Becque, Henri | Marvin Carlson (essay date 1972)
Marvin Carlson (essay date 1972)
SOURCE: Carlson, Marvin. “Realism & Symbolism (1870-1900).” In The French Stage in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 177-80. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1972.
[In the following essay, Carlson proclaims Becque a major victim of the French theatre's prejudices towards new playwrights and the reintroduction of censorship in 1874.]
In France, as elsewhere in Europe, the final decades of the nineteenth century provide the richest variety of theatre. Identifying the period with a single movement is therefore even more misleading here than identifying the 1830s and 1840s with the then-dominant romantic school. Nevertheless, there is considerable justice in the common association of the end of the century with realism. Realism, like romanticism, is subject to a wide range of interpretation, even if we restrict ourselves only to its manifestations in the theatre. It may suggest the literal reproduction of...
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