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DRAMA

of human conduct. This afforded the author, who was, in his w7ay, a moralist and a reformer, excellent opportunities for humorous discussions and the display of that familiar eloquence which was his greatest gift and most effective faculty. Among other subjects, the social position of women had an all-powerful attraction for his mind, and many of his later plays were written with the object of placing in strong relief the remarkable inequality of the sexes, both as regards freedom of action and responsibility, in modern marriage. Like all the dramatists of his time, he adhered to Scribe’s mode of play-writing—a mixture of the drarne bourgeois, as initiated by Diderot, and the comedy of character and manners, long in vogue from the days of Moliere, Regnard, Destouches, and Marivaux, down to the beginning of the 19 th century. In his prefaces Dumas often undertook the defence of the system which, in his estimation, was best calculated to serve the purpose of the artist, the humorist, and the moralist—a dramatist being, as he conceived, a combination of the three. Though the majority of French playgoers continued to side with him, and to cling to the time-honoured theatrical beliefs, a few young men were beginning to murmur against the too elaborate mechanism and artificial logic. Scribe and his successors, whose plays were a combination of comedy and drama, were wont to devote the first act to a brilliant and witty presentation of personages, then to crowd the following scenes with incidents, until the action wras brought to a climax about the end of the fourth act, invariably concluding, in the fifth, with an optimistic denouement, just before midnight, the time appointed by police regulations for the closing of playhouses. At the same time a more serious and far-reaching criticism was levelled at the very principles on which the conception of human life was then dependent. A new philosophy, based on scientific research, had been gradually gaining ground and penetrating the French mind. A host of bold writers had been trying, with considerable firmness and continuity of purpose, to start a new kind of fiction, writing in perfect accordance with the determinist theories of Auguste Comte, Darwin, and Taine. The long-disputed success of the Naturalistic School carried everything before it during the years 1875-1885, and its triumphant leaders were tempted to make the best of their advantage by annexing a new province and establishing a footing on the stage. In this they failed signally, either when they were assisted by professional dramatists or when left to their own resources. It became evident that Naturalism, to be made acceptable on the stage, would have to undergo a special process of transformation and be handled in a peculiar way. M. Henry Becque succeeded in embodying the new theories in two plays, which at first met with very indifferent success, but were revived at a later period, and finally obtained permanent recognition in the French theatre— even with the acquiescence of the most learned critics, when they discovered, or fancied they discovered, that M. Becque’s comedies agreed, in the main, with Moliere’s conception of dramatic art. In Les Gorbeaux and La Parisienne the plot is very simple; the episodes are incidents taken from ordinary life. No extraneous character is introduced to discuss moral and social theories, or to acquaint us with the psychology of the real dramatis 'personae, or to suggest humorous observations about the progress of the dramatic action. The characters are left to tell their own tale in their own words, which are sometimes very comical, sometimes very repulsive, but purport to be always true to nature. Human will, which was the soul and mainspring of French tragedy in the 17th century, and played such a paramount part in the drame bourgeois and the haute comedie of the 19th, appears in M. Becque’s

plays to have fallen from its former exalted position and to have ceased to be a free agent. It is a mere passive instrument to our inner desires and instincts and appetites, which, in their turn, obey natural laws. Thus, in M. Becque’s comedies, as in the old Greek drama, Destiny, not man, is the chief actor, the real but unseen protagonist. M. Becque was not a prolific writer, and when he died„ in 1899, it was remarked that he had spent the last ten years of his life in comparative inactivity. But during these years his young and ardent disciples had spared no effort in putting their master’s theories to the test. It had occurred to a gifted and enterprising actor-manager,, named Antoine, that the time had come for trying dramatic experiments in a continued and methodical manner. For this purpose he gathered around him a number of young authors, and produced their plays before a select audience of subscribers, who had paid in advance for their seasontickets. The entertainment was a strictly private one. In this way M. Antoine made himself independent of the censors, and at the same time was no longer obliged to consider the requirements of the average playgoer, as is the case with ordinary managers, anxious, above all things, to secure long runs. At the Theatre Libre the most successful play was not to be performed for more than three nights. The reform attempted was to consist in the elimination of what was contrary to nature in Dumas’s and Augier’s comedies: of the intrigue parallele or underplot, of the overnumerous and improbable incidents which followed the first act and taxed the spectator’s memory to the verge cf fatigue; and, lastly, of the conventional denouement for which there was no justification. A true study of character was to take the place of Sardou’s complicated fabrications and Dumas’s problem plays. The authors would present the spectator with a fragment of life, but would force noconclusion upon him at the termination of the play. The reformation in histrionic art was to proceed apace. The actors and actresses of the preceding period had striven to give full effect to certain witty utterances of the author, or to preserve and to develop their own personal peculiarities or oddities. M. Antoine and his fellowartists did their best to make the public realize, in every word and every gesture, the characteristic features and ruling passions of the men and women they were supposed to represent. It was in the early autumn of 1887 that the Theatre Libre opened its doors for the first time. It struggled on for eight years amidst unfailing curiosity, but not without encountering some adverse, or even derisive, criticism from a considerable portion of the public and the press. The Theatre Libre brought under public notice such men as Courteline and George Ancey, who gave respectively, in Bonbouroche and La Dupe, specimens of a comic vein called the “comique cruel.” M. Fabre, in VArgent, approached, if not surpassed his master, Henry Becque. M. Brieux, in Blanchette, gave promise of talent, which he has since in a great measure justified. In Les Fossiles and FEnvers Pune Sainte, by M. Francois de Curel, were found evidences of dramatic vigour and concentrated energy, allied with a remarkable gift for the minute analysis of feeling. M. Antoine’s activity was not exclusively confined to the efforts of the French Naturalistic School; he included the Norwegian drama in his programme, and successively produced several of Ibsen’s plays. They received a large amount of attention from the critics, the views then expressed ranging from the wildest enthusiasm to the bitterest irony. Francisque Sarcey was decidedly hostile, and M. Jules Lemaitre, who ranked next to him in authority, ventured to suggest that Ibsen’s ideas were nothing better than long-discarded social and literary paradoxes, borrowed from Pierre Leroux through George Sand, and returned to