of M. Victor Hugo's dramas, but on their superiority over the plays of other distinguished contemporaries. It has been said, with some semblance of truth, that of all the departments of literature which the great poet has touched, the theatre is the weakest. We cannot say that the highest expression of his genius is revealed in the dramatic portion of his work; for it is scarcely possible to put anything above "La Légende des Siècles" and "Les Rayons et les Ombres;

but when the special subject here treated of is thus disparaged, its merits are only thrown into more striking relief. However inferior to himself Victor Hugo may be in his plays, these are, none the less, the first of the modern répertoire. They are therefore only to be judged on their own intrinsic merits, not as the unimportant productions of a man who wrote dramas in his leisure moments as an experiment.

The great superiority of these dramas -some in prose, as "Angelo" and "Lucrèce Borgia," others cast in fine and pregnant verses, like "Le Roi s'amuse" and "Ruy Blas"-is principally obvious when they are submitted to the test of a comparison with the most successful plays of the time. Place M. Hugo's weakest drama beside the finest of M. Ponsard's, and the distance that separates the real from the conventional will at once be measured; do the same with the best productions of M. Octave Feuillet-a dramatist of no mean order-and we see the superiority of a writer who treats human passions, over one who gives a fair superficial tracing of the transient manners of a portion of society. The only safe manner of estimating dramatic creations at their real value is to examine whether they are and will be of all time. If a play appears at all out of fashion-démodée -it may fairly be judged inferior, because it has gone little more than skin deep in the reproduction of human sentiments, and is doomed to pass because it pictures things that pass. Otherwise, there is no reason why the reputation of Scudéry should not have transcended that of Corneille. If Molière

are

and Corneille radiantly outlive their age and soar higher than any character of the grand siècle, while Scudéry, Voiture, Colletet, and a host of others all but dead and buried, it is because their types, passions, and feelings live; while the personages of those minor scribes, as successful in their time as M. Sardou is in ours, were, if the metaphor may be allowed, casts of the human visage without any of its characteristic expressions. Moreover, to mould a work which shall resist the raids of time and of the ordinary narrow-minded men who abhor all that is true, because truth is too broad and overwhelming for their intellect, it is not only requisite that the necessities of the scene be not sacrificed to the conception; the situations must be plausible, natural, unsought for, and, even in verse, the dramatis persona must express themselves as other people do. One feature only-the costumes, the place-may be archaic. If the play be not true, if the public do not hear sentiments which, maybe, have traversed their thoughts, if the author has sacrificed reality to rule and convention, however fine and well said the verses, the public will go to sleep, or will remain untouched, respectful, and indifferent.

Shortly before his death, Talmatoo great an artist not to be aware of the insufficiency of the Racinian and other classical personations which his talent alone could render acceptable -bewailed the sadness of his fate in having been eternally condemned to express himself on the scene as an Academician, and never as a man, just as Corneille was wont to lament at having to submit to the stage rules of Aristotle. "Surtout plus de beaux vers!" said Talma, perhaps unaware that with one word he was laying his finger on the fundamental defect of the classical school. Thus the tragedies of Racine are absolutely dull; and the few spectators "Britannicus" can muster now-a-days are those who suppose that Racine is admirable, and must in consequence be

yawned over with due respect to his great but undetected genius. What can be more dreary than the emphatic tirades of those pompous and extra-human personages, who entwine the simplest expression with paraphrases and circumlocutions, and, instead of

“Il est minuit,”

give us this curt and neatly put euphemism :

