tten that
in Paris itself the Theatre Libre did not stand alone. Many other
_theatres a cote_ sprang up, under such titles as "Theatre d'Art,"
"Theatre Moderne," "Theatre de l'Avenir Dramatique." The most important
and least ephemeral was the "Theatre de l'OEuvre," founded in 1893 by
Alex. Lugne-Poe, which represented mainly, though not exclusively, the
symbolist reaction against naturalism.

The impulse which led to the establishment of the Theatre Libre was, in
the first instance, entirely French. If any foreign influence helped to
shape its course, it was that of the great Russian novelists. Tolstoi's
_Puissance des tenebres_ was the only "exotic" play announced in
Antoine's opening manifesto. But the whole movement was soon to receive
a potent stimulus from the Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen.

Ibsen's early romantic plays had been known in Germany since 1875. In
1878 _Pillars of Society_ and in 1880 _A Doll's House_ achieved wide
popularity, and held the German stage side by side with _A Bankruptcy_,
by Bjurnstjerne Bjurnson. But these plays had little influence on the
German drama. Their methods were, indeed, not essentially different from
those of the French school of the Second Empire, which were then
dominant in Germany as well as everywhere else. It was _Ghosts_ (acted
in Augsburg and Meiningen 1886, in Berlin 1887) that gave the impulse
which, coalescing with the kindred impulse from the French Theatre
Libre, was destined in the course of a few years to create a new
dramatic literature in Germany. During the middle decades of the century
Germany had produced some dramatists of solid and even remarkable
talent, such as Friedrich Hebbel, Heinrich Laube, Karl Gutzkow and
Gustav Freytag. Even the generation which held the stage after 1870, and
included Paul Heyse, Paul Lindau and Adolf Wilbrandt, with numerous
writers of light comedy and farce, such as E. Wichert, O. Blumenthal, G.
von Moser, A. L'Arronge and F. von Schunthan, had produced a good many
works of some merit. But, in the main, French artificiality and
frivolity predominated on the German stage. In point of native talent
and originality, the Austrian popular playwright Ludwig Anzengruber was
well ahead of his North German contemporaries. It was in 1889, with the
establishment of the Berlin Freie Buhne, that the reaction definitely
set in. In Berlin, as afterwards in London, _Ghosts_ was the first play
produced on the outpost stage, but it was followed in