distinguished himself
by helping to adapt to the stage the novels of Dumas the elder, which he
had already helped to write; and one of his colleagues on Dumas' staff,
M. Octave Feuillet, who was shortly to make a great reputation for
himself as a novelist, appeared on the boards with _Echec et Mat_.
During the whole of this decade (1840-1850) Delphine Gay, the beautiful
and accomplished wife of the journalist Emile de Girardin, was a
frequent and successful play-writer. Soon afterwards M. Legouve, son of
the academician of the same name, and himself an academician, began to
collaborate with Scribe in works of more importance (_Adrienne
Lecouvreur_) than the latter had before attempted; while George Sand and
her former friend, Jules Sandeau, were also drawn into the inevitable
theatrical vortex. In collaboration with Augier, Sandeau produced, from
one of his own novels, one of the best plays of the century, _Le Gendre
de M. Poirier_, 1855. Eugene Labiche, who had been born in 1815,
distinguished himself, in 1851, by _Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italie_, and
in it laid the foundation of a long career of success in the lighter
kind of play which, at last, conducted him to the Academy. His
best-known play is _Le Voyage de M. Perrichon_. The year 1852 was
memorable for the French stage, for it saw the production of _La Dame
aux Camelias_, the first important play of Alexandre Dumas _fils_.
Without much of his father's talent for novel-writing, M. Dumas has been
both a more successful, and perhaps a better, dramatist. Most of his
plays have been directed to some burning question of the social or
ethical kind, and it has been his practice to re-issue them after a
time, with argumentative prefaces, in a very singular style. _Diane de
Lys_, _Le Demi-Monde_, _La Question d'Argent_, _Le Fils Naturel_, _Le
Supplice d'une Femme_ (nominally composed with Emile de Girardin), _Les
Idees de Madame Aubray_, _Une Visite de Noces_, and _L'Etrangere,_ are
his chief works. In 1854 appeared a now almost forgotten work by
Victorien Sardou, who was destined to be the favourite dramatist of the
Second Empire, and to share with MM. Augier and Dumas _fils_ the chief
rank among the dramatists of the last half of the century. Seven years
later _Nos Intimes_ gave him a great success, and, in 1865, _La Famille
Benoiton_ a greater, which he followed up with _Nos Bons Villageois_,
1866. Since that time he has written many plays, of which the finest by
far, an