[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 everyday life, a trend already present to some extent in such reformers as Montigny but carried much further in this period by Antoine. It may refer only to the use of contemporary as contrasted with classical or mythological subjects. Since Scribe and Augier had already studied the monied classes, this usually meant that the contemporary subjects of later realists were drawn from the lower classes. Realism may also involve a concern with historical accuracy (a concern it shares with romanticism). This may lead on the one hand to attempts to recreate the period of the play's action in the manner of Pixérécourt, Charles Kean, the Meininger, or the spectacles of Bernhardt and Sardou, or on the other to attempts to recreate the original conditions of production, as in the Poel Shakespearian stages or the Greek revivals done late in the century at the Odéon and Comédie. Each of these aspects of realism was involved in the experimentation undertaken by the Parisian theatre of this period.

This experimentation took many other forms as well, some rivaling realism in significance for the coming century, but in at least two respects realism's significance was unique. First, it was the realists who eventually achieved the shattering of the established and sterile forms that Zola so deplored, thereby opening the way to other experiments. Second, in this period so dominated socially and intellectually by the forces of positivist philosophy, materialism and scientism, the works of the realists struck a more responsive chord and thus won a wider and more lasting support than any of the subsequent movements the theatre offered.

The most important of these later alternatives to realism was the symbolist movement, appearing in the 1890s. It was in many respects a return to romanticism after the harsh and sometimes banal offerings of the realists. It emphasized the vague and the universal over the specific, emotion over reason, and, doubtless due to the influence of Wagner, a harmony of all elements in the work of art. The tradition of experimentation outside the established theatre was developed further by both realists and symbolists. The Porte-Saint-Martin, the Gymnase, and the Vaudeville had proven earlier in the century that established minor houses could challenge the national theatres. Antoine's Théatre-Libre and Lugné-Poe's Théâtre de l'Oeuvre carried the process a step further, by mounting their challenge from entirely outside the existing theatre system. They thus established the pattern the avant-garde in the theatre has followed since. The Comédie eventually assimilated these new schools, or at least their most important products, but its major role had become that of repository of the established classics.

1. HENRY BECQUE AND ANDRé ANTOINE, 1881-1894

During the 1870s and early 1880s the French theatre experienced a rising sense of dissatisfaction, a growing suspicion that a plateau had been reached and that the existing system had become too rigid to allow new directors, new actors and, especially, new playwrights an opportunity to add vitality to the art. Young authors were discouraged by the preference of major theatres for Augier, Sardou, and the proven dramatists of the Second Empire. Censorship was reintroduced in 1874, but when Zola mounted a campaign against it in 1885 after the banning of Germinal he found most of the established dramatists in Paris united against him. He joined with other novelists such as Flaubert and Daudet to challenge the hold of these established authors on the theatre, but either their dramatic imagination or their determination proved insufficient, since all ended by allowing their works at last to be adapted by popular hacks such as Busnach or Belot, who had little concern for either experimentation or originality.

The major victim of this situation was Henry Becque, who complained frequently and bitterly of the commercialism and exclusiveness of the system which indeed denied him his rightful position as the major serious dramatist of France during this period:

“About twenty-five authors,” he observed, “share the theatres. The vogue of their works, almost always legitimate, but frequently somewhat excessive, and furthermore aided by outstanding interpretation, leads to runs of 200, 300, and even 500 nights. When these authors compete with each other and are often obliged to wait their turn even for guaranteed productions, how can unknowns hope to gain a turn?”

Becque, of course, persevered and triumphed, but his assertion that many other potential playwrights of his generation were stifled, while impossible to prove, seems unfortunately likely.

There was admittedly little in Becque's early work to indicate the development of a major talent. All of his first four plays were clear failures except a drama, Michel Pauper (1870), which Becque mounted at his own expense at the Porte-Saint-Martin. Thanks largely to the interpretation of Taillade, it achieved a favorable, if not enthusiastic, response. This was hardly enough to interest Parisian directors of the 1870s in a new author, and Becque tried in vain for five years to find a theatre to present his major work, Les Corbeaux. Neither Montigny nor his successor Koning was interested, neither Duquesnel nor his successor La Rounat at the Odéon, not Deslandes at the Vaudeville nor Ritt at the Porte-Saint-Martin. Even the less popular Gaîté, Ambigu, and Cluny refused him. At last, in 1881, despairing of ever seeing the play performed, Becque arranged for its publication. Then remarkably his publisher, Stock, praised the work to his friend Thierry, the former director of the Comédie, who arranged for a reading at the national theatre. Even more remarkable, the widely refused play was accepted by the Comédie for presentation by a vote of six to two.

