l burlesque which was the congenial
delight of the later days of the Second Empire to a species of comedy in
which the ingredients of bitterness and even of sadness found a
place.[154]

Tendencies of the drama and of the theatre in France.

Dramatic criticism in France has had a material share in the maintenance
of a deep as well as wide national interest in the preservation of a high
standard of excellence both in the performance of plays and in the plays
themselves. Among its modern representatives the foremost place would
probably be by common consent allowed to F. Sarcey, whose Monday
theatrical _feuilleton_ in the _Temps_ was long awaited week by week as
an oracle of dramaturgy. But he was only the first among equals, and the
successor and the predecessor of writers who have at least sought to be
equal to a function of real public importance. For it seems hardly within
the range of probability to suppose that the theatre will for many a
generation to come lose the hold which it has established over the
intellectual and moral sympathies of nearly the whole of the educated--to
say nothing of a great part of the half-educated--population of France.
This does not, of course, imply that the creative activity of French
dramatic literature is certain to endure. Since the great changes set in
which were consequent upon the disastrous war of 1870, French dramatic
literature has reflected more than one phase of national sentiment and
opinion, and has represented the aspirations, the sympathies and the
philosophy of life of more than one class in the community. Thus it has
had its episodes of reaction in the midst of an onward flow of which it
would be difficult to predict the end. The tendency of what can only
vaguely be described as the naturalistic school of writers has
corresponded to that even more prominent in the dramatic literatures of
certain other European nations; but it must be allowed that a new poetic
will have to be constructed if the freedom of development which the
dramatic, like all other arts, is entitled to claim is to be reconciled
to laws deducible from the whole previous history of the drama. The
reaction towards earlier forms has asserted itself in various
ways--through the poetic plays of the later years of F. Coppee; in the
success (notable for reasons other than artistic) of Vicomte H. de
Bornier's first tragedy; and of late more especially in the
dramas--highly original and truly romantic in b