It is perhaps not too much to say that Meilhac and Halévy are seen at their best in these one-act plays. They hit better with a single-barrel than with a revolver. In their five-act plays, whether serious like Fanny Lear or comic like La Vie Parisienne, the interest is scattered, and we have a series of episodes rather than a single story. Just as the egg of the jelly-fish is girt by circles which tighten slowly until the ovoid form is cut into disks of independent life, so if the four intermissions of some of Meilhac and Halévy's full-sized plays were but a little longer and wider and deeper they would divide the piece into five separate plays, any one of which could fairly hope for success by itself. I have heard that the Roi Candaule was originally an act of La Boule, and the Photographe seems as though it had dropped from La Vie Parisienne by mistake. In M. Meilhac's earlier five-act plays, the Vertu de Celimène and the Petit fils de Mascarille, there is great power of conception, a real grip on character, but the main action is clogged with tardy incidents, and so the momentum is lost. In these comedies the influence of the new school of Alexandre Dumas fils is plainly visible. And the inclination toward the strong, not to say violent, emotions which Dumas and Angier had imported into comedy is still more evident in Fanny Lear, the first five-act comedy which Meilhac and Halévy wrote together, and which was brought out in 1868. The final situation is one of truth and immense effectiveness, and there is great vigor in the creation of character. The decrepit old rake, the Marquis de Noriolis, feeble in his folly and wandering in helplessness, but irresistible when aroused, is a striking figure; and still more striking is the portrait of his wife, now the Marquise de Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear the adventuress—a woman who has youth, beauty, wealth, everything before her, if it were not for the shame which is behind her: gay and witty, and even good-humored, she is inflexible when she is determined; hers is a velvet manner and an iron will. The name of Fanny Lear may sound familiar to some readers because it was given to an American adventuress in Russia by a grand-ducal admirer.
After Fanny Lear came Froufrou, the lineal successor of The Stranger as the current masterpiece of the lachrymatory drama. Nothing so tear-compelling as the final act of Froufrou had been seen on the stage for half a century or more. The death of Froufrou was a watery sight, and for any chance to weep we are many of us grateful. And yet it was a German, born in the land of Charlotte and Werther,—it was Heine who remarked on the oddity of praising the "dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears—a talent which he has in common with the meanest onion." It is noteworthy that it was by way of Germany that English tragedy exerted its singular influence on French comedy. Attracted by the homely power of pieces like The Gamester and Jane Shore, Diderot in France and Lessing in Germany attempted the tragédie bourgeoise, but the right of the "tradesmen's tragedies"—as Goldsmith called them—to exist at all was questioned until Kotzebue's pathetic power and theatrical skill captured nearly every stage in Europe. In France the bastard offspring of English tragedy and German drama gave birth to an equally illegitimate comédie larmoyante. And so it happens that while comedy in English literature, resulting from the clash of character, is always on the brink of farce, comedy in French literature may be tinged with passion until it almost turns to tragedy. In France the word "comedy" is elastic and covers a multitude of sins: it includes the laughing Boule and the tearful Froufrou: in fact, the French Melpomene is a sort of Jeanne qui pleure et Jeanne qui rit.
So it happens that Froufrou is a comedy. And indeed the first three acts are comedy of a very high order, full of wit and rich in character. I mentioned The Stranger a few lines back, and the contrast of the two plays shows how much lighter and more delicate French art is. The humor to be found in The Stranger is, to say the least, Teutonic; and German humor is like the simple Italian wines: it will not stand export. And in The Stranger there is really no character, no insight into human nature. Misanthropy and Repentance, as Kotzebue called his play (The Stranger was Sheridan's title for the English translation he revised for his own theatre), are loud-sounding words when we capitalize them, but they do not deceive us now: we see that the play itself is mostly stalking sententiousness, mawkishly overladen with gush. But in Froufrou there is wit of the latest Parisian kind, and there are characters—people whom we might meet and whom we may remember. Brigard, for one, the reprobate old gentleman, living even in his old age in that Bohemia which has Paris for its capital, and dyeing his few locks because he feels himself unworthy to wear gray hair,—Brigard is a portrait from life. The Baron de Cambri is less individual, and I confess I cannot quite stomach a gentleman who is willing to discuss the problem of his wife's virtue with a chance adorer. But the cold Baronne herself is no commonplace person. And Louise, the elder daughter of Froufrou, the one who had chosen the better part and had kept it by much self-sacrifice,—she is a true woman. Best, better even than Brigard, is Gilberte, nicknamed "Froufrou" from the rustling of her silks as she skips and scampers airily around. Froufrou, when all is said, is a real creation, a revelation of Parisian femininity, a living thing, breathing the breath of life and tripping along lightly on her own little feet. Marrying a reserved yet deeply-devoted husband because her sister bid her; taking into her home that sister, who had sacrificed her own love for the husband; seeing this sister straighten the household which she in her heedless seeking for idle amusement had not governed, then beginning to feel herself in danger and aware of a growing jealousy, senseless though it be, of the sister who has so innocently supplanted her by her hearth, and even with her child; making one effort to regain her place, and failing, as was inevitable,—poor Froufrou takes the fatal plunge which will for ever and at once separate her from what was hers before. What a fine scene is that at the end of the third act, in which Froufrou has worked herself almost to a frenzy, and, hopeless in her jealousy, gives up all to her sister and rushes from the house to the lover she scarcely cares for! And how admirably does all that has gone before lead up to it! These first three acts are a wonder of constructive art. Of the rest of the play it is hard to speak so highly. The change is rather sudden from the study of character in the first part to the demand in the last that if you have tears you must prepare to shed them now. The brightness is quenched in gloom and despair. Of a verity, frivolity may be fatal, and death may follow a liking for private theatricals and the other empty amusements of fashion; but is it worth while to break a butterfly on the wheel and to put a humming-bird to the question? To say what fate shall be meted out to the woman taken in adultery is always a hard task for the dramatist. Here the erring and erratic heroine comes home to be forgiven and to die, and so after the fresh and unforced painting of modern Parisian life we have a finish full of conventional pathos. Well, death redeems all, and, as Pascal says, "the last act is always tragedy, whatever fine comedy there may have been in the rest of life. We must all die alone."
J. BRANDER MATTHEWS.
THE KING'S GIFTS.
Cyrus the king in royal mood
Portioned his gifts as seemed him good:
To Artabasus, proud to hold
The priceless boon, a cup of gold—
A rare-wrought thing: its jewelled brim
Haloed a nectar sweet to him.
No flavor fine it seemed to miss;
But when the king stooped down, a kiss
To leave upon Chrysantas' lips,
The jewels paled in dull eclipse
To Artabasus: hard and cold
And empty grew the cup of gold.
"Better, O Sire, than mine," cried he,
"I deem Chrysantas' gift to be."
Yet the wise king his courtiers knew,
And unto each had given his due.
To all who watch and all who wait
The king will come, or soon or late.
Choose well: thy secret wish is known,
And thou shalt surely have thine own—
A golden cup thy poor wealth's sign,
Or on thy lips Love's seal divine.
EMILY A. BRADDOCK