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by Grander {Matthews :
ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS
French Dramatists of the I9th Century
Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more
or less importance
Aspects of Fiction, and Other Essays
The Historical Novel, and Other Essays
Essays on English (in press)
FRENCH DRAMATISTS
OF THE
i 9 th CENTURY
OF THE
i 9 th CENTURY
BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS, D.C.L.,
PROFESSOR OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
THIRD EDITION,
BROUGHT DOWN TO THE END OF THE CENTURY
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1881, 1891,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY BRANDER MATTHEWS.
All rights reserved.
THE CAXTON PRESS
NEW YORK.
PREFACE.
IT is not yet sixty years since the Romanticists and
the Classicists first met in battle-array ; and it is but
little more than fifty years since Hernani sounded his
trumpet, and the hollow walls of Classicism fell with
a final crash. This half-century is a period of no slight
importance in the history of the drama : it is one of
the two epochs when the plays of France have been
conspicuously and incomparably superior to the plays
of any other country ; the earlier epoch was when the
French stage saw in rapid succession the newest works
of Corneille, of Moliere, and of Racine. Although, with
our ownership -of Shakspere constantly in mind, we
may not be willing to allow that the French have
reached the highest pinnacle of the drama, we can see
clearly enough that it is in the drama that they have
mounted highest. If we seek to know why this is,
why they have done better work in the drama than in
any other department of literature, it is easy (although
vi Preface.
perhaps not altogether sufficient) to answer that it is
because the dramatic is the form best suited for the
expression of certain qualities in which the French
excel the men of other races. Chief among these
national characteristics are a lively wit, a love of effect
for its own sake, a gift for writing beautiful prose,
and a passion for order and symmetry and clear-
ness. These are precious qualities to the dramatist ;
and, just as they did their share toward the beauty of
the comedy and the tragedy which amused and moved
the people of Paris and the court of the king in the
age of Louis XIV., so they now help to make the
present drama of France what it is. The plays of
Corneille, of Moliere and of Racine, have been written
about superabundantly; while, so far as I know, the
story of the more modern French drama has nowhere
been told. Now and again one may chance on the
portrait of an individual, but a picture of the whole
period is not to be found anywhere. For this reason,
I have sought in the following pages to give an outline
of the course of the drama in France from the first
quarter of this century to the present time. In the
attempt to embrace the whole I have been forced to
neglect some of the parts, and to pass with but casual
attention over more than one dramatist of note, Casi-
mir Delavigne, for example, Alfred de Musset (who,
in spite of his genius and of the latter-day success of
certain of his comedies, was a dramatist only second-
Preface. vii
arily, and, so to speak, by accident), Frangois Ponsard,
and Mme. de Girardin, among the dead ; M. Jules San-
deau, M. Ernest Legouve, M. Edouard Pailleron, and
M. Edmond Gondinet, among the living.
In an earlier and less complete condition, most of the
chapters which make up the book have already appeared
here and there in various reviews and magazines. Be-
fore taking its appointed place in these pages, each
chapter has been carefully revised, often enlarged, and
in all cases "brought down to date." Space has been
found for more minute criticism and for more ample
quotation than was possible in the scant quarters of a
serial. It will be noted that the French titles of plays
have been turned into English whenever a translation
appeared possible and profitable ; and the use of
French has been conscientiously avoided, save where
no English equivalent could be found for a technical
term, and in an occasional specimen quotation of the
verse of Victor Hugo or Emile Augier, to which no
translation would do justice.
I take pleasure in expressing my thanks here to a
friend, who, in spite of our constant disagreement as to
the relative value of M. Augier and M. Dumas, has lent
me the aid of his literary skill and of his knowledge of
the modern French drama, as he did before, when the
' Theatres of Paris ' was passing through the press.
B. M.
NEW YORK, October, 1881.
viii Preface.
NOTE TO THIRD EDITION.
To the second edition of this book, published in
1891, there was added a chapter covering the years
of the ninth decade; and the present edition is now
enlarged by a final chapter considering the condition
of the French drama at the end of the nineteenth
century.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, February, 1901.
CONTENTS.
>AGE.
PREFACE v
CHAPTER.
I. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT i
II. VICTOR HUGO 15
III. ALEXANDRE DUMAS 46
IV. EUGENE SCRIBE 78
V. EMILE AUGIER 105
VI. ALEXANDRE DUMAS jils 136
VII. VICTORIEN SARDOU 172
VIII. OCTAVE FEUILLET 203
IX. EUGENE LABICHE 224
X. MEILHAC AND HALEVY 243
XI. EMILE ZOLA AND THE PRESENT TENDENCIES OF FRENCH
DRAMA 264
XII. A TEN YEARS' RETROSPECT: 1881-1891 . .285
XIII. AT THE END OF THE CENTURY: 1891-1900 . . . 303
FRENCH DRAMATISTS
OF THE
igth CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.
" THERE is in every thing a maturity which must be
waited for," said Chamfort ; " happy the man who
arrives at the moment of this maturity ! " Toward the
end of the first quarter of this century it was evident,
to any one who had eyes to see, that a moment of
maturity in the history of the French drama was soon
coming. The time was ripe for a new growth. Else-
where in literature and in art, there was the murmur
of new life ; in prose fiction and in poetry, there had
been a new birth ; even on the stage there were begin-
ning to be signs of the coming of new blood. And
nowhere else was there as much need of a renascence
as in the theatre, where all was chill and lifeless.
During the imperial rule of Napol6on the position
of the Parisian theatres had been peculiar. They were
under the direct control of the General Government^
represented at the fall of the empire by M. de R6mu-
sat. They were limited in number; and the style of
play each could perform was rigidly prescribed by the
2 French Dramatists.
imperial decree. To one theatre the production of
operas-comiques was permitted, and nothing else; to
another, vaudevilles ; to a third, melodramas ; while to
the Theatre Frangais was reserved the exclusive right
to perform the pieces of the classic repertory. The
comedies and tragedies of Corneille, Moliere, Racine,
Regnard, Marivaux, Voltaire, and Beaumarchais, could
be seen on the stage of the Theatre Frangais, and
nowhere else. This lack of liberty brought about the
usual result of restriction, a dearth of novelty and a
desolating monotony. The imperial interference was,
in part at least, responsible for the low condition into
which French dramatic literature was sinking in the
first ten years of the Bourbon restoration. At the
Theatre Frangais comedy was almost childish, and
tragedy was in its dotage: there was neither action
nor animation ; all was dull, dreary, and commonplace.
Now and again, in a minor theatre, there was an
attempt at something less constrained: opera-comique
was beginning its lively career ; the national vaudeville
had been renewed by Eugene Scribe, who had stamped
it forever with his own image and superscription ; and
Pixe're'court and Victor Ducange had made themselves
masters of melodrama imported from Germany, and
were using it to wring all hearts.
But the official theatre and the official critics chose
to ignore, even the existence of vaudeville and melo-
drama, or at best, to regard them as wholly inferior
forms of art, if indeed they were not altogether beyond
the pale of art. The attitude of the French critics
toward such unliterary plays as vaudevilles and melo-
dramas was not unlike that of a cultivated New-Yorker
toward the old Bowery Theatre, or that pf a cultivated
The Romantic Movement. 3
Londoner toward the similar Transpontine houses.
Such places might serve to amuse the vulgar throng ;
but the plays acted therein were too far removed from
literature to call for criticism, or even consideration.
The new comedies and tragedies brought out from time
to time by the Comedie-Franc.aise received all the more
consideration and criticism : they were judged accord-
ing to a code of Draconian severity ; and if they broke
one jot or tittle of the dramatic law, if they were found
wanting in one iota of dramatic decorum, condign and
exemplary punishment was at once visited upon the
hapless author. In general, however, authors and critics
were quite comfortably agreed on what was fit and
proper and in accordance with the dignity of the drama.
To be dignified was the chief end of the dramatist, and
both tragedy and comedy were constantly taking les-
sons in deportment. Never to infringe upon the rules
laid down by Boileau, and discussed by numberless
commentators, was an equal duty. Slowly and surely
the desire to do nothing outside of the rules, or in any
way indecorous, was choking all life out of the drama.
As Mr. Saintsbury aptly puts it, " Each piece was ex-
pected to resemble something else, and originality was
regarded as a mark of bad taste and insufficient cul-
ture." The French drama of the first quarter of this
century is the empty echo of a hollow past. Its aim
was to equal Voltaire. Voltaire had admiringly copied
Racine ; Racine had sought to reproduce in French
the tragedy of the Greeks as he saw it, chiefly through
the medium of the Latin adaptations ; and thus there
was imitation of an imitation, and no end. "French
tragedy," said Goethe, "is a parody of itself." If the
great critic thought this of the tragedy of Voltaire,
4 French Dramatists.
what must he have thought of the tragedy of Vol-
taire's feeble followers ?
The trademark of a tragedy, according to the rules,
was the blind obedience paid to the "unities." The
French critics pretended to derive from Aristotle a law
that a dramatic poem should show one action happening
in one place in the space of one day : these were the
unities of action, place, and time. As to the unity of
action, there need be no dispute : any work of art must
have a single distinct motive and mainspring. But
both the unity of time, which compelled the hurried
massing of all the straggling incidents of a tale into
the course of twenty-four hours ; and the unity of place,
which forbade all change of scene, these were absur-
dities. In 1629 a Frenchman, Mairet, had brought
out at Rouen an imitation of the Italian Trissino's
'Sofonisba,' in which the three unities appeared for
the first time. Corneille early gave in his adhesion to
the principle, but found it hard to reconcile his prac-
tice. Although the Italians and French supposed that
they were imitating the ancients, it is a fact that the
unities of time and place were not erected among the
Greek tragedians into a principle, nor does Aristotle
lay them down as laws. 1 He says nothing at all as
to the unity of place ; and in speaking of the unity of
time he probably meant merely to declare the habitual
practice among the best dramatists. It is safe to say
that not ^Eschylus, Sophocles, nor Euripides ever gave
a thought to either the unity of time or the unity of
place. By accident, and because of the physical condi-
1 For an elaborate discussion of the subject, with abundant citation of authori-
ties, see the ' Dramatic Unities in the Present Day,' by Edwin Simpson. London.
Triibner, 1874.
The Romantic Movement. 5
tions of the Greek theatre, they had to condense their
story as well as they could, and to be sparing of change
of scene. That they did not hesitate to shift the place
of action when it suited their purpose, there can be no
doubt. The ' Hecuba ' of Euripides is an instance, and
others are not wanting.
The simplicity, the directness, and, above all, the un-
consciousness to which the Greek drama owed so much
of its poetry and its power, were qualities wholly for-
eign to the French court of Louis XIV., and they were
neither appreciated there, nor in the main even under-
stood. The severity and stately dignity of the Greek
drama, in great part the result of the circumstances
under which it was acted, were foreign to the turbu-
lent and fiery tragedy of Corneille, produced under
wholly different conditions and in a wholly altered
state of society, with far more complex emotions. The
Greek actor, raised in lofty buskins, and speaking
through a resonant mask, that he might be seen and
heard by the vast multitude seated before him in the
open amphitheatre, was thus hampered from all vio-
lent action, and achieved perforce a certain stateliness.
But the French actor, in the rich and elaborate cos-
tume of his own time, declaimed his verses in a small
hall, before a select audience, many of whom had seats
upon the stage, crowding the performers into a narrow
lane between these rows of spectators, and into a
narrow space between these spectators and the foot-
lights. To attempt to reproduce, under these conditions,
the massive dignity of the Greek stage, was to attempt
the impossible. Of a certainty, the result would be
literary merely, and not lifelike. It is not to be de-
nied that the regularity and concentration and nudity
6 French Dramatists.
imposed on the dramatist by the observance of the
three unities may at times have helped the writer of
genius, who is but the stronger for the difficulties he
struggles with : the feeble, however, were made more
feeble still ; and even a writer of genius, like Corneille,
chafed against rigid restrictions he was not flexible
enough to get around. It is pitiful to see how the
virile and vigorous Corneille, in his three discourses
on dramatic composition, humbles himself before the
shadow of Aristotle and the ancients, and begs to be
allowed to stretch the "single day" to, say, thirty
hours, and to take as the " single place " a whole town,
in different parts of which the action may go on. How
the bonds hampered the poet is summed up concisely
in the judgment which the Academy, at Richelieu's
order, passed on Corneille's best play, the 'Cid,' to
the effect that the poet/ in endeavoring to observe the
rules of art, had chosen rather to sin against those of
nature.
Racine's calmer genius worked without revolt under
the rules which pinioned Corneille : he found his ac-
count in them. To him his characters were of first
importance, and what they felt and thought and said ;
whereas Corneille was concerned chiefly with the
action, and with what his people did, what they might
have to say was of less interest. When action was
proscribed, and little was done, and every thing was
talked about, Corneille chafed against the tightening
bonds ; but Racine seemed to dance best in fetters.
And as Racine came after Corneille, and became the
foremost tragic writer of the magnificent court of
Louis XIV., the courtly graces with which he had
endowed tragedy were afterward inseparable from it.
The Romantic Movement. 7
So the frank and free-spoken drama of Corneille gave
way before the fine-lady muse of Racine, not any
weaker, it may be, but more polished and mannered.
The twist once given, French tragic drama turned
more and more away from nature, and became more
and more artificial and barren. Later came Voltaire,
who was never tired of finding fault with Corneille,
and had nothing but praise for Racine. He gave in to
the pseudo-unities of time and place, although with
characteristic ingenuity he evaded them, while pretend-
ing to be bound by them. Voltaire even refined on
his predecessor. He had a horror of the colloquial : he
screwed dramatic diction two or three turns higher, and
still farther from nature. For his fastidious taste, even
Greek tragedy was too simple and too familiar. He
never by any chance allowed to pass any of those
homely words which reach the heart so readily : these
were banished, and a dignified periphrasis took their
place.
Voltaire, after all, was a man of genius, however
false his doctrines ; and the full feebleness of which
French tragedy was capable, when it was made accord-
ing to his precepts, was evident only after his death
and in the works of his followers, men of moderate
talent, able to copy correctly the faults of their elders
and betters. In their hands the tragic drama lost
what little life it had left, and the red heels of Racine
lengthened into unmistakable stilts. There were not
wanting those who now and then inveighed against
long monologues, and the two false unities, and the
device of confidants ; but the admirers of " dignity "
and "correctness" made a firm front against these
barbarians. As time went on, tragedy went from bad
8 French Dramatists.
to worse. Even in the hot days of the Revolution,
even in the carnage of '93, the Theatre Frangais con-
tinued to bring forth vapid and innocuous classical
tragedies. With the return of order and the subse-
quent worship of Republican Greece and Rome, the
so-called classic drama got the benefit of the craze
for antiquity. When Napoleon was first consul, and
after he was firmly seated on the throne, every thing
was still more pseudo-classic. In tragedy, as in sculp-
ture and in painting, subjects were chosen almost ex-
clusively from Greek and Roman history and legend.
Napoleon was anxious to have a great dramatist to
illustrate his reign. He fostered tragedy as well as he
knew how : but the conditions were not favorable ; the
moment of maturity had not yet come ; and somehow
or other the great dramatist refused to be made to
order.
The fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the
Bourbons made no change in literary fashions. The
returning exiles found the tragic drama as they had
left it. In 1792, the year before the Terror, the good
Ducis had produced his 'Othello,' in which a ban-
deau is the token of guilt, and the Moor stabs his
wife, instead of smothering her ; for the sight, or even
the mention, of so low and common a thing as a
handkerchief or a pillow would have been fatal to the
proper elevation of tragedy. In 1815, when the Bour-
bons sat again on the throne of their fathers, there
was the same painful effort after " dignity " and " cor-
rectness." Holding that action or even violent emo-
tion was unseemly, every thing was told, and nothing
was done. As Victor Hugo put it in the preface
to his 'Cromwell,' published in 1827, "Instead of
The Romantic Movement. 9
scenes, we have narrations ; instead of pictures, descrip-
tions. Grave personages, placed like a Greek chorus
between us and the drama, come and tell us what is
taking place in the temple, in the palace, in the public
place, until we are tempted to call out to them, ' Truly ?
Then why do you not take us there ? It must be
amusing, it must be well worth seeing.'" Still worse,
not only was real emotion proscribed, but also the
simple, homely, heartfelt words in which real emotion
is wont to show itself. The language of tragedy had
to be literary, and without any phrase plucked from
the roots of humanity, and racy of the soil. The
words such as Shakspere was wont to use without
stint, simply and nobly, were shunned for a roundabout
pomposity. The simple and direct word, to obtain
which without baldness is the highest poetry, was
always avoided. In its stead were strained and stilted
verses, in which an infantine idea was swaddled in long
robes of verbiage. By a process of selection and puri-
fication the vocabulary had become extremely impover-
ished. No welcome was extended to new words, and
good old words were constantly getting thrust aside
because they lacked "dignity." There was a steady
attempt to reach the grand style by the use of big
words, and to attain elevation by standing on tip-toe.
Laced in a tight corset thus, poor tragedy could
scarcely breathe, and was, indeed, well-nigh at its last
breath. Yet it died hard. Talma, whom Carlyle notes
as incomparably the finest actor he ever saw, asked for
Shakspere, and got Ducis, and left the stage without
having played one part really worthy of him. All over
the tragic drama was the abomination of desolation.
By the end of the first quarter of this century, how-
IO French Dramatists.
ever, the moment of maturity approached, and the time
began to be ripe for revolt against the rigid restraints
and monotonous mannerism of the Classicists. During
the forcible-feeble reign of the Bourbons, a new genera-
tion, born in the thick of the Napoleonic combats and
conquests, had grown to manhood. It was restless
and militant, and it had a congenital impatience of
inherited authority. A change came over the spirit
of the scene : instead of a slumber like unto death, there
were signs of a general awakening. In all depart-
ments of art there were wars, and rumors of wars.
The effect of Mme. de Stael's precepts on the one
hand, and of Chateaubriand's practice on the other,
was beginning to be felt. Byron and Scott, and our
own Cooper, were getting themselves read in France
as no foreign authors ever had been read there. A
knowledge of Goethe and of Schiller was spreading
slowly. Weber's ' Freischiitz,' sadly mutilated, it is
true, was sung with success. In art, pictorial and
plastic, in architecture, in music as well as in poetry,
both lyric and dramatic, there was turmoil and ebul-
lition. From Byron, in a measure, came a spiritual
unrest and a mild misanthropic pessimism ; and from
Germany came a certain tendency to vehement exag-
geration. Like the movement headed by Wordsworth,
the movement headed by Hugo was "a great move-
ment of feeling, not a great movement of mind."
The publication of Victor Hugo's ' Odes et Ballades '
was the signal for a general revolt against the estab-
lished forms ; and it began to be evident that an artistic
revolution impended, although where the first rising
might be expected was doubtful. But in 1827 the best
actors of Eigland Kean, Young, Charles Kemb'e, and
The Romantic Movement. 1 1
Macready crossed the Channel, and revealed the
English drama to the Parisians. No greater contrast
could well be imagined than the tumultuous action of
Shakspere, and the decorous declamation of French
classic tragedy. One enthusiastic admirer of the Eng-
lish performances said to Charles Kemble, " Othello !
voila, voila la passion, la tragedie. Que j'aime cette
piece ! il y a tant de remue-mtnage f" 1 In December,
1827, a few weeks after the English actors had left
Paris, Victor Hugo published his ' Cromwell,' a his-
torical drama in five acts, accompanied by a preface,
which was at once a protest against the prevailing taste,
a plan of reform, and a declaration of war. Obviously
the theatre was to be the battle-ground of the factions :
nowhere else could they fight hand to hand and face
to face ; nowhere else would there be so stubborn a
resistance to the new gospel.
In every group there is an individuality, acting as a
pivot, around which the others gravitate, just as a
system of planets revolves around the sun. Among
the impatient romanticists this central individuality
was Victor Hugo. He was the happy man, who, to use
Chamfort's phrase cited at the beginning of this chap-
ter, "arrived at the moment of maturity." More multi-
farious and of higher genius than any of his compan-
ions-in-arms, Hugo was well fitted to be a chief. He
was void of fear, and he believed in himself. His
friends and followers believed in him and in the right-
eousness of their common cause, and they made ready
for battle. The political debates and disturbances which
1 " There, there's passion for you, and tragedy I How I love that play 1
There is so much of a rumpus in it." Mrs. KEMBLE'S 'Recollections of a
Girlhood.' New York: Holt, 1879. p. 115.
12 French Dramatists.
led to the final fall of the Bourbons, in 1830, were
scarcely more acrimonious than the contemporaneous
romantic attacks on the Classicism which, like the ex-
iled family, had learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing.
" Something of the intensity of the odium theologicum
(if, indeed, the cestheticum be not in these days the
more bitter of the two) entered into the conflict," wrote
Lowell of the war of critics, which began when Words-
worth proclaimed himself the prophet of a new poetic
dispensation. And Hugo's disciples were like Words-
worth's, in that " the verses of the master had for them
the virtue of religious canticles, stimulant of zeal, and
not amenable to the ordinary tests of cold-blooded criti-
cism."
Second only to Hugo, if, indeed, second even to him,
came Alexandre Dumas, whose 'Henri III.' was to
shock the staid frequenters of the Theatre Frangais,
and to achieve an indisputable and unexpected success
a full year before Hugo's ' Hernani ' was acted. Next
came Alfred de Vigny, whose 'More de Ve'nise' also
won a triumph at the Theatre Frangais before the
final fight over the first acted play of Hugo. Besides
these three leaders, there were Charles Nodier (much
the oldest of them all), Gerard de Nerval, The"ophile
Gautier, Auguste Maquet, Joseph Bouchardy, and many
another as ardent for the cause as the chief himself.
Ranged in battle-array over against the irregular
band of Romanticists were the serried ranks of the
Classicists, men full of years and honors, and all so
carefully forgotten now of the public that their names
can be recalled only with an effort, even by the professed
student of the stage of that time. Between the com-
batants, a little off at one side, and perhaps a trifle
The Romantic Movement. 13
nearer to the Romanticists than to the Classicists, was
a tiny group of conservatives, who stood halting between
the old and the new. In his entertaining account of
this phase in the history of French dramatic literature,
Alphonse Royer considers this group of conservatives
as Classicists, holding that those who were not for the
Romanticists were against them. Consequently he
divides the Classicists into two sets, the pure Clas-
sicists and the mitigated Classicists ; designating by
this latter name those whom I have called the conser-
vatives. The pure Classicists were the no-surrender
and die-in-the-last-ditch party, who brooked no com-
promise with the Romanticists, and who always voted
the straight ticket. The mitigated Classicists, or conser-
vatives, were the more amiable persons, who confessed
some of the failings and abuses of the existing state of
things, but believed in "reform within the party."
The little knot of the mitigated, who thus sought
safety in the middle path, had for its chief Casimir Dela-
vigne, remembered now as the author of ' Louis XI.'
The only other authors of any permanent value belong-
ing to this group were Lebrun, whose ' Marie Stuart '
is still remembered ; and Soumet, whose tragedy, * Nor-
ma/ is familiar to all as the book of Bellini's opera.
Great was the dismay among the pure Classicists when
Casimir Delavigne quit the camp, and set up for himself
as the chief of a new sect, conciliatory and conserva-
tive, when, in 1829, he chose the Porte St. Martin
Theatre, instead of the Theatre Frangais, to produce
his 'Marino Faliero,' based on Byron, as his 'Louis
XI.' had been made out of Scott's 'Quentin Durward.'
In like manner his later drama, the ' Enfants d'Edou-
ard,' was taken from Shakspere. And this frequency
14 French Dramatists.
of imitation was characteristic of the timid talents of
Delavigne. His plays lacked boldness, and his verse
lacked relief. His was an amiable talent : but during
the hot battle between the Romanticists and the
Classicists was no time for a merely amiable talent ; and
Delavigne had to submit to be thrust on one side,
and remembered rather for the share he might have
taken in the combat than for any positive quality in the
work he actually did.
The interest in the fight of the factions centres
almost altogether around the two chiefs, Victor Hugo
and Alexandre Dumas ; and the course of the combat
can best be told in considering their separate dramas.
It suffices now to note that the English actors left Paris
in the fall of 1827, and that Victor Hugo published his
profession of faith in the preface to * Cromwell ' before
the end of the year. Less than fifteen months after-
ward Alexandre Dumas brought out his first acted play,
1 Henri III.,' at the Theatre Francois. In another
year, at the same theatre, came 'Hernani,' the first
acted play of Victor Hugo. Within eighteen months
' Antony ' and ' Marion Delorme ' followed, and victory
was assured. The Romanticists, like Jove's thunder-
bolts, were but a handful, yet they annihilated the
Titans who had overawed their predecessors.
CHAPTER II.
VICTOR HUGO.
IN the year 1778 there was acted in Paris, at the
Theatre Frangais, ' Irene,' the last tragedy of Voltaire,
whose first play, ' CEdipe,' had been brought out at the
same theatre in 1718, sixty years before. On March
31, at the sixth performance of 'Irene,' the presence of
the aged author called forth the greatest enthusiasm.
To the yet living Voltaire, it was, as it were, a foretaste
of literary immortality, and he was much affected by
the demonstrations. " You smother me with roses," he
said, " and kill me with pleasure."
In our day we have seen but one sight like unto this.
On Feb. 25, 1880, at the same Theatre Frangais where
Voltaire was honored, was celebrated the fiftieth anni-
versary of the first performance of ' Hernani,' a play by
Victor Hugo. In the half-century it had been acted
over three hundred times in that theatre. The house
was full and enthusiastic ; and the list of those present
at this semi-centennial performance holds nearly all the
notable names of modern France. After the acting of
' Hernani,' the curtain drew up again, and discovered
that incomparable company of actors, the Comedie-
Frangaise, grouped around a bust of Victor Hugo in
the centre of the stage. Then from the ranks of the
performers, each of whom was dressed in the costume
of the character he had acted in one of the poet's plays,
came forward the chief actress of tragedy, and recited
5
1 6 French Dramatists.
in the most musical of voices, and amid the plaudits of
the audience, the poem written for the occasion by one
of the foremost of younger French poets, a poem
which proclaimed that Victor Hugo would have long
life before he had immortality, and which declared that
his drama and Glory had celebrated their golden wedding.
Voltaire has been dead only a century, and already
the dust lies thick on his dramatic works. A hundred
years is a long life for any thing in literature. What
may befall Victor Hugo's dramas in a hundred years, it
were vain to prophesy. Shakspere has been dead two
centuries and a half, and his plays are as young as the
day they were born. Victor Hugo does not lack par-
tisans who declare him to be of the race and lineage
of Shakspere. Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne, for
instance, is an English poet and critic who cannot men-
tion M. Hugo's name without dithyrambic rhapsodies ;
and the late Th6ophile Gautier was a French poet and
critic, who, when almost on his death-bed, told a friend,
that, if he had the ill-fortune to find a single line of
Hugo's poor, he would not dare to confess it, to him-
self, all alone, in the cellar, without a light.
Gautier, at least, had the excuse that Hugo had been
his leader in a fierce fight, and that it ill becomes a
soldier to doubt the captain who brought the battle to
an end. It is needless to tell again, and at length, the
tale of the battle between the Romanticists and the
Classicists. It is enough to remember that the theatre
was the chief battle-ground. Now, for an assault on the
stage, Hugo was the best possible leader. He was a
born playwright. Although only twenty-five years old
when he put forth 'Cromwell,' in 1827, he had already
published two novels and two volumes of poetry. Nov-
Victor Hugo. 1 7
elist and poet then, he has revealed himself since as
critic, orator, historian, and satirist ; but in every dis-
guise he shows his strong native bent toward the
theatre. His poems are often but the lyric setting of
a dramatic motive : his novels are but plays told in
narrative, instead of put en the stage. All the elements
of the play are to be found in the novel : situations,
scenery, effects, even to the exit-speeches, all are
there. No reader of the ' History of a Crime ' need be
reminded how dramatic, not to say theatrical, he can
make history. As an orator, also, his stage-training
stands him in good stead : his oration becomes a play
with only one part, and he uses as best he may the
scenery which chances to surround him. In 1851, for
example, pleading in court against the death-penalty,
he pointed to the crucifix over the judge's head, and
appealed to "that victim of capital punishment." It is
in his novels, however, that his dramatic instinct is
most plainly seen. His methods are those of a melo-
dramatist. He plans and paints his scenery himself,
and far better than the material brush of the scenic
artist could do it ; and he delights in the violent con-
trasts always effective on the stage, in the cut-and-
thrust repartee of the theatre, and in the sharply out-
lined characters whose complexity is only apparent.
Abundant proof of the dramatic tendencies of his
youth are to be found in the curious book, 'Victor
Hugo ; raconte par un T6moin de sa Vie/ which is at
least semi-autobiographical : it is an open secret that
the Witness of his Life was his wife. In this we are
told that he wrote a tragedy, 'Irtamene,' at the age
of fourteen and an optra-comique, 'A Quelque Chose
Hasard est Bon,' before he was sixteen. Between the
1 8 French Dramatists.
two, at fifteen, he had written a more elaborate tragedy,
' Athalie.' The witness of his life tells us that it was
" perfectly regular, in five acts, with unities of time and
place, dream, confidants," etc. At nineteen he planned
a play, 'Amy Robsart,' taken, for the most part, from
' Kenil worth.' Seven years later he gave it to his
brother-in-law, Paul Foucher, not thinking it fit that
after the publication of ' Cromwell,' he should borrow a
subject. The play was acted anonymously, and hissed.
Hugo at once came forward, and claimed his share of
the failure. None of these early dramatic attempts
of Hugo has been published ; but the witness of his
life prints in full another play, ' Inez de Castro,' written
at the age of sixteen, apparently just after the com-
position of the opfra-comigue, and three years before
the adaptation from Scott.
' Inez de Castro ' is a remarkable production for a
boy of sixteen, and it has never received the attention
it deserves from critics of Hugo's literary career. We
can detect in this youthful sketch the germ of his later
dramatic work. Here, in fact, is Victor Hugo the play-
wright, in the chrysalis. ' Inez de Castro ' is a melo-
drama in three acts and two interludes. These latter
are spectacular merely, and call for no comment. But
the three acts of melodrama repay study. The story
of the play need not be told here at length : it has a
juvenile want of profundity, and it shows a juvenile
love of the marvellous and astounding. But the effects
are not altogether external, and there is a willingness
to grapple with weighty subjects, not a little charac-
teristic. Here are the firstlings of Hugo's theatrical
genius, and we can see here in embryo some of his
later qualities. The scene is laid in Spain, where the
Victor Hugo. 19
poet had passed part of his wandering childhood ; and
there is a lavish use of local color. That the young
poet had already broken with the unity of place is
shown by the frequent change of scene. There is the
commingling of the comic and the serious, which, nine
years later, in the ' Cromwell ' preface, he declared to
be essential to a proper dramatic presentation of life.
The humor is not grim and grotesque, as it became
in some of his later plays, but frankly mirthful. There
is the use of the prattle of little children to relieve
the strain of tense emotion, an effect repeated half a
century later in ' Ninety-three.' There are intriguing
officials, recalling those in ' Ruy Bias ; ' and there is a
liberal use of spies and poison, recalling 'Lucrece
Borgia' and 'Angelo.' There are lyric interludes and
antitheses, and violent contrasts, and a seeking of star-
tling effects by the sudden diclosure of solemn situa-
tions. There is one scene in the tomb of the king,
which perhaps suggested the act of ' Hernani ' in the
tomb of Charlemagne ; and there is another in a vast
hall, hung with black draperies, and containing a
throne and a scaffold, around which are grouped guards
in black and red, and executioners in the black robes
of penitents, with torches in their hands. This scene
seemingly has served as raw material for one in ' Marie
Tudor,' and also, it may be, for the famous supper-
scene in * Lucrece Borgia.' And, last of all, there is a
ghost, which, I am glad to say, Victor Hugo has made
no attempt to utilize in any of his later works.
After Victor Hugo had begun to be recognized as the
chief of a new sect, his liking for the stage prompted
him to plan a play which should exemplify what the
drama of the future ought to be. He sketched out
2o French Dramatists.
'Cromwell,' intending it for Ta'ma, who heartily ap-
proved of the new principles. Unfortunately, the great
actor died, worn out with giving form to the emptiness
of the plays he had to act. Bereft of the one actor
who could do justice to his hero, Hugo gave up the
thought of the stage, and elaborated the play, until it
is well-nigh as long as Mr. Swinburne's interminable
'Bothwell.' However, the original acting-play remains
visible, though embedded in a mass of superabundant
matter. Although the scenes are unduly prolonged,
and the characters developed at needless length, care-
ful cutting would make its performance a possibility.
It is to be judged frankly as a play for the stage, and
not as that half-breed monstrosity, a "play for the
closet." Of course, it marks an immense advance on
the ' Inez de Castro ' of nine years before ; but it is
far inferior to the ' Hernani ' of three years later. The
restrictions of actual stage representation are whole-
some to Hugo's exuberant genius.
As a historical drama, ' Cromwell ' is not quite so
accurate as its author pretends ; but it presents vividly
the superficial aspects of a man and a time still waiting
for a dramatist who can see their great capabilities.
The plot, the incidents of which are not as closely ser-
ried as in Hugo's later plays, turns on the Protector's
intrigues for the crown he afterward refused. There is
the familiar use of moments of surprise and suspense,
and of stage-effects appealing to the eye and the ear.
In the first act Richard Cromwell drops into the midst
of the conspirators against his father, surprise : he
accuses them of treachery in drinking without him,
suspense; suddenly a trumpet sounds, and a crier
orders open the doors of the tavern where all are sit-
Victor Hugo. 2 1
ting, suspense again ; when the doors are flung wide,
we see the populace and a company of soldiers, and the
crier on horseback, who reads a proclamation of a gen-
eral fast, and commands the closing of all taverns,
surprise again. A somewhat similar scene of succeed-
ing suspense and surprise is to be found in the fourth
act. The setting off of the Roundheads against the
Cavaliers is rather French in its conception of char-
acter, but none the less effective. There is real humor
in the contrast of Carr, the typical Puritan, with Lord
Rochester, the ideal courtier ; and the improbable, not
to say impossible, disguise of Rochester as Cromwell's
chaplain is fertile in scenes of pure comedy. The fun,
light and airy and graceful in Rochester, gets a little
forced and farcical in Dame Guggligoy : the effort is
obvious, and the hand rather heavy.
The opening line of ' Cromwell ' was a protest against
the stiff, stilted, and unnatural decorum which forbade
the use of the simple word for a simple thing, prescrib-
ing in its place a sort of roundabout hinting at it : this
is the first line of Hugo's first published play, a date
only.
"Demain, vingt-cinq juin, mil six cent cinquante-sept."
To see the curtain rise on a tavern, and to hear a date
as the first phrase of a five-act historical drama in verse,
was enough to shock even the most liberal Classicist.
The second act began, in like manner, with a question
as to the time of day, and the simple answer, "Noon."
In the preface to the play, a preface which was as a
declaration of independence, the attempt to get away
from effete conventionalities was set up as a principle.
In this iconoclasm, Hugo broke the shackles of the
tragic stage He disavowed the unities of time and
22 French Dramatists.
p ace ; he proclaimed the supreme importance on the
stage of action; he demanded a return to nature in
poetic diction; and he rejected the rigid couplets of
contemporary poets, to plead, not for prose, but for a
freer use of verse ; for, as he says, " an idea steeped in
verse becomes at once more cutting and more glittering :
it is iron turned to steel." A poet who can handle such
verse need not fear the simplest and humblest phrases,
for to him nothing would be trivial. " Genius is like
the stamp, which prints the royal image on the coins
of copper as well as on coins of gold." Above all, the
poet must not be afraid to mingle the grotesque with
the terrible : he must, indeed, choose rather the charac-
teristic than the abstractly beautiful. In this principle,
especially the juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy
(which he supported in this preface by citation of the
Greeks, Dante, Shakspere, Moliere, and Goethe), we
may see the mainspring of his next plays.
As Dryden has told us, "They who would combat
general authority with particular opinion must first es-
tablish themselves a reputation of understanding better
than other men." Now 'Cromwell' was unactable.
Its preface irritated many, but converted few. It re-
mained for Hugo to prove his superior understanding
of the stage by his own works acted on the stage. In
the spring of 1829, eighteen months after the publica-
tion of ' Cromwell,' Hugo was asked to write a play for
the Comedie-Frangaise. He had two subjects in his
head. He chose to write first ' Marion Delorme,' a
task which took him from June i to June 24, the fourth
act having been finished in one day's steady labor.
Accepted by the theatre, the play was interdicted by
the censors. Hugo at once turned to his second sub-
Victor Hugo. 23
ject, and in three weeks he had completed ' Hernani.'
It is a coincidence that Voltaire wrote 'Zaire/ much
his best tragedy, in just the same space of time that
Hugo took to write ' Hernani,' his most popular play.
In explanation of this wondrous improvisation, for
'Hernani' is a play in five acts of full length, one
may venture to suggest that the plot had been slowly
matured in the author's head, the situations had linked
themselves together in order, and that, when the poet
sat him down to his desk, he had but to clothe his con-
ceptions with verse. To him this was a task of no diffi-
culty, for Hugo has superabundantly the gift of metrical
speech : his vocabulary is surpassingly rich, and he has
lyric melody at his beck and call. And of a truth his
Muse responded nobly to the appeal. In no other play
of Hugo's is the verse finer or firmer. The lumbering
and jingling rhymed Alexandrine is not the best metre
for dramatic poetry ; it is not even a good metre ; but
it is here handled by a master of verse. Though no
carelessness betrays the improvising, the verse retains
the rush and impetus of its making. The whole work
is full of the freshness and vigor of youth. One can
almost hear the rising sap, and see the spreading foliage
of spring.
Although the French cannot be accused of taking
their pleasure sadly, the first performance of an impor-
tant play at the national theatre is a solemnity. The
production of 'Hernani' at the Theatre Frangais on
the evening of Feb. 25, 1830, was a national event.
It was the first pitched battle between the Classicists
and the Romanticists. The pit was filled with bands
of young artists of all kinds, who had volunteered in
place of the salaried applauders of the theatre, and who
24 French Dramatists.
were admitted on the presentation of a special ticket,
the word hierro (Spanish for iron) stamped in a bold
handwriting on a little slip of red paper. Chief among
these young enthusiasts was Theophile Gautier, resplen-
dent in a flaming crimson waistcoat. With the first
line the conflict broke out. The hisses of the old
school were met by the plaudits of the new. Phrases
which now pass without notice were then jeered and
hooted. Extra-hazardous expressions were cheered
before they were fairly out of the actors' mouths.
When the curtain fell, the victory lay with the young
author. But the end was not yet. The fight was
renewed with the same bitterness at every performance ;
speeches roughly received one night were rapturously
applauded the next ; a scene lost by the Romanticists
to-day was taken by assault to-morrow; until at last
there was not one single line in the whole five acts
which, at one time or another, had not been hissed.
The theatre was crowded night after night. The excite-
ment was not confined to the capital, and provincial
towns echoed the animated discussions of Paris. At
Toulouse a quarrel about 'Hernani' led to a duel, in
which a young man was killed.
It was the position of the play as a manifesto, and
not its merits, remarkable as they were, which called
forth such demonstrations. Yet it needs no wide ac-
quaintance with the works then holding the stage in
France to understand that a play as fresh and as full of
force as ' Hernani ' must needs make a strong impres-
sion. The rapid rush of its action carries the specta-
tor off his feet ; the lyric fervor of its language is
intoxicating; and it is only a sober second-thought
which lets us see the weak points of the piece. If
Victor Hugo. 25
this is its effect now, when the play has no longer the
charm of novelty, when, indeed, its startling innovations
have been worn threadbare in the service of second-
rate and often clumsy followers, we may guess what
its effect was then on the ardent generation of 1830,
surfeited with the sickly inanities of the self-styled
classic school. Whatever we may now think of Dona
Sol and her three lovers, the young artists of half a
century ago took them for types of a dramatic renas-
cence, a new birth of the stage. What we do now
think of them is, that all four characters although full
of movement, and rich in color are hollow, and with-
out real life. They live, move, and have their being,
in a world that never was : in brief, they are operatic
impossibilities, ruled by an inexorable fate and the firm
hand of the author, who has decided on ending a pic-
turesque play with a pathetic situation.
The plot may be recalled briefly. Ruy Gomez in-
tends to marry his niece, Dona Sol, who, however, loves
a mysterious bandit, Hernani, own brother to my
lord Byron's ' Giaour.' The King of Spain also loves
Dona Sol, and bears her away with him. Hernani owes
his life to Ruy Gomez, to whom he gives his hunting-
horn, agreeing to take that life himself whenever he
hears the horn ; and then Ruy Gomez and Hernani,
for revenge, join in a conspiracy against the king.
But Don Carlos, the King of Spain, is elected Roman
Emperor, and he surprises the conspirators. Changed
by his higher office, he pardons. Hernani is restored
to all his rank and titles, and Dona Sol is wedded to
him. In the midst of the marriage-feast comes the
sound of the horn. Ruy Gomez is implacable : Her-
nani has sworn to die ; and his poison serves also for
26 French Dramatists.
his bride. ' Castilian Honor/ the sub-title of the play,
seems a very queer thing when we consider this story
in cold blood. For the plot not to look ludicrous, one
must be almost as hasty and hot-headed as the hero
himself. And the incidents are as like each other as
the whole play is unlike life. As Mr. W. H. Pollock
has aptly remarked, every act ends with somebody spar-
ing the life of somebody else, save the last, in which
all the chief characters, except Charles V., die together.
The catastrophe, although it is the logical sum total
of the situations, would be revolting, if it were not so
extravagant. The lugubrious tooting of the horn it
was, doubtless, that Goethe had in mind when he called
' Hernani ' " an absurd composition."
But to detect these demerits takes afterthought.
While the play is acting before us, we are under the
spell : we are moved, thrilled, excited. The pleasure
it gives is not of the highest kind intellectually, if,
indeed, it may be termed intellectual at all ; but as to
the amount of pleasure it gives, there can be no ques-
tion. The quality of its power may be doubted, never
the quantity. It is a very interesting play, melodra-
matic in its motive, poetic in its language, and pictur-
esque at all times.
The same phrase describes fairly enough 'Marion
Delorme ' and ' Le Roi s'amuse,' which followed ' Her-
nani ' upon the stage. 'Marion Delorme,' forbidden
by the Bourbon censors, waited a few months, till the
revolution of 1830 overturned the Bourbon throne;
and then, in a few months more, on Aug. n, 1831,
it was brought out at the Porte St. Martin Theatre.
It was received with the same outburst of contend-
ing prejudices and preferences which had been let
Victor Hugo. 27
loose upon ' Hernani.' To my mind it is a better play
than its predecessor on the boards. To the full as
moving and as picturesque, it bears study better. For
one thing, it mingles humor and passion far more skil-
fully. It may perhaps be called the only one of Hugo's
plays which fulfils the conditions of the new drama as
laid down by the author in the preface to ' Cromwell.'
And from this freer use of humor results a great supe-
riority in the presentation of character. In no other
play of Hugo's are the characters as natural as in
'Marion Delorme.' They are not mere profile masks
set in motion to face each other in a given situation.
Louis XIII. and Saverny are real flesh and blood. The
king indeed is a royally well conceived character ; Hugo
brings before us by a few light and humorous touches
the feeble, melancholy, pious, moral, fearful, restive,
and helpless monarch, chafing under the iron curb of
his red ruler, and yet inert in self-assertion. True to
history or not, the portrait is true to itself, which is
of greater importance in dramatic as in other art. The
scene between Louis and his solemn jester, who seeks
to gain his end by playing on the king's failings, is in
the true comedy vein, and would greatly surprise those,
who, familiar only with Hugo's later works, pretend
that he does not know what humor is.
Saverny is a figure filled in with a few easy strokes
of an airy fancy : he is the embodiment of light-hearted
grace and true-hearted honor. He is a young fellow
who wears feathers in his cap, it is true : but he bears
down in his heart the motto of his order, "Noblesse
oblige ;" and he acts up to it when time serves. His
is a poetic portrait of a characteristic Frenchman, with
the national quality of style, and a capability for lofty
28 French Dramatists.
sacrifice. There is true comedy, again, in his attitude,
when his friend, the Marquis de Brichanteau, tries to
console Saverny's uncle for his supposed death, by
pointing out his faults, and dwelling on them at length,
until at last Saverny revolts. There is, perhaps, a
slightly too epigrammatic emphasis in the final self-
possession of Saverny, which lets him coolly point out
three mistakes in the spelling of his own death-war-
rant. Emphasis and epigram, however, are kept more
subordinate in ' Marion Delorme ' than in any other of
Hugo's plays. Marion Delorme the heroine, and Didier
the hero, are simpler figures, and more like those to
be found in the ' Hernani.' Didier is another brother
of the Giaour, mysterious, melancholic, misanthropic.
Like Hernani, he is a wanderer on the face of the
earth, and has great capacity for suffering. Marion
Delorme is a poetic portrait, no doubt highly flattered,
of the fair and fragile beauty who has come down to us
from history, leaving her character behind her.
Although, as in all of Hugo's plays, the plot is of
prime importance, I have said nothing of it here,
because it is both hard and unfair to give in a scant
sentence or two a sample of the situation for which
the playwright has cunningly prepared by all that pre-
cedes it. In the skill with which the plot is conducted,
in the force and effect of its situations, 'Marion De-
lorme ' does not yield to its fellows. In no other play
of Hugo's is there any thing to compare with the skill
with which the action of the drama is dominated by
the red figure, and stiffened by the steel will of the
unseen cardinal, the Richelieu, who, before Prince Bis-
marck, proved his belief in the efficacy of blood and
iron.
Victor Hugo. 29
It was possibly to ' Hamlet ' that Hugo owed the troop
of strolling players among whom Marion Delorme hides ;
and he may have been indebted for the self-sale by
which she tries to procure Didier's escape either to
the fiction of ' Faublas, ' or to the fact in the rela-
tions of Josephine Barras and Napoleon ; just as it
may have been a recollection of an incident in the
' School for Scandal ' which suggested the far more
dramatic picture-scene of ' Hernani.' To conclude this
list of hypothetic borrowings, there are in ' Cromwell '
four clowns almost too Shaksperian in the most objec-
tionable sense of that much-abused word. When he
began to write for the stage, Hugo seemed to be
greatly taken with the king's jester, a figure at once
mediaeval and grotesque, and therefore doubly capti-
vating. After the four in * Cromwell/ let us imagine,
if haply we can, the Protector with four fools, we
have the doleful and black-robed jester in 'Marion
Delorme.'
In the next piece, the ' Roi s'amuse,' the protagonist
is the court -fool, Triboulet, the jester of Francis I. of
France. This play was brought out at the Theatre
Francois, in Paris, one evening in November, 1832.
Before the first night audience it failed, and it had no
chance of recovery, for the next morning the govern-
ment forbade the performance of the play on the ground
that it libelled Francis I. So the 'Roi s'amuse' has
had but one performance ; and yet the plot of no play
of Hugo's is so well known out of France, for it served
Verdi as the libretto of ' Rigoletto.' Space fails to
consider it here in detail. In form and spirit it does
not differ from ' Hernani ' or ' Marion Delorme,' al-
though it rises to a higher reach of passion than they.
30 French Dramatists.
If any one wishes to see how a strong story can be
watered into symmetrical sentimentality, he may read
the 'Roi s'amuse,' and then take up the 'Fool's
Revenge,' a drama in three acts, by Mr. Tom Taylor.
The essential tragedy of the motive is weakened to a
triumph of virtue, and conversion of the vice. The
desperation and death, which are the vitals of the
French play, are in the English anodyned for the sake
of the conventional happy ending.
Now we come to a curious change of manner. The
'Roi s'amuse/ 'Marion Delorme,' and 'Hernani' are all
written in a rich and ample verse, full of fire and color :
the three plays which followed 'Lucrece Borgia,'
' Marie Tudor,' and ' Angelo' are in prose ; and the
effect of the change of medium is most surprising. Of
course verse is not always poetry, and prose may aim
as high and be as lofty as verse ; but in Hugo's case
the giving-up of verse seems like a giving-up of poetry.
The elevation, the glow, and the grace of, say, 'Her-
nani,' are all lacking in 'Lucrece Borgia' and its two
companions in prose. There is no falling-off in the
ingenuity of invention, or in the constructive skill of
the author ; but the plays in prose seem somehow on a
much lower level than those in verse ; and this is in
spite of Hugo's use of a metre hopelessly unfit for the
quick work of the stage. Before Mr. Matthew Arnold,
Stendhal * had dwelt on the insufficience of the Alex-
andrine for high poetry. The jigginess of the metre
and the alternating pairs of male and female rhymes
are fatal to continued elevation of thought. Shak-
1 "Les vers italiens et anglais permettent de tout dire; le vers Alexandria
seul, fait pour une cour d6daigneuse, en a tous les ridicules." ' Racine et Shak*
spere,' p. 36, note.
Victor Hugo. 31
speare and Dante could not have been sublime in
Alexandrines. Yet the metre has a certain fitness
to the French intellect, to the French love of order
and balance ; and, moreover, it is the recognized and
regular metre of the higher theatre : so a French
dramatist must needs make the best of it. Victor
Hugo is a master in versification ; it has no mysteries
for him : and in his hands, even the stubborn Alexan-
drine is bent to his bidding. Archbishop Trench calls
Calderon " nearly as lyric as dramatic." Victor Hugo
is even more lyric than dramatic. The most poetic lines
in his plays have a lyric lilt and swing. A friend of
mine who has a most acute insight into rhythmic
intricacies has suggested to me a subtle likeness
between the verse of ' Hernani,' particularly, and of
the ' Lays of Ancient Rome ; ' and just as the quotation
of a single stanza would do injustice to Macaulay,
whose merit lies mainly in the movement of his verse,
so it is almost impossible to pick out for quotation any
passage of the far finer and higher verse of Hugo
which will be fairly representative. A pretty couplet
is that of the king, Don Carlos, in ' Hernani,' when
he, having been elected emperor, pardons his rival,
gives him Dona Sol to wife, and finally bestows the
accolade :
. . . "je te fais chevalier.
Mais tu 1'as, le plus doux et le plus beau collier,
Celui que je n'ai pas, qui manque au rang supreme,
Les deux bras d'une femme aime'e et qui vous aime !
Ah, tu vas etre heureux; moi, je suis empereur."
(' Hernani,' act iv. sc. 4.)
And lovely are the last lines of the same play, after
Hernani and Dona Sol have taken the fatal poison,
32 French Dramatists.
Hernani falls back; and Don Ruy Gomez, lifting his
head, declares him dead ; but Dona Sol will not have
it so :
..." Mort ! non pas ! . . . nous dormons.
II dort ! c'est mon dpoux, vois-tu, nous nous aimons,
Nous somraes couche"s la. C'est notre nuit de noce.
Ne le reVeillez pas, seigneur due de Mendoce . . .
II est las. . . . Mon amour, tiens-toi vers moi tourne*,
Plus pres . . . plus pres encore . . ."
(' Hernani,' act v. sc. 6.)
And then she, too, falls back dead. Fine lines again
are those of Didier at the end of ' Marion Delorme,'
when the bell tolls the hour of his execution, and he
turns to the by-standers :
" Vous qui venez ici pour nous voir au passage.
Si 1'on parle de nous, rendez-nous te*moignage
Que tous deux sans palir nous avons e'coute'
Cette heure qui pour nous sonnait 1'e'ternite' ! "
(' Marion Delorme,' act v. sc. 7.)
Perhaps as beautiful a monologue as any in the lan-
guage is the touching speech of the jester, Triboulet,
over the body of the daughter he has killed, thinking
to slay the king :
. . . "Je croi
Qu'elle respire encore ! elle a besoin de moi !
Allez vite chercher du secours a la ville.
Laissez-la dans mes bras, je serai bien tranquille.
Non ! elle n'est pas morte ! oh ! Dieu ne voudrait pas.
Car enfin il le sait, je n'ai qu'elle ici-bas.
Tout le monde vous hait quand vous etes difforme,
Ou vous fuit, de vos maux personne ne s'informe ;
Elle m'aime, elle ! elle est ma joie et mon appui.
Quand on rit de son pere, elle pleure avec lui.
Si belle et morte ! oh, non ! Donnez-moi quelque chose
Pour essuyer son front. Sa levre est encor rose.
Victor Hugo. 33
Oh ! si vous 1'aviez vue, oh ! je la vois encor
Quand elle avait deux ans avec ses cheveux d'or !
Elle e'tait blonde alors ! O ma pauvre opprime'e !
Ma Blanche ! raon bonheur ! ma fille bien-aimde !
Lorsqu'elle 6ta.it enfant, je la tenais ainsi.
Elle dormait sur moi, tout comme la voici !
Quand elle reVeillait, si vous saviez quel ange !
Je ne lui semblais pas quelque chose d'dtrange,
Elle me souriait avec ses yeux divins,
Et moi je lui baisais ses deux petites mains !
Pauvre agneau ! Morte ! oh non ! elle dort et repose.
Tout a 1'heure, messieurs, c'e'tait bien autre chose,
Elle s'est cependant re'veille'e. Oh ! j'attend.
Vous 1'allez voir rouvrir ses yeux dans un instant !
Vous voyez maintenant, messieurs, que je raisonne,
Je suis tranquille et doux, je n'ofrense personne ;
Puisque je ne fais rien de ce qu'on me defend,
On peut bien me laisser regarder mon enfant.
J'ai de"ja re'chauffe' ses mains entre les miennes ;
Voyez. touchez les done un peu ! . . .
UNE FEMME.
Le chirurgien.
TRIBOULET.
Tenez, regardez-la, je n'empecherai rien.
Elle est eVanouie, est-ce pas ?
LE CHIRURGIEN.
Elle est morte." *
(' Le Roi s'amuse,' act v. sc. 5.)
When Hugo drops verse, he gives up a great advan-
tage. His plays in verse may pass for poetic dramas ;
but his plays in prose are of a truth prosaic. A garment
of verse veils 'Hernani* and 'Marion Delorme;' but
1 A metrical translation of this passage into English will be found in the note
to this chapter.
34 French Dramatists.
' Lucr6ce Borgia ' and ' Marie Tudor ' are naked melo-
drama, without any semblance of poetry. 'Lucrece
Borgia,' written in the summer of 1832, immediately
after the 'Roi s'amuse,' and acted in 1833, is strangely
like 'Inez de Castro,' its predecessor in prose. It is
simply a melodrama, owing its merit mainly to its sim-
plicity. We have an adroit and cunning handling of a
single fertile theme. There is none of the involute
turgidity of the ordinary melodramatic playwright ; but
for all its simplicity the play is a melodrama, even in
the etymological sense, which requires the admixture
of music. With all her accumulated vices, Lucrece
Borgia herself has no grandeur, no touch of the wand
which transfigures the wicked woman of Webster or
Ford. It is not imaginative, it is not poetic, and it is
immensely clever. In spite of the magnitude of her
crimes, and the force with which she is depicted, she
remains commonplace. She arouses the latent instinct
of caricature. When, in the first act, she tries special
pleading for herself, and lays the blame and the burden
of her sins on her family, " It is the example of my
family which has misled me," one involuntarily recalls
the fair Greek heroine of the ' Belle Helene,' who com-
plains of " the fatality which weighs upon me ! "
Coincident with the change from verse to prose is a
sudden falling-off in the humor which lightened the
sombre situations of the metrical plays. The romantic
formula which prescribed the mingling of comedy and
tragedy to make the model drama is disregarded already
in ' Lucrece Borgia ; ' in Gubetta the humor we found
frank and free in the Saverny of 'Marion Delorme '
is getting grim and saturnine. It is less frequent and
more forced, as though the author was beginning to
Victor Hugo. 35
make fun with difficulty. In 'Marie Tudor/ written
and actec in the same year (1833), the humor has
wholly disappeared, and we may therefore detect a
growing extravagance of speech and structure. The
* Marie Tudor ' of M. Hugo is the ' Queen Mary ' of Mr.
Tennyson ; and the poets themselves are scarcely more
unlike than the pictures they present us of the miserable
monarch who went down to history as Bloody Mary.
Tennyson could probably give chapter and verse for
every part of his play. Hugo has no warrant for dozens
of his extraordinary assertions and assumptions as to
the manners and customs of the English. Tennyson
is patriotic, and always seeks the subjects of his plays
in the national history which he has reverently studied.
Hugo has laid the scene in France of only two of his
plays : he prefers foreign countries, which offer more
frequent opportunities for sharp contrasts and strange
mysteries. Spain, Italy, England, even Germany, can
be taken by storm with less fear of the consequences.
But in 'Marie Tudor' the joke is really carried a little
too far. The play is absurd where it is not ridiculous.
It is a caricature of history, a wanton misreading of rec-
ords, and, worse yet, a passing-over of the truly dramatic
side of the reign, to invent vulgar impossibilities. The
play is in every way inferior to its predecessors. It
has action, and it is shaped solely with an eye to effect
before the footlights ; but even as a specimen of jour-
neyman play-making it is cheap. There is no touch
or trace of poetry anywhere. The unfortunate queen
is transformed into a sanguinary and lascivious virago,
a Madame Angot of a monarch, scolding like a fishwife,
and threatening like a fury.
The third play in prose, ' Angelo,' written and acted
3 6 French Dramatists.
in 1835, though inferior to 'Lucrece Borgia,' is superior
to ' Marie Tudor,' because it does not make history to
suit itself, and because its story is simpler and more
pathetic. The contrast of the chaste patrician lady
with Tisbe, the lawless woman of the people, is capable
of development into affecting situations. The two parts
were originally acted by Mile. Mars and Mme. Dorval.
Tisbe was afterward acted by Rachel, and in America
an adaptation by John Brougham was played by Char-
lotte Cushman. Outside of these two parts there is
little in the piece. Homodei is not very like a man of
God, though he is represented as the personification
of ubiquitous omniscience. It is one of Hugo's first
attempts at embodying an abstraction, or rather at
clothing a really commonplace character with marvel-
lous attributes. He looms up as something far more
wonderful than he appears when seen close to. There
is an effort to pack a quart into a pint, to the resulting
fracture of the vessel. ' Angelo ' has no more humor
than ' Marie Tudor : ' so the extravagance has a chance
to grow. There is a perceptible increase in the affecta-
tions of plot and dialogue, and an equally perceptible
increase in Hugo's fondness for mystic devices. In all
his plays there are sliding panels, and secret passages,
and hidden staircases in plenty ; spies and hireling
bravos and black mutes are to be found in them ; subtle
Italian poisons, and sudden antidotes thereunto, and
strange narcotics, at an instant's notice are ready at
hand : in short, there is no lack of tools for the most
Radcliffean mysteries and mystifications. Of poison
especially, is there no miserly use. Hernani poisons
himself, and so does his bride ; Ruy Bias takes poison ;
Angelo Jhinks to poison his wife; and Lucrece Borgia
Victor Hugo. 37
poisons a whole supper-party. In fact, to read Hugo's
plays straight through is almost as good as a course in
toxicology. The dagger is abused as freely as the bowl.
To call the death-roll of all the dramatis persona who
die by the sword or the axe would be as tedious as un-
profitable.
In 1838, three years after ' Angelo,' came 'Ruy Bias,'
in many ways Hugo's finest play. It is a happy return
to verse and the earlier manner. The plot suggested
possibly by the story of Angelica Kaufmann, and
slightly similar to Lord Lytton's 'Lady of Lyons' is at
once simple and strong. Verse again throws its ample
folds over the characters, and cloaks their lack of the
complexity of life. And again we have the wholesome
and lightsome humor which kept the metrical dramas
from the exaggerations and extravagances of the prose
plays. It is as though the exuberant genius of Victor
Hugo needed the strait-jacket of the couplet. There is
true comedy in the conception of Don C6sar de Bazan ;
and very ingenious and comic is the scene in the fourth
act, when he drops into the house occupied by Ruy
Bias (who has assumed the name of Don Cesar), and is
astonished at the adventures which befall him, and
does in every thing the exact reverse of what would
be done by Ruy Bias, for whom the adventures were
intended. It is only in this scene, and in one or two
in 'Marion Delorme,' that we can see any thing in
Hugo's work approaching to large and liberal humor.
Wit he has in abundance, and to spare ; grim humor,
ironic playfulness, grotesque fancy, are not wanting :
but real comic force, the enjoyment of fun for its own
sake, the vis comica of Moliere, for example, or of
Shakspere, or Aristophanes, is nowhere to be found.
^8 French Dramatists.
I have already dwelt on the utter absence of any kind
of comedy from the prose plays. If it were not for
'Ruy Bias,' which seems to come out of its proper
chronological order, since it is closely akin to its fellow
metrical dramas, and not to the prose plays which pre-
ceded it, if it were not for ' Ruy Bias,' we might trace
the gradual decay of Hugo's feeling for the comic.
