Chapter III: Part 3

National as it was, and because of this very quality, the Spanish drama was fated to share the lot of the people it so fully represented. At the end of the 17th century, when the Spanish throne at last became the declared apple of discord among the governments of Europe, the Spanish people lay, in the words of an historian of its later days, "like a corpse, incapable of feeling its own impotence." That national art to which it had so faithfully clung had fallen into decline and decay with the spirit of Spain itself. By the time of the close of the great war, the theatre had sunk into a mere amusement of the populace, which during the greater part of the 18th century, while allowing the old masters the measure of favour which accords with traditional esteem, continued to uphold the representatives of the old drama in its degeneracy--authors on the level of their audiences. But the Spanish court was now French, and in the drama, even more than in any other form of art, France was the arbiter of taste in Europe. With the restoration of peace accordingly began isolated attempts to impose the French canons of dramatic theory, and to follow the example of French dramatic practice; and in the middle of the century these endeavours assumed more definite form. Montiano's bloodless tragedy of _Virginia_ (1750), which was never acted, was accompanied by a discourse endeavouring to reconcile the doctrines of the author with the practice of the old Spanish dramatists; the play itself was in blank verse (a metre never used by Calderon, though occasionally by Lope), instead of the old national ballad-measures (the romance-measure with assonance and the rhymed _redondilla_ quatrain) preferred by the old masters among the variety of metres employed by them. The earliest Spanish comedy in the French form (a translation only, though written in the national metre)[67] (1751), and the first original Spanish comedy on the same model, Nicolas Moratin's _Petimetra_ (_Petite-Maitresse_), printed in 1726 with a critical dissertation, likewise remained unacted. In 1770, however, the same author's _Hormesinda_, an historic drama on a national theme and in the national metre, but adhering to the French rules, appeared on the stage; and similar attempts followed in tragedy by the same writer and others (including Ayala, who ventured in 1775 to compete with Cervantes on the theme of Numantia), and in comedy by Iriarte and Jovellanos (afterwards minister under Godoy), who produced a sentimental comedy in Diderot's manner.[68] But these endeavours failed to effect any change in the popular theatre, which was with more success raised from its deepest degradation by R. de la Cruz, a fertile author of light pieces of genuine humour, especially _saynetes_, depicting the manners of the middle and lower classes. In literary circles Garcia de la Huerta's voluminous collection of the old plays (1785) gave a new impulse to dramatic productivity, and the conflict continued between representatives of the old school, such as Luciano Francisco Comella (1716-1779) and of the new, such as the younger Moratin, whose comedies--of which the last and most successful[69] was in prose--raised him to the foremost position among the dramatists of his age. In tragedy N. de Cienfuegos likewise showed some originality. After, however, the troubles of the French domination and the war had come to an end, the precepts and examples of the new school failed to reassert themselves.

Already in 1815 an active critical controversy was carried on by Buhl de Faber against the efforts of J. Faber and Alcala Galiano to uphold the principles of classicism; and with the aid of the eminent actor Maiquez the old romantic masterpieces were easily reinstated in the public favour, which as a matter of fact they had never forfeited. The Spanish dramatists of the 19th century, after passing, as in the instance of F. Martinez de la Rosa and Breton de los Herreros, from the system of French comedy to the manner of the national drama, appear either to have stood under the influence of the French romantic school, or to have returned once more to the old Spanish models. Among the former class A. Gil y Zarate, of the latter J. Zorrilla, are mentioned as specially prominent. The most renowned Spanish dramatist at the opening of the 20th century was the veteran politician and man of letters J. Echegaray.

Meanwhile, the old religious performances are not wholly extinct in Spain, and the relics of the solemn pageantry with which they were associated may long continue to survive there, as in the case of the _pasos_, which claim to have been exhibited in Holy Week at Seville for at least three centuries. As to the theatre itself, there can be no fear either that the imitation of foreign examples will satisfy Spanish dramatists--especially when, like the author of _Dona Perfecta_ (Perez Galdos), they have excellent home material of their own for adaptation,--or that the Spanish public itself, with fine actors and actresses still upholding the lofty traditions of the national drama, will remain too fatigued to consume the drama unless bit by bit--in the shape of _zarzuelas_ and similar one-act confections. Whatever may be the future of one of the noblest of modern dramatic literatures, it may confidently be predicted that, so long as Spain is Spain, her theatre will not be permanently either denationalized or degraded.

(d) _Portugal._

The Portuguese drama.

The Portuguese drama in its earlier phases, especially before in the latter part of the 14th century the nation completely achieved its independence, seems to have followed much the same course as the Spanish; and the religious drama in all its prevailing forms and direct outgrowths retained its popularity even by the side of the products of the Renaissance. In the later period of that movement translations of classical dramas into the vernacular were stimulated by the cosmopolitan example of George Buchanan, who for a time held a post in the university of Coimbra; to this class of play Teive's _Johannes_ (1553) may be supposed to have belonged. In the next generation Antonio Ferreira[70] and others still wrote comedies more or less on the classical model. But the rather vague title of "the Plautus of Portugal" is accorded to an earlier comic writer, the celebrated Gil Vicente, who died about 1536, after, it is stated, producing forty-two plays. He was the founder of popular Portuguese comedy, and his plays were called _autos_, or by the common name of _praticas_.[71] Among his most gifted successors are mentioned A. Ribeiro, called _Chiado_ (the mocking-bird), who died in 1590;[72] his brother Jeronymo, B. Dias, A. Pires, J. Pinto, H. Lopes and others. The dramatic efforts of the illustrious poet Luis de Camoes (Camoens) are relatively of slight importance; they consist of one of the many modern versions of the _Amphitruo_, and of two other comedies, of which the earlier (_Filodemo_) was acted at Goa in 1553, the subjects having a romantic colour.[73] Of greater importance were the contributions to dramatic literature of F. de Sa de Miranda, who, being well acquainted with both Spanish and Italian life, sought early in his career to domesticate the Italian comedy of intrigue on the Portuguese stage;[74] but he failed to carry with him the public taste, which preferred the _autos_ of Gil Vicente. The followers of Miranda were, however, more successful than he had been himself, among them the already-mentioned Antonio Ferreira; the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, which bear some resemblance to the Spanish _Celestina_, are valuable as pictures of contemporary manners in city and court.[75]

