words, but in 
 some marvellous way the poetry, instead of being 
 vulgarised by them, simply ennobles them. The 
 style has all the freedom of prose, but, neverthe- 
 less, it preserves all the dignity and grace of 
 poetry ; in this poetry the two forms of art 
 combine Hugo joins hands with Zola. 
 
 It is an amphibious style. Sometimes it wades 
 in the mud and picks its way through the filth 
 of the farmyard; then, with one stroke of its
 
 292 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 wings, it is soaring in mid-air and describing 
 harmonious curves through, infinite space. How 
 can one justify these alternations? In the 
 simplest way in the world. Poetry is the 
 blossoming out of the soul under the influence of 
 some great thought or strange emotion. Some of 
 the characters of Le Chemineau have none but 
 coarse and animal ideas, but the uprightness and 
 devotion of Fra^ois, the love felt by Toinette, 
 in the first act for her lover, and in the subsequent 
 acts for her son, make the expression of their 
 sentiments rise imperceptibly with the sentiments 
 themselves. As for the Chemineau himself, 
 before I know anything about him, before he haa 
 appeared on the stage, even before the curtain 
 rises, I have heard him singing, and I can guess 
 the sort of creature I have to deal with. That 
 clear, sympathetic, vibrating voice rising up into 
 space is in itself a character, a psychological fact, 
 and I have no difficulty in understanding it, 
 although it is never explained to me. The 
 author does not enter into any discussion; he 
 does not try to persuade me that all who tramp 
 the high road are like this. He knows that
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 293 
 
 besides the vagabond who sings there is a 
 vagabond whose one thought is to kill, and 
 that between the two there are many poor 
 commonplace devils not worth the trouble of 
 describing. His Chemineau is an exception; 
 he sins out of sensualism and does good out of 
 pity, for is not pity another form of sensuality ? 
 He is the incarnation of idleness, not the idle- 
 ness of the sluggard, but the idleness of the 
 restless wanderer, consumed by an eternal thirst 
 for the changing and the unknown. He is 
 fated to be a mere creature of fantasy, living 
 apart from reality, apart from duty. Need it 
 surprise us that such a man talks like a poet ? 
 Why, he is poetry itself. Please call to mind 
 that whatever theory you may cherish about the 
 origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Homeric 
 poems were the work of one or of several 
 vagabonds. Were not the Trouveres and the 
 Troubadours vagabonds too? Was not Yillon, 
 Cervantes, or Burns a vagabond, each in his own 
 fashion ? Nay, may not Richepin himself, even 
 in his riper years, feel sometimes a pang of 
 longing for the freedom of the great high road ?
 
 294 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 The year 1897 did not close without bringing 
 us a work as beautiful, perhaps more beautiful, 
 which met with a reception still more enthusias- 
 tic, either because the author's youth awoke still 
 higher hopes, or because the light of genius 
 shone out with greater freedom and spontaneity 
 than in Le Chemineau. I am speaking of Cyrano 
 de Bergerac, the drama written for the Porte 
 Saint Martin by M. Edmond Eostand. 
 
 M. Eostand is only twenty-nine years old. 
 He is the son of a very distinguished journalist 
 of Marseilles, Eugene Eostand, who might have 
 had a brilliant career in the Paris press. But he 
 preferred to live in his native town, where he 
 devoted himself to the study of economic and 
 labour questions, and took a keen interest in 
 everything which concerns local politics and the 
 internal organization of a great city. Between 
 whiles he amused himself by translating and 
 editing Catullus, a very great poet, whom we 
 made a mistake in ignoring, and who ought to 
 be given a place of honour between Lucretius 
 and Yirgil. Catullus might be called the intel- 
 lectual god-father of Edmond Eostand, and I
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 295 
 
 recognise some of his gifts in his brilliant god- 
 son. 
 
 Celebrity of the best kind was slow to find 
 out the father at Marseilles; the son leapt at 
 once out of his provincial obscurity into the most 
 exclusive circle of Parisian literary fame. He 
 was twenty years old when he issued his first 
 volume of verse, Les Musardises. I was at that 
 time critic to the Revue Bleue. The book was 
 both impertinent and engaging, a mixture of 
 carelessness and preciosity, but it was full of 
 the joy of life and of love, and it brought with 
 it a ray of the sun, which melted the ice of 
 pessimism. The publishers had never sent me 
 anything so young, so fresh, so living, and I was 
 bold enough to say that it was the most brilliant 
 poetical debut which the public had witnessed 
 since the far-off day when Alfred de Musset 
 published Les Contes d'Espagne. They laughed 
 at me then; now the eulogy appears almost 
 inadequate. Since that time M. Eostand has had 
 a charming comedy, Les Romanesques, played at 
 the Theatre Fran^ais, and La Samaritaine, which 
 I mentioned just now, at the Eenaissance.
 
