426 DRAMA [FRENCH. 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 ci f ,y ; though even the rich extravagance of Aristophanes s burlesque was not left wholly unreproduced by him. Moliere is both a satirist and a humourist ; 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 construc- tion, he is master of the delicate play of irony, the penetrat ing force of wit, and the expansive gaiety of frolicsome fun. Faithful to the canons of artistic taste, and under the safe 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 he rendered to his art are not the less services rendered to society, concern ing which the laughter of true 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 faith fully reproduced. 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 Patelin 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 ori ginal copy Les Plaideurs of Racine. The tragic poets Quinault and Campistron likewise wrote comedies, one 1 or more of which furnished materials to contemporary English dramatists, as did one of the felicitous plays in which Boursault (1638-1701) introduced Mercury and ^Esop into the theatrical salon." 21 But if the mantle of Moliere can be said to have fallen upon any of his contemporaries or successors, (his honour must be ascribed to J. F. Regnard (1655-1709), who imitated the great master in both themes and characters, 3 while the skilfulness of his plots, and his gaiety of the treatment even of subjects tempting into the by-path of sentimental comedy, 4 entitle him to be regarded as a comic poet of original genius. In the next generation (that of Voltaire) this by-path threatened to become the chosen walk of comedy, though Gresset (1709- 1777) still attempted comedy of character, 5 and the witty Firon (1689-1778) produced something like a new type in the hero of his epigrammatic, but hardly dramatic, Metromanie. Marivaux (1688-1763), "the French 1 Quinault, L Amour Indiscret (Newcastle and Dryden s Sir Martin Marall). 8 T^e Afercure Galant; fisope d la Ville; fisope d la Cour (Vanbrugh, <Esnp). 3 Le Bal (M. de Pourceaugnac}; Geronte in Le Legataire Universel (Argun in Le Malade Imaginaire); La Critique du L. (La C. de I ficole den Femmes}. 4 Le Joucur; Le Leyataire Universel. 5 Le Mediant. Spectator" whose minute analysis of the tender passion ? excited the scorn of Voltaire, forms the connecting link between comedy and the mixed species of the sentimental or " tearful " domestic drama, which still retained the name, but no longer pursued the ends, of the comic art. The most effective and professedly didactic dramatic moralists of this school were Destouches " (1680-1754) and Nivelle de la Chaussee (1692-1754), in whose hands French comedy became a champion of the sanctity of marriage 8 and reproduced the sentiments in one instance 9 even the characters of Richardson. Melpomene, humbly shod with the sock, and Thalia, dissolved in tears, had now entered in to partnership. The species which varied as comedie larmoyante or as tragcdie lourgeoise, and which ruled or was to rule supreme in so many dramatic literatures of Europe, more and more firmly established its hold on that of France. In the hands of Diderot (1713-1784) it sought to proclaim itself as an agent of social reform, and as an apostle of the gospel of philanthropy ; but the execution of these works fell short of their aims ; 10 it was, in Mine, de Stael s words, " the affectation of nature," not nature itself which they ex hibited. 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 tlis 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 reformation of mankind. The idea was neither new nor just, but its speciousness will probably continue to commend it to many benevolent minds, whensoever and in whatsoever shape it is revived. 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. Beaumarchaia (1732-1799), who for his early sentimental plays, 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 Earlier 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 signifiance. The comedy of the empire is, in the hands of Collin d Harleville, Picard, A. Duval, Etienne, and others, mainly a harmless comedy of manners : nor was the attempted innovation of N, Lemercier (1771-1840) 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 8 Le Jeu de F Amour et du Hasard; Le Legs ; La Surprise de VA mour; Les Fausses Confidences; Vtiprcuvc. 7 Le Dissipateur; Le Glorieux, &c. 8 La Fausse Antipatlue; Le Prejvge d la Mode; Meluside. s Pamela. 10 Le Fils Naturel ou les Epreuves dc la Vertu; Le Ptrc de Famille Senti mental comedy and the clomusti drain 3. The comedy the llev tion am the Fir,-
Empire.