The later Portuguese dramatic literature seems also to have passed through phases corresponding to those of the Spanish, though with special features of its own. In the 18th century Alcino Mycenio (1728-1770), known as Domingos dos Reis Quito in everyday life, in which his avocation was that of Allan Ramsay, was remarkably successful with a series of plays,[76] including of course an _Inez de Castro_, which in a subsequent adaptation by J. B. Gomes long held the national stage. Another dramatist, of both merit and higher aspirations, was Lycidas Cynthio (_alias_ Manoel de Figueiredo, 1725-1801).[77] But the romantic movement was very late in coming to Portugal. Curiously enough, one of its chief representatives, the viscount da Almeida Garrett, exhibited his sympathy with French, revolutionary and anti-English ideas by a tragedy on the subject of Cato;[78] but his later works were mainly on national subjects.[79] The expansive tendencies of later Portuguese dramatic literature are illustrated by the translations of A. F. de Castilho, who even ventured upon Goethe's _Faust_ (1872). Among 19th-century dramatists are to be noted Pereira da Cunha, R. Cordeiro, E. Biester, L. Palmeirin, and Garrett's disciple F. G. de Amorim, by whom both political and social themes have been freely treated. The reaction against romanticism observable in Portuguese poetic literature can hardly fail to affect (or perhaps has already affected) the growth of the national drama; for the receptive qualities of both are not less striking than the productive.

(e) _France._

The French regular drama.

France was the only country, besides Italy, in which classical tragedy was naturalized. In 1531 the Benedictine Barthelemy of Loches printed a _Christus Xylonicus_; and a very notable impulse was given both to the translation and to the imitation of ancient models by a series of efforts made in the university of Paris and other French places of learning. The most successful of these attempts was the _Johannes Baptistes_ of George Buchanan, who taught in Paris for five years and at a rather later date resided at Bordeaux, where in 1540 he composed this celebrated tragedy (afterwards translated into four or five modern languages), in which it is now ascertained that he had in view the trial and condemnation of Sir Thomas More. He also wrote _Jephthah_, and translated into Latin the _Medea_ and _Alcestis_ of Euripides. At a rather later date the great scholar M. A. Muret (Muretus) produced his _Julius Caesar_, a work perhaps superior in correctness to Buchanan's tragic masterpiece, but inferior to it in likeness to life. About the same time the enthusiasm of the Paris classicists showed itself in several translations of Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedies into French verse.[80]

Jodelle.

Thus the beginnings of the regular drama in France, which, without absolutely determining, potently swayed its entire course, came to connect themselves directly with the great literary movement of the Renaissance. Du Bellay sounded the note of attack which converted that movement in France into an endeavour to transform the national literature; and in Ronsard the classical school of poetry put forward its conquering hero and sovereign lawgiver. Among the disciples who gathered round Ronsard, and with him formed the "Pleiad" of French literature, Etienne Jodelle, the reformer of the French theatre, soon held a distinguished place. The stage of this period left ample room for the enterprise of this youthful writer. The popularity of the old entertainments had reached its height when Louis XII., in his conflict with Pope Julius II., had not scrupled to call in the aid of Pierre Gringoire (Gringon), and when the _Mere sotte_ had mockingly masqueraded in the petticoats of Holy Church. In the reign of Francis I. the Inquisition, and on occasion the king himself, had to some extent succeeded in repressing the audacity of the actors, whose follies were at the same time an utter abomination in the eyes of the Huguenots. For a time the very mysteries of the Brethren of the Passion had been prohibited; while the moralities and farces had sunk to an almost contemptible level. Yet to this reign belong the contributions to farce-literature of three writers so distinguished as Rabelais (non-extant), Clement Marot and Queen Margaret of Navarre. Meanwhile isolated translations of Italian[81] as well as classical dramas had in literature begun the movement which Jodelle now transferred to the stage itself. His tragedy _Cleopatre captive_ was produced there on the same day as his comedy _L'Eugene_, in 1552, his _Didon se sacrifiant_ following in 1558. Thus at a time when a national theatre was perhaps impossible in a country distracted by civil and religious conflicts, whose monarchy had not yet welded together a number of provinces attached each to its own traditions, and whose population, especially in the capital, was enervated by frivolity or enslaved by fanaticism, was born that long-lived artificial growth, the so-called classical tragedy of France. For French comedy, though subjected to the same influences as tragedy, had a national basis upon which to proceed, and its history is partly that of a modification of old popular forms.

French tragedy in the 16th century.