 296 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 Finally, on the 28th December, 1897, hence- 
 forth a date in literature, the Porte Saint Martin 
 gave for the first time Cyrano de Bergerac, in 
 which Paris was delighted to meet again the 
 charming spirituality of Mdlle, Legault, and in 
 which our great Coquelin found scope for his 
 artistic faculties, his magnificent and faultless 
 diction, his fire, his mischief, his restrained and 
 trembling tenderness, his depth of feeling, and 
 his dazzling irony. 
 
 It is almost impossible to describe in English 
 the personality of the original De Bergerac, the 
 most French of all the Frenchmen of his time. 
 Brimful of cleverness but mad, commanding 
 admiration yet grotesque, he is a caricature and a 
 hero, he is the very form and feature of tragi- 
 comedy. There is in him much both of Pierre 
 Corneille and of Alexandre Dumas. If he had 
 put his genius into his works we should have had 
 it in its completeness, but he lived it instead of 
 writing it, he lavished it without thought of the 
 morrow in mad freaks, sublime caprices, and 
 irresponsible outbursts, he squandered it in 
 improvisations of which not a trace remains.
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 297 
 
 They have vanished like a rocket fired into space 
 two hundred years ago. Yet, thanks to Edmond 
 Rostand and thanks to Coquelin, he lives again, 
 and once more showers madness and fireworks 
 about him, Ecce Cyrano redivivus. 
 
 This wonderful creation is a feat in itself, but 
 where is the drama ? It consists entirely in the 
 strange contrast presented by Cyrano's double 
 nature. On the one hand the brave and tender 
 heart, the tongue so marvellously quick in a 
 fencing-match of words, the hand so skilful in 
 the more deadly play of the sword. On the 
 other hand the ridiculous face, the nose for 
 children to mock at, Don Juan imprisoned in the 
 skin of Quasimodo. To hear him is to love him, 
 but to see him is to make love impossible. Well, 
 then, to win love his mind must take the out- 
 ward semblance of another. He will write the 
 letters of a young and attractive rival to whom 
 he lends all the magic of his imagination, all the 
 fever of his passion. He will prompt him, he 
 will speak for him in a nocturnal rendezvous, 
 hidden in the shade of Eoxana's balcony, and 
 when the happy lover has scaled the balcony and
 
 298 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 clasped his mistress in his arms, the sound of 
 their first kiss will be both his torture and his 
 reward. The years pass, the handsome lover 
 has died at the wars ; Eoxana a widow who has 
 never been wife has taken refuge in a convent, 
 where she finds her chief solace in talking with 
 Cyrano of the dear departed. Poor Cyrano ! 
 He has become the shadow of himself, and the 
 hand of death is already upon him. His brilliant 
 gifts have faded, his proud and genial nature 
 only shows itself in spasmodic efforts. Eoxana 
 has no great difficulty in winning from the dying 
 man the secret of his deception. For a few 
 moments, then, he will be loved, or rather it was 
 he who was always loved under the outward 
 form of the handsome Christian. 
 
 Is this really a dramatic subject ? Is it not 
 rather a dream, a subtle, impalpable fancy ? The 
 " something divine, light and winged," which, 
 according to Plato, is poetry itself? Did it not 
 require remarkable audacity to think of basing 
 five acts upon such a slight foundation, and a 
 supernatural skill as well as an insolent good 
 fortune to succeed in the task ? However that
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 299 
 
 may be, the wager was played and won by M. 
 Rostand. His play had nothing vague about it ; 
 the life in it is so overflowing that it would 
 be enough for ten plays. The human heart, 
 which we thought could hold no more secrets or 
 surprises, has grown quite young again, although, 
 as Labruyere says, men have been living and 
 thinking for six thousand years. The play 
 speaks a language, old and yet new, which we 
 love both for what it reveals and for what it 
 restores. A torrent of images evoked on the 
 spur of the moment, a vein of poetry, so full of 
 freshness and novelty, overwhelm and intoxicate 
 us, whilst the gaiety of earlier days flashes 
 out in brilliant phrases, and covers us wi;n J^ 
 shower of sparks. The nightmare of symb>lism 
 is put to flight, the northern mists break and 
 roll back before the glorious rays of this Pro- 
 ven^al sun, which gives back to France her very 
 self, her own peculiar genius. I do not shrink 
 from saying that Cyrano is France, France at 
 her best, France at the culminating point of her 
 genius. 
 
 Two masterpieces in the space of a few months,
 
 300 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 after so many years of leanness, cannot but raise 
 innumerable hopes. One fact is henceforth 
 certain. We have dramatic poets, and we have 
 also a public for dramatic poetry. 
 
