D R A M M E N the French market as novelties. It was only quite recently that John Gabriel Borchnann received a warm tribute of admiration from M. Emile Faguet, the talented successor of M. Jules Lemaitre on the Journal des Debats. Without entering into a close consideration of the subject, it may be affirmed that up to the year 1902 Ibsen had not yet been understood by the French public at large, though his influence could be clearly traced on thoughtful men like M. Paul Hervieu and M. Francois de Cure! The authors of the Theatre Libre were sadly wanting in tact and patience. They went at once to extremes, and, while trying to free themselves from an obsolete form of drama, fell into a state of anarchy. If a too elaborate plot is a fault, no plot at all is an absurdity. The old school had been severely taken to task for devoting the first act to the delineation of character, and the delineation of character was now found to have extended over the whole play; and worse still, most of these young men seemed to find pleasure in importing a low vocabulary on to the stage ; they made it their special object to place before the spectator revolting pictures of the grossest immorality. In this they were supported by a knot of noisy and unwise admirers, whose misplaced approval largely contributed towards bringing an otherwise useful and interesting undertaking into disrepute. The result was that, after the lapse of eight years, the little group collected round M. Antoine had lost in cohesion and spirit, that it was both less hopeful and less compact than it had been at the outset of the campaign. But some authors who had kept aloof from the movement were not slow in reaping the moral and intellectual profit of these tentative experiments. Among them must be cited M. George de Porto-Riche, M. Henri Lavedan, M. Paul Hervieu, M. Maurice Donnay, and M. Jules Lemaitre. The first-named is a veteran writer, but in Amoureuse he revealed qualities unsuspected by those who witnessed his first literary efforts. M. Henri Lavedan, who has succeeded Henri Meilhac at the French Academy, has also inherited some of that writer’s brilliant faculty for light comedy and the portrayal of the gay Parisian world of pleasure and fashion. There is no wit, no humour, in M. Paul Hervieu, nothing bright or refreshing in his manner. In two successive plays, Les Tenailles and La Loi de VHomme, he has made evident to all but prejudiced minds the inadequacy and injustice of the marriage laws now existing in France. It is admitted by fastidious judges that the third act of Les Tenailles is a model of masterly simplicity and dramatic concentration. M. Donnay, in his play entitled Amants, has presented a fascinating love-story, which goes through all its natural phases without the addition of a single incident borrowed from old scenic traditions. In his more recent works he has won only partial applause. He is still a master of light, easy-going dialogue, but his style and treatment become conventional and constrained when he attempts drama. M. Jules Lemaitre, in his double capacity of critic and playwright, seems to have overlooked the salutary example set him by Maitre Jacques, who was both cook and coachman in the household of Harpagon. . He should have been warned against letting his two callings clash. His dramatic works may be described as successful and clever efforts in all branches of the art, from tragedy down to farce, but he has achieved no decisive triumph in any particular field, perhaps because his freedom of invention has been, to some extent, hampered by his critical faculties, or diverted towards the imitation of too many different lines. Alone among the authors of the Theatre Libre, M. Brieux has come to the front and secured an assured position on the regular stage. Instead of attacking the vices and follies of his times, he has made a name by satirizing the weak points or the wrong application of
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certain fundamental principles by which modern institutions are supported. He mocked at universal suffrage in L’Engrenage, at art in Menages d’Artistes, at popular instruction in Blanchette, at charity in Les Bienfaiteurs, at science in HEvasion, and, finally, at law in La Robe Rouge. Of Les Trois Filles de M. Pupont, one is an old maid with a strong bent towards mysticism, another is a star in the demi-monde, and the third is married. Neither religion, nor free love, nor marriage has made one of the three happy. The strange fact about M. Brieux is that he propounds his uncomfortable ideas with an incredible amount of dash and spirit. All the plays written by the above-mentioned authors, and by those who follow in their steps, have been said to constitute the “new comedy.” But one may question the advisability of applying the same name to literary works which present so little, if any, family likeness. It was tacitly agreed to remove the intricacies of the plot and the forced denouement. But no one will trace in those plays the uniformity of moral purpose which would justify us in comprising them under the same head, as products of the same school. Then, before the Naturalistic, or half-Naturalistic, School had attained to a practical result or taken a definite shape, a wave of Romanticism swept over the French public, and in a measure brought back the old artistic and literary dogmas propounded by Victor Hugo and the generation of 1830. Signs of an approaching revival in French dramatic poetry have not been lacking during the last few years. The success of La Fille de Roland, by the Vicomte de Bornier, was restricted to the more cultivated classes, but the vogue of M. Jean Richepin’s Chemineau was at once general and lasting. Cyrano de Bergerac, produced in the last days of 1897, brought a worldwide reputation to its young author, M. Edmond Rostand. This play combines sparkling witand brilliancy of imagination with delightful touches of pathos and delicate tenderness. It was assumed that M. Edmond Rostand was endowed to an extraordinary degree both with theatrical genius and the poetic faculty. EA iglon fell short of this too favourable judgment. It is more a dramatic poem than a real drama, and the author handles history with the same childish incompetence and inaccuracy as Hugo did in Cromwell, in Ruy Bias, and Hernani. The persistent approbation of the public seems, however, to indicate a growing taste for poetry, even when unsupported by dramatic interest—a curious symptom among the least poetical of modern European races. To sum up, the French, as regards the present condition of their drama, are confronted with two alternative movements. Naturalism, furthered by science and philosophy, is contending against traditions three centuries old, and seems unable to crystallize into masterly works ; while romantic drama, founded on vague and exploded theories, has become embodied in productions of real artistic beauty, which have been warmly welcomed by the general playgoer. It should nevertheless be noted that in Cyrano and L Aiglon human will, which was the mainspring of Corneille’s tragedy and Hugo’s drama, tries to reassert itself, but is baffled by circumstance, and has to submit to inexorable laws. This shows that the victorious school will have to reckon with the doctrines of the defeated party, and suggests that a determinist theatre may be the ultimate outcome of a compromise. (a. fi. ) Dram men, a seaport town of Norway, partly in co. Buskerud, partly in co. Jarlsberg and Laurvik, 33 miles by rail south-west from Christiania. In 1899 it owned a mercantile fleet of some 140 vessels of 88,700 tons aggregate, and its total foreign trade was valued at over one million sterling (exports, £704,100; imports, £373,750), as