The history of French tragedy begins with the _Cleopatre captive_, in the representation of which the author, together with other members of the "Pleiad," took part. It is a tragedy in the manner of Seneca, devoid of action and provided with a ghost and a chorus. Though mainly written in the five-foot Iambic couplet, it already contains passages in the Alexandrine metre, which soon afterwards J. de La Peruse by his _Medee_ (pr. 1556) established in French tragedy, and which Jodelle employed in his _Didon_. Numerous tragedies followed in the same style by various authors, among whom Gabriel Bounyn produced the first French regular tragedy on a subject neither Greek nor Roman,[82] and the brothers de la Taille,[83] and J. Grevin,[84] distinguished themselves by their style. In the reign of Charles IX. a vain attempt was made by Nicolas Filleul to introduce the pastoral style of the Italians into French tragedy;[85] and the Brotherhood of the Passion was intermingling with pastoral plays its still continued reproductions of the old entertainments, and the religious drama making its expiring efforts, among which T. Le Coq's interesting mystery of _Cain_ (1580) should be noted. Beza's _Abraham sacrifiant_ (1550), J. de Coignac's _Goliath_ (dedicated to Edward VI.), Rivandeau's _Haman_ (1561), belong to a group of Biblical tragedies, inspired by Calvinist influences. But these more and more approached to the examples of the classical school, which, in spite of all difficulties and rivalries, prevailed. Among its followers Montchretien exhibited unusual vigour of rhetoric,[86] and in R. Garnier French tragedy reached the greatest height in nobility and dignity of style, as well as in the exhibition of dramatic passion, to which it attained before Corneille. In his tragedies[87] choruses are still interspersed among the long Alexandrine tirades of the dialogue.

Comedy under Italian influence.

During this period comedy had likewise been influenced by classical models; but the distance was less between the national farces and Terence, than between the mysteries and moralities, and Seneca and the Greeks. _L'Eugene_ differs little in style from the more elaborate of the old farces; and while it satirizes the foibles of the clergy without any appreciable abatement of the old licence, its theme is the favourite burden of the French comic theatre in all times--_le cocuage_. The examples, however, which directly facilitated the productivity of the French comic dramatists of this period, among whom Jean de la Taille was the first to attempt a regular comedy in prose,[88] were those of the Italian stage, which in 1576 established a permanent colony in France, destined to survive there till the close of the 17th century, by which time it had adopted the French language, and was ready to coalesce with French actors, without, however, relinquishing all remembrance of its origin. R. Belleau, a member of the "Pleiad," produced a comedy in which the type (already approached by Jodelle) of the swaggering captain appears,[89] J. Grevin copied Italian intrigue, characters and manners;[90] O. de Turnebe (d. 1581) borrowed the title of one Italian play[91] and perhaps parts of the plots of others; the Florentine F. d'Amboise (d. 1558) produced versions of two Italian comedies;[92] and the foremost French comic poet of the century, P. de Larivey, likewise an Italian born (of the name of Pietro Giunto), openly professed to imitate the poets of his native country. His plays are more or less literal translations of L. Dolce,[93] Secchi[94] and other Italian dramatists; and this lively and witty author, to whom Moliere owes much, thus connects two of the most important and successful growths of the modern comic drama.

The close conjunction between the history of a living dramatic literature and that of the theatre can least of all be ignored in the case of France, where the actor's art has gone through so ample an evolution, and where the theatre has so long and continuously formed an important part of the national life. By the middle of the 16th century not only had theatrical representations, now quite emancipated from clerical control, here and there already become matters of speculation and business, but the acting profession was beginning to organize itself as such; strolling companies of actors had become a more or less frequent experience; and the attitude of the church and of civic respectability were once more coming to be systematically hostile to the stage and its representatives.

French tragedy and comedy in the 17th century before Corneille.

Before, however, either tragedy or comedy in France entered into the period of their history when genius was to illuminate both of them with creations of undying merit, and before the theatre had associated itself enduringly with the artistic and literary divisions of court and society and the people at large, the country had passed through a new phase of the national life. When the troubles and terrors of the great civil and religious wars of the 16th century were over at last, they were found to have produced a reaction towards culture and refinement which spread from certain spheres of society whose influence was for a time prevailing. The seal had been set upon the results of the Renaissance by Malherbe, the father of French style. The masses meanwhile continued to solace or distract their weariness and their sufferings with the help of the accredited ministers of that half-cynical gaiety which has always lighted up the darkest hours of French popular life. In the troublous days preceding Richelieu's definitive accession to power (1624), the _tabarinades_--a kind of street dialogue recalling the earliest days of the popular drama--had made the Pont-Neuf the favourite theatre of the Parisian populace. Meanwhile the influence of Spain, which Henry IV. had overcome in politics, had throughout his reign and afterwards been predominant in other spheres, and not the least in that of literature. The _stilo culto_, of which Gongora was the native Spanish, Marino the Italian, and Lyly the English representative, asserted its dominion over the favourite authors of French society; the pastoral romance of Honore d'Urfe--the text-book of pseudo-pastoral gallantry--was the parent of the romances of the Scuderys, de La Calprenede and Mme de La Fayette; the Hotel de Rambouillet was in its glory; the true (not the false) _precieuses_ sat on the heights of intellectual society; and J. L. G. de Balzac (ridiculed in the earliest French dramatic parody)[95] and Voiture were the dictators of its literature. Much of the French drama of this age is of the same kind as its romance-literature, like which it fell under the polite castigation of Boileau's satire. Heroic love (quite a technical passion), "fertile in tender sentiments," seized hold of the theatre as well as of the romances; and La Calprenede, G. de Scudery[96] and his sister and others were equally fashionable in both species. The Gascon Cyrano de Bergerac, though not altogether insignificant as a dramatist,[97] gained his chief literary reputation by a Rabelaisian fiction. Meanwhile, Spanish and Italian models continued to influence both branches of the drama. Everybody knew by heart Gongora's version of the story of "young Pyramus and his love Thisbe," as dramatized by Th. Viaud (1590-1626); and the sentiment of Tristan[98] (1601-1655) overpowered Herod on the stage, and drew tears from Cardinal Richelieu in the audience. J. Mairet was noted for superior vigour.[99] P. Du Ryer's style is described as, while otherwise superior to that of his contemporaries, Italian in its defects. A mixture of the forms of classical comedy with elements of Spanish and of the Italian pastoral was attempted with great temporary success by A. Hardy, a playwright who thanked Heaven that he knew the precepts of his art while preferring to follow the demands of his trade. The mixture of styles begun by him was carried on by the marquis de Racan,[100] J. de Rotrou and others; and among these comedies of intrigue in the Spanish manner the earliest efforts of Corneille himself[101] are to be classed. Rotrou's noteworthier productions[102] are later in date than the event which marks an epoch in the history of the French drama, the appearance of Corneille's _Cid_ (1636).