After 'Ruy Bias,' after 1838, neither in play nor in any
other of the multifarious efforts of Victor Hugo, can I
recall any attempt at comedy, or even any conscious-
ness of its existence. It is as though, born with a full
sense of humor, in the course of time he had allowed
his vanity to spring up and choke it ; for, oddly enough,
as his humor died, his vanity grew apace. It is an ag-
gressive vain-glory, and may best be seen in his prefaces.
In that to ' Cromwell ' he is defiant, and not on the de-
fensive ; in those to later plays we can see the undue
humility which is the chief sign of towering vanity.
Just after 'Hernani,' Chateaubriand, who was gifted
with no slight self-esteem, hailed Victor Hugo as his
fit successor. And Hugo has inherited, not only some
of the literary methods and some of the authority of
Chateaubriand, but a full share of his intellectual arro-
gance.
It was this intellectual arrogance which prompted him
to withdraw from the stage after the popular failure of his
next play. The 'Burgraves,' written in October, 1842,
and acted in March, 1843, is an attempt to set on the
stage something of the epic grandeur of mediaeval his-
tory. It sought to make dramatic use of the legend of
the mighty and undying Barbarossa. As a poem, it is
one of Hugo's noblest ; as a play, it is his poorest. We
have a powerful picture of Teutonic decadence and of
Victor Hugo. 39
imperial majesty ; but in aiming high Hugo naturally
missed the heart of the play-goer. There is nothing
human for the play-goer to take hold of, and carry away
with him. The plot, with but little of the melodramatic
machinery Hugo directs so effectively, is uninteresting,
and in its termination undramatic. The characters,
grandly conceived as they are, seem like colossal
statues, larger than life, and not flesh and blood. No
real passion was to be expected from such stony figures,
perfect as may be their cold and chiselled workmanship.
The ' Burgraves ' is the most ambitious of Hugo's
dramas, and the least successful in performance. Its
career on the stage was short. About this time, too, a
re-action had set in against the Romanticists, and Pon-
sard's ' Lucrece ' was hailed as a return to common
sense. Victor Hugo took umbrage, and declared that
it was unbecoming to his dignity to submit himself to
the hisses of a chance audience. Although he had two
plays nearly ready for acting, he has never again pre-
sented himself as a dramatist. One of these plays, the
'Jumeaux,' was about finished in 1838; and since then
he has written ' Torquemada,' a drama of the Spanish
Inquisition, a most promising subject for his peculiar
powers ; neither of which is to be acted until after
Hugo's death. A recent biographer refers to still other
pieces of the poet, among them a fairy-play called the
'Foret Mouillee,' in which trees and flowers speak.
In this enumeration of Hugo's plays I have omitted
only one, the libretto of an opera, 'Esmeralda,' pro-
duced at the Op6ra of Paris in November, 1836. It
was a lyric dramatization of his romance * Notre Dame
de Paris/ made for Mile. Bertin, the daughter of a
friend, after he had refused to do it far Meyerbeer.
4<D French Dramatists.
Dramatizations of the same story and of the ' Misera-
bles ' have been acted ; and an adaptation of ' Ninety-
Three' is announced for the winter of 1881-1882.
If his own libretto chanced upon an incompetent com-
poser, certain of his dramas are better known to the
world at large as opera-books than in their original
and more literary form as French plays. 'Hernani'
and the 'Roi s'amuse' served Verdi as the books of
' Ernani ' and ' Rigoletto.' ' Ruy Bias ' has been turned
into a libretto several times. Balfe's 'Armorer of
Nantes' is based on 'Marie Tudor.' Mercadante's
' Giuramento ' is a setting of 'Angelo.' 'Lucrece Bor-
gia,' the final act of which is fuH of contending emo-
tions and scenic contrasts culminating in the thrilling
commingling of the bacchanalian lyrics of the supper-
party with the dirge for the dying chanted by the
approaching priests a situation which almost sets
itself to music has been turned to excellent account
in the 'Lucrezia Borgia' of Donizetti. These trans-
formations were not always to the poet's taste, as was
shown by the savage way in which he warned off the
librettist in a note to one of his later plays.
All Victor Hugo's plays are the work of his youth
(he was not forty when the ' Burgraves ' was acted), and
they are thus free from the measureless emphasis
which is the besetting sin of his later work. And
unfortunately Hugo has not obeyed Goethe's behest,
to beware of taking " the faults of our youth into our
old age ; for old age brings with it its own defects."
This is just what Hugo has done. No author of his
years and fame has ever changed so little since he first
came forward. There has been extension, of course;
but there has not been growth. So, although Hugo
Victor Hugo. 41
stopped short his dramatic production, we may doubt
whether the future would have had any surprise in
store for us. We may fairly enough discount what
manner of play he would have given us had he written
more for the stage. We should have found the " lively
feeling of situation and the power to express them,"
which Goethe tells us " make the poet ; " but now and
then the situation would have been overcharged, and
the expression extravagant. We should have had plays
in the highest degree ingenious in device, thrilling in
incident, and, if they chanced to be in verse, full of
lyric melody. But these are not the chief attributes
of a great dramatic poet. Indeed, excess of ingenuity
is fatal to true grandeur, as Hugo himself seems to
have felt ; for in his one attempt at a lofty theme, the
' Burgraves,' he instinctively cast aside cleverness, and
strove for a noble simplicity. In the two chief qualities
of a great dramatic poet, in the power of creating
character true to nature, and in unfailing elevation of
thought, in both of these Victor Hugo is deficient.
If one seek proof that Hugo is not a great dramatic
poet of the race and lineage of Shakspere, but rather
a supremely clever playwright, an artificer of dramas,
not because the drama was in him and must out, but
because the stage offered the best market and the
most laurels, one has only to consider ' Marie Tudor,'
or ' Angelo.' No great dramatic poet, no one who was
truly a dramatic poet, could have written such stuff.
In spite of all their cleverness, they are unworthy of a
poet who has any sense of life. That these plays are
so inferior to the metrical dramas goes to show that
Hugo needs the restraint of verse, and that he is at
his best when working under the limitations of the
42 French Dramatists.
Alexandrine, limitations, which, as I have said, are
fatal to dramatic poetry of the highest rank. Putting
this and that together, I find that Hugo's plays are melo-
dramas, written by a poet, and not poetic plays written
by a dramatic poet. In Moliere's plays, as in Shak-
spere's, the man is superior to the event ; but in
Hugo's, as in Calderon's and in Corneille's, the situa-
tion dominates the characters. Unlike Calderon's and
Corneille's, Hugo's plays are not poetic in conception,
however poetic they may be in verbal clothing. Nei-
ther the plots nor the personages are poetic in concep-
tion. The plot is melodramatic, but the best of melo-
dramas because of its simplicity and strength, and
because it is the work of a man of heavier mental
endowment than often takes to melodrama. Nor are
the characters more poetic than the situations : they
are not saturated with the spirit of poesy, and lifted up
by the breath of the muse. Most of Hugo's people,
especially the tragic, are drawn in outline in mono-
chrome : they are impersonations of a single impulse.
Miss Baillie wrote a series of Plays for the Passions :
Hugo gives a passion apiece to each of his people, and
lets them fight it out. Put one of Hugo's villains, the
Don Salluste of ' Ruy Bias,' say, a sharp silhouette,
all black, and set it by the side of lago, and note the
rounded and life-like complexity of Shakspere's traitor.
Or compare Hugo's characters with Moliere's, and see
how thin their substance seems, how petty their
natures, in spite of all their swelling speech. They
have not the muscle and the marrow, they have not
the light and the air, of Moliere's poetically conceived
creatures.
Melodramatic as situations and characters are, how-
Victor Hugo. 43
ever, the best of Hugo's plays are still poetic, in ap-
pearance at least. This is because Victor Hugo is a
great poet, although not a great dramatic poet. It is
because his plays, while they are melodramas in struc-
ture, are the work of an artist in words. The melo-
dramatist, when he has once constructed the play, calls
on the poet to write it ; for in Hugo are two men, a
melodramatist doubled by a lyric poet. The joints of
the plot are hidden, and the hollowness of the charac-
ters is cloaked, by the ample folds of a poetic diction
of unrivalled richness. It is the splendor of this lyric
speech which blinds us at first to the lack of inner and
vital poetry in the structure it decks so royally. Al-
though, therefore, his plays are immensely effective in
performance, and his characters wear at times the ex-
ternals of poetic conception, Victor Hugo is not that
rare thing, a great dramatic poet, a thing so rare,
indeed, that the world as yet has seen but a scant half-
score.
There is no need to say here that Victor Hugo's glory
does not depend on his dramas, nor, indeed, upon his
work in any single department of literature. His
genius has, turn by turn, tried almost every kind of
writing, and on whatsoever it tried it has left its mark.
He is a master-singer of lyrics and a master-maker of
satires. The song is as pure as the spring at the hill-
side, and the satire is as scorching as the steel when
it flows from the crucible. He is mighty in romance,
and moving in history ; giving us in ' Notre Dame
de Paris ' historical romance, and in the ' History of a
Crime ' romantic history. Even in criticism and phi-
losophy he has done his stint of labor. But his best
work is not merely literary. Literature is too small to
44 French Dramatists.
hold him, and the finest of him is outside of it. The
best part of him has got out of literature into life.
What he has done in politics and philanthropy is on
record, and he who runs may read if he will. The
politics may at times have been a little erratic, and the
philanthropy may have seemed sentimental and opin-
ionated ; yet these defects are but dust in the balance
when weighed against the nobler qualities of the man.
In times of doubt and compromise it is worth much to
see one who holds fast to what he believes, and who
stands forth for it in lofty and resolute fashion. Dur-
ing the darkest and dirtiest days of the Second Empire
a beacon-light of liberty and hope and faith flashed to
France from a rocky isle off the coast where dwelt one
exile from the city he loved, one man at least who
refused to bow the head or bend the knee before the
man of December and S&lan. Beyond and above
Hugo's great genius is his great heart. He is the poet
of the proletarian and of the people ; he is the poet of
the poor and the weak and the suffering ; he is the
poet of the over-worked woman and of the little child ;
he is the friend of the down-trodden and the outcast ;
and his is the truly Christian charity which droppeth
like the gentle dew from heaven.
Mr. Swinburne concludes the ode he wrote in 1865,
' To Victor Hugo in Exile/ with two stanzas, to be fitly
quoted here, before we take leave of the foremost figure
among all European men of letters :
" Yea, one thing more than this,
We know that one thing is,
The splendor of a spirit without blame,
That not the laboring years
Blind-born, nor any fears,
Victor Hugo. 45
Nor men, nor any gods, can tire or tame ;
But purer power with fiery breath
Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death.
Praised above men be thou,
Whose laurel-laden brow,
Made for the morning, droops not in the night ;
Praised and beloved, that none
Of all thy great things done
Flies higher than thy most equal spirit's flight ;
Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend
Earth's loftiest head, found upright to the end."
CHAPTER III.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
ON the nth of February, 1829, a full year before
any piece of Hugo's was played, there was produced
at the Theatre Francois a five-act drama, full of fire
and action, called ' Henri III. et sa Cour,' and written
by Alexandre Dumas, a young quadroon, who owed to
his fine handwriting a place as clerk under the Duke of
Orleans, and who had promised himself some day to
live by his pen instead of his penmanship.
Like Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas was the son
of a revolutionary general. His father, the Count
Mathieu Dumas, was the son of the Marquis Davy
de la Pailleterie. In his characteristically voluminous
memoirs, Dumas tells us how he spent his early youth
in the country, running wild and laying up stores of
strength. He seems to have grown up as void of learn-
ing as he was of fear. His mother tried to get him
to read Corneille and Racine : he confesses that he
was prodigiously bored by them. But one day there
came along a company of apprentice actors from the
conservatory, and gave the ' Hamlet ' of the good and
simple-minded Ducis, with Hamlet acted in imitation
of Talma. It made so great an impression on Dumas,
that when he wrote his memoirs, thirty-two years after-
ward, he could recall distinctly every detail of the per-
formance. He sent to Paris for the ' Hamlet ' of Ducis,
and in three days he had the part by heart. He was
4 6
Alexandre Dumas. 47
then not sixteen years old. Two or three years later,
he ran up to Paris, and saw Talma as Sylla, and was
introduced to him as a young man who aspired to be
a dramatist. Talma greeted him so kindly that he was
emboldened to ask the great actor to lay hands on him
in consecration, as it were, and to bring him luck in
his vocation. " So be it," said Talma, laying his hand
on the youth's head ; " Alexandre Dumas, I baptize
you poet, in the name of Shakspere, of Corneille, and
of Schiller."
When he was twenty years of age, he and his mother
came up to Paris, and he got himself a clerkship under
the Duke of Orleans. Then he took up in earnest the
hard trade of a professional playmaker. In the first
four years of his life in Paris, he succeeded in getting
acted three vaudevilles of no special value, and each
written in collaboration with one or two of his com-
rades, hopeful and struggling youngsters like himself.
He made also a tragedy of 'Fiesque,' imitated from
Schiller ; but he had not been able to place it. Then,
in 1827, arrived the English actors ; and he saw in suc-
cession the masterpieces of the English drama. (He
had English enough to follow Shakspere, as he had
German enough to paraphrase Schiller.) He records
the immense impression made on him by this first sight
of real passions moving men of flesh and blood. Just
before the English performances ended, leaving Dumas
with new lights, and having opened beyond him new
ranges of vision, the Salon set forth its annual show of
pictures and sculptures ; and here Dumas saw two bas-
reliefs, the energy and firmness of which struck him.
One was a scene from the 'Abbot,' and the other
represented the death of Monaldeschi. Dumas did not
4.8 French Dramatists.
know who Monaldeschi was : so he borrowed a biogra-
phical dictionary, and there made the acquaintance oi
Christine of Sweden and of her physician-lover ; and
he began at once to work their story into a five-act
tragedy in verse. When it was done, by good luck he
got audience of Baron Taylor, the manager of the
Theatre Francois, who invited him to read it before
the committee of comedians which had the accepting of
new plays. Very comic indeed, and very characteristic
of the changing condition of the drama just then, was
the declaration of the committee, that it did not know
whether the play was classic or romantic. " What mat-
ter ? " asked the author : " is it good, or bad ? " And
the committee did not know that either. Finally, how-
ever, it accepted the piece on condition that it was
approved by one of the regular dramatists of the house.
So Dumas was forced to leave the play for a week with
Picard, the author of the 'Petite Ville,' imitated by
Kotzebue. When he went for his answer, Picard
asked him if he had any other means of existence than
literature ; and when Dumas answered that he had a
fifteen-hundred-franc clerkship under the Duke of Or-
igans, the withered old dramatist handed back the
manuscript of ' Christine,' saying, " Go to your desk,
young man ! Go to your desk ! "
In spite of this chilling criticism, the Comedie-Fran-
^aise accepted ' Christine,' and put it in rehearsal. But
delays arose, and disagreements with Samson, accord-
ing to one account, and with Mile. Mars, according to
another; and in a little while Dumas was convinced
that ' Christine ' would never be acted at the Theatre
Fran9ais. He was right ; and his first drama, like
Hugo's, was brought out after his second. It was, per-
Alexandre Dumas. 49
haps, well for Dumas that this was so, for it is a great
advantage to begin by hitting the bull's eye ; and
' Christine ' would never have made so striking a suc-
cess as 'Henri III.' After he was established as a
dramatist, Dumas remodelled 'Christine;' and from
a quasi-classic tragedy it became a frankly romantic
" trilogy in five acts, with prologue and epilogue,"
with changes of scene to justify the new sub-title
' Stockholm, Fontainebleau, and Rome/ and with the
introduction even of a wholly new and important char-
acter, Paula. As the original version is no longer
before us, criticism is impossible. No doubt it was
tamer in movement, and duller in color, than the play
as we have it. No doubt it was a somewhat timid
attempt at Romanticism : even in the revised version
it is not one of Dumas's best. The verse in which it is
written is verse : it is not poetry. Dumas, although
not exactly constrained in writing Alexandrines, never
handles them with the assured ease of a master. Al-
though he bends the metre to obey him, the result is
good journeyman verse-making, nothing more ; and
there is never the burst of lyric fervor which often
makes Hugo's lines sing themselves into the memory.
Dumas threw off the shackles of metre when he
began to write his second drama, ' Henri III.' In
style, too, as well as in speech, it was ampler, and more
frankly romantic, than his first. Since ' Christine ' had
been originally outlined, Hugo had published the pref-
ace to ' Cromwell,' the revolt of the Romanticists had
gained great headway, and then the time for faltering
between the two schools had passed forever. ' Henri
III.' showed no hesitation. It was a bold, not to say
brutal picture of an epoch of history : it was the first
5o French Dramatists.
French play in which history was set squarely on the
stage much as Scott had shown it in his novels. And,
truth to tell, Scott had his share in the drama, directly
as well as indirectly. Dumas had found one suggestion
in Anquetil, and another in the ' Memoires de 1'Es-
toile.' By combining and developing these hints from
the records, he had made the main plot of his play ;
utilizing for one of its chief situations a scene from
Scott's 'Abbot,' probably the one represented in the
other of the two bas-reliefs. Dumas also drew on his
abandoned version of Schiller's ' Fiesco.' He has told
us that he had studied Schiller and Goethe and Calde-
ron and Lope de Vega, seeking to spy out the secret
of their skill ; and what wonder was it that a few
fragments of the foreign authors should get themselves
somehow worked into his model ? Made, in a measure,
of reminiscences, ' Henri III.' hangs together wonder-
fully well, and has a unity of its own. Some of the
brick and some of the mortar are borrowed without
leave ; but the finished house is Dumas's property be-
yond all question.
Alphonse Royer, who was present at the first per-
formance, has recorded that he never again saw such a
sight, and that from the third act on the audience was
wild with excitement. The changing scenes and star-
tling situations were followed with breathless interest.
The touches of local color, the use of the language,
and even of the oaths of the time, the ease and grace
of the sketch of the king's court, with the mignons
playing cup-and-ball, the life and vigor of the whole
drama, charmed and delighted an audience tired with
the dignified inanity of the Classicists. The very vio-
lence of the action gave a shock of pleasure to the
Alexandre Dumas. 5 1
willing spectators. It is to be said, too, that the par-
tisans of the Classicists, not afraid of the first play
of an unknown writer, had not assembled to give it
battle, as they did a year later when 'Hernani' was
brought out; and so ' Henri III.' took them by surprise,
and gained the victory before they could rally. A
profitable victory it was for the author. Before writ-
ing ' Henri III.' he was a clerk at fifteen hundred francs
a year, a little less than six dollars a week. ' Henri
III.' had been written in about eight weeks ; and, in
addition to what he received from the Theatre Frangais
for the right of performance, he sold the copyright for
six thousand francs. By two months' labor of his pen
he had gained far more than he could have made in
four years by his penmanship.
Taking all things into consideration, I am inclined to
call 'Henri III.' Dumas's best drama. Looking down
the long list of his plays, it is not easy to pick out
another as simple, as strong, as direct, and as dignified.
It has a compressed energy, and a certain elevation
of manner, not found together in any of his other
plays. Whether the best of his dramas or not, it is
emphatically a very remarkable play to have been writ-
ten by a young man of twenty-six. It is especially
remarkable when we recall that it sprang up from the
dust of the Classicist tragedies, and that it was the
first flower of Romanticism on the stage. There are
many things one might single out for praise. For one,
the intuition by which Dumas grasped the cardinal
principle of historical fiction, deducing it, perhaps,
from the example set by Scott in his novels. This
principle prescribes that the chief characters in which
the interest of the spectator or the reader is to be
52 French Dramatists.
excited shall be either wholly the invention of the
author; or, if suggested by actual personages, the
originals must be known so slightly that the author
may mould or modify them as he please. A transcrip-
tion of historic fact may then serve as the scaffolding
of the story, and real characters may be reproduced to
give it solidity and pomp. In other words, history
may be stretched for the warp ; but fiction must supply
the woof. This is what Dumas generally did in his
novels, and it is what he did admirably in ( Henri III.
We see the crafty, courageous, and effeminate Henri
III. himself, the resolute, masculine, intriguing Cath-
erine de Medicis, and the stern and rigorous Duke of
Guise ; and these serve to set off the high and noble
heroine, and the melancholy and devoted hero, who,
although bearing historic names, are in fact truly pro-
jections of the dramatist's imagination.
The story of 'Henri III.' has a purity and a sobriety
lacking to most of Dumas's other plays ; yet it yields to
none of them in effect, in freedom, or in force. Slight-
ing the purely historical incidents, the plot may be
told briefly. The weak-kneed but quick-witted king,
Henri III., is under the rule of his mother, Catherine
de Medicis, who fears the ascendency gained over him
by St. Megrim, and dreads the growing power in the
state of the Duke of Guise. She craftily sets one
against the other by fostering the love of St. Megrim
for Catherine of Cleves, wife of the duke; and she
contrives an interview between them at an astrologer's,
an interview innocent enough, even if the speedy
coming of the duke had not put to flight the duchess,
who leaves behind her a handkerchief, which her hus-
band finds. In the next act the Duke of Guise and
Alexandre Dumas. 53
St. Megrim bandy words before the king, who makes St.
Megrim a duke too, that he may fight Guise as his
peer ; and the combat is fixed for the morrow. But the
wily Guise has no desire to die in a duel : so, in the
third act, we see him in full mail armor standing over
his wife, grasping her arm with his iron gauntlet, and
by physical pain forcing her to write a letter to St.
Me'grim, bidding him to her palace that night. In the
following act St. Megrim gets the note ; and the king,
anxious about the issue of the single combat the next
morning, lends St. Megrim his own special talisman
against death by fire or steel. In the last act St.
Megrim comes to the apartment of the duchess to
keep his appointment. While Catherine of Cleves is
trying to tell him hastily how she has vainly sought to
give warning of the trap in which he is caught, the
outer door of the palace clangs to, and the tread of
armed men is heard on the stairs. Helpless and
unarmed before the danger which draws nearer and
nearer, St. Megrim knows no way to turn, when sud-
denly a bundle of rope falls at his feet, thrown through
the window by the duchess's page, who has overheard
enough to suspect. Catherine thrusts her arm through
the rings of the door, in place of the missing staple, to
give St. Megrim time to let himself down to the ground.
When the door opens, the duke strides in, and goes
straight to the window. St. Megrim has fallen among
thieves, for Guise's men are below. He is wounded
and bleeding, but not dead. " Perhaps he has a talis-
man against fire and steel," says the Duke of Guise :
"here, strangle me him with this." And he drops
down to his hirelings the handkerchief of his wife
which he picked up at the beginning of the play.
54 French Dramatists.
This telling of the tale is bare and barren indeed ;
it hides the good points while exposing the weak.
That the story is of thinner texture at times than one
could wish is sufficiently obvious. French and English
wits have readily found spots to gird at. In a French
parody of the play the moral was summed up in four
lines, which made fair fun of the handkerchief expe-
dient :
" Messieurs et mesdames, cette piece est morale
Elle prouve aujourd'hui sans faire de scandale,
Que chez tin amant, lorsqu'on va le soir,
On peut oublier tout . . . excepte" son mouchoir ! "
Lord Leveson Gower's English adaptation, called
'Catherine of Cleves,' gave the author of the 'In-
goldsby Legends' a chance to condense the story in
comic verse, and to give it at least one keen hit :
" De Guise grasped her wrist
With his great bony fist,
And pinched it, and gave it so painful a twist,
That his hard iron gauntlet the flesh went an inch in :
She did not mind death, but she could not stand pinching!"
' Henri III. et sa Cour ' is not a play of the highest
order, and it has sufficiently obvious blemishes ; but
it is a strong and stirring drama, and one of the very
best of its class, of which it was also almost the first.
It is a very much better play than ' Christine,' written
before it, and brought out after it, or than ' Charles
VII. chez ses Grands Vassaux,' a second attempt in
rhymed Alexandrines scarcely more successful than the
first. It is a better play than either of the two other
dramas he produced in 1831. Of these the first was
the frantically immoral and preposterously impossible
Alexandra D^lmas. 55
' Antony/ of which Dumas, strangely enough, was so
proud that he was wont to declare it and his son his two
best works ; and the second was ' Napoleon Bonaparte,'
which he had cut with a hasty pair of scissors from
the many memoirs of the time, and which is more of
a panorama than a play. The author had to confess
that it made no pretence to be literature, except in so
far as a single character gave it value, the character
of a magnanimous and heroic spy, omniscient, ubiqui-
tous, and ever ready to sacrifice himself for Napoleon.
The Napoleonic piece may be dismissed thus briefly,
but ' Antony ' is too important and too powerful a play
to be glanced at cursorily. It is a play one cannot
help pausing over. Even in the thick of the battle
between the Classicists and the Romanticists, when the
latter opposed to the staid decorum of the former the
most glowing pictures of fiery passion, free from all
bond or limit, even at such a time ' Antony ' gave a
sharp shock to those who saw it, and owed its success
to the sudden and startling surprise upon which the
curtain fell, and which left the first spectators too as-
tonished to protest. Byronic influence, always power-
ful among the exuberant young iconoclasts, had peopled
the dramas of the day with fellows of the Giaour,
haughty, self-contained, and passionate bastards, bear-
ing their bar sinister as though it were the grand cross
of a mighty order. The re-action against the cold
conventionalities of the Classicist tragedies had given
birth to a long line of lovely ladies, sad and suffering,
sentimental and sinning. As the contemporary epigram
had it,
"A croire ces messieurs, on ne voit dans nos rues,
Que les enfants trouve's et les femmes perdues."
56 French Dramatists.
Nowhere are these two figures more puissantly fash-
ioned and more powerfully put upon their feet than by
Dumas in this play; and Antony and Adele d'Hervey
are types of the great lengths to which the revolt
tionary zeal of the revolting Romanticists could carry
them.
Antony had loved Adele before she was married,
but did not dare ask her hand, because he was illegiti-
mate. He absents himself for three years, and then
returns, to find her a wife and a mother. In the first
act he saves her life from a runaway before her door,
and is brought into her house seriously injured; and,
to remain under the same roof with her, he tears the
bandages from his wounds. In the second act his
passion is so powerful, that Adele thinks it best to
seek safety for her fragile virtue by secretly joining
her husband, who is at Frankfort. The third act
passes in an post-inn on the road to Frankfort. Antony
has learned Adele's flight, and discovered her desti-
nation, and contrived to pass her on the road. He
engages the only two rooms in the house, and hires
all the horses, sending them on with his servant ; and,
when Adele arrives, she is forced to wait for fresh
horses. The landlady asks Antony to cede one of his
rooms to a lady travelling alone ; and Antony gives up
one room, having seen that the balcony affords a means
of communication with the other, which he retains.
Adele, forced to pass the night by herself, is lonely
and nervous : at last, however, she retires to sleep in
the alcove bed-room. Antony appears outside the
window, breaks a pane, passes in his arm, shoots back
the bolt, and steps into the room. As he locks the
door through which the landlady went out, Adele comes
Alexandre Dumas. 57
back. The act comes to an end after this abrupt
dialogue and action :
Adele. Noise! . . A man! ... Oh!
Antony. Silence! (Taking her in his arms, and putting a
handkerchief over her mouth.) Tis I ! ... I, Antony ! (CUR-
TAIN.)
In the fourth act we are back in Paris again. The
relations between Antony and Adele are beginning to
be talked about. Both are present at a party, and
after much talk about the new literary theories, in the
course of which Dumas follows the Aristophanic prece-
dent, and, in a sort of parabasis delivered by one of
the secondary characters, makes a personal defence,
as well as a direct assault on the * Constitutionel/ the
newspaper most opposed to the new views, Antony
retorts severely on a scandal-monger, who reflects by
innuendo on Adele. Made wretched by this attack,
Adele withdraws early ; and Antony follows her hur-
riedly as soon as his servant arrives post-haste from
Frankfort, announcing the hourly return of Adele's
husband. He gets to Adele's house, in the next and
last act, before the husband ; and the guilty pair make
ready for flight. All of a sudden Adele bethinks her-
self of her child. Antony consents to take the child
along. But the mother cries out that her open shame,
confessed by her flight, will surely be visited on her
daughter in the future, and that death would be better
than exposure and humiliation. In the midst of the
heated talk of Adele and Antony, a double knock is
heard at the street-door. The husband has got back.
Flight is no longer possible. There is no way of es-
cape. Adele begs for death in preference to shame.
She is one of those who hold, with Tartuffe, that,
58 French Dramatists.
" Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait 1'offense,
Et ce n'est pas pecher que pecher en silence ! "
Now, when silence is not possible and scandal is in-
evitable, she cries aloud for death. As a sharp knock
is heard on the door of the room, Antony asks her if
she means what she says, if she would welcome a
death which might save her reputation and her child's,
if she would forgive him for slaying her. Adele, out
of her mind with the excitement of the moment, begs
for death. Antony kisses her and stabs her. Then
the door is broken in. The husband and servants rush
in, and stand in horror as they see Adele lying in
death. "Dead: yes, dead!" says Antony heroically.
"She resisted me, and I assassinated her." On this
the curtain falls finally.
Of course this story is simply absurd, if you consider
it calmly; but this is just what the author will not let
you do. He allows no time at all for consideration.
He hurries you along with the feverish rush of the
action, as resistless as it is restless. As the younger
Dumas has told us, ' Antony ' is to be " studied by all
young writers who wish to write for the stage, as
nowhere else is interest, audacity, and skill carried so
far." The elder Dumas knew how audacious his story
was, and how important to its success was the leaving
of as little time as possible to the play-goer for sober
second-thought. At the first performance, when the
curtain fell on the fourth act there was great enthusi-
asm. Dumas sprang upon the stage, and shouted to
the carpenters, " A hundred francs for you if you get
the curtain up before the applause ceases ! " By this
presence of mind he succeeded in springing his very
ticklish fifth act upon the audience while they were
still excited over the fourth.
Alexandre Dumas. 59
The proud and lonely bastard had been called Didier,
and had made love to Victor Hugo's Marion Delorme,
before he was Antony, the lover and assassin of Adele
d'Hervey. There was more than a family likeness
between Dumas's hero and Hugo's ; and when ' Marion
Delorme,' written in 1828, and forbidden by the cen-
sors, was at last acted in 1831, not long after 'Antony,'
charges of plagiarism were not wanting. Alexandre
Dumas came forward at once, and said ingenuously
enough, that if there was a plagiarist it was he, as he
had heard Victor Hugo read * Marion Delorme ' before
' Antony ' was written. In his memoirs Dumas frankly
sets down the great effect the hearing of 'Marion
Delorme ' had had upon him, and confesses that it
had greatly enlarged his dramatic horizon. By one
of the curious compensations, of which there are a
many in the history of literature, it seems as though
Dumas was enabled to pay his debt to Hugo in full ;
for it can scarcely be doubted that for ' Lucrece Bor-
gia,' Hugo, perhaps and indeed probably unconsciously,
was indebted to the ' Tour de Nesle ' of Dumas.
Although we can detect Antony's father in Didier,
it would be a hopeless task to attempt to discover or
count all the children of Antony himself. A play,
like any other entity, is perhaps best judged by its
posterity. A very successful play like 'Antony' has
a progeny as numerous as a patriarch of old. Antony's
offspring are a pernicious brood, from the elder Dumas's
own efforts to put him again on the stage, under other
names, down to the 'Princess of Bagdad,' the latest
play of the younger Dumas, the three chief characters
of which all show the hereditary characteristics. In
the list of the French plays of the past half-century
60 French Dramatists.
there is a long line of monsters, violent, headstrong,
bloody, and impossible ; and all of them own Antony
for their father. Of late, as scepticism grows, and
passion forcibly repressed is more fashionable than
passion forcibly expressed, the play-going public does
not take very kindly to Antony or to his children. It
is many a long year since 'Antony' itself has been
acted in Paris : it is as long, nearly, since any play
in which his influence is emphatic and visible has
had any success on the French stage. The ' Princess
of Bagdad/ the latest play of the younger Dumas, is
almost as preposterous an impossibility as 'Antony'
itself; and in spite of its modern dress, cut in the
latest fashion, and trimmed with the sharp wit of
which its author alone has the secret, in spite of
the fame of the dramatist and the aid of some of the
chief actors of the Come'die-Fran^aise, the 'Princess
of Bagdad' has been a distinct and dismal failure.
Fifty years ago 'Antony' was as distinct a success.
The world moves. Outside of France, neither 'An-
tony ' nor Antony-ism has ever been popular ; and, so far
as I know, there has never been acted in any English
or American theatre any adaptation of 'Antony.'
After ' Antony,' the next of Dumas's dramas which
needs consideration here is the 'Tour de Nesle.' This
is quite as remarkable a play as ' Henri III.' or ' Antony.'
It is a play of the same kind, but more exciting, more
terrible, more brutal. The dramatist has given another
turn to the screw, and the pressure is more intense.
Considered solely by its effect in the theatre, the ' Tour
de Nesle ' is one of the most powerful plays ever written.
The clash of conflicting interests and emotions catches
the attention in the first scene, and holds it breath-
Alexandre Dumas. 61
less till the last. There is a resistless rush of action :
improbabilities so glaring that on other occasions you
would cry aloud, are here so dexterously veiled, and so
promptly turned to advantage, that you have neither
time nor wish to protest. Situation presses after situa-
tion, each stronger than the other ; a complicated plot,
intricate in its convolutions, unrolls itself with the
utmost ease and simplicity : the eye is kept awake, and
the ear alert ; and the interest never flags for a moment,
from the rising of the curtain to the going-down thereof.
Then, oh, then ! with a final pause, there is at last and
for the first time a chance for reflection, and you begin
to wonder what manner of monster this is which has
held you motionless, and almost panting, for so many
hours ; and you begin, it may be, to suspect that the
drama is a series of absurdities, a phantasmagoric
nightmare. But whatever it is, and however much sober
second-thought may find to cavil at, its power, its sheer
brute force, is indisputable.
Outcry has been made about the immorality of ' Henri
III.' and the 'Tour de Nesle,' surely without reason.
' Antony ' is immoral, it is true, shamelessly and grossly
immoral; but not 'Henri III./ or the 'Tour de Nesle.'
The latter has been termed a tissue of horrors, because
it contains murder and adultery and incest. But Dumas
tries to get no sham pathos out of these sins ; and they
are not dallied with, or in any way palliated. Dark
crimes were frequent enough in the dark days in which
the action of the ' Tour de Nesle ' is laid. Nor are these
crimes so revolting that they are without the pale of art,
as are some of the subjects Calderon treats for example.
The horrible is not necessarily immoral ; rather, if any
thing, the reverse. The accumulation of sin in the
62 French Dramatists.
1 Tour de Nesle ' is not more horrible than it is in the
' Medea,' nor is it as horrible here as it is in the ' CEdi-
pus.' It must be confessed at once that the effect is
more horrible in the modern play than in the ancient,
because the Greek tragedians were poets, and their
later imitators have tried to catch also something of
the poetic spirit. But Dumas's handling of a similar
situation has no touch of poetry : it is prosaic, baldly
prosaic ; and the horrors stand forth in their nakedness.
The modern French play may be more shocking, but
essentially it is no more immoral, than the old Greek
tragedy. After all, morality is an affair, not of subject,
but of treatment ; and Dumas's treatment, while not as
austere and ennobling as the Greek, is not insidious or
vicious. Except in so far as all over-exciting exhibitions
are harmful, I do not believe that any one ever has been
injured by the 'Tour de Nesle,' which has been acted
in half the theatres of the United States at one time
or another during the past half-century.
It was with intention that reference was made to
Calderon. There is something in the exuberant prodi-
gality of Dumas's production which recalls the most
brilliant days of the Spanish stage. Dumas can stand
the comparison with Lope de Vega and Calderon : it is
not altogether to his disadvantage. In the qualities in
which they were most eminent, ease and fertility and
skill, he was also most abundant. In the vastness of
his production he recalls Lope de Vega ; but it is per-
haps rather Calderon than Lope de Vega with whom
Dumas may be compared when one considers quality
more than quantity. He lacked the simple faith of
Calderon, and Calderon was without the self-conscious-
ness which was so strong in Dumas ; and the points of
Alexandre Dumas. 63
resemblance are scarcely more than the points of dis-
similarity. Archbishop Trench dwells on the technical
playmaking skill of Calderon, in which Dumas was
assuredly his equal ; while in fecundity of character, if
not of situation, the French dramatist surpasses the
Spanish. Where Dumas is inferior, is in that inde-
scribable quality we call " style." Calderon, like Victor
Hugo, is a playwright doubled with a lyric poet : in the
highest sense neither is a true dramatic poet, as are
^schylus, Shakspere, Moliere, and Schiller. The dis-
tinction between the clever playwright who is also a
lyric poet, and the true dramatic poet, is not at all
trivial, even if it seem so. Much as Dumas was like
Calderon in ease and abundance and skill, he was far
inferior in that he was not a poet, and that he is alto-
gether lacking in elevation.
It was in 1836 that Dumas brought out 'Don Juan
de Marana ; or, The Fall of an Angel,' mystery in five
acts. This is the play of his which puts us most in
mind of Calderon. The story is one which the author
of ' Life is a Dream ' might well have told, and would
have told with a simple sincerity and an honest faith not
to be found in Dumas's drama. The bold use of sacred
personages as part of the machinery of the play is more
in the style of the pious and priestly Calderon than of
a worldling like Dumas. The chief figure is a repetition
of the traditional type of Don Juan, accompanied through-
out by the good and evil angels of his family, striving
with each other for his soul. Most of the scenes are on
the earth : though there is one under the earth, in a
tomb, in which a dead man comes to life for a moment ;
and another above the earth, in the heavens, in which
the good angel begs permission of the Virgin Mary to
64 French Dramatists.
be allowed to go down into the world as a woman, to
be more closely united with her beloved Don Juan. In
the course of this truly extraordinary production we
have duels and deaths by the half-dozen, suicides, seduc-
tions, elopements, murders, poisonings, ghosts, and spec
tral visions ; " and what is more, is more than man may
know." Calderon handles elements not unlike these
without shocking our moral sense : however extravagant
the events in his tale, it is easy to see they have been
touched by the magic wand of the poet. Dumas had
to use a showman's pointer instead of the poet's wand ;
and so, in spite of all effort to moralize, his precious
hodge-podge is not exactly edifying.
' Don Juan de Marana ' is one of the plays against
which Thackeray particularly protested in his essay on
French Dramas and Melodramas, reprinted in the ' Paris
Sketch-Book.' With all his liberality and fondness for
freedom, this play affected him so unpleasantly, that he
cried aloud for government interference, and the putting-
down of such indecent entertainments by the stern
hand of the law. It is not a little curious that Thack-
eray, who lost no opportunity of heartily praising
Dumas's novels, has only words of reprobation for his
plays. For one thing, it must be remembered that
Dumas had not regularly set up as a novelist, with a
sign over his door and daily office-hours, when the
4 Paris Sketch-Book ' was written : he was known then
only as a dramatist. The charm of the story-teller had
not yet disposed Thackeray, whose morality was stout
and sturdy, to look with lenity on Dumas's slipshod
ethics. Then, again, Thackeray himself had not a very
quick feeling for strength of situation and stage-effects
in general, and perhaps he was therefore not precisely
Alexandre Dumas. 65
the critic to appreciate at its full value Dumas's best
quality. Whatever the cause of Thackeray's lack of
liking for Dumas as a dramatist, it is certain that he
did not like him, and showed it plainly in the essay
already referred to. Not only does he fall foul of
' Don Juan de Marana,' but he makes fun of some of
the rhodomontade which fills the preface to * Caligula : '
harmless enough it seems to us now, and not to be
taken seriously. Besides ' Caligula,' which failed, Thack-
eray also dissected with the finest-edged scalpel of his
sarcasm, 'Kean,' a drama the action of which Dumas
chose to lay in England. In spite of its success, due
no doubt for the most part to the acting of Frederic
Lemaitre, ' Kean ' can scarcely be considered a fair
specimen of Dumas at his best. The hero is Edmund
Kean, most erratic and most miserable of Mother Ca-
rey's chickens ; and Dumas, with a truly Parisian dis-
regard for exact facts, makes Kean indeed a tragedy
hero. Thackeray has so thoroughly shown the flimsi-
ness and absurdity of the play that nothing remains to
be said.
I have called * Don Juan de Marana ' a hodge-podge,
not merely because the drama has no very distinct unity
of design, but more particularly because it was com-
pounded of scraps stolen from half a score authors.
The outline of plot and character had been borrowed
from Moliere, of course, and more especially from Meri-
mee ; and individual incidents had been taken from
Goethe, Musset, Scott, Shakspere, and even "Monk"
Lewis. It must be confessed at once that this proceed-
ing was not unusual with Dumas, although the plagia-
rism is rarely as flagrant as here. All through his earlier
plays are scattered little bits of Scott and Schiller and
66 French Dramatists.
Lope de Vega, turned to excellent account, and firmly
joined to the rest of the work. The prologue of 'Rich-
ard Darlington ' is from Scott's ' Chronicles of the
Canongate.' Generally it is but a hint, a suggestion, an
effect, an incident, a situation, which he took unto him-
self. Sometimes, as in the case of 'Henri III.,' he
borrowed from two or three authors. Sometimes, as in
'Don Juan de Marana,' although the whole play was
plainly his own, nearly all the separate scenes could be
traced to other authors. Sometimes he even took a
play ready made, and condescended to the vulgar adap-
tation of which his own plays have only too often been
the victims in English. Dean Milman's ' Fazio ' was
thus turned into French verse as the ' Alchimiste.'
Sometimes, again, only the motive of the action came
from outside, and the development was all his own:
thus Racine's ' Andromaque ' furnished the basis of
'Charles VII.,' and Dumas boldly braved the compari-
son by the epigraph on his title-page, " Cur nonf "
Ben Jonson, we are told, once dreamed that he saw
the Romans and Carthaginians fighting on his big toe.
No doubt Dumas had not dissimilar dreams ; for his
vanity was at least as stalwart and as frank as Ben
Jonson's. To defend himself against all charges of
plagiarism, the French dramatist echoed the magnilo-
quent phrase of the English dramatist, and declared
that he did not steal, he conquered. It is but justice
to say that there was no mean and petty pilfering about
Dumas. He annexed as openly as a statesman, and
made no attempt at disguise. In his memoirs he is
very frank about his sources of inspiration, and tells us
at length where he found a certain situation, and what it
suggested to him, and how he combined it with another
Alexandre Dumas. 67
effect which had struck him somewhere else. When
one goes to the places thus pointed out, one finds some-
thing very different from what it became after it had
passed through Dumas's hands, and, more often than
not, far inferior to it. It can scarcely be said that
Dumas touched nothing he did not adorn ; for he once
laid sacrilegious hands on Shakspere, and brought
out a ' Hamlet ' with a very French and epigrammatic
last act. But whatever he took from other authors he
made over into something very different, something
truly his own, something that had Dumas fecit in the
corner, even though the canvas and the colors were not
his own. The present M. Dumas asserts that "there
are no original ideas, especially in dramatic literature :
there are only new points of view." Granting this, as
we may, it remains to be said that no one ever took
more new points of view than Dumas. In a word, all
his plagiarisms, and they were not a few, are the veriest
trifles when compared with his indisputable and extraor-
dinary powers.
Besides plagiarism, Dumas has been accused of
"devilling," as the English term it; that is to say, of
putting his name to plays written either wholly or in
part by others. There is no doubt that the accusation
can be sustained, although many of the separate speci-
fications are groundless. The habit of collaboration
obtains widely in France ; and collaboration runs easily
into " devilling." When two men write a play together,
and one of them is famous and the other unknown,
there is a strong temptation to get the full benefit of
celebrity, and to say nothing at all about the author
whose name has no market-value. That Dumas yielded
to it now and then is not to be wondered at. There
68 French Dramatists.
was something imperious in his character, as there was
something imperial in his power. He had dominion
over so many departments of literature, that he had
accustomed himself to be monarch of all he surveyed ;
and if a follower came with the germ of a plot, or a
suggestion for a strong situation, Dumas took it as trib-
ute due to his superior ability. In his hands the hint
was worked out, and made to render all it had of effect.
Even when he had avowed collaborators, as in ' Rich-
ard Darlington,' he alone wrote the whole play. His
partners got their share of the pecuniary profits, bene-
fiting by his skill and his renown ; and most of them
did not care whether he who had done the best of the
work should get all the glory or not. At times, too, as
in the case of ' Perrinet Leclerc ' and of the ' Tour de
Nesle,' his name did not appear at all : he tells us in
his memoirs that the former was in part his handi-
work, and it is not even yet included in his collected
plays.
The case of the ' Tour de Nesle ' is different, and
not a little complicated. Dumas has written a long
and somewhat disingenuous history of the play. It
seems that M. Frederic Gaillardet (afterward the found-
er of the Courier des tats-Unis in New York) wrote the
' Tour de Nesle,' and took it to Harel, the manager of
the Porte St. Martin Theatre. Harel saw in it the raw
material of a strong piece, and accepted it, subject to
revision by a more practised hand. He sent the play
to Jules Janin, who re-wrote it, and then knew enough
to see that the result was hopelessly undramatic.
Harel then took Janin's manuscripts to Dumas, who,
according to his own account, discarded most of the
original play, and wrote a new drama around the centraJ
Alexandre Dumas. 69
situations. Having thus made what was substantially
a new play, Dumas arranged with Harel that M. Gail-
lardet should get the full author's fee which the Porte
St. Martin Theatre was accustomed to pay, and that
his own pay should be independent of M. Gaillardet's.
In spite of Harel's repeated requests, Dumas refused to
allow his name to be put on the bills. Under such cir-
cumstances a play is announced as by MM. Gaillardet
and * * * but Harel chose to announce the * Tour de
Nesle'as by MM. * * * and Gaillardet. M. Gaillardet
rushed into print, and Dumas retorted, setting forth
his own share in the composition of the drama. After
a while Dumas and M. Gaillardet fought a bloodless
duel. Then there was a lawsuit. After many years,
peace was declared, and M. Gaillardet was pleased to
acknowledge the great service Dumas had rendered
to the 'Tour de Nesle.' Looking back now, one can
scarcely have a doubt as to whom the success of the
drama was due, whether to M. Gaillardet, who had
not done any thing like it before, and who has not done
any thing like it since, or to Dumas, who had shown in
'Henri III.' and 'Antony' his ability to write a play
of precisely the same quality. The original sequence
of situations was no doubt suggested by M. Gaillardet ;
but the play as it stands is unequivocally the handi-
work of Dumas.
That Dumas plagiarized freely in his earliest plays,
and had the aid of " devils " in the second stage of his ca-
reer, is not to be denied, and neither proceeding is
praiseworthy ; but, although he is not blameless, it irks
one to see him pilloried as a mere vulgar appropriator
of the labors of other men. The exact fact is, that he
had no strict regard for mine and thine. He took as
70 French Dramatists.
freely as he gave. In literature, as in life, he was a
spendthrift ; and a prodigal is not always as scrupu-
lous as he might be in replenishing his purse. Dumas's
ethics deteriorated as he advanced. One may safely
say, that there is none of the plays bearing his name
which does not prove itself his by its workmanship.
When, however, he began to write serial stories, and to
publish a score of volumes a year, then he trafficked in
his reputation, and signed his name to books which he
had not even read. An effort has been made to show
that even 'Monte Cristo' and the 'Three Muske-
teers ' series were the work of M. Auguste Maquet, and
that Dumas contributed to them only his name on the
titlepage. It is foreign to my purpose now to consider
Dumas as a writer of romance ; but, as these novels
were at once cut up into plays, a consideration of their
authorship is in order here. I must confess that I do
not see how any one with any pretence to the critical
faculty can doubt that ' Monte Cristo ' and the ' Three
Musketeers ' are Dumas's own work. That M. Maquet
made historical researches, accumulated notes, invented
scenes even, is probable ; but the mighty impress of
Dumas's hand is too plainly visible in every important
passage for us to believe that either series owes more
to M. Maquet than the service a pupil might fairly
render to a master. That these services were consid-
erable is sufficiently obvious from the printing of M.
Maquet's name by the side of Dumas's on the title-
pages of the dramatizations from the stories. That it
was Dumas's share of the work which was inconsidera-
ble is as absurd as it is to scoff at his creative faculty
because he was wont to borrow. Sefior Castelar has
said that all Dumas's collaborators together do not
Alexandre Dumas. 7 1
weigh half as much in the literary balance as Dumas
alone ; and this is true. I have no wish to reflect on
the talents of Dinaux, the author of ' Thirty Years, or
a Gambler's Life/ and of ' Louise de Lignerrolles,' or
on the talents of M. Maquet himself, whose own novels
and plays have succeeded, and who is so highly
esteemed by his fellow-dramatists as to have been elect-
ed and re-elected the president of the Society of Dra-
matic Authors ; yet I must say that the plays which
either Dinaux or M. Maquet has written by himself do
not show the possession of the secret which charmed
us in the work in which they helped Dumas. It is to
be said, too, that the later plays taken from his own
novels, in which Dumas was assisted by M. Maquet,
are very inferior to his earlier plays, written wholly by
himself. They are mere dramatizations of romances,
and not in a true sense dramas at all. The earlier
plays, however extravagant they might be in individual
details, had a distinct and essential unity not to be
detected in the dramatizations, which were little more
than sequences of scenes snipped with the scissors
from the interminable series of tales of adventure.
How could the plot of the 'Three Musketeers,' so
far as it has any single plot, how could it be com-
pressed within the limits of five, or even of six or
seven acts ? How could there be any of the single-
ness of impression which is a necessary element of
good dramatic art in a dramatization so bulky that it
took two nights to act ? ' Monte Cristo ' was brought
out as a play in two parts, Dec. 3 and 4, 1848 ; and
three years later two more divisions of the same story
were put on the stage. Obviously enough, pieces of
this sort are like the earlier 'Napol6on Bonaparte,'
72 French Dramatists.
not plays, but panoramas : slices of the story serve as
magic-lantern slides, and dissolve one into another at
the will of the exhibiter. Full as these pieces are of
life and bustle and gayety, they are poor substitutes
for plays, which depend for success on themselves, and
not on the vague desire to see in action figures which
the reader has learned to like in endless stories. These
dramatizations were unduly long-drawn, naturally prolix,
not to say garrulous. When his tales were paid for by
the word, when he was " writing on space," as they say
in a newspaper office, Dumas let the vice of saying all
there was to be said grow on him. On the stage, the
half is more than the whole.
Side by side with these dramatizations, Dumas con-
tinued to bring out now and then dramas in his earlier
manner ; for example, the already mentioned ' Alchi-
miste' (1839) and 'Hamlet' (1849), an d also a 'Cati-
lina' (1849), likewise in verse, besides an occasional
play in prose, including, for one, an adaptation of Schil-
ler's 'Kabale und Liebe.' None of these, however,
is as interesting or as important as any one of his ear-
liest four or five successes. The only works of his
more mature years which enlarge his reputation are
his comedies. He brought to the making of comedy
the same freshness, facility, fecundity, and force, that
he had brought years before to the making of drama.
After all, it is not inexact to say that the two chief
qualities of Dumas were abundance and ease. Other
writers of his time were abundant : none were so easy.
Contrast his running sentences with the tortured style
of Balzac, and we can understand how it was that
Dumas could write a volume in a few hours, and that
Balzac once spent a whole night toiling over a single
Alexandre Dumas. 73
sentence. Now, ease and abundance are invaluable to
a writer of comedy. Although the half a dozen come-
dies Dumas wrote vary in value, all are equally facile
and flowing. 'Mile, de Belle-Isle' and the 'Demoiselles
de St. Cyr ' and the ' Jeunesse de Louis XIV ' (which
his son edited for the Parisian stage a few years ago)
are as simple and unaffected plays as you can find ; and
they are plays of a new kind. The comedies of Dumas
are unlike the comedies of any other French dramatist.
They are as different from the more philosophical
comedy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
as they are from the Realistic comedy which his son
brought into fashion. They are a little like the best
of the comedies which Scribe wrote for the Theatre
Frangais, although they had a boldness and a freedom
Scribe could never attain. Perhaps, more than any
thing else, they resemble the English comedies of in-
trigue and adventure imitated from Spanish models,
such as Gibber's ' She Would and She Would Not.'
In Dumas's plays, however, both situation and dia-
logue seem less forced, although it is unfair ever to
speak of either as though it were at all forced. Dumas
had little humor, as we understand the word, and what
he had was on the surface ; but he was witty without
effort and without end. It is a quality he seems to
have discovered after he had written his earlier and
more famous plays ; for in these there is little to re-
lieve the tensity of emotion. In his comedies, how-
ever, his wit had a chance to show its nimbleness.
This wit is lightsome and buoyant, rather than pene-
trating. It is not epigrammatically sparkling with a
hard brilliance like Sheridan's and Congreve's ; nor
is it biting and vitriolic like his son's : it seems less
74 French Dramatists.
studied and more natural than either, and more to be
compared to the graceful and clever wit of a ready man
of the world ; and, as I have said, it is as unfailing as it
is unforced. I can recommend a little comedy in one
act called the * Mari de la Veuve,' and written during the
desolation caused by the cholera, to all who may desire
to see as bright a little play as one could wish. In his
memoirs Dumas tells us that the primary idea of this
tiny piece was one friend's, and that the development
and construction were another's, and that all he did
was to take their plan, and write the dialogue. But it
was dialogue such as none but he could write.
This very play contains an admirable instance of his
tact in turning a difficulty. A husband has written to
his wife bidding her to announce his death, f6r reasons
not given but imperative. It is from the false position
thus created for the wife, who is supposed to be a
widow, that the comedy is evolved. Shortly after the
rise of the curtain, the husband appears, but too much
in a hurry to explain why he has had to conceal his
existence. At the end of the play even, he had not
yet told ; then, when all is attention, the servant an-
nounces the notary to draw up the contract for the
marriage which brings every comedy to a happy end.
Interrupted, the husband says, " I will tell you all about
it to-morrow." And the curtain falls, leaving the spec-
tator amused and entertained, but still in ignorance
why the husband found it necessary to give out his
own death. I am inclined to surmise that the pair of
collaborators who planned the play devised a reason for
this, and that Dumas found this reason insufficient.
Not having time to concoct another, he made the diffi-
culty disappear by not giving any reason at all.
Alexandre Dumas. 75
From the sombre ' Antony ' to the laughing ' Mari
de la Veuve ' is a long stride ; but Dumas took it with-
out straining ; and many another beside. Even more
remarkable than the range of Dumas's work is its gen-
eral level of merit. He had, at least, one element of
greatness, an inexhaustible fecundity. More than
this ; when we consider the quantity of his dramas, the
quality of the best of them seems singularly high.
There is but one dramatist of his generation who will
stand comparison with him ; and even Victor Hugo,
master as he is of many things, is less a master of the
theatre than Dumas. He was the superior of Dumas
in that he was a poet, and had style, as Dumas was
willing to confess. But for success on the stage,
poetry and style are not so potent as other qualities
which Dumas had more abundantly than Hugo. He
had an easy wit which Hugo lacked, and which is of
inestimable service to the playmaker. He had a flexi-
bility of manner to which Hugo could not pretend.
We have seen how many different kinds of dramas
Dumas attempted, while all Hugo's pieces are cast in
the same mould. As Heine said, "Dumas is not so
great a poet as Victor Hugo ; but he possesses gifts
which in the drama enable him to achieve far greater
results than the latter. He has perfect command of
that forcible expression of passion which the French
term verve ; and he is, withal, more of a Frenchman
than Victor Hugo is." Elsewhere Heine credits Hugo
with a Teutonic want of tact, and suggests that his
muse had two left hands. Now Dumas's muse had a
right hand, and it never forgot its cunning. Dumas's
dramas, extravagant as some of them are, strike one as
more natural than Hugo's, perhaps because the latter
76 French Dramatists.
reveal too openly the constraint of their construction,
which the former never do. Dumas was frank to praise
Hugo, and to acknowledge his own indebtedness to
him ; yet he spoke his mind freely about his competitor.
He is reported as saying that " each had our own good
points ; but mine were better. Hugo was lyrical and
theatrical : I was dramatic. Hugo, to be effective, could
not do without contrasting drinking-songs with church
hymns, and setting tables laden with flowers and flasks
by the side of coffins draped in black. All I wanted
was four scenes, four boards, two actors, and a passion."
It is easy to smile at this as mere vanity and vexation
of spirit ; but, magniloquence apart, it is sound criti-
cism nevertheless.
Like Hugo, Dumas was the son of a revolutionary
general, and both were as militant in literature as their
fathers had been in life. From his father, Dumas
inherited little but the physical force which sustained
him in his reckless waste of energy, and which helped
to give him the abundant confidence in himself : these
two things indeed, strength and confidence, are at
the bottom of his career of marvellous prodigality. It
was confidence and strength combined which made
possible his unhasting, unresting life of toil in so many
departments of literature. This life is in many re-
spects a warning, rather than an example. With his
great powers one feels he ought to have done something
higher and nobler : that he had great powers, admits of
no cavil. The present M. Alexandre Dumas, who is as
restrained as his father was exuberant, and who looked
on his father as a sort of prodigal son, upholds the
honor of the family, and pushes filial reverence to the
extreme verge of extravagance; yet, due -allowance
Alexandre Dumas. 77
made, he is not so very far out when he speaks of his
father as " he who was and is the master of the modern
stage, whatever noise may be made about other names,
he whose prodigious imagination touched the four car-
dinal points of our art, tragedy, historical drama,
the drama of manners, and the comedy of anecdote ; he
whose only fault was to lack solemnity, and to have
genius without pride, and fecundity without effort, as
he had youth and health; he who, to conclude, Shak-
spere being taken as the culminating point, by inven-
tion, power, and variety approached among us most
closely to Shakspere."
CHAPTER IV.
EUGENE SCRIBE.
CARLYLE speaks of Diderot as "successful in criti
cism, successful in philosophism, nay, highest of sub-
lunary glories, successful in the theatre." Accepting
this last dictum, we may venture the assertion that no
writer ever enjoyed so much of the highest of sublunary
glories as Eugene Scribe ; for no maker of plays, either
before or since, was ever so uniformly successful, and
over so wide an area. ^Eschylus and Aristophanes did
not always get the prize they strove for ; and even
when they did triumph, their fame was limited to their
own city, or at most to Greece and its chain of colonies.
Scribe's luck rarely failed him ; and his best pieces were
carried, not only all over France, but around the world.
His fertility was as unfailing as his good fortune. The
output of his fiction-factory is enormous. In the year
1823 alone, he brought out nearly a score of plays. In
the half-century of his incessant production he wrote
more than four hundred dramatic pieces, of one kind or
another, beside a dozen or more novels. In bulk his
work is barely equalled by Lope de Vega's, or by
Hardy's, by De Foe's, or by Voltaire's, or, in our own
day, by the elder Dumas's. His complete works are
now in course of publication. Sixty closely-printed
volumes, of some four hundred pages each, have already
appeared ; and the end is not yet. He began life with
a trifling patrimony. By his pen he made sometimes as
78
Eugene Scribe. 79
much as one hundred and fifty thousand francs a year
For the one long novel he wrote for serial publication
in a newspaper, he received sixty thousand francs ; and .
when he died he left a fortune of quite two millions
of francs. To these material gains, there was added
the honor of a seat among the illustrious forty of the
French Academy.
Born in 1791, Scribe began to write for the stage
before he was twenty. Like many another dramatist,
he was intended for the law, before his success on the
stage justified his giving up the bar. Like many
another dramatist, moreover, his earlier dramatic at-
tempts proved failures. If we may credit M. Ernest
Legouv6, his fellow-craftsman and sometime literary
partner, Scribe saw fourteen of his plays miss fire
before he made his first hit. Then, turning from the
servile imitation of Picard and Duval, he began to look
at the life around him, and determined to place on the
stage the petty foibles of the day. His first attempt
at what an American dramatist has called " contempo-
raneous human interest " was * Une Nuit de la Garde
Nationale/ a vaudeville in one act, brought out in 1816.
It attracted instant attention. The citizen-soldiers it
made fun of chose to take offence. There was much
bluster, and some talk of a challenge to mortal com-
bat. The piece, in the mean time, set everybody laugh-
ing ; and Scribe saw, that, after prospecting vainly, he
had found at last the lead he could work to advantage.
The vaudeville, when Scribe took it up, was in a
middle stage of its long evolution. Originally it had
been a sort of satirical ballad, or a string of epigrams,
telling pointedly an anecdote of the hour, or girding
sharply at an unpopular official or favorite. This
8o French Dramatists.
is the vaudeville whereof Boileau speaks when he
says,
" Le Frangais, n malin, forma le vaudeville."