"Du haut de ma demeure,

Voltaire stigmatized as a madman. At the beginning of this century Shakespeare was steadily read in France. A powerful generation, born and bred in the shadow of the first revolution, hotblooded, passionate, open to generous ideas, possessing to a marvellous degree the keen spirit of art blended with the esprit révolutionnaire, taken in its highest acceptation, was inaugurating the age for France and promising great things for the future. On no other public could Shakespeare have worked more

heure ;"

who cannot make up their minds to the shocking emergency of dying on the stage, but discreetly retire to the greenroom for that operation; and who continue to express unnatural sentiments in masculine and feminine rhymes of the dreariest and most exasperating perfection? It is by such narrow treatment that dramatic art is destroyed; conventionality and affectation are far more baneful to stage excellence than the loudest excesses in the other extreme; and from 1700 to 1810 the unparalleled poverty of the French theatre demonstrates but too conclusively with what degeneracy art may be afflicted under the influence of a Racine. It steadily waned throughout the eighteenth century. Racine was followed by Voltaire, a poor poet and dramatist; and under Ducis and Pixéricourt, we find the classical style even more unbearable. Voltaire had somewhat vulgarized the name of Shakespeare, hitherto unknown in France, but had stamped him down as a "madman," after vain efforts to imitate him; and it is a sign of the times that public taste was so radically perverted by pompous tragedy, that men like the immortal author of "Candide" should find it stupid and coarse for Othello to murder Desdemona before the public, and to carry ridicule and indecency so far as to do it with a pillow.

By a strange reaction, the honour of regenerating French dramatic art was reserved for the man whom the great

exclaimed many of these boiling young men, Alfred de Vigny, Emile Deschamps, Paul Delacroix, and others. And henceforth Shakespeare was read and worshipped con furore. He was translated and imitated, and finally there came forth works pregnant with proud and self-asserted personality, not written after the manner but after the spirit of Shakespeare, in which men and women could die as they liked, where tragic sentiment did not exclude comedy, or comedy drama; in fact, where creatures could cry, laugh, die, live, and speak as common mortals. These were M. Victor Hugo's.

It was in 1827. The sun of the Bourbons was setting for ever: the revolution of 1830 was already giving unequivocal tokens of its forthcoming outburst; a spirit of rebellion was stirred, not only in politics but in literature. To Ducis had succeeded Casimir Delavigne; to Casimir Delavigne, the missing link between la vieille tragédie and romanticism, another style was to succeed. At that time Victor Hugo, known hitherto as the young and promising poet of royalty, began to manifest decided leanings to dramatic writing. The young man was well read in the great English plays, but his literary education had been essentially orthodox; he was brought up to respect Legitimacy and Catholicism, was still obviously impressed by what he had fed on, and his principles clashed for some time with his natural aspirations towards freedom of expression. It was not until an apparently trifling event,

which it is useful to record here as a species of prefatory explanation, revealed to him and others a boundless vein in art, that his ideas were fixed, and that he set with vigour and audacity to breaking with every tradition. The Odéon had given, for the first time in France, Weber's "Freischütz;" and the manager was so encouraged by the success of his foreign importation, that he induced Charles Kean and a troupe of English actors to give a series of Shakespearian performances. The attempt was not a little venturous; Frenchmen are but poor English scholars; it is in translations that they admire the beauties of English literature, even at this period of continuous international communication. We are told, for instance, by Alexandre Dumas (who translated many English books, although he knew not a word of the language) that Gustave Planche was, to his knowledge, one of the three or four literary men who could read Shakespeare in the text. However, this ignorance of English seems not to have impeded Kean's success. Victor Hugo followed with intense interest all the personations of the great English actor; the performances, guessed more than understood, inspired him with enthusiastic admiration for the genius whom he styles, in the preface to "Cromwell," "the god of the theatre, uniting in one person the three characteristic geniuses of the French scene-Corneille, Molière, Beaumarchais." He was then giving a last touch to "Cromwell;" the part of the Protector was destined for Talma. Talma was a man of taste and refinement, as well as a great actor; he divined that the young poet would give him occasions for other triumphs, and solicited a part in the forthcoming drama. But Talma died before its completion; and Victor Hugo developed it to proportions that excluded it from the stage. At the same time he wrote a preface to the play, purporting to be the grand manifesto of the Romantiques. The preface produced perhaps more effect than the drama; it was the signal for violent discussions in the two hostile

camps, and was the preliminary skirmish to the great battles fought over "Hernani" and "Marion." The Classiques were not so easily sent about their business. "La jeunesse dorée"-it was a golden youth then, not one of German silver-ranged itself under the banner of Victor Hugo, and the supporters of the old school prepared for the struggle. The painter Delacroix wrote to the poet: "Eh bien, the field is ours! Hamlet raises his hideous head, Othello prepares his pillow so essentially murderous and subversive of all good dramatic policy. You had better wear a stout cuirass under your coat. And, in truth, this jocular recommendation was not without reason, for the struggle was very soon to pass from literary to physical demonstrations.

