Contemporary French Dramatists

Author : Henri Lavedon
Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781495343094
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (43 download)

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Download or read book Three Modern Plays from the French written by Henri Lavedon and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-01-26 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An excerpt from the beginning of the PREFACE: THE label "Made in France" may nearly always be accepted as a guarantee of good play-making; for, ever since the inception of the modern drama, the French have been the masters and the teachers of the craft. In these opening years of the twentieth century, fewer French plays have been presented in the theaters of America and England than were presented in the closing years of the nineteenth century; but this fact, instead of indicating a deterioration in the contemporary product, may be accepted, rather, as an indication that the French drama has made a definite advance along a certain line. The dominant spirit of the French drama in the last three generations has been realistic. As realism advances, the tendency is to narrow the segment of life that is submitted to observation and to deepen the observation of the segment that has been selected for analysis. As realism has progressed in France, the drama has become more French—more local in its themes and in its characters— and has sacrificed the breadth of cosmopolitan appeal to gain the depth of national importance. Three or four generations ago, the most popular dramatist in France was Eugene Scribe. It was this facile and prolific craftsman who gave to the modern theater the formula of the well-made play [la pièce bien faite], a formula that, with several modifications and amplifications, has subsisted to the present day. Since the excellence of Scribe was mainly structural, it was very easy to transplant his plays from one country to another. His dialogue was devoid of literary merit, and was therefore just as pertinent in a translation as in the original. His characters were merely puppets, and were therefore just as interesting to foreigners as they could ever be to Frenchmen. And, since there was no note of nationality in his dexterous and clever plots, these plots could easily be adapted to serve as the theatric fare of a public overseas. A simple play of plot is much more cosmopolitan in its appeal than a study of national characters or local situations. The broad and cosmopolitan appeal of Scribe was continued by his immediate disciple and successor, Victorien Sardou. A typical Sardou melodrama, like Fedora or La Tosca, was fully as enjoyable to foreign audiences as to the public of Paris. The logical successor of Sardou in the contemporary French theater is M. Henry Bernstein; and it is not surprising that his plays have been more successful in America than those of any other French playwright of the present time. No less than five of his works — The Whirlwind, The Thief, Samson, Israel, and The Secret — have been profitably acted in this country. M. Bernstein is a more important dramatist than Sardou or Scribe, for he has forced the formula of the well-made play to sustain an analysis of character that is unusually searching; but his merit is, in the main, a matter of mechanics, and his emphasis on mechanism may be accepted as accounting for the comparative ease with which his plays may be transported from one country to another. In France itself, while Scribe was still alive, his reputation was overridden by two dramatists of more profound intention,—Emile Augier and Alexandre Dumas, fils; but neither of these writers attained the cosmopolitan currency of their more mechanical and artificial rival. Augier—the greatest French dramatist of the nineteenth century—devoted himself to the study of social conditions which were peculiarly French; and it was impossible to make his plays seem applicable to the social conditions of any other country. Just as M. Bernstein has been singled out as the logical successor of Sardou and Scribe, M. Eugene Brieux may be selected as the logical successor of Augier in the contemporary theater....