About the beginning of the last century this versi-
fied anecdote came to be cast into dialogue, and sung
in public, appropriate action aiding. For the theatre
in the fair first, and afterward for the Italian come-
dians, Lesage and Piron wrote vaudevilles of this type,
rudimentary plays, the words of which were all in
rhyme, ready for the vocalists. By the end of the
century the vaudeville had got a little more dramatic
consistence, remaining, however, either the parody of a
play or opera popular at another theatre, or a brief
and brisk setting on the stage of an anecdote. Such
it was when Scribe began to write, and to him was due
its final transformation. First he freshened it, as we
have seen, by attacking the follies and the fashions of
the day ; then, as soon as he felt himself secure, he
broadened its scope. The versified anecdote, dramatic
only by courtesy, gave place to a complete play, which,
slight as it might be, had a beginning, a middle, and an
end. Traces of the old form survived in the frequent
sets of verses written to well-known airs, and almost
meant to be said rather than sung. In these couplets,
as the snatches of song were called, were put the
special points of the dialogue and the best jests. But
in Scribe's hands reliance was had on the situation,
rather than on the dialogue. For the first time a
vaudeville was seen with an imbroglio as involved and
as full of comic uncertainty as might have sufficed
hitherto for a play of far greater pretensions.
In 1820, four years after Scribe's first success, M.
Eugene Scribe. 81
Poirson, his collaborator in that play, opened the
Gymnase Theatre, and at once bound Scribe by con-
tract not to write for any rival house for the space of
ten years. This is the decade of Scribe's most copious
production. Aided by a host of collaborators, he
brought out at the Gymnase a hundred and fifty pieces,
nearly all of them vaudevilles. Sure of his public,
Scribe gave the vaudeville still greater extension.
From one act he enlarged it often to two, and at times
to three acts. From a merely jocular and hasty rep-
resentation of scenes from every-day life, he raised it
now into comedy, and again into drama. As he trust-
ed more and more to his plot, to the situations which
his wondrous constructive skill enabled him to present
to the best advantage, the couplets, although still re-
tained, became of less and less importance : they could
even be omitted without great loss. In at least one
case this was done. Scribe had written a vaudeville
in one act for the Gymnase, intending the chief part
for Leontine Fay, who, however, fell sick before the
piece was put in rehearsal. The author cut out the
couplets, and cut up the play into three acts, changing
but one line of his original prose in so doing. Then
he took 'Valerie,' a comedy in three acts, to the
Theatre Frangais, where it was accepted at once, and
where Mademoiselle Mars acted the blind heroine with
her usual graceful perfection. This anecdote shows
how the vaudeville had grown in Scribe's hands. A
vaudeville which a skilful touch or two will turn into a
comedy fit for the Comedie-Frangaise is very far from
the vaudeville which is only a hastily dramatized anec-
dote. Of this comedie-vaudeville, then, Scribe was
really the inventor, as well as its most industrious
maker.
82 French Dramatists.
The new comedies-vaudevilles varied in range from
pretty and semi-sentimental comedy, like ' Valerie,' to
light farce, like the 'InteYieur d'un Bureau.' As fast
as they appeared in Paris, they were adapted to the
London market by Planch6, Dance, Poole, or Charles
Mathews the younger. As typical as any is ' Zoe, ou
I'amant pret6,' which Planch6 turned into the 'Loan
of a Lover.' Those who recall that well-worn little
comedy can form a not unfair idea of the hundred
other plays of its kind which Scribe wrote for the
Gymnase. Those who will take the trouble to com-
pare the English play with the French will see that
the adaptation is a better bit of work than the original.
Planch, having a story ready to his hand, could spend
time and give thought to the consistency and coher-
ence of the characters who were to take part in it.
To Scribe the situations were of first importance ; and
no more strength was imparted to the characters than
was needed to get them through the ingenious intrigue.
There is a sharp contrast between the innate and
carefully cultivated tact with which Scribe handled
the succeeding situations of these lively little dramas,
and the careless way he set on their legs the people
whom he was to guide through the labyrinth.
I do not pretend to have read all of Scribe's four
hundred and more dramatic pieces, or even the half
of them ; but I have read or seen acted all those which
the consensus of criticism has indicated as the most
typical and the best ; and in all these plays I can re-
call only one single character thoroughly thought out
and wrought out, breathing the breath of life, and
moving of its own will. By an effort of memory I
can call up a crowd of pretty faces with a strong family
Eugene Scribe. 83
likeness, or a lot of young gentlemen who have got
themselves into a most unpleasant scrape. But that is
all. The people who pass through these plays are
merely profiles : they are like the plane of the geo-
metricians, without thickness and impalpable. Scribe
had some knowledge of human nature, but it was only
skin deep. He had insight enough ; but it went just
below the surface, and no further. Now, nothing is
more temporary than superficial human nature. Scribe
never got behind the man of the time to find man as
he is at all times. His characters are silhouettes, into
which the scissors have cut also the date. The fif-
teen years of the Restoration were the years when
Scribe wrote the most of his comedies-vaudevilles, and
it does not need the titlepage to tell us that they
were acted before 1830. Scribe had looked around
him, and seen the mighty industrial progress of France,
freed at last from the bondage of the old Bourbon
rule, from the uneasiness and ferment of the Revolu-
tion, and from the military strain of the Empire. Sick
of martial glory, all France was trying to make money ;
and yet in picturesque juxtaposition to the new brood
of bankers and merchants and manufacturers, stood the
survivors of the Empire and the Revolution. So these
comedies-vaudevilles are full of old soldiers, sergeants,
and colonels and generals, all singing bits of verse in
which guerriers rhymes with lauriers ; and in contrast
with these are the money-makers, and the usual young
men and pretty dolls of women, more or less witty and
wicked. By dint of off-hand sketching of these as they
floated by on the current of middle-class society, Scribe
had made for himself a full set of the personages which
might be needed in any comedie-vaudeville; and, having
84 French Dramatists.
once got a stock of these figures, he used them again
and again, much as the deviser of one of the old Italian
corn-media delV arts used the pedant and Brighetta, the
captain and the doctor, and the rest of the instantly
recognizable masks.
A comparison, not without interest, might be insti-
tuted between the comedie-vaudeville of Scribe and
the commedia dell' arte as it became naturalized in
France by the harlequin Dominique and his fellows,
the friends of Moliere. In each case, it was especially
the amusement of the people of Paris, of the shop-
keeping class above all ; and, as I have said already,
in each case, characters and dialogue were of less im-
portance than plot and situation. The fecundity of
Scribe in providing new subjects far surpassed that of
his Italian predecessors. Goethe told Eckermann that
Gozzi said that there were only thirty-six tragic situa-
tions, and added that Schiller had thought there were
more, but could never succeed in finding even so many.
Granting that the comic situations outnumber the
tragic, there must be an end to them at length ; yet
Scribe seemed inexhaustible. When one turns out
from ten to twenty new plays every year for ten years,
there must be some repetition, some use of stale mat-
ter, some attempt at a rfahauffte. But France is not
a country with ten religions and only one sauce ; and
a French play-maker, if he be as skilful as Scribe, can
serve you over again any old drama with a new dress-
ing, so deftly disguised that you would scarce know it.
Scribe took suggestions everywhere. From Marryat
he borrowed 'Japhet in Search of a Father;' from
Mrs. Inchbald, ' A Simple Story ; ' from Hertz, the
lovely 'King Rent's Daughter;' and from Cooper's
Eugene Scribe. 85
' Lionel Lincoln ' he got the germ of the ' Bohemienne,
ou rAme"rique en 1775,' a highly comic drama of our
Revolution, which might have been adapted to advan-
tage during the centennial excitement. Scribe was
fond also of doing over again in his more modern
manner some of the masterpieces of the past ; and so
we have the ' Nouveaux Jeux de 1'Amour et du Ha-
sard ' and the ' Nouveau Pourceaugnac : ' even Moliere
did not scare him. Then, too, he did his own plays
over again. M. Legouve" tell us that he quite forgot
his own work sometimes, and would sit and listen to
it, criticising it freely, without recalling it as his own.
And I have seen somewhere an anecdote of his saying,
as the curtain fell on a piece which was an obvious fail-
ure, "No matter: I will do it again next year." He
did over not only his own failures, but those of other
dramatists, when they bungled a good idea.
Beside all his borrowing from himself and from
others, borrowing in which there was no deceit or
dishonesty, a more straightforward and upright man
than Scribe never lived, he had the assistance of
the crowd of collaborators who encompassed him
about. Scarce a tithe of his earlier plays were written
by Scribe alone. First and last he must have had
half a hundred collaborators, most of them unknown
now out of France, and well-nigh forgotten even there.
Not a few were men of mark on the French stage at
that time. Three or four may be known to the world
at large : Saintine, for instance, the author of ' Picciola ; '
and Bayard, the author of the ' Gamin de Paris ; ' and
SaintiGeorges, the author of the libretto of ' Martha '
and of many another opera; and M. Legouve", the
author of 'Medee.' So many were his partners, that
86 French Dramatists.
he was accused of keeping a play-factory, under the
style of Scribe & Co., just as Dumas had been charged
with keeping a novel-factory. But Scribe's treatment
of his collaborators was in marked contrast with
Dumas's. Scribe always did more than his share of
the work, and was ready to give them more than their
share of the credit. He never tried to grasp all the
gold or the glory for himself.
His collaborators remained his friends, every one of
them ; and it was to them collectively that he dedicated
the complete edition of his plays. One brought him a
suggestion, another a plot in detail, a third a few coup-
lets : whatever the share in the work, they were always
named in the bill of the play, and on the titlepage, and
they always drew a proportion in the profits. The
most of the labor was always Scribe's ; and sometimes
the contribution of the partner was so slight that he
could not point it out. M. Dupin once brought Scribe
an ill-made two-act vaudeville, from which, however,
Scribe got a suggestion that he immediately worked
over into a one-act play of his own, ' Michel et Chris-
tine.' To the first performance he invited Dupin, who
never knew he was seeing his own piece until it had
succeeded, and the chief actor had announced as its
authors MM. Scribe and Dupin. Again : M. Cornu
came up from the country with a bag full of melo-
dramas, one of which he begged Scribe to glance at.
When he next called, months afterward, Scribe asked
him if he had time to listen to a play. M. Cornu was
pleased with the compliment, pleased with the vaude-
ville Scribe read, and astonished as well as pleased
when told that he was its author. " I found an idea
in your melodrama," said Scribe: "to me an idea is
Eugene Scribe. 87
enough." So on its titlepage the ' Chanoinesse ' de-
clares itself to be by MM. Scribe and Cornu. M.
Dupin had not written a line of one play, nor M. Cornu
of the other, nor had they even recognized their ideas
in Scribe's work ; yet he acknowledged his obligation
to them, and shared his profits with them. In 1822
M. de Saint-Georges brought him a piece turning on a
game of lansquenet. "You have lost your labor," said
Scribe ; " your play is impossible. If you want to
make dramatic use of a game of cards, you must
choose a game familiar to play-goers now, ScartS, for
example." And then he went on showing how such a
play might be written, what its plot might be, and
what might be done and said. When he paused,
Saint-Georges suggested that he had just sketched a
play, only needing to be written out. " So I have ! "
said Scribe, smiling; and in November, 1822, there
was acted at the Gymnase a vaudeville called ' EcarteV
by MM. Scribe and Saint-Georges. Now, M. Saint-
Georges had contributed nothing whatever to the
piece ; but as his play had been the cause of the talk
out of which ' Ecarte 1 ' sprang, Scribe chose to consider
him as a collaborator. Surely delicacy can go no far-
ther than this.
Perhaps the making of a vaudeville like 'Michel et
Christine,' or the ' Chanoinesse,' or ' Ecarte",' was such
an easy thing to Scribe that he held it lightly, al-
though it must not be forgotten that he shared the
substantial profits of the play as well as the more
immaterial honor. When however he took a higher
flight, and rose from the com6die-vaudeville, never
longer than three acts, to the full-length five-act com-
edy of manners, meant for the Theatre Fran^ais, he
88 French Dramatists.
renounced all outside aid, and relied on himself alone.
The only fault his collaborators had ever found with
him was his insisting on doing more than his share of
the work. When he began to write for the Comedie-
Frangaise he cast them aside altogether, and did all
the work. Dumas, whose assistants were as many,
but not as loyally treated, as Scribe's, once defended
himself over Scribe's shoulders, and declared that col-
laboration is a hindrance, and not a help. When Scribe
was received at the French Academy, one of his dis-
satisfied colleagues is said to have murmured, " It is
not a chair we should give him, but a bench to seat
all his collaborators." And there were not wanting
those who insinuated that his literary partners sup-
plied all the ideas, and deserved all the credit. On
these he turned the tables by doing alone and unaided
his most important, and in many respects his best
work.
Fifty years ago the Theatre Fran9ais, owing to the
strict division of styles among the theatres of Paris,
and the reservation to it of the masterpieces of classic
tragedy and comedy, was an institution more august
and of higher dignity than it is even now. Scribe,
broken to every ruse and wile of theatrical effect by
the experience gained in a hundred plays, and speaking
on the stage as one having authority, turned from the
Gymnase (though without wholly giving up the com^die-
vaudeville), and brought out .at the Theatre Frangais a
series of comedies of higher pretensions. Valerie was
produced by the Come'die-Frangaise in 1822, half by
accident, as we have seen. Five years later, in the
midst of his incessant production at the Gymnase, he
brought out at the Theatre Frangais his first five-act
Eugene Scribe. 89
comedy, the ' Mariage d'Argent.' It failed. " Here,
at last," said Villemain, when receiving Scribe into
the French Academy, " is a complete comedy, without
couplets, without collaborators, sustaining itself by its
dramatic complexity, by the unity of its characters,
by the truth of the dialogue, and by the vivacity of
its moral." But at first the old play-goers, who were
wont to meet in the house of Moliere, keen to protect
its traditions, would not hear of Scribe's comedy. It
was the work of a vaudevillist only too obviously, they
said ; and they sent him back to his couplets and his
collaborators. Though the piece failed in Paris, it suc-
ceeded amply in the provinces.
Soon the Theatre Fra^ais was bearing the brunt
of the Romanticist onslaught ; and soon a more mate-
rial revolution overthrew the Bourbon throne. Scribe
was the only French dramatist of prominence who
took no part in the struggle between the Romanticists
and the Classicists, who went quietly on in his own
way, and who held his public as firmly after the suc-
cess of ' Antony ' and ' Hernani ' as before the publica-
tion of the preface to ' Cromwell.' But the revolution
of July affected him more closely. The Gymnase had
been called the "Theatre de Madame," and on the
withdrawal of the princely protection its future seemed
less favorable. Besides, the turn of the political wheel
had brought into view subjects for which the stage of
the Gymnase was too small. So Scribe went to the
Theatre Fran^ais again, and ' Bertrand et Raton, ou
1'Art de Conspirer,' was acted there in November, 1833,
nearly six years after the check of the 'Mariage
d'Argent.' In the next fifteen years, seven other five-
act comedies, written by Scribe alone, were acted by
O French Dramatists.
the Comedie-Franc.aise : the 'Ambitieux' (1834); the
'Camaraderie, ou la Courte Echelle' (1837); the
' Calomnie ' and the ' Verre d'Eau, ou les Effets et les
Causes' (1840); 'Une Chalne' (1841); the ' Fils de
Cromwell, ou une Restauration ' (1842) ; and the 'Puff,
ou Mensonge et V6rite' (1848). These comedies, not-
withstanding their well-jointed skeletons, are already
aging terribly ; they show the wrinkles of time : even
the young lovers are now gray-haired, and the language
is hopelessly rococo. The taste for sub-titles has died
out, and some of Scribe's seem very ridiculous now.
His fancy for reflecting fully the changing hues of
the hour has given his plays a color now faded and out
of fashion forever. What is contemporary is three
parts temporary. Language, for one thing, is always
shifting. A far-seeing literary artist borrows only as
many phrases from the jargon of the day as he may
need to give life to his dialogue, and never enough to
weight that dialogue down with dead words after they
have dropped out of use. Scribe's subordination of
every thing to the demands of an immediate stage-
success makes most of his dialogue now lifeless and
wooden. And unfortunately, though Scribe had a very
pretty wit of his own, and was capable of writing dia-
logue of no little sparkle, he was never above making
use of the ready-made jests, the commonplaces of
joking. Th6ophile Gautier, to whom picturesqueness
was the whole duty of man, somewhere says, that,
after a witticism had been worn threadbare by hard
usage, it was still sure of a freshening-up in some one
of Scribe's plays. Here again we see Scribe's knowl-
edge of the play-goer: if he made the new jest he
was so well capable of making, perhaps the public
Eugene Scribe. 91
might not see it ; but if he used the old joke, the public
could but laugh. On the same principle, the clown in
the circus gives us the most obvious and antique wit ;
and the people needs must laugh at it, just as Diggory
had been laughing at the story of the grouse in the
gun-room these twenty years. Taught by his experi-
ence as a playwright, Scribe distrusted his own higher
powers, assuredly capable of further development, and
chose instead to rely on his well-tried, and indeed truly
wondrous, constructive skill.
To consider in detail the comedies acted at the
Theatre Frangais would take too long. ' Vale'rie ' is,
no doubt, much improved by the cutting out of its
couplets : it is a simple and touching little story, lack-
ing only in depth and pathos, in the one touch of
nature. It is made, not born ; and there is no blood in
it. The ' Manage d' Argent ' seems to me the least
satisfactory in structure of Scribe's long plays, and I
do not wonder it failed. The subject might suffice
for a come"die-vaudeville in three acts ; and the strain
of stretching it into a five-act comedy is unfortunately
only too evident. But in 'Bertrand et Raton' is a
great improvement : for the first time Scribe strikes
the true note of high comedy. All the characters are
cast in worn moulds, and have no sharpness of edge,
save Bertrand, the incarnation of the ultimate diplo-
macy. Here is real observation and the real comic
touch. In Bertrand the world chose to see a portrait
of Talleyrand, then ambassador to England ; and when
the play was acted in London, Mr. Farren wore a wig,
which made him the image of Talleyrand. To the
horror of the English authorities, the French ambassa-
dor came to the play ; but with characteristic shrewd-
92 French Dramatists.
ness he refused to see the likeness, and led in applause
of the actor. Bertrand is Scribe's one rememberable
character. It leavens the whole play, of which the plot
however is interesting and possible, and not without
irony.
What would the great writer who invented Queen
Anne have thought of the 'Verre d'Eau,' in which the
Duchess of Marlborough and the lady-love of Lieut.
Masham are rivals of th'e queen for the affection of
that inoffensive young man? Scribe takes as many
liberties with Queen Anne who is dead, as we all
know, and has no Churchill now to fight her battles
as Hugo took with Queen Mary ; but he is never melo-
dramatic like Hugo. The emotion is rarely tense ; and
even the shock of surprise evokes no more startling
ejaculation than "O Heaven!" a lady-like expletive
which recurs half a dozen times in the play. The
'Verre d'Eau,' indeed, is a very lady-like comedy,
wherein high affairs of state are shown to hang on the
trifles of feminine feeling. While Scribe has no enthu-
siasm, no poetry, no passion, so also has he no affec-
tation, and no false and forced emotion. In 'Une
Chame,' for instance, which remains the most modern
of Scribe's comedies, and which tells a familiar tale,
there are no ardent scenes between the lover and the
mistress, and no dwelling on the raptures of illicit pas-
sion. On the contrary, the play, as the title shows,
turns on the lover's struggles to break the toils that
bind him to his enchantress. Scribe was a bourgeois, a
Philistine if you will ; and he worshipped respectability
with its thousand gigs. Mr. Henry James, Jr., has
said that the grand protagonist of Balzac's ' Com^die
Humaine ' was the five-franc piece : I am inclined to
Eugene Scribe. 93
think that money plays an even more important part in
Scribe's plays than in Balzac's novels. Money, for one
thing, is eminently respectable ; and Scribe was nothing
if not respectable. In ' Oscar, ou le Mari qui trompe
sa Femme,' for example, a three-act comedy done at
the Theatre Frangais in 1842, there is abundant sacri-
fice to decorum, though the subject is disgusting. Out-
wardly all is proper: inwardly it is of indescribable
indelicacy. But so skilfully has Scribe told his story,
that it is only by taking thought that one sees into it :
we are hurried so swiftly over the quaking bog, that we
scarcely suspect its existence. In 'Une Chaine' the
subject is commonplace enough now, though it was less
so in Scribe's day. What is remarkable about it is not
only the matter-of-fact treatment of a passionate situa-
tion, this was possibly Scribe's protest against the
Romanticist code, which set passion above duty, but
the curious way in which his instinct as a playwright
had anticipated the formulas of a quarter of a century
later. 'Une Chaine,' written in 1841 by Scribe, is in
construction very much what it would have been had it
been written by M. Victorien Sardou in 1881. It has
the external aspects of a comedy ; but lurking behind
and half out of sight is a possibility of impending
tragedy, a possibility which stiffens the interest of
the comedy, and strengthens it.
We try a play by a triple test, for plot, for charac-
ter, for dialogue. Scribe, who was a born playwright,
well knew, what so many would-be dramatists do not
know, that plot alone, if it be striking enough, will
suffice to draw the public. But he either ignored or
was ignorant of the fact that only character, that only
a true fragment of human nature, can confer immortal-
94 French Dramatists.
ity. Panurge and Sancho Panza and Bardolph and Tar-
tuffe are as alive to-day as when they came into being.
Plot and situation and intrigue, however clever, become
stale in time : we weary of them, and they are forgot-
ten. Unless a story is kept alive by the immortality
of character, it soon gets old-fashioned, and drops out of
sight till another generation takes it up, and dresses it
anew to suit the changing fancy. If it then fall into
the hands of a true poet, a real maker, and he put into
it the human nature it has hitherto lacked, it has a
chance of long life ; though the first arranger is remem-
bered only as having suggested the story, and the great
credit is given to the creator of the character. Thus
Shakspere and Moliere have worked over the plots of
the Latin comic dramatists, and so stamped these with
their marks, that no one has since dared to question
their ownership, or to replevin what, after all, belonged
to the public domain. Even when a man is without
this puissant gift of making men in his own image,
he has a chance of immortality if he be but sincere and
simple, and if he but put himself into his work. As
the saying is, every man has one book in him : however
he may halt in the delivery of his message, the world
will listen to him so long as he tries to deliver it in
straightforward fashion. There was nothing halting or
hesitating in Scribe's manner. He had practised till he
could talk on the stage better than any one else ; but
he had absolutely nothing to say, he had no message
whatsoever to deliver. No sooner did there come
to the front men like Iimile Augier and the younger
Dumas, who believed in a new gospel, and preached it
heartily and boldly, than all men flocked to hear them,
deserting Scribe. There was even an audience for M.
Eugene Scribe. 95
Sardou, who has hardly more to say than Scribe him-
self, but who is young enough to say nothing in a
style fifty years younger than Scribe's.
Scribe has left his impress on the stage ; but it is as
the inventor of the comedie-vaudeville, as the improver
of grand opera, as a play-maker of consummate skill,
not as the maker of character. He was full of appreci-
ation of a comic situation, and wrung from it the last
drop of amusement : it never re-acted to the creation of
a truly comic character. No one of Scribe's people lives
after him. They were in outline only, faint at best, and
soon faded : time has had no difficulty in rubbing them
out. " Outline " is perhaps scarcely the right word :
one may say, rather, that they are pastels, not sketches
in black and white. Indeed, there is little black any-
where in Scribe. He took a rose-colored view of life ;
and, as M. Octave Feuillet pointed out in the eulogy he
delivered as Scribe's successor in the French Academy,
nowhere in all his plays will you find a villain of the
deepest dye. Few of his characters are even vicious :
they are ridiculous only. We can laugh at them with-
out any feeling that we ought, perhaps, to weep. His
is a benevolent muse, and all's for the best in the best
of worlds.
The most easily recalled of Scribe's characters is one
which shows some of the complexity of real life, Ber-
trand, the cold and subtle diplomatist, who turns the
zeal and the generosity of others to his own account,
and makes the rest of his fellow-men serve as his cat's-
paws and scapegoats. Here is a figure not all of a
piece : he has some life of his own ; he could stand on
his own legs, even if the directing wire of the manager
of the show were withdrawn. After Bertrand, one can
96 French Dramatists.
bring up with least effort Michonnet, the old prompter
in 'Adrienne Lecouvreur.' Here, also, is a man with
the blood of life coursing through his veins. And of
all Scribe's countless women no one has such a glow of
human nature, fragile and feminine, as Adrienne herself.
It is hard to have to grudge Scribe the credit of
these last two characters ; but it is a fact that in writ-
ing 'Adrienne Lecouvreur,' Scribe had again taken
unto himself a partner, this time M. Ernest Legouve.
Scribe was asked by the Com^die-Fran^aise to write a
comedy for Rachel. He doubted, and wisely, whether
the task was not beyond him, and whether Rachel, who
was great in tragedy, would in comedy either be easy
herself, or be accepted by the public. He casually
consulted M. Legouve, who said the task was lighter
than it seemed. " It will be enough to put into a new
frame and another period Rachel's ordinary qualities.
The public will believe it a transformation, while it will
be only a change of costume." "Will you look up
a subject for us to treat together?" said Scribe at
once. M. Legouv6 sought ; and at last he happened on
the anecdote of Adrienne Lecouvreur acting Phedre,
and throwing into the teeth of the Duchess de Bouillon,
who sat in the stage-box, these scorching lines of her
part :
" Je ne suis point de ces femmes hardies
Qui, gofitant dans le crime une tranquille paix,
Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais ! "
M. Legouv6 hastened to carry his find to Scribe, who
fell on his neck in delight, crying, "A hundred per-
formances at six thousand francs ! " M. Legouv6 kindly
tells us that this was not a mercenary outbreak : it was
the natural expression of the enthusiasm of a trained
Eugene Scribe. 97
playwright who knew that in the box-office receipts
are figures that never lie, or flatter, or disparage, but
tell the author with brutal frankness what the public
thinks of his work. M. Legouvd has also described to
us how Rachel refused the piece, and how artfully he
persuaded her to play it. Its success tightened the
link between Scribe and M. Legouve ; and they wrote
three other plays together, of which the best known is
' Bataille de Dames,' turned into sturdy English by Mr.
Charles Reade as the * Ladies' Battle.'
If I had to select one play of Scribe's showing him
it his best, I should choose this 'Bataille de Dames.'
I can recommend it as agreeable reading, and quke
harmless. It takes no great study to see that the
plot of the play is a wonderful work of art. The
neatness with which the successive links of the simple
yet ever-changing action are jointed together is beyond
all praise. The comedy of intrigue can go no farther :
this is its last word. And there is not only ingenuity
of incident, there is some play of character ; not much,
to be sure, but a little. Nature in Scribe's plays has
as poor a chance as it had at the hands of the French
gardeners who bent the yew and the box into shapes
of strange animals. But ' Bataille de Dames ' is far
better in this respect than the ' Camaraderie ' of fifteen
years before. Ingenious with a Chinese-puzzle inge-
nuity, all the pieces fit into each other, and fill the box
exactly, and so completely that there is scant room for
the least human nature. In the ' Camaraderie ' there
is no air at all, and you cannot breathe ; but in ' Bataille
de Dames ' the people show some little will of their
own, thanks possibly to M. Legouv6. In the plays
Scribe wrote with M. Legouve there is more life, and
98 French Dramatists.
less insufficiency of style, than in his other pieces.
Scribe had little of the literary feeling, and cared less
for the art of writing than even M. Zola. It is a rare
thing for a Frenchman to attain prominence as an
author, and yet write as ill as Scribe : and it is only
as a dramatist that he could have done it ; on the stage
purely literary merit is a secondary consideration.
Scribe had far more real ability than M. Legouve 1 , but
he lacked the tincture of literature which the latter
had: so their conjunction was fertile. Together they
made a better play than Legouve alone, who with no
great poetic endowment tried to be a poet, or than
Scribe alone, who was satisfied to be theatrically ef-
fective. So the ' Bataille de Dames ' is the best of
Scribe's comic imbroglios; and 'Adrienne Lecouvreur'
is the best of his more dramatic attempts.
In his lighter comedies, as in his position in the
theatrical world, Scribe recalls Lope de Vega. Each
was in his day the chief purveyor of plays ; both relied
on the ingenuity of plot to sustain the interest ; neither
left behind him a single memorable character. With
due allowance for the differences of time and place,
some of Lope de Vega's comedies are very like Scribe's.
Take the ' Perro del Hortelano : ' is it not in sugges-
tion and handling much what it would have been had
Scribe written it? A little more sprawling, may be,
not so economical in its effects, but still much the
same. The Gardener's Dog is Spanish for the Dog
in the Manger. In this case it is a woman lightly and
easily sketched : she loves, and she is jealous ; and yet
she cannot make up her mind to marry the man she
loves, because of his lowly birth. Even the nincom-
poop of a lover is not unlike some of Scribe's uncer-
Eugene Scribe. 99
tain heroes. The art of play-making is constantly
improving, and Scribe could have given points to
Lope in the game of the stage. The Spanish drama-
tist, on the other hand, had a Spanish dignity and
grandiloquence, and some stirrings of poetry. Scribe's
Pegasus had no wings ; and so his attempts to rise to
the romantic and historical drama did not succeed.
He had a telescope rifle, unfailing in shooting folly as
it flies ; but the handling of a siege-gun was beyond his
power.
In 1819 Scribe had written the 'Freres Invisibles,' a
sufficiently absurd melodrama of the Pix6recourt school.
In 1832, in the midst of the Romantic ferment, he tried
his hand at ' Dix Ans de la Vie d'une Femme,' some-
thing in the style of Dinaux and Ducange's 'Trente
Ans ; ou, la Vie d'un Joueur.' But the dagger and the
bowl were too heavy for him to lift. If any one wants
to see a delightful specimen of the competent criticism
one dramatist can visit on another, as candid and as
cutting as may be, notwithstanding its good nature,
he should glance over Scribe's drama, and then read
Dumas's analysis of it in his ' Souvenirs Dramatiques.'
Perhaps the rattling raillery of Dumas convinced
Scribe of his error. It was twenty years later, and
only after 'Adrienne Lecouvreur,' a comedy-drama,
had succeeded, that he ventured on the ' Czarine,' an
historical drama acted by Rachel in 1855. Scribe
could do a dainty pastel or a delicate miniature, but
he lacked the robust strength which historical painting
calls for. Strange to say, the play is wanting even in
the picturesqueness of stage-effect when compared
with Scribe's own libretto for the ' Star of the North,'
or with the beginning of a play sketched by Balzac,
TOO French Dramatists.
both of which have for their heroine the mistress and
wife and successor of Peter the Great. A compli-
cated and petty intrigue dwarfs the figure of one who
fills so large a place in history and in the imagination
as Catherine. Scribe's feebleness in character-drawing
is shown in the way his historic figures slip out of
mind in spite of every effort to lay hold on them, and
in spite of their pretence to be portraits of Richard
Cromwell and Marshal Saxe, of Queen Anne and the
Duchess of Marlborough, of Francis the First and
Charles the Fifth.
Scribe's device was a pen crossed over pan-pipes,
with the motto, Inde Fortuna et Libertas, a proud
saying, for all its humility. He owed what he was to
his pen, and he acknowledged the debt. The pan-pipes,
I take it, are meant to symbolize, more modestly than a
lyre, his operatic labors : still they seem somewhat out
of place, as no man was ever less given to the warbling
of native wood-notes wild. Scribe's share in the de-
velopment of grand opera, and in the maintenance of
opfra-comique, important as it is, must be dismissed
briefly. Nowhere is skilful scaffolding more needed
than in an opera-book, and nowhere did Scribe's un-
equalled genius for the stage show to better advantage
than at the opera. It was he who constructed the
'Jewess' for Halevy, and 'Robert the Devil,' the
'Huguenots,' the 'Prophet,' and the 'Africaine,' for
Meyerbeer. It was he, in great measure, who made
possible Herr Wagner's art-work of the future by
bringing together in unexampled perfection and pro-
fusion the contributions of the scene-painter, the ballet-
master, the property-man, and the stage-manager, and
putting them all at the service of the composer for the
Eugene Scribe. 101
embellishing of his work. As the First Player says, in
the ' Rehearsal ' of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham,
"And then, for scenes, clothes, and dancing, we put
'em quite down, all that ever went before us ; and these
are the things, you know, that are essential to a play."
They are essential to that passing show we call an
opera ; and no one handled them more effectively than
Scribe.
His operas, ballets, and operas-comiques fill twenty-
six volumes in the new edition of his works ; and
among them are the librettos of the 'Bronze Horse/
' Crown Diamonds,' the ' Sicilian Vespers,' the ' Star of
the North/ 'Fra Diavolo/ the 'Dame Blanche/ the
' Domino Noir/ the ' Favorite/ ' Masaniello/ and the
' Martyres ; ' which last he had taken from Corneille's
'Polyeucte/ just as he had taken another opera-book
from Shakspere's 'Tempest/ Many of his com6dies-
vaudevilles he made over as operas. The ' Comte Ory/
was set by Rossini, and the ' Sonnambule ' was arranged
as a ballet. An Italian librettist aftenvard took this
ballet, and used it as the book for Bellini's ' Sonnam-
bula/ just as other foreign librettists have used his
plots for the ' Ballo in Maschera/ the ' Elisire d'Amor/
and more recently for ' Fatinitza/
Consider, for a moment, Scribe's extraordinary dra-
matic range. He began with the vaudeville, which he
improved into the comedie-vaudeville ; he rose to the
five-act comedy of manners ; he invented the comedy
drama ; he failed in Romantic and historical drama, but
he succeeded in handling tragic themes in grand opera ;
he devised the ballet-opera, and he gave great variety
to the op6ra-comique. He was ever on the lookout for
new dramatic forms. One of the most curious of those
IO2 French Dramatists.
he attempted is to be seen in the three-act play of
' Avant, Pendant, et Apres.' The first act, 'Before the
French Revolution,' is a comedy ; the second act,
' During the Revolution,' is a drama ; and the third act,
' After the Revolution,' is a vaudeville.
The same impulse to seek new forms led him also to
discover a new country, in which he laid the scenes of
all his plays. Scribe called this new land England, or
France, or Russia, or whatever else he wanted to make
it pass for ; but the critics called it Scribia. This is a
country where the people are all cut and dried, where
the jokes are generally old jokes, where every thing
always comes out right in the end, where waiting-
women twist queens around their fingers, where great
effects are always the result of little causes, and where,
in short, Scribe could have every thing his own way
This uniformity of local color made his plays more
easily understood in foreign countries, and facilitated
the task of the adapter. Beaumarchais and Augier
lose fifty per cent, in transport to another land and
tongue. Scribe's tare and tret is trifling. Manners
are local : but a plot might be used as well in England
as in France, and in Germany or Italy as in England ;
and so the universal borrowing from France began.
Before Scribe, the nations had borrowed from each
other all round : no one race had a monopoly of the
dramatic supply. The Restoration comedy of England
was derived from France ; but Germany and France
were both copying from England toward the end of the
last century ; and England and France were imitating
Germany in the early part of this. Since Scribe's
plays began their tour of the world, and since his re-
organization of the French Dramatic Authors' Society
Eugene Scribe. 103
made writing for the stage the most profitable form of
literary labor, France has ruled the dramatic market.
It is instructive to note that the French playwright
who has had the most foreign popularity, after Scribe, is
M. Victorien Sardou, who came to the front in 1861, the
year of Scribe's death, and who, like Scribe, places his
main reliance on his situations. M. Sardou is the
direct disciple of Scribe. We have been told, that,
when M. Sardou was learning the trade of play-making,
he modelled himself on Scribe, seeking to spy out his
secret. He would take a play of Scribe's, read one act,
and then write the following acts himself, comparing
his work with his model, and so learning the tricks of
the trade from its greatest master. Proof of this study
can be seen by a glance at the list of M. Sardou's
works: the 'Pattes de Mouche' is his 'Bataille de
Dames ; ' ' Rabagas ' is his ' Bertrand et Raton ; ' and
in ' Nos Intimes ' and ' Fernande ' we have the formula
of ' Une Chaine.' To M. Sardou, as to Scribe, a play
is a complex structure, whose varied incidents fit into
each other as exactly as the parts of a machine-made
rifle, lacking any one of which, the gun will miss fire.
M. Sardou is not as rigid in his construction as Scribe
was, and he has a broader humor, and is more open
to the influences of the day, perhaps too much so;
and the disciple is consequently more in accord with
the taste of the times than was the master as his career
drew to a close. Toward the end of his life Scribe
complained that his pieces did not meet the old suc-
cess, and wondered why it was, sure that he made
plays as well as ever. The fact was, that taste had
changed, and the public did not ask for well-made
plays ; or rather, it demanded something more than a
IO4 French Dramatists.
well-made play, something more than mere workman-
ship. Fortunately for his own peace of mind, Scribe
passed away before the full effect of the change in
public taste was apparent.
To sum up, Scribe's qualities are an inexhaustible
industry, an unfailing invention, an easy wit, a lively
feeling for situation, great cleverness, and supreme
technical skill. He paid little attention to human
nature ; he showed no knowledge that life is more than
mere work and play, that there can be grand self-sacri-
fice, noble sorrow, or any large and liberal sweep of
emotion. He had neither depth nor breadth. A good
man himself, and a generous, in his plays he took a
petty, not to say an ignoble, view of life. Even in his
comedies there is no great comic force : it is easy to
understand how Philarete Chasles came to call him a
Marivaux-^zVzVr. And it is no wonder that Heine,
whose eyes were wide open to the iniquities, the suffer-
ings, and the struggles of mankind, should regard
Scribe as the arch-Philistine, the guardian of the gates
of Gath, and should have risked a dying jest against
Scribe. As breath was fast failing him, Heine was
asked if he could whistle (in French, siffler, meaning
also "to hiss"), to which he replied with an effort,
" No, not even a play of M. Scribe's."
CHAPTER V.
M. EM1LE AUGIER.
IN criticism, as in astronomy, we must needs allow
for the personal equation ; and I am proud to confess
a hearty admiration for the sincere and robust dramatic
works of M. Emile Augier, to my mind the foremost
of the French dramatists of our day, with the possible
exception only of Victor Hugo. M. Augier inherits
the best traditions of French comedy. He is a true
child of Beaumarchais, a true grandchild of Moliere.
He has the Gallic thrust of the one, and something of
the broad utterance of the other and greater. One
of the best actors in Paris told me that he held the
' Gendre de M. Poirier ' to be the finest comedy since
the ' Mariage de Figaro.' It would be hard to gainsay
him ; and in the * Fils de Giboyer ' there is more than
one touch which recalls the hand of the great master
who drew ' Tartufe.'
It is not a little curious, that, while the plays of M.
Alexandre Dumas and M. Victorien Sardou are familiar
to the American theatre-goer, M. Augier's virile works
are but little known here. Three or four years ago
the case was the same in Germany ; and in an appre-
ciative study of M. Augier's career, published in Nord
und Sild, Herr Paul Lindau asked the reason of this,
and gave the answer ; which is simply that M. Augier
appeals to a higher (and smaller) class than either M.
Dumas or M. Sardou. In the preface of 'Cromwell,'
105
io6 French Dramatists.
Victor Hugo divides those who go to the theatre into
three classes : (i) The crowd, who look for action,
plot, situations ; (2) Women, who expect passion, emo-
tion ; and (3) Thinkers, who hope for characters, studies
of human nature. M. Sardou suits the first class, M. ,
Dumas the second, and M. Augier the third. It is
much easier to transfer to an alien soil the situations
of M. Sardou, or the emotions of M. Dumas, than
the social studies of M. Augier, in whose plays plot
and passion are subordinate, and subservient to the
development of character. Startling incidents can be
set forth in any language, and strong emotion loses
little by change of tongue ; but a fearless handling of
burning questions, and a scorching satire of society, can
be fully appreciated only among the social surround-
ings in which they first came forth. The note of M.
Augier is a broad and liberal loyalty ; while M. Dumas's
chief characteristic is a brilliancy often misdirected,
and M. Sardou's a cleverness always ready to take
advantage of the moment. M. Dumas is too complex
a problem to be considered in a sentence or two ; but
M. Sardou is simpler, and one may venture to define
the difference between his work and M. Augier's as
not unlike the difference between journalism and litera-
ture. M. Sardou's puppets live, move, and have their
being in some city forcing-house, where their master
keeps them under lock and key. M. Augier's char-
acters are as free as all out-doors ; and they breathe
the open breeze which blows from seashore and hill-
top, and which has the odor of the pines, and not a
little of their balsamic sharpness.
That M. Augier's plays, in spite of their lack of sen-
sational scenes, should not have found favor in the
M. Emile Augier. 107
eyes of Anglo-Saxon managers, is the more remarkable,
because he is the most moral of modern French dram-
atists. He is not one of "them that call evil good,
and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and light
for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for
bitter." Unlike M. Dumas, he does not let his emo-
tions run away with him. It is not that the moral is
violently thrust through each play, as a butterfly is im-
paled on a pin, to use Hawthorne's apt figure. No :
the morality in M. Augier, as in all really great authors,
" is simply a part of the essential richness of inspira-
tion," to quote from that other American writer who
has recently rapidly sketched Hawthorne's life. " The
more a work of art feels it at its source, the richer it
is," continues Mr. James ; and in this respect M. Au-
gier's work is of royal richness.
Although the French drama of to-day is not so bad
as many believe it to be, still the dramatists, like the
novelists of France, have not taken to heart Dr. John-
son's warning : " Sir, never accustom your mind to
mingle vice and virtue." Mr. Matthew Arnold quotes
with approval Michelet's assertion that the Reforma-
tion failed in France because France did not wish a
moral reform ; and he adds that the French are lack-
ing in the " power of conduct." Admitting the rule,
M. Augier is a noble exception : he has an abiding
sense of the importance of conduct in life, and he
strenuously seeks to strengthen that sense in others
by dwelling on the influences which make for it.
' Home,' the name which the English dramatist, Rob-
ertson, gave to an English comedy, for which he had
borrowed the plot of M. Augier's ' Aventuriere,' is
characteristic of all M. Augier's work. Home in his
io8 French Dramatists.
eyes is a sacred thing ; and throughout his plays we
can see a steadfast setting-forth of the holiness of
home and the sanctity of the family. This feeling will
not let him be a passive spectator of assaults on what
he cherishes. His is a militant morality, ever up in
arms to fight for the fireside. The insidious success
of the 'Dame aux Camelias' in which a courtesan's
chance love purified her so far as it might drew from
him the indignant 'Mariage d'Olympe,' and gave him
the opportunity of showing what might be expected
when the courtesan wormed her way into an honorable
household. The Third Person is as important to many
French dramas of this century as was the Third Estate
to the nation in the last century : but he is in no way
aided and abetted by M. Augier ; there is one French
dramatist who can always be counted on for the hus-
band and the home.
This love for the fireside is 'not merely literary capi-
tal : it is part of his actual life. In the preface to one
of his plays he explains how it happens that he has
written more than once in collaboration : it is owing
to his fondness for chat by the hearth with a friend ;
and if, in course of talk, they start a subject for a piece,
and run it down, to which of the two does it belong ?
M. Augier's whole life has been given to literature :
his career is that of a true man of letters, passing his
time quietly by his fireside, or in his garden in the study
of men and things. Herr Lindau quotes his answer
to a would-be biographer, perhaps the German critic
himself, who asked for adventure or anecdote: "My
life has been without incident." And Mr. W. E. Henle
has pointed out that M. Augier's love for the family
may be seen even in the externals of his works, in
M. Etnile Augier. 109
the dedication of his collected plays to his mother's
memory, and of individual pieces to his sisters and to
other intimate friends. There is in all this nothing
namby-pamby : on the contrary, his manly tenderness
is joined to a hearty scorn of sentimentality. Indeed,
the first tribute he paid to his family was an act of
courage. He inscribed his earliest play to the memory
of his maternal grandfather, Pigault-Lebrun, who traced
his descent from Eustache de St. Pierre, the burgher
of Calais. Pigault-Lebrun himself was a curious prod-
uct of the revolutionary effervescence : put in prison
twice by his father for youthful freaks, he went through
a series of Gil-Bias adventures : he was shipwrecked ;
he fought at the frontier ; he wrote for the stage ; and
finally he brought forth certain free-and-easy tales,
which were so successful that his father forgave him.
The dominant quality of Pigault-Lebrun was what the
French call " verve," and the English " go." M. Augier
seems to have inherited his independence and his frank
gayety : perhaps he has a portion of the imperative will
of the imprisoning father ; and, it may be, also some
share of the stout heart of Eustache de St. Pierre.
M. Augier began modestly. A two-act comedy of
antique life, called the ' Cigue,' from the draught of
hemlock which the hero has determined to take,
tendered first to the Theatre Francois, was finally
brought out at the Odeon in May, 1844. It met with
instant success, ran three months, and has since been
taken into the repertory of the Com6die-Franc,aise. In
classic purity of form this first of his plays remains the
best : it is a picture of self-seeking greed, treated with
a firmness of touch and a masculine irony unusual
in a young writer. M. Augier, born in 1820, was not
no French Dramatists.
twenty-four when the ' Cigue ' first saw the light of the
lamps. He had studied for the bar ; but the entice-
ments of poetry were irresistible, and, after the success
of the ' Cigue,' he devoted himself wholly to the drama.
He came upon the stage just in the nick of time :
both play-goers and professional critics accepted him as
the most promising of a new school of dramatists.
Just at this moment there was a lull in the fierce strife
between the Romanticists and the Classicists. A year
before the ' Cigue,' the Odeon had acted ' Lucrece,' a
tragedy by Frar^ois Ponsard, a classic tale told in
verses of romantic variety and color. The unwitting
poet was hailed at once as the chief of a new school,
the School of Common Sense which was, to seek
safety in the middle path, and to join the good qualities
of both the opposing styles, without the failings of
either. The ' Cigue,' on its appearance, was claimed as
the second effort in the new manner. Neither Ponsard
nor M. Augier warm personal friends, and both men
of modesty ever set up as leaders of a new departure ;
just as it has been said that John Wilkes was never
a Wilkite. M. Augier gave in no adhesion to the
School of Common Sense, yet was tacitly accepted as
its lieutenant : when its day had passed, he stepped out
of its narrow limits, and walked on toward his own goal
with a sturdy tread. But for convenience, and not in-
accurately, we may consider his earlier work as belong-
ing to this school. Beautiful as much of it is, taken by
itself, we see at once, when we survey his writings as
a whole, that the earlier pieces were only tentative,
and that he had not yet discovered where his real
strength lay. In the first ten years after the ' Cigue '
was acted, he brought out six other plays in verse ; in
M. Entile Augier. ill
1845 the 'Homme de Bien;' in 1848 the 'Aven-
turiere,' the finest and firmest of all his metrical come-
dies ; in 1849 'Gabrielle,' a noteworthy success; in
1850 the 'Joueur de Flute,' a weaker return to the
classic, and akin in subject to the 'Cigue;' in 1852
' Diane,' a romantic drama written for Rachel, and acted
by her without any great effect, owing, perhaps, to its
use of the historical material which had already served
Victor Hugo in 'Marion Delorme ;' and in 1853 'Phili-
berte,' a charming comedy of life in the last century.
All these comedies belonged to the new school, in that
they had common sense without commonplace. In the
best of them were to be seen simplicity, without the
weakness of the Classicists, and vigor, without the bru-
tality of the Romanticists.
' Gabrielle,' as we consider it now after thirty years,
does not seem the best, even of these earlier attempts :
it lacks the easy sweep of the ' Cigue,' and the manly
strength of the ' Adventuriere ; ' it is almost wholly
wanting in the wholesome humor which plays so freely
around the characters in M. Augier's other comedies ;
and, although the play is well constructed from a tech-
nical point of view, its climax is reached by means
which seem inadequate to the end attained. Yet so
noble was its intention, and so clean its execution, that,
in spite of its vulnerable points, it created a profound
sensation, enjoyed success beyond its fellows, and re-
ceived from the Academy the Monthyon prize of virtue.
It shows how M. Augier fought for the fireside and the
home before he gave up a didactic for a purely dramatic
method. In ' Gabrielle ' we have, briefly, a young hus-
band devoted to his wife and child, and toiling unceas-
ingly for their future : therefore is he unable to divine,
1 1 2 FrencJi Dramatists.
much less to satisfy, the somewhat sentimental aspira-
tions of his wife. Unfortunately a friend of his falls
in love with her, and tenders the ideal passion her heart
craves. Fortunately the husband is warned in time ;
and he fights bravely for his home, not with his
hands, but with his brain. Giving no sign of suspicion,
he appeals to the lover to help him loyally to win back
his wife's heart ; then, getting them both together, he
seizes an occasion to set before them with heartfelt
eloquence the consequences of a false step. So per-
suasive and so powerful is he, that, when they are left
alone for a moment, the wife dismisses the lover, who
accepts his sentence without a murmur. By herself,
she compares the two men : how small looks the lover
by the side of her husband ! On his return she con-
fesses, whereupon he declares the fault to be his own,
in that he has neglected her, and asks if he may hope
to win back her love. Conquered by his strength and
his tenderness, the wife seizes his hand, and, as the
curtain falls, exclaims,
*'O pre de famille ! 6 poete ! je t'aime ! "
To understand the startling effect of such a comedy,
we must consider the state of the stage in France at
the time. It was a cutting rebuke to the followers
of Scribe and to the disciples of Dumas. "There is
something about murder," Mr. Howells tells us, " some
inherent grace or refinement perhaps, that makes its
actual representation upon the stage more tolerable
than the most diffident suggestion of adultery." M.
Scribe and the crowd of collaborators who encompassed
him about were of another opinion. The fracture of
the Seventh Commandment, actual or imminent, was to
X
M. Emile Augier. 1 1 3
be seen at the centre of all pieces of the Scribe type.
" There was a need of hearing something which had
common sense, and which should lift up, encourage, or
console mankind, not so egotistic or foolish as M.
Scribe declares it," wrote the younger Dumas ; adding,
that a writer "robust, loyal, and keen, presented him-
self ; and ' Gabrielle,' with its simple and touching
story, with its fine and noble language, was the first
revolt against the conventional comedy."
M. Dumas saw distinctly the blow M. Augier gave to
Scribe ; but he did not acknowledge, that at the same
time were shaken the foundations of the school in which
his father was a leader. As M. fimile Montegut has
said, only once did M. Augier take up arms against the
Romanticists. "The re-action of the School of Com-
mon Sense had, as a whole, but little success, because
it especially attacked the literary doctrines of Roman-
ticism, which were sufficiently solid to resist. But
Romanticism presented more vulnerable points than its
doctrines ; for example, the false ideals of sentimen
tality it made fashionable, and the brilliant immorality
of its works, which had again and again exalted the su
periority of passion over duty." With this feeling M.
Augier had no sympathy : he is always for duty against
passion ; and ' Gabrielle ' was a curt rebuke to 'Antony.'
Yet one can but regret, with M. Montegut, that the
object was attained by this mild piece, in the author's
earlier and gentler manner, rather than by a true com-
edy in the hardy and satiric style of his later work
Sham sentimentality and misplaced yearnings call for
the hot iron of satire ; and the weapon which M. Augier
soon forged for use against the hypocrites and schem-
ers of the 'Effrontds ' and the Tils de Giboyer' would
H4 French Dramatists.
have served effectively against personified Romanticism.
But, like many another young warrior, M. Augier was
a long time finding his right weapon. After writing
without aid the seven plays in verse which have been
grouped together, he changed about, and took to prose
and to collaboration. In the ' Pierre de Touche ' (1853),
in which M. Jules Sandeau was a partner, and in ' Cein-
ture Dore'e' (1855), in which M. Foussier was a half-
partner, a distinct advance can be noted toward what
was soon seen to be M. Augier's true road ; and in the
'Gendre de M. Poirier ' (1855) he struck the path, and
walked straight to the goal.
To my mind the ' Gendre de M. Poirier ' is the model
modern comedy of manners : its one competitor for
the foremost place, the ' Demi-Monde ' of M. Dumas, is
fatally weighted by its subject. M. Augier gives us
a picture of the real world, and not of the half world.
M. Montegut truly calls it " not only the best comedy
of our time, but the only one which satisfies the idea
formerly held as to what a comedy should be." Most
modern French comedies are melodramatic ; and more
than one successful play by Dumas or Sardou is but a
Bowery drama in a dress-coat. But the ' Gendre de
M. Poirier ' is pure comedy, and would be recognized as
such by Congreve and Sheridan, Lessing and Beau-
marchais. It is simple and straightforward in story,
and it has no petty artifices or cheap machinery. The
interest arises from the clash of character against char-
acter, and not from external incidents or ready-made
situations. The subject is the old, old strife between
blood and wealth, between high birth and a full purse.
M. Poirier is a shop-keeper, who, having made a fortune,
has political aspirations, which he seeks to advance
M. Emile Augier. 115
by an alliance with the aristocracy. The Marquis de
Presles is a young nobleman without money, but with
blood and to spare. The daughter of M. Poirier be-
comes the wife of M. de Presles, and is the innocent
victim of both father and husband ; and the situations
of the play are called forth by the unexpected develop-
ment of her character under the pressure of suffering,
a character which M. de Presles, although they have
been married three months, has hitherto held to be
colorless. From idle carelessness the husband gets
into trouble, and the young and plebeian wife has twice
a chance of saving his patrician honor. There is no
palliation of his vice, still less any pandering to it.
Nakedly it stands before us, and we see the pain which
the empty pursuit of pleasure may bring even on the
innocent. A chance of reconciliation is offered to the
marquis at a heavy cost of honor ; and this brings about
the beautiful scene one of the most pathetic known
to the modern stage, and ending in a truly dramatic
surprise where the wife nobly rejects the sacrifice,
and sends her husband forth to battle for his name.
Besides these three characters there are but two others ;
and to carry through a full four-act comedy with but
five parts is an instance of that calm simplicity which
only a very high art can attain.
The ' Gendre de M. Poirier ' is truly dramatic in every
sense, above all in the rare merit of impartiality. The
authors do not take sides, and the scales are held with
an even hand. Altogether the tone of the play is so
honest, healthy, and hardy, and its literary quality is
so high, that I am never tired of reading it and prais-
ing it. I see in it an almost Molierian inspiration :
indeed, it seems to me not only the best French comedy
n6 French Dramatists.
since Beaumarchais, but better than any between Beau-
marchais and Moliere. Beside the noble simplicity of
its subject, it has more than one characteristic of the
great sad humorist's style : for one thing, it unites, in
true Molierian manner, humor and good humor. The
humor is searching and liberal, and the good humor is
abundant enough to light the whole play with healthy
laughter. In the evolution of the characters again we
catch a glimpse of Moliere : every one of the five per-
sons of the play is at once a type and an individual,
true to eternal human nature. In all five can be seen
a masculine sturdiness of conception allied to an almost
feminine delicacy of delineation.
This remark reminds me, that, although I have hither-
to spoken of the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' as M. Augier's,
it is signed also by M. Jules Sandeau. However, no sub-
stantial injustice is done ; for, while there is nothing
else of M. Sandeau's which will bear comparison with
the ' Gendre de M. Poirier,' it is but the best expres-
sion of M. Augier's genius. Both M. Augier and M.
Sandeau are men of too marked an individuality to
gain by collaboration, although in this play the manly
vigor of the former and the caressing gentleness of
the other blend harmoniously. Not always has the
union been so easy. In the 'Pierre de Touche,' for
instance, as it has been neatly said, the characters are
by the author of the ' Effrontes,' and the situations and
scenery are by the author of 'Mile, de la Seigliere.'
And in their latest joint-production, 'Jean de Thom-
meray,' M. Augier had obviously only borrowed the
idea of M. Sandeau's charming tale, and had himself
written the whole play, stamped throughout by his
muscular hand. "Dans tout concubitns" wrote M.
M. mile Augier. 1 1 7
Augier in regard to M. Labiche's collaborations, " il y
a un male et une femelle." J Now it is not to be
doubted that M. Augier is the male. To him that hath
shall be given : on ne prete qiiaux riches. So much the
worse for M. Sandeau.
The effect of collaboration is to raise the general
level of dramatic workmanship. Partnership makes it
easier to learn the difficult trade of playmaking. The
beginner full of ideas serves his apprenticeship with
the veteran full of experience ; and the association is
for mutual profit. But, if we get more good plays, we
gain no more great ones. Two minds can rarely have
the singleness and simplicity needed to conceive and
carry out a truly great idea. Indeed, since Beaumont
and Fletcher, the ' Gendre de M. Poirier ' is the first
masterpiece ; and its strength and beauty are in great
measure owing to the fact that M. Augier and M.
Sandeau, like Beaumont and Fletcher, are kindred
intellects, thinking alike in important matters, and
happily correcting each other in minor details. Gener-
ally the two natures either clash irreconcilably, or else
emphasize each other's virtues and vices with a conse-
quent loss of proportion. This is to be seen even in
M. Augier's case, although he has only collaborated
with first-rate men, Alfred de Musset, M. Jules San-
deau, M. Eugene Labiche, and M. Edouard Foussier ;
the first three, like himself, members of the Academy.
In 1849 he wrote a little one-act trifle, the 'Habit
Vert,' with Musset; and in 1877 he joined M. Eugene
Labiche in writing the ' Prix Martin,' a three-act farce ;
and neither of these is equal to the average of either
of its author's other plays.
" In every consorting, there must be a male and a female."
1 1 8 French Dramatists.
To the partnership with M. Foussier we owe one,
at least, of M. Augier's most important plays, the
'Lionnes Pauvres ' (1858). I can but think that the
play would have been better, had M. Augier written it
alone. M. Sandeau's gentleness may have corrected
M. Augier's occasional acerbity ; and the ' Gendre de
M. Poirier' is artistically a finer piece of work than
any thing M. Augier did by himself : but M. Fouisser
simply says "ditto" to M. Augier, and so their joint
work shows an over-accentuation and almost a harsh-
ness of tone not to be found in the other plays of the
author of the 'Fils de Giboyer.' A comparison of
the 'Mariage d'Olympe ' (1855), written alone, with
the ' Lionnes Pauvres ' (1858), written with M. Foussier,
will show what I mean. In the latter there is an over-
emphasis not to be detected in the former; and the
conception and dramatic construction is feebler in the
joint work than when M. Augier relied on himself
alone. These two plays are linked together here, be-
cause, although a comedy in verse intervened, in them
M. Augier came before the public in an entirely new
manner. The ' Dame aux Camelias,' first acted in
1852, changed the whole aspect of contemporary dra-
matic literature. The merely amusing comedy was
pushed from the front rank, to which the skill of Scribe
had advanced it ; and, as Scribe fell from his high
estate, M. Dumas came to the front as the demonstra-
tor of social science set forth upon the stage. A
quarter of a century ago M. Dumas had not developed
into the moral philosopher who now so calmly surveys
mankind from the summit of a preface ; and the moral-
ity of his earlier plays was easy, to say the least. The
success of these pieces of M. Dumas's was the one
M. Emile Augier. 119
thing needful to the full fruition of M. Augier's genius.
Orderly, fond of home, full of love for the family, and
a bitter foe to any insidious attack on these ideals, he
saw in the ' Dame aux Camelias/ its successors and its
rivals, formidable adversaries with whom to do battle.
The school of easy morality offered a shining mark
for his satire ; and, in the new dramatic form which
Dumas had introduced, Augier found a sure weapon
ready to his hand. In the 'Mariage d'Olympe' and in
the ' Lionnes Pauvres ' he first showed his willingness
to sound a note of warning against social dangers, and
displayed a power of grappling with social problems.
In both plays the subject is repulsive, and of a kind
not now tolerated on the English-speaking stage. An
adaptation of the * Lionnes Pauvres,' called ' A False
Step,' and made with due decorousness of expression,
was refused a license in London in 1878. Plays writ-
ten in English, like novels written in English, must be
made virginibus puerisque ; and so only half of life
gets itself into our literature. In France, fortunately
or unfortunately, the dramatic moralist labors under
no such limitations. Yet it is to be recorded that the
French censors tried to prevent the production of the
' Lionnes Pauvres ' unless it were made more moral ;
one of their suggestions, as M. Augier tells us in his
preface, being that the vicious woman should, between
the fourth and fifth acts, have an attack of small-pox as
a " natural consequence of her perversity."
The late G. H. Lewes, one of the best of dramatic
critics, wrote of a revival of this play in 1 867 : " The
comedy or shall I not rather call it tragedy? was
terribly affecting : the authors have shown us what
comedy may be, should be. They have boldly laid bare
I2O French Dramatists.
one of the hideous sores of social life, and painted the
consequences of the present rage for dress and luxury
which is rapidly demoralizing the middle classes of
Europe." The hideous sore was the possible change
from passionate adultery to salaried prostitution for the
continuance of luxury and extravagance. The scene
is laid in two households ; and we see in one the wife
awakening to desertion, and in the other a husband
discovering his dishonor. The subject was indeed a
bold one; and, if the play had succeeded, it would go
far to contradict the assertion, made now and again in
Th^ophile Gautier's dramatic criticisms, that the stage
never becomes possessed of any idea until it has been
worn threadbare in print. Unfortunately the play,
although more than once revived, and always well re-
ceived, never makes a long stay on the stage. It owes
this lack of stability, perhaps, to the very boldness of
its subject : this, at least, is the suggestion of M.