Corneille.

P. Corneille is justly revered as the first, and in some respects the unequalled, great master of French tragedy, whatever may have been unsound in his theories, or defective in his practice. The attempts of his predecessors had been without life, because they lacked really tragic characters and the play of really tragic passions; while their style had been either pedantically imitative or a medley of plagiarisms. He conquered tragedy at once for the national theatre and for the national literature--and this, not by a long tentative process of production, but by a few masterpieces, which may be held to be comprehended within the ten years 1636 to 1646; for in his many later tragedies he never again proved fully equal to himself. The French tragedy, of which the great age begins with the _Cid_, _Horace_, _Cinna_, _Polyeucte_ and _Rodogune_, was not, whatever it professed to be, a copy of the classical tragedy of Greeks or Romans, or an imitation of the Italian imitations of these; nor, though in his later tragedies Corneille depended less and less upon characters, and more and more, after the fashion of the Spaniards, upon situations, and even upon spectacle, were the forms of the Spanish drama able to assert their dominion over the French tragic stage. The mould of French tragedy was cast by Corneille; but the creative power of his genius was unable to fill it with more than a few examples. His range of passions and characters was limited; he preferred, he said, the reproach of having made his women too heroic to that of having made his men effeminate. His actions inclined too much to the exhibition of conflicts political rather than broadly ethical in their significance. The defects of his style are of less moment; but in this, as in other respects, he was, with all his strength and brilliancy, not one of those rarest of artists who are at the same time the example and the despair of their successors. The _examens_ which he printed of all his plays up to 1660 show how much self-criticism (though it may not always be as in this case conscious) contributes to the true fertility of genius.

In comedy also Corneille begins the first great original epoch of French dramatic literature; for it was to him that Moliere owed the inspiration of the tone and style which he made those of the higher forms of French comedy. But _Le Menteur_ (the parent, with its sequel, of a numerous dramatic progeny[103]) was itself derived from a Spanish original,[104] which it did not (as was the case with the _Cid_) transform into something new. French tragi-comedy Corneille can hardly be said to have invented;[105] and of the mongrel growths of sentimental comedy and of domestic drama or _drame_, he rather suggested than exemplified the conditions.

Racine.

The tragic art of Racine supplements rather than surpasses that of his older contemporary. His works reflect the serene and settled formality of an age in which the sun of monarchy shone with an effulgence no clouds seemed capable of obscuring, and in which the life of a nation seemed reducible to the surroundings of a court. The tone of the poetic literature of such an age is not necessarily unreal, because the range of its ideas is limited, and because its forms seem to exist by an immutable authority. That Racine should permanently hold the position which belongs to him in French dramatic literature is due to the fact that to him it was given to present these forms--the forms approved by his age--in what may reasonably be called perfection; and, from the point of view of workmanship, Sophocles could not have achieved more. What his plays contain is another question. They suit themselves so well to the successive phases in the life of Louis XIV., that Madame de Sevigne described Racine as having in his later years loved God as he had formerly loved his mistresses; and this sally at all events indicates the range of passions which inspired his tragic muse. His heroes are all of one type--that of a gracious gloriousness; his heroines vary in their fortunes, but they are all the "trophies of love,"[106] with the exception of the scriptural figures, which stand apart from the rest.[107] T. Corneille, Campistron, Joseph Duche (1668-1704), Antoin de Lafosse (c. 1653-1708) and Quinault were mere followers of one or both of the great masters of tragedy, though the last named achieved a reputation of his own in the bastard species of the opera.

Characteristics of French classical tragedy.

