But public taste soon tired of this brilliant but rather artificial art. It calls for truth and reality which is found lacking in the extrava gances of romantic drama. This feeling brought comedy once more into favor, which hereafter was destined to become more and more realistic and contemporary. We were to descend, so to say, from the clouds to mother earth and substitute actualities for the historical Past.
Classical Comedy and Vaudeville.— The years which followed on the great develop ment of Romantic drama were a period of re lief. A movement of reaction toward Natural ism began to make itself felt and more simple forms of art came into favor again. Comedy relegated drama to a secondary place. As a matter of .fact comedy had never completely lost its hold on the public, but during the first half of the 19th century its more sordid side only appealed to spectators. We witnessed the triumph of vaudeville with Picard and espe cially Scribe. This latter name is an incarna tion of the epoch and at the same time forms a judgment thereof. Scribe was the exact an tithesis of an artist. In his works no trace is found of poetry or style. He was, however, an adept in stagecraft, excelled in the con struction of a plot and a pastmaster in the preparation of theatrical situations. His char acters had to be manipulated like puppets, which in fact they really were; they appeared, disappeared, met unexpectedly, lost one another only to meet again at the opportune moment. In his best pieces, i.e., those most cleverly ar ranged, 'Bertrand et Raton,' 'La Camaraderie' and 'Bataille des Dames,' he handled compli cated situations with a master hand.
Victorien Sardou followed in his footsteps. He, also, replaced art by artificiality and grasped in a remarkable manner all the tricks of the trade. He was able to machinate ad mirably an intrigue whether in the nature of vaudeville like 'Pattes de Mouche) or whew dealing with a historical question as in 'Pattie' or 'Theodora.' There was more sincerity and realism in the astonishing vaudevilles of Labiche. A grain of common sense always sobered his coarsest farces. 'Monsieur Perrichon) was as unemotional toward him who helped him as he was ardent in befriending others. His remark (Vous me devez tout . . le ne l'oublierai jamais) ((You owe me everything . . . I shall never forget it))) is typical of the man. He
was, moreover, capable of better work than that displayed in 'Le Chapeau de Paine d'Italie> with its quid pro quo s and cock and bull situations.
The operettas of Offenbach, written with the collaboration of Meilhac and Halevy, were masterpieces of satire concealed beneath a con siderable amount of buffoonery, particularly 'Orphee aux Enters) and (La Belle Helene.) Popular Comedy.— Real comedy, i.e., com edy of life and comedy of character, was repre sented by these two authors, Emile Augier and Alexandre Dumas fils, with a disposition for the pathetic comedy of La Chaussee and the popular drama of Diderot. Augier was that type of the middle-class man, having all his sterling qualities but also his narrow-minded ideas.. His ideal was sound but prejudiced. He desired more than anything else to maintain and fortify home life. . He waged war to the knife on everything pertaining to the romantic. His fantastic ideas concerning romanticism dis turbed the most respectable women: in 'Ga brielle) we see a woman about to desert her husband and child because she is mentally up set and thinks she has poetical aspirations. In the 'Mariage d'Olympe,) Augier attacked the artificial sentimentality of those who consid ered the rehabilitation of fallen woman as possi ble and desirable; in 'Les Lionnes pauvres) and 'Les Fourchambault> he depicted the havoc wrought by a life of luxury and pleasure, and in 'Ceinture doree) he made a violent attack against the custom of giving dowries and financially arranged marriages in general. His loyal, upright mind and aversion for innova tion made him the champion of the traditions and the morals of the people.
Himself a commoner in the true meaning of the word, he created certain types of the middle class which will ever survive: Mon sieur Pointer, the counterpart of the Monsieur Jourdain of Louis Philippe's reign, the parvenu with his mania for sacrificing his daughter to his ambition by marrying her to a ruined nobleman who in addition to deceiving her despises his father-in-law; or Maitre Guerin, the unscrupulous notary, with his dis honest associates, whose whole character is summed up in his sublime but wily expression: je tourne la loi, donc je la respecte.)) (q twist the law, yet I respect it().