Sarcey, formulated when the play was last revived,
in the fall of 1879. The subject was so novel in 1858,
and so hazardous, that the authors did not dare to
paint the wicked woman in the vivid colors which the
situation demanded : they attenuated the drawing, and
filled it in with half-tints, to the obvious weakening of
the effect. In spite of this blemish, the 'Lionnes
Pauvres ' remains a work of extraordinary vigor and
value, one which the future historian of Parisian soci-
ety under the Second Empire cannot afford to neglect.
Yet as a work of art it is inferior to the ' Mariage
d'Olympe,' which M. Augier wrote alone, and which
had no success at all. Olympe is a courtesan who
tricks an inexperienced young man into a marriage,
and by a skilful comedy gets herself recognized by
M. Entile Augier. 121
his family. Once sure of her position in an honora-
ble household, she is seized by the nostalgic de la boue,
the longing for the mud, the homesickness for the
gutter from which she has been lifted, and in which
she had her natural growth. A lover appears, and she
sells herself to him from mere wantonness. Brought
to bay by her husband's grandfather, the head of his
noble house, she threatens to publish a scandal about
an innocent young girl, the youngest member of the
family. Unable to buy her off, the old marquis shoots
her down like a dog. While this was a fit solution of
the situation, so violent a method of meting out poetic
justice revolted the play-going public ; and the final
pistol-shot killed the play as well as the heroine. It
came before its time : the public was not ripe for it.
Since then the stage has taken a bold stride forward,
and a sudden shot has cut the Gordian knot in two of
M. Dumas' plays, the ' Princesse Georges,' and the
' Femme de Claude.' On two occasions the ' Mariage
d'Olympe ' has been revived to see if a more favorable
fortune might not be found for it ; but although re-
spectfully received, and although its many good quali-
ties are admitted, it has never been able to captivate
the general public and to compel admiration from the
common throng.
The heroine of the ' Mariage d'Olympe ' is not so
vicious as the heroine of the 'Lionnes Pauvres,' for
whom there is no excuse to be made ; and the sudden
taking-off of the former is more merciful than the awful
perspective opened before us as the certain course of
the latter. In each play we have a sickening picture
of depravity ; and the stronger the artist's hand, and
the finer his art, the more we wish that he had chosen
122 French Dramatists,
another subject. The orgy in the second act of the
' Mariage d'Olympe ' is as typical in its way as Couture's
picture of the Romans of the decadence ; but it is set
forth with a decorous pen by an author who respects
himself. There is nothing in it of the unspeakable
filth of M. Zola's ' Nana ; ' besides, Olympe is true, and
in the highest degree artistic, and Nana is conventional
in spite of her minute Naturalism. One feels that
the mere mention of M. Augier in the same breath with
M. Zola is a mistake in taste; yet in the portrait of
Olympe there is an impression of main strength which
one feels M. Zola must appreciate. I should be
tempted to characterize it as violent and brutal, if these
were not altogether too harsh words to apply to a
writer so well-bred and so keen as M. Augier. It is
perhaps safe to say, that, had it been treated by another
hand, " violent and brutal " would surely be the exact
words to employ. It is not that the note is forced, or
that there is any thing false in the treatment : on the
contrary, no work of M. Augier is more sober or direct.
The painful impression is no doubt due to the repulsion
inherent in the subject, and it is this painful impres-
sion which has kept the play from attaining general
popularity.
Between the 'Mariage d'Olympe' (1855) and the
'Lionnes Pauvres' (1858), M. Augier had reverted to
verse in 'La Jeunesse,' acted in 1857. Eleven years
later, in 1868, came 'Paul Forestier,' another poetical
play. These two are his latest attempts in verse, and
may therefore be considered together. ' La Jeunesse '
is closely akin to Ponsard's 'L'Honneur et 1'Argent '
in subject and style. Its verse is not so academic in
its elegance as Ponsard's ; but it is fresher, and it has
M. Emile Augier. 123
more freedom : the flowers of M. Augier's poesy always
have their roots in the soil. In spite of the dates, it
seems as though ' La Jeunesse ' must have been written
just after ' Gabrielle : ' they are informed by the same
spirit, and in each is a warning to be seen.
In as marked contrast as may be to both of these
is 'Paul Forestier/ M. Augier's last drama in verse.
Indeed, it is so unlike the rest of his plays, that it
might almost be taken for the work of another. It is
a play of pure passion surchanged with hurrying emo-
tion, and culminating in what one cannot but think,
in spite of all the skill with which it is done, is a con-
ventional conclusion, only caused by a wrenching of
the logic of the characters, wherein vice is punished,
and virtue rewarded, in spite of themselves. M. Augier's
comedies are generally moral in another and nobler
manner than this. Here one feels that, given the
characters and situation, the outcome would have been
different. In general, M. Augier's logic is so inexora-
ble, and the moral so entirely a part of the essence of
his story, that to come upon this play, in which the
moral seems merely tacked on, is something of a shock.
The only excuse at hand is that the poet had run away
with the moralist, and that the latter got the upper
hand only in time to pull up as best he might.
In America the divorce between poetry and the stage
seems to be as final, and as unhealthy for both parties,
as the divorce between politics and society. In France
one has a chance now and then of hearing an actor
speak the language of the gods. The habit of writing
in verse is dying out slowly ; yet, as M. Augier has
shown us, the poetic attitude is possible even to those
who use the language of men. It may well be doubted
124 French Dramatists.
whether the gradual disappearance of French dramatic
verse is greatly to be deplored. The rhymed Alexan-
drine is not a fit dramatic instrument : it is, of all met-
rical forms, the one least suited to the stage. The
theatre requires action, and the Alexandrine is lazy
and slow. The theatre requires simplicity, and, above
all, directness ; and the Alexandrine lends itself only
too easily to the employment of drum-like words, loud-
sounding, empty, and monotonous. M. Augier suc-
ceeds in overcoming this temptation : so close at times
is his verse, that it would be no light task to turn his
Alexandrines into English verse, line for line. Style
is generally on a level with the thought it clothes. In
M. Augier's poetry we find none of the haziness of
expression which results from weakness of conception.
He sees clearly, and speaks frankly : his verse is flexi-
ble, full, and direct. In his antique and mediaeval
plays, especially in the ' Aventuriere,' it abounds in
grace and color ; and the metre helps to keep up the
artificial remoteness of the illusion.
It is, perhaps, my duty to give a specimen of M.
Augier's verse, although I dare not attempt a transla-
tion. Here, then, is the indignant rebuke of Fabrice,
when Clorinde, the adventuress, claims the right to
be treated with the courtesy due to a woman :
" Vous une femme ? Un lache est-il un homme ? Non . . .
Eh bien ! je vous le dis : on doit le meme outrage
Aux femmes sans pudeur qu'aux hommes sans courage,
Car le droit au respect, la premiere grandeur,
Pour nous c'est le courage et pour vous la pudeur.
La sainte dignite" que vous avez salie
Au lieu de 1'invoquer, souhaitez qu'on 1'oublie.
Vous seule, songez-y, mais pour pleurer sur vous.
O femme sans amour, sans enfants, sans e'poux ;
M. Emile Augier. 125
Etrangere au milieu des tendresses humaines,
La glace de la mort est de"ja dans vos veines,
Et quand vous descendrez au ne"ant du cercueil,
II ne s'dteindra rien en vous qu'un peu d'orgueil !
C'est votre chatiment ! Aussi, je vous 1'atteste,
Vous me feriez pitie", si vous n'dtiez funeste . . .
Mais lorsque je vois, vos parcelles et vous,
Repandre vos poisons dans les coeurs les plus doux,
Quand surtout vous voulez, par d'odieuses trames,
Prendre dans nos maisons le rang d'honnetes femmes,
A cote" de nos soeurs lever vos fronts abjects,
Et comme notre amour nous volez nos respects ! . . .
Tiens, va-t'-en ! "
(Act iv. sc. 5.)
Well as M. Augier could handle the Alexandrine,
his admirable artistic instinct told him that it could
only be used to great disadvantage in attacking the
weak points of a more modern and complex civilization.
In a play of passion like ' Paul Forestier,' or in a more
or less didactic and idealized comedy like ' La Jeunesse/
it might serve ; but in a direct assault on a crying evil,
as in the ' Mariage d'Olympe ' or the ' Lionnes Pauvres,'
metre would hamper rather than help ; and so verse
was discarded for a prose as pointed and as nervous as
any dramatist could wish. M. Augier's practice as a
poet was of great aid in giving to his prose its form
and color : it is a true poet's prose, a prose lifted at
times on the wings of poetry, but never to soar out of
sight. M. Augier's prose is seemingly hurried at times :
it shows, besides the effect of its author's poetic expe-
rience, a study of Beaumarchais : one catches at times
a faint echo of the " ruse, rase, blas6 " manner of
Figaro. It is as picturesque, in its nineteenth-cen-
tury way, as was Beaumarchais's ; and it is far more
126 French Dramatists.
correct and more natural. Indeed, it is the model of
dramatic dialogue of our day, terse, tense, racy, and
idiomatic.
Nowhere is M. Augier's style seen to better advan-
tage than in the series of startling comedies of con-
temporary life which he brought forth between 1861
and 1869. The avenging pistol-shot was abandoned
for the whip-lash of satire. At bottom, both the
' Mariage d'Olympe ' and the ' Lionnes Pauvres ' were
dramas. There can be no doubt that the ' Effronte's '
and the ' Fils de Giboyer ' are comedies : they are
models of what the modern comedy of manners should
be ; they show no trace of melodrama, and the interest
arises naturally from the clash of character against
character. Therefore it is not a little difficult to con-
vey an idea of their high merit ; for no rehearsal of
the plot fairly represents the play, because the plot is
a secondary consideration ; and any description of char-
acter is pale and weak copying of what in the comedies
moves before us with all the myriad hues of life.
"There has never been a literary age," so Joubert
tells us, " in which the dominant taste was not sickly.
The success of an excellent author consists in making
healthy works agreeable to sickly tastes." M. Augier
boldly surmounted this difficulty by making the sickly
tastes of his age a literary one beyond all question
the theme of his satire. He attacked contemporary
demoralization in four comedies, the ' Eff rentes '
(1861), the 'Fils de Giboyer' (1862), the 'Contagion'
(1866), and ' Lions et Renards' (1869). No one of them
was so calmly artistic or symmetrical as the ' Gendre
de M. Poirier,' but all four of them, taken together
and considered as one, are more exactly typical of his
X
M. Emile Augier. 127
genius, and give us an even higher opinion of it. The
' Gendre de M. Poirier ' remains M. Augier's best play ;
but in his series of satiric comedies there are characters
who linger in the memory even longer than M. Poirier
himself, Giboyer, for instance, who ties together the
first two plays ; and d'Estrigaud, who links the other
pair.
In the ' Effrontes ' an assault was made on discredit-
able speculation, and undue respect for mere money
whencesoever derived. In the ' Fils de Giboyer ' in
which Giboyer, a Bohemian of the press, and the
Marquis d'Auberive, a representative of the old nobili-
ty, re-appeared from the preceding play a plain pic-
ture was presented of clerical intriguing in politics.
All at once M. Augier found himself in a wasp's nest.
Clericalism was in arms ; and M. Augier received hot
shot and heavy from newspaper and pamphlet, accus-
ing him of odious personalities, calling him Aristopha-
nes, and recalling the legend that the death of Socrates
was due to the attacks of the great Greek humorist.
The likeness to Aristophanes was not altogether inapt ;
for, without the license of the Greek, the Frenchman
had the same directness of thrust. He indignantly
repelled the accusation of personality, while frankly
admitting that one character and but one was
drawn from the living model. This was Deodat, in
which everybody had recognized Veuillot, the ultra-
montane gladiator and papal-bull fighter. The denial
availed little. A disreputable pamphleteer who called
himself Eugene de Mirecourt, author of a series of
prejudiced and inaccurate contemporary biographies,
professed to recognize himself in Giboyer (without war-
rant, surely ; for, in spite of his vice and venality, Gi-
"** jr
128 French Dramatists.
boyer was sound at the core) ; and this fellow published,
in answer to the ' Fils de Giboyer,' a stout volume called
the ' Petit-fils de Pigault-Lebrun,' in which he tried to
hit M. Augier over the shoulder of his grandfather,
gathering together stores of apocryphal anecdotes and
doubtful jests.
Nothing daunted by this rain of invective, but hold-
ing it rather as proof that he had hit the mark, M.
Augier returned to the assault. One may guess that
he delights in the combat, and is never so happy as
when giving battle for the right. In this case he
showed that he had what we Yankees call " grit." He
brought out a new pair of plays. In the ' Contagion,'
as in the 'Effrontes,' he attacked a general evil, the
cheap scepticism of the hour, the want of faith in the
future, the ribald scoffing at things hitherto held sacred.
Then in ' Lions et Renards,' as in the ' Fils de Giboyer,'
he used one of the characters, fully developed in the
earlier play, as a mainspring of the polemic action of
the later. In the ' Contagion ' we see the Baron d'Es-
trigaud, most keen and quick-witted of rascals, carrying
off his rascality with an easy grace, and taking things
with a high hand. In ' Lions et Renards ' clericalism
re-appears again in the person of a M. de St. Agathe,
mentioned already in the ' Fils de Giboyer,' and here
brought boldly upon the stage : he is one who has sac-
ficed every thing, even his identity, to the order of
which he is an unknown instrument, from sheer lust of
power wielded in secret. The struggle between these
two, D'Estrigaud and St. Agathe, for a fortune which
neither of them captures, is exciting. In the end, by
a sudden irony, the beaten D'Estrigaud abandons the
world, forgives his enemies, and, under the eyes of St.
M. Entile Augier. 129
Agathe, takes to religion, the last resort of rascals,
to paraphrase Dr. Johnson.
While no one of these four comedies, as I have said,
is artistically equal to the ' Gendre de M. Poirier,' yet
taken together they give us a still higher opinion of
M. Augier's genius. No other dramatic author of this
century can point to four such pieces : no other drama-
tist of our day has put before us so many distinct in-
dividualities, and shown them before us in action, each
after its kind. There are no longer preachments ; there
are a bit of action and a single line instead, and the
evil is summed up better than by a score of sermons.
The dialogue is sharp and short : it has a satiric wit,
which cuts like a lash when it does not bite like an acid.
The wit is really wit, a diamond of the first water, trans-
parent and clear. There is none of the rough-and-ready
repartee only too common in many modern English
plays, the rudeness of which recalls Goldsmith's asser-
tion, that there was no arguing with Dr. Johnson ; for,
if his pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with the
butt. M. Augier's pistol does not miss fire.
The series of comedies of manners which I have here
grouped together was interrupted in 1865 by 'Maltre
Guerin,' as well as by the poetic drama 'Paul Fores-
tier' (1868). 'Maitre Guerin ' is analyzed at length in
Mr. Lewes's valuable volume on ' Actors and the Art of
Acting.' Although showing many of M. Augier's ever-
admirable qualities, it is lacking in the symmetry of
the ' Gendre de M. Poirier ' and in the sharp savor of
the later satires : it pales by the side of either. In the
same year (1869) that he brought out 'Lions et Re-
nards ' he gave us also the ' Postscriptum,' one of the
brightest and most brilliant little one-act comedies in
130 French Dramatists.
any language, and to be warmly recommended to
American readers. The next year came the war with
Prussia and the two sieges of Paris.
The first play which M. Victorien Sardou brought
out after France had gone through these terribles trials
was the trivial ' Roi Garotte,' a fairy spectacle ; and the
second was the illiberal and re-actionary ' Rabagas.' M.
Augier's first play was the stirring and patriotic * Jean
de Thommeray ' (1873) : love for home and love for the
fatherland are rarely separated. 'Jean de Thommeray'
was a series of energetic pictures of the demoralization
which had led to defeat : its fault was that it was only
a series of pictures, and not a homogeneous drama. M.
Augier had borrowed his hero from M. Sandeau's tale ;
and Jean de Thommeray himself was almost the only
link connecting the succeeding acts. The play thus
lacked backbone ; its parts were not knit together by
the bond of a common life : it was rather a polyp, any
one of whose members, when detached, is as capable
of separate life as the original whole.
M. Augier's later plays call for little comment. In
1877 was acted the 'Prix Martin,' signed by M. Augier
and by M. Eugene Labiche. It is not noteworthy ; and
M. Augier has himself told us that his share of the
work was confined to a partnership in the plan and to
a slight revision of M. Labiche' s dialogue. The year
before, M. Augier brought out 'Mme. Caverlet,' and
the year after, the ' Fourchambault.' The latter was
very successful, but neither is in M. Augier's best man-
ner. The first is a plea for divorce, and the second a
plea for the solidarity of the family ; and both are what
on the English stage are called "domestic dramas."
In all, M. Augier has written twenty-seven plays,
M. Emile Augier. 131
great and small. Of these, nine are in verse. Eight
times he had a literary partner. At least ten out of
the twenty-seven are plays of the first order, not to be
equalled in the repertory of any contemporary drama-
tist ; and of these ten, three the * Aventuriere,' the
' Gendre de M. Poirier,' and the ' Fils de Giboyer '
are surely classics in the strictest sense of the term.
According to Lowell, " a classic is properly a book
which maintains itself by virtue of that happy coales-
cence of matter and style, that innate and exquisite
sympathy between the thought that gives life and the
form which consents to every mood of grace and dig-
nity, which can be simple without being vulgar, elevated
without being distant, and which is something neither
ancient nor modern, always new, and incapable of grow-
ing old." Judged by this test, the 'Aventuriere,' the
' Gendre de M. Poirier,' and the ' Fils de Giboyer,' are
classics beyond all peradventure.
The first thing which strikes one who surveys M.
Augier's literary career is the combination of original-
ity and individuality with great susceptibility to external
influence. He is a self-reliant man, but quick to take
a hint. He was at first accepted as a disciple of Pon-
sard ; and perhaps the ' Cigue ' did owe something to
' Lucrece,' and ' La Jeunesse ' to ' L'Honneur et 1'Ar-
gent.' But to my mind, even in Augier's comedies of
antiquity, there was a greater obligation to Alfred de
Musset. They wrote together a little piece of no
consequence ; and Mussel's influence may be traced in
all M. Augier's earlier plays of fantasy, in which the
scene, wherever the poet may declare it to be, in reality
is laid in the enchanted forest of Arden, or in that
132 French Dramatists.
Bohemia which is a desert country by the sea. In the
technical construction of ' Diane ' there was something
of the manner of Victor Hugo : that M. Augier's verse
was indebted to Hugo for its freedom from the eigh-
teenth-century shackles goes without saying. Neither
Scribe nor the elder Dumas tempted him ; but, with
the first work of the younger M. Dumas, M. Augier
saw at a glance the prospect it opened. Combined
with this suggestion of new worlds to conquer, given
by M. Dumas, was a study of Balzac's methods. With-
out the ' Recherche de 1' Absolu ' we should not have
had 'Maitre Gu6rin,' just as, if there had been no
' Dame aux Camelias,' there had also been no ' Mariage
d'Olympe.'
I have ill expressed myself, if, from the paragraph
above, any one infers that M. Augier has been guilty
of any servile copying. Nothing could be less true.
He is a man of marked individuality, and in his works
strongly self-assertive. Nothing like imitation is to be
discovered in his dramas. Another man's work is to
him only an exciting cause, to use a medical phrase.
The analogies to Ponsard, Musset, and Hugo, are sub-
tile and probably unconscious ; and the indebtedness to
M. Dumas is comprised in the assertion that the author
of the ' Dame aux Camelias ' turned over a new leaf of
the history of French dramatic literature, a leaf upon
which M. Augier wrote his name with his own pen.
The obligation to Balzac is no more than that M.
Augier studied human nature with Balzac as his master.
It is by his knowledge of human nature, and by his
skill in turning this knowledge to account, that poster-
ity judges an author. M. Augier is fit to survive : he is
a great creator of unforgettable figures, a true poet in
M. mile Augier. 133
the Greek sense, a "maker." Giboyer is one of the
most puissant characters of the nineteenth century ;
he seems to sum it up ; he walks right out of literature
into life. He is no mere profile silhouette, such as M.
Sardou cuts so cleverly : he is rounded and ruddy flesh
and blood, one of the glorious company of Sancho
Panza, Falstaff, Tartuffe, and Captain Costigan. Scarce-
ly less extraordinary in their absolute truth to life are
D'Estrigaud and D'Auberive, who, like Giboyer himself,
are made to appear in more than one work, a device
Balzac may have borrowed from Moliere. Who is there,
having any knowledge of French character, does not
see the marvellous reality of Poirier and of his noble
son-in-law, the Marquis de Presles ? And is not the
high-art cook whose resignation M. Poirier receives,
is he not a worthy descendant of the coachman-cook
who was in the service of Harpagon ?
M. Zola who looks forward to an impossible regen-
eration of the stage, from which convention is to be
banished, and every thing is to be as dull as every day,
in the interest of naturalistic exactness recognizes in
M. Augier a creator of actual characters, and calls him
the master of the French stage. " Seraphine," says M.
Zola of the heroine of the ' Lionnes Pauvres,' " is a
daring figure, put squarely on her feet, of an absolute
truth." And M. Zola praises Guerin, who " has a final
impenitence of the newest and truest effect." He
objects that some of M. Augier's characters are too
good to live, and that others change front in an instant
before the curtain falls. In M. Zola's eyes any noble
character is unnatural : Colonel Newcome, for instance,
is too good to live. But his other criticism has some
slight foundation : there are characters of M. Augier's
134 French Dramatists.
who reform with undue haste, in ' Gabrielle ' for
example, and in ' Paul Forestier.'
M. Augier's women are all admirable. In his devo-
tion to the family he has drawn woman fit to be the
goddess of the fireside. He excels alike in the young
girl, clear-headed and warm-hearted, perfectly jeune fille
according to French ideas, but with a little spark of
independence, with a head of her own, and a willingness
to use it if need be ; and in the clever woman of the
world, skilled in all the turns and tricks of society,
quick-witted and keen-tongued, and able to hold her
own. His women, good or bad, are thoroughly femi-
nine and human : they are neither men in women's
clothes, nor dolls ; they have hearts and sex. He has
drawn brilliant portraits of wicked women, Seraphine
and Olympe, and, above all, Navarette, and he de-
lights in showing their true womanhood, and, as in the
' Aventuriere,' redeeming them almost at the last with
a few words of simple dignity and pathos. In none of
these qualities can any trace of foreign influence be
detected : they are purely personal.
Purely personal also are his hatred of hypocrisy, his
trust in the future, his belief in progress, his respect
for toil. To these last two qualities is due his liking
for modern invention and discovery. In the 'Beau
Mariage ' the hero is a chemical experimenter ; in the
' Lions et Renards ' he is an African explorer ; while in
the ' Fourchambault ' he is a specimen of the highest
type of mercantile sagacity. National, rather than per-
sonal, is the occasional note of bad taste. In general,
the French pay an exaggerated respect to the Fifth
Commandment, to balance, perhaps, the frequent frac-
ture of the Seventh : so the scene in the ' Contagion/
M. Emile Augier. 135
where the hero chances on his mother's love-letter in
the midst of a disreputable supper, comes with an un-
expected shock. There is another scene in the ' Four-
chambault,' this time directly between the mother and
the son, which no Anglo-Saxon pen could have written.
But these taints are rare. For the most part, M.
Augier's characters live, move, and have their being, in
a clear, pure atmosphere, as different as may be from
the moral miasma which hangs over Balzac's landscapes.
Mentally and morally M. Augier is a well-balanced
writer, and his works are symmetrical. We see in him
an intellect in equilibrium, well poised on itself, and
sure of its stability. A great critic has told us that the
grand style is not the so-called classic, with its finish
and polish and point, but something larger, freer,
ampler ; something not incompatible with a homely
realism in matters of detail, if, indeed, a truly grand
style does not demand a rigorous calling of the thing
by its right name, be it never so humble. As Moliere
in his day and Beaumarchais in his were in the grand
style, so is M. Augier, each in his degree. The pro-
gressive civilization of the nineteenth century is per-
haps as hampering as the pseudo-classic formality of
the seventeenth. It is high praise to say that the
words which describe one of M. Augier's characters,
and which Herr Lindau aptly applies to their author,
are as fitting to him as they are to his great master,
Moliere : " Un cceur simple et tendre, un esprit droit
et sur, une loyaute royale." A simple and tender
heart, an upright and sure spirit, a royal loyalty, these
are noble gifts which no one can deny the author of the
'Gendre de M. Poirier,' of the ' Aventuriere/ of the
'Fils de Giboyer,' and of the 'Mariage d'Olympe.'
CHAPTER VI.
M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS fils.
WITH the appearance on the stage of the younger
Alexandre Dumas, a fresh force came into the French
drama. To say this is easy ; but to qualify this force
adequately, and to define its limits, is no light task.
The two other dramatists, each in his way remarkable,
who stand to-day with M. Dumas at the head of French
dramatic literature, are comparatively simple problems.
In M. Sardou we see the utmost cleverness and tech-
nical skill, heightened by a girding wit : he continues
the tradition of Scribe, adding all the modern improve-
ments. In M. Augier we behold a high and genuine
literary value, a broad and humorous humanity he
inherits by right of primogeniture from Moliere, and
observes mankind with the large frankness of his
master. But M. Dumas continues no tradition. He is
that rare thing in literature, a self-made man. He
derives from no one. He expresses himself, and with
emphasis : he is a personal force. Not condescending
to the ingenious trickery of M. Sardou, and never rising
to the lofty liberality of M. Augier, his place in the
dramatic hierarchy is not so readily fixed as theirs, his
character is not so simple : in fact, it may fairly be called
complex and even contradictory. Here, for instance,
is a bundle of inconsistencies : with a real power for
creating character, there is no dramatist who has more
often and more boldly than he brought forward the
136
M. Alexandre Dumas fits. 137
same faces and figures. While declaring in one volume
that he knows no immoral plays, but only ill-made ones,
in another volume he asserts that the stage of itself is
immoral. Setting forth in one piece the right of assas-
sinating the wife taken in adultery, he sets forth in the
next the duty of forgiving her. In comedies inherently
vicious he pauses to preach virtue, but with a blunt-
ness of language at times shocking even to vice. He
has written the 'Ami des Femmes' and the 'Visite de
Noces,' two plays which imply that their author does
not suspect what " good taste " means ; and yet he has
been elected a member of the French Academy, con-
stituted to be a tribunal of taste. The historian of the
' Dame aux Camelias,' and the discoverer of the ' Demi-
Monde,' a word with which he has enriched the
vocabulary of the world, he has stood forward in the
name of the Academy to bestow prizes of virtue. The
son of a prodigal father always poor, he himself is
wealthy and frugal. And finally, brought up in all the
looseness of the lightest Parisian society, he has the
Bible at his fingers' ends, and quotes the Scripture as
freely as an orthodox New-Englander. With such a
character and such a career, M. Dumas is one of the
most interesting and curiously complex figures of our
century.
The literary baggage of M. Dumas is not over bulky.
Exclusive of about a dozen juvenile novels of little or
no value, it is contained in eleven volumes. The col-
lected edition of his plays in which each piece was
accompanied by a preface, wherein the author frees his
mind began to appear in 1868: the sixth, and, for the
present, final volume was issued late in 1879. Under
the apt title of ' Entr'actes ' a collection of his miscel
138 French Dramatists.
laneous essays came out in three volumes in 1878-79.
The dramaturgical chapters are of great value ; the
general literary papers are interesting ; and so com-
petent a critic as M. Auguste Laugel has at length,
in letters to the Nation, praised the political portions.
A later novel, the 'Affaire Cle"menceau,' put forth in
1867, and two pamphlets on divorce and the woman-
question, published within two years, complete the
list of M. Dumas's acknowledged works. More or less
anonymously he has had a hand in half a dozen plays
not wholly his own : chief among these are the ' Sup-
plice d'une Femme ' of M. Girardin, and the ' Danicheff.'
Another play, the ' Filleul de Pompignac/ acted anony-
mously, and not yet included among his collected plays,
seems, however, to have been acknowledged by him. It
is as a dramatist only that M. Dumas is now to be con-
sidered. Such portions of the books mentioned above
may be passed over as do not either relate directly to
the stage, or reveal peculiarities of the author's char-
acter. As far as may be, attention will be confined to
the twelve important plays which M. Dumas produced
in the twenty-five years, 1852-76.
M. Alexandre Dumas fils was born in Paris in July,
1824, a few days after his father was twenty-one years
old, and a few years before his father had begun that
career of literary notoriety and inexhaustible produc-
tion which was to end only with his death. Like his
grandfather, he was an illegitimate son, a fact which
seems to have given a congenital bias to his future
writings. In one of his many autobiographic frag-
ments the elder Dumas referred grandiloquently to the
birth of his son: "The 2Qth of July, 1824, whilst the
Duke of Montpensier was coming into the world, there
M, Alexandre Dumas fils. 139
was born to me a Duke of Chartres." M. Dumas him-
self, in a letter to M. Cuvillier-Fleury, which serves as
a preface to the ' Femme de Claude,' speaks of the cir-
cumstances of his birth with real eloquence : he pro-
tests against the law which marked him, an innocent
babe, with the stigma of illegitimacy. " Happily my
mother was a noble woman, who worked to bring me
up, my father being a petty employee at twelve hundred
francs a year. And by a happy chance it turned out
that my father was impulsive, but good. . . . When,
after his first successes as a dramatist, he thought he
could count on the future, he formally acknowledged
me as his son, and gave me his name. This was much.
The law did not compel him ; and I was so grateful to
him for it, that I have borne the name as nobly as I
could."
The boy was then put to school under Prosper
Goubaux, one of the authors of 'Thirty Years, or A
Gambler's Life,' and of ' Louise de Lignerolles.' His
school-fellows bullied him unmercifully because he was
a natural son. " My torture, which I have depicted in
the 'Affaire Clemenceau,' and of which I did not speak
to my mother, so as not to worry her, lasted five or six
years." These years of suffering gave him the habits
of observation and reflection. Removed finally to an-
other school, he regained his strength and his growth.
At twenty he was a healthy lad, who, having known
misery, was only too eager for pleasure enough to
balance the account. His father, making and spending
hand over fist, was glad to have his son share in his
prodigalities ; and M. Dumas soon plunged headlong
into the vortex of Parisian dissipation. But, to quote
again from his letter, " I did not take great delight
140 French Dramatists.
in these facile pleasures. I observed and studied more
than I enjoyed in this turbulent life." Yet he was
swept along by the current for several years, writing
juvenile novels, more or less imitations of his father's
inimitable fictions, gathering a load of debts, and lay-
ing up a stock of adventures and experiences for future
literary consumption. In all his earlier plays he drew
from the living model. The ' Dame aux Came"lias,' and
' Diane de Lys,' and even the ' Demi-Monde,' were, as he
tells us, " the echo, or rather, the re-action, of a personal
emotion to which art gave a development and a logical
conclusion happily lacking in life." One may, perhaps,
hazard the suggestion, that since M. Dumas has ex-
hausted his personal experiences, and has had to rely
altogether on his invention, as in the ' fitrangere ' and
the 'Princess of Bagdad,' his plays are not nearly so
good : whence we may fairly infer that the early adven-
tures of the man were necessary for the full develop-
ment of the author.
" It was the play of the ' Dame aux Cam61ias ' which
began to free me from the slavery of debt and of the
society to which I owed both the debt and the success.
I promised myself not to fall back, either into debt or
into this society ; and I kept my promise at the risk of
being called ungrateful." Written when the author
was but little older than twenty-one, the novel of the
' Dame aux Came"lias ' had been published with striking
success just before the Revolution of 1848. It decked
out afresh a figure of which the French seem fonder
than any other race. Manon Lescaut gave birth to
Marion Delorme, and Marion Delorme was the mother
of the Dame aux Camelias, who, in turn, may vainly
deny her latest offspring, Nana. Truly it is an un-
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 141
savory brood. The popularity of the novel suggested
its dramatization. The elder Dumas thought ill of the
project ; and it was not until a melodramatist showed
the author the scenario of a black melodrama which
'he had taken from the novel, that, in sheer revolt at
such treatment, M. Dumas himself set to work at it.
In eight days the play was finished, so the author
tells us ; and the statement does not seem extravagant.
As in the case of the ' Supplice d'une Femme,' which
he wrote later with extraordinary rapidity, he had his
material all under his hand ; and the play was not com-
edy, which calls for slow incubation, but a drama of
simple passion, which could be struck off at white-heat.
In spite of the speed of its production, the ' Dame aux
Camelias,' of all plays which an author has made out
of his novel, shows least traces of a previous existence.
One would suppose that every stage-door in Paris
would open wide to receive a dramatization of his suc-
cessful novel by the son of one of the foremost novel-
ists and dramatists of France. But it was more than
three years before the play was tried by the fire of the
footlights. Rejected by nearly every theatre in Paris,
it was at last accepted at the Vaudeville, only to be
vetoed by the censors. Patronized by the Duke of
Morny, the government interdict suppressed it until
after the bloody 2d of December, 1851, when the duke
himself entered the ministry. He believed in provid-
ing sensations for the people of Paris, and, if possible,
in diverting attention from politics to the playhouse.
The 'Dame aux Camelias' was brought out at the
Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, Feb. 2, 1852. It was an
instant success, holding the stage for a hundred nights
or more. It has since been revived in Paris half a
142 French Dramatists.
dozen times, and always with the same success. A
mutilated and innocuous alteration of it, prepared by
Miss Jean Davenport (afterward the wife of Gen. Lan-
der), was acted by her in America : it was called ' Ca-
mille, or the Fate of a Coquette/ an absurd title, which
shows how the story suffered in the interest of Pro-
crustean morality. Later the piece was taken up by
Miss Matilda Heron. An Italian version of the play
served Signer Verdi as the book of his 'Traviata/ an
opera of which the lord-chamberlain permitted the per-
formance in London while prohibiting the acting of the
original French play.
The ' Dame aux Came'lias ' was at once simple, pa-
thetic, and audacious. It emancipated French comedy,
and gave it the right of free speech. To judge it fairly,
one must consider the comedies which held the French
stage before its coming. There were Scribe and his
collaborators, with their conventional and machine-made
works ; and there were Ponsard and M. Augier, with
their plays, poetic in intent and finely polished, but as
yet reflecting nothing vital and actual. The great merit
of the ' Dame aux Camelias ' is, that it changed the face
of modern French comedy by pointing out the path
back to nature, and the existing conditions of society,
and by showing that life should be studied as it was,
and not as it had been, or as it might be. There is no
need to dwell on the character of the play. As M.
Mont^gut pointed out over twenty years ago in the
Revue des Deux Mondes, the story of a courtesan's love
may be a poetic subject if treated with elevation, or
it may be a degrading subject if treated realistically ;
adding that M. Dumas had chosen a middle course, and
that the result was little more than a vulgar melodrama.
J/. Alexandre Dumas fils. 143
Before M. Montegut wrote, the subject had been treated
poetically in Hugo's ' Marion Delorme ; ' since, it has
been set forth with unspeakable realism, or Naturalism
rather, in M. Zola's 'Nana.' In M. Dumas's play we
avoid the offensiveness of the latter, but we miss wholly
the poetry of the former. On one of its revivals a com-
petent French critic declared that it bore itself, even in
its old age, like a masterpiece ; and an equally compe-
tent American critic recorded that he had had a hearty
laugh over its " colossal flimsiness." It is, in fact, not
to be taken too seriously. It carries one along by the
rush of youthful strength ; yet one has time to note
phrases horribly out of tune, and to detect a sort of
sentimentality run mad. Its morality is cheap, not to
say tawdry : in short, the play seems to me youthful
in the objectionable sense of the word, and I am half
inclined to think that the Dame aux Camelias herself
is doing exactly what she is best fitted for when she
serves as the heroine of an Italian opera.
This may seem a harsh judgment. It is perhaps only
fair to add, that, although the ' Dame aux Camelias ' is
not at all a work of genius, it is a work which could have
been written only by a genius. It is a work of the
Werther type, in that it is the result of youthful effer-
vescence and the period of ferment which needs must
precede the riper, richer, purer work of the author's
maturity. Flimsy it is, if you will, and of a shabby
morality ; but it is not insincere. The author said what
he thought when he wrote it, or, rather, what he felt ;
for he had scarcely begun to think then. When he did
begin to think, his views of the courtesan changed
entirely, and so did his treatment of her. It is in the
treatment of Marguerite Gautier, and not in the mere
144 French Dramatists.
bringing forward of such a character on the stage, that
the ' Dame aux Camelias ' is immoral. A courtesan is
the chief figure of M. Augier's ' Manage d'Olympe/
and no play is more moral. Where the ethics of the
' Dame aux Camelias ' are at fault is, not in the taking
of a courtesan for the heroine : it is in the failure to
show that so self-sacrificing a courtesan as Marguerite
Gautier was an exception. In any later play, M. Dumas,
had he chosen to treat the subject anew, would have
proved conclusively, and by a few simple and direct
touches, that a Marguerite Gautier was as rare as a
white blackbird, and as little likely to be chanced upon
by the wayfarer. Here occasion offers to say, once for
all, that the 'Dame aux Camellias' is not now to be
judged by the light of Dumas's later plays. It has no
thesis ; it was meant to point no moral ; it was written
off-hand and carelessly, with no thought but to tell a
touching story as touchingly as possible.
The second play of M. Dumas, ' Diane de Lys,' calls
for no detailed criticism. Like its predecessor, it was
taken from an earlier novel ; and, as M. Dumas himself
suggests, the second play is inferior to the first. It
cost but a few days' work, and was written to pay off
lingering debts ; and it shows that the impulse which
called it into being was wholly external. It is a manu-
factured product, a re-working of old material, lacking
wholly the youthful freshness which gave the 'Dame
aux Camelias ' so individual a savor. Paul, the hero,
like his forerunner Armand, is obviously a projection
of the author's own profile. Neither Armand nor Paul
comes up to our standard of a gentleman. In his first
scene with Diane, Paul heedlessly and needlessly betrays
the confidence of the friend who has just presented him
M. Alexandra Dumas fils. 145
to her. Diane herself is none too ladylike : she seems
a sort of study for that much finer portrait, the Duchess
in the ' fitrangere.' But with time M. Dumas's touch
had become firmer and more delicate. The Duchess
would be above the brutal frankness of Diane, who,
when her husband's sister begs her to guard the family
honor, and to remember that she bears the family name,
retorts point blank, " There's no danger that I forget it :
your name costs me enough. I paid four millions for
it."
' Diane de Lys,' however, did one thing : it freed the
author from debt, and enabled him to devote eleven full
months to the execution of his next and best play,
the 'Demi-Monde.' Intended for the Gymnase Theatre,
the author was constrained to offer it to the Comedie-
Franc.aise, dexterously choosing his time, however, so
that it might be rejected. Acted at the Gymnase in
1855, a score of years later it was triumphantly adopted
by Comedie-Franc.aise, where it is now a chief comedy
in the current repertory. A word as to the title, before
we consider the comedy itself. By the phrase demi-
monde M. Dumas meant, not the class of courtesans,
but the class of exiles from society. The half-world
is peopled by those who have fallen from grace, and
not by such as have always been outcasts and sinners.
It is, in the main, an association of repudiated wives.
As de Jalin, the witty Parisian of the play, tells de
Nanjac, the soldier just fresh from Algeria, "The first
wife who was thrust from the door went to hide her
shame, and weep over her sin, in the most sombre retreat
she could find ; but the second ? The second set out
to find the first ; and, when they were two, they called
their fault a misfortune, and their crime an error; and
146 French Dramatists.
they began to console and excuse each other. When
they were three, they invited each other out to dinner.
When they were four, they had a quadrille." And then
de Jalin goes on to account for the later recruits,
imitation widows, and brevet wives : " in short, all the
women who wish to have it believed that they have been
what they are not, and who do not wish to appear what
they are." There is a distinct boundary-line between
this society and that of the venal courtesans who have
since arrogated to themselves the title of the demi-
monde. There is an equally distinct boundary-line be
t ween this society and the real monde, the world of
fashion and society at large : " it is to be known best
of all," says de Jalin, " by the absence of the husband."
In what is the most celebrated speech in the comedy,
de Jalin likens the demi-monde to a basket of peaches
in the window of a Parisian fruiterer. You ask the price
of a basket in which each peach is carefully wrapped in
paper, and protected by leaves : these peaches are thirty
cents apiece. Alongside of this basket is a second, in
which the fruit is seemingly as good, save that it is
somewhat huddled together ; but the price of these is
but fifteen cents. If you ask why there is this differ-
ence, the dealer lifts one of the latter carefully, and
shows you a little spot on its lower side. The fifteen-
cent peaches are all speckled, and the demi-monde is a
basket of fifteen-cent peaches.
The play sets forth the struggles of a clever woman,
Suzanne d'Ange, calling herself a baroness, to get out
of the troubled waters of this doubtful world into the
haven of matrimonial respectability. M. de Nanjac, a
hot-headed and warm-hearted young soldier, has fallen
in love with her just after his arrival from Africa; and,
M. Alexandre Dumas fits. 147
unsuspecting her past, he is about to marry her. But
his friend M. de Jalin has the best of reasons for
knowing her to be unworthy ; and in the end, by des-
picable trick, he opens de Nanjac's eyes, and prevents
Suzanne's marriage. The ' Demi-Monde ' is a masterly
play. It stands the threefold test : it is good in plot,
in dialogue, and in character. The story is one which
we follow with interest to the finish, with a growing
desire to be in at the death. In dialogue it is as bril-
liant and as metallic as any M. Dumas ever wrote. The
characters are splendidly projected against the dim
background of a dubious society, and contrasted one
against the other with the utmost skill : M. de Nanjac's
heat, for instance, sets off the coolness of M. de Jalin.
In M. de Thonnerins we see a second edition of the
old duke, invisible in the ' Dame aux Camelias ; ' and in
Valentine we see the first sketch of the future Iza of
the ' Affaire Clemenceau ' and of the wife of Claude.
The chief person of the comedy, Suzanne, is a boldly
drawn character, almost worthy of a place by the side
of the nobler and more poetic figure of M. fimile Au-
gier's ' Aventuriere : ' four years later she re-appears
with a hardened outline in the Albertine of the ' Pere
Prodigue.'
M. Dumas is fond of these reduplications of a favor-
ite character. He confesses that he took a certain
Count de R. as the model for Gaston in the * Dame aux
Camelias,' for Maximilien in ' Diane de Lys,' and Olivier
de Jalin. The same character also appears as Rn6 in
the 'Question d' Argent,' as M. de Ryons in the 'Ami
des Femmes,' and as Roger de Talde in the 'Danicheff.'
If the author had not told us distinctly that he had
copied M. de Jalin from the Count de R., one would
148 French Dramatists.
have called him a rib from M. Dumas's own breast, the
more especially as M. Dumas has twice used the name
of "de Jalin" to sign plays to which he did not wish
to put his own name. And yet, in spite of the author's
liking for him, one cannot help thinking him a con-
temptible fellow. He is lacking in the instincts of a
gentleman. He has neither delicacy nor frankness.
He ought to keep a secret sacred, but he leaks by in-
sinuation all the time. Granting that it is his duty to
prevent the marriage of an adventuress to an honest
man, it should be done somehow honorably and openly,
not underhand and stealthily, by ignoble trickery.
Surely so clever a man as M. de Jalin could find some
other means than the unworthy device by which he
traps Suzanne into a confession of love for him. And
surely nothing is to be said for the brutality of his
outburst of laughter when his stratagem has succeeded,
and he holds her in his arms in the sight of the man
she had hoped to marry. On top of this the author
goes out of his way to give M. de Jalin a certificate
of honor. As the curtain falls, M. de Nanjac declares
him "the most honest man I know." And even M.
Edmond About, reviewing the ' Demi-Monde ' in the
Revue des Deux Mondes, called M. de Jalin a type
sympathetic to the audience.
The ' Demi-Monde ' is the model of nineteenth-cen-
tury comedy, just as the 'School for Scandal' is the
model of eighteenth-century comedy. The contrast of
the two plays would be pregnant, did space permit.
The seemingly careless ease with which Sheridan has
sketched his characters, and the airy humor which in-
forms the whole comedy, make us accept a story and
special scenes far more dangerous thac any thing in
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 149
M. Dumas's piece. And yet the impression left by the
' School for Scandal ' is pleasant ; while the ' Demi-
Monde ' is almost a painful spectacle. We cannot help
liking some of Sheridan's characters, Lady Teazle
for instance, and Sir Peter, in spite of his uxuriousness,
and Charles too ; while even the scandalous college,
after making due allowance for the tone of a bygone
century, is not wholly repulsive. But no woman in
the ' Demi-Monde ' should we wish a wife to visit, and
no man in it should we care to shake by the hand.
It was, perhaps, M. About's reproach, that in the
' Demi-Monde ' M. Dumas had painted only a certain
society, and not society at large, that led him in his
fourth play, the 'Question d' Argent,' brought out in
1857, to attack a more general subject. It is a play of
no great value, much inferior in interest to its prede-
cessors, but differing from them in that it is really a
comedy. Both of M. Dumas's earlier plays were dramas ;
and even in the ' Demi-Monde ' the situations at times
are on the verge of melodrama. But the 'Question
d' Argent ' is pure comedy : its incidents are entirely
the result of the clash of character on character ; and
its central figure, though marred by a touch too much
of caricature, is one of which any comedy might be
proud. We are shown boldly and with novel effect
Jean Giraud, a self-made man, with unbounded skill in
scheming, and no sense of right or wrong. He is a
restless, uneasy speculator, young, and already very
wealthy, but never quite sure of his footing. In ' Cein-
ture Doree,' and again in the 'Effrontes,' M. fimile
Augier has pointed out how vainly ill-gotten riches
can live down the bad repute of t.ieir origin. In
'L'Honneur et 1' Argent ' Ponsard was emphatically
150 French Dramatists.
moral in his denunciation of peculating financiers. But
Ponsard was serious and poetic ; while M. Dumas chose
to see the comic side of the speculator's career, and to
hold up to ridicule the suddenly enriched snob. Pon-
sard preached : M. Dumas at least enlivened his sermon
with wit and humor. The comedy is less tainted with
M. Dumas's views and theories than any other of his
plays written before or since : it is more wholesome ;
and it might be read or seen by any one without dam-
age or danger. Unfortunately the fable is weak ; and
the figure of the financier, who believes that money is
absolute monarch, though boldly outlined, is not always
artistically filled in.
" Here is a comedy for which I confess my predilec-
tion : this comes, perhaps, from its having cost me a
great deal of work," writes M. Dumas at the head of
the preface of the 'Fils Naturel,' acted in 1858 at the
Gymnase, and, like the ' Demi-Monde,' revived at the
Theatre Fra^ais a score of years later. In the last
century the founder of modern drama, Diderot, wrote
a ' Natural Son,' which was the illegitimate father of a
play of the same name by Kotzebue, adapted to the
English stage by Mrs. Inchbald, to the American by
William Dunlap, our first playwright, and often acted
by the American Infant Roscius, John Howard Payne.
who had cleverly amalgamated the Inchbald-Dunlap
versions for his own use. There is a fine theatrical
situation in Kotzebue's play, when the natural son, see-
ing his mother sick unto death from want, takes to the
highway, and puts a knife to the breast of the first
passer-by, his own father, as it chances. But even in
technical excellence M. Dumas's play does not yield to
Kotzebue's, It is an admirable specimen of stage-craft ;
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 1 5 1
and it is no wonder that two such experts in diamatic
art as M. Sarcey and M. Perrin, the director of the
Theatre Frangais, should incline to considering it M.
Dumas's masterpiece. No wonder is it, either, that such
praise should revolt M. Zola, who has a fresh theory of
throwing nature on the stage raw and crude as in a
photograph. M. Zola holds that M. Dumas " never hesi-
tates between reality and a scenic exigency : he wrings
the neck of reality." And he says that M. Dumas " uses
truth only as a spring-board to jump into space." In the
' Fils Naturel,' for the first time, M. Dumas sought to
set a social problem on the stage ; and yet nowhere else
has he shown so full a share of the constructive faculty
which is the birthmark of the true dramatist, but which
M. Zola chooses to contemn.
Kotzebue had treated the demand of the illegitimate
child for bread for physical support : M. Dumas chose
rather to .consider his claim to a place in his father's
family, and his right to his father's name. M. Dumas
has a prologue specially to show how it was that
his young hero had a large fortune left to him by a
stranger. Then in the play we have the story over
again of d'Alembert and Mme. Tencin : the natural
son first seeks his parent's name, and then refuses it.
The play is a model of equilibrium. In the first half
we see the hero gradually discovering his illegitimacy.
At the end of the first act he is told his father's name.
"Where are you going?" asks his informant.
" To my father's."
"What for?"
" Why, to see him, since I have never seen him. "
And on this exit-speech the curtain falls. In the next
act is the scene between the father and the son, in
152 French Dramatists.
which the former refuses to give the latter any satisfac-
tion whatever. Then in the last half of the play we
see how the son becomes more important to the father,
and well-known in the world at large. Finally, to fur-
ther his own interests, the father offers the son the
name he refused at first ; and the son, in turn, refuses,
preferring to keep the name he has made for himself,
his mother's.
The choice of the subject and title of the ' Fils Natu-
rel ' by M. Dumas was scarcely in the best of taste :
still worse was the name of his next play, the 'Pere
Prodigue,' acted in 1859 without any great success.
What the elder Dumas was we all know. He was truly
a prodigal father. His son is reported to have said of
him, " My father is a child I had when I was young."
But the bad taste is confined to the title : in the come-
dy itself there was no trace of unfilial personality ;
the son of Dumas was not a son of Noah tp uncover
his father's nakedness. As the * Fils Naturel ' tries to
show the result of depriving a son of his father, so the
' Pere Prodigue ' was intended to set forth the bad effects
of giving a son a false education ; and thus one play
completes the other. The 'Pere Prodigue/ however,
is not remarkably good : it is overladen with incident ;
and, as a French critic remarked when it was first acted,
it might almost begin with the second act, or the third,
or even the fourth. The picture of prodigality in the
first act is full of typical touches, all compactly accu-
mulated, until an irresistible effect is produced.
The same highly-wrought brilliance is to be seen
throughout the play, which contains one of M. Dumas's
most successful characters. The prodigal father is in
the true high-comedy vein. By the side of M. Dumas's
M. Alexandre Dumas fits. 153
bull-headed and sentimental heroes, and of his preter-
naturally witty heroes, projections of his own impulses
and cleverness, and reduplicated to fatigue, is a series
of comic characters of great force and originality. No
dramatist of the nineteenth century has enriched litera-
ture with more amusing comic portraits. The prodigal
father in this play, the self-made speculator in the
* Question d'Argent,' the broken-down and philosophic
artist Taupin in ' Diane de Lys,' the clear-headed and
good-hearted notary Aristide in the ' Fils Naturel,' the
outspoken Madame Guichard in ' M. Alphonse,' and the
profligate duke in the ' fitrangere,' these are figures
firm on their feet, and worth, any one of them, more than
all the interchangeable MM. de Jalins and de Ryons.
Better by far than these mere figments of cleverness
are the fresh faces of sprightly and self-reliant young
girls seen now and again in M. Dumas's comedies, and
bearing a family likeness one to another. They are
somewhat too knowing to please the French critics, and
they have a little too much decision of character. The
Mathilde of the ' Question d'Argent ' is only a little less
decisive than the H ermine of the ' Fils Naturel ; ' and,
had either of them grown up in the demi-monde, she
would not have been unlike Marcelle. In Jane de
Simerose, in the ' Ami des Femmes,' we see the same
type. The 'Ami des Femmes' was not acted until
1 864, five years after the ' Pere Prodigue ; ' and, although
it called forth greater controversy, it had no greater
success. It is, in fact, by far the poorest of M. Dumas's
plays. There is really little or nothing to admire in it :
there is less wit than usual, and no action to speak of.
It may be passed over with the remark that its subject
was bad, and the taste with which it was treated worse,
154 French Dramatists.
Its subject, indeed, is one wholly unfit for stage treat-
ment, unless, as M. Dumas sometimes hints, the theatre
ought to be an amphitheatre for gynecologic clinics.
Here I must break off the criticism of successive
plays to consider a change which had gradually come
over M. Dumas himself. In all the comedies written
before this transformation, even in the ' Fils Naturel,'
Dumas was first of all a dramatist ; and the writing
of the best play he could was his aim. Afterward
he became a moralist, a teacher, a leader of the peo-
ple; and to set an example and to prove something
was M. Dumas's object in writing plays. This change
in the author's views had been brought about by a
curious change in the man himself, a change which
may be described as an evolution to virtue from an
environment of vice. It seems as though M. Dumas
had found out by experience what most other men are
fortunate enough to get by inheritance and training.
Having grown to manhood without strict or severe
education, having seen laxity from his youth up, and
having lived years of his life in the demi-monde, where
morality is but a word, M. Dumas has been surprised
to discover that it was also a thing. As he says in * M.
Alphonse/ a young man left to himself, badly brought
up and badly surrounded, may most likely fall into
errors ; " but little by little, if he have intelligence, he
will learn for himself what others have not taught him."
So M. Dumas taught himself. He knows by experience,
as one may say, that honesty is the best policy, and that
vice does not pay. He is at the end of a course of
practical ethics ; and his experiments have been made
in corpore vilo, on his own body. He has been taught
by his own sufferings. As far as morals go, one might
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 155
call him "a self-made man." Of course there are many
things he has not yet found out. The world is older
than he, and has suffered more, and likewise learned
more. But what to many well-meaning persons are but
commonplaces, M. Dumas holds to firmly as precious
discoveries of his own ; and he is so pleased with these
discoveries, that he seeks to cry them aloud from the
housetop. Like all converts, he has undue zeal. He is
seized with a burning impatience to spread abroad the
glad tidings ; and to this is coupled an emphatic inten-
tion that they shall not be misunderstood. In all his
later plays there is the viciousness of vice and the virtu-
ousness of virtue in every third line : unfortunately his
taste has not always improved with his morals, and the
other two lines often offend more than the one line
benefits. M. Dumas has always shown the tendency
toward mysticism not infrequent in men of his tempera-
ment. Even in the ' Dame aux Came'lias ' the curtain
finally fell on a quotation from the New Testament. Now
he frankly takes to preaching, and puts his audacity, his
patience, and his ingenuity at the service of the strange
system of sociology which he has evolved from his inner
consciousness. His skill as a dramatist is bent to the
making of purely didactic dramas. He comes forth in
the purple and fine linen of the stage to set forth a
doctrine of sackcloth and ashes. In the expounding of
his new views his style is harder and more brilliant than
ever; and he explains his latest moral kinks with no
sign of sweetness or light, but with great rigor and
vigor.
In the 'Id^es de Madame Aubray,' acted in 1867, and
the first-fruits of this new philosophy, the preacher
fortunately has not yet overmastered the playwright.
156 French Dramatists.
The piece is a marvel of polemic literature, a model
in the art of teaching by example. Mr. John Morley
instances it as one of the very few modern plays which
Diderot would recognize as belonging to the genre
s/rieux, which began with his own * Pere de Famille.'
It treats an important subject honestly and with intel-
lectual seriousness : there is none of the petty begging
of the question which disfigures two other works on
the same subject, the 'Fernande' of M. Victorien
Sardou, and the ' New Magdalen' of Mr. Wilkie Collins ;
both clever men, lacking, however, in the courage and
the candor needed to face the problem fairly. There
is a fourth work of fiction, published not long after
M. Dumas's, which approaches the subject with the
same appreciation of its demands and its difficulties.
This is a novel, ' Hedged In,' by Miss Elizabeth Stuart
Phelps, as representatively New England as the ' Id6es
de Madame Aubray ' is French.
It is of course a mere paradox to say that M. Dumas,
since his regeneration, appears to me as a typical New-
Englander ; but he has something of the New-England
spirit, and he stands at times in the New-England atti-
tude. He recalls, in a way, both Nathaniel Hawthorne
and Oliver Wendell Holmes. His theology is in essence
Unitarian. I have before made mention of his very
New-England knack of biblical quotation ; and, as his
recent volume on divorce shows, he is as prone to
search the Scriptures for a text wherewith to smite his
adversary, as any of those chips of Plymouth Rock who
"take to the ministry mostly." Without pushing the
analogy too far, we can see it stand out plainly when
we set the ' Idees de Madame Aubray ' by the side of
' Hedged In,' and see that both the American and the
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 1 5 7
French writers, though differing greatly in mental equip-
ment, approach the subject from the same point of view,
and give it the same austerity of treatment. M. Dumas
lights up his logic with flashes of his Parisian wit ;
while Miss Phelps relieves the stress of undue senti-
mentality by a sort of imported English humor. But
these are externals.
In considering the problem of the redemption of the
woman who has fallen but once, each author gives us a
picture of a sincere Christian woman who believes in
the gospel of doing good. Madame Aubray and Mar-
garet Purcell are close enough akin to be twin-sisters.
Each of them has a child of her own, Mme. Aubray, a
son ; Mrs. Purcell, a daughter. To each of them, abun-
dant in good works, comes the opportunity of befriend-
ing a young and unmarried mother. In each case the
father of the nameless child re-appears on the stage.
Mme. Aubray and Mrs. Purcell have each to choose
between her sense of duty and her ardent affection for
her own child. Both Miss Phelps and M. Dumas fight
fair ; there is no begging of the question ; the problem
is looked in the face; the objections to the thesis
are plainly shown. M. Dumas even turns his honesty
to advantage : the philosophic observer who acts as
Greek chorus sums up bluntly the feelings of the
average spectator, "Jest raide " " it's pretty steep ! "
and the audience, hearing the author thus give vent
to their own verdict, go away without shock or resent-
ment. For in the French play the actions take a
more personal turn than in the American novel : Mme.
Aubray has to consent to her only son's marriage
with the redeemed sinner, while Miss Phelps kills off
her penitent. It cannot be said that either play or
i eg French Dramatists.
novel has a satisfactory ending, or that the conclusion
of either is in any sense a true denoument, an un-
tying; and this because no work of fiction, however
clever, can at best do more than show one way of
cutting the knot.
Just what moral M. Dumas meant to advance in his
next piece, a comedy in one act, called the 'Visite de
Noces,' and acted in 1871, I cannot imagine. It is an
inquest on the internal corruption of man. Perhaps the
verdict is just, in view of the evidence produced; but
the impulse of a healthy man would be to let such
matter drop into the gutter, where it belongs. To lift
it thence is to stir up muddy depths of degradation to
no purpose.
In a novel, the 'Affaire Cle'menceau,' published just
before the ' Visite de Noces,' and in the two plays he
brought out after it, the 'Princess Georges' (1871) and
the ' Femme de Claude' (1873), M. Dumas returned to
an early theme. Indeed, we may consider ' Diane de
I .ys ' as the first of these dramas of adultery and death.
In ' Diane de Lys ' and in the ' Princess Georges ' the
husband kills the lover. In the ' Affaire Clemenceau '
and in the ' Femme de Claude,' in which M. Dumas has
treated a situation essentially identical, the husband
kills the wife. And in a later play, the ' Etrangere,' it
is the husband who is killed.
Neither the ' Princess Georges ' nor the ' Femme de
Claude ' can be called a good play, or even a well-made
play. Knowing that Mile. Descl6e acted the heroine
of each, one is inclined to see in them scarcely more
than two strong parts. The thesis in each case has
proved too heavy for the plot. In the ' Princess
Georges ' the thesis seems to be the duty of femi-
M. Alexandre Dumas fits. 159
nine forgivenness, in the ' Femme de Claude ' the duty
of summary justice. I say seems ; for the exact target
of M. Dumas's bullet is not unmistakable, despite much
talk about it. Unfortunately the theorist got the bet-
ter of the playwright, especially in the ' Princess
Georges,' in which two ladies of the highest society
explain the bad character of the Comtesse de Terre-
monde at immoderate length, and in M. Dumas's own
style, with recondite historical and scientific allusions ;
and, shortly after they have done, another of the actors,
this time a notary, takes up the parable, and preaches
another page of the same sort of stuff. After reading
these diatribes, with all their pseudo-scientific parade,
one can scarcely help wondering whether M. Dumas is
not laughing in his sleeve at us. But no : I think his
sincerity beyond dispute ; only well, only I wish he
would not believe in himself quite so emphatically. If,
indeed, he were not so sincere, there would be only one
word to describe his attitude with exactness ; and that
word, unfortunately, is yet waiting its passport into
good society : if I may venture to use it, however, I
shall say that M. Dumas has sublime cheek.
