INTRODUCTION V

vation and showing that he knew human nature well. His personages are usually taken f rom the bourgeois class and the provinces. Generally his heroes are peoplé who are possessed of some great weakness, some all-absorbing mania or hobby. Thèse characters are placed in the most comic situations where they are made to dîsplay an amusing naïveté, innocence — and sometimes stupidity.

With characters and situations comic in the extrême, it is but natural that Labiche^s comédies should be f ull of extravagances and eccentricities of every Idnd. Many of them abound, moreover, in improbabilities to discover which requires but little ingenuity. Furthermore they contain ail the hackneyed means for producing comic efïects, such as mistaken identity, répétitions, expressions which savor of the stage, etc.

But notwithstanding ail the objections that may be urged, our author's gaiety is so contagions, his mirth so spontaneous, his wit and humor so abundant that we cannot find fault with him — he is so delightf ul, so entertaining that we f eel nothing but gratitude for his contribution to our merriment and pleasure.

The notes for this play were written some years ago in connection with Professor V. E. François, but with his consent hâve undergone a complète revision by me for this édition. Acknowledgement of aid in the earlier work is hère made.

The following brief bibliography may be of service: Emile Augier, Préface to Labiche's Théâtre Complet^ 1878. Ferdinand Brunetière, Revue des deux Mondes^ Sept. 15, 1879. René Doumic, De Scribe à Ibsen, 1896.

Dumasyf/f, Entt' actes, III, 1878-79.

Hippolyte Parigot, Le Théâtre d^hier, 1893.

Léopold Lacour, Nouvelle Revue, October i, 1880. Brander Matthews, French Dramatists of the Ninteenth Cen-

tury, New York, 1891.

Emile Zola, Nos Auteurs dramatiques, 1881.