AUGIER, tVzhyti', EMILE (1820-89). Prob ably the greatest French dramatist of the Nine teenth Century. When comedy was in danger of being stilled between the vaudeville of Scribe and the sensational drama of the Ronianticists, he with the younger Dumas, raised it to a mime vigorous, realistic life. and a truer contemporary morality than it had kin)wn since .Moliere. Angier was born at Valence, September 17, 1820, and at first praetieed law; hut he inherited from his grandfather, Pigault-Lebrun, a prolific though mediocre novelist, a bent for literature, and wrote while still in a notary's study Charles VII. a Naii/cs, which was a failure. La cigar, acted in 1844, showed promise, and was approved by Ponsard (q.v.). It achieved sucees, and de cided the dramatist's career. It wits a Creek play, graeetul, witty, and like Le joueuI' de jhite, writ ten also at this time, though not acted until 1850, it pleads, in easy verse, the cause of the courtesan redeemed by love, which his later prose dramas eloquently condemn. L'arenturi6-r (IS4S) pre sents the same theme in a French setting, and was rewritten to suit his later position in 1860. He was still feeling his way, and is next found collaborating with Alfred de .Musset in L'habit rcrt (1849), a trifle. and, like Le postscriptum (I869), a failure. Then, with (1849), begins Augier's second manner. In this 'domes drama' he becorms the champion of average, conventional ethics, allaying the calculations of interest to the language of sentiment. as the Ro manticists hail never 110110. From this position Diane (1852) shows a momentary recoil, belle (1853) a slight advance, and La picrre touche (1833) a decided progress, thanks, per haps,to the collaboration of Sandeau, who also fur nished the plot for Le gendre de M. I'oiricr (1855) —Angler's first great drama,;ind thought by many the greatest since Beaumarchais's Mariage de Fi garo. It is a model comedy of manners, its comic force resting wholly on the interplay of characters, every one of whom is drawn to and from the life, without idealism and yet with no touch of bitter ness, such as is felt in Augier's Ceintarc don'e (1855), a satire of conventional marriage and the stock-exchange, foreshadowing his great series of social satires that begins with Les (Ironies ( 18(11).
Progress toward sterner ethics may be noted in Le maria•ge d'Olympe (1S57), which earned Angier his election to the Academy. La jeunesse (1858) is insignificant, but Les lionises paurres (1858) contains, in the cold, cowardly and per verse S6raphine, Augier's greatest female charac ter, and verges on tragedy in the dread of destiny that it rouses at the close. Un boan mariage (1859) completes the cycle of 'domestic dramas,' and Les effrontes (1861) turns to the corrupting of society through the struggle for unearned wealth. Here Vernouillet is the typical specu lator. and Giboyer the typical venal wit, who, in Le fins de Giboyrr (1862), becomes a hardly dis guised portrait of the clerical journalist, Louis Veuillot (q.v.). In no drama of Angier's is the interest more unflagging, the irony more caustic, and the dialogue more sparkling, than in this tri angular struggle between a decaying aristocracy, a vain plutocracy, and the unscrupulous exploits of both. The dramas that follow hardly reach this height. Haitre Guerin (1864) is a fine study of the tricky country lawyer; Paul Fares tier (1868) is insignificant ; La contagion (1866) and Lions et renards (1869) elaborate the theme of Les effrantes, and show in Estrigaud a type of the Parisian blague-ur. After the Franco-German War, Angier wrote the patriotic. but prosaic, Jean de Thommeray ( 1873 ) , Madame Carerlet (1876), dealing with divorce, and Les Fourcham bault (1878), whieh pushes the illegitimate son to the front, and marks by its melodramatic senti ment the beginnings of a reaction from literary naturalism. Augier's style is vigorous, often dar ing, in its use of new words, and even of slang. His moral earnestness makes him at times harsh; but he looked at the world with the honest sym pathy of an upright and sincere student. of nature. He died at Croissy, October 25, 1SS9, Consult: Parignt, Emile Angier (Paris, 1S90) : Lacour. Train tluceitres (Paris. 1SS0) : Donnie, Portraits crecrirains (Paris, 1S94) ; Matthews, French Dramatists (New York, 18S1).