I
PRECURSORS OF THE PEOPLE'S THEATER:
ROUSSEAU, DIDEROT, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, MICHELET
Earliest Experiments in the People's Theater
The first men who appear to have conceived the idea of a new dramatic art for the new society, a People's Theater for the sovereign people, are among the precursors of the Revolution, the philosophers of the eighteenth century, whose epoch-making suggestions sowed in every corner of the earth the seeds for a new life: above all, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Diderot—Rousseau, who was always preoccupied with the nation's education, and Diderot, so anxious to enrich life, exalt its powers, and unite men in a Dionysiac and fraternal joy.
Rousseau, in his admirable Lettre sur les spectacles,[1] that profoundly sincere work in which some have pretended to discover a paradox in order to escape the application of its stern moral—Rousseau, after having analyzed the theater and the life of his day with the pitilessly clear vision of a Tolstoy, does not however conclude by condemning the stage in general, for he perceives the possibility of a regen-
- ↑ Lettre à d'Alembert, 1758.
63
