it repeated. Diderot's
second play, _Le Pere de famille_, printed in 1758 with a _Discours sur
la poesie dramatique_, went through a few public performances in 1761;
and a later revival was unsuccessful. But "at a distance," as was well
said, the effect of Diderot's endeavours, the earlier in particular, was
extremely great, and Lessing, though very critical as to particular
points, greatly helped to spread it. Diderot had for the first time
consciously sought to proclaim the theatre an agency of social reform,
and to entrust to it as its task the propagation of the gospel of
philanthropy. Though the execution of his dramatic works fell far short
of his aims; though Madame de Stael was not far wrong in denouncing them
as exhibiting not nature itself, but "the affectation of nature," yet
they contained, in a measure almost unequalled in the history of the
modern drama, the fermenting element which never seems to subside. Their
author announced them as examples of a third dramatic form--the _genre
serieux_--which he declared to be the consummation of the dramatic art.
Making war upon the frigid artificiality of classical tragedy, he
banished verse from the new species. The effect of these plays was
intended to spring from their truth to nature--a truth such as no
spectator could mistake, and which should bring home its moral teachings
to the business as well as the bosoms of all. The theatre was to become
a real and realistic school of the principles of society and of the
conduct of life--it was, in other words, to usurp functions with which
it has no concern, and to essay the direct reformation of mankind. The
idea was neither new nor just; but its speciousness will probably
continue to commend it to many enthusiastic minds, whensoever and in
whatsoever shape it is revived.

The comedy of the Revolution and the first empire.

Vaudevilles, etc.

From this point the history of the French drama becomes that of a
conflict between an enfeebled artistic school and a tendency which is
hardly to be dignified by the name of a school at all. Among the
successful dramatists following on Diderot may be mentioned the critical
and versatile J. F. Marmontel, and more especially M. J. Sedaine, who
though chiefly working for the opera, produced two comedies of
acknowledged merit.[133] P. A. C. de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), who for
his early sentimental plays,[134] in which he imitated Diderot, invented
the appellation _drame_--s