In this very ' Princess Georges,' the general verdict
was that the catastrophe was a mistake. The Princess
Georges, knowing that her husband is about to go off
with an adventuress, and knowing her own helpless-
ness, declares her intention of taking the law in her
own hands. She warns the jealous husband of her
rival that his wife has a lover ; then, when the hus-
band of the Princess Georges is going into the trap
which the jealous man has set for the unknown lover
of his wife, the princess does what she can to prevent
his going, but without avail, when suddenly, as she is
160 French Dramatists.
clinging to him ineffectually, a shot is heard, and we
are told that the jealous husband has brought down a
young man whom we have seen making juvenile love
to the adventuress. Now, this ending is all wrong, and
wholly unworthy of M. Dumas, who, however, defends
it by saying that the princess would be guilty of cold-
blooded murder if she let her husband go to certain
death. This is all very true. I do not ask that the
prince should be shot; but I do ask that M. Dumas
should not take me in by a petty trick ; that, having led
me to think that the prince was to be killed, he should
balk this legitimate expectation by a wrench of proba-
bility. M. Dumas can afford to leave such clever de-
vices to M. Sardou : they do not become a teacher and
a preacher. Unfortunately, M. Dumas at bottom is
governed by his emotions : he sees things passionately,
and drives on to a vehement conclusion. But he has
even more than average French logic. He always
seeks to prove to himself first of all that the end
his feeling has arrived at is the only orderly one in
the nature of things, and, indeed, the best of all possi-
ble endings.
One is less disposed to dispute the fatal conclusion
of the 'Femme de Claude.' Emerson tells us that "the
Koran makes a distinct class of those who are by nature
good, and whose goodness has an influence on others,
and pronounces this class to be the aim of creation."
M. Dumas reverses this : he shows us in the ' Femme
de Claude,' and elsewhere, a woman by nature irredeem-
ably bad, and of evil influence on all ; and on this class
he pronounces destruction. Mr. John Morley, speaking
of the startling figure which dominates that tale of un-
holy passion, Diderot's ' Religieuse,' says that " it is a
M. Alexandre Dumas Jils. 1 6 1
possibility of character of which the healthy, the pure,
the unthinking, have never dreamed. Such a portrait
is not art, that is true ; but it is science, and that delivers
the critic from the necessity of searching the vocabulary
for the cheap superlatives of moral censure." M. Dumas's
science is not as deep as Diderot's, but the attempt is
the same in kind. In the Valentine de Santis of the
' Demi-Monde ' we see the first sketch of this woman ;
in the Countess de Terremonde of the ' Princess
Georges ' we have a half-length ; and the figure re-
appears at full-length in the Iza of the 'Affaire Cle-
menceau ' and in the Cesarine of the ' Femme de
Claude.' Both of these last are creatures governed
wholly by animal wants and instincts ; in other words,
they are irresponsible brutes : and in each case the
husband exercises the right of individual justice, and
puts her out of the world. And in the sociological
pamphlet called 'L'Homme-Femme,' and published in
1872, between the 'Princess Georges ' and the 'Femme
de Claude,' M. Dumas dissected the same female phe-
nomenon, and came to the same conclusion formulated
in the phrase " Tue-la ! " " Kill her."
In 'M. Alphonse' (1873) one may note a return to
M. Dumas's earlier manner, or at least a temporary
cessation of his sociological studies. In spite of its
unpleasant subject and the weak-as-water heroine, the
play is one of M. Dumas's best. Its characters are few,
and nervously drawn. In the M. Alphonse, whom even
the coarse Madame Guichard cannot stand, we see a
sort of transition type from the passive Tellier of the
' Idees de Madame Aubrey ' to the active duke of the
'Etrangere,' just as we see Claude repeated in Montai-
glin, and Jeannine in Montaiglin's wife. There is no-
1 62 French Dramatists.
where any feebleness in outline. All M. Dumas's char-
acters, like their creator, believe in themselves. The
story, which is simple and pathetic, tells itself plainly ;
the action is not overladen with philosophical diatribes.
M. Dumas, for once, reaped the benefit of his own im-
provement in the formula of dramatic construction.
We owe to him the cutting-short of long-winded ex-
positions and the rapid rush of hurrying action. Un-
fortunately the inventor of this improved comedy has
taken advantage of the time thus saved for illicit indul-
gence in metaphysical stump-speeches, and for the
promulgation of the gospel according to St. Alexandre.
In ' M. Alphonse ' there is little of this skirmishing
along the flanks : he sticks close to the issue in hand.
The teaching of the play is only the plainer for this
restraint. "A good work of art," Goethe tells us,
" may and will have moral results ; but to require of the
artist a moral aim is to spoil his work." Now, in gen-
eral, M. Dumas requires of himself a moral aim : so long
ago as 1869 he announced his intention of using the
stage as a moral engine. He seemed to think that
every play should be a dramatized Tendenz-Roman, and
that every statue should bear a lamp on its head, or
in its hand ; or else what excuse has it for its being ?
An epigram of Mr. Austin Dobson's is apt just here :
" Parnassus' peaks still catch the sun ;
But why, O lyric brother !
Why build a pulpit on the one,
A platform on the other? "
In the ' Demi-Monde ' can be seen what M. Dumas
could do before he had bound himself by this new law,
and in ' M. Alphonse ' what he could do when he chose
to loosen its coils. When he rigidly required a moral
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 163
aim of himself, he spoiled his work, as Goethe told
us, and as we can see in his next play, the 'fitran-
gere.'
M. Dumas himself has propounded the theory that
all great dramatists have built their plays just as well
in the beginning of their career as at the end, just
as well, if not better. The faculty of dramatic con-
struction being a native gift, in age they are inclined
to push too far, and so lack spontaneity. So is it
with the author of the ' ltrangere,' a sorry comedy,
and utterly wanting in spontaneity or spirit. I think I
can fairly call it the poorest of M. Dumas's plays, and
surely, despite its moral intent, the foulest. There is
but one decent man in the play ; and he, like the most
of M. Dumas's virtuous heroes, is virtuous with a ven-
geance : he is a good man in the worst sense of the word.
For the rest, the duke, and the duchess, and the rest of
the gang, the word sounds coarse, but is exactly expres-
sive, we have no feeling but disgust. All are corrupt :
there is a general odor of corruption. A miasma hangs
over the stage when the curtain is up, and we breathe
more freely when once we get outside. Of the plot
there is not much more to be said. I can understand
the Englishman who told M. Sarcey, when the Comedie-
Frangaise acted the play in London, that it had no com-
mon sense. Coming right after so perfect a piece of
workmanship as ' M. Alphonse,' one scarcely knows
what to make of it. As far as one may disentangle it,
there are three acts of talk and theorizing, and two acts
of action. This is the true Sardou formula : ar d the
story cast into it was not M. Dumas's either ; it was a
blackening of the ' Gendre de M. Poirier,' the master-
piece of MM. Augier and Sandeau. M. Dumas and
164 French Dramatists.
M. Augier stand at the head of contemporary French
dramatic literature, and it is interesting to remark how
often one has trodden in the other's tracks. M. Augier,
having more and higher qualities than M. Dumas, a
wider reach and keener insight, has not had the same
uniformity of success : in the final and fatal shot of
the ' Mariage d'Olympe ' he anticipated the " tue-la ! "
of M. Dumas and the 'Femme de Claude,' just as he,
in turn, used the mould of the ' Fils Naturel ' for his
'Fourchambault.' This may be a digression; but, in
considering the ' Etrangere,' I cannot help wishing for
the hygienic breeze that blows through most of M.
Augier's manly plays. There is never a breath of poetry
in M. Dumas's dramas, no trace of imagination. One
is never lifted out of matter-of-fact, every-day life : in a
measure the life in his pieces differs from the life around
us only in that the people in the plays are rather wittier
in speech, and worse in character, than those in reality.
All is hard and dry and brilliant. More than that, every
thing is narrow : it is a very tiny corner of even the
little world of Paris which serves as the stage of M.
Dumas's dramas ; and, if one can form a fair idea of
Paris from these plays, then one may well wonder and
regret that fire and sword, and blood and iron, left one
stone on another.
The scene of his latest play the ' Princess of Bag-
dad,' acted by the Com^die-Frangaise in February last
is not even in this little corner of Paris : it is in some
fantastic capital of M. Dumas's own discovery, where
ordinary human motives have ceased to govern, and
every thing goes, as in a dream, by contraries. Indeed,
the play is a sort of evil dream, a nightmare. It was
of the ' Supplice d'une Femme ' that M. Dumas wrote,
M. Alcxandre Dumas fils. 165
" The spectator must submit to this play as to an attack
of fever, feeling its truth in the beatings of his heart,
and only recognizing its danger afterward ; that is to
say, too late : " but these words fit the ' Princess of
Bagdad ' even better than they do the ' Supplice d'une
Femme.' It is needless to analyze the doings of a lot
of people, all of whom are lacking in common sense.
Heroine, husband, and would-be lover are all clean daft,
and ought to be sent back to Bloomingdale or Colney
Hatch, where they would find seclusion and a strait-
jacket. One of the characters is called a millionnaire
Antony, referring to the ' Antony ' of the elder Du-
mas. As a fact, all three of the chief characters seem
to have walked right out of the pages of ' Antony ' half
a century behind time. In the preface to the ' fitran-
gere,' M. Dumas discussed the question of naturalism
on the stage, and took occasion to praise Moliere for
the extraordinary delicacy with which he had treated
so indelicate a tale as 'Amphitryon.' In the ' Princess
of Bagdad,' there was need of a little of the same deli
cacy, instead of which we have needlessly plain speech
and brutal violence.
In the foregoing pages all the acknowledged plays
of M. Dumas have been dealt with : besides these, there
are nearly a dozen others in the making of which he
has had a hand. He has retouched his father's 'Jeu-
nesse de Louis XIV. ' and done over his father's 'Bal-
samo.' He lent his skill to George Sand for the
dramatizing of the ' Marquis de Villemer.' He was a
silent partner in the ' Danicheff ' with M. " Pierre New-
sky," and in the ' Supplice d'une Femme.' To him is
ascribed the whole of the ' Filleul de Pompignac,' and
a half of the 'Comtesse Romani,' and a quarter of
1 66 French Dramatists.
'H&olse Paranquet.' In many of these his speech
bewrayeth him, but on none do we find his signature.
He has nobly respected his name, and it has never
been lent to joint-stock literary operations. His skill
and his time he has been free with, but his reputation
is jealously guarded.
The respect which he pays to his name he also has
for his art. He is proud of his business. In his book
about divorce, published last year, he constantly op-
poses his calling as a dramatist to the vocation of the
priest he is addressing. He contrasts church and stage ;
evidently and honestly believing that in the contest
between them the stage has the right of it, and gets
the best of it. His discussion of this burning question
is in the form of a letter to the Abb6 Vidier, vicar of
St. Roch. He has great dialectic superiority over the
abb6 ; and, although he tries to be courteous, he does
not spare satire and sarcasm, until the poor priest is in
a bad way. He produces the impression that his cleri-
cal adversary is hopelessly his inferior, and that the
combat is unequal. Just as one may see in the preface
to the ' Ami des Femmes ' a supplemental chapter to
' L' Homme-Femme,' so one may trace in the preface
to the ' Dame aux Came'lias ' the germ of this plea for
divorce. But since 1868, when he wrote these pref-
aces, M. Dumas's style has sharpened, and his author-
ity is greater. He has wit and eloquence : he appears
in these pages as a Bourdaloue-Beaumarchais. Sur-
passing his eloquence is his wit, though he is too
conscious of it, and too reliant on it : as George Eliot
says,
" Life is not rounded in an epigram,
And, saying aught, we leave a world unsaid."
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 167
M. Dumas half hints, at times, that he can unlock
the gravest of problems with the pass-key of a clever
phrase. What is most characteristic in this divorce
pamphlet is the serried logic of four hundred and six-
teen pages, and the sudden lack of logic in the nine
lines of the four hundredth and seventeenth and last
page, on which M. Dumas all his arguments having
hitherto tended to show the need of a modification of
the French law until divorce may be had under some
such strict limitations as obtain in New York con-
cludes by formally asking for the passage of M. Naquet's
bill, which he has cited at length in the earlier part of
the book, and which allows a freedom of separation
shocking even to an Illinois or Connecticut legislator.
M. Dumas's latest utterance in sociology is a bulky
pamphlet of some two hundred pages on ' Les Femmes
qui tuent et les Femmes qui votent.' This discussion
of women who kill and women who vote contains little
that is new to any one familiar with M. Dumas's other
polemical writings : it is as characteristic as any, but
perhaps a little more extravagant and illogical. There
have been several variations of the Laura Fair case in
France, and there has been a reproduction of the refu-
sal of the Smith sisters to pay taxes. From the first
set of examples M. Dumas argues that, until the
French code is reformed by the institution of an action
for bastardy and the re-establishment of divorce, woman
will be justified in taking the law in her own hands,
and acting at once as jury and judge and executioner.
From the second example M. Dumas argues that woman
suffrage ought to be, and that it is only a question of
time how soon it will come. His answer to the objec-
tion that woman has not the physical force to defend
1 68 French Dramatists.
her choice and cannot fight, is to cite (p. 102) Jeanne
de France, and Jeanne de Blois, and Jeanne de Flandres,
and Jeanns de Hachette, and Jeanne d'Arc, and to add,
that " no one of these women, having done in our day
what they did in their own time, would be admitted to
elect representatives in the country they had saved.
This is very comic." To the objections that a descent
into the political arena would rob woman of her charms,
M. Dumas responds that she would vote as gracefully
as she does every thing, having first made herself " hats
d la polling-booth, waists a la universal suffrage, and
skirts d la ballot-box." I fear that our own reformers
would find M. Dumas very flippant.
Among the consequences which would follow the
decreeing of divorce in France, M. Dumas told us in
his preceding volume on that question, would be a total
change in the French drama, as adultery, now the chief
stage-stock in trade, would lose its importance in life,
and so would see less service in the theatre. If M.
Dumas be right, we can only wish that divorce had
been established before he began to write, and perhaps
then illicit love would not have been found in some
form in every one of his plays. There is adultery, or
the attempt at it, or the suspicion of it, in eleven out
of twelve of M. Dumas's dramas. Once and again Paga-
nini chose to play on one string as an artistic freak,
but he owed his greatness to his skill on a violin com-
plete in all its parts. M. Dumas, though his violin had
four strings like the rest, has given us little else save
solos on a single one. He is, in short, a specialist ; and
in literature, as in medicine, a specialist is often danger-
ous. An illegitimate child himself, the result of illicit
affection, he cannot abandon the discussion of one sub-
M. Alexandre Dumas fits. 169
ject : do what he will, his thoughts still turn to it. All
his powers as a playwright are at the service of this
peculiar predilection : his gift of seeing things theatri-
cally ; his ability in handling a plot, generally simple,
and turning frequently on a single strong situation
carefully prepared and provided for, and only postponed
to come at last with double force ; his gift of charac-
terization ; his skill in skating over thin ice ; his speech,
when needed, vigorous to the point of violence; his
knack of breaking the force of all objections to his
conclusion by himself advancing them ; and his wit,
which cannot be denied, though he is far too conscious
of it, as any one may see who notes how he scatters it
broadcast through his plays, and then, for fear some of
it may have fallen on stony ground, takes care that
his characters compliment each other on their clever-
ness (and one may easily see also that the wit is M.
Dumas's own, and not that of the individual character,
in spite of some attempt at disguise), all these remark-
able qualifications are held at the beck and call of his
desire for the contemplation of illicit love. He even
goes out of his way to make wholly unimportant figures,
shown to use only in profile, adulterers, in the ' Fils
Naturel,' for instance, and the 'Princess Georges.'
No wonder he warns us not to take our daughters to
the theatre. Goethe, it is true, gave much the same
advice. M. Dumas says he respects the maiden too
much to bid her to his plays, and he respects his art
too much to write for maidens. There is some rea-
son in this : it is, at least, an open question whether
we do not fetter the artist too tightly when we insist
on bringing all literature down to the level of the
school-girl. While we may admit, however, that girls
170 French Dramatists.
have no business in a dissecting-room, one may also
protest against always taking the stage for a physio-
logical laboratory. Besides, while true science is clean
and wholesome, M. Dumas's is neither. As M. Fran-
cisque Sarcey once wrote, " He gives the best advice
in the world in a language which recalls at once the
manuals of physiology and the Vie Parisienne of Mar-
celin." And a sceptic is tempted to wonder whether
by chance M. Dumas has not gleaned the most of his
science in the Vie Parisienne. A competent critic like
M. Charles Bigot doubts M. Dumas's science, and thinks
it rather a hap-hazard gathering of physiological and
psychological orts and ends picked up here and there in
stray newspaper articles. The scientific spirit itself is
utterly absent. One may doubt that M. Dumas knows
whether there be any scientific spirit or not. In de-
fault of it he is fertile in hypothesis and theory. Some-
times he gets so entangled in the jungle of his own
philosophy, that it is difficult to discover his where-
abouts. Yet, as a French critic has pointed out, he
seems to have had in turn, if not at the same time,
these three theories : first, love rehabilitates a fallen
woman ; second, when she is not capable of rehabilita-
tion, one must kill her ; and thirdly, woman, anyhow, is
a being greatly inferior to man, who, indeed, may be said
to stand intermediate and mediating between woman
and God. It is to prove one or another of these three
hypotheses, that M. Dumas has written his later plays,
which, fortunately for us, are most of them of more
value than the doubtful theories which called them into
being.
There are two writers with whom the elder Dumas
is to be compared : one is Victor Hugo, because they
M. Alexandre Dumas fils. 171
together led the Romanticists ; the other is the younger
Dumas, because both bear the same name. I have
already, in the chapter on the elder Dumas, given his
opinion of the relative qualities of Victor Hugo and
himself : it is fortunately possible also to give his opin-
ion of the relative qualities of himself and his son, of
whom he was truly proud. " Alexandre, being my son,
was born with a few of my good points, and completed
them with those which were his own. I was born in
a poetical and picturesque age. I was an idealist. He
was born in a materialist and socialist age : he was a
positivist. In one play only can our different manners
be traced : it is the first he wrote, the ' Dame aux
Camelias.' ... I take my subject in a dream : he
takes his in reality. I work with my eyes closed : he
works with his eyes open. I shrink from the world at
my elbows : he identifies himself with it. I draw :
he photographs. People look in vain for the models
of my characters : they might almost point out his by
name. The work suggests itself to me through an
idea : it suggests itself to him through a fact." A
little later the father summed up the son in these three
sentences, with which we may leave the subject :
" With all this, Alexandre has a fault which will ruin
him if he does not correct himself in time. Alexandre
is over fond of preaching. His favorite book among
the works of Balzac is the ' Me"decin de Campagne,'
a magnificent novel, it is true, but one in -'vhich theory
takes the place of plot, and philosophy of action."
CHAPTER VII.
M. VICTORIEN SARDOU.
PERHAPS the most prominent of the French drama
lists of to-day is M. Victorien Sardou. He is probably
better known, both in and out of France, than any of
his rivals. He has written some twoscore plays, good
and bad, in half as many years : at least ten of those
plays have met with emphatic public applause ; and
twenty of them, more or less, have, at one time or
another, been acted in the United States. He is just
fifty ; he is rich ; he is the youngest member of the
French Academy ; and it is to his plays that he owes
his riches and his seat with the forty immortals.
M. Sardou was born in Paris, Sept. 7, 1831. His
father was a teacher and the author of elementary text-
books. The son was early entered as a medical student,
but he soon gave up medicine for history. Both of
these early inclinations have left their mark on the
work of the dramatic author. The larger and ampler
literary style of his two historical dramas, ' Patrie ' and
the ' Haine,' is no doubt the result of his youthful
reading; and the scientific marvel which is the back-
bone of the 'Perle Noire' possibly came within his
experience while he was preparing to be a physician.
His change of front just as he began the battle of life
did not lighten the struggle. The ten years between
1850 and 1860 were years of misery and want. M.
Sardou taught, served as an usher in a school, did hack
172
M. Victorien Sardou. 173
writing for d.ctionary-makers and in cheap newspapers,
and wrote various plays, which were refused right and
left. But in 1854 the Ode"on accepted a three-act
comedy in verse ; and on April i ominous date
the ' Taverne des fitudiants ' was hissed. Like many
another successful dramatist, M. Sardou saw his first
play damned out of hand. After the failure of this
-comedy he fell back into obscurity. He planned a
series of semi-scientific tales, after the manner of Poe's,
and in some sort anticipating M. Jules Verne's fantastic
inventions ; but only one or two of them ever saw the
light. The ' Perle Noire ' is one of these : it is a neat
little story, and a translation of it was published not
long ago in an American magazine.
In 1858 M. Sardou married Mile, de Brecourt, an
intimate friend of Dejazet. At the house of the cele-
brated actress he met Vanderbuch, who had written
several plays for Dejazet ; and one day, struck by
M. Sardou's intelligence, he proposed a collaboration.
The two dramatists wrote together the 'Premieres
Armes de Figaro ; ' and the play was at once accepted
by Dejazet, for whom the leading part had been con-
trived. But the actress was out of an engagement,
and vainly offered her services and her new play to
manager after manager. At last, toward the end of
1859, she took a theatre herself, called it the Thdatre-
D6jazet, and on its stage acted the part of the young
Figaro. The play was a great success ; and M. Sardou
soon followed it by others, ' M. Garat,' a study of the
French revolutionary epoch, a period he is especially
interested in ; and the ' Pres St. Gervais/ which in
1874 was re-arranged to serve as a libretto for the light
and tuneful music of M. Lecocq. These three neat
174 JFrenc/i Dramatists.
little pieces, like all plays written for Dejazet, are not
so characteristic of the author as of the actress. They
are cast in the D6jazet mould, and one seeks vainly for
the Sardou trade-mark. Strong or original dramatic
work was out of the question, and the most the author
could do was to show his ingenuity in variations on
the accepted air. The dramas written for Dejazet by
M. Sardou were the only new plays in which the sexage-
narian actress was successful ; and their success drew
their author from his former obscurity, and proved his
possession of the dramatic faculty, the rare gift of
shaping one's work exactly for the exigencies of the
modern theatre ; a gift which the greatest genius may
be without, and without which the greatest genius
cannot hope for success on the stage.
The doors of the Parisian theatre having thus been
opened by Dejazet to M. Sardou, he rushed in at once
with long-repressed energy, and produced within five
years (1860-64) nearly twenty plays of one kind or
another, comedy, farce, drama, or opera. This haste
was its own punishment. The ' Papillonne/ brought
out in 1862 at the Theatre Frangais, failed, and so did
most of the others. Two of the score, however,
achieved instant and lasting success. The ' Pattes de
Mouche ' and ' Nos Intimes ' were both first acted in
1 86 1 ; and the triumph they won compensated in a
measure for the less favorable reception of their fel-
lows. These are, perhaps, the two plays of their author
best known in England and America. Each has been
adapted to our stage more than once. ' Nos Intimes '
was turned into ' Friends or Foes ? ' by Mr. Wigan,
whose version has been given in New York as ' Bosom
Friends.' Another adaptation, called ' Peril,' has been
M. Victorien Sardou. 175
acted within a few years at the Prince of Wales's
Theatre in London ; while at the other theatre, the
Court, which then sought to rival the Prince of Wales's
as the home of the higher comedy in London, there was
at the same time presented ' A Scrap of Paper,' a skil-
ful alteration of the ' Pattes de Mouche.' It is no small
testimony to the author's skill as a playwright, that
two pieces written by him in 1861 to please the public
of the Vaudeville and Gymnase theatres in Paris
should in 1877 hit the fancy of the audiences of the
Court and Prince of Wales's theatres in London.
In the next seven years (1865-71) M. Sardou pro-
duced in Paris only seven plays, including three of his
best pieces. His literary frugality during this time
reaped its due reward ; for not one of these plays made
a fatal failure, and most of them had a warm reception.
In 1865 was brought out the 'Famille Benoiton,' the
first of a series of satires of society as it exists nowa-
days in France, and in many ways the best of them.
It is a very vivid and vigorous sketch of the demorali-
zation and extravagance of men and women, young and
old, amid the corrupting influences of the Second Em-
pire. It was revived at the Vaudeville during the
Exhibition of 1867, to keep company with another play
of M. Sardou's at the Gymnase, ' Nos Bons Villageois,'
which was the second in the series of satires, and
sought to portray French provincial life much as the
typical Benoiton family pictured the manners and
morals of the monopolizing metropolis. These two
comedies which, with the ' Grand Duchess of Gerol-
stein,' were the three great theatrical attractions Paris
offered to the thousands of strangers who came there
from all quarters contain some of M. Sardou's clev-
176 French Dramatists.
erest writing. They bi istle with hits at the times,
sharp enough witticisms, many of them, but somewhat
out of place surely in a play which hopes to outlive the
year of its birth. The success of both pieces seems,
however, to have encouraged M. Sardou to form the
practice of alluding to contemporary politics, art, and
society, forgetting apparently that much of what is
merely timely loses its interest in a short time But no
trace of this bad habit is to be found in ' Patrie ! ' a
historical drama brought out at the Porte St. Martin
Theatre in 1869, and likely to remain as the firmest
and finest specimen of M. Sardou's skill. Its scene
was laid in the Netherlands during the struggle for
independence ; and the drama was appropriately dedi-
cated to the late John Lothrop Motley.
A little over a year after the performance of ' Patrie ! '
the war with Germany broke out ; and Paris was be-
sieged, first by the Prussians, and again by the French.
When peace was at last restored, the first play M.
Sardou presented to the public of Paris was the ' Roi
Garotte,' a trifling and tawdry spectacular fairy-tale, set
to music by Offenbach. It was not literature at all,
excepting only one scene, in which a sudden recalling
to life of Pompeii, with its gladiators, soldiers, citizens,
slaves, and hetaerae, all skilfully contrasting with the
same classes as they exist nowadays, served to show
that the ruling motives of human nature then and now
are one and the same. The second play M. Sardou
brought out after the war was 'Rabagas.' During the
rule of the Commune the playwright's lovely villa on
the Seine had been destroyed ; for this reason, and for
others, be hit back hard, and made in ' Rabagas ' a
powerful but brutal assault on M. Gambetta, the leader
M. Victor ien Sardou. 177
ci the Republican party in France. Warming to his
work, he wrote a second attack on republican institu-
tions, setting his scene this time in this country. Al-
ready in an early comedy, the 'Femmes Fortes,' he
had compared the manners and customs of America
with those of France, greatly to our disadvantage. In
his ' Oncle Sam ' he laid on the blacks and whites with
so heavy a hand that the censors forbade the produc-
tion of the play, as insulting to a friendly nation. But
one of the enterprising managers of the friendly nation
procured the piece ; and it was brought out here in the
land it insulted while still under the ban in France.
When acted here, it was at once seen to be the result
of the most amusing ignorance, giving us good occasion
to laugh at the author, instead of laughing with him,
and showing but little of his customary smartness. The
words which Matthew Arnold uses to criticise the man-
ner of an English historian toward the French generals
in the Crimean war can fairly be used here to charac-
terize this incursion of a French dramatist into Ameri-
ca : " The failure in good sense and good taste reaches
far beyond what the French mean by fatuitt. They
would call it by another word, a word expressing
blank defect of intelligence ; a word for which we have
no exact equivalent in English, bete."
' Andrea,' which served as a stop-gap, pending the
raising of the interdict on the satire on American
society, was a hastily-revised edition of a play written
to order for a charming American actress, Miss Agnes
Ethel, and originally brought out in New York as
' Agnes : ' one would think that M. Sardou had cause
to be thankful to America. The censors soon allowed
the performance of ' Oncle Sam ; ' but the comedy was
178 French Dramatists.
received with no great favor ; and indeed, for the next
five years, M. Sardou saw little of success. A farce
failed at the Palais Royal in 1 873, another at the Varie-
t6s in 1874; and in the same year his strong but repul-
sive historical drama, the ' Haine,' was brought out for
but few nights at the Gait6. In 1875 'Ferreol' had
a little better luck; and in 1877 'Dora' met with an
enthusiastic reception as a return to his characteristic
manner, and as a worthy successor of the 'Famille
Benoiton ' and ' Nos Bons Villageois.' Turned into
English none too skilfully, and disfigured by the need-
less thrusting-in of jingoism, 'Dora,' as 'Diplomacy,'
has been acted with popular applause throughout Eng-
land and America. In 1878 M. Sardou sought to repeat
his success of 1867, and to set before the visitors to the
Exhibition a dramatic dish resembling closely the fare
which had proved acceptable to their predecessors of
eleven years before. The ' Bourgeois de Pont d' Arcy '
was made on the same lines as ' Nos Bons Villageois/
and satirized in the same style the petty politics of
country life. The later play was not so well made as
the earlier one : its fundamental situation was most
unpleasant ; and Parisian and provincial play-goers felt,
with Joubert, that comedy ought never to show what is
odious. The piece failed in Paris, and was acted in
New York for a while with much the same result.
In ' Daniel Rochat,' acted by the Comedie-Franc.aise
in 1880, M. Sardou, true to his habit of trying to tickle
the taste of the hour, and to set on the stage the ques-
tion of the day, considered the so-called conflict of
leligion and science. When the author of ' Oncle Sam '
and the ' Famille Benoiton ' tries to handle so important
a topic, it is a little difficult to take him seriously ; but
M. Vtctorien Sardou. 179
he is so clever, that he compels attention at least, if not
admiration. It is curious that the adjective, which, when
one writes about M. Sardou, comes of its own accord
to the end of one's pen, is " clever ; " and the word really
sums him up. Conviction, sincerity, truth, all these
may be wanting in ' Daniel Rochat ; ' but there is no
falling-off in cleverness. Now, a really great writer is
not clever, he is something more and better ; and to
dwell on a writer's cleverness is like insisting on a
man's good nature : if he had nobler qualities, this
would be taken for granted. To say this is to say, that,
whenever M. Sardou tackles a living issue, he may be
amusing, but he is not likely to be instructive. In
' Daniel Rochat ' his treatment is at once insufficient
and superficial. Having attacked the church in ' Sera-
phine,' the original title of which was the ' Devote,' he
now defends religion in ' Daniel Rochat.'
The story of the play is simple to baldness : Rochat,
who is an atheist and an eloquent politician, meets in
Switzerland two Anglo-American girls, and falls in love
with the elder. We say "Anglo-American," because M.
Sardou seems never to be able to make up his mind as
to their nationality : at one moment they are English, at
another American ; and of a truth they are all the time
French, M. Sardou apparently thinking that to let them
go about without a chaperone was sufficient to Ameri-
canize them. In the first act Rochat proposes ; in the
second they are married civilly ; in the third she insists
on a religious marriage also, which he refuses ; in the
fourth he tries to seduce her from her allegiance to her
faith ; and in the fifth they agree to separate, and the
curtain falls on the signing of the application for a
divorce. Rochat begins as a conceited snob, to turn, in
180 French Dramatists.
the fourth act, into a contemptible cur; and Lea is
always a rather priggish young person. The final three
acts are filled with the bandying of argument between
the two ; and, as M. Sarcey said when the play was pro-
duced in Paris, " the fifth act repeats the fourth, which
repeats the third, which was tiresome." There is no
decrease in the technical skill, but the subject is fatal.
We are not interested in hero or heroine ; and we know
that in real life, if they really loved each other, they
would not have parted : either he would have so en-
dowed the civil marriage with solemnity that she would
accept it, or else he would have put his pride in his
pocket, and been married when and how she pleased,
by minister, or priest, or bishop, or pope, or rabbi, or
dervish, or what you will. They would have got mar-
ried somehow, and then would have come the real dra-
matic struggle. The true drama looms up after the
fifth act of M. Sardou's play, had it ended happily : it is
in the rending force in a household of religious antago-
nism, the wife going one way, and the husband another.
If the subject is to be set on the stage at all, it is here
in married life that incidents and interest^ must be
sought, and not in the petty hesitancies of two people
who cannot make up their minds. It is here that it
would have been sought by writers honest of purpose,
like M. Augier or M. Dumas. The hollowness of M.
Sardou's protestations of a desire to regenerate his
countrymen by a dramatic discussion of a vital issue is
shown most amusingly by the fact that the first play
he brought out after ' Daniel Rochat ' was an amusing
and highly indecent farce called ' Divorgons,' written for
the Palais Royal theatre.
In this brief survey of M. Sardou's career as a drama-
M Victor ien Sardou. 181
tist during the past twenty years, only those plays have
been dwelt on which demand especial attention. The
first thing which suggests itself, when one looks down
the list of his twoscore of pieces, is the great variety
of the styles the author has striven to succeed in. M.
fimile Augier and M. Alexandre Dumas fits have con-
fined themselves to comedy, a comedy, it is true, which
sometimes crosses the line of drama ; but the apparent
intention has always been comedy. M. Sardou has
written comedies, historical dramas, farces, and operas.
In farce and in historical drama his success has been
slight. Opera, which he has attempted half a dozen
times, has been but little more advantageous to him.
Only ' Piccolino,' a recent setting by M. Guiraud as an
opera-comique of an early play, seems likely to last.
The ' Roi Carotte,' with the music of Offenbach, and
the ' Pres St. Gervais,' with the music of M. Lecocq,
are already forgotten. ' Patrie ! ' has been used by an
Italian composer as the libretto of an opera called the
' Comtessa di Mans.'
On recalling M. Sardou's work in comedy and in the
other departments of the drama, with the idea of detect-
ing what his dominant quality may be, one cannot avoid
the deduction that it is cleverness. Mr. Henry James,
Jr., has called him a " supremely skilful contriver and
arranger." And no one who has at all studied M.
Sardou's plays will quarrel with Mr. James's other asser-
tion, that he is " a man who, as one may phrase it, has
more of the light, and less of the heat, of cleverness,
than any one else." That is to say, M. Sardou is very
clever : he has cleverness raised to the n th , if I may so
express it, and he has little or nothing except clever-
ness ; but it is the cleverness of a man who has the
1 82 French Dramatists.
dramatic faculty, the theatrical touch, the dramatizing
eye. And just what this precious faculty is, M. Sardou
himself has told us in his speech when received as a
member of the French Academy. " The gambler is not
more haunted by dreams of play," said he, "nor the
miser by visions of lucre, than the dramatic author by
the constant slavery of his one idea. All things are
connected with it, and bring him back to it. He sees
nothing, hears nothing, which does not drape itself at
once in theatric attire. The landscape he admires
what a pretty scene ! The charming conversation he
listens to what good dialogue ! The delicious young
girl who passes by the adorable ingtmte ! And the
misfortune, the crime, the disaster, he is told of what
a situation ! what a drama ! "
This dramatic faculty has another side : the author
who has it, besides unconsciously dramatizing all he
hears and sees, has also an innate power of so setting
upon the stage what he has written, that the specta-
tors are affected by it as he was. The days when
a dramatist needed merely to write are now gone,
gone with the placards which may have served to
indicate where the action of any scene in Shakspere's
plays passed. The dramatic author of our day has to
fill the eyes as well as the ears of his audience. The
stage-setting, the scenery, the furniture, the costumes,
the movements of the actors, the management of the
many minor characters, often mingled with the action,
in short, the show part of the play, all this is now of
importance second only to the play itself, and often
thrust into the front place, to the almost certain failure
of the production. Play-goers are both audience and
spectators ; they like to see as well as to hear : but they
M. Victor ien Sardou. 18^
\J
do not care to see a show at the expense of the drama
they have come to hear. Now, expert as M. Sardou is
in all details of stage management and of mise-en-schie,
to use a French phrase impossible to render in
English with exactness, he sometimes has pushed
the merely spectacular into undue prominence. The
'Haine,' a historical drama, and the ' Merveilleuses,'
a historical farce, both failed because the play was
smothered into insignificance beneath the splendor of
the show. M. Sardou seems to have thought with the
First Player in the ' Rehearsal,' that the essentials of a
play were scenes and clothes, and to have forgotten to
put in enough human interest to counterbalance this
excess of external adornment. The plays were over-
laden with gold, and they sank when they sought to
swim.
In general M. Sardou's extreme cleverness does not
thus overreach itself : in general his skill in setting his
subject on the stage serves him to great advantage.
Consider this scene in ' Patrie ! ' we are outside the gates
of Brussels, with snowy rampart and tower, and frozen
moat glistening in the moonlight ; a Spanish patrol
crosses, the patriots, who are in consultation, hide as
best they may, another patrol is heard approaching :
the patriots will be taken between two fires; prompt
action is needed ; as the second patrol passes across
the stage, every man in it is silently seized, and killed,
and his body is thrown through a hole in the ice of the
moat, a hole at once filled with masses of snow, so
that when the first patrol returns, it walks unsuspect-
ingly over the icy graves of its fellow-soldiers.
Not only in the heavier historical dramas, like 'Pa-
trie ! ' is this skill in stage-setting useful ; for it is almost
184 French Dramatists.
as imperatively demanded in the comedy of every-day
lif 3. Here there are no adventitious aids, no moonlight,
no snow, no frozen moat : the variety which charms the
eye of the spectator must be sought in the constant
and appropriate movement of the actors. A long
scene between two characters is broken by numberless
changes of position, by crossing and recrossing the
stage, by rising and sitting down, now right and now
left, by taking advantage of the conformations of the
scenery, and the placing of the furniture. All this
must not be overdone : every movement must seem to
be unpremeditated, and to spring naturally from the
dialogue. To assist in the delusion, the scenery and
the accessories are all carefully considered by the
author; they are to be found set down on his manu-
script ; and they, and the movements of the actors which
they assist, are as truly part of his play as the words he
puts into the mouths of his characters. M. Charles
Blanc, the eminent art-critic to whom was allotted the
duty of replying to M. Sardou's reception-speech at the
Academy, took occasion to declare that M. Sardou pos-
sessed this talent of mise-en-schte in the highest degree.
It is a talent, "perhaps," he said, "too highly praised
nowadays. . . . But I admire the skilful ordering of
the room in which passes the action of your characters,
the care you take in putting each in his place, in choos-
ing the furniture which surrounds them, and which is
always not only of the style required, that goes with-
out saying, but significant, expressive, fitted to aid in
the turns of the drama."
In this as in many another way, M. Sardou suggests
Scribe, who was also a supremely skilful contriver and
arranger. Scribe was passing slowly out of sight as
M. Victor ten Sardou. 185
M. Sardou came into prominence ; but without Scribe M.
Sardou was scarcely possible. In the rapidity with
which they gained wealth, in their many successes, in
their willingness to suit the public taste rather than to
serve any rigid rules of true art, in their conservatism,
in their bourgeois respectability with its thousand gigs,
in their mastery over stage technicalities, in their fre-
quent borrowing of material from a neighbor, in the
dexterity with which they can play with an audience,
in all these respects, the two dramatists are alike. If
the habit obtained nowadays of naming one writer after
another, some few of whose obvious qualities he might
have, as Irving was at one time the American Gold-
smith, and Klopstock was hailed as the German Milton
(a very German Milton, as Coleridge suggested), if
this habit obtained now, M. Sardou would be the later
Scribe. The points of unlikeness are almost as many
and as marked as the points of likeness. It is in tech-
nical skill and in the resulting success that the essen-
tial similarity lies. But M. Sardou, who has studied
Scribe to the end, early saw that the simple style of the
dramatist of the citizen-king was not best suited to
please the new Paris of the lower Empire : so he doubled
the French playwright with the Athenian dramatic poet,
and sought to be Aristophanes and Scribe at the same
time. It can scarcely be said, however, that he wholly
succeeds : he is at best but little more than a sort of
Pasquin-Scribe. Yet he wields a lively wit ; and I
think Heine, who hated Scribe, might now and then
have shaken hands with M. Sardou.
The essential similarity between the two playwrights
is, as has been said, the extreme cleverness of each,
and the success which rewards that cleverness. In
1 86 French Dramatists.
another important point is the likeness between them
almost as striking, in a willingness to make over old
material. Here M. Sardou treads in Scribe's footsteps.
But while the old dramatist was open and honest, and
never claimed what was not his own, the younger one
has been more than once sued because he was bearing
away in his literary baggage another man's property.
It has been shortly and sharply said that M. Sardou
" has shown real power in the creation of types, while
unhesitatingly using in his plots the commonest effects :
he carries through a play with a verve and a rapidity of
movement, for the sake of which he has been pardoned
the frequency of his rememberings and borrowings."
These rememberings and borrowings are not a few.
The germ of the 'Pattes de Mouche' (1861) is to be
found in Poe's story of the 'Purloined Letter;' the
fourth act of <Nos Intimes' (1861) is said to be singu-
larly like a vaudeville called the ' Discours de Rentree ; '
the 'Pommes du Voisin' (1864) is taken from a tale of
Charles de Bernard's; *S6raphine' (1868) seems to be
indebted to Diderot's ' Religeuse ' and to Bayard's ' Mari
a la Campagne ; ' ' Patrie ! ' (1869) owes something to a
play of Mery's; the story of 'Fernande' (1870) is to
be found in Diderot's ' Jacques le Fataliste ; ' the ' Roi
Garotte' (1872) was greatly indebted to Hoffman; the
American 'Oncle Sam' (1873) would not have existed
had it not been for two stories of M. Alfred Assolant,
who, however, lost the suit he brought against M. Sar-
dou for a share in the profits of the play ; in ' Andr6a '
(1873) is a situation from M. Dumas's ' Princess Georges ; '
many a hint for 'Ferreol' (1875) was derived from
M. Jules Sandeau and from M. Gaboriau ; the 'H6tel Go-
delot' (1876), a comedy by M. Crissafulli, of which
M. Victor ien Sardou. 187
M. Sardou was anonymously joint author, was founded
upon Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to Conquer;' and the
final act of 'Don' (1877) has more than one point of
resemblance to the end of the ' Aventuriere ' of M.
Smile Augier.
Besides borrowing freely from his neighbor, M. Sardou
has more than once repeated himself, and is evidently
fond of falling back on his early works, and presenting
them anew. The two-act ' Pres St. Gervais,' a comedy
in 1862, becomes a three-act opera-bouffe in 1874. The
comedy of 'Piccolino,' played in 1861, re-appears in
1876 as an optra-comique. These are of course avowed
reproductions, but there is no lack of unconf essed but
almost equally obvious repetition. There is in the
'Vieux Gardens ' (1865) a strong situation, a father,
whose child is ignorant of his relationship, is so placed
that he dare not declare himself; the same situation
re-appears in 'Seraphine' (1868): in the former case
the child is a boy, and in the latter a girl. The first
acts of the 'Famille Benoiton' (1865) and of 'Oncle
Sam ' (1873) are almost exactly alike. The fast French-
women in the first play and the impossible American
girls in the second are exhibited one after another : a
clever French-woman (a part taken in both pieces by
Mile. Fargueil) acts as showman, while a witty French-
man asks the right questions at the right time. And
the characters of the two comedies resemble each other
singularly. The witty Frenchman and the clever French-
woman take part in both. Uncle Sam himself is a first
cousin to M. Benoiton : his son is only the calculating
young Formichel, and the trick young Formichel plays
on his father finds its counterpart in the trick Uncle
Sam s son plays on him. In fact, on a careful compari-
French Dramatists.
son of the two comedies, it seems as though M. Sardou,
in his absolute ignorance of this country, thought that
all he need do to satirize America was to push his satire
of fast French society a little farther. ' Oncle Sam ' is
the ' Famille Benoiton,' only the dose is stronger, more
pungent, more acrid. In M. Sardou's first assault on
the bad habits of the United States, the 'Femmes
Fortes' (1860), we see Americans who are just like
those in the ' Oncle Sam ' of fourteen years later, and
who, like them, seem to have walked straight out of the
pages of 'American Notes.'
There is to be seen in the ' Femmes Fortes ' the same
clever woman of great common sense, who re-appears
in both the 'Famille Benoiton' and 'Oncle Sam.' In
each of these pieces she plays the part of Greek chorus.
In ' Rabagas ' she is the dea ex machina. In the ' Pattes
de Mouche,' perhaps the cleverest of all of M. Sardou's
clever comedies, she is the protagonist. In each of
these five plays the same woman appears under differ-
ent names ; and in each M. Sardou lauds her cleverness,
and skilfully lays her traps for her, and obligingly insists
on the victims walking into them blindfold. In the
' Famille Benoiton ' and ' Oncle Sam ' and the ' Pattes
de Mouche,' the clever woman is accompanied and
assisted by a clever man ; and in ' Patrie ! ' and ' Fer-
nande ' and ' Nos Intimes ' and ' Dora,' the clever man
is all by himself, and has to get things settled and
straightened out without any aid from a clever woman.
In ' Fernande ' he is a lawyer ; in ' Patrie ! ' he is a soldier
and a Huguenot ; and so he gets a backbone and a solid-
ity lacking to his equally clever brothers and sisters.
I am not sure, indeed, that the Marquis de la Tremouille,
the Frenchman in ' Patrie ! ' is not the most charming of
M. Victorien Sardou. 189
all M. Sardou's characters. He is strong and manly,
and true to life. His courtly grace and vivacity lighten
and brighten the sombre gloom of ' Patrie ! ' and it has
been suggested, that, if he or some other of his country-
men equally debonair had appeared also in the ' Haine,'
the fate of that powerful and painful play might have
been more happy.
These repetitions, these frequent rememberings of
himself, and borrowings from others, are pardoned,
because in the rushing rapidity which M. Sardou im-
parts to his play, there is scarce time to think of them.
The sin at worst is but venial : we are always willing
to forgive an author's theft, if he but steal at the
same time the Promethean spark to give life to his
creatures. This M. Sardou seems certainly to do. His
characters are full of motion, and as life-like as may be,
although they are rarely really alive and human. His
clever men and women are always seen with pleasure,
because M. Sardou is clever himself, and he understands
cleverness, and these characters are but projections of
himself. All his minor humorous characters are skil-
iully sketched. He has a keen eye for the ludicrous,
and a genuine gift of caricature. This latter quality,
the keen, quick thrust of the caricaturist, was used in
moderation and with great effect in the village apothe-
cary and the rustic louts of ' Nos Bons Villageois,' and
in the professional revolutionist and other self-seeking
political agitators of ' Rabagas.' But the dramatist's
political animosities blunted his artistic perception
when he cast the central figure of the latter play in the
same mould which had served for its minor characters.
In structure the piece is weaker than any other of its
author's important plays ; and the character of Rabagas
190 French Dramatists.
himself is an overcharged, self-contradictory caricature.
It is very clever, of course, and one can readily under-
stand its startling success at first ; but, when one thinks
over the conduct of Rabagas, its weakness is manifest.
He is represented as a type of the uneasy political
lawyer, using the tools of state-craft to carve his way
to fame and fortune,
" Ready alike to worship and revile,
To build the altar or to light the pile.
Now mad for patriots, hot for revolution;
Now all for hanging and the Constitution."
This is a fine subject for a comic dramatist. Patri-
otic hypocrisy gives as good an occasion for grave and
thoughtful humorous treatment as religious hypocrisy.
Rabagas might have been worthy to hang in the same
gallery with Tartuffe. But Moliere's creation is firm,
and broadly handled, and consistent to the end : M.
Sardou's is cheap, and sacrifices again and again his
consistency for the sake of making a point. It is a
Punch-and-Judy show : the figure is the figure of Raba-
gas ; but we know the hand of M. Sardou is inside it,
and makes it move ; and we recognize the voice of M.
Sardou whenever it speaks. Its movements are amus-
ing, and what it says is entertaining, and we must needs
confess that the showman is very clever. But Moliere
was something more than clever when he drew Tar-
tuffe. And if this comparison be thought too crushing,
M. fimile Augier was more than clever when he
created Giboyer ; and M. Alexandre Dumas fits was
more than clever when he set before us the 'Demi-
Monde.' Moliere and M. Augier and M. Dumas worked
M. Victor ien Sardou.
191
with heart as well as head : they put something of
themselves into their plays. M. Sardou relied solely on
his cleverness, and, if the assertion may be ventured,
on his spite.
In the pr eface to the ' Haine ' M. Sardou declares his
respect for woman, and his worship of her. Here is
perhaps as good an opportunity as any to say that M.
Sardou's plays are, for the most part, as moral as one
could wish, not only in the conventional reward of
virtue, and punishment of vice, but in the tone and
color of the whole. He has his eccentricities of taste
and of morals, such as we Anglo-Saxons detect in any
Frenchman ; but he never panders to vice, never pets
it, pats it, and plays with it seductively, as M. Octave
Feuillet is wont to do. With the present method in
France of bringing up young girls, and of marrying and
giving in marriage, the dramatist is forced frequently
to seek for his love-interest in the breaking, actual or
imminent, of the Seventh Commandment. But more
often than any other French dramatist of standing has
M. Sardou sought to confine himself to the honest love
of a young man and a young woman. In 'Dora/ in
the ' Ganaches,' and in more than one other of his
comedies, there is, if one strikes out a few grains of
sharp Gallic salt, nothing to offend the most fastidious
Anglo-American old maid. M. Sardou's young girls
are charming. One does not wonder at the fondness
of the Frenchman for the lily-like innocence of the
ingenue, if all ingenues are really as innocent and as
delicious as those in M. Sardou's comedies. To the
healthy American the ingenue seems almost an impos-
sibility ; but M. Sardou endows her with a frankness
and grace which relieves the somewhat namby-pamby,
192 French Dramatists.
goody-goody innocuousness of a bread-and-butter miss
whose only preparation for the duties of life is a com-
plete ignorance of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
In M. Sardou's hands the ingenue is neither sickly nor
unwholesome : she is confiding and engaging, and
timid if you will, but charming and delightful. M.
Sardou, in announcing his great respect for woman,
says he has always given her the best part in his plays,
" that of common sense, of tenderness, of self-sacri-
fice. I say nothing of my young girls. They form a
collection of which I am proud. Aside from one or
two Americans and the Benoitons, you could marry
them all ; and this is no slight praise."
He is right to be proud of them. It would be hard
to find a more charming scene in recent comedy than
the one in the last act of 'Nos Bons Villageois,' in
which Genevieve (the ingenue) with girlish frankness
confesses to her brother-in-law, the baron, that she is
in love, and that her lover is coming in a few hours to
ask for her hand ; this same lover being the man with
whom the brother-in-law is about to fight a duel because
the lover has been apparently intriguing with Gene-
vieve's sister, the baron's wife. The daughter of
SeYaphine is almost equally charming : her presence
in the play does much toward atoning for the odious-
ness of her mother, that despicable creature, a female
hypocrite, a Lady Tartuffe, but not as delicately drawn
as Mme. de Girardin's. And the tender and clinging
grace of the fragile daughter of the Duke of Alba in
' Patrie ! ' must be accepted as some compensation for
the wretchedly vicious heroine. He acknowledges that
these two, Seraphine and Dolores, are dark spots in his
white list of women, "and especially Dolores. Im-
M. Victorien Sardou. 193
posed on me by the action of the play, she long haunted
my sleep to reproach me for having made her so
guilty."
These words " imposed on me by the action of the
play" (imposee par la donnde mime) let in a flood of
light on M. Sardou's methods of work. His characters
are the creatures of his situations. He contrives his
plot first, and afterwards looks around for people to
carry it out. Here, again, is the difference between
M. Sardou and M. Augier. The author of the ' Fils de
Giboyer' and the 'Mariage d'Olympe' invents and con-
trasts characters, and then lets them work out a play.
The author of ' Nos Bon Villageois ' happens on a
striking situation, and then puts together characters
to set it off to best advantage. M. Augier is interested
in human nature, and trusts for success on man's inter-
est in man : M. Sardou relies, for the most part, on the
mechanical ingenuity of his situations. As the proper
subject of comedy is to be found in the ever varying
phases of human nature, rather than in the external
and temporary accidents of life, M. Augier's method is
truer than M. Sardou's.
In the preface to the ' Haine,' from which quotation
has already been made, M. Sardou tells us how the first
idea of a play is revealed to his mind. " The process is
invariable. It never appears otherwise than as a sort
of philosophic equation from which the unknown quan-
tity is to be discovered. As soon as it is fairly set
before me, this problem possesses me, and lets me have
no peace till I have found the formula. In ' Patrie ! ' this
was the problem, What is the greatest sacrifice a man
can make for love of his country ? And, the formula
once found, the piece followed of its own accord. In
194 French Dramatists.
the 'Haine' the problem was, In what circumstances
will the inborn charity of woman show itself in the
most striking manner ? "
This confession, which is probably as exact as Poe's
account of the way he wrote the ' Raven,' confirms the
assertion that he always starts with a situation. In
' Patrie ! ' he sought to find the situation which would
show in action the greatest possible sacrifice a man
could make for love of his country. In the 'Haine'
he looked for the situation in which the inborn charity
of woman would be most strikingly revealed. In neither
case did he set out with a strong character, and ask
what that man or that woman would do in a given sit-
uation. In both plays he started with a situation,
meaning to fashion afterward a man or a woman to fit
it. We must confess that the reliance M. Sardou
places in his situations is not misplaced. In general
they are very strong, and they admit of effective theat-
rical handling. Although one is indisposed to admit
that in ' Patrie ! ' we have the greatest sacrifice a man
may make to his country, still the situation is beyond
doubt powerful and pathetic. The patriot leader of a
revolt, loving his wife only second to his country, dis-
covers, on the eve of the rising against the oppressor,
that she is untrue to him, and that her lover is his sec-
ond in command, a man whose services are indispen-
sable to the triumph of the insurgents. He does not
hesitate, but sacrifices at once his private vengeance to
his patriotism, and fights side by side with the man
who has wronged him. In ' Nos Bons Villageois ' a
young man found in a lady's dressing-room at night,
under suspicious circumstances, seizes her jewels, and
allows himself to be denounced as a thief, sacrificing
M. Victorien Sardou. 195
himself to save her reputation. In 'Dora' a young
girl on her wedding morning is accused, and the proof
is overwhelming, of having stolen an important official
document from her husband to send it to an emissary
of the enemy. In the ' Bourgeois de Pont d'Arcy ' the
situation is equally dramatic ; but it is fundamentally
disgusting, and suggests the reflection that M. Sardou
has morally no taste, to use the apt phrase of Henry
James, Jr., about George Sand. And this lack of moral
taste affects us unpleasantly in other of his plays,
in the ' Haine ' for instance, in the ' Diables Noirs,'
and in ' Maison Neuve ! ' in all of which the strength
of the situations is beyond dispute.
Few playwrights have ever had more skill in handling
a situation than M. Sardou. He has, as M. Jules Clare-
tie neatly puts it, " better than any one the fingering
of the playwright " (la doigtt du dramaturge). He
prepares his situation slowly, and presents it with full
effect ; leaves you in doubt for a while, and then cuts
the knot with a single unexpected stroke. After he
has got his characters into a terrible tangle, and there
is seemingly no way of loosing the bands which bind
them, M. Sardou either shows us that the tangle was
only apparent, and the slipping of a single loop will set
everybody free, or else he whips out his penknife, and,
as has just been said, slyly cuts the cords, getting his
knife safely back into his pocket while we are all aston-
ished at the sudden falling of the ropes. In this super-
subtle ingenuity M. Sardou again resembles Scribe, but
the disciple has improved on the master. Both drama-
tists take delight in producing great effects from little
causes, but the methods are different. Scribe had the
ingenuity of the travelling conjurer at a country fair :
196 French Dramatists.
he showed you a pellet under this cup ; in a second it
is passed under that ; and, before you know it, he raises
the third, and there it is again. The trick is done, and
the three acts are over, leaving the pellet-people very
nearly where they were when he began. But the art
of magic has made great progress of late. The village
conjurer has given way before the court prestidigitator.
M. Sardou disdains a simple cup-and-ball effect : he has
at his command an electric battery and a pneumatic
machine, and he can do the second-sight mystery. He
is a wizard of the North, not like Scott, but like Ander-
son. He handcuffs his hero, seals him in a sack, locks
the sack in a box, has the box heavily chained, then
lowers the lights, and fires a pistol and hi! presto!
the prisoner is free, and ready to play his part again.
M. Charles Blanc, in his witty and graceful reply to
M. Sardou's reception oration at the Academy, a
reply in which, as is often the case in the academic
ceremonies, cutting criticism and biting rebuke were
courteously sheathed in suavity, politeness, and compli-
ment, with no dulling of the edge of their keenness,
M. Charles Blanc satirically praised M. Sardou's skill
in "using small means to arrive at great effects.
Among these small means there is one, the letter, that
you use from preference, and always happily. The let-
ter ! it plays a part in most of your plots ; and all of it
is important, the wrapper as well as its contents. The
envelope, the seal, the wax, the postage-stamp and the
postmark, and the tint of the paper and the perfume
which rises from it, not to speak of the handwriting,
close or free, large or small, how many things in a
letter, as handled by you, may be irrefutable evidence
to betray the lovers, to denounce the villains, and to
M. Vidorien Sardou. 197
warn the jealous!" M. Blanc continues by pointing
out, that, in the ' Pattes de Mouche,' a letter is the basis
of the plot : it is a long time hidden under a porcelain
bust ; then, turn by turn, it serves, half-burnt, to light a
lamp, then to prop a shaky table, then as a wad in a gun,
then as a box for a rare beetle, and then, at last, for a
proposal, which settles all things to everybody's satis-
faction. In ' Dora ' the traitress is exposed because of
a peculiar perfume which she alone uses, and which
clings to the letter she has touched. In 'Fernande,'
in which M. Sardou, as M. Blanc says, "has so well
depicted the exquisite elevation of a young soul which
has preserved itself pure in the midst of all the im-
purities of a wretched gambling-hell, the heroine, on
the eve of marrying a gentleman, the Marquis des
Arcis, writes him a letter avowing the ignominies she
has passed through without moral stain ; but this letter,
intercepted by an old mistress of the marquis, does not
arrive at its destination in time, and the marquis learns,
when it is too late, that his marriage was dishonoring.
However, as Fernande had loyally confessed before
what he had only learned after, he consents to forgive
all ; he wishes to forget all ; he easily persuades him-
self that he ought to love her whom he does love;
and thus a letter, because it was a day too late, makes
happy a girl whom an involuntary stigma does not pre-
vent from being charming." In the 'Bourgeois de
Pont d' Arcy ' it is a letter again which a son will not
allow his mother to see, because it convicts his father
of sin ; and this refusal forces the son finally to avow
himself guilty of his father's fault. In the 'Famille
Benoiton ' and in ' Seraphine ' letters are again to be
found in the very centre of the plot.
198 French Dramatists.
In spite of this frequent use of apparently inadequate
and trifling means to untie the knots of his story, no
playwright has ever shown more skill in getting the
utmost possible effect out of a situation : the situation,
however, is nearly all there is. The characters are
made to fit it, and the dialogue is sufficient to display it.
The skeleton may be supple and well-jointed : it is not
clothed with living flesh and blood. In spite of all the
cleverness, there is no real feeling. There are few
words which come straight from the heart, such as
abound in M. Augier's work. The language of any of
the characters in the moments of intense emotion is
always to the point, and vigorous, and all that is needed
by the situation ; but it is the clever language of M.
Sardou, not the simple words of a heart torn by anguish,
or racked by suspense. The characters do not rule
events : they are ruled by them. For the most part,
they are little more than puppets, to be moved me-
chanically so as to bring on the situation, or else they
are vehicles for the author's wit and his satire.
For M. Sardou is really a journalist playwright. He
tries to put the newspaper on the stage. He is rarely
content to rely on his dramatic framework, good as it
may be ; but he seeks to set it off by an appeal to the
temper of the time, and an attempt at reflecting it. To
enable him to combine this dramatizing of editorial arti-
cles and the latest news, with the proper presentation
of a strong situation, M. Sardou has devised a new for-
mula of dramatic construction. What this formula is
can be seen on even slight consideration of almost any
two or three of his five-act comedies, ' Dora,' or ' Oncle
Sam,' or 'Nos Bons Villageois.' He does not always
employ this formula : ' Patrie ! ' is an exception, and so
M. Victorien Sardou. 199
in a measure, is ' Fernande.' Indeed, as the Paris corre-
spondent of the Nation once said, "Sardou is not ob-
stinate : he changes his manner, not in the course of a
few years, like the great painters ; he can change it three
times a year. He rather likes to change it, to jump
from one thing to another, to alter his system : he is a
sort of dramatic clown."
In spite of these frequent changes of system, there
are nearly a dozen of M. Sardou's plays, and the best
known of them, constructed according to a definite for-
mula. This formula is evidently the result of a sort of
compromise arrived at between the two different men
contained in M. Sardou, the satirical wit and the
situation-loving playwright, Pasquin and Scribe. The
wit writes the first half of the comedy, and it rattles
along as briskly and as brightly as a revolving firework ;
and then the playwright seizes the pen, and the story
suddenly takes a serious turn, and the interest grows
intense. It is characteristic of his cleverness, that he
is able to join two acts and a half of satirical comedy
to two acts and a half of melodramatic strength so
deftly that at first glance the joint is not visible. The
first act of any one of his plays rarely does more than
introduce the characters, and develop the satirical motive
of the play. Often there is absolutely no action what-
ever. This is the case in both the ' Famille Benoiton '
and * Oncle Sam,' the first acts of which, as has been
said, are almost exactly alike. In the second act, the
satire and the wit and the comedy continue to be de-
veloped ; and possibly there is an indication of a coming
cloud, but it is not larger than a man's hand. In neither
' Dora ' nor ' Nos Bons Villageois ' do we get much
nearer the action of the story in the second act than
2OO French Dramatists.
we were in the first. During these earlier acts M.
