CLASSIC TRAGEDY
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minius. The play is ingeniously constructed and the action more interesting than most tragedies—at least, the interest is sustained by more surprises, and rises steadily up to the end. Why is the style more obscure than ever and more replete with jargon? Like Horace, Nicomède could not be produced without cuts and many explanations. Finally—and we need proceed no further in our inquiry—we may say that unless we alter them beyond recognition, we have no use for our seventeenth century tragedies on the stage, and must relegate them to the library.[1]
- ↑ Maurice Pottecher, who is in a position to observe the popular public, is of the same opinion: "I do not think it possible to use our classical tragedies; they belong to an aristocratic form of art which seems out of place in a people's theater. Popular actors are not intended to speak the language of Corneille and Racine." (Le Théâtre du Peuple, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 1, 1903.)
