IV. HUGO'S LATEB CAREER

After the success of Hernani^ Hugo turned his attention to prose fiction, and in February, 1831, there

appeared Notre Daine de PariSy an historical novel dealing with life in Paris in the fifteenth century. Â vast compendium of observations regarding the customs, beliefs, arts, and laws of this epoch, it was nevertheless a work of the imagination in which could be seen that love for the middle ages and that desire for historical reconstruôtion and interpretation which had been so evident in the earlier drama. In the fall of the same year Marion Delorme was finally given at the Porte St. Martin Theatre, where it had rather a short run and caused much less comment than Hernani, Coming directly after Dumas' second drama, AntJiony, which was a great success, it found the supporters of the new ideas divided into two parties, one for Hugo and one for Dumas, and with this difference of opinion a triumph like the first was impossible. In 1832, Le Roi s^amuse^ his next drama, was given a single performance and then stopped by the censor on the ground that it spoke in too slighting a manner of François I., who waa one of the characters of the piece. The play resembled its predecessors in that it had an historical basis and was filled with local color, while it excelled them, perhaps, in force and power.

So far, Hugo had been living up to his dramatic ideals, in that he had been carrying out his original theories, and had retained the poetical form. Now, however, he abandons the Alexandrine and turns to prose. Three plays were written in this way, Lucrèce Borgia^ Marie Tudor^ and Angelo, the first and second appearing in 18o3 and the last in 1835, and in each one of them there V iittle more than a lurid melodrama. The humor that