[In the following essay, the critic argues that Becque's writing skills were inferior to those of his rivals.]

There was a time, thirty or forty years ago, when the name of Henri Becque occupied a very prominent place in the list of contemporary French playwrights, but his works seem hopelessly old-fashioned now, and it is not easy to divine the special reason which induced Mr. Edwin Björkman to include these pieces in his Modern Drama series. Still more difficult is it to acquiesce in the judgment of the translator, Mr. Freeman Tilden, who, in his preface, acclaims Becque as an epoch-making revolutionary, the discoverer of the drama of the commonplace, and a pioneer for Ibsen. Admirers of the famous Norwegian will not be pleased by the insinuation. Unquestionably, Becque, going to the masses for his subjects, was an innovator when compared with such writers as Augier, Feuillet, Sardou, and the younger Dumas, and was, in one sense, more of a realist than any of them. But he was essentially either a melodramatist or a farceur, and was inferior to his rivals in constructive skill, imagination, the composition of emotional climaxes, and polished dialogue. He had wit, a good sense of situation, an honest indignation against public abuses, and the courage of his convictions, but in his illustrations he was not much nearer to the truth of nature than the romanticists themselves.

This is the reason why The Vultures (Les Corbeaux), instead of being an effective satire upon an iniquitous system and professional rascality, becomes a diffuse and conventional melodrama of no particular significance. The subject—the opportunities afforded by then existing French regulations to greedy and unscrupulous practitioners to rob the widow and orphan under the cover of legal technicalities—is a good one, and it need not be doubted that, in selecting it, M. Becque was animated by sincere and philanthropic purpose. But he spoils a strong case by the extravagance and manifest artificiality of his premises and the complete theatricality of his personages. All the conditions of his story are prescribed, transparently, to insure a predestined issue, and would therefore be impotent as a demonstration, even if they could be regarded as fairly typical. His lewd and usurious old financier, his grasping and scoundrelly lawyer, his speculative architect, his dishonest tradesman, and the lesser vultures who batten upon the unfortunate Vigneron family, are one and all ancient puppets of the melodramatic stage. Madame Vigneron and her daughters, and the fortune-hunting Madame de Saint-Genis are almost equally destitute of originality or freshness. None of the characters, with the exception of the faithful old nurse, conveys the impression of an actual living human being. For their inveterate loquacity, which constantly clogs the action, the responsibility, of course, rests upon the author, who has made them the mouthpieces of his explanations and protests; but the mixed literary quality of their discourse must be put to the credit of Mr. Tilden, who has employed all sorts of current American colloquialisms which seem strangely inconsistent with the supposed place and time, however ingenious they may be as English equivalents of French phrases.

The Woman of Paris (La Parisienne), which was vehemently denounced at the time of its first production as a gross libel upon the sex, is written with a certain cleverness and vivacity, but is no way brilliant either in form or in psychological analysis. It is a simple variation of a formula upon which hundreds of farcical comedies have been built. The fickle wife, who deceives an abominably complacent or phenomenally stupid husband, has, in this case, two lovers. There is a domestic quadrangle instead of the usual triangle. The construction is arbitrary rather than plausible or ingenious, and the use of prolonged soliloquies is excessive. Theatrically it is inferior, in sparkle, point, and essential veracity, to scores of pieces of a similar character, while as literature or drama it is of infinitesimal value. As for The Merry-Go-Round (La Navette), described as a comedy in one act, that is an ordinary French farce, in which an unprincipled little baggage plays at fast and loose with three of her lovers at once, the first of whom she dismisses, only to take up with him again after she has failed to make satisfactory terms with either of the other two. It is a cynical trifle which skilled French comedians doubtless could make fairly amusing, but why it should be thought worthy of translation into English as a choice example of modern drama, French or other, passes comprehension.