Dumas, Alexandre
Dumas, Alexandre (père) (1803–70),French playwright. Dumas's work bears the most striking and thoroughgoing orientation by Shakespeare to be found in the whole range of Romantic drama. He produced Shakespearian plays in the epic tradition of the ‘Diorama’ whose special effects satisfied the popular demand for elaborate stage productions with mobile scenes abounding in picturesque details. Une fille du régent (1846) transplants Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet into an epic story of romantic love mixed with political agitation from the French Revolution. The heavily reworked tragedy of Hamlet (1846–7), presented as a ‘modern drama’, forged the immensely popular tradition of the French ‘grand spectacle’ under the ‘July Monarchy’. Nevertheless, critics excoriated Dumas's penchant for special effects which catered to the boulevard tradition of melodrama to the detriment of poetic subtlety.
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