Fear the classical daggers."

The principles laid down in the famous preface were those that were to become the basis of the modern drama. "Three kinds of spectators," it said,

ແ

compose what it is agreed to call the public: (1) the women; (2) the thinkers; (3) the common mass. What the common mass demand of a dramatic work is action; what woman requires, above all things, is passion; what thinkers more especially seek are types. The common mass is so enamoured with action as willingly to overlook passion and types; women are so ab sorbed by the development of passion, that they give no attention to the design of the types; and as to thinkers, they are so eager to see types, that is to say, men, alive on the stage, that albeit they accept passion as a natural instinct in a dramatic work, their equanimity is almost disturbed by the action. This is because the common mass especially seek sensations in the theatre; women are in quest of emotion, and thinkers of reflection: all want pleasure; but the first want the pleasure of the eyes, the second that of the heart, the last that of the mind. Hence the existence of three very distinct kinds of dramatic work-one vulgar and imperious, the two others illustrious and superior, but all three

gratifying a separate want: the melodrama for the common mass; for women, the tragedy, where passion is analysed; for thinkers, the comedy, which describes humanity." This classification may be perhaps a little too exclusive, but on consideration it will be found to contain the immutable rules of dramatic production. The plays brimful of poison, murder, duels, and other violent actions, written for the Ambigu, could hardly be presented on any other stage, because they are written for a special unlettered public invincibly allured to the sight of such excrescences by a natural law. "For those," pursues Victor Hugo, "who study the three categories I have spoken of, it is evident that all three are in the right: women are right in wishing to be moved; thinkers in wishing to be taught; the common herd in wishing to be amused. Hence the necessity of the drama. Beyond the foot-lamps, that barrier of fire which separates the real from the ideal world, to create and to vivify men in the combined conditions of art and nature; to instil into these men passions which develop some and modify others; and lastly, out of their collision with the laws of providence, to derive human life-that is to say, great, small, painful, comical, and terrible events - such is the object of the drama. It is, in fact, the alliance of tragedy and comedy."

This was tantamount to classing Racine and his followers among the perruques that had fulfilled their time. Unfortunately the perruques were numerous in 1827; they clang to the Racinian répertoire as desperately as they held on to the Bourbons, and the Bourbons to their crown; and they were seconded by the vacillating mass which will at all times side with the opponents of innovation, following the ingenuous maxim that what has been consecrated by time and past generations must be infinitely superior to anything new, however good. So the Perruquiers were determined to play out the game unguibus et rostro-with fist and foot;

"Crom

but how could this be done? well," covering paper to the extent of five hundred pages, was not to appear on any stage they would vow it to the infernal divinities on paper, and charge the writer with his scandalous ignorance of French grammar, and with misspelling Shakespeare's name, which he spelt "Schakspere," and indulge in other such little fantasies with the pen. But that was all. There were enough tokens of combativeness in the preface, and sufficient dramatic power in the play to guarantee an early opportunity of fighting out the battle before the foot-lamps.

