NOTES:
Criticism of Scribe may be found in Brunetière's "Époques du théâtre français;" Weiss, "Le Théâtre et les moeurs;" Matthews, "French Dramatists," p.78; Wells, "Modern French Literature," p. 353. Lanson, "Littérature française," p.966, is perhaps unduly harsh. For contemporary criticism of Scribe see Sainte-Beuve, "Portraits contemporains," ii., 91 and 589.
It originated in Italy as a pantomime with songs, which in seventeenth-century France became what we now call "topical." It is of this that Boileau says, "Le français, né malin, forma le vaudeville." Later the pantomime yielded gradually to dialogue, and the vaudeville was tending to farcical opera when Scribe gave it a new direction.
"Valérie" (1822) and "Le Mariage d'argent" (1827), both at the Théâtre Français.