INTRODUCTION
The greatest fame of Balzac will rest in the future, as in the past, upon his novels and short stories. These comprise the bulk of his work and his most noteworthy effort—an effort so pronounced as to hide all side-excursions. For this reason his chief side-excursion—into the realms of drama—has been almost entirely overlooked. Indeed, many of his readers are unaware that he ever wrote plays, while others have passed them by with the idea that they were slight, devoid of interest, and to be classified with the Works of Youth. Complete editions—so-called—of Balzac's works have fostered this belief by omitting the dramas; and it has remained for the present edition to include, for the first time, this valuable material, not alone for its own sake, but also in order to show the many-sided author as he was, in all his efficiencies and occasional deficiencies.
For those readers who now make the acquaintance of the dramas, we would say briefly that the Balzac Theatre comprises five plays —Vautrin, Les Ressources de Quinola, Pamela Giraud, La Maratre, and Mercadet. These plays are in prose. They do not belong to the apprenticeship period of the Works of Youth, but were produced in the heyday of his powers, revealing the mature man and the subtle analyst of character, not at his best, but at a point far above his worst. True, their production aroused condemnation on the part of many contemporary dramatic critics, and were the source of much annoyance and little financial gain to their creator.
