[8] Recall Schlegel's saying that the genius of the classic drama was plastic and that of the romantic picturesque.
[9] Gautier, 192.
[10] This is a distinction more French than English: la tragédie vs. le drame.
[11] Preface to "Hernani."
[12] Preface to "Cromwell."
[13] "Histoire du Romantisme," p. 64.
[14] "Primer of French Literature," p. 115.
[15] One of the principles of the romanticists was the mélange des genres, whereby the old lines between tragedy and comedy, e.g., were broken down, lyricism admitted into the drama, etc.
[16] Stendhal, writing in 1823 ("Racine et Shakspere"), complains that "it will soon be thought bad form to say, on the French stage, 'Fermez cette fenêtre' [window]: we shall have to say, 'Fermez cette croisée' [casement]. Two-thirds of the words used in the parlours of the best people (du meilleur ton) cannot be reproduced in the theatre. M. Legouvé, in his tragedy 'Henri IV.,' could not make use of the patriot king's finest saying, 'I could wish that the poorest peasant in my kingdom might, at the least, have a chicken in his pot of a Sunday.' English and Italian verse allows the poet to say everything; and this good French word pot would have furnished a touching scene to Shakspere's humblest pupil. But la tragédie racinienne, with its style noble and its artificial dignity, has to put it thus,—in four alexandrines:
"'Je veux enfin qu'au jour marqué pour le repos,
L'hôte laborieux des modestes hameaux,
Sur sa table moins humble, ait, par ma bienfaisance,
Quelques-uns de ces mets réservés à l'aisance.'"