A year or so elapsed, and it suddenly became known that the desired moment was forthcoming. Victor Hugo had written a five-act drama called "Un Duel sous Richelieu," wherein the principles of romanticism were acted upon with a vengeance. The play had been read to an audience at once numerous and select Balzac, Alfred de Musset, Frédéric Soulier, Alexandre Dumas, the brother painters Deveria, Delacroix, Saint-Beuve, and the full body of heroes of the romantique Iliad. The poet's friends had feared that his talent could not bend itself to the exigencies of the stage; but the lecture had dispelled all apprehension; the applause had been unanimous, and Baron Taylor, the royal commissary of theatres, had risen to such a pitch of enthusiasm as to bespeak the piece (the name of which was afterwards changed to "Marion de Lorme") for the Théâtre Français. Shortly after, Victor Hugo received a letter from the manager of the Porte Saint Martin offering a splendid cast, including Frédéric Lemaître and Madame Alain-Dorval, both in the radiancy of their talent. Then a gentleman with white trousers and a white face, and a decoration at his button-hole, the well-known M. Harel, besought the author to let him have it for the Odéon; and when the author alleged his engagement with the Théâtre Français, the enterprising manager, espying the MS. on the table, took forcible possession, and would have walked

off with it had he not with great difficulty been induced to relinquish his prize. So went the classical chronicle. But although the artists of the Comédie received their parts with favour, and the competition between managers was so great, the first onslaught was not to take place over "Marion de Lorme." The Censure condemned the play, on the plea of immoral and subversive tendencies. For the censors, it was a crime to show a Phryne capable of rehabilitation; for the Home Minister, M. de Martignac (poor both as author and statesman), who had perpetrated some vaudevilles in the old style in conjunction with Scribe, it was a grievous offence to write otherwise than Scribe and he did; as for Charles X. it was an enormity to place one of his weakest ancestors on the stage, and still worse to portray Louis XIII. in true colours. So Marion was prohibited by general consent. The drama was performed after the revolution of 1830, not with the original cast of the Théâtre Français, but at the Porte Saint Martin-Bocage in the part of Didier, and Dorval as Marion. Its success was not affirmed without passionate disputes: Madame Dorval, admirable from the first to the last word of her part, was hissed more than once, especially at the verses-

"Fut-ce pour te sauver, redevenir infâme,

Je ne le puis. Mon Didier, ton souffle a relevé mon âme!" &c. &c.

by those who, to use the poet's words, "could not hear chaste things with chaste ears." But, as with most pieces the excellence of which is contested because they are partly misunderstood, "Marion de Lorme" eventually triumphed, not because the obnoxious. verses and situations, but the public, were altered. This drama, the first stage piece written by M. Victor Hugo, is by no means his best: it is far below "Le Roi s'amuse," "Ruy Blas," and, we should almost say, "Lucrèce Borgia," in dramatic construction. The knowledge of the stage is often meagre ; Didier comes in at the window when there is no reason why he should not use the door. There are frequent

coincidences, as when Marion says to Didier

"Vous êtes mon Didier, mon maître et mon seigneur,"

almost the words of Doña Sol, in "Hernani,"

"Vous êtes mon lion superbe et généreux." There is too much analogy, too, between the parts and speeches of De Nangis and De Silva-an analogy which may be said to extend, for type at least, to St. Vallier in "Le Roi s'amuse." Extreme deference to historical veracity has also led the poet to frame the character of Louis XIII. on a too drawling and laggard pattern. It is true that, allowing for these defects, there remains a very fine drama, altogether worthy of the writer. What wit and entrain in the

speeches of the volatile De Saverny ! The light, harebrained, unconsciously cruel, and yet withal open nature of the seventeenth century seigneur, is given with incomparable delicacy and exactness; and the whole of the fifth act, culminating in Didier's forgiveness of Marion for deceiving him, is admirable

"Eh bien! non! non! mon cœur se brise! c'est horrible!

Non; je l'ai trop aimée! Il est bien impossible

De la quitter ainsi! Non, c'est trop malaisé De garder un front dur quand le cœur est brisé !

Viens! O viens dans mes bras!"

Is the play immoral? The treatment it met at the hands of Charles X.-a treatment, it would seem, recently repeated in this country-points to immorality. An erring creature, lost in the whirl of a brilliant and dissolute life, is by chance touched to the heart by real, profound love; forthwith she eschews the past, leaves for ever the scene of her disorders, and makes herself a life of crystalline purity. The event that has worked this sudden conversion is real love; the woman is transfigured, and feels a horror for her past life. The moral object of "Marion de Lorme" is, then, to show that virtue can bend down even to the most forlorn