The type of French tragedy thus established, like everything else which formed part of the "age of Louis XIV.," proclaimed itself as the definitively settled model of its kind, and was accepted as such by a submissive world. Proud of its self-imposed fetters, French tragedy dictatorially denied the liberty of which it had deprived itself to the art of which it claimed to furnish the highest examples. Yet, though calling itself classical, it had not caught the essential spirit of the tragedy of the Greeks. The elevation of tone which characterizes the serious drama of the age of Louis XIV. is a true elevation, but its heights do not lose themselves in a sphere peopled by the myths of a national religion, still less in the region of great thoughts which ask Heaven to stoop to the aspirations and the failures of man. The personages of this drama are conventional like its themes, but the convention is with itself only; Orestes and Iphigenia have not brought with them the cries of the stern goddesses and the flame on the altar of Artemis; their passions like their speech are cadenced by a modern measure. In construction, the simplicity and regularity of the ancient models are stereotyped into a rigid etiquette by the exigencies of the court-theatre, which is but an apartment of the palace. The unities of time and place, with the Greeks mere rules of convenience, French tragedy imposes upon itself as a permanent yoke. The Euripidean prologue is judiciously exchanged for the exposition of the first act, and the lyrical element essential to Greek tragedy is easily suppressed in its would-be copy; lyrical passages still occur in some of Corneille's early masterpieces,[108] but the chorus is consistently banished, to reappear only in Racine's latest works[109] as a scholastic experiment appropriate to a conventual atmosphere. Its uses for explanation and comment are served by the expedient, which in its turn becomes conventional, of the conversations with _confidants_ and _confidantes_, which more than sufficiently supply the foil of general sentiments. The epical element is allowed full play in narrative passages, more especially in those which relate parts of the catastrophe,[110] and, while preserving the stage intact from realisms, suit themselves to the generally rhetorical character of this species of the tragic drama. This character impressed itself more and more upon the tragic art of a rhetorical nation in an age when the loftiest themes were in the pulpit receiving the most artistic oratorical treatment, and developed in the style of French classical tragedy the qualities which cause it to become something between prose and poetry--or to appear (in the phrase of a French critic) like prose in full dress. The force of this description is borne out by the fact that the distinction between the versification of French tragedy and that of French comedy seems at times imperceptible.

Voltaire.

The universal genius of Voltaire found it necessary to shine in all branches of literature, and in tragedy to surpass predecessors whom his own authority declared to have surpassed the efforts of the Attic muse. He succeeded in impressing the world with the belief that his innovations had imparted a fresh vitality to French tragedy; in truth, however, they represent no essential advance in art, but rather augmented the rhetorical tendency which paralyses true dramatic life. Such life as his plays possess lies in their political and social sentiments, their invective against tyranny,[111] and their exposure of fanaticism.[112] In other respects his versatility was barren of enduring results. He might take his themes from French history,[113] or from Chinese,[114] or Egyptian,[115] or Syrian,[116] from the days of the Epigoni[117] or from those of the Crusades;[118] he might appreciate Shakespeare, with a more or less partial comprehension of his strength, and condescendingly borrow from and improve the barbarian.[119] But he added nothing to French tragedy where it was weakest--in character; and where it was strongest--in diction--he never equalled Corneille in fire or Racine in refinement. While the criticism to which French tragedy in this age at last began to be subjected has left unimpaired the real titles to immortality of its great masters, the French theatre itself has all but buried in respectful oblivion the dramatic works bearing the name of Voltaire--a name persistently belittled, but second to none in the history of modern progress and of modern civilization.

French classical tragedy in its decline.

As it is of relatively little interest to note the ramifications of an art in its decline, the contrasts need not be pursued among the contemporaries of Voltaire, between his imitator Bernard Joseph Saurin (1706-1781), Saurin's royalist rival de Belloy, Racine's imitator Lagrange-Chancel and Voltaire's own would-be rival, the "terrible" Crebillon the elder, who professed to vindicate to French tragedy, already mistress of the heavens through Corneille, and of the earth through Racine, Pluto's supplementary realm, but who, though thus essaying to carry tragedy lower, failed to carry it farther. In the latter part of the 18th century French classical tragedy as a literary growth was dying a slow death, however numerous might be the leaves which sprouted from the decaying tree. Its form had been permanently fixed; and even Shakespeare, as manipulated by Ducis[120]--an author whose tastes were better than his times--failed to bring about a change. "It is a Moor, not a Frenchman, who has written this play," cried a spectator of Ducis' _Othello_ (1791); but Talma's conviction was almost as strong as his capacity was great for convincing his public; and he certainly did much to prepare the influence which Shakespeare was gradually to assert over the French drama, and which was aided by translations, more especially that of Pierre Letourneur (1736-1788), which had attracted the sympathy of Diderot and the execrations of the aged Voltaire.[121] Meanwhile, the command which classical French tragedy continued to assert over the stage was due in part, no doubt, to the love of Roman drapery--not always abundant, but always in the grand style--which characterized the Revolution, and which was by the Revolution handed down to the Empire. It was likewise, and more signally, due to the great actors who freed the tragic stage from much of its artificiality and animated it by their genius. No great artist has ever more generously estimated the labours of a predecessor than Talma judged those of Le Kain; but it was Talma himself whose genius was pre-eminently fitted to reproduce the great figures of antiquity in the mimic world, which, like the world outside, both required and possessed its Caesar. He, like Rachel after him, reconciled French classical tragedy with nature; and it is upon the art of great original actors such as these that the theatrical future of this form of the drama in France depends. Mere whims of fashion--even when inspired by political feeling--will not waft back to it a real popularity; nor will occasional literary aftergrowths, however meritorious, such as the admirable _Lucrece_ of F. Ponsard and the attempts of even more recent writers, suffice to re-establish a living union between it and the progress of the national literature.