Sardou is quietly laying his wires ; and in the third act
the change comes, the masked batteries are revealed,
and strong situation and sensation follow each other in
rapid succession. Even in the caustic 'Rabagas,' M.
Sardou seemingly had no confidence in his pure comedy,
and so lugs in by the ears an extraneous intrigue of the
prince's daughter with a captain of the guards.
For this inartistic mingling of two distinct styles of
play, M. Sardou has good reasons. In the first place, it
pays better to write five-act plays than plays of any
other length. A dramatic author in Paris takes fifteen
per cent of the gross receipts every night, more or less.
If his play is short, he only gets his proportion of this,
sharing it with the authors of the other pieces acted
the same evening : if his play is long, and important
enough to constitute the sole entertainment, he natu-
rally takes the whole fifteen per cent himself. Having
thus a motive for writing five-act plays, M. Sardou knows
the temper of Parisian play-goers too well to believe that
either five acts of satirical comedy or five acts of pa-
thetic interest will please as well as five acts in which
both tears and smiles are blended. Five acts of humor
would probably begin to pall long before the fifth act
was reached, and five acts of pathos would probably
prove too lugubrious : so he combines the two. Now,
the Parisian play-goer has a very bad habit : he dines
late ; and, if he goes to the theatre after a dinner, he
arrives certainly after the first act, possibly after the
second. Therefore, clever in this as in all things, M.
Sardou delays the real movement of his play until the
third act, when he is certain to have all his spectators
assembled ; and in the first two acts he gives free rein
to his satirical instincts.
M. Victorien Sardou. 201
To amuse the many spectators who may have come
in time, he has much bustle, much coming and going,
little or no dramatic progress, but much effective theat-
rical movement, all accompanied by a running fire of
witticisms, and hits at the times. His plays are written
so distinctly to suit the taste of the moment, that when
they are revived in after-years, they seem faded, and
have a slightly stale odor, as of second-hand goods. In-
deed, it would not be difficult for any one familiar with
politics and society in France for the last score of years
to declare the date of almost any of M. Sardou's five-
act comedies from a cursory inspection of its allusions.
' Fernande,' we note from a remark in the first act, was
written about the time a bottle of ink was broken against
the Terpsichorean group of statuary which adorns the
new opera-house; and the 'Famille Benoiton' marks
the fashionable corruption of the lower Empire just
before the Exhibition of 1867. As M. Jules Claretie
has neatly said, " Sardou is a barometer dramatist, rising
and falling with the weather, as it changes or is about
to change. . . . Turn by turn, liberal or re-actionary,
as liberty or re-action may happen to be at a premium,
and pay a profit to him who traffics in it, he will praise,
for example, the reconstruction of Paris in the 'Ga-
naches ' when M. Haussmann is up at the top of the
hill, and he will scourge it in ' Maison Neuve ! ' when M.
Haussmann draws near his fall." The criticism is not
unjust. The incipient re-action against the republic
found its reflection in 1872 in 'Rabagas ;' the uneasy
restlessness in regard to foreign spies furnished the
groundwork for 'Dora' in 1877 ; the provincial election-
eering, log-rolling, and wire-pulling of the MacMahonite
struggles were used in 1878 to give color to the ' Bour
2O2 French Dramatists.
geois de Pont d'Arcy ; ' and advantage is taken of the
agitation in favor of a divorce-law in 1881 to give point
to 'Divorgons.'
In spite, therefore, of M. Sardou's extraordinary
cleverness, of his great theatrical skill, of his undenia-
ble wit, in spite of his many gifts in various directions,
he is not a dramatist of the first rank. He cannot
safely be taken as a model. As Joubert points out, " It
suffices not for an author to catch the attention and to
hold it : he must also satisfy it." M. Sardou often
catches the attention, and for a time he holds it ; but
he never satisfies it. In the preceding pages he has
been likened to a conjurer, a clown, and a barometer.
If these comparisons are just, they suggest that there
is an ever-present taint of insincerity in his work ; that
he does not put himself into it ; and that we shall seldom
find in it that " one drop of ruddy human blood " which
Lowell tells us " puts more life into the veins of a poem
than all the delusive aurum potabile that can be distilled
out of the choicest library," or compounded by the
utmost cleverness.
CHAPTER VIII.
M. OCTAVE FEUILLET.
AMONG the foremost of the French dealers in for-
bidden fruit, canned for export and domestic use, is
M. Octave Feuillet, whose wares are well known to the
American public. His novels are the fine flower of
the Byzantine literature of the Second Empire. They
have been freely translated and widely read in this
country. The 'Romance of a Poor Young Man' has
the choice distinction of being one of the few French
novels harmless enough for perusal in young ladies'
boarding-schools. The drama which M. Feuillet made
from this novel, and of which a broadened and vulgar-
ized version has been acted in America by Mr. Lester
Wallack, is equally familiar. Two other of his plays
the ' Tentation ' (skilfully transmuted by Mr. Boucicault
into ' Led Astray ') and the ' Sphinx ' have been fre-
quently shown to American play-goers. But the novels
which have been translated into English, and the plays
which have been acted in America, are only a part of
M. Feuillet's work ; and they are not sufficient to give
a fair idea of his qualities or his career.
Born in 1812, M. Octave Feuillet began to be known
toward the end of the first half of the century as one
of the assistants and imitators of Alexandre Dumas the
elder, then in the splendor of his most prodigal produc-
tion. Just what share M. Feuillet may have had in any
of the countless tales of his master it is impossible to
203
204 French Dramatists.
say, nor how many bricks he may have made for the
marvellous palace of Monte Cristo. With M. Paul
Bocage, another of Dumas's disciples, M. Feuillet wrote
a novel or two and several dramas. Among the plays
are 'Echec et Mat* (1846), ' Palma, ou la Nuit du Ven-
dredi Saint' (1847), and the 'Vieillesse de Richelieu'
(1848). These pieces are rather ponderous dramas of
the Dumas type, made on the model of ' Angele,' ' Th6-
rese,' and 'Richard Darlington.' Although common-
place and conventional, they are not without a certain
cleverness ; but they made no mark, and they have noth-
ing salient or individual about them, and so call for no
comment here.
In these juvenile writings M. Feuillet was merely
feeling his way ; and, not finding success, he abruptly
changed front, and, ceasing to follow Dumas, began
to walk in the footsteps of Alfred de Musset. After
the failure of one of his earliest plays, Musset had
given up writing for the stage, while steadily putting
forth pieces in dramatic form for the readers of the
Revue des Deux Mondes. Without his knowledge,
certain of these plays were acted at the French theatre
in St. Petersburg ; and, when the actress who had caused
their performance returned from Russia to the Theatre
Frangais she brought Musset's comedies with her.
And it happened that just about the time when M.
Feuillet left off collaborating with M. Bocage, and began
to look around for himself, Musset was having a series
of unlooked-for successes on the stage. M. Feuillet
came forward with comedies modelled on Musset's, but
different from these in one important particular. Mus-
set's heroes and heroines were a law unto themselves,
as much as to say that their loves not seldom were law-
M. Octave Feuillet. 205
less : now, M. Feuillet's pair of lovers had been duly
married by the mayor.
Here occasion serves to remark on the meagreness
of subject to be found in nearly all French fiction now-
adays, in the novel as well as in the drama. The
inexhaustible fertility and ingenuity of the French lit-
erary workmen may hide for a while the thinness of the
theme which they have wrought ; but sooner or later, in
spite of all the variety of enamel, and all eccentricity
of form by which the cunning artificers seek to distract
attention, we detect the poverty and scantiness of the
material which they are working. Just as most con-
temporary English fiction ends with the wedding-bells,
so most contemporary French fiction rings the changes
on the one tune, lawless love. "Business," said
Robert Macaire, "is other people's money." "Mar-
riage," says most modern French fiction, "is other
people's wives." To discuss why there is this tacit con-
fession of a dearth of other subjects fit for fiction,
would take me too long, and too far from the present
text ; but that the scarcity exists, even in the plays
of the best French dramatists of our time, is beyond
doubt. Of the dozen dramas of M. Alexandre Dumas
fits, all (with perhaps a single exception) turn on
adultery or illegitimacy ; and one or the other of these
subjects furnish forth half of M. Augier's plays, and
perhaps two-thirds of M. Sardou's. It is not that these
plays are all immoral : on the contrary, M. Dumas
nowadays always writes with a conscious moral aim,
though his morality has a queer twist of its own ; M.
Augier's manly comedies have the morality inherent in
all healthy works ; and even M. Sardou affronts the
proprieties far less than one might suppose. Still the
2o6 French Dramatists.
fact remains, that the majority of the dramas of these,
the first three dramatists of our day, turn on the illicit
relation of the sexes, as though that were the only
theme capable of effective dramatic treatment, and
worthy of it. Of course there are other themes. Pure
love has its dramatic possibilities, as well as impure
love. Love is only one of the passions ; and although
popular will demands that it enter into every play, it
may be made subordinate to the development of any
one of the other passions. How few of Shakspere's
plots spring from illicit love, or have any thing to do
with it ! In the best English novels of this century
we find absorbing interest and ample psychologic reve-
lation with the slightest perhaps even a too slight
attention to the theme which is the staple of corre-
sponding French fiction. Scott and Thackeray, George
Eliot and Hawthorne, have used unlawful passion, but
in proportion only, and not to the neglect of the other
motives which move mankind. French feeling differs
from ours ; and perhaps the playwrights merely dwell to
excess on a topic to which their countrymen in general
give an exaggerated attention. There is a curious
passage in one of the later writings of M. Dumas, in
which he discusses marital misfortune, and tells us that
every man thinks of it constantly, laughing at his
neighbor, and fearing for himself. The American hus-
band does not devote his days and nights to specula-
tions about his wife's fidelity.
To the French public, thus familiar with the most
high-flown and the least lawful passion, M. Feuillet
gave a new thing: he offered it the old and ever
welcome exhibition of amorous adventure, dexterously
veiled by a pretence of morality. French morality is
M. Octave Feuillet. 207
at times rather humorsome ; and in one of its freaks
it chose to accept M. Feuillet's pseudo-delicacy and
ultra-refinement, and to close its eyes to the falsity
of M. Feuillet's ethics. The public was tired of the
stormy souls in irregular situations seen in the stories
of Hugo, Dumas, George Sand, Merime'e, and Musset;
and it was ready for a novelty. M. Feuillet took
Musset for his model, turning his morality inside out.
Musset's morality was easy, to say the least : and M.
Feuillet's was pretentiously paraded; his tender and
glowing interiors were certified to contain only a duly
married couple. Instead of the trio husband, wife,
and lover almost universal in French literature, there
was only a duo, in which the husband committed adul-
tery with his own wife. It was an attempt to graft
the roses and raptures of vice on the lilies and lan-
guors of virtue. By giving conjugal endearments the
externals of criminal passion, M. Feuillet managed to
lower marriage to the level of vulgar gallantry, and to
make the reconciliation of husband and wife as in-
teresting as the chance intrigues of a courtesan. In
these boudoir dramas he outraged the sacred secrecy
of wedded life ; but so clever was his affectation of pro-
priety, that many respectable people did not look be-
neath the surface, and took him at his own word. Then
there were those, who, having preached against the
wickedness of the world, could not denounce so ingen-
uous a writer when he declared himself their ally.
And yet another class was pleased by these new plays
the pretentious prudes ; for there are prtcieuses ridi-
cttles now as well as two hundred years ago, though
there is no Moliere to put them in the pillory.
Fairness requires us to admit that perhaps the author
208 French Dramatists.
was more sincere then than we now judge from a study
of his work ; and, if he believed in himself, why should
not others believe in him ? Even those who detested
him were not always sharp enough to see the underly-
ing immodesty. One of these scoffingly nicknamed him
the family Musset, the "Musset des families," a slant-
ing allusion to an eminently proper periodical publica-
tion called the Musee des Families. But he failed to
blind so keen an observer as Sainte-Beuve, as any one
may see who reads the perfidious compliments scattered
through the study of M. Feuillet's work with which the
great critic greeted ' Sibylle,' a Roman-Catholic Ten-
denz-Roman, a "novel with a purpose," written at the
request of the devout and frivolous empress, and pub-
lished in 1863.
M. Feuillet followed in Musset's footsteps, not only
in the form of his new ventures, but also in the mode
of putting them before the public. They appeared first
in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and then in volumes
called ' Scenes et Comedies ' and * Scenes et Proverbes.'
In Musset fashion again, it was some little time before
the plays M. Feuillet had thus printed and published
were brought out at a regular playhouse. Although
there is everywhere in his work an odor of tuberoses,
sweet and stifling, a few of these earlier little comedies
are not open to the objection I have just urged ; and
in such unpretentious and simple plays, as pretty as
they are petty, M. Feuillet shows at his best. The
'Village' is a touching little sketch of country life.
The 'Fe' is an amusing attempt to import some of
the quaint mystery of fairy-folk lore into this matter-of-
fact ninteenth century. The ' Urne ' is a lively repro-
duction or imitation pastiche is the French word
M. Octave Feuillet. 209
of the comedy of Marivaux and his fellows. M. Feuil-
let has a distinct sense of the comedy of situation, and
is not lacking in Gallic lightness ; although his humor
has no depth, and his wit no edge. In all these little
plays he appears to advantage : he can handle two or
three characters in the compass of a single act without
overstraining his powers. Even the * Cheveu blanc,' a
fine specimen of his new style of tickling the jaded
palate of Parisians by a highly-spiced dish served with
an insipid and enveloping moral sauce, is more tolerable,
because shorter, than his later and more ambitious at-
tempts in the same vein. Elegant trifling, grace, ease,
and emptiness, and fine, unsubstantial talk about ego-
tism and selfishness and honor, these are the charac-
teristics of the ' Scenes et Comedies ; ' and it is in these
that M. Feuillet excels.
The three more important plays of this period of M.
Feuillet's career are the ' Crise,' ' Dalila,' and ' Redemp-
tion,' all of which passed through the Revue des Deux
Mondes on their way to the stage; the 'Crise,' for
one, waiting from 1848, when it appeared in the maga-
zine, until 1854, before it got itself acted in the theatre.
Seriously considered, ' Redemption ' is an absurd play ;
puerile, or at least boyish, in motive, and feeble even
in construction ; for the prologue is useless, and the
scenes are disjointed. 'Dalila' is better and stronger
in itself ; and, besides, it is free from the childish endeav-
or to grapple with tiny hands at the mighty problems
which vex men's souls. In Carnioli, too, there is a
character of force and freshness. Of these three plays,
however, the 'Crise' is first in interest, as it was in
point of time. It is the earliest of the dramas in which
M. Feuillet posed as the analyst of the feminine char
2io French Dramatists.
acter, and as one who had spied out all its secrets, and
had a balm for all its wounds. The crisis from which
the play takes its title is that eventful moment in life,
when, according to our author, even the most honest
and worthy woman, having aforetime led a reputable
and humdrum life, all of a sudden has a mad desire to
go to the devil headlong : it is an alleged culminating
point of the feminine curiosity of knowledge of good
and evil. There are plays which criticise themselves ;
when the story is once told, no comment is called for :
the ' Crise ' is one of these.
In the four acts there are but three characters (save
a servant or two) ; and these three characters are the
eternal trio of French fiction, husband, wife, and
lover. For ten years the husband and the wife have
lived happily together. To his oldest and best friend,
who is also the family physician, the husband confides
that of late his wife has changed : she could not be
in better health physically ; but she is now, against
her wont, at times restless, or irritable, or sentimental,
or what-not, as the whim seizes her. The doctor ex-
plains that this is the crisis in her life, the epoch of
maturity in woman, when she longs for a bite of for-
bidden fruit. The husband asks for a prescription.
The doctor explains that the only cure for this strange
taste is for the husband to find a devoted friend
who will lead the wife to the brink of the abyss, but
only to the brink; and he vouches, that, when she
shrinks back in horror, she will long no more for the
apples on the other side of the chasm : it will be a radi-
cal cure. The husband instantly beseeches the doctor
to try this experiment on his wife ; and the friend re-
luctantly but immediately consents to pretend to be the
M. Octave Feuillet. 211
lover. Husband and lover then draw up a code, under
which the lover is, if possible, to seduce the wife,
pausing before any damage is done, so that the wife
may be cured by an awful warning and a narrow escape.
Time passes, and the lover makes headway. The hus-
band finds his wife's private journal, and brings it to the
lover ; and the two men read it together to see how the
wife feels. In all this playing with fire, the lover and
the wife kindle a flame in their own hearts. At last a
guilty appointment is made. Morally, at least, the sin is
committed. Just in time the husband intervenes, and,
talking in parables, threatens to deprive the wife of her
children, should she sin. This restless and sentimental
woman, be it known, has two children. So effective are
these parables of the husband's, that the new love fades
out of the wife's heart, and she falls on her husband's
neck ; and then the curtain falls also, leaving in doubt
the fate of the unfortunate lover. Is not comment
needless ?
In 1858 M. Feuillet turned his novel, the 'Romance
of a Poor Young Man,' into a play ; and for sufficiently
obvious reasons it is the most wholesome of his later
dramas. The scene is skilfully chosen ; the characters
are sharply contrasted ; and a dexterous use is made of
our love for the heroic and self-sacrificing : so we see
the play with pleasure in spite of its quick-tempered
and disagreeable young woman, its high-toned and hot-
headed young man, its absurd old pirate, and its atmos-
phere of effeminate sentimentality. Two years later
it was followed by the 'Tentation,' the first comedy
which M. Feuillet had written directly for acting, and
not for reading ; and its simpler and closer structure
shows the benefit of the experience gained in transfer
212 French Dramatists.
ring its predecessors from the pages of a magazine to
the boards of a theatre. There is no need to dwell on
the ' Tentation,' as it is as familiar to American audi-
ences as the ' Romance of a Poor Young Man,' Mr.
Dion Boucicault having turned it into ' Led Astray.'
Nothing better shows Mr. Boucicault's skill, and knowl-
edge of the temper of our playgoing public, than the
tact and taste with which he changed the relationship
of the objectionable pair of foreign adventurers. Mr.
Boucicault's Irish soldier of fortune is a distinct char-
acter, with truly Irish wit and readiness ; whereas M.
Feuillet's foreigners were Frenchmen in disguise.
Oddly enough, M. Feuillet is fond of using foreigners
to give color and comic variety to his groups : we find
them not only in this play, but also in ' Redemption,'
'Montjoye,' and the 'Sphinx.' It is all the more odd
that he should resort to this expedient for forcing a
laugh, when he has a flow of easy comedy all his own,
and nowhere shown to better advantage than in this
very play. There is brightsome humor and charming
comedy in the courtship of the two young people ; and,
although the two old women are somewhat farcical, even
they do their share in amusing. But the main intrigue
of the play is again husband and wife and lover ; and
again the heroine is a lady of passionate aspirations
and valetudinarian virtue ; and again, when every thing
tends toward irretrievable mishap, the dramatist inter-
venes, and gives a sharp twist to plot and people ; and
after such a wrench the play cannot but end happily.
Any one of M. Feuillet's plays might be called ' On
the Brink ; ' and in very few of them is there an actual
fall over the precipice. Here the author is lacking in
intellectual seriousness : he is always ready to drop logic
M. Octave Feuillet. 213
through a trap in his trick-table. " Consequences are
unpitying," said George Eliot ; evidently M. Feuillet
does not think so : however vicious any character may
seem, we may be sure of his death-bed repentance, and
that he will die in a state of grace and the odor of sanc-
tity. Next to the uncleanness beneath the surface,
this is M. Feuillet's worse defect ; and nowhere has it
done him more harm than in ' Montjoye,' a comedy in
five acts, brought out in 1863, three years after the
' Tentation.' Taken altogether, this is perhaps M. Feuil-
let's best play : it is the only one of his serious pieces
in which he has not mistaken violence for strength.
Montjoye himself is the central figure of the picture,
and indeed the only one ; for all the others are merely
accessory, and devised to set off the protagonist. Mont-
joye is a man of velvet manner and iron will, a man
who aims at success, and who believes that the end jus-
tifies the means, and who bends or breaks every thing
to attain his end. He is a character boldly projected,
although not sufficiently justified, and at the finish not
self-consistent. He softens into sentiment, and so weak-
ens the effect on the audience. In criticising M. Augier,
M. Zola praises the final impenitence of Maitre Guerin.
This final impenitence is just what Montjoye lacks : in
real life such a man would die game.
The fact is, M. Feuillet is no Frankenstein : he never
creates any being he cannot control ; and he makes all
his creatures do his bidding at the peril of their lives.
He is rather a magician, who raises good and evil spirits
at will. Or, to be more exact, he is a writer of fairy-
tales. The stories he tells are not true, and they could
not happen anywhere out of fairyland. In one of his
' Scenes et Comedies/ he ventured within the magic cir-
214 French Dramatists.
cle in that most mysterious little play called the ' Fee/
hi which a benevolent and sprightly little fairy plays
most charming and delightful pranks, all of them,
alas ! prosaically explained away before the curtain falls.
Once granting that M. Feuillet is a writer of fairy-
tales, and it is a matter of course to find the ' Belle au
Bois dormant ' in the list of his plays ; and it is per-
haps characteristic that this ' Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood ' should be a drama rather than a comedy. The
Sleeping Beauty is the last of a feudal line, declining
into poverty, and representing the past. The young
Prince is the head of a factory, rising in riches, and
thus representing the future. The Beauty has an im-
practical and re-actionary brother ; and the Prince has
a practical and progressive sister : thus is the play pro-
vided with two pair of lovers. So far is the fairy-tale
followed, that when the young Prince gets into the
castle, the author puts the Beauty to sleep off-hand,
that the Prince may see her so. There is much clever-
erness in detail, as there is ingenuity in the main situa-
tion. Here, frankly face to face, is the conflict of old
and new, past and future, a conflict irrepressible and
irreconcilable ; and there is no end to it.
And here, again, M. Feuillet shows his artistic weak-
ness. His young Prince is no true man of the nine-
teenth century, having to do with men and machinery,
and master of himself at all events. He is no true
man at all : when he cannot get the woman he loves,
he breaks down, and moons around, and weeps saltless
tears. How much better this is handled in one of
our own novels, as those will acknowledge who recall
the same situation in the 'American' of Mr. Henry
James, Jr. ! When Christopher Newman determines
M. Octave Feuillet. 215
to marry the highborn French woman who has charmed
him with her quiet grace, he hesitates at no obstacle,
he is baffled by nothing, he works out his own work,
he fights his own fight, and he bears every thing before
him by sheer force of Yankee grit and Yankee wit,
until at last the doors of a convent clang to, and the
woman he seeks is shut up from him behind the walls
of the church, the one thing against which all Yan-
kee energy, ingenuity, and perseverance are vain.
All this time M. Feuillet was slowly outgrowing the
imitation of Musset. In the 'Romance of a Poor
Young Man,' in the 'Tentation,' in 'Montjoye,' and
especially in the ' Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,' it is
easy to see traces of Musset's manner : taken alto-
gether, however, these plays are truly M. Feuillet's
own, and not fiefs for which he must needs do homage.
As the recollection of Alfred de Musset was getting
fainter, the influence of M. Alexandre Dumas fils was
growing. Already in ' Dalila ' one may see some sign
of the ' Dame aux Camelias ' and of ' Diane de Lys ; '
and surely the ' Tentation ' and ' Montjoye ' would not
have been what they are, had it not been for the ' Demi-
Monde' and the 'Fils Naturel.' The influence of M.
Dumas upon M. Feuillet is the influence of a man of
marked individuality and vigor upon a man of feeble
fibre ; and, as time passed, this influence became plainer
and more emphatic. The author of the ' Crise ' seemed
to tire of the nickname the MM. de Goncourt had
tagged to him, and refused any longer to be the " Mus-
set des families." Not content with charming, and
drawing tears, he wished to thrill and to shock his
audience ; and M. Dumas seemed to him the best model.
But, in trying to vie with M. Dumas, M. Feuillet was
216 French Dramatists.
going against his natural gifts. As M. Charles Bigot
said in his admirable study of the author of 'Dalila/
" In reality, what the graceful talent of M. Feuillet
lacks is strength, and, with strength, all the qualities
which go with it, logic, simplicity, frankness." Now,
these are just the qualities which M. Dumas has most
abundantly. So when M. Feuillet tries to be strong,
he is only violent ; and, when he seeks to show his
muscles, he lets us see that he has only nerves, to
use the neat figure of M. Claretie.
'Julie/ a drama in three acts, which M. Feuillet
brought out at the Theatre Frangais in 1869, is plain-
ly enough an attempt to repeat the effects of the
'Supplice d'une Femme,' of which M. Dumas is one
of the authors, and the one to whom its success is due.
But ' Julie ' has none of the concentrated passion and
remorseless logic which make the 'Supplice d'une
Femme ' so startling and successful ; and whereas the
' Supplice d'une Femme ' seems dominated by a fate as
inexorable as that which determined the destiny of the
heroes of Greek drama, 'Julie' has all the weakness
of any copy, in which reliance is placed on carefully-
planned claptraps, rather than on the natural rush and
expression of emotion. The ' Supplice d'une Femme/
although it is a high-strung play, easy to turn into
ridicule, has the accent of sincerity. 'Julie' rings
false. It was a play of a kind radically opposite to
that which the author had hitherto produced ; and even
so ingenious a writer as M. Feuillet cannot change his
skin in the twinkling of an eye. In his treatment of
woman M. Dumas is severe, and logical to the point of
brutality: hitherto M. Feuillet had been petting, and
illogical to the verge of mushiness ; and it was no
M. Octave Feuillet.
217
wonder that the author of 'Julie' was greeted as a
literary dandy who was affecting the intense. Of a
truth, morality is not a garment which an author may
don and doff at will : if it be good for any thing, his
morality is in him, deep down in him, and cannot be
torn thence.
Still more violent and feeble-forcible than ' Julie ' is
M. Feuillet's latest play, the 'Sphinx,' acted in 1874.
It is hard to see in this ill-made and monstrous impos-
sibility any trace of the neat workmanship and charming
style of the family Musset. A vulgar and undigested
drama like the 'Sphinx' forces us to remember that
the author of the ' Romance of a Poor Young Man ' and
of the ' Sleeping Beauty in the Wood ' was first of all
the author of melodramatic crudities like ' Palma, ou la
Nuit du Vendredi Saint.' Just how absurd the play is
can best be seen by a rapid summary of the plot.
Blanche de Chelles is the wife of a naval officer absent
on a cruise. She lives with her father-in-law, and near
her friend Berthe de Savigny, whose husband, however,
dislikes the intimacy, and seeks to break it off. It sud-
denly transpires that the cause of Blanche's wanton bra-
vado of manner is her hitherto unsuspected love for M.
de Savigny. As soon as M. de Savigny suspects this,
he half responds, although he has hitherto disliked her.
Then, with a revulsion of feeling, he pours forth his
devotion to his wife. Blanche overhears this conjugal
scene, and instantly accepts the proposal of an impos-
sible Scotch nobleman, Lord Astley, who has asked her
to elope with him to Scotland. M. de Savigny forbids
her running away, and she takes this as a confession of
his affection .for her. Now, Madame de Savigny has
overheard M. de Savigny's avowals to Blanche, just as
218 French Dramatists.
Blanche had previously overheard his avowals to Berthe.
(It is astonishing how everybody overhears every thing
all through the play ; and listeners, we know, never hear
any good of themselves, and rarely of any one else.)
Having discovered the guilty love of her husband and
Blanche, Madame de Savigny says nothing, but suffers
in silence, until the fourth act. Then she breaks out,
and threatens Blanche with certain compromising letters
she has found. (After putting people behind doors to
listen, M. Feuillet makes use of compromising letters :
surely these are children's toys, unworthy of a serious
dramatist.) Blanche wears a mysterious ring with a
hollow sphinx's head on it, containing a deadly poison.
She opens the ring, and pours the poison into a glass
of water, just as Berthe feels faint, and asks to drink.
Here is the one dramatic scene of the piece, and one
moment of suspense and uncertainty. Instead of giving
the fatal draught to Berthe, Blanche drinks it off her-
self, and dies in horrible agony and with convulsive
contortions.
Such success as the ' Sphinx ' had was due to exter-
nal accident. With M. Feuillet's usual ingenuity he had
laid his weakest scene in one of the picturesque sites
of which he is fond ; and the moonlit marsh of the third
act did nearly as much for the ' Sphinx ' as the ruined
tower, with its lissome coat of ivy, did for the ' Romance
of a Poor Young Man.' And the author was fortunate
in having Mile. Croizette and Mile. Sarah Bernhardt for
his heroines. It was not the first time that the talent
and authority of the actress had done much for the
author, as those willingly bore witness who saw Mme.
Favart in 'Julie,' and Mme. Fargueil in 'Dalila.' It
was rumored at the time that M. Feuillet had not in-
M. Octave Feuillet. 219
tended any such naturalistic display of toxicological
phenomena as Mile. Croizette exhibited, and that the
author objected to the "sensational" devices of the
actress. If so, he was ungenerous ; for it was her last
dying speech and confession which gave the play all the
originality it could boast. As to the taste of such an
exhibition, opinion may differ : in this case, certainly, it
was quite in keeping with the tone of the play. " It is
always difficult," wrote Lamb to Godwin, "to get rid
of a woman at the end of a tragedy. Men may fight
and die. A woman must either take poison, which is a
nasty trick ; or go mad, which is not fit to be shown ;
or retire, which is poor ; only retiring is the most repu-
table."
'Julie ' and the * Sphinx/ however, are not really rep-
resentative of M. Feuillet, save in minor detail ; and they
are artistically so inferior to his earlier plays, that they
seem the result of some strange freak. The best group
of his dramatic works is that which includes the pieces
produced between 1858 and 1865, the 'Romance
of a Poor Young Man,' the 'Tentation, 'Montjoye,'
and the ' Sleeping Beauty.' Although one can scarcely
call these comedies strong plays, they are M. Feuillet's
strongest, as they are his least offensive. They reveal
his amiable talent in the most favorable light. Yet I
am not sure whether some of his smaller plays, and in
a painter's sense less "important," are not really bet-
ter bits of work and of better workmanship. He lacks
logic to construct your carefully-considered edifice in
five acts ; and he has no breadth of style. In the space
of one act he does not exhaust himself or his spectator ;
and he has ample marge and room enough to show off
his grace, his ease, his ingenuity, his charm of style,
220 French Dramatists.
and his caressing and effeminate touch. There is some-
thing feminine in the author of the * Sleeping Beauty.'
Sainte-Beuve remarked that M. Feuillet excelled in the
women's diaries, of which he is fond : as who should say
he had been a woman himself. Sustained effort is not
to be expected from a writer of feminine qualities ; and
this is, perhaps, why certain of his little comedies are
of greater worth than their bigger brothers. A humor-
ous fantasy like the 'Fruit Defendu,' in which, too,
the humor, though not robust, is not at all what a wo-
man could have written ; or a clear-cut intaglio from
life, like the ' Village,' a little masterpiece, these are
worth, not only all the 'Julies' and 'Sphinxes,' but all
the ' Romances of Poor Young Men ' and ' Sleeping
Beauties.' On the other hand, also in one act, are both
the 'Cheveu Blanc' and 'Le Pour et le Contre,' the
most disgusting of all his plays, in spite of their high
polish and superficial decorum. To come across the
' Village ' in the series of M. Feuillet's plays is like a
vision of the country rising before you as you stand in
the overladen air of a stifling ball-room. The ' Village '
is one of the author's few incursions into real life.
The most of his plays have their scenes laid in a world
of his own, much pleasanter than this work-a-day world
of ours. It is a world where youth and beauty, and wit
and riches, and titles and idleness abound, and where
there is nothing poor, or mean, or painful. Especially
is there nothing like self-sacrifice. Every thing has a
smooth surface and a fine finish. Everybody is happy,
or will be before the curtain fall. What though the
fair heroine suffer for a while for her fault? in the
end all will come right, as it always does in other
fairy-tales.
M. Octave Feuillet. 221
The want of variety in the scene is to be detected
also in the actions and characters of M. Feuillet's come-
dies, long and short. He has his favorite type of man
and woman, and they re-appear again and again. His
men all wear dress-coats of correct cut, and white ties
beyond reproach : by preference they are men of the
world, somewhat cynical, girding at society, but incapa-
ble of living out of the whirl and rush of passion : they
are men
" Who tread with jaded step the weary mill,
Grind at the wheel, and call it ' Pleasure ' still ;
Gay without mirth, fatigued without employ,
Slaves to the joyless phantom of a joy."
This is his favorite hero ; and his favorite heroine is
like unto him, save that he has greater skill in draw-
ing women. His heroine is listless, excited, nay, fever-
ish at times, sickly in body and soul, moved by a secret
and nameless unrest born of idle luxury. She fancies
herself abandoned and lonely. " Solitude," says Balzac,
" is a vacuum ; and nature abhors a vacuum in morals
as in physics." The wife in the 'Crise' is hysteria
personified ; the heroine of the ' Tentation ' is no bet-
ter : and there are a dozen like them. One feels like
prescribing cold baths and out-door exercise for all of
them. "Virtue, however solid you may think it, has
need of some encouragement, and of some little sup-
port," says the heroine of 'Le Pour et le Centre.'
Poor thing ! and if her virtue is not propped and stayed,
if there come a thunder-storm, or if any other of a
hundred and one accidents happen, the fragile virtue
gets a fall, and there is nobody to blame.
In discussing M. Victorien Sardou, the final word is
that his work is clever ; and, in considering M. Octave
t
222 French Dramatists.
Feuillet, the final word is that his works are unhealthy.
To my mind, the author of the 'Crise,' and of the
' Cheveu Blanc/ and of the ' C16 d'Or,' and of ' Le Pour
et le Centre,' is one of the most dangerous of modern
French writers of fiction. His is an insidious immo-
rality, parading itself in the livery of a militant virtue.
His is a false art, and false art is pretty surely immoral.
Summed up, his teaching is that you can touch pitch,
and not be defiled, so long as you wear ten-button kid
gloves ; that you can play with fire, and drop the torch
so soon as the flame begins to scorch your hands ; that
that you may handle edged tools, and get off scart-free ;
and that you can rush headlong at the precipice, and
pull up somehow and safely right on the brink. It
would be a wholesome pleasure to know how sturdy
and truly British Samuel Johnson, with his stalwart
morality, would have voiced his opinion of M. Feuillet' s
ethics. It happens that there is extant an American
equivalent for this British judgment. I was re-reading
M. Feuillet's productions to write these pages, when
Mr. Stedman published his fine criticism of Walt Whit-
man ; and the tricksy humor, which is said to be an
American characteristic, made me ask myself if a
greater curiosity of literature could well be imagined
than a criticism of M. Octave Feuillet of the French
Academy, novelist and dramatist, by Walt Whitman,
American poet and essayist. But a poet has the gift
of foreseeing our wants and of satisfying them before
we ask ; and so, when I took up ' Leaves of Grass ' to
read it again through Mr. Stedman's spectacles, I found
that Whitman had expressed his opinion of Feuillet, or
what we may be sure would be his opinion, did he care
to consider the Frenchman. It is in 'Chants Dmo-
cratiques ' (284), and it is as follows :
M. Octave Feuillet. 223
" They who piddle and patter here in collars and
tailed coats I am aware who they are
they are not worms or fleas."
If this seem a harsh judgment, remember that the
Frenchman has in excess the very qualities the Ameri-
can most detests in literature, sweetness, feudalism,
the aristocratic atmosphere, a lady-like touch. If this
seem a harsh judgment, let us turn to Mr. Stedman, and
try M. Feuillet by the test and standard Mr. Stedman
sets up to gauge Whitman ; and, though more cour-
teously phrased, I doubt if the verdict will differ
greatly from the suppositions we quoted above from
' Leaves of Grass.' Here is what Mr. Stedman asks :
" How far does the effort of a workman relate to what
is fine and enduring ? and how far does he succeed in
his effort ? "
CHAPTER IX.
EUGENE LABICHE.
ONE of the most curious changes of opinion that is
recorded anywhere in the history of literature took place
in France during 1878 and 1879. For more than two-
score years M. Eugene Labiche had been putting forth
comic plays with unhesitating liberality. His humorous
inventions had delighted two generations, and he was
set down in the biographical dictionaries as one of the
most amusing of French farce-writers. Attempting in
rapid succession, and with almost unbroken success,
every kind of comic play, from the keen and quick com-
edy of the Gymnase theatre to the broad buffoonery
of the Palais Royal, for nearly forty years M. Labiche
had been one of the most prolific and most popular of
French playwrights. His work was seemingly unpre-
tentious, and the author modestly made no higher claim
than to be the exciting cause of laughter and gayety.
Having made a fine fortune, he had watched for the first
symptom of failing luck ; and, as soon as two or three
plays were plainly not successes, he announced that he
should write no more, and withdrew quietly to his large
farm in Normandy.
The retiring of a mere comic writer was of no great
moment, and few paid any attention to it. But it hap-
pened that M. fimile Augier was a friend of M. Labiche,
and that one day he came to visit M. Labiche in his
country retirement, and fell to reading the odd plays of
224
Eugene Labiche. 225
his host as he found them in his library. He was so
struck and so surprised with what he discovered, that
he prevailed on the author to gather together the best
of them into a series of volumes, promising to write an
introduction. In the spring of 1878 appeared the first
volume of the 'Theatre Complet' of M. Eugene Labiche,
with a preface by M. fimile Augier, in which he pointed
out that the author of a hundred and fifty comic plays
was not a mere farce-writer, but a master of humor, for
whom he had the highest admiration. "Seek among
the highest works of our generation a comedy of more
profound observation than the 'Voyage de M. Perrichon,'
or of more philosophy than the ' Misanthrope et 1'Au-
vergnat.' Well, Labiche has ten plays of this strength
in his repertory." The leading dramatic critics of Paris
and in France dramatic criticism is still one of the
fine arts fell into line, M. Francisque Sarcey first of
all. They read the volumes of M. Labiche's ' Theatre
Complet ' as they followed one another from the press ;
and with one accord almost all confessed their surprise
at the richness and fecundity of M. Labiche's humor.
Indeed, it seemed as though the critics had taken to
heart the repairing of their previous unwitting indiffer-
ence, and were unduly lavish of admiration. So it came
to pass in the fall of 1879, when the tenth, and proba-
bly the final volume of the 'Theatre Complet ' appeared,
that, urged to overcome his modesty by his cordial
friends, M. Labiche became a candidate for a vacant
chair in the French Academy, seeking admittance among
the forty immortals chosen from the chiefs of literature,
science, and politics. Three years before, such a step
would have seemed a good joke ; but now no one laughed.
Certainly those did not laugh who opposed his election ;
226 French Dramatists.
and the staid Revue des Deux Mondes, in an elaborate
article written rather in the slashing style of the earlier
Edinburgh Review than with the suave and academic
urbanity we have been taught to expect in the pages of
the French fortnightly, the Revue des Deux Mondes
argued seriously and severely against his election. But
the tide had turned in his favor. He was elected ; and
November, 1880, M. Eugene Labiche took his place in
the Academy by the side of his fellow-dramatists, M.
Victor Hugo, M. fimile Augier, M. Jules Sandeau,
M. Octave Feuillet, M. Alexandre Dumas fils, and M.
Victorien Sardou. A seat in the Academy, it may be
remembered, was an honor refused to Jean Baptiste
Poquelin de Moliere, to Caron de Beaumarchais, to
Alexandre Dumas, and to Honore" de Balzac.
It is said, but with how much truth I do not know,
that what determined M. Labiche to stop writing for
the stage was the recalling of an incident of Scribe's
later years. One day, about 1860, M. Labiche had
called on Jacques Offenbach, at his request, to see
about the setting to music of a little play which had
already been successful without it. While they were
talking, a card was brought to Offenbach, who impa-
tiently tore it up, and told the servant to say he was
not at home. Then, turning to M. Labiche, the com-
poser said that the visitor was Scribe, who had been
bothering him to set one of his plays : " but I will not
do it," added Offenbach roughly; "for old Scribe is
played out." M. Labiche at once resolved, that when
he was old and rich, like Scribe, he would not lag super-
fluous on the stage. With the first intimations of fail-
ing power to please the fickle play-goers of Paris, he
withdrew. For now nearly five years no new play from
Eugene Labiche. 227
his pen has been brought out in Paris. He has written
a trifle or two for the 'Theatre de Campagne,' and for
'Saynetes et Monologues,' two little collections of
comedies for amateur acting ; but for the paying public
he has done nothing. It is to M. fimile Augier that
the credit is due of bringing M. Labiche out of his
retirement. The preface which M. Augier had been
too lazy too write for his own collected plays he wrote
for M. Labiche's ; and it was this preface which first
opened the eyes of the press and the public, and led to
the frank acknowledgment of M. Labiche's very unusual
merit. The theatrical managers are now only too eager
for new pieces from him ; and, in default of these, they
have revived right and left some of the most mirthful
of his plays. The ' Grammaire ' at the Palais Royal,
the ' Trente Millions de Gladiateur ' at the Nouveautes,
and, above all, the ' Voyage de M. Perrichon ' at the
Odeon, were received with great cordiality and appre-
ciation.
To most Americans, I fancy, the name of M. Labiche
is utterly unknown ; and one may well ask, What man-
ner of plays are these, that they could remain so long
misunderstood ? The question is easier to ask than to
answer. The most of them are apparently farces, in
one, two, three, four, or even five acts, farces some-
what of the Madison Morton type. Mr. Morton bor-
rowed his ' Box and Cox ' from one of them ; the late
Charles Mathews took his 'Little Toddlekins' from
another; from a third came the equally well-known
'Phenomenon in a Smock-frock.' These are all one-
act plays. Of his larger work, a version of the ' Voyage
de M. Perrichon ' has been done at the Boston Museum
as ' Papa Perrichon ; ' and Mr. W. S. Gilbert has used
228 French Dramatists.
the plot, and tried to catch something of the spirit, of
the 'Chapeau de paille d'ltalie' in his 'Wedding
March.' In many of M. Labiche's plays, perhaps in all
but the best of them, the first impression one gets is
that of extravagant buffoonery : the phrase is scarcely
too strong. But soon one sees that this is no grinning
through a horse-collar ; that it has its roots in truth ;
and that, although unduly exuberant, it is in essence
truly humorous. To the very best of M. Labiche's
plays, the half-dozen or so comedies which entitle their
author to take rank as a master, reference will be made
later. In all his work, in the weakest as well as in the
best, the dominant note is gayety : they are filled full
of frank, hearty, joyous laughter. In reading his plays,
as in seeing them on the stage, you have rarely that
quiet smile of intellectual appreciation which is called
forth by Sheridan in English, and by Beaumarchais,
and M. Augier, and M. Dumas, in French. The wit is
not subtle and quiet, excepting now and again in the
half-dozen chosen comedies. There is rather the rush
of broad and tumultuous humor than the thrust of wit,
and the clash of repartee. It is not that the dialogue
has not its felicities, and its not always felicitous quib-
blings and quips : it is because the laughter is evoked
by a humorous situation, from which, with great knowl-
edge of comic effect, and with unfailing ingenuity, the
author extracts all the fun possible. A comedy ought
to stand the test of the library, how few modern
comedies there are in English which will stand it !
but a farce, making no pretensions to be literature, may
well be excused if it does not read as well as it acts.
Yet M. Labiche's plays, frankly farces as the most of
them are, and devised to lend themselves to the whim
Eugene Labiche. 229
and exaggeration of comic actors, will still repay
perusal. I have just finished the reading of the ten
volumes of his ' Theatre Complet ; ' and I confess to real
enjoyment in the course of it. The fundamental idea
of each piece is in general so humorous, and the indi-
vidual scenes are so comic, that I paid my tribute of
laughter in my chair by myself almost as freely as I
should have done in my seat at the theatre. Even in
the plays where the fun seems forced, as though the
author were out of spirits when he wrote, at worst
there is nearly always one scene as mirthful as any one
could wish. This quality of humor, which does not
rely upon any merely verbal cleverness, is difficult to
set before a reader. An epigram of Sheridan's, or of
the younger Dumas's, can be selected for quotation,
which shall be typical of the writer's whole work. It
would be only by long paraphrases of entire plays, or
at least of the main plots, that any fair idea could be
given of M. Labiche's merits, so closely, as a rule, is
his humor the result of his comic situation. But the
attempt must be made, however inadequately. In the
' Trente Millions de Gladiateur/ one of the poorest of
M. Labiche's plays, is a scene which M. Francisque
Sarcey thus spoke of when the piece was last given in
Paris :
" The scene of the slaps is now legendary. I do not
know any thing more unexpected, or more laughable.
A druggist, very much in love with a young lady, has
by accident, one night, thinking to strike another, given
his future father-in-law a resounding slap. The father
of the lady declares that he will never consent to the
marriage until he has returned the blow. But the
druggist is a man of dignity, and he has been a com-
230 French Dramatists.
mander in the national guard : still, after many a hesi-
tation he submits. He presents himself to be slapped,
and holds forth his cheek. But he has no sooner
received the blow, than, carried away by an irresistible
impulse, he returns it, crying with disgust, ' That does
not count. We must begin again.' Finally, at the
very end of the piece, when she whom he loves is, un-
known to him, promised to another, love brings him
again to the father, and again he holds out his cheek
for the blow. The father rolls up his sleeve, gives him
the slap, and then at once points to the other suitor,
and says, 'Allow me to present my future son-in-law.' "
Another scene as characteristic is to be found in the
'Vivacite's du Capitaine Tic.' The captain is a very
quick-tempered man. His cousin Lucile, whom he
loves, says she will have nothing to do with him if he
forgets himself in future as he has done in the past.
An irritating old man, who wishes to marry Lucile to
his nephew, determines to provoke the captain into an
outbreak. Lucile promises to warn her cousin, when
he begins to get heated, by tapping a hand-bell. The
old man is intentionally irritating ; and the young officer
warms up at once, to be checked by a tap of the bell.
As Lucile puts the bell down, the old man uncon-
sciously takes it up, and goes on with his insulting
remarks. Again the captain boils over, and is about to
throw the insulter out of the window, when Lucile
shakes the old man's arm, and so rings the bell. The
officer laughs ; and after that he has no difficulty in
keeping his temper, in spite of the strength of the old
man's provocation, which indeed goes so far as to call
Lucile to her feet to defend her cousin with warmth,
not to say heat. Then the captain, leaning coolly
Eugene Labiche. 231
against the fireplace, taps a bell there, and calls his
cousin to order. Both of the young people break into
a hearty laugh, and ring their bells once again under
the nose of the disappointed old man, who goes out
saying that the captain "has no blood in his veins."
All this may sound simple enough, and perhaps dull
enough, in a bald paraphrase ; but no one would call the
scene dull when it is read in full as M. Labiche has
written it, with manifold clever little turns in the action,
and neat little touches in the dialogue. Both of the
plays from which these scenes are taken have stood the
severest of tests, the ordeal by fire : they have been
tried in the glare of the foot-lights. It is no easy task
to bring a smile on the faces of a thousand people
assembled together ; it is no light endeavor to force
the smile into a hearty laugh ; and nowhere is a public
more experienced and more exacting than in Paris.
But most of M. Labiche's plays have received due meed
of merriment. The laughter is not always evoked, it
must be confessed, by devices as simple as those just
set forth. There is sometimes a descent into the
broadly fantastic, both of situation and of dialogue.
The effort to be funny is at times apparent, and the
means adopted are now and then far-fetched.
M. Labiche's plays divide themselves readily into
three classes : first, the farcical comedies of broad and
generous fun ; second, the plays in which the fun has
run away with itself, and become extravagance, still
founded on a humorous idea, it is true, but none the
less extravagant ; and, third, the plays in which the
humor has crystallized around a thread of philosophy,
the plays in which the fun rises from the region of farce
into the domain of true comedy of a high quality. Most
232 French Dramatists.
of the fifty-seven plays in the ten volumes of the ' Thea
tre Complet ' take their places at once in the first division.
They are comic dramas, neither falling into wild farce,
nor rising into real comedy. They are comedies of large
and hearty laughter, with no Rabelaisian breadth of
beam, but with not a little of Molierian swiftness. The
linking thus of M. Labiche's name with that of the
great humorist who wrote the 'Misanthrope,' is not
as incongruous as it might seem. Along with other
and nobler qualities for which we revere him, Molie're
had comic force, the v is comica, in its highest expres-
sion, to a degree, indeed, equalled only by Shakspere
and Aristophanes. And this is a quality which M. La-
biche has, as we have seen, in a very full measure. In
a few other particulars it might be possible to trace
something of a likeness. M. Labiche, in his most fan-
ciful inventions, could scarcely surpass the exuberant
fancies of Moliere : the author of the ' Bourgeois Gen-
tilhomme ' and the ' Malade Imaginaire ' does not hesi-
tate to be exuberant, and extravagant also, when he needs
must make the pit laugh. And now and again, in M.
Labiche's very best work, there are strokes which the
author of the * School for Wives ' would not despise.
If M. Labiche were always as strong as his strongest
work, just as a bridge is as weak as its weakest point,
he would hold high rank among the heirs of Moliere.
His ' Theatre Complet ' is not really complete ; indeed,
it contains barely a third of his dramatic writing : but
it would give the reader a higher opinion of his powers,
if it were but a third of what it is ; if instead of ten
volumes, we had only three or four ; and of these, one,
or at most two, would suffice to hold the few plays which
raise the author above most, if not all, of the other
French stage-humorists of our time.
Eugene Labiche. 233
This best work of M. Labiche's, this third division
of his plays, includes a half-dozen comedies, each of
which is devoted to illustrating a philosophic truth.
They may be called dramatizations of La Rochefoucauld-
like maxims. In 'Celimare le Bien-Aim6' the truth
illustrated is seemingly the homely one, that our pleasant
vices are chickens, which will surely come home to roost.
In the ' Voyage de M. Perrichon ' it is the more ducal
axiom, that we like better those whom we have bene-
fited than those who have benefited us. The history
of this last play, if current report may be credited,
affords an instance of the rather roundabout, not to say
half-accidental, way in which M. Labiche has made his
masterpieces. He started out with the well-worn plan
of getting fun out of the misadventures of a Parisian
shopkeeper in Switzerland ; but just as Dickens soon
abandoned the sporting exploits of Mr. Winkle, which
were at first intended to form the staple of the 'Pickwick
Papers,' so M. Labiche, when the play was half written,
coming to a scene in which Perrichon was rescued from
mortal peril by the suitor for his daughter's hand, saw
at once that this scene ought to have its counterpart,
in which Perrichon should pose as the relieving hero.
This suggested the axiom, that we like better those
whom we have benefited than those who have bene-
fited us ; and the author thereupon rewrote the play,
taking this maxim as the Q. E. D. Perrichon's daughter
now has two suitors, one of whom, acting up to the
axiom, coolly calculates that to have been foolish
enough to get into danger will not be a pleasant recol-
lection, while to have saved another's life will be most
gratifying to recall. So he pretends to be in danger,
and lets Perrichon get him out of it, and calls him a
234 French Dramatists.
preserver, and has the rescue elaborately noticed in
the newspaper. The simple and conceited shopkeeper
avoids the man who saved him, and seeks the man he
saved ; and so the play goes on. Whenever one suitor
really serves Perrichon, the other devises a fresh occa-
sion for Perrichon apparently to benefit him. In the
end, of course, all is exposed and explained, in a less
skilful manner than is usual with M. Labiche, and
the really brave and deserving young man gets the fair
daughter. Here, again, all paraphrase is bald and bleak
when contrasted with the fertile luxuriance of the
humorous original; but I trust the subject has been
shown plainly enough for the reader to see that it lends
itself readily to comic treatment. I trust, too, that the
reader may be induced to examine for himself (and also
for herself) the play as it is in the second volume of
M. Labiche's 'Theatre Complet,' where it is accompanied
by the * Grammaire,' a bright and lively little play in
one act ; by the ' Petits Oiseaux ; ' by the ' Vivacit^s du
Capitaine Tic/ already referred to ; and by the ' Poudre
aux Yeux,' an almost equally amusing though short
comedy in two acts, perhaps better known in America
than any other of its author's work, as it forms part of
the excellent college series of French plays edited by
Professor Bdcher of Harvard. These five plays are all
entertaining, characteristic of the author, and free from
all taint of impropriety.
A certificate of good moral character cannot be given
to all of M. Labiche's plays. The ' Plus Heureux des
Trois' and 'Celimare le Bien-Aime",' two of his best
works, had better be avoided by those who have not
been broken in to French ways of looking at life. But
two other plays very nearly as good, the 'Cagnotte'
Eugene Labiche. 235
and ' Moi,' are without any Frenchiness or Parisianism.
These four plays, with the * Voyage de M. Perrichon,'
represent M. Labiche at his best. The first query
which the reader of the rest of his works puts to him-
self is, Why does not M. Labiche write always at this
level ? Why does he let wit so lively, and humor so
true, waste themselves on the wildness of farce ? The
answer is not far to seek. It is to be found in the
insultingly modest way he spoke to M. Augier about his
own writings. It is because he really did not know
how good his best work was. He apparently ranked
all his plays together : he had aimed only at fun, at
amusement in making them ; and, although some had
paid better and been more praised than others, he did
not see that now and again one of them rose right up
from the low level of farce to the broad table-land of
true comedy. This, of course, suggests the further
question, Why did he not see his own merits ? And
that is not so easy to answer. Perhaps it is owing to
his writing generally for farce theatres, where the comic
company so overlaid his work with the freaks of indi-
vidual fantasy that he could not see the higher qualities
of what was best, any more than did the professional
critics, whose duty it surely was to sound a note of
warning, and prevent such pure comic force from wast-
ing itself. Perhaps it is due to some want of self-
reliance, of which one may possibly see proof in the
fact that there are fifty-seven plays in the ten volumes
of 'Theatre Complet/ containing in all one hundred
and twelve acts, and that four acts only are the work
of M. Labiche alone, and unaided by a collaborator.
Literary partnerships are the fashion in France nowa-
days, a fashion which tends to the general improve-
236 French Dramatists.
ment of play-making, but which has hampered M.
Labiche, and kept him from doing his best. In one
way his reluctance to rely on himself is freely shown
when we come to examine the result of his collabo-
rating. First of all, we see, that although at least a
dozen different writers at different times, some of them
again and again, worked in partnership with him, yet
the fifty-seven plays are all alike stamped with his
trade-mark. M. Augier and M. Legouv6 and M. Gon-
dinet are authors of positive force and distinct charac-
teristics; yet the plays they have written with M.
Labiche are like his other plays, and unlike their other
plays. In the development of the comic theme, in
expressing all possible fun from the situation, in giving
the action unexpected turns to bring it back again for
a fresh squeeze, in all this M. Labiche is unexcelled,
in all this the plays are beyond peradventure his doing.
But in the technical construction, in the sequence of
scenes, in the mere stage-craft, which differs in different
pieces, and is indifferent in many of them, there is noth-
ing of M. Labiche's own : in all probability, intent upon
his higher task, he slighted this, and left it in great
measure to his coadjutors. M. Augier points out the
generic likeness of all the plays which M. Labiche has
signed, and suggests that it is because he writes all
these plays alone. In M. Augier's case, repeated con-
versations between him and M. Labiche enabled them
to make out a very elaborate scenario : this was their
joint work; and, this done, M. Labiche requested permis-
sion to write the piece himself, which M. Augier gen-
erously granted, revising the completed play in a few
minor points only. It may be remarked parenthetically
that this piece, the ' Prix Martin,' is not a good speci-
men of the handiwork of either author.
Eugene Labiche. 237
Although in general the technical construction of
the play seems to be the work of his collaborator of the
moment, yet even in the construction we can now and
again detect traces of M. Labiche's individual clever-
ness. No one of the contemporary comic dramatists
of France can so neatly and so simply get out of a
seemingly inextricable entanglement. A single sen-
tence, a solitary word sometimes, a slight turn given to
the dialogue, and the knot is cut, and nothing remains
but " Bless you, my children," and the fall of the cur-
tain. An instance of this dramaturgical cleverness can
be seen in the ' Deux Timides,' one of the most amus-
ii>g of his one-act plays. 1
The critic in the Revue des Deux Mondes, pleading
specially against M. Labiche's candidature for a seat
among the forty, pointed out that he has not hesitated
to use the same idea twice ; that, for instance, the
' Vivacite's du Capitaine Tic ' is erected on the same
foundation as the shorter and slighter * Un Monsieur
qui prend la Mouche,' both being based on the iden-
tical hot-headedness of the hero. He might have in-
stanced also, that, instead of repeating the situation, M.
Labiche sometimes reverses it ; that the ' Plus Heureux
des Trois ' is, in part, the turning inside out of the idea
of ' Celimare le Bien-Aime.' In spite of discoveries
like these, one of the first things which strikes the
reader of M. Labiche's plays is his almost inexhausti-
ble variety of comic incident. Any one of his plays is
a series of freshly humorous situations. What little
old material may here and there be detected is wholly
l An admirable adaptation of this amusing little piece, by Mr. Julian Magnus,
has been printed in ' Comedies for Amateur Acting.' (New York : D. Appleton
& Co., 1879.)
238 French Dramatists.
cast in tne shadow by the brilliant fun of the original
incidents. But, strange to say, the sterility of charac-
ter is almost as quickly remarked as the fertility of
situation ; and this shows at once that he cannot, no
matter at what interval, be put even in the same class
with Moliere, who sought for humor in the human heart,
and not in the external circumstances of life.
This repetition of characters is but added evidence
in proof of M. Labiche's lack of ambition, and want of
belief in his best powers ; for in ' Moi,' written for
the Com^die-Franc.aise, he has shown a capacity for the
searching investigation of characters invented with
almost as much freshness as he had in other plays con-
trived comic incidents. There are lines in ' Moi ' wor-
thy of the highest comedy. And in more than one
other play his characters deserve, indeed demand, study.
But in general they are merely the Punch-and-Judy
puppets required by the plot. There is scarcely a fe-
male figure in all his plays which the memory can
grasp : all are slight, intangible, shadowy, merely the
projections needed by the story. M. Sarcey tells us
that M. Labiche does not pretend to " do " girls or wo-
men : he says that they are not funny.
None of his men are as weak as his women. Some
of his peasants are drawn with great and amusing ac-
curacy. Most of his minor characters are vigorously
outlined, and well contrasted one with another; and
one character, repeated with but little alteration as the
central figure in perhaps two dozen plays, is drawn with
a marvellous insight into the inner nature of the bour-
geois of Paris. Although grotesque almost in its humor,
the caricature is vital ; for it is a personification of the
exact facts of bourgeois life. M. Perrichon and Celi-
Eugene Labiche. 239
mare and Champbourcy (in the * Cagnotte '), and their
fellows in many another play, are not unlike Mr. Mat-
thew Arnold's homme sensuel moyen ; and with a mas-
ter hand M. Labiche lays bare the selfish foibles and
petty vanity of the average sensual man.
One cannot help wondering what Mr. Matthew Ar-
nold's opinion of M. Labiche's ' Theatre Complet ' would
be, if it were of high or of equal enough merit to deserve
his study. Mr. Arnold would surely be confirmed in his
belief that it is for the average sensual man that the
French dramatist of our day writes. Not that there is
any pandering to sensuality in M. Labiche's plays : on
the contrary, the ultimate moral of his work is always
wholesome. As the sharp critic of the Revue des Deux
Mondes confessed, his pleasantry is not either heavy
and gross as in the old vaudeville, or licentious as in
the new opera-bouffe. " Generally it is gay, witty, and,
what is not without value, at bottom always honest."
And as M. John Lemoinne told M. Labiche in his an-
swer to his reception-speech at the French Academy,
" Your comedy is perhaps light, nay, even risky : but
there is always something which keeps it from being
immoral ; it is never sentimental."
This is no more than the exact truth. Perilously
risky as some of M. Labiche's plays are, none of them
have any trace or taint of sentimentality; and when
they are acquitted of that deadly sin, they cannot be
fundamentally immoral. In fact, M. Labiche is too
healthy to take kindly to vice ; but like other hearty
natures, like Rabelais and like Moliere, he is not always
free from a fancy for breadth rather than length. He
has the old French set gaulois rather than Attic salt.
If, dropping morality, we consult Mr. Arnold as to
240 French Dramatists.
M. Labiche's right to a seat in the Academy, we shall
have no difficulty in getting an answer. In the essay
on the 'Literary Influence of Academies,' Mr. Arnold
gives us Richelieu's words in founding the French Acad-
emy : its " principal function shall be to work with all
the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure
rules to our language." It was to be a literary tribunal.
