ascendancy for many years longer. Sardou's
fertility of invention, and extraordinary cleverness at manipulating a
complicated intrigue, were also greatly admired, and much was expected
from Edouard Pailleron's brilliant and--as it seemed--inexhaustible wit
in satirizing the whims and weaknesses of high-born and highly-cultured
society. Alexandre Dumas had created and still monopolized the problem
play, of which _Le Demi-monde_, _Le Fils naturel_, _La Question
d'argent_, _Les Idees de Madame Aubray_, _La Femme de Claude_, _Monsieur
Alphonse_, _La Visite de noces_, _L'Etrangere_, _Francillon_ and
_Denise_ may be mentioned as the most characteristic specimens. The
problem play is the presentation of a particular case, with a view to a
general conclusion on some important question of human conduct. This
afforded the author, who was, in his way, a moralist and a reformer,
excellent opportunities for humorous discussions and the display of that
familiar eloquence which was his greatest gift and most effective
faculty. Among other subjects, the social position of women had an
all-powerful attraction for his mind, and many of his later plays were
written with the object of placing in strong relief the remarkable
inequality of the sexes, both as regards freedom of action and
responsibility, in modern marriage. Like all the dramatists of his time,
he adhered to Scribe's mode of play-writing--a mixture of the _drame
bourgeois_, as initiated by Diderot, and the comedy of character and
manners, long in vogue--from the days of Moliere, Regnard, Destouches
and Marivaux, down to the beginning of the 19th century. In his prefaces
Dumas often undertook the defence of the system which, in his
estimation, was best calculated to serve the purpose of the artist, the
humorist and the moralist--a dramatist being, as he conceived, a
combination of the three.

Though the majority of French playgoers continued to side with him, and
to cling to the time-honoured theatrical beliefs, a few young men were
beginning to murmur against the too elaborate mechanism and artificial
logic. Scribe and his successors, whose plays were a combination of
comedy and drama, were wont to devote the first act to a brilliant and
witty presentation of personages, then to crowd the following scenes
with incidents, until the action was brought to a climax about the end
of the fourth act, invariably concluding, in the fifth, with an
optimistic _denouement_, just before m