All too soon, Becque found that this apparent triumph merely opened to him a new set of agonies. The actors of the Comédie, accustomed to the “realism” of Augier, Dumas fils, Feuillet, and Erckmann-Chatrian, were confused and irritated by this harsh and savage study of the destruction of a family by the former friends of its dead father. Like Hugo fifty years before, Becque found himself in constant quarrels with conservative actors over interpretation, indeed even over the language of his work. Just as Mlle Mars had refused to say Hugo's “lion superbe et généreux,” Coquelin now demanded that Becque's “boustiffouller” be replaced by “se mettre à table.” Got was clearly relieved to be withdrawn from the central role of Teissier in order to appear in a revival of Le Roi s'amuse. The opening was rather stormy, but far from another “battle of Hernani.” Les Corbeaux was generally associated in the public mind with Zola's new “naturalist” movement, but though opinion on the movement was sharply divided, little of the explosiveness of the early romantic period was now present. Reviews of the play were generally re-statements of the reviewers' previously expressed opinions on naturalism in general, so that conservatives spoke disparagingly of the “cynicism and salaciousness” of the work, while Zola's partisans praised its “realism and tough-mindedness.” Neither the criticism nor the generally indifferent interpretation engaged the attention of the general public, and the run was a short one.

How far the battle for “naturalism in the theatre” was from being won by this single skirmish was made clear later, in 1882, when the Comédie refused by a vote of six to three to produce Becque's second major work, La Parisienne. Once again Becque made the rounds of Parisian theatres and once again found his work rejected in favor of such established figures as Sardou, Labiche, or Gondinet. In 1885 Becque wrote to Thierry, who had continued to give him encouragement, that he had been forced to entrust his work to the “inadequate artists and poverty-striken director” of the Renaissance.

Certainly, after acceptance at the Comédie, Becque had reason to complain of his fall to one of the capital's more obscure houses, but the little organization which presented his second work was not simply one among many indistinguishable ventures, and deserves more attention than theatre historians have given it. The director, Fernand Louveau (whose professional name was Samuel), began as the leader of an amateur dramatic society, the Cercle des Arts Intimes, which gave unproduced works by known authors. Louveau moved on to direct the Renaissance in 1884, but retained for several years his interest in experimentation, even in this commercial situation. Though La Parisienne was his only significant production, Louveau should be remembered as one who provided a model for the more influential André Antoine a few years later. The actors at the Renaissance had little training, of course, but for that very reason, as Antoine also later discovered, were in some ways better suited to the new approach in drama than the traditionally trained actors of the major houses. Mlle Antonine in particular, who played the original Clotilde, was generally considered superior to Suzanne Reichenberg in the 1890 revival at the Comédie La Parisienne was a far more successful work than the more bitter Corbeaux, and Becque had no difficulty in finding theatres willing to present the five lesser plays he wrote before his death in 1899. After 1885 he busied himself also with reviewing for several journals, defending his two major works, and organizing their revivals. The 1890 revival of La Parisienne at the Comédie was a failure, but Réjane at the Vaudeville gave the piece a triumphant vindication in 1893.

Despite Becque's eventual success, the difficulties he had in attaining it guaranteed that few of his contemporaries would follow his example. Slowly, the Parisian theatre began to evolve less difficult procedures for the discovery and encouragement of new talent. Louveau's productions made an important but limited contribution, since his authors were established even though the plays were unfamiliar. Another step was taken by a more prominent figure in the theatre world, Hilarion Ballande. In 1867 Ballande formed a Société de patronage des auteurs dramatiques inconnus which supported matinee performances of new playwrights. Unable to engage the interest of the public, Ballande changed two years later to “classic matinees” at the Gaîté and later at the Porte-Saint-Martin. These productions, like Louveau's, were of unusual works by known authors, though the Ballande matinees gained a far greater reputation because of his ability to attract to them most of the great names among established actors as well as the most promising new talents—Mélingue, Laferrière, Coquelin, Bernhardt, Desclée, Mounet-Sully, Taillade, Montaland, Reichenberg all were seen in Ballande productions. The matinees proved so successful that by 1880 almost every major theatre in Paris had established an experimental matinee program. Most followed Ballande's example in reviving minor classics, but some, most notably the Gymnase, produced even the more ephemeral comedies and vaudevilles of the early part of the century. In 1876 Ballande purchased the Déjazet, which he renamed the Troisième Théâtre-Français. Here again he attempted to introduce young authors, but his most important discovery was the distinctly minor Ernest Calonne, and his greatest successes continued to be revivals. Far more productive were the “matinées inédites” which Tallien began giving at the Cluny in 1879 and which introduced Hennique, Brieux, and Salandri to the stage.