SARDOU, VICTORIEN (1831-1908), French dramatist, was born in Paris on Sept. 5, 1831. The Sardous were settled at Le Cannet, a village near Cannes, where they owned an estate, planted with olive trees. A night's frost killed all the trees and the family was ruined. Victorien's father, Antoine Leandre Sar dou, came to Paris, and earned his living in a succession of em ployments. Victorien had to make his way as best he could. A play of his, La Taverne des etudiants, produced at the Odeon on April 1, 1854, was withdrawn after five nights. Many disappoint ments followed; some plays were rejected, others were accepted and not performed.
Sardou was now in actual want, and his misfortunes culminated in an attack of typhoid fever. He was dying in his garret, sur rounded with his rejected manuscripts. A lady named Mlle. de Brecourt nursed him back to health, and introduced him to Mlle. Dejazet. Then fortune began to smile on the author. It is true that Candide, the first play he wrote for Mlle. Dejazet, was stopped by the censor, but Les Premieres Armes de Figaro, Monsieur Garat, and Les Pres Saint Gervais, produced almost in succession, had a splendid run, and Les Pattes de mouche (1860: afterwards anglicized as A Scrap of Paper) obtained a similar success at the Gymnase. Fedora (1882) was written expressly for Sarah Bernhardt, as were many of his later plays. He soon ranked with Augier and Dumas. He ridiculed the vulgar and selfish middle-class person in Nos Intimes (1861: anglicized as Peril), the gay old bachelors in Les Vieux Garcons (1865), the modern Tartufes in Seraphine (1868), the rural element in Nos Bons Villageois (1866), old-fashioned customs and antiquated political beliefs in Les Ganaches (1862), the revolutionary spirit and those who thrive on it in Rabagas (1872) and Le Roi Garotte (1872), and the then threatened divorce laws in Divorcons (1880).
He struck a new vein by introducing a strong historic element in some of his dramatic romances. Thus he borrowed Theodora (1884) from Byzantine annals, La Haine (1874) from Italian chronicles, La Duchesse d' Athenes from the forgotten records of mediaeval Greece. Patrie (1869) is founded on the rising of the Dutch gueux at the end of the i6th century. The scene of La Sorciere (19c4) was laid in Spain in the i6th century. The French Revolution furnished him with three plays, Les Merveil leuses, Thermidor (1891) and Robespierre (1902). The last named was written expressly for Sir Henry Irving, and produced at the Lyceum theatre, as was Dante (1903). The imperial epoch was revived in La Tosca (1887) and Madame Sans Gene (1893). Later plays were La Piste (1905) and Le Drame des poisons (1907).
Sardou married his benefactress, Mlle. de Brecourt, but eight years later he became a widower, and soon after the revolution of 1870 was married again, to Mlle. Soulie. He was elected to the French Academy in 1878. He died at Paris on Nov. 8, 1908.
See L. Lacour, Trois theatres (188o) ; Brander Matthews, French Dramatists (New York, 1880 ; R. Doumic, Ecrivains d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1895) ; F. Sarcey, Quarante ans de theatre (vol. vi., 1901).