" To give the law, the tone, to literature, and that tone
a high one, is its business." Sainte-Beuve said that
Richelieu meant it to be a /taut jury, "a sovereign
organ of opinion." And M. Renan tells us that "all
ages have had their inferior literature ; but the great
danger of our time is, that this inferior literature tends
more and more to get the upper place. No one has the
same advantages as the Academy for righting against
this mischief." To make these quotations is to quash
M. Labiche's title to a seat among the forty jurists.
But, if the Academy exists for such high aims, why is
it not true to them ? How many of the dramatists who
now have seats there are entitled to them ? M. Victor
Hugo of course is ; and equally, of course, is M. Iimile
Augier, for he is a master, writing in the grand style.
And perhaps M. Jules Sandeau may justly claim a place
for his ' Mademoiselle de la Seigliere,' and also for his
share in the ever-admirable 'Gendre de M. Poirier.'
But by what right is M. Octave Feuillet there ? The
empress used to like his novels. And is M. Alexandre
Dumas, or M. Victorien Sardou, a writer who can speak
with " the authority of a recognized master in matters
of tone and taste " ? M. Dumas is strong and brilliant ;
and M. Sardou is very clever. If these have each a seat
among the forty, why not M. Labiche also? He is
surely not more out of place than they. Their election
Eugene Labiche. 241
was the reward of skill and ability and success : his
would mean no more and no less. If the Academy is
what Richelieu meant it to be, M. Labiche belongs out-
side. If its duty is to reward success, as the election
of M. Feuillet, M. Dumas, and M. Sardou apparently
asserts, then M. Labiche also deserved his election ;
for, as M. Smile Augier tells us in the preface from which
quotation has been made before, M. Labiche is a master ;
"and without hyperbole, since there are as many degrees
of mastership as there are regions in art, the important
thing is to be a master, not a schoolboy. It is in a
matter like this that Caesar's phrase is so true : ' Better
to be the first in a village than the second at Rome.' I
prefer Teniers to Giulio Romano, and Labiche to the
elder Crebillon. It is not the hazard of the sentence
which brings together under my pen the names of La-
biche and of Teniers. There are striking analogies
between these two masters. There is at first the same
aspect of caricature : there is, on looking closer, the same
fineness of tone, the same justness of expression, the
same vivacity of movement." And here follows a re-
mark, already cited, but repeated now because it is the
ultimate expression of M. Labiche's ability : " The foun-
dation of all these joyeusetes d toute oritrance is truth.
Look among the highest works of our generation, seek
for a comedy of more profound observation than the
' Voyage de M. Perrichon,' or of more philosophy than
the ' Misanthrope et 1'Auvergnat.' Well, Labiche has
ten plays of this strength in his repertory."
The adverse criticism of the Revue des Deux Mondes
has been cited : in due course of time the Nouvelle
Revue bore witness in his favor. A long essay in the
younger magazine praised M. Labiche very highly, and
242 French Dramatists.
suggested that we are to see in him the comic underside
of the realistic movement of which M. Augier and M.
Dumas offer the more serious examples. The same
writer calls him half a Gaul and half a Parisian, and
then draws a close parallel between M. Labiche and
LaFontaine, the spoilt child of French literature. Here
we have M. Labiche's name linked with M. Augier's
and M. Dumas's. What M. Augier thinks of him has
already been quoted. What M. Dumas thinks of him
is equally worthy of quotation. In a brief consideration
of the present state of the French stage, 1 M. Dumas
takes occasion to say that he is " one of those who
laughs and is glad to laugh ... at ' Celimare le Bien-
Aime" ' and the * Voyage de M. Perrichon,' and at two or
three other of the plays of Labiche, who, in parenthesis,
is one of the finest and frankest of the comic poets
who have existed since Plautus, the only one, perhaps,
who can be compared to him."
Here is high praise, and enough. Likened by the
Nouvelle Revue to Jean LaFontaine, by M. Augier to
Teniers, and by M. Dumas to Plautus, surely M. La-
biche is a writer of no common quality, and well worth
the study of all who seek to discover the secrets of the
stage.
1 Entr'actes, iii. 336. (Paris : C. L6vy, 1878.)
CHAPTER X.
HENRI MEILHAC AND LUDOVIC HALEVY.
No doubt it may surprise some theatre-goers who
are not special students of the stage to be told that
the authors of 'Froufrou' are the authors also of
the ' Grand Duchess of Ge'rolstein,' and of the ' Belle
Helene,' of ' Carmen,' and of the ' Petit Due.' There
are a few, I know, who think that 'Froufrou' was
written by M. Victorien Sardou, and who, without
thinking, credit Jacques Offenbach with the compo-
sition of the words as well as the music of the ' Grand
Duchess ; ' and, as for ' Carmen,' is it not an Italian
opera ? and is not the book, like the music, the work of
some Italian ? As a matter of fact, all these plays,
unlike as they are to each other, and not only these, but
many more, not a few of them fairly well known to
the American play-goer, are due to the collaboration
of M. Henri Meilhac and M. Ludovic Halevy.
Born in 1832, M. Henri Meilhac, like M. fimile Zola,
dealt in books before he began to make them. He
soon gave up trade for journalism, and contributed
with pen and pencil to the comic Journal pour Rire.
He began as a dramatist in 1855, with a two-act play,
at the Palais Royal theatre. Like the first pieces of
Scribe and of M. Sardou, and of so many more who
have afterward abundantly succeeded on the stage, this
play of M. Meilhac's was a failure; and so also was
his next, likewise in two acts. But in 1856 the 'Sara-
243
244 French Dramatists.
bande du Cardinal,' a delightful little comedy in one
act, met with favor at the Gymnase. It was followed
by two or three other comediettas equally clever. In
1859 M. Meilhac made his first attempt at a comedy in
five acts ; but the ' Petit-fils de Mascarille ' had not the
good fortune of his ancestor, whose godfather Moliere
was.
In 1860, for the first time, M. Meilhac was assisted
by M. Ludovic HaleVy ; and in the twenty years since
then their names have been linked together on the
title-pages of twoscore or more plays of all kinds,
drama, comedy, farce,- opera, operetta, and ballet. M.
Meilhac's new partner was the nephew of the HaleVy
who is best known out of France as the composer of
the 'Jewess ;' and he was the son of M. L6on Halevy,
poet, philosopher, and playwright. Two years younger
than M. Henri Meilhac, M. Ludovic HaleVy held a
place in the French civil service until 1858, when he
resigned to devote his whole time, instead of his spare
time, to the theatre. As the son of a dramatist and
the nephew of a popular composer, he had easy access
to the stage. He began as the librettist-in-ordinary
to Offenbach, for whom he wrote 'Bata-clan' in 1855,
and later the 'Chanson de Fortunio,' the 'Pont des
Soupirs,' and ' Orphe"e aux Enfers.' The first very suc-
cessful play which MM. Meilhac and Halevy wrote to-
gether was the book of an operetta for Offenbach ; and
it was possibly the good fortune of this first venture
which finally affirmed the partnership. Before the tri-
umph of the 'Belle Helene,' in 1864, the collaboration
had been tentative, as it were : after that, it was as
though the articles had been definitely ratified; not
that either of the parties has not now and then in-
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. 245
dulged in outside speculations, trying a play alone, or
with an outsider, but this is without prejudice to the
permanent partnership.
This kind of literary union, the long-continued con-
junction of two kindred spirits, is better understood
amongst us than the indiscriminate collaboration which
marks the dramatic career of M. Eugene Labiche, for
instance. Both kinds were usual enough on our stage
in the days of Elizabeth ; but we can recall the ever-
memorable example of Beaumont and Fletcher, while
we forget the chance associations of Marston, Dekker,
Chapman, and Ben Jonson. And in contemporary lite-
rature we have before us the French tales of MM.
Erckmann-Chatrian, and the English novels of Messrs.
Besant and Rice. The fact that such a union endures
is proof enough that it is advantageous. A long-lasting
collaboration like this of MM. Meilhac and Halevy
must needs be the result of a strong sympathy and a
sharp contrast of character, as well as of the possession
by one of literary qualities which supplement those of
the other.
One of the first things noticed by an American
student of French dramatic literature is that the chief
Parisian critics generally refer to the joint work of
these two writers as the plays of M. Meilhac, leaving
M. HaleVy altogether in the shade. At first this seems
a curious injustice ; but the reason is not far to seek.
It is not that M. Halevy is some two years the junior
of M. Meilhac : it lies rather in the quality of their
respective abilities. M. Meilhac has the more mascu-
line style ; and so the literary progeny of the couple
bear rather his name than his associate's. M. Meilhac
has the strength of marked individuality, he has a style
246 French Dramatists.
of his own. one can tell his touch ; while M. Halevy
is merely a clever French dramatist of the more con-
ventional pattern. This we detect by considering the
plays which each has put forth alone, and unaided by
the other. Pausing before one of M. Meilhac's works,
we are in no doubt as to the maker ; and there is no
need to seek in a corner for the Meilhac inv* et del* ;
while M. Halevy's clever pictures of Parisian society,
less distinct in their individuality, might be perhaps
passed over as belonging simply to the "Modern
French School."
Before finally joining with M. HaleVy, M. Meilhac
wrote two comedies in five acts, of high aim and skil-
ful execution ; and two other five-act pieces have been
written by MM. Meilhac and Halevy together. The
' Vertu de Celimene ' and the ' Petit-fils de Mascarille '
are by the elder partner : ' Fanny Lear ' and ' Froufrou '
are the work of the firm. Yet in these last two it is
difficult to see any trace of M. HaleVy's handiwork.
Allowing for the growth of M. Meilhac's intellect dur-
ing the eight or ten years which intervened between
the work alone and the work with his associate, and
allowing for the improvement in the mechanism of
play-making, I see no reason why M. Meilhac might
not have written ' Fanny Lear ' and ' Froufrou ' sub-
stantially as they are, had he never met M. HaleVy ;
but it is inconceivable that M. Hal6vy alone could have
attained so high an elevation, or have gained so full a
comic force. . Perhaps, however, M. Halevy deserves
credit for the better technical construction of the later
plays : merely in their mechanism, the first three acts
of 'Froufrou' are marvellously skilful. And perhaps,
also, his is a certain softening humor, which is the
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. 247
cause that the two later plays, written by both part-
ners, are not so hard in their brilliance as the two ear-
lier comedies, the work of M. Meilhac alone.
It may seem something like a discussion of infinitesi-
mals ; but I think M. HaleVy's co-operation has given
M. Heilhac's plays a fuller ethical richness. To the
younger writer is due a simple but direct irony, as well
as a lightsome and laughing desire to point a moral when
occasion serves. It happens that M. HaleVy has put
forth two volumes of sketches and stories, ' Monsieur
et Madame Cardinal ' and the ' Petites Cardinal,' in
which the chief characters are two sisters in the ballet
of the opera, and their parents, as disreputable an old
couple as you could find anywhere in Paris. The gar-
rulity, and, so to speak, bonhomie, of the old wife, and
the highly humorous linking of dignity and depravity
in the husband, recall the somewhat similar figures of
M. and Mme. Pipelet in Sue's ' Mysteries of Paris.'
(Here occasion offers to note that it was as the princi-
pality of the marvellous young man who plays the part
of Providence in Sue's book that the Grand Duchy of
Gerolstein made its first appearance in fiction.) M. Ha-
levy's touch is lighter than Sue's, and his humor is less
oily. He succeeds in giving M. and Mme. Cardinal more
color, and less monotony, than Sue endowed his M. and
Mme. Pipelet with. The type is common enough, I
fancy, in Paris, where the porter's lodge is the stepping-
stone to the stage-box ; and a comparison of the stud-
ies of it, made in 1840 with those made in 1870 and
1880, is not uninstructive. I have mentioned M. Hal6-
vy's two volumes here, because they are his only con-
siderable publications apart from M. Meilhac's, and
because also I think I can detect in them an ironical
248 French Dramatists.
morality not to be discovered in M. Meilhac's work.
Most of these little sketches were written for the Vie
Parisienne, and this is to say that they are not intend-
ed virginibus puerisque ; but the attitude of the author
is that of a half-pitying, half-contemptuous moralist.
Whenever the same ironical morality is to be detected
in the plays written by both authors together, it seems
to me fair to give M. Halevy the greater share of the
credit ; and even in stories written for the Vie Parisi-
enne, and in plays written for the Palais Royal theatre,
the discovery may be made far more often than the
chance reader might suppose.
Certainly I shall not hold up a play written to please
the public of the Palais Royal, or even of the Gymnase,
as a model of all the virtues. Nor need it be, on the
other hand, an embodiment of all the cardinal sins.
The frequenters of the Palais Royal theatre are not
babes. Young people of either sex are not taken
there ; only the emancipated gain admittance ; and to
the seasoned sinners who haunt theatres of this type
these plays by MM. Meilhac and Halevy are harmless.
Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could
hurt any one capable of understanding it. Most of
their plays are not to be recommended to ignorant
innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not meant for
young men and maidens. They are not wholly free
from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all
French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a
little of the work done by the strongest men in France.
M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in
indecency from mere wantonness. He has no liking for
vice : but his virtue sits easily on him ; and, though he
is sound on the main question, he looks upon the vaga-
Henri Meilkac and Ludovic Hal'evy. 249
ries of others with a gentle eye. M. HaleVy, it seems to
me, is made of somewhat sterner stuff. He raises a
warning voice now and then, in ' Fanny Lear,' for
instance, the moral is pointed explicitly ; and, even
where there is no moral tagged to the fable, he who has
eyes to see, and ears to hear, can find " a terrible exam-
ple" in almost any of these plays, even the lightest.
Considered aright, there is a moral lesson in ' Froufrou ; '
and, as M. Claretie said of the authors when it was first
acted, " Their work is like a red-hot iron dipped in rice-
powder : it smells good, but it cauterizes too." For
the congregation to which it was delivered, there is a
sermon in ' Toto chez Tata,' perhaps the piece in which,
above all others, the muse seems Gallic and tgrillarde.
That is a touch of real truth, and so of a true morality,
where Tata, the fashionable courtesan, leaning over her
stairs as Toto the schoolboy bears off her elderly lover,
and laughing at him, cries out, " You, my little fellow,
I'll catch you again in four or five years ! " And a cold
and cutting stroke it is a little earlier in the same little
comedy, where Toto, left alone in Tata's parlor, negli-
gently turns over her basket of visiting-cards, and sees
" names which he knew because he had learnt them by
heart in his history of France." Still, in spite of this
truth and morality, I do not advice the reading of ' Toto
chez Tata ' in young ladies' seminaries. Young ladies
in Paris do not go to hear Madame Chaumont, for whom
* Toto ' was written ; nor is the Varietes, where it was
played, a place where a girl can take her mother.
It was at the Varies in December, 1864, that the
' Belle Helena ' was produced : this was the first of half
a score of plays, written by MM. Meilhac and HaleVy, for
which Jacques Offenbach composed the music. Chief
250 French Dramatists.
among these are * Barbe-bleue,' the ' Grand Duchess
of Gerolstein,' the ' Brigands/ and ' Pe>ichole.' When
we recall the fact that these five operas are the most
widely known, the most popular, and by far the best,
of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on
his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and HaleVy, or to
point out how important a thing the quality of the
opera-book is to the composer of the score. When we
recall that the ' Grand Duchess ' and ' Belle Helene '
are the typical op/ras-bouffes, and that other optras-
bouffes are mostly attempts to imitate them or emulate
them, there is no need to dwell on the fact that opera-
bouffe as we now know it owes as much to MM. Meil-
hac and HaleVy as it does to Jacques Offenbach. So
long as MM. Meilhac and Halevy furnished Offenbach's
books for him, the resultant was always a work of art,
with the restraint which art demands. So soon as he
went to other librettists, the product of the conjunction
became violent, vulgar, and inartistic; above all, the
"moral game-flavor" which Ambros and Mr. Apthorp
find in Offenbach's work was intensified beyond endur-
ance by decent people. What MM. Meilhac and Ha-
leVy kept subordinate, and at best suggested, was by
their copyists paraded and emphasized. In short, it is
not unjust to say that the credit of optra-bouffe belongs
to MM. Meilhac and Haldvy, and the discredit of it
belongs to the feebler and louder librettists who tried
hard to give a double meaning to words without any.
The earlier librettos which MM. Meilhac and Hal6vy
wrote for Offenbach were admirably made: they are
models of what a comic-opera book should be. I cannot
well imagine a better bit of work of its kind than the
'Belle HeUene,' or the 'Grand Duchess.' Plot and
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Hal'evy. 251
dialogue and characters, all are admirable, and no-
where are they wanting. Since MM. Meilhac and
Halevy have ceased writing for Offenbach, they have
done several books for M. Charles Lecocq : among
them are the 'Petit Due' and the 'Grande Demoiselle.'
These are rather light comic operas than true optras-
bouffes. But, if there is an elevation in the style of
the music' there is an emphatic falling-oil in the qual-
ity of the words. From the ' Grand Duchess ' to the
'Petit Due' is a great descent. The former was a
genuine play, complete and self-contained : the latter
is a careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the com-
poser to fill up. The story, akin in subject to Mr. Tom
Taylor's fine historical drama, ' Clancarty,' is pretty ;
but there is no trace of the true poetry which made
the farewell letter of ' Perichole ' so touching, or of the
true comic force which projected G^neVal Bourn. 'Car-
men,' which, like 'Perichole,' owes the suggestion of
its plot and characters to Prosper Merime'e, is little
more than the task-work of the two well-trained play-
makers. It was sufficient for its purpose, no more and
no less.
Of all the opera-books of MM. Meilhac and HaleVy,
that one is easily first and foremost which has for its
heroine the Helen of Troy, whom Marlowe's Faustus
declared,
" Fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."
In the 'Belle Hlene' we see the higher wit of M.
Meilhac. M. Halevy had been at the same college with
him, and they had pored together over the same legends
of old time. But, working without M. Meilhac on
1 Orphe aux Enfers,' M. Halevy showed his inferiority ;
252 French Dramatists.
for ' Orphee ' is the old-fashioned anachronistic skit on
antiquity, funny, if you will, but with a fun often
labored, not to say forced, the fun of physical incon-
gruity and exaggeration. When, however, M. HaleVy
wrote his next play of Greek life, M. Meilhac's finer
insight prevailed ; and in the ' Belle Helene ' the fun,
easy and flowing, is of a very high quality, and it has
root in mental, not physical incongruity. Here, indeed,
is the humorous touchstone of a whole system of gov-
ernment and of theology. And allowing for the varia-
tions made with comic intent, it is altogether Greek in
spirit, so Greek, in fact, that I doubt whether any one
who has not given his days and nights to the study of
Homer and of the tragedians, and who has not thus
taken in by the pores the subtle essence of Hellenic
life and literature, can truly appreciate this French farce.
Of its kind the 'Belle Helene' seems to me a great
work : the kind, of a truth, is not great ; but it is great
in its kind. Planch6's ' Golden Fleece ' is in the same
vein, but the ore is not so rich. Frere's ' Loves of the
Triangles,' and some of his Anti-Jacobin writing, are
perhaps as good in quality ; but the subjects are inferior
and temporary. Scarron's vulgar burlesques and the
cheap parodies of many contemporary English play-
makers are not to be mentioned in the same breath
with this scholarly fooling. There is something in the
French genius akin to the Greek ; and here was a Gallic
wit who could turn a Hellenic love-tale inside out, and
wring the uttermost drop of fun from it, without recourse
to the devices of the booth at the fair, the false nose
or the simulation of needless ugliness. The French
play, comic as it was, did not suggest hysteria or epi-
lepsy ; and it was not so lacking in grace that we could
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. 253
not recall the original story without a shudder. There
is no shattering of an ideal ; and one cannot reproach
the authors of the ' Belle Helene ' with what Theophras-
tus Such calls " debasing the moral currency, lowering
the value of every inspiring fact and tradition." They
have not, to use the quotation from La Bruyere which
Mr. Such takes as the text of the essay from which I
have just borrowed, they have not seen the ridiculous
where it was not, to the spoiling of their own taste and
that of others ; but they have seen what was ridiculous
in the old Hellenic legend, and they have set it forth
with grace, and in a manner which pleases. (As to the
" instruction " which La Bruyere also requires, I will
say nought. We must not ask too much from one of
Offenbach's opera-books.) To the ridiculous from the
sublime is but a hair's breadth ; and who shall say on
which side of the line Menelaus stands, this epic hus-
band ? And Helen herself, if half the tales about her
were true, is not a lady who would be received in society
nowadays, except perhaps in princely circles. I cannot
but think that after all, MM. Meilhac and Halevy may
have given us a better portrait of the lovely daughter
of Leda and the swan, than hangs in any gallery of his-
torical paintings. What a living, loving bit of flesh
and blood their fair Helen is ! Greek to the back-bone,
but a Greek who had read the dramas of M. Victor
Hugo. With her "fatality," she is a true heroine of
the Romanticists. And Paris, as Homer shows him to
us, has he not something of the comic-opera tenor ?
And Achilles, as thick-witted, no doubt, as he was thin-
skinned, he must have been very much the sort of a
bore he appears to us in M. Meilhac's play. But above
all these figments of antiquity, conceived as they are
254 French Dramatists.
with high comic richness and strength, towers the busi-
ness-like priest Calchas, the Augur we cannot meet
without laughter, the quintessence of classical mythol-
ogy, an unforgettable figure of the fullest comic force.
Surpassed only by the ' Belle Helene ' is the ' Grand
Duchess of Gerolstein.' It is more than fifteen years
since all the world went to Paris to see an Exposition
Universelle, and to gaze at the "sabre of my sire;" and
since a Russian emperor, going to hear the operetta
said to have been suggested by the freak of a Russian
empress, sat incognito in one stage-box of the little
Varite"s theatre, and, glancing up, saw a Russian grand
duke in the other. It is fifteen years now since the
tiny army of her Grand-ducal Highness took New
York by storm, and since the American play-goer
hummed his love for the military, and walked from the
French Theatre along Fourteenth Street to Delmoni-
co's to supper, sabring the waiters there with the vene-
rated weapon of her sire. The French Theatre is no
more ; and Delmonico's is no longer at that Fourteenth-
street corner ; and her Highness Mile. Toste"e is dead,
and so is Offenbach himself ; and his sprightly tunes
have had the fate of all over-popular airs, and are for-
gotten now. Oit sont les neiges d'antan ?
It has been said that the authors regretted having
written the ' Grand Duchess,' because the irony of
history soon made a joke on Teutonic powers and prin-
cipalities seem like unpatriotic satire. Certainly they
had no reason to be ashamed of the literary quality of
their work : in its class it yields only to its predeces-
sor. There is no single figure as fine as Calchas. G6-
ne"ral Bourn is a coarser outline ; but how humorous and
how firm is the drawing of Prince Paul and Baron
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. 255
Grog! and her Highness herself may be thought a
cleverer sketch of youthful femininity than even the
Hellenic Helen. It is hard to judge the play now.
Custom has worn its freshness, and made it too familiar :
we know it too well to criticise it clearly. Besides, the
actors have now overlaid the action with overmuch
"business." In spite of all these difficulties, the merits
of the piece are sufficiently obvious. Its constructive
skill can be remarked : the first act, for example, is one
of the best bits of exposition on the modern French
stage.
Besides these plays for music, and besides the more
important five-act comedies to be considered later, MM.
Meilhac and HaleVy are the authors of thirty or forty
comic dramas, as they would be called on the English
stage, or farce-comedies in one, two, three, four, and
even five acts, ranging in aim from the gentle satire of
sentimentality in the ' Veuve ' to the outspoken farce
of the ' ReVeillon.' Among the best of the longer of
these comic plays are 'Tricoche et Cacolet' and the
' Boule.' Both were written for the Palais Royal ; and
they are models of the new dramatic species which
came into existence at that theatre about twenty years
ago, as M. Francisque Sarcey recently reminded us in
his interesting article on the Palais Royal in the Nine-
teenth Century. This new style of comic play may be
termed realistic farce, realistic, because it starts from
every-day life and the most matter-of-fact conditions ;
and farce, because it uses its exact facts only to further
its fantasy and extravagance. Consider the 'Boule.'
Its first act is a model of accurate observation : it is a
transcript from life ; it is an inside view of a common-
place French household which incompatibility of tern*
256 French Dramatists.
per has made unsupportable. And then take the follow-
ing acts, and see how, on this foundation of fact, and
screened by an outward semblance of realism, there is
erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic
farce. I remember hearing one of the two great come-
dians of the Theatre Francois, M. Coquelin, praise a
comic actor of the Varie'te's whom we had lately seen in
a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la
verite" la plus absolue avec la fantaisie la plus pure." 1
And this is the merit of the ' Boule : ' its most humor-
ous inventions have their roots in the truth.
Better even than the ' Boule ' is ' Tricoche et Cacolet,'
which is the name of a firm of private detectives whose
exploits and devices surpass those imagined by Poe
in America, by Mr. Wilkie Collins in England, and
by Gaboriau in France. The manifold disguises and
impersonations of the two partners when seeking to
outwit each other are as well-motived, and as fertile
in comic effect, as any of the attempts of Crispin, or
of some other of Regnard's interchangeable valets. Is
not even the ' Le'gataire Universel,' Regnard's master-
piece, overrated ? To me it is neither higher comedy,
nor more provocative of laughter, than either the
' Boule,' or ' Tricoche et Cacolet ; ' and the modern
plays, as I have said, are based on a study of life as it
is ; while the figures of the older comedies are frankly
conventional. Nowhere in Regnard is there a situation
equal in comic power to that in the final act of the
' Re" veillon,' a situation Moliere would have been glad
to treat.
Especially to be commended in ' Tricoche et Cacolet '
is the satire of the hysterical sentimentality and of the
1 " The most absolute truth with the purest fantasy."
Henri Meilkac and Ludovic Halevy. 257
forced emotions born of luxury and idleness. Just as
the Belle Helene herself is a heroine of Hugo or the
elder Dumas, so the Bernardine of this play is a heroine
of M. Octave Feuillet. The parody of the amorous
intrigue which is the staple of so many French plays
is as wholesome as it is exhilarating. Absurdity is a
deadly shower-bath to sentimentalism. The method
of Meilhac and HaleVy in sketching this couple is not
unlike that employed by Mr. W. S. Gilbert in ' H. M. S.
Pinafore ' and the ' Pirates of Penzance.' Especially to
be noted is the same perfectly serious pushing of the
dramatic commonplaces to an absurd conclusion. There
is the same kind of humor too, and the same girding at
the stock-tricks of stage-craft, in ' H. M. S. Pinafore '
at the swopping of children in the cradle, and in ' Tri-
coche et Cacolet ' at the " portrait of my mother," which
has drawn so many tears in modern melodrama. Even
the exaggerated sense of duty which bound the 'pren-
tice to the pirates also holds firmly the conscience of
Bernardine. But MM. Meilhac and Halevy, having
made one success, did not further attempt the same
kind of pleasantry, wiser in this than Mr. Gilbert,
who seems to find it hard to write any thing else.
As in the ' Chateau a Toto ' MM. Meilhac and HaleVy
had made a modern perversion of the ' Dame Blanche,'
so in the ' Cigale ' did they dress up afresh the story
of the 'Fille du Regiment.' As the poet asks,
" Ah, World of ours, are you so gray,
And weary, World, of spinning,
That you repeat the tales to-day
You told at the beginning?
For lo ! the same old myths that made
The early stage-successes,
Still hold the boards, and still are played
With new effects and dresses."
258 French Dramatists.
I have cited the 'Cigale,' not because it is a very
good play, for it is not, but because it shows the present
carelessness of French dramatists in regard to dramatic
construction. The 'Cigale' is a very clever bit of
work : but it has the slightest of plots, and this made
out of old cloth ; and the situations, in so far as there
are any, follow each other as best they may. It is not
really a play : it is a mere sketch touched up with
Parisianisms, "local hits," and the wit of the moment.
This substitution of an off-hand sketch for a full-sized
picture can better be borne in a little one-act play than
in a more ambitious work in three or four acts.
And of one-act plays Meilhac and HaleVy have writ-
ten a score or more, delightful little genre pictures
like the ' fit6 de Saint-Martin,' simple pastels like
'Toto chez Tata,' and vigorous caricatures like the
' Photographe ' or the 'Brdsilien.' The Frenchman
invented the ruffle, says Emerson : the Englishman
added the shirt. These little dramatic trifles are French
ruffles. In the beginning of his theatrical career M.
Meilhac did little comedies like the 'Sarabande' and
the ' Autographe,' in the Scribe formula, dramatized
anecdotes, but fresher in wit, and livelier in fancy, than
Scribe's. This early work was far more regular than
we find in some of his latest, bright as these are. The
' Petit H6tel,' for instance, and ' Lolotte,' are etchings,
as it were, instantaneous photographs of certain aspects
of life in the city by the Seine, or stray paragraphs of
the latest news from Paris.
It is perhaps not too much to say that Meilhac and
Halevy are seen at their best in these one-act plays.
They hit better with a single-barrel than with a re-
volver. In their five-act plays, whether serious like
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. 259
'Fanny Lear,' or comic like the 'Vie Parisienne,' the
interest is scattered, and we have a series of episodes
rather than a single story. Just as the egg of the jelly-
fish is girt by circles which tighten slowly until the
ovoid form is cut into disks of independent life, so, if
the four intermissions of some of Meilhac and Halevy's
full-sized plays were but a little longer and wider and
deeper, they would divide the piece into five separate
plays, any one of which could fairly hope for success
by itself. I have heard that the ' Roi Candaule ' was
originally an act of the ' Boule ; ' and the ' Photographe '
seems as though it had dropped from the 'Vie Pari-
sienne' by mistake. In M. Meilhac's earlier five-act
plays, the ' Vertu de Celimene ' and the ' Petit-fils de
Mascarille,' there is great power of conception, a real
grip on character ; but the main action is clogged with
tardy incidents, and so the momentum is lost. A rifle-
ball hits the bull's eye more surely than a charge of
buckshot : only when they made ' Froufrou ' had they
any use for a rifle. In both these early comedies of
M. Meilhac there is, as their titles show, an inten-
tion of modelling on Moliere, and of carrying on his
work after a lapse of two centuries. In the ' Petit-fils
de Mascarille ' there are touches not unworthy of the
original inventor of Mascarille : one scene in particular,
between Clavarot and the impudent valet Jean, would
have been appreciated not a little by the author of the
' Bourgeois Gentilhomme.'
In both of these earlier comedies of M. Meilhac's,
and especially in the ' Vertu de Celimene,' besides the
influence of Moliere, and even more potent than that,
is to be seen the influence of the new school of M.
Alexandre Dumas fils. And the inclination toward
260 French Dramatists.
the strong, not to say violent emotions which Dumas
and Augier had imported into comedy is still more evi-
dent in 'Fanny Lear,' the first five-act comedy which
MM. Meilhac and Hal6vy wrote together, and which
was brought out in 1868. The final situation is one
of truth and immense effectiveness, and there is great
vigor in the creation of character. The decrepit old
rake, the Marquis de Noriolis, feeble in his folly, and
wandering in his helplessness, and yet irresistible when
aroused, this is a striking figure; and still more strik-
ing is the portrait of his wife, now the Marquise de
Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear, the adventuress, a
woman who has youth, beauty, wealth, every thing
before her, if it were not for the shame which is behind
her. Gay and witty, and even good-humored, she is
inflexible when she is determined : hers is a velvet
manner and an iron will. The name of Fanny Lear
may sound familiar to some readers because it was
given to an American adventuress in Russia by a grand-
ducal admirer.
After ' Fanny Lear ' came ' Froufrou,' the lineal suc-
cessor of the ' Stranger,' as the current masterpiece of
the lachrymatory drama. Nothing so tear-compelling
as the final act of ' Froufrou ' had been seen on the stage
for half a century or more. The death of Froufrou was
a watery sight, and for any chance to weep we are many
of us grateful. And yet it was a German, born in the
land of Charlotte and Werther, it was Heine, who
remarked on the oddity of praising the " dramatic poet
who possesses the art of drawing tears, a talent which
he has in common with the meanest onion." It is note-
worthy that it was by way of Germany that English
tragedy exerted its singular influence on French come-
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. 261
dy. Attracted by the homely power of pieces like the
' Gamester ' and ' Jane Shore,' Diderot in France, and
Lessing in Germany, attempted the tragfdie bourgeois e ;
but the right of the " tradesmen's tragedies," as Gold-
smith called them, to exist at all, was questioned, until
Kotzebue's pathetic power and theatrical skill captured
nearly every stage in Europe. In France the bastard
offspring of English tragedy and German drama gave
birth to an equally illegitimate come'die larmoyante.
And so it happens that while comedy in English litera-
ture, resulting from the clash of character, is always on
the brink of farce, comedy in French literature may be
tinged with passion until it almost turns to tragedy. In
France the word " comedy " is elastic, and covers a
multitude of sins : it includes the laughing ' Boule ' and
the tearful ' Froufrou : ' in fact, the French Melpomene
is a sort of Jeanne qui pleure et Jeanne qui rit.
So it happens that ' Froufrou ' is a comedy. And in-
deed the first three acts are comedy of a very high order,
full of wit, and rich in character. I mentioned the
' Stranger ' a few lines back ; and the contrast of the
two plays shows how much lighter and more delicate
French art is. The humor to be found in the ' Stranger '
is, to say the least, Teutonic ; and German humor is
like the simple Italian wines, it will not stand export.
And in the ' Stranger ' there is really no character, no
insight into human nature. ' Misanthropy and Repent-
ance,' as Kotzebue called his play (the 'Stranger' was
Sheridan's title for the English translation he revised
for his own theatre), are loud-sounding words when we
capitalize them ; but they do not deceive us now : we
see that the play itself is mostly stalking sententious-
ness, mawkishly overladen with gush. Now, in ' Frou
262 French Dramatists.
frou ' there is wit of the latest Parisian kind, and there
are characters, people whom we might meet, and
whom we may remember. Brigard, for one, the repro-
bate old gentleman, living even in his old age in that
Bohemia which has Paris for its capital, and dyeing his
few locks because he feels himself unworthy to wear
gray hair, Brigard is a portrait from life. The Baron
de Cambri is less individual ; and I confess I cannot
quite stomach a gentleman who is willing to discuss the
problem of his wife's virtue with a chance adorer. But
the cold Baroness herself is no commonplace person.
And Louise, the elder sister of Froufrou, the one who
had chosen the better part, and had kept it by much
self-sacrifice, she is a true woman. Best (better even
than Brigard) is Gilberte, nicknamed " Froufrou " from
the rustling of her silks as she skips and scampers
airily around. Froufrou, when all is said, is a real crea-
tion, a revelation of Parisian femininity, a living thing,
breathing the breath of life, and tripping along lightly
on her own little feet. Marrying a reserved yet deeply-
devoted husband because her sister bid her ; taking into
her home that sister who had sacrificed her own love
for the husband ; seeing this sister straighten the house-
hold which she in her heedless seeking for idle amuse-
ment had not governed ; then beginning to feel herself
in danger, and aware of a growing jealousy senseless
though it be of the sister who has so innocently sup-
planted her by her hearth and even with her child ;
making one effort to regain her place, and failing, as
was inevitable, poor Froufrou takes the fatal plunge
which will at once and forever separate her from what
was hers before. What a fine scene is that at the end
of the third act, in which Froufrou has worked herself
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. 263
almost to a frenzy, and, hopeless in her jealousy, gives
up all to her sister, and rushes from the house to the
lover she scarcely cares for ! And how admirably does
all that has gone before lead up to it ! These first three
acts are a wonder of constructive art. Of the rest of the
play it is hard to speak so highly. The change is rather
sudden from the study of character in the first part to
the demand in the last, that if you have tears, you
must prepare to shed them now. The brightness is
quenched in gloom and despair. Of a verity, frivolity
may be fatal, and death may follow a liking for private
theatricals and the other empty amusements of fashion ;
but is it worth while to break a butterfly on the wheel,
and to put a humming-bird to the question ? To say
what fate shall be meted out to the woman taken in
adultery is always a hard task for a dramatist. Here
the erring and erratic heroine comes home to be for-
given, to kiss the child she abandoned, and to die, like
Pope's Narcissa, to the very end thinking of fine linen
and a change of raiment ; and so, after the fresh and
unforced painting of modern Parisian life, we have a
finish full of conventional pathos. Well, death redeems
all ; and, as Pascal says, " the last act is always tragedy,
whatever fine comedy there may have been in the rest
of life. We must all die alone."
CHAPTER XI.
M. EMILE ZOLA AND THE PRESENT TENDENCIES OF
THE FRENCH DRAMA.
IN his admirable essay on the genius of Calderon,
Archbishop Trench has pointed out that thrice, and
thrice only, has there been a really great and popular
drama, and that "the conditions of a people which
make a grand outburst of the drama possible make it
also inevitable that this will utter itself, not by a single
voice, but by many." In a note, the archbishop shows
us that each of these dramatic outbursts has been com-
prised in the space of a century, or but little more :
thus ^Eschylus was born B.C. 525, and Euripides died
B.C. 406 ; Lope de Vega was born in 1562, and Calderon
died in 1681 ; and Marlowe was born in 1565, and Shir-
ley died in 1666. Now, although in France there has
been no grand outburst of the drama as the one voice
through which the nation was uttering itself, and spake
to foreign countries and posterity, there have been two
occasions, when, beyond all cavil, the drama was the
first and most important form of literature. The earlier
and by far the greater of these two epochs, when the
supremacy of the drama in French literature is indis-
putable, was the space of a little less than a hundred
years, which elapsed between the birth of Corneille in
1606, and the death of Racine in 1699, a scant cen-
tury, which saw the making of all the masterpieces of
Moliere, and which displays a dramatic literature in-
ferior only to that of Greece and of England, and it
264
M. Emile Zola. 265
raay be, of Spain. The second and secondary occasion
when the drama became the most important form in
French literature is in our own time, in the half-century
extending from 1830 to 1880. Just what will be the
future estimate of this drama, we cannot now do more
than guess at, nor what it is to become in the immediate
future. But it is possible to recapitulate briefly the
course of the drama in France, from the beginning of
this century, and to see whether we cannot discover in
what direction lie its present tendencies.
" The theatre is, of all the countries of the world, the
one most subject to revolutions," says M. Edmond
About : "it renews itself and gets younger every day,
like the society of which it is the image. . . . The stage
is a magnifying mirror, in which are reflected the pas-
sions, the vices, the follies, of each epoch. Now, the
vices of yesterday are no longer those of to-day : fash-
ion governs passion, and we change our follies as we
do our hats. Moliere did not know the stockbroker:
we have lost the courtier. The shopkeeper turned
gentleman is played out; but we have the gentleman
turned shopkeeper, selling wine and flour, and putting
the family arms on his labels. We must not be too
greatly astonished, if, after thirty or forty years, plays,
like women, begin to age, excepting only a few mas-
terpieces, whose style preserves them. We may say of
a comedy, as of a duchess, that she was beautiful in
1720. We may say of a drama, what the Spaniards say
of a soldier, ' He was brave such-and-such a day.' "
French drama has had two such revolutions in this
century : it has got younger twice ; and even now it
may be on the edge of a third rejuvenescence. At the
opening of the century, the theatre in France was op
266 French Dramatists.
pressed by the rigidity of the imperial rule, fettered by
a blind obedience to the so-called unities, and shackled
by a superstitious regard for dignity and propriety.
After Beaumarchais abandoned the stage, the drama
was lifeless, except in the minor theatres, where melo-
dramas of the German type drew throngs. In 1817
Eugene Scribe began to renovate the national vaude-
ville, and in his hands it gained value and variety. In
1827 a young French poet, Victor Hugo, published a
play called ' Cromwell,' to which he prefixed a declara-
tion of dramatic principles ; and the revolt of the Ro-
manticists against the Classicists was proclaimed. In
1829 ' Henri III.,' a drama by a young quadroon called
Alexandre Dumas, took everybody by surprise. The
next year was acted Victor Hugo's ' Hernani ; ' and, as
Sefior Castelar puts it picturesquely, it " was wondered
at like a comet, and announced in the heavens a war
in the realm of poetry." In their revolt against the
formality and severity of the old school, the Romanti-
cists went to the other extreme. They slighted accu-
racy and even common sense : they sought to astound
and to stupefy the spectator into silent acquiescence.
Not a few of the most brilliant of French dramas saw
the light of the lamps at this time. Historical plays
especially found favor in the eyes of French theatre-
goers, and a fantastic semblance of history filled the
stage. And so, at last, a movement which promised
much accomplished little. The rubbish of Classicism
was cleared away, and that was all. " The great point,"
said Goethe, " is not to pull down, but to build up ; and
in this humanity finds pure joy." The Romanticists
pulled down, but the power of united action in build-
ing up failed them. A few fine works by the great
M. Emile Zola. 267
writers who led the movement still survive, but toward
the foundation of a distinct and enduring school Ro-
manticism did little or nothing. It was Maurice de
Guerin who characterized Romanticism as " that youth-
ful literature which has put forth all its blossom prema-
turely, and has left itself a helpless prey to the return-
ing frost."
It is important to remember that the romantic drama
in France, although seemingly a fresh creation, was in
great measure an evolution from the melodrama of the
minor theatres. Before Hugo and Dumas were Victor
Ducange and Pixerecourt ; and ' Henri III.' and ' Her-
nani,' although immensely superior to 'Thirty Years
of a Gambler's Life,' differed from it in degree rather
than in kind. The poets of the Romanticist movement
robed in royal verse plots not greatly above those which
the humbler playwright clothed in common prose.
Even during the height of the movement, Bouchardy
drew the multitude to see ' Lazare le Patre.' When the
poets gave up the stage, successors to Ducange and
Pixerecourt and Bouchardy were not wanting. M.
Dennery and his fellows began the long list of modern
melodramas, of which the best specimens are 'Don
Cesar de Bazan ' (suggested by a scene or two of
Hugo's 'Ruy Bias') and the 'Two Orphans.' Lack-
ing in elevation, their plays were constructed with
the utmost technical skill. Nothing was neglected to
heighten the effect on the play-goer, and every thing
was sacrificed to it.
In this making of melodramas, the influence of the
Romanticists was very obvious, and indeed unmis-
takable. There was one form of drama on which the
movement led by Hugo and Dumas had had no effect
268 French Dramatists.
whatever. After having made over the vaudeville to his
own satisfaction, Eugene Scribe invented the come'die-
vaudeville; and from this to comedy in three or five
acts was but a step. To the writing of comedy, Scribe
brought the unexampled skill acquired in the writing of
a hundred minor plays. His knowledge of the stage,
and of what could be done there, and of how to do it,
has never been equalled, and probably never will be.
The present world-wide acceptance of French drama is
owing to the perfection of Scribe's methods, methods
which he used in vaudeville and comedy, and which
M. Dennery and his associates imitated in the making
of melodramas. What Scribe on the one hand, and the
melodramatic playwrights on the other, devoted them-
selves to, was the construction of a self-acting plot ; and,
when once constructed, this plot could be dressed up
just as well in English, or German, or Icelandic, as in
the original French. But after we have once admired
the pretty trickeries of mere ingenuity, we tire of them
and crave something better, something more substantial.
The melodramatists and the Romanticists still in active
practice met this demand by extravagance and by the
accumulation of horrors. Time was ripe for another
transformation.
In 1843, perhaps fifteen years after the beginning of
the Romantic movement, a young poet named Ponsard
brought out a tragedy called ' Lucrece,' and was at once
hailed as the founder of a new school, the School of
Common Sense, a compromise, as it were, between the
coldness of Classicism and the fire of Romanticism. It
is useless to be hailed as the founder of a school, if you
have no scholars ; and Ponsard had none. It is true
that when a friend of his produced a delightful little
M. Emile Zola. 269
poetic comedy of antique life, its author, M.
Augier, was declared to be of the School of Common
Sense. But M. Augier never set himself down as a
disciple of Ponsard's ; and, when the real transformation
of the drama did come at last, it was seen, not only that
M. Augier did not belong to the School of Common
Sense, but that the school itself had never had any
substantial existence. It sprang up quickly ; but it had
no root, and it withered away as quickly. Further:
when the new movement began it was not poetic, but
prosaic. Nothing more clearly declares that the pres-
ent is not a time for a great outburst of the drama than
the fact that there is nowadays an almost universal
divorce between the poet and the playwright. In the
three great epochs of Greece, Spain, and England, and
even in the French literature under Louis XIV., the
dramatist was perforce a poet. Now, not only in
France, but everywhere, the playwright is very rarely a
poet, and the stage is correspondingly prosaic. Even
Hugo is not a true dramatic poet : he is a curious com-
bination of a playwright and a lyric poet. Alfred de
Musset was a poet first, and a dramatist by accident
only. Ponsard was a respectable poet ; and M. limile
Augier can write fine verse ; but the mass of contem-
porary French drama has but little touch of poetry.
Now and again a comedy in verse, or an old-fashioned
tragedy in five acts, gets before the footlights ; but,
although the form is relished by the inner circle of
literary epicures, it is out of fashion with the throng
which alone can fill a theatre. Beautiful as some of
these poetic plays are, and I know nothing more beau-
tiful in the modern drama than M. Theodore de Ban-
ville's ' Gringoire ' (which, although written in prose, is
270 French Dramatists,
instinct with the truest poetry), or than M. Frangois
Coppee's 'Luthier de Crmone/ both written for the
acting of that admirable comedian, M. Coquelin of the
Comedie-Frangaise, they remain individual efforts
only, and are insufficient in either number or impor-
tance to be considered as a school. The accidental suc-
cess of M. Henri de Bornier's declamatory tragedy, the
' Fille de Roland,' is not evidence of a popular revival
of interest in an obsolete formula : it is to be explained
easily enough, as the chance result of the appropriate-
ness of the patriotic speeches, in which the piece
abounds, to the feelings of the French at the time it
was acted.
About the middle of the century, there was a sharp
re-action against the violence of the melodramatists, and
against the childishness of the machine-made plays,
against M. Dennery and his fellows, and against Scribe.
Fact began to take the place of fantasy. Dramatists
invented less, and observed more. A photograph of
modern life was offered in place of a pretentious his-
torical painting, the maker of which had relied on his
fancy for all details. Romanticism was followed by
Realism. Hugo and Alexandre Dumas were succeeded
by M. fimile Augier and M. Alexandre Dumas fils ;
just as, in pictorial art, the large manner of Decamps
and Delacroix gave way to the genre painting of MM.
Meissonier and Gerdme. The dramatist sought to be
probable, to give an exact transcript of life as he saw
it around him, to do for the stage what Balzac was
doing for prose fiction. In 1852 M. Dumas fils brought
out his 'Dame aux Camelias/ and two or three years
later began the series of social studies which includes
the 'Demi-Monde,' the 'Fils Nature!/ and 'M. Al-
M. mile Zola. 271
phonse.' M. Smile Augier, whose hand had hitherto
hesitated, saw at once where his real strength lay, and,
abandoning verse, gave us the stirring and sturdy satires
of which the ' Fils de Giboyer ' is the best, and the long
list of high and keen comedies, chief among which is
the 'Gendre de M. Poirier.' In the footsteps of M.
Dumas and M. Augier have walked Theodore Barriere,
M. Victorien Sardou, and MM. Meilhac and Halevy.
The effect of their example was felt even by the melo-
dramatists who left the middle ages and sought for
subjects and excitement in the crimes of the present.
When the 'Dame aux Camelias' was first acted,
The'ophile Gautier hailed it as a protest against the
cheap complications of the Scribe school, and the dark,
deep plots of the Dennery melodramatists. "What
does most honor to the author," he wrote, "is that
there is not the slightest intrigue, surprise, or compli-
cation in all these five acts, despite their intense inter-
est." Any one who glances through the volumes of
The"ophile Gautier's collected dramatic criticisms can-
not but note how often he flings out against the machine-
made plays of his day, in which one part fitted so per-
fectly into another, that there was no room for any life
or nature, and all that the spectator was called upon to
admire was a sort of Chinese-puzzle ingenuity. Scribe's
formula, for instance, was to take a simple situation, to
present it frankly, and then to carry it out to a care-
fully-considered conclusion by means of a series of
amusing scenes, which, while showing various phases
of the idea, seemed to delay the determined end, while
in reality they were skilfully made to serve in its prepa-
ration. There was, in short, an essential unity of plot,
carried on by a well-balanced and intricately-complicated
272 French Dramatists.
intrigue, in the course of which poor human nature
was wofully twisted to suit the exigencies of an end
arbitrarily agreed on. This principle of construction
is right enough, if not pushed to extremes ; but the
temptation to which Scribe and his disciples succumbed
was to invent difficulties from mere delight in their own
dexterity in surmounting them. With the coming of
Realism, and the consequent demand for a closer re-
semblance to actual existence, the machine-made play
went out of fashion. Unfortunately, the pendulum
swung as far one way as it had the other, and plays are
now as ill made as they were then too well made. I
have read somewhere, that Scribe wondered why his
later plays did not hit the popular taste, declaring that
his pieces were as well made as ever. No doubt ; but
the French play-goer had ceased to care for a well-made
piece, or rather, he wanted something more in a piece
than clever joinery. Exactly the same change has taken
place in the making of French plays within a quarter
of a century which has taken place in the making of
English novels within half a century. As Mr. Richard
Grant White reminded us a year ago, the modern novel
Mr. Anthony Trollope's, for instance slights plot,
and is slovenly in structure when we compare it with
one of Scott's, in which we cannot but be struck by
the neatness of the workmanship and the dexterity
with which the story is shaped. In France, Scribe has
gone out of fashion, and his formula with him. Just as
Gautier protested against the well-made play, so now
M. Francisque Sarcey has to protest constantly against
the neglect of constructive principles which character-
izes nearly all the French drama of our day.
Even the farces and comic dramas, which in Scribe's
M. Emile Zola. 273
hand were as carefully finished as plays of more im-
portance, now rely on the wit of their dialogue and
the jests liberally sprinkled through them, and only
a little on the humor of the situation. Instead of a
comic plot, which could be used in any language, we
have only an anecdote in dialogue, purely Parisian in
its abundant allusions, and full of a local wit which loses
its color ten miles from the capital. Many of the comic
plays of M. Gondinet and of MM. Meilhac and Halevy,
delightful as they are to those who can appreciate their
Parisianism, do not bear exportation : they are like the
fairies who cannot cross running water. The pieces of
inferior artists are indeed articles de Paris: they are
like the cheap French bronzes, glittering and hollow
and brassy, and they do not wear well. Even in more
important comedies the same defect is to be detected.
Clever as are the later comedies of M. Gondinet, for
instance, the charming play called the ' Grands Enfants,'
we find in them no unity of plot, no sequence of
situations, scarcely, indeed, any situations at all : in-
stead, we have a pell-mell medley of pictures of differ-
ent phases of the fundamental idea, huddling one after
another with no apparent order, and lit up by a rapid
running fire of very good jokes. A play of this kind,
pleasant as it may be, presents no unity of impression,
and fades out of memory far more easily than a play
of inferior material so constructed that there is some-
thing salient for the mind to cling to. As I said, M.
Gondinet is not alone in this failing : he serves how-
ever as an admirable example, for no play of his has
ever been adapted for the American stage, no doubt, be-
cause of this very deficiency.
Romanticism dates from 1827; Realism, from 1852.
274 French Dramatists.
Another quarter of a century has elapsed, and what new
force is now making itself felt on the French stage in
the stead of the Realism which has spent itself ? If we
pay attention only to the noise a new doctrine and its
disciples are wont to make, there is no need of hesita-
tion : the coming power is Naturalism, and M. Zola is
its prophet. M. fimile Zola is a robust young man who
has roughly shouldered his way into literature. In this
country he has rather an unsavory reputation, from the
dirt which encumbers the corners of his ignoble but
powerful novels. Dirt has been defined to be matter
in the wrong place; and in Zola's novels it is in the
wrong place, for it hides their strength, and keeps many
men from reading them, who would keenly appreciate
their force, were it not for their indecency. Although
indecent, they are not immoral, any more than a clinic
or a dissection is immoral ; and it is as the operator at
a clinic that M. Zola poses. The system of an artist
always takes color from his personality : Naturalism is
no exception ; it has been warped to fit the nature of
M. Zola. So it is well first to consider what manner
of man he is, before discussing his literary code.
The first impression we get from his works is one of
main strength, often perversely misapplied, and never
corrected by good taste. M. Zola seems to delight in
describing the unspeakable. In his eye every thing is
unclean, sordid, and despicable. He has a gloomy dis-
satisfaction with life, and is, indeed, as disgusted with
it as most readers are with the degradation laid bare in
his novels : Schopenhauer himself could scarcely be
more pessimistic. This explains his dislike of sympa-
thetic characters : he simply does not believe in them ;
in his eyes, Colonel Newcome would be an idiot or an
M. Emile Zola. 275
impossibility. To him there are no good men, though
some men are not so bad as others. Health is as scarce
as virtue : so he studies the diseases of his characters,
and details their sufferings. It is hard for him to meet
the accusation that the Naturalists are artists who re-
fuse to paint your portrait unless you are pitted by the
small-pox. M. Zola has none of the saving grace of
humor. In fact, he has a most un-French lack of esprit
and a corresponding hatred of it. His chance attempts
at jocoseness are painful : when he trees a poor little
joke he brings it down mercilessly, and nails up its
skin as a warning. No writer ever stood more in need
of the sense of humor than M. Zola ; and he has it not.
It takes a strong stomach to read through certain of
his books without qualms, and a hearty laugh would do
much toward clearing the atmosphere of its foulness.
His grossness may be matched in Rabelais perhaps;
but M. Zola's work is without the broad breeze of humor
which blows across the pages of Rabelais, setting the
reader in such a gale of laughter that he has no need
to hold his nose. He is as devoid of humor as a graven
image. His substitute for it is a chill and bitter irony,
with which he is not scantily supplied.
Turning from the man to the system, we may define
Naturalism as the application to novels and plays of
the principles of what, in history and criticism, is known
as the "historical method." It is easy to trace the
growth of this idea to its present maturity as we look
back through M. Zola's writings. Fifteen years ago he
declared, " I must find a man in every work, or it leaves
j me cold. I frankly sacrifice humanity to the artist. If
I were to formulate my definition of a work of art, it
would be, ' A work of art is a corner of creation seen
276 French Dramatists.
through a temperament.' And what matters to me all
else ? I am an artist, and I give you my flesh and my
blood, my heart and my thought. . . . Have you, then,
not understood that art is the free expression of a
heart and of an intelligence, and that it is the greater
the more personal it is ? " A year later the idea had
grown : " I am for no school, because I am for human
truth, which excludes all sects and all system. The
word art displeases me : it contains I do not know what
ideas of necessary arrangement, of absolute ideal. To
make art (faire de Varf), is it not to make something
which is outside of man and of nature ? I wish that
you should make life: I wish that you should be alive,
that you should create afresh, outside of all things,
according to your own eyes and your own tempera-
ment. What I seek first of all in a picture is a man,
and not a picture."
A platform like this needed but one more plank to let
M. Zola take a purely scientific view of literature,
excluding art utterly. This plank was soon added. M.
Zola's advanced doctrine has been most succinctly for-
mulated in his essay on 'Naturalism in the Theatre.'
He defines Naturalism as " the return to nature : it is
what scientific men did when they first thought of
beginning with the study of bodies and phenomena, of
basing themselves on experience, of working by analy-
sis. Naturalism in literature is also the return to
nature and to man, direct observation, exact anatomy,
the frank acceptance and depicting of the thing as it
is." M. Zola claims Homer as a Naturalist, which is
rather damaging to the assertion that Naturalism is a
new thing. From Homer it is a far cry to Diderot ;
but M. Zola clears the distance at a single stride.
M. Emile Zola. 277
Diderot, as we all know, begat Balzac ; and Stendhal
and Balzac bring us down to Flaubert, and to the broth-
ers de Goncourt, and to M. Zola himself. In its per-
fected form as it is to be in the future, for perhaps
all present Naturalists are too tainted with the conven-
tionalities of contemporary art ever to rise to the height
which their followers may easily attain, the Natural-
istic novel or drama is to be "simply an inquest on
nature, beings, and things ; " and its interest is to be
sought "no longer in the ingenuity of a fable well
invented and developed according to certain rules.
Imagination is no longer needed, plot is of little conse-
quence." What the coming Naturalist must stand and
deliver is facts, documents on humanity. " Instead of
imagining an adventure, complicating it, preparing
stage surprises, which from scene to scene will bring it
to a final conclusion, one simply takes from life the
history of a being, or of a group of beings, whose acts
one faithfully registers." The work has no other merit
than "exact observation, the penetration more or less
profound of the analysis, the logical linking of events."
In short, the theatre is to be made "the study and
painting of life," and not "a mere amusement of the
intellect, an art of balance and symmetry, ruled accord-
ing to a certain code."
Like most reformers, M. Zola breaks too many
images : his zeal runs away with him. The drama,
like all other arts, exists only through certain conven-
tions which are absolutely necessary to its existence.
Other conventions there are, not absolutely necessary,
and changing from time to time : these M. Zola may
attack with impunity and credit ; but all struggle
against the former is futile. On the stage the absolute
278 French Dramatists.
reproduction of nature is neither possible nor desirable.
There are scores of every-day situations which cannot
be shown in the theatre. As M. Dumas reminded us
in his preface to the 'fitrangere' (intended as an
answer to M. Zola's essay), no matter how closely we
seek to copy nature, there is always a point at which
exact imitation must stop, and convention take its place.
" An artist," says M. Dumas concisely and conclusively,
" a true artist, has a higher and more difficult mission
than the mere reproduction of what is : he has to dis-
cover and to reveal to us that which we do not see in
things we look at every day, that which he alone has
the faculty of perceiving in what is apparently patent
to all of us." No less apt is Lowell's remark, that
Wordsworth, who also proclaimed a new gospel in lite-
rature, sometimes confounded fact, which chokes the
Muse, with truth, which is the breath of her nostrils.
Then, again, the inborn eagerness we all have for
story-telling, is this to be satisfied by coldly-scientific
statements of ascertained facts ? Bare facts are poor
food for the fancy. The imagination which stirs us
while yet in the cradle is not to be shut out at M. Zola's
bidding : indeed, he cannot even shut it out of his own
work. When we examine his novels, we find his prac-
tice better than his precepts. He is often an artist in
spite of himself, as in the ' Faute de 1' Abb6 Mouret,'
for instance ; and again he falls below his doctrine to
the other extreme, and gives us in ' Nana ' a tale as
conventional and cheap as it is dull and obscene. It is
but fair to add, that these two stories are units in a
series to contain twenty tales, and called collectively
the ' Rougon-Macquart, Natural and Social History of
a Family under the Second Empire,' laid out on strictly
M. Emile Zola. 279
scientific lines, and having for its backbone the princi-
ple of heredity. To prove how the character of each
child is the result of its parentage, he prefixed to one of
his novels a family tree of his double set of personages.
It might surprise M. Zola to be told that Lowell has
shown us how Shakspere had applied the principle of
heredity, making no parade about it, and that in Hamlet
we see the blending of the characteristics of the Queen
and the Ghost. This identity of view between Shak-
spere and himself may not interest M. Zola ; for it
happens that he has a poor opinion of Hamlet, prefer-
ring his own Coupeau, the drunkard, whose death from
delirium-tremens gives relief to his novel the 'Assom-
moir ' and to the play taken from it. In the preface to
this play M. Zola says, "I laugh at Hamlet (je me
moque parfaitement d' Hamlet}, who no longer comes
within my ken, who remains an enigma, a subject for
dissertations ; while I am ardently interested at the sight
of Coupeau, whom I can hold fast, and on whom I can
try all sorts of interesting experiments."
A proof of the importance of the drama in France
nowadays, and of the fact that there, at least, it is still
the highest form of literature, can be found in M. Zola's
anxiety for the success of his principles on the stage.
The Naturalists of to-day, like the Romanticists of half
a century ago, look upon the theatre as the final battle-
ground on which their theories must conquer or perish.
With those who have possession of the stage now, M.
Zola is thoroughly dissatisfied. He brushes Hugo aside
impatiently, and sweeps away Scribe. The three chief
Realists of the contemporary drama fare a little better
at his hands. M. Sardou is a prestidigitator who plays
with marionettes, and his " human documents " are
280 French Dramatists.
commonplace and second-hand. M. Dumas is a Natu-
ralist at times, and his " human documents " are fresher ;
but he is too witty and too clever, and he " uses truth
as a spring-board to jump into space," to repeat a
quotation I have made before. M. Augier is nearly
always a Naturalist ; but his plays are too well made,
and some of his characters are too good to live.
