RED ROBE, The. One of the most pow erful of the plays of Social criticism written by Engine Brieux is The Red Robe) ((La Robe rouge)), produced in 1900. It is a scathing indictment of the system of criminal justice peculiar to France. It satirizes the unscrupu lous place-hunting of lawyers who, desiring to rise to judgeships, can do so only by pleasing the people and accumulating convictions of the supposedly guilty. If a crime be committed, the police and the prosecutors must find the crimi nal, or failing of this, must fasten the deed upon the innocent, in order to satisfy public demand. The ruin of one such innocent victim is depicted, together with the hideous methods of the chief prosecutor for bullying the poor devil and his wife into submission. Eventually the Basque peasant Etchepare is acquitted through the courage of an honest lawyer who revolts against the tricicery of his colleagues and thus forever forfeits advancement for himself. But the unhappy Etchepare is already hopelessly injured in property and reputation and his wife, against whom he has been turned by the villainous Mouzon, when the latter laughs at her claim for reparation, slays him with the knife of one of his victimsas a trophy.
Every incident of the plot of this piece, every scene and every personage is contributory to the central thesis of the dramatist, who has elsewhere confessed:
I lived in the 17th century I would have been a preacher; but now I write plays.* It should be noted, however, that