Comedy.

Moliere.

The rival influences under which classical tragedy has after a long struggle virtually become a thing of the past in French literature are also to be traced in the history of French comedy, which under the co-operation of other influences produced a wide variety of growths. The germs of most of these--though not of all--are to be found in the works of the most versatile, the most sure-footed, and, in some respects, the most consummate master of the comic drama whom the world has known--Moliere. What Moliere found in existence was a comedy of intrigue, derived from Spanish or Italian examples, and the elements of a comedy of character, in French and more especially in Italian farce and ballet-pantomime. Corneille's _Menteur_ had pointed the way to a fuller combination of character with intrigue, and in this direction Moliere's genius exercised the height of its creative powers. After beginning with farces, he produced in the earliest of his plays (from 1652), of which more than fragments remain, comedies of intrigue which are at the same time marvellously lively pictures of manners, and then proceeded, with the _Ecole des maris_ (1661), to begin a long series of masterpieces of comedy of character. Yet even these, the chief of which are altogether unrivalled in dramatic literature, do not exhaust the variety of his productions. To define the range of his art is as difficult as to express in words the essence of his genius. For though he has been copied ever since he wrote, neither his spirit nor his manner has descended in full to any of his copyists, whole schools of whom have missed elements of both. A Moliere can only be judged in his relations to the history of comedy at large. He was indeed the inheritor of many forms and styles--remaining a stranger to those of Old Attic comedy only, rooted as it was in the political life of a free imperial city; though even the rich extravagances of Aristophanes' burlesque was not left wholly unreproduced by him. Moliere is both a satirist and a humorist; he displays at times the sentiments of a loyal courtier, at others that gay spirit of opposition which is all but indispensable to a popular French wit. His comedies offer elaborate and subtle--even tender--pictures of human character in its eternal types, lively sketches of social follies and literary extravagances, and broad appeals to the ordinary sources of vulgar merriment. Light and perspicuous in construction, he is master of the delicate play of irony, the penetrating force of wit, and the expansive gaiety of frolicsome fun. Faithful to the canons of artistic taste, and under the sure guidance of true natural humour, his style suits itself to every species attempted by him. His morality is the reverse of rigid, but its aberrations are not those of prurience, nor its laws those of pretence; and, wholly free as he was from the didactic aim which is foreign to all true dramatic representation, the services rendered by him to his art are not the less services rendered to society, concerning which the laughter of genuine comedy tells the truth. He raised the comedy of character out of the lower sphere of caricature, and in his greatest creations subordinated to the highest ends of all dramatic composition the plots he so skilfully built, and the pictures of the manners he so faithfully reproduced.

Moliere's contemporaries and successors.

Even among the French comic dramatists of this age there must have been many who "were not aware" that Moliere was its greatest poet. For though he had made the true path luminous to them, their efforts were still often of a tentative kind, and one was reviving _Pathelin_ while another was translating the _Andria_. A more unique attempt was made in one of the very few really modern versions of an Aristophanic comedy, which deserves to be called an original copy--the _Plaideurs_ of Racine. The tragic poets Quinault and Campistron likewise wrote comedies, one[122] or more of which furnished materials to contemporary English dramatists, as did one of the felicitous plays in which Boursault introduced Mercury and Aesop into the theatrical _salon_.[123] Antoine Montfleury (1640-1685), Baron and Dancourt, who were actors like Moliere, likewise wrote comedies. But if the mantle of Moliere can be said to have fallen upon any of his contemporaries or successors, this honour must be ascribed to J. F. Regnard, who imitated the great master in both themes and characters,[124] while the skilfulness of his plots, and his gaiety of the treatment even of subjects tempting into the by-path of sentimental comedy,[125] entitle him to be regarded as a comic poet of original genius. With him C. R. Dufresny occasionally collaborated.

In the next generation (that of Voltaire) comedy gradually--but only gradually--surrendered for a time the very essence of its vitality to the seductions of a hybrid species, which disguised its identity under more than a single name. A. R. le Sage, who as a comic dramatist at first followed successfully in the footsteps of Moliere, proved himself on the stage as well as in picturesque fiction a keen observer and inimitable satirist of human life.[126] The light texture of the playful and elegant art of J. B. L. Gresset was shown on the stage in a character comedy of merit;[127] and in a comedy which reveals something of his pointed wit, A. Piron produced something like a new type of enduring ridiculousness.[128] P. C. de Marivaux, the French _Spectator_, is usually supposed to have formed the connecting link between the "old" French comedy and the "new" and bastard variety. Yet, though his minute analysis of the tender passion excited the scorn of Voltaire, it should not be overlooked that in _marivaudage_ proper the wit holds the balance to the sentiment, and that in some of this frequently misjudged writer's earlier and most delightful plays the elegance and gaiety of diction are as irresistible as the pathetic sentiment, which is in fact rather an ingredient in his comedy than the pervading characteristic of it.[129] Some of the comedies of P. H. Destouches no doubt have a serious basis, and in his later plays he comes near to a kind of drama in which the comic purpose has been virtually submerged.[130] The writer who is actually to be credited with the transition to sentimental comedy, and who was fully conscious of the change which he was helping to effect, was Nivelle de La Chaussee, in whose hands French comedy became a champion of the sanctity of marriage, and reproduced the sentiments--in one instance even the characters--of Richardson.[131] To his play _La Fausse Antipathie_ the author supplied a _critique_, amounting to an apology for the new species of which it was designed as an example.