 So that the signs of renewal are appearing on 
 all sides, and the transformation of the theatre 
 is advancing so rapidly that new life is now 
 making itself felt in the very places where, less 
 than a year ago, I could discern only routine, dis- 
 couragement, and inertia. Nor is this only true 
 of the theatres a cote^ as people used to call the 
 Theatre Libre, and the other institutions created 
 in imitation of it; but the regular legitimate 
 theatres, open to the general public, are to-day 
 fiafi of promise and movement. The spirit of 
 f initktive and of progress, sometimes perhaps a 
 little subversive in its eagerness, but always 
 well-intentioned, has penetrated into the old- 
 established precincts, where nothing had moved 
 for twenty years, and where tradition reigned 
 supreme. There is movement in every direc- 
 tion, from the present towards both the future 
 and the past, from the native drama towards the 
 works of foreigners. Never have the classics
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 301 
 
 been more piously performed. Not only do the 
 two great houses devoted to classical drama never 
 forget to keep the birthdays of Corneille, Eacine, 
 and Moliere, like those of old and dearly -loved 
 kinsmen, but the popular theatres have now their 
 classical matinees, in which the nouvelles couches 
 gain acquaintance with our masterpieces. Every 
 week sees the unearthing of a forgotten comedy 
 or drama, accompanied by an explanatory lec- 
 ture. At the same time the old wall of prejudice 
 against foreign dramatists begins to give way 
 on every side, without, however letting in a 
 rush of sentiment which would be fatal. The 
 Odeon played Lytton's Richelieu, and the world 
 did not laugh as much as I had feared. The 
 Eenaissance offered its audience the first taste of 
 Gabriele d'Annunzio's Ville Morte, and the world 
 did not yawn more than it had a right to do. 
 The Theatre de 1'CEuvre gave two plays of 
 Ibsen, Jean Gabriel BorcJcmann and Rosmersholm 
 this year, as well as Gogol's Rivizor in Merimee's 
 translation. If the International Theatre suc- 
 ceeds in coming into being, it promises us the 
 most interesting plays produced during the last
 
 302 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 few years by Spanish, Italian, and English 
 dramatists. 
 
 The Theatre Antoine has lowered the price of 
 its seats, and this enables a new class of spec- 
 tators to gain acquaintance with the best plays 
 produced during the ten years at the Theatre 
 Libre. Its " soire'es d'avant garde " will go on 
 making experiments in new forms of art, so as to 
 be in the forefront of discovery. The old theatres 
 have not abandoned the long runs, which are so 
 justly denounced on both sides of the Channel ; 
 but they now interrupt them by varied specta- 
 cles, and divide them by subscription nights, 
 which tend to foster a special repertoire and a 
 special public, like those of the Comedie Fran- 
 9aise and the Ode'on. It is an excellent move, 
 because it helps to give regularity and scope to 
 the process of selection in these matters. 
 
 But the crowning fact to which I have striven 
 to give prominence in this, my last study, is the 
 revival of verse on the stage. And it is not only 
 dramatic verse which is now flourishing in 
 several theatres, lyrical verse has its share in this 
 revival, and appropriates one evening a week at
 
 REVIVAL OF VERSE ON THE STAGE. 303 
 
 the Ode*on. At the Bodiniere it is quite at home, 
 and although much that is impure mingles with 
 the poetry in the amusement provided at the 
 famous Butte, it must be recognised that poetry 
 holds the first place there, and has become indis- 
 pensable. A quarter of a century ago it would 
 have been simply ignored, but from an outcast it 
 has become a queen. 
 
 Some writers, even amongst our own country- 
 men, delight in bearing witness to the decay of 
 the French mind, and in announcing the end of 
 France. If I agreed with these prophets of 
 misfortune, I should take care not to tell the 
 English so. But, as a matter of fact, I am of an 
 entirely different opinion. Whether it be a 
 matter of rejoicing, or of affliction, France is in the 
 best of health, and, whatever the world may say, 
 shows no sign of mental disease. I cannot discern 
 the dismal symptoms which are described with 
 such melancholy pleasure, or if I do discern 
 them, they seem to me unimportant, or even if a 
 few of them are important, they are counter- 
 balanced by reassuring phenomena. In the 
 sphere of the drama, I have spoken of schools
 
 3o 4 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA. 
 
 which, are in process of dissolution, of worn-out 
 systems, of principles which have lost their virtue, 
 of old truths which have almost become false- 
 hoods ; but I have also pointed to rising talents, 
 to new forces which are making themselves felt, 
 to rich and fruitful combinations of ideas. It 
 was in the autumn of 1895 that Dumas fils was 
 taken from us. "What a host of emotions and of 
 discoveries have come to light since that date. 
 On the one hand a long and brilliant series of 
 experiments in the domain of comedy, of 
 successes attained by young masters, whom no 
 one had heard of eight years ago. On the other 
 hand the unexpected revival of the drama 
 brought about by our great poets, until it is 
 more popular in all its forms than it ever was 
 before. Yerily, there is something here more 
 than consolation, and more than promise. One 
 thing is dying another is born, and there is 
 nothing to prove that the dawning life may not 
 equal, or even excel, that which is drawing to 
 a close. 
 
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