Just what kind of a play M. Zola wants, it would be
hard to say. No play yet acted exactly meets his
views. Three times he has himself come forward as
a dramatist, and the pieces have been damned out of
hand. A dramatization of his novel, the ' Assommoir,'
made by two hack playwrights, was successful ; but
M. Zola distinctly disavowed its paternity. A drama-
tization of ' Nana,' also successful, was made by one
of these playwrights, apparently aided by M. Zola
himself; but neither of these plays has any literary
value. No one of his own three plays fits into his
formula. Two of them are rough and coarse farces,
suggested, one by Ben Jonson's ' Volpone,' the other by
one of Balzac's ' Contes Drdlatiques.' M. Zola's hand
is too heavy for fun, even of the lugubrious kind here
attempted; and such gayety as he can command is
stolid and sodden. The third play, ' Th6rese Raquin,'
is a grim and ghastly drama, full of main strength and
directness, and having the simplicity of genius. It
failed in Paris, but has since had better luck in Italy.
The figure of the paralyzed Madame Raquin, ever pres-
ent between the two murderers of her son, like a pal-
pable and implacable ghost, gazing at them with eyes
of fire, and gloating motionless over their misery, is a
projection of unmistakable power. If M. Zola had
written nothing but this one play, it would be impos-
sible to contest his ability.
M. Emile Zola. 281
After the Romanticists had declared their principles,
they proceeded at once to put them in practice, and in
' Henri III.' and ' Hernani ' exhibited concrete speci--
mens of their theories. The same obligation rests on
the Naturalists ; and so far, at least, it has not been
met. For ten years or more, M. Zola has been crying
aloud from the housetop, that reform is necessary in
the drama ; but he has not yet proved his case by
showing an example of the improved play. The only
visible effect of his exhortation has been to accentuate
the tendency to the more exact imitation of reality in
the scenery, costumes, and accessories of the stage.
There is a general desire now in the playhouse, wher-
ever it is possible, to substitute the real thing for the
imitation of it, which has hitherto contented both stage-
folk and spectators. Within limits, this taste for exact-
ness is unobjectionable ; but it may readily be carried
to excess, and at best it tends to divert attention from
more important parts of the performance, from the
play and from the playing. It is well to remember that
when there is a real interest in the drama as such, there
is always great indifference to dresses, scenes, and prop-
erties. The play, the play's the thing : all else is of
small account. In two, at least, of the three great out-
bursts of the drama, in England in Shakspere's time,
and in Spain in Lope de Vega's and Calderon's, when
the drama was the chief expression of the national life,
the mounting of the plays was simple and even shabby.
That the drama at large is to be made over to fit M.
Zola's theories may be doubted ; as yet, at any rate,
there are no signs of it : but that they will have a dis-
tinct influence on French dramatic art in the immediate
future seems to me indisputable. This influence will
282 French Dramatists.
be good in so far as it may make the coming dramatist
a more attentive student of life, a closer investigator of
human nature, a more diligent seeker after truth, which
has to be sought long and earnestly before it yields
itself. In so far, however, as it may tend to exclude
poetry and imagination, and to limit fiction to the tran-
script of the bare realities of life, we may unhesitatingly
declare it to be doomed to sterility. In so far also as
it seeks to decry the technical skill of the trained play-
wright, it is misleading, and sure of contradiction by the
event. It is the abuse, not the use, of technical expe-
rience, which is to be decried : it is the production of
plays by writers who have no other qualification for the
work than their familiarity with the boards. The true
dramatist cannot ignore the exigencies of the stage:
he ought, indeed, to have so thoroughly mastered all
the tricks of the trade, that he can use them uncon-
sciously. In a word, the dramatist should know the
grammar of construction so well, that he need give it
no more thought than the trained speaker gives to the
grammar of language. Shakspere and Moliere owed
no small share of their success to their complete mas-
tery over the tools of their trade : besides being the
hack dramatist of his company, each was actor and
manager, and had a share in the takings at the door.
The century begins to draw to a close ; and on the
French stage Romanticism and Realism have come for-
ward in turn, and played their parts. It is full twenty
years now since M. Victorien Sardou, the youngest of
the three chief Realists, made his first appearance. It
is time for a new doctrine and for a new man. It may
be that Naturalism will be the new doctrine, and M.
Zola the new man ; but, for the reasons given in the pre-
M. Emile Zola. 283
ceding pages, I doubt it. That he himself is a potent
force must be admitted ; but that his principles are des-
tined to triumph, I do not believe. To my mind, the
outlook indicates a return, sooner or later, to the well-
made play, to be written by those as deeply imbued
with the desire for physiologic and psychologic accuracy
as M. Zola himself. It will be a union of the school of
the past with what M. Zola proclaims as the school
of the future, blending the best features of both, and so
obliterating the weakness of either. It will, in short,
be that commonplace thing, a compromise. With a
simple and most skilful symmetry of plot, the play-
wright will have to unite the most vigorous exactness
of character ; and so shall we have a new drama, com-
pounded of the theories of the past and the present.
We may rest content with the prediction of M. Du-
mas, who declares that whenever there shall come a
writer knowing man like Balzac, and knowing the stage
like Scribe, he will be the great dramatist of the future.
We may be sure, too, that morality will find full ex-
pression, consciously or unconsciously, in the plays
of this dramatist of the future, in spite of M. Zola's
precept and practice. We may be sure, also, that the
imagination will not be left out of the compound alto-
gether, if indeed it be not a more potent ingredient
than it is now. And, if we may judge what is to come
by what was gone before, we may fairly expect to find
that the French drama of the few remaining years of
the nineteenth century will not reach deep down into
the depths of humanity, or rise far up in flights of poe-
try, but that it will cultivate the level table-land of
modern life with extraordinary dexterity and success.
Above all, we may safely prophesy, that for the most
284 French Dramatists,
part and in general its note will be the note of comedy,
since that is the department of the drama in which
the French have always and especially excelled. Mo-
liere is greater than Corneille or Racine ; Beaumarchais
lives while the tragic authors of his time are clean for-
gotten ; and of the ten dramatists whose plays have
been considered in the preceding pages, only two, the
first and the last, Victor Hugo and fimile Zola, are
wanting in the gift of comedy : all the rest the two
Dumas, Augier, Scribe, Sardou, Feuillet, Labiche, Meil-
hac and HaleVy have found in comedy their best
expression. Tragedy calls for a largeness and a free-
dom foreign to the nature of the Frenchman, readily
ruled in all things. Comedy paints the manners of
society, and seeks its models there ; and nowhere has
the art of society been carried to more nearly complete
perfection than in France. And comedy affords most
scope for that dexterous commingling of gentle senti-
ment and lively wit which the French excel in, and
which an American poet has set forth in four lines :
" Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise,
And shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes ;
But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears,
'Tis ten to one you find the girl in tears."
CHAPTER XII.
A TEN YEARS' RETROSPECT : 1881-1891.
TEN years do not fill a broad space in the lifetime
of a nation or in the history of a literature, especially
when they are as uneventful as the decade which has
slipped past since the earlier chapters of this book were
first published. But ten years are ten years after all ;
and they afford a perspective even though it be con-
tracted. The end of a decade gives a good chance to
take stock and to audit our accounts, deciding what
must finally be charged off to profit and loss. The
development of an art is often as sluggish as the pro-
gression of a glacier ; yet if three stones be laid on the
ice in a straight line, one in the centre and one near
either shore, the stone in the middle will be moved
forward in ten years' time, and by it we may make a
guess at the rate of advance.
Certainly there are some things which can be seen
more plainly now than ten years ago. One of these is
that Romanticism has run its course. Since the death
of Victor Hugo not a few who had kept silent out of
deference to him have spoken out boldly. Romanti-
cism had served its purpose when it killed Classicism,
falsely so called ; but when it tried to substitute its
own cast-iron creed for that which it destroyed, it had
a hard fight, and finally it failed. All but the best
of the works of the Romanticists seem now almost as
old-fashioned and out-worn as the works of the Classi-
285
286 French Dramatists.
cists whom they superseded. It is not threescore years
and ten since Victor Hugo raised the standard of revolt,
but already the victories he won seem empty and the
conquests he made now acknowledge other masters.
"In art and poetry," M. Weiss remarks in his sug-
gestive volume of essays on ' Le Theatre et les Moeurs,'
" as in politics and philosophy, there are but a very few
truths always the same: true invention and whole-
some originality do not consist in adding to them, but
in modernizing their explanation and their practice."
The Romanticists sought to substitute for the Greeks,
Romans, and Antiquity, Italy, Spain, and the Middle
Ages ; but this was not a true modernization, and the
inconsequence of their reform and its insubstantiality
are now sufficiently obvious. No one of the many
dramas of the elder Dumas is alive now, not ' Henri III.,'
not the 'Tour de Nesle,' not 'Antony' ; and of Hugo's
plays only <Ruy Bias' and 'Hernani' survive on the
stage to this day.
The success of the Romanticists was for a season
only ; but it was indisputable while it lasted in every
form of art, sculpture, painting, poetry, music, and the
drama. The great movement which followed Romanti-
cism, and for which the Romanticists unwittingly rrade
the path straight, was Naturalism. Looking down the
vista of the decade, another thing is quite as obvious as
the disappearance of Romanticism ; and this is that the
Naturalists, despite their utmost effort, have not yet
taken the theatre by storm, and the theatre was almost
the first stronghold of the enemy captured by the
Romanticists. Strive as diligently as it can, Naturalism
has not yet found its dramatic formula. And here,
perhaps, is the character of the past ten years; they
A Ten Years Retrospect. 287
are a period of fumbling in the dark, of feeling toward
the light, of unsatisfactory graspings, and of unrewarded
endeavor. It may be doubted whether any appreciable
progress has been made during the decade. But, per-
haps, all inquiry into the existing tendencies of the
French drama had best be postponed until after a con-
sideration of the actual work French dramatists have
accomplished in the years 1881-1891.
When Hugo died, in 1885, he had brought out in
the theatre no new play since the failure of the ' Bur-
graves ' in 1843; and such pieces of his as have been
published posthumously, or in the last years of his
Me, reveal nothing new. They are exactly what one
might expect little more than sketches and frag-
ments left over from the earlier days of dramatic
enthusiasm. Eugene Labiche died in 1888, and Emile
Augier in 1889; and neither of them had written any-
thing for the stage for more than ten years before
his death. The best comedies of both continue to be
revived ; and while Augier holds his own stanchly,
Labiche is probably more highly esteemed now than
he was when he gave up work, perhaps because it is
only his better plays which are now familiar, while
the memory of his unconsidered trifles is fast fading
away. Of Augier's strong, nervous, honest comedies,
the * Gendre de M. Poirier/ and the ' Aventuriere,' and
the ' Fourchambault ' seem likely to continue foremost
in popular favor.
Yet another of the eleven dramatists considered in
detail in the earlier chapters of this book has closed
his career recently, Octave Feuillet ; and of the dead
he was the only one criticised in these pages with
harshness or severity. Sympathy is the germ of fer-
288 French Dramatists.
tile criticism ; and for Feuillet's novels and comedies,
for his theory of life, and for his methods in art, I
must still confess a plentiful lack of sympathy. Nor
have I found anything to change my opinion in either
of the two pieces produced by him since 1881. Neither
' A Parisian Romance ' nor ' Chamillac ' is to my mind
a good play or a wholesome spectacle. The sudden
death of a dissipated atheist at the supper-table just
when he is proposing a toast to Matter strikes me as
tricky, cheap, childish ; as Dr. Klesmer, in ' Daniel
Deronda,' said of an aria of Bellini's, it indicates "r.
puerile state of culture no sense of the universal."
And a sense of the universal is just what is wanting
in 'Chamillac,' the hero of which is a person of the
most strangely contorted and high-strung morality, in
whose sayings and doings the audience takes singu-
larly little interest, possibly because the author wilfully
chose to keep a secret till the last act, leaving the
spectators so far in the dark that they could not see
whither the action tended or the motives of the char-
acters. In the drama obscurity is a fatal defect, and
a transparent clearness is an absolute necessity, if
those who sit in judgment are to follow the story
with interest. I had liefer praise Feuillet than not,
for he was a gentleman and he wrote with profound
respect for himself and for art ; but most of his more
serious writings seems to me essentially false and
insidiously demoralizing. But although I do not like
his unreal fictions, it would perhaps be unfair not to
suggest that many accomplished critics have admired
Feuillet: one of M. Jules Lemaitre's cleverest essays
is devoted to the author of ' M. de Camors.' Even
M. Lemaitre, however, is moved to complain that the
A Ten Years Retrospect. 289
rarefied "high-life" atmosphere of Feuillet almost makes
him long for the barnyard odors of Zola.
MM. Meilhac and Halevy are now both of them
members of the French Academy, but they are no
longer in partnership. The firm was dissolved nearly
fifteen years ago, and M. Halevy has not since written
for the theatre. Even when the vogue of his charm-
ing novel, 'Abbe Constantin,' moved a manager to
ask for a dramatization, M. Halevy left this labor to
other hands. M. Meilhac has not been idle, and no
twelve months pass without the production of a play
from his pen. He writes alone or with chance col-
laborators ; and his comedies have always wit, grace,
fantasy, and observation ; and they are nearly always
wanting in the unswerving directness of subject which
the stage demands. He is fond of chasing two hares
at once, and while he enjoys the exercise, his guests
often go without their game-pie. His pieces delight the
delicate, but they rarely attract the broader public, which
prefers stronger fare. Yet no man who can appreciate
the play of a subtle intelligence and the exercise of a
brightsome humor has any right to be disappointed at
' Gotte ' or ' Decore ' or ' Ma Cousine.' No one of
these has any rash American manager ever ventured
to adapt ; and Voltaire declares that " there are no
really good works except those which go to foreign
nations, which are studied there, and translated."
This is a hard saying of Voltaire's, and were it unerr-
ingly applicable, it would bear severely on Augier as
well as on M. Meilhac.
*Le Monde ou Ton s'ennuie' was brought out in
1881, and since then M. Pailleron has produced only one
comedy, the ' Souris,' a scanty showing due, it may be, to
290 French Dramatists.
the timidity which is prone to seize a man of letters on
the morrow of a triumphant success, just as Sheridan
was said to be afraid of the author of the 'School for
Scandal.' M. Pailleron is witty, but inclined to be
precious and tortured in style. His spontaneity is the
result of taking thought, and his effects are often far-
fetched. Clever he is, no doubt, but the vogue of
' Le Monde ou Ton s'ennuie ' seemed accidental and
inordinate. The ' Souris ' suffered from the comparison,
and its chilly reception can be measured by the gibe of
a fellow-dramatist to the effect that M. Pailleron was a
lucky fellow since he had two of his plays at the Theatre
Fran^ais at the same time, the ' Souris ' on the stage
and le monde oil ton s'ennuie in the house.
Edmond Gondinet, who died only two or three years
ago, was a dramatist of ampler gifts than M. Pailleron
and of a wider experience. Though his hand was uncer-
tain, and though he left behind him few pieces which
show him at his best, his gifts for the stage were indis-
putable. He had originality, deftness, and the literary
touch; but much of his time was wasted in fruitless
collaborations, despite the obvious fact that his best
work was done alone excepting always the 'Plus
Heureux des Trois,' in the writing of which he had
Labiche for his partner. The 'Parisien' was the last
comedy of Gondinet's to be acted at Theatre Frangais ;
it was a bright but inconclusive piece, with just a hint
of sentiment. After the play written in partnership
with Labiche, probably the most characteristic of Gondi-
net's pieces were the ' Panache ' and the highly amusing
' Gavaut, Minard et Cie.'
Perhaps it is not fair to M. Bisson to compare him
with Gondinet, whose successor in some sort he seems
A Ten Years Retrospect. 291
to be. Gondinet was a humorous dramatist ; M. Bisson
is merely a comic playwright ; and the difference is fun-
damental. Yet M. Bisson's 'Deput6 de Bombignac'
was acted for many a night by the Come"die-Frangaise
with M. Coquelin as the hero ; and the * Surprises du
Divorce' would make a Vermont deacon laugh out in
meeting. The last play Sir Roger de Coverley had
been at was the 'Committee,' "which I should not have
gone to, neither," the worthy knight explained, "had I
not been told beforehand that it was a good Church of
England comedy." Perhaps it would be an exaggeration
to liken the ' Surprises du Divorce ' to the ' Committee/
but the French farce, despite its title and a stray note
or two of bad taste, is innocent enough. Farce stands
to comedy, I take it, in a relation like that borne by
melodrama to tragedy, in that action predominates over
thought, plot is more prominent than character, what is
done has a far greater importance than what is said or
felt ; but although farce and melodrama are doubtless
inferior, they are quite as legitimate forms of the drama
as comedy and tragedy. A really good farce is almost
as great a rarity as a good comedy; and there is no
need to despair of French dramatists as long as they are
capable of a farce as unfailingly and persistently funny
as the ' Surprises,' a marvel of constructive skill, with-
out hurry or hesitation, and with the utmost tribute of
laughter adroitly expressed from every situation. Even
the master-magician of the modern stage, M. Sardou,
could not have extracted more fun out of the theme,
although there would have been some tincture of litera-
ture in the play had he written it.
Of all the French dramatists to whom the earlier
chapters of this volume have been devoted, M. Sardou
292 French Dramatists.
is the only one who has retained his productivity. In
the past ten years he has produced ten plays. Of these,
'Georgette,' 'Marquise,' and the 'Crocodile' were flat
failures ; ' Odette ' and ' Cleopatre v were little better ;
' Belle-Maman,' 'Theodora,' and 'La Tosca' met with
a fair measure of success ; ' Thermidor ' was suppressed
by the government because its pictures of the Revo-
lution gave rise to rioting ; and ' Fedora ' is the only
play of the ten the popularity of which rivalled that
of the better pieces of M. Sardou's earlier career. The
most of these plays were careless in workmanship, hasty
in construction, slovenly in their writing. Voltaire says
that a man always talks ill when he has nothing to say,
so it is easy to account for the ill-writing in most of
these later plays. French critics did not hesitate to
accuse M. Sardou of working for the export trade
of thinking more of the possible receipts of the per-
formances in London, New York, San Francisco, and
Melbourne, than of the artistic presentation of his sub-
ject to the Parisian public.
Four of these ten plays were written for Mme. Sarah
Bernhardt, as clever and as careless in her art as is
M. Sardou in his, and equally wanting in respect for her
audiences. There is a certain fitness in their conjunc-
tion, and they seem made for each other, the actress for
the author and the author for the actress, both being
possessed of surpassing cleverness and both having a
taint of charlatanry ; but none the less did the alliance
prove disastrous to both parties and together both dete-
riorated. ' F6dora ' is the first play of the four and by
far the best ; ' Theodora,' the second, is inferior ; ' La
Tosca,' the third, is weaker yet ; and ' C16opatre/ the
last, is the least of all. And the strongest of them,
A Ten Years Retrospect. 293
' Fedora,' is a brutal play, holding the spectator breath-
less, with a violent physical oppression, as though he was
held down by a nightmare he was powerless to throw off.
But it is a masterpiece of technic ; the joinery is most
artful ; and the fitting together of the various parts is as
clever as can be. Mr. James was right when he called
M. Sardou a "supremely skilful contriver and arranger."
In its way and of its kind nothing better than 'Fedora'
has ever been seen on the stage; but the kind is one
that the stage could spare without serious loss.
"The man of talents possesses them like so many
tools, does his job with them, and there an end," Mr.
Lowell tells us ; "but the man of genius is possessed by
it, and it makes him into a book or a life according to its
whim. Talent takes the existing moulds, and makes
its castings, better or worse, of richer or baser metal,
according to knack and opportunity ; but genius is
always shaping new ones and runs the man in them, so
that there is always that human feel in its results which
gives us a kindred thrill." M. Sardou is a man of
talents, beyond all question, but may one venture to
term M. Alexandre Dumas fits a man of genius ? When
I contrast his later plays with M. Sardou's, I am inclined
to risk the phrase, for the difference between the two
dramatists grows apace ; and it strikes me now as wider
and more radical than ever before.
And yet I doubt if either of the two plays which
M. Dumas has produced during this decade has raised
my opinion of him. Neither ' Denise ' nor ' Francillon,'
pathetic as is the first, and brilliant as is the second,
and interesting as they both are, is a work of the
calibre and range of the 'Demi-Monde.' But in both
can be seen a power beyond M. Sardou's, because
294 French Dramatists.
M. Dumas has so sure a knowledge of the tricks of
the trade that he can dispense with them and move
us without their aid. There are men and women now
and again in the plays of M. Dumas, while in M. Sar-
dou's later pieces we soon discover that all the dolls
are stuffed with sawdust. Of M. Dumas's sincerity
I may still have my doubts, although I incline more
and more to the opinion that M. Dumas at least be-
lieves in himself. But of his ability, of his intellectual
force, of his gift for propounding social puzzles and so
setting people thinking, and above all, of his drama-
turgic skill and of his sense of form, there cannot be
two opinions. Both ' Denise ' and * Francillon ' have
a solid simplicity of structure worthy of all praise.
In both plays M. Dumas has a subject other than
his mere story, a theme which the incidents of his
drama are intended to demonstrate. In 'Denise,' he
raises again the question he first put forth in ' Idees
de Madame Aubray,' Is a single lapse from virtue suf-
ficient to bar a girl from marriage to a man who knows
her history and who loves her and respects her in spite
of it ? In ' Francillon,' the inquiry is, Whether there
is an equal obligation on both parties to a marriage con-
tract to be faithful to each other, or whether the infi-
delity of the husband justifies that of the wife ? In
' Denise ' M. Dumas decides as he decided in the
' Id^es de Madame Aubray ' ; and as is his wont, he
has a personal mouthpiece in his own play, a conden-
sation of the multiplex Greek Chorus into a single
personality, charged with the duty of delivering a most
Parisian parabasis. In ' Denise,' the name of this dens
ex machina in a dress-coat is Thouvenin ; and even the
skill of M. Dumas is tasked to the utmost to get our
A Ten Years Retrospect. 295
attention to the preachments of this obtruding character.
In ' Francillon,' with far better art, the events as they
succeed swiftly set forth their own moral ; and there
needs no lecturer to explain the figures. But ' Fran-
cillon ' lacks the final sincerity of ' Denise,' where the
author poses his problem and forces us to accept his
solution. In the latter comedy M. Dumas dodges
there is no other word for it. He plays a trick on us,
a practical joke of the most dazzling description, but
still a practical joke only. If Francillon is innocent,
if she has told a lie when she confesses her fault, then
the comedy is but a vaudeville a la Scribe, not to be
taken seriously ; and we need not make believe that it
ever happened. M. Dumas has been playing the game
for its own sake, and not for the possible profit. In
mere dramaturgic art, in the technic of the playwright,
nothing can be swifter, bolder, better, than ' Francillon ' ;
it is a marvel and a despair to all other makers of plays.
And it is written with sustained brilliancy, and of the
best kind, since the wit is struck out by the situations
and by the characters and loses its effect when detached.
It is to be noted that M. Dumas did not dramatize his
novel, the 'Affaire Clemenceau,' just as M. Halevy left
the adaptation of the 'Abbe Constantin ' to other hands.
Having been dramatists before they were novelists,
M. Dumas and M. Halevy knew the impossibility of
making satisfactory plays out of their stories, so they
put off on others the responsibility of the attempt. The
one playwright who has pushed to the front in the past
ten years is a story-teller, also, all of whose dramas are
presented to the public as novels first ; this is M.
Georges Ohnet, the author of ' Serge Panine,' the
' Maitre de Forges,' the ' Comtesse Sarah,' and the
296 French Dramatists,
' Grande Marniere,' works which have had an enor-
mous sale in the bookstores (and some of them a suc-
cess almost as overwhelming on the stage), and which
either in the library or in the theatre stand wholly out-
side of literature. The pieces Ohnettes, as the small
wits of the boulevard call them, make even the hastiest
play of M. Sardou's seem literary. M. Ohnet's methods
are the acme of the commonplace, the conventional, and
the cut-and-dried ; and in his pieces we know every
character almost before he opens his mouth, we foresee
every situation at the first word of preparation, and we
recognize as an old friend almost every phrase of the
dialogue. "All copyists are contemptible," Mr. Ruskin
has said ; "but the copyist of himself is the most so, for
he has the worst original."
This summary, imperfect though it must needs be, of
the theatrical output in Paris during the decade, shows
that no new French dramatist of high rank has come
forward within this period. It is significant of the
changing condition of literature in France that in the
past ten years three novelists of unusual endowment
have made themselves known to us, M. Guy de Mau-
passant, M. Paul Bourget, and " Pierre Loti," as he
calls himself. Nowadays the young man of high liter-
ary expectations finds his account rather in prose fiction
than in writing for the stage. At last the novel is
almost as profitable as the play ; and of course the
story pays even better than the play if it is set upon the
stage after it has conquered success in the bookstores.
Literary tendencies may be likened to the currents
of the air ; we can see the clouds moving above us, but
we know that the winds are changeable and capricious,
blowing by fits and starts, and often two ways at once.
A Ten Years Retrospect. 297
and it is not always easy to tell which of the two strug-
gling breezes is the stronger and will bring the final
storm. The weather-wise, nevertheless, hardly doubt
that to-day in France, as in Spain and in America,
there is an overmastering tendency toward Naturalism.
It is a fact that four or five of the foremost French
novelists are now adherents of the Naturalistic school.
Slowly these writers, M. Zola and M. Daudet at the
head of them, have made their way to the forefrontof
French fiction, and now they are seeking for success in
the theatre also. At first they allowed more practised
playwrights to shape their stories for the stage ; M. Bus-
nach lent M. Zola his experience in dramatizing ' Germi-
nal,' and M. Belot aided M. Daudet in making a play
out of ' Froment jeune et Risler aine.' With increas-
ing experience, the novelists are gaming self-reliance ;
M. Zola himself modified * La Cure"e ' into ' Renee ' ;
M. Daudet dramatized * Sapho ' without assistance ; and
M. de Goncourt was solely responsible for the stage ver-
sions of ' Germinie Lacerteux ' and of the * Fille Elisa.'
That no one of these dramatizations was wholly
satisfactory is due chiefly to the fact that the novels
of the Naturalists lend themselves with difficulty to the
dramatizer, as they are far less fit for the purpose of
the theatre than the stories of the old Romanticists,
and they suffer far more in the transfer. A liberal share
of M. Zola's powers abandon him when his fictions are
produced in the theatre without the aid of his sturdy
and strenuous faculty of description. Rank strength
is perhaps his chief characteristic ; and on the stage he
is shaven and shorn perforce. ' Germinal,' for example,
one might call the strongest story of the past ten years ;
there was in it not a little of the splendid sweep of a
298 French Dramatists.
great epic ; it had the irresistible and inevitable move-
ment of a solemn tragedy ; but taken from the pages of
a book and put on the boards of a theatre, nearly all
this evaporated, and there was little left but a rather
vulgar panorama of violence and suffering.
In like manner the essential element of M. Daudet's
' Sapho ' was dissipated when she was presented to us in
the person of Mme. Jane Hading, and in only five acts
a division quite insufficient to show adequately the flux
and reflux of contending duty and desire, and yet quite
enough to lay bare the apparent monotony of the inci-
dents. Perhaps it was the perception of this which has
led M. Daudet to come forward as an original dramatist.
His last two plays, the ' Lutte pour la Vie ' and the
'Obstacle,' are not adapted novels like 'Sapho' and
'Numa Roumestan'; nor is either elaborated from a
short story like the ' Arl^sienne.' They were written
for the stage in the first instance, and they are there-
fore most interesting experiments, tentative no doubt,
but indisputably promising. They have manifest signs
of inexperience, but they indicate that M. Daudet is
feeling the way, and that he is determined to " know the
ropes " before he gives up.
Mr. Brownell has told us that "of every problem
which the French artist attacks, he knows in advance
various authoritative and accepted solutions," and that
"irresistibly he is impelled to take advantage of these."
In no art is this truer than in the dramaturgic, and as
a result there is no art more bound by convention. In
no other form of literary endeavor is it as difficult to
get free from the shackles of tradition. So it happens
that while the technic of many French plays is abso-
lutely impeccable, they have the smooth perfection of
A Ten Years Retrospect. 299
machine-work. As Mr. Brownell's Italian fellow-traveller
said to him, the French " charge you more for potatoes
an natiirel than for potatoes served in any other way."
M. Daudet is one of those who are discovering by per-
sonal experience that it is more difficult for a French-
man to serve potatoes au naturel than sauttfes or souffltes,
as his countrymen have been accustomed to see pota-
toes served.
M. Henri Becque is another. M. Becque is unlike
his fellow-Naturalists in that he is a dramatist primarily,
and not at all a novelist. He is the author of the
'Corbeaux' and of the ' Parisienne,' plays of a hard
originality both of them, of a dark vigor and of an
uncompromising directness. Both of them have been
acted by the Comedie-Frangaise ; and neither met
with popular approval, notwithstanding its remarkable
qualities. M. Becque is a leader in the search for a
new theatrical formula. He declares that the existing
dramatic moulds are hopelessly worn out. He hates
the "patent buffer-and-coupler " play quite as much as
Mr. Howells, and with a far deeper understanding of
the principles which underlie the art of play-making.
Yet M. Becque in his distaste for the conventional is
on the verge of denouncing all convention, forgetting
that convention is the foundation of every art. In the
drama, for example, it is a condition of the existence of
the art, that the fourth side shall be taken off the room
so that the spectators can see what is going on within.
It is a condition also that the actors shall so raise their
voices above the ordinary and so face the footlights,
that the audience can hear them. The comedian must
allow for the perspective of the stage, and therefore he
cannot act as he would really in life, but with just suffi-
300 French Dramatists.
cient exaggeration or emphasis that he may appear to
be absolutely natural when seen from afar. So also the
dramatist must simplify, explain, make clear, condense,
and heighten his story, that it may be presented com-
pletely within two or three hours, so that a thousand
men and women of average intelligence can apprehend
its movement and its meaning. I have no desire to
defend the "patent buffer-and-coupler " play far from
it ; but if I am going a journey unto a far country, I
know that a proper buffer-and-coupler will spare me
many a jolt.
The Naturalists, like all reformers, are inclined to be
intolerant. They are prone also to claim all the virtue
for their own party. But it was a professional play-
wright, a master of every secret of the dramaturgic art,
M. Alexandre Dumas fits, who broke the bonds of the
Scribe formulas forty years ago and let a flood of fresh
air into the theatre. M. Meilhac, in collaboration with
M. Halevy, and with other of his chance assistants, and
alone, has repeatedly served a most appetizing dish of
potatoes au naturel. So did Gondinet, now and again.
So once, in a way, did two hardened veterans of the
theatre, MM. Blum and Toche", in ' Paris Fin-de-Siecle,'
a play as plotless and as amusing as any one could wish,
a satirically humorous collection of scenes from real life,
strung together anyhow. Here occasion serves to say
that it is only an experienced cook who can prepare a
simple dish, and that the "picture of real life " is most
likely to be painted by the men who best understand all
the devices of the studio ; neither Mr. Harrigan nor the
author of the 'Old Homestead' is a novice.
It is a strange truth also and it is one that helps
to explain the lack of success the Naturalists have met
A Ten Years Retrospect. 301
with in the plays they have produced as yet that
while a man may be a pessimist alone, in a multitude
he is inclined to be an optimist. By himself, at his
own fireside, he may be eager to gaze on a picture of
total depravity, and to exalt ' Barry Lyndon ' over
'Henry Esmond' as the more enjoyable work of art;
yet in company with his fellows, in the seats of a thea-
tre, he likes a suggestion of heroism or self-sacrifice,
and he is moved to resent M. Zola's habit of holding
an inquest on humanity in the presence of the corpse.
So far the Naturalists have found it very difficult to over-
come the desire for idealization which seems to exist
among the body of play-goers, although this very mass
is composed of individuals who are ready enough to
read ' Sapho ' and ' Germinal ' at home. And the plain
speaking also which a man will stand when it is a
whisper in his private ear, shocks him into protest
when he touches elbows with some hundreds of his
fellow-men.
A consciousness of this curious fact has been the
cause of the most peculiar development in the French
stage during the past ten years. This is the founding
of the Theatre Libre. M. Antoine, an enthusiast for
the drama and an extremist in his application of the
doctrines of Naturalism, has given a series of subscription
performances in Paris during the past five or six win-
ters, at which he has produced plays of the new school
such as had no hope of acceptance by the managers of
the regular theatres. Among the pieces he has brought
out for two or three performances only are Tolstoi's
'Powers of Darkness' and Ibsen's 'Ghosts.' Another
is M. Hennique's matter-of-fact tragic sketch, 'La Mort
du Due d'Enghien.' Yet another is M. de Goncourt's
3O2 French Dramatists.
'Fille Elisa.' All of these are experiments most curi-
ous to witness. And all of them have had the advan-
tage of the undeniably effective stage-management of
M. Antoine, who has taught a trick or two to his
predecessors. But many of the plays he has produced
have been both dirty and dull ; and most of them have
been hard, cold, unfeeling, laboriously unconventional,
wholly devoid of inspiration. The Theatre Libre has
been little more than a dramatic dissecting-room for
the dreary exhibition of offensive subjects. That it
exists, however, that it is sustained year after year,
that its performances excite ardent discussion, these
are all signs of the vitality of the drama in France,
even if they have no further significance.
To sum up the ten years, 1881-1891, and to declare
their total value is not yet possible, although it is easy
to see that the decade has been a time of transition
like every other decade of the world's history. No new
dramatist has taken his place by the side of Augier,
M. Dumas, and M. Sardou. No new formula has won
acceptance. There is an irrepressible conflict between
the new school and the old, but the result of the strug-
gle is likely to be a slow evolution rather than a sudden
revolution. And so best, no doubt; for the Jacobin
and the Jacobite are as dangerous, one as the other.
It is to be remembered also that the most diverse colors
in the spectrum of art, if we may so call it, as we gaze
at it through the prism of history, range themselves in
regular order and melt one into the other by insensible
gradations. In the present condition of the French
drama the extreme Naturalists are at one end, and the
extreme Idealists at the other, and, as usual, safety
is in the centre.
CHAPTER XIII.
AT THE END OF THE CENTURY.
IN his essay on Gray, Lowell said : " Let us admit
that the eighteenth century was, on the whole, prosaic,
yet it may have been a pretty fair one as centuries go,"
and he added, with characteristic shrewdness, "every
age is as good as the people who live in it choose to
make it, and if good enough for them, perhaps we, who
had no hand in the making of it, can complain of it only
so far as it had a hand in the making of us." Now as
the nineteenth century is leaving us for ever, let us
admit that it has been a pretty fair century on the
whole, not prosaic like its predecessor, which had a
hand in the making of it, but essentially poetic, as
perhaps no earlier century can have been, in so far as
vast vistas of speculation have been suddenly disclosed
to the mind of man. A practical century, it has been,
no doubt ; but then every other century must also have
been practical, since the day's work had always to be
done. Never before has man been less bound down to
mere journeyman labor; never before has life been
so strangely interesting, with so constant a succession
of surprises, due to our conquest of nature and to our
expansion of knowledge.
It may be that the twentieth century which the
nineteenth has had a hand in making will be prosaic
again, that it will settle down and seek to set in order
what its predecessor has poured out lavishly, that it will
303
304 French Dramatists.
be content to live in the past rather than in the future,
that it will be critical rather than creative. Should this
come to pass, the critics and the commentators will find
ready for their investigation and evaluation a certain
number of movements, more or less complete, in the
hundred years that followed 1 800, movements of less
importance, indeed, than the Renascence or the Refor-
mation, or the Decline and Fall, but none the less well
worthy of inquiry and analysis. For example, the rise
of Transcendentalism in the United States and its effect
on American character, here is a theme to be handled
satisfactorily only after a due interval of time. As
M. Jules Lemaitre has assured us, "criticism of the
works of yesterday is not criticism ; it is conversation,"
a harsh saying this to come from the author of the
' Contemporains.' Again, the final weighing of each of
the remarkable group of British writers whom we are
wont to call the Victorian poets, and the investigation of
the true relation of each of them to the others here
we have a subject likely to task the best critical faculty
of the twentieth century. And a third theme, as rich
as either of the others, I think, and as tempting, can be
discerned in the development of the drama in France
during the half-century that stretches from 1830 to 1880.
All that took place in the playhouses of Paris before
the first performance of ' Hernani ' may be regarded as
but the preparation and the prelude of that startling
event ; and all that has happened there since the first
performance of ' Le Monde ou Ton s'ennuie ' cannot be
considered as of primary importance in itself, for no
one of the plays of the final twenty years of the century
is epoch-making, no one of them has more than a
secondary importance, as it either continues the tradi-
At the End of the Century. 305
tion of the 1830-1880 period, or more or less obviously
protests against that tradition. The Romantic move-
ment made smooth a path for the Realistic movement
that followed it inevitably ; and Hugo and the elder
Dumas lived to see their formulas and their philosophy
disestablished by Augier and the younger Dumas. But
in the final decades of the century it was seen that
Realism had spent its force, and yet no new movement
had swept forward to renew the drama again. No new
man has come boldly to the front to declare a fresh set
of principles, and to impose his formulas and his phi-
losophy upon his more impressionable contemporaries.
The last twenty years of the century are not so blank
as were the first thirty, from which little or nothing
now survives ; but they supply us with scanty indication
of the lines along which the drama is likely to modify
itself in the immediate future.
The year 1830 is still a date to be remembered, and
the battle of ' Hemani ' remains a picturesque episode
in literary history ; and yet, as we look down on the
struggle now from the height of the threescore years
and ten that have elapsed, the span of a man's life
already, the conflict seems petty and the result incon-
clusive. The Classicists were feeble folk, all of them,
and they had no strength to withstand the first on-
slaught; there was no life in them or in the theories
which they thought they were defending ; they were
dead, even if they did not know it. What vitality can
there be in a criticism which asserts that tragedy must
fulfil twenty-six conditions, while comedy need fulfil
only twenty-two, and the epic only twenty-three, and
which is ready with a list of the twenty-six conditions,
the twenty-two, and the twenty-three ? What real glory
306 French Dramatists.
is to be gained by overcoming antagonists as pettily
pedantic as these ?
The Romanticists began bravely, but they did not
persist. They routed the Classicists readily enough,
but, when their foes were overthrown, they did not
press on to other victories. They were content to rest
on their laurels ; and very early did keen critics discover
the inherent weakness of their attitude. Maurice de
Gueiin, for example, said that Romanticism had "put
forth all its blossom prematurely, and had left itself a
helpless prey to the returning frost." The real reason
for this sterility was that the core of Romanticism was
revolt In so far as it was destructive, it was success-
ful ; and it did not really set out to be constructive. As
M. Souriau points out in his acute and scholarly edition
of the preface of ' Cromwell,' Romanticism " is rather a
reaction than a renascence " ; and he quotes from the
elder Dumas to the effect that in those days the ardent
young fellows were in doubt as to what they wanted,
but they were in no doubt as to what they did not want.
Not only were their literary doctrines negative rather
than affirmative, but they strove to throw off all restraint
and to denounce all rule. As a typical hero they were
prone to present an outlaw, who added to acts that
were illegal a birth that was illegitimate and loves that
were illicit. Hernani is a bandit and Antony is a bas-
tard. To the men of 1830, the most complex problem
of all times was simple ; they saw no difficulty in the
relation of man to society, and in the proper restraint of
the right of the individual to assert himself, when his
self-assertion may be harmful to the community. They
proclaimed the complete liberty of the individual ; and
they never declared the duty of every man to sacrifice
At the End of the Century. 307
himself, if need be, for the good of all the rest. Carried
to their logical conclusion, their principles led straight
to anarchy, with every man a law unto himself. As
Thiers said in 1871, when the French republic was
fighting for its life, "The Romanticists that's the
Commune ! "
Much high-flown eulogy of the famous books of the
past is as unimpressive now as the perfunctory flattery
of an epitaph in which manifold and contradictory vir-
tues are imperishably inscribed. The praise is all very
well in its way, but the real question is, does the famous
book keep on being read ? The proof of the play is the
acting. After two centuries, the one or two master-
pieces of Corneille and the two or three masterpieces of
Racine still hold the attention of French playgoers. But
of all the plays of the elder Dumas none keeps the stage
to-day, except possibly one or another of his lighter
comedies in which the Romanticism has been reduced
to the vanishing point. Of all Hugo's dramas in prose
and verse only ' Hernani ' and ' Ruy Bias ' survive in
the theatre. Here the selection of time seems as satis-
factory as it always must. These are the two plays in
which Hugo's merits are most abundantly displayed,
and in which his demerits are diminished. They, in
their turn, are beginning to be considered as classics.
It was Goethe who declared that the important point
for a work of art is that it should be " thoroughly good,
and then it is sure to be classical. I call the classic
healthy, the romantic sickly." Perhaps it is a little
difficult to assert that 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Bias' are
really healthy in tone ; but there is no doubt that they
are the least sickly of all Hugo's plays.
One may wonder what Goethe would have thought of
308 French Dramatists.
the Realistic movement that followed the Romanticist.
Would he have relished Balzac ? Would he have found
' Madame Bovary ' healthy ? How would he have en-
joyed the ' Demi-Monde ' of the younger Dumas and
the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' of Augier and Sandeau?
Recalling Goethe's profound delight in Moliere, we may
guess that the ' Gendre de M. Poirier ' would have
pleased him. But while the ' Demi-Monde ' would have
interested him indubitably, we cannot be sure just how
the author of ' Elective Affinities ' would have taken it.
Of this thing, however, we may be certain : Goethe
would have seen and acknowledged the dramaturgic
skill of Augier and the younger Dumas, for he had the
craftsman's liking for technic.
Less gaudy than Romanticism, but richer as a topic
for investigation, is the history of the so-called "well-
made play," la pihe bien faite. As it happens, we can
trace almost every step in the career of this formula,
its beginning, its rise, its development, its modification,
and its decadence at last. Suggested, perhaps, by
Beaumarchais, the form was carried to the highest
point of mechanical complexity by Scribe ; then it
was simplified by the younger Dumas and accepted
by Augier, having Sarcey for its press-agent ; until, in
the end, it wore out its welcome and was rejected of the
Theatre Libre, which refused to be bound by any for-
mula whatsoever.
What is the formula of the well-made play ? When
Regnard, who followed in Moliere's footsteps more
faithfully than he knew, imitated the master also in
writing a critique on one of his comedies that had been
attacked, he tried to show that the first act of his play
"exposes the subject; the second ties the knot; in the
At the End of the Century. 309
third the action begins ; it is continued in the following
acts ; everything concurs in the event ; the complication
grows until the final scene; the ctinoument is drawn
from the heart of the subject." Here Regnard comes
very near to giving us the definition we seek. A well-
made play is a piece having a beginning, a middle, and
an end (as every work of art ought to have), and con-
taining nothing that does not help in the movement of
the plot. In a perfect play of this type, every scene is
carefully prepared for, and led up to, and so is every
character; every situation inherent in the theme is
treated in its proper place and in its due proportion ;
there are no digressions, however alluring the oppor-
tunity ; and nothing is allowed to interfere with the
more or less intricate convolutions of the plot. Such a
play is the ' Bataille de Dames,' of Scribe and Legouve,
or the ' Pattes de Mouche ' of M. Sardou. Such a play
at its best is -likely to be a marvel of ingenuity in inven-
tion and construction. Such a play, when its writer
was not a master mechanic or was not at his best, is
likely to be hard and dry, empty and unsatisfactory.
It was Scribe who had perfected this mechanism, and
who applied the formula most rigorously. The best of
Scribe's plays are masterpieces of dramaturgy ; but the
breath of life is not in them. He delighted in dexterity
for its own sake ; and, in his eyes, the playwright was
a rival to the juggler who keeps three brass balls in the
air with one hand, while with the other he spins a bowl
on the end of a rod. Mere craftsmanship can go no
further ; but while he was playing his tricks, the drama
was getting divorced from literature. Yet the influence
of Scribe was so potent toward the middle of the cen-
tury, and he had so completely succeeded in imposing
310 French Dramatists.
his standards upon the playgoing public, that even
authors of marked individuality, men who looked at
life with their own eyes, Augier and the younger Du-
mas, could not help following in his footsteps, even when
they were resolved to go their several ways. A certain
artificiality, a certain theatricalness, a certain compla-
cency in adroitness, which we discover now and again
even in their best plays, may be set down as the result
of the overwhelming vogue of Scribe in the days when
Augier and Dumas began their careers as dramatists.
Although a humorist, like Labiche, and a pair of wits,
like Meilhac and HaleVy, chose to learn the formula of
the well-made play, and could apply it when they saw fit,
they rebelled against its restrictions, which irked their
vagabond fantasy. In some of their more frolicsome
pieces they refused to be bound by it. They reverted
to more primitive and easier formulas, like that which
Moliere had been content to employ in one or another
of his earlier pieces, the 'Etourdi,' for example, and
the ' Facheux,' before he had learned how to achieve
the solid structure of ' Tartuffe.' They did not develop
their theme with narrow and inexorable logic ; rather
did they play with it, showing now this aspect of it, and
now that. The ' Chapeau de paille d'ltalie ' of Labiche
and the ' Boule ' of Meilhac and Halevy are each of
them a sequence of comic scenes, having about as much
unity as a string of sausages. They are humorous pan-
oramas of life rather than organic comedies. Their
plots are so loosely knit that almost any act might be
omitted without being missed. And no doubt not a
little of the freshness and the frank fun of these pieces
is to be credited to the refusal of their authors to accept
the limitations of the well-made play.
At the End of the Century. 311
The partnership of Meilhac and Halevy had been
dissolved when the century had nearly a quarter of its
course to run, and at the very moment when the full
effect of the plays they had produced was beginning to
be visible. As it happened, the realist novel was just
then entering on its period of vogue; and under the
lead of Daudet and M. Zola, not a few of the younger
story-tellers came to believe that the background was
quite as important and as interesting as the grouping of
the characters themselves. This could not but have its
echo on the stage also. Yet it is chiefly to the influence
of Meilhac and HaleVy that we must ascribe the frag-
mentary construction which is to be observed in many
of the pieces performed during the final years of the
century. But whereas the authors of ' Froufrou ' had
known from their youth up what the well-made play
was, and what were the principles of its construction,
even though they often preferred to depart from the
formula, their later followers, M. Henri Lavedan, for
instance, and M. Maurice Donnay, have not mastered
the art of play-making in the same severe school. These
younger men, clever as they are, and witty and observ-
ant, have to be contented with a casual structure be-
cause they do not know any better. Their works are
therefore a little too sketchy ; they are a little too lavish
of minor details ; they are frequently overneglectful
of the main subject, and overwilling to sacrifice the
essential scene for the accidental effect. They have
not gone quite so far as the even more ignorant
enthusiasts of the Theatre Libre who took the final
step, and at one fell swoop cast aside all the accepted
principles of the dramatic art as well as all the ordi-
nary decencies of life, and whose plays are many
312 French Dramatists.
of them to be described as unactable, unreadable, un-
speakable.
Underlying the formula of the well-made play was a
sound principle which the dramatist can disregard only
at his peril. This principle is as old as Aristotle, who
tells us that the plot "must have for its object a single
action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle,
and an end, that, like a single living organism, it may
produce its appropriate pleasure." What Scribe and
his disciples did was to cramp the drama by applying
this principle too narrowly. The principle itself is one
which every great dramatist has accepted and obeyed,
Sophocles in ' CEdipus the King,' and Shakspere in
'Othello,' no less than Moliere in the 'Femmes Sa-
vantes,' and Ibsen in ' Ghosts.'
As Aristotle was the critic and theorist of the Greek
drama, so the late Francisque Sarcey was the critic and
theorist of the French drama of the nineteenth century.
Toward the end of his career, it is true that his mind
lost a little of its former flexibility ; but this is only what
often happens to old men. He was the most philo-
sophic of all critics of the acted drama since Lessing.
His code of maxims was not made up out of his own
head arbitrarily, or taken over second-hand from the
books of his library ; it was derived, like Aristotle's and
like Lessing's also, from a long-continued, very careful,
and most conscientious study of the theatre of his own
time. He had the equipment of a scholar and the
insight of a true critic. He was extremely expert in
disentangling the real point at issue, and in applying to
it the decisive principle. More than one of the com-
monplaces of current French dramatic criticism was an
original discovery of Sarcey's.
At the End of the Century. 313
For example, a favorite phrase of his was to the effect
that in a given play the author had or had not shirked
the scene he ought to have treated, the sctne a faire, the
scene that must be in the play. Here Sarcey condensed
into three words an inviolable principle of dramatic con-
struction, that the essential situation of the story must
be shown on the stage in action. If the subject calls
for a meeting of two characters at the crisis of the piece,
this meeting must take place in sight of the audience.
It cannot pass behind closed doors or between the acts ;
it cannot be told by a messenger ; it must be seen and
heard directly by the spectators, who are expecting it,
although, of course, they do not know just what it is
they do expect. If it is not presented to them, they will
be disappointed ; they will feel vaguely that they have
been balked of a pleasure somehow, and they will be
dissatisfied. Perhaps one reason why Sarcey esteemed
the well-made play so highly is that it is always certain
to contain the one or more scenes d faire implicit in its
theme. The scene in which lago distils the poison of
jealousy into the ear of the unsuspicious Othello, the
scene in which Tartuffe makes love to Elmire while
Orgon is hidden under the table, the scene in which
Lady Teazle tells the truth to Sir Peter after the screen
has fallen, all these are scenes d faire. In the final
analysis, what we seek in the theatre is the pleasure the
art of acting can bestow; and it is the earmark of a
genuine scene a faire that it always gives the actors
their best chance.
The success of the ' Etourdi ' and of the ' Chapeau de
paille d' Italic ' shows that the comic dramatist need not
always follow the formula of the well-made play; but
in the final years of the nineteenth century in Paris,
314 French Dramatists.
the failure of many a comedy brisk with incident and
character and bristling with witty speeches is proof
that a comic dramatist can disregard the seine d faire
only at his peril. Of course, plot-making can be over-
done, as Scribe exemplified; but it can be underdone
also, as only too many recent French plays make
evident. The proper protest against the undue insist-
ence upon mere mechanical ingenuity has led to a
loose slovenliness of form, which in its turn is bringing
about a reaction. The French, after all, are very Latin
in their likings; they joy in beholding the orderly
framework of a play put together in due obedience to
the traditions of the craft. They may tolerate a laxity
of structure sometimes, but they do not really admire it.
The reaction against the happy-go-lucky method of play-
making is likely also to be aided greatly by the strong
impression which Ibsen's social dramas have made
upon the Parisian public, and the high esteem in which
the Scandinavian dramatist is held by the more serious
of the French critics.
No modern literature has been less swerved aside by
foreign example than the French ; and none has gone
on its own way with less hesitation; and yet in the
course of history French literature has received a suc-
cession of vivifying shocks from one foreign source or
another. In the Renaissance it was Italy that gave
this stimulus ; to Corneille it came from Spain, and to
Rousseau from England; the share of Germany in
bringing to pass the Romanticist revolt is large enough,
although perhaps not to be declared with precision.
The latest irritants come from still further North,
from Russia and from Scandinavia. Just what effect
the example of Tolstoy will have on the French drama
At the End of the Century. 315
no one can even venture to guess now ; as the Russian
is known chiefly as a novelist and scarcely at all as a
dramatist, his influence on the writers of plays is likely
to be somewhat indirect, although to say this is not
to say that it may not in time prove to be powerful.
Yet I doubt if it will be very potent, except in so far
as his broad toleration, his immense sympathy, his
abundant compassion, may be contagious and may help
to soften the hardness and the contempt which are
marked characteristics of the writings of Flaubert and
of his school. On the whole, Tolstoy's ideal is too
remote from that of the French themselves, for them
to be able to cherish it and to adopt it.
But Ibsen is a dramatist ; so far as mere dramaturgic
skill goes, he is one of the greatest of all dramatists.
Almost every one of his social dramas has been per-
formed in Paris ; and even though some of them have
been acted but two or three times, still they have been
seen on the stage, the only true proving-ground of a
genuine dramatist's work. Few of these plays really
pleased the Parisians, and why should they ? Ibsen
is not Gallic, but very Scandinavian ; he is not at all
gay, indeed he is austere. But after they had seen a
certain number of these Scandinavian austerities, they
came away dissatisfied with the ordinary Parisian play.
However inacceptable their ethical code may seem some-
times to us Anglo-Saxons, the French are moralists to
the marrow; and what they seek on the stage is "a
picture of life, which is also a judgment." They
may not have recognized the picture of life to which
Ibsen called their attention, and they may have refused
to accept his judgment on the case presented ; but they
could not but see where Ibsen had set a higher stand-
316 French Dramatists.
ard, ethically and esthetically, than their own later
dramatists.
The symbolism, the vagueness, the mysticism
which to many of us are the least interesting phase of
Ibsen's later works puzzled the Parisians repeatedly.
Many of the characters he had projected into life were
far too bold and reckless in asserting their right to live
out their own lives in their own way, to please a people
governed by the social instinct as the French are. The
occasional morbidness, the lack of wholesome material
sometimes, the merely Scandinavian problem presented
once or twice in place of one of the eternal and univer-
sal puzzles of human existence, all these things tended
to disconcert the French playgoing public. But no
people could more heartily appreciate Ibsen's merciless
logic and his severity of form.
It may be fanciful in me, but I have always wondered
whether or not the social dramas of Ibsen are what
they are, because the militant comedies of the younger
Dumas preceded them, just as these comedies in
their turn are what they are because they had for fore-
runners Scribe's ingenious plays. Scribe had a complex-
ity of plot, and, so far as may be, no moral whatsoever.
Dumas did away with the half of Scribe's machinery ;
and he insisted on pointing the moral, getting up him-
self to declare it, if occasion served. Now Ibsen has
gone a step farther, profiting by the labors both of
Scribe and Dumas, and having studied their works
diligently. He is now able to make the plots of his
plays seem perfectly simple, although, as a matter of
fact, they are often very elaborate; and the moral
which is explicit in Dumas, Ibsen has intensified by
keeping it implicit. His craftsmanship is so masterly
At the End of the Century. 317
that the French are glad to claim it ; Sarcey called the
' Doll's House ' a French play, except in the arbitrary
departure of Nora in the final act.
This mastery of dramatic form is another quality of
Ibsen's which the next generation of French play-
wrights will probably seek to acquire. Already has
M. Paul Hervieu, in the ' Loi de I'homme,' and in other
pieces, succeeded in attaining a certain plain simplicity,
not unlike Ibsen's. Perhaps also the directness of one
or two of M. Jules Lemaitre's plays may be ascribed
likewise to Ibsen's severe example. But it is hard for
M. Lemaitre to lay aside his irony; and irony not
the tragic irony of Sophocles, but the disintegrating
comic irony of Renan is fatal to the success of a
dramatist. No audience is willing to be laughed at;
it has not paid its money to serve as a butt. That
Ibsen is somewhat deficient in humor is probably to his
advantage. Certainly no taint of comic irony ever mars
the force of his straightforward sincerity.
Perhaps the French do not find a complete satisfac-
tion in the solutions that M. Hervieu and M. Lemaitre
propose for the problems they have propounded. But
Ibsen has not always solved those he has presented, as
Mr. Howells reminds us: "It is not by the solution
of problems that the moralist teaches, but by the ques-
tion that his handling of them suggests to us respecting
ourselves. Artistically he is bound, Ibsen as a drama-
tist is bound to give an esthetic completeness to his
works, and I do not find that he ever fails to do this ;
to my thinking they have a high beauty and propriety ;
but ethically he is bound not to be final ; for if he forces
himself to be final in things that do not and can not
end here, he becomes dishonest, he becomes a Nordau.
318 French Dramatists.
What he can and must do ethically is to make us take
thought of ourselves, and look to it whether we have in
us the making of this or that wrong ; whether we are
hypocrites, tyrants, pretenders, shams, conscious or un-
conscious ; whether our most unselfish motives are not
really secret shapes of egotism ; whether our convictions
are not mere brute acceptances; whether we believe
what we profess ; whether, when we force good to a
logical end, we are not doing evil."
The most popular play of the final decade of the
century presents no problem whatsoever and avoids any
criticism of life. Apparently, its author has never heard
of Ibsen, and never seen any play by the younger
Dumas. He has not taken his stand on firm reality,
but has preferred to build an airy fantasy, as unsub-
stantial as it is charming. His aim has not been to
enlighten, but merely to entertain ; and he has accom-
plished his purpose superabundantly. Since ' Hernani,'
no play has been so enthusiastically acclaimed at its
first performances as the 'Cyrano de Bergerac' of
M. de Rostand, its humorously poetic hero being acted
with incomparable variety by the most accomplished
of contemporary comedians, M. Coquelin. This play,
which pleased many thousands of spectators, not only
in France, but also in Germany, in Italy, and in Amer-
ica, was joyfully hailed by certain Parisian critics as the
harbinger of a new springtime for the French poetic
drama. M. Rostand was welcomed as a reviver of the
best traditions, and he was eulogized as one who like
Corneille with the ' Cid,' and like Hugo with ' Hernani '
had set a new model which later dramatists might
vainly strive to surpass.
It may be bad manners to look Pegasus in the mouth
At the End of the Century. 319
or to smile at the cooing murmurs of delight that run
round the Porte Saint Martin at the exquisite delivery
of a mellifluous couplet ; and there is no disputing that
'Cyrano de Bergerac' is very clever and very adroit,
that it has color and vivacity, that if it lacks passion,
it has at least sentiment, that if it wants real action, it
has abundant movement, and, above all, that it makes
an extraordinarily wide appeal to those who like love-
making and romance, to those who relish easy wit and
lively humor, and to those who revel in combats and in
the peril of life and death. But it cannot fairly be
called an epoch-making novelty. It is, instead, an old
thing done in a new way. The plot is put together by
a playwright who has absorbed every device of the
elder Dumas, and the verse is written by a lyrist who
has learned every trick of the Parnassians. It is, in
short, an old-fashioned piece, but with all the modern
improvements.
An adverse critic might suggest that M. Rostand had
used his story to display his verbal virtuosity. He has
a very pretty lyric gift, always a rare endowment
among the French. He can touch wit with sentiment,
and he can thrust a hint of pathos into an extravagant
simile. He combines clearness and elegance, and his
verse is both facile and finished. The quality of his
poetry is almost exactly that of the vers de soci/te, the
verse in lighter vein of Prior and Mr. Austin Dobson,
of Locker and Dr. Holmes. M. Rostand is brilliant
and buoyant as Praed is, for example; and Cyrano's
description of a kiss may be compared curiously with
the stanza in the ' Chaunt of the Brazen Head,' in
which the lyrist liltingly tells us what he thinks of
love.
320 French Dramatists.
' Cyrano de Bergerac,' for all its bravery of epithet
and all its briskness of motion, is at bottom too slight
a thing to serve as the corner-stone of a new school. It
contains no promise of future development, nor do the
author's other plays, less coruscating than ' Cyrano,' but
possessing the same qualities. And even in ' Cyrano '
itself, there is no character of real originality or of
genuine verity ; it is peopled only by the masks of the
stage. The play itself lacks depth and breadth ; it is
without ultimate sincerity ; it has as its basis an unwor-
thy trick, and it holds up before us as a hero whom we
are to honor with our approval and with whom we are
expected to sympathize, a man engaged in deceiving
a woman into a marriage certain to bring her misery so
soon as she discovers, though too late, the dulness of
the man she has wedded. M. de Rostand's play is clean
externally, but it is essentially immoral, in so far as it
erects a false standard and parades a self-sacrifice which,
to use Mr. Howells's apt phrase, is " a secret shape of
egotism."
Whatever the real value of ' Cyrano de Bergerac,' it
is not to be denied that it was the last play of the nine-
teenth century to achieve a triumph at once immediate
and widespread. Yet there is no dispute about the fact
that it stands frankly outside the line along which the
French drama has been developing in the past fifty
years. M. Rostand's piece is not "a picture of life,
which is also a judgment " ; and unless it is this, no
play is likely long to satisfy the French. That is what
we find in the * Tartuffe ' of Moliere, in the ' Mariage
de Figaro ' of Beaumarchais, in the ' Demi-Monde ' of
Dumas fits, and the ' Gendre de M. Poirier ' of Augier
and Sandeau. It is what we find in the plays of M. Paul
At the End of the Century. 321
Hervieu, on the one hand, and, on the other, in those of
M. Henri Lavedan.
If we may guess at the future from our knowledge
of the past, we must expect that the masterpiece of the
French theatre in the twentieth century will be like
those of the nineteenth century and of the eighteenth
century and of the seventeenth. It will be a comedy
almost on the verge of stiffening into the serious drama.
It will deal gravely and resolutely with life, but it will
also be charged with satire and relieved by wit. Per-
haps it will not be robustly comic ; but is ' Tartuff e '
really so very laughter-provoking ? Its subject will be
logically thought out and symmetrically presented, for
the dramatic anarchists of the Theatre Libre are already
routed and dispersed. Its craftsmanship will be sure;
and it will have the prime merits of simplicity, of straight-
forwardness, and of sincerity.
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