The new species known as _comedie larmoyante_ was now fairly in the ascendant; and it would be easy to show how even Voltaire, who had deprecated the innovation, had to yield to a power greater than his own, and introduced the sentimental element into some of his comedies.[132] The further step, by which _comedie larmoyante_ was transformed into _tragedie bourgeoise_, from which the comic element was to all intents and purposes extruded, was taken by a great French writer, D. Diderot; to whose influence it was largely due that the species which had attained to this consummation for more than a generation ruled supreme in the dramatic literature of Europe. But the final impulse, as Diderot himself virtually acknowledged in the _entretiens_ subjoined by him to his _Fils naturel_ (1757), had been given by a far humbler citizen of the world of letters, the author of _The London Merchant_. Diderot's own plays were a literary rather than a theatrical success. _Le Fils naturel ou les epreuves de la vertu_ was not publicly performed till 1771, and then only in deference to the determination of a single actor of the Francais (Mole); nor was the performance of it repeated. Diderot's second play, _Le Pere de famille_, printed in 1758 with a _Discours sur la poesie dramatique_, went through a few public performances in 1761; and a later revival was unsuccessful. But "at a distance," as was well said, the effect of Diderot's endeavours, the earlier in particular, was extremely great, and Lessing, though very critical as to particular points, greatly helped to spread it. Diderot had for the first time consciously sought to proclaim the theatre an agency of social reform, and to entrust to it as its task the propagation of the gospel of philanthropy. Though the execution of his dramatic works fell far short of his aims; though Madame de Stael was not far wrong in denouncing them as exhibiting not nature itself, but "the affectation of nature," yet they contained, in a measure almost unequalled in the history of the modern drama, the fermenting element which never seems to subside. Their author announced them as examples of a third dramatic form--the _genre serieux_--which he declared to be the consummation of the dramatic art. Making war upon the frigid artificiality of classical tragedy, he banished verse from the new species. The effect of these plays was intended to spring from their truth to nature--a truth such as no spectator could mistake, and which should bring home its moral teachings to the business as well as the bosoms of all. The theatre was to become a real and realistic school of the principles of society and of the conduct of life--it was, in other words, to usurp functions with which it has no concern, and to essay the direct reformation of mankind. The idea was neither new nor just; but its speciousness will probably continue to commend it to many enthusiastic minds, whensoever and in whatsoever shape it is revived.

The comedy of the Revolution and the first empire.

Vaudevilles, etc.

From this point the history of the French drama becomes that of a conflict between an enfeebled artistic school and a tendency which is hardly to be dignified by the name of a school at all. Among the successful dramatists following on Diderot may be mentioned the critical and versatile J. F. Marmontel, and more especially M. J. Sedaine, who though chiefly working for the opera, produced two comedies of acknowledged merit.[133] P. A. C. de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), who for his early sentimental plays,[134] in which he imitated Diderot, invented the appellation _drame_--so convenient in its vagueness that it became the accepted name of the hybrid species to which they belonged--in two works of a very different kind, the famous _Barbier de Seville_ and the still more famous _Mariage de Figaro_, boldly carried comedy back into its old Spanish atmosphere of intrigue; but, while surpassing all his predecessors in the skill with which he constructed his frivolous plots, he drew his characters with a lightness and sureness of touch peculiar to himself, animated his dialogue with an unparalleled brilliancy of wit, and seasoned action as well as dialogue with a political and social meaning, which caused his epigrams to become proverbs, and which marks his _Figaro_ as a herald of the Revolution. Such plays as these were ill suited to the rule of the despot whose vigilance could not overlook their significance. The comedy of the empire is, in the hands of Collin d'Harleville, Louis Picard (1769-1828), A. Duval, Etienne and others, mainly a harmless comedy of manners; nor was the attempted innovation of N. Lemercier--who was fain to invent a new species, that of historical comedy--more than a flattering self-delusion. The theatre had its share in all the movements and changes which ensued in France; though the most important revolution which the drama itself was to undergo was not one of wholly native origin. Those branches of the drama which belong specifically to the history of the opera, or which associate themselves with it, are here passed by. Among them was the _vaudeville_ (from Val de Vire in Calvados), which began as an interspersion of pantomime with the airs of popular songs, and which, after the Italian masks had been removed from it, was cultivated by Ponsard and Marmontel, while Sedaine wrote a didactic poem on the subject (1756). Sedaine was the father of the _opera-comique_ proper;[135] Marmontel,[136] as well as Rousseau,[137] likewise composed _operettes_--a smaller sort of opera, at first of the pastoral variety; and these flexible species easily entered into combination. The melodrama proper, of which the invention is also attributed to Rousseau,[138] in its latter development became merely a drama accentuated by music, though usually in little need of any accentuation.

The stage.

Transition to the romantic school.

