single company of actors had begun in 1680, the
party-strife of the times made itself audible; and the most prominent
tragic poet of the Revolution, M. J. de Chenier, a disciple of Voltaire
in dramatic poetry as well as in political philosophy, wrote for the
national stage the historical drama--with a political moral[139]--in
which in the memorable year 1789 the actor Talma achieved his first
complete triumph. But the victorious Revolution proclaimed among other
liberties that of the theatres in Paris, of which soon not less than 50
were open. In 1807 the empire restricted the number to 9, and reinstated
the Theatre Francais in sole possession (or nearly such) of the right of
performing the classic drama. No writer of note was, however, tempted or
inspired by the rewards and other encouragements offered by Napoleon to
produce such a classic tragedy as the emperor would have willingly
stamped from out of the earth. The tragedies of C. Delavigne represent
the transition from the expiring efforts of the classical to the
ambitious beginnings of the romantic school of the French drama.

The romantic school.

Of modern romantic drama in France it must suffice to say that it
derives some of its characteristics from the general movement of
romanticism which in various ways and at various points of time
transformed nearly every modern European literature, others from the
rhetorical tendency which is a French national feature. Victor Hugo was
the founder whom it followed in a spirit of high emprise to success upon
success, his own being the most conspicuous of all;[140] A. Dumas the
elder its unshrinking middleman. The marvellous fire and grandeur of
genius of the former, always in extremes but often most sublime at the
height of danger, was nowhere more signally such than in the drama;
Dumas was a Briareus, working, however, with many hands besides his own.
Together with them may, with more or less precision, be classed in the
romantic school of dramatists A. de Vigny[141] and George Sand,[142]
neither of whom, however, attained to the highest rank in the drama, and
Jules Sandeau;[143] A. de Musset, whose originality pervades all his
plays, but whose later works, more especially in his prose "proverbs"
and pieces of a similar kind, have a flavour of a delicacy altogether
indescribable;[144] perhaps also P. Merimee (1803-1870), who invented
not only Spanish dramas but a Spanish dramatist, and who was never more
audacious th