The chief home of the regular drama, however, demanded efforts of another kind. At the Theatre Francais, or Comedie Francaise, whose history as that of a single company of actors had begun in 1680, the party-strife of the times made itself audible; and the most prominent tragic poet of the Revolution, M. J. de Chenier, a disciple of Voltaire in dramatic poetry as well as in political philosophy, wrote for the national stage the historical drama--with a political moral[139]--in which in the memorable year 1789 the actor Talma achieved his first complete triumph. But the victorious Revolution proclaimed among other liberties that of the theatres in Paris, of which soon not less than 50 were open. In 1807 the empire restricted the number to 9, and reinstated the Theatre Francais in sole possession (or nearly such) of the right of performing the classic drama. No writer of note was, however, tempted or inspired by the rewards and other encouragements offered by Napoleon to produce such a classic tragedy as the emperor would have willingly stamped from out of the earth. The tragedies of C. Delavigne represent the transition from the expiring efforts of the classical to the ambitious beginnings of the romantic school of the French drama.

The romantic school.

Of modern romantic drama in France it must suffice to say that it derives some of its characteristics from the general movement of romanticism which in various ways and at various points of time transformed nearly every modern European literature, others from the rhetorical tendency which is a French national feature. Victor Hugo was the founder whom it followed in a spirit of high emprise to success upon success, his own being the most conspicuous of all;[140] A. Dumas the elder its unshrinking middleman. The marvellous fire and grandeur of genius of the former, always in extremes but often most sublime at the height of danger, was nowhere more signally such than in the drama; Dumas was a Briareus, working, however, with many hands besides his own. Together with them may, with more or less precision, be classed in the romantic school of dramatists A. de Vigny[141] and George Sand,[142] neither of whom, however, attained to the highest rank in the drama, and Jules Sandeau;[143] A. de Musset, whose originality pervades all his plays, but whose later works, more especially in his prose "proverbs" and pieces of a similar kind, have a flavour of a delicacy altogether indescribable;[144] perhaps also P. Merimee (1803-1870), who invented not only Spanish dramas but a Spanish dramatist, and who was never more audacious than when he seemed most _naif_.[145]

Modern schools.

The romantic school was not destined to exercise a permanent control over French public taste; but it can hardly be said to have been overthrown by the brief classical revival begun by F. Ponsard, and continued, though in closer contact with modern ideas, both by him[146] and by E. Augier, a dramatist who gradually attained to an extraordinary effectiveness in the self-restrained treatment of social as well as of historical themes.[147] While the theatrical fecundity and the remarkable constructive ability of E. Scribe[148] supplied a long series of productions attesting the rapid growth of the playwright's mastery over the secrets of his craft the name of his competitors is legion. Among them may be mentioned, if only as the authors of two of the most successful plays of the historical species produced in the century, two writers of great eminence--C. Delavigne[149] and E. Legouve.[150] Later developments of the drama bore the impress of a period of social decay, prepared to probe its own sufferings, while glad at times to take refuge in the gaiety traditional in France in her more light-hearted days, but which even then had not yet deserted either French social life or the theatre which reflected it. After a fashion which would have startled even Diderot, while recalling his efforts in the earnestness of its endeavour to arouse moral interests to which the theatre had long been a stranger, A. Dumas the younger set himself to reform society by means of the stage.[151] But the technical skill which he and contemporary dramatists displayed in the execution of their self-imposed task was such as had been undreamt of by Diderot. O. Feuillet, more eminent as a novelist than on the stage, applied himself, though with the aid of fewer prefaces, to the solution of the same or similar problems; while the extraordinary versatility of V. Sardou and his unfailing constructive skill was applied by him to almost every kind of serious, or serio-comic, drama--even the most solid of all.[152] In the same period, while E. Pailleron revived some of the most characteristic tendencies of the best French satirical comedy in ridiculing the pompous pretentiousness of learning for its own sake,[153] the light-hearted gaiety of E. Labiche changed into something not altogether similar in the productions of the comic muse of L. Halevy and H. Meilhac, ranging from the licence of the musical burlesque which was the congenial delight of the later days of the Second Empire to a species of comedy in which the ingredients of bitterness and even of sadness found a place.[154]

Tendencies of the drama and of the theatre in France.

Dramatic criticism in France has had a material share in the maintenance of a deep as well as wide national interest in the preservation of a high standard of excellence both in the performance of plays and in the plays themselves. Among its modern representatives the foremost place would probably be by common consent allowed to F. Sarcey, whose Monday theatrical _feuilleton_ in the _Temps_ was long awaited week by week as an oracle of dramaturgy. But he was only the first among equals, and the successor and the predecessor of writers who have at least sought to be equal to a function of real public importance. For it seems hardly within the range of probability to suppose that the theatre will for many a generation to come lose the hold which it has established over the intellectual and moral sympathies of nearly the whole of the educated--to say nothing of a great part of the half-educated--population of France. This does not, of course, imply that the creative activity of French dramatic literature is certain to endure. Since the great changes set in which were consequent upon the disastrous war of 1870, French dramatic literature has reflected more than one phase of national sentiment and opinion, and has represented the aspirations, the sympathies and the philosophy of life of more than one class in the community. Thus it has had its episodes of reaction in the midst of an onward flow of which it would be difficult to predict the end. The tendency of what can only vaguely be described as the naturalistic school of writers has corresponded to that even more prominent in the dramatic literatures of certain other European nations; but it must be allowed that a new poetic will have to be constructed if the freedom of development which the dramatic, like all other arts, is entitled to claim is to be reconciled to laws deducible from the whole previous history of the drama. The reaction towards earlier forms has asserted itself in various ways--through the poetic plays of the later years of F. Coppee; in the success (notable for reasons other than artistic) of Vicomte H. de Bornier's first tragedy; and of late more especially in the dramas--highly original and truly romantic in both form and treatment--of E. Rostand.