Trois comédies: Fantasio; On ne badine pas avec l'amour; Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée;

^ " Le véritable esprit français, tel que nos vraiment grands écrivains l'ont su représenter, s'est efforcé d'accommoder ensemble les

Vi INTRODUCTION

frivolous, intellectual, inconsistent society of Paris. The moment was one of political révolution and of triumph in ail forms of art over the lifeless and conventional classicism of the eighteenth century. Although Musset was personally identified with the Romantic School for a short time only, he nevertheless profited by the victory which it gained for freedom in literature. This freedom did not, it is true, altogether commend itself to him. As he shows in La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle, Fantasio, and several other works, he felt that when the old standards had been shattered, and no new ones had taken their place, the resuit was dissatisfaction, despondency, a hopeless yearning for the unattainable. A feeling of this sort is best expressed in lyric poetry, and the real strength of the Romantic school was lyric rather than dramatic. Thus Musset, by carrying his lyric qualities into the drama, and by avoiding various conventional Romanticist doctrines, not only produced better plays than any of the regular members of the school, but also put into thèse plays more of the true, vital spirit of Romanticism.

When Musset had become known through the Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie, the manager of the Odéon asked him for a comedy. In accordance with this request he wrote La Nuit Vénitienne, which was performed on December i, 1830. The Romantic dramas, especially Victor Hugo's Hernani (February 25, 1830), had provoked violent controversy. Asi bas happened at various times in the history of the Freneh stage, organized disturbances were made in the théâtres, with the object of breaking up the performances, Musset was known as an innovator, if not as an out-and-out Romantic ; and j at the first

justes libertés de Tesprit gaulois et les justes scrupules de l'esprit précieux" (Brunetière, Études critiques^ 2e série). See also Hend» reich, Alfred d€ Musset, ein Vertreter des Esprit gaulois, Berlin, 1899.

INTRODUCTION Vil

performance of his play a trifling accident on the stage threw the audience, already inclined to be hostile, into an uproar. After a second performance under similar conditions, the play was withdrawn. The discouraged author determined to write no more for the stage. Yet the dramatic form appealed to him so strongly that he used it more than any other, — sometimes even in purely lyric poems like the Nuits, That he intended his plays to be read, not acted, is clearly indicated by the sonnet prefixed to the two comédies in verse, La Coupe et les Lèvres and A quoi rêvent les jeunes filles, published in 1832 under the title Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil} No other French writer has given us for heroines such a séries of charming and life-like young girls as Musset, beginning with Ninon and Ninette in A quoi rêvent les jeunes filles. The thème of this exquisitely fanciful comedy, whose scène is "où Ton voudra," is the deeppooted love of romance which revolts against the common-place, and longs for romantic adventures.'*

In 1833 Musset wrote three prose dramas, André del Sarto, Les Caprices de Marianne, and Fantasio, In the second of thèse, Marianne falls in love with Octave, who is merely pleading the cause of his friend Cœlio. As his own mood varied, Musset resembled, his brother tells us,

^ The sonnet is reprinted in this book, page i. Although dated 1833, the Spectacle appeared in December, 1832; the volume contained this sonnet, a dedication, the two plays, and the poem Na* mouna, — now ail mcluded, with the Contes d* Espagne et d* Italie ^ in the Premières Poésies, One of the Contes, Les Marrons du Feu, is in the form of a drama.

^ £. Rostand's equally charming Romanesques (1894) has many points of similarity to Musset's play ; for instance, this whimsical development of^its geographical indefiniteness: la scène se passe où Von voudra, pourvu que les costumes soient jolis. Molière's Précieuses Ridicules satirizes a perverted form of the same romantic idéal.

Vlll INTRODUCTION

now the brilliant, thoughtless libertine Octave, now — when in love himself — the timid and sensitive Cœlio. Octave, with his wit as sharp as ever, but with his soûl deadened by ennui, reappears as Fantasio, the hero of the last drama that Musset wrote before his journey to Italy. In none of his works has he given us more of his personality. He shows himself as the enfant du siècle, whose ennui, if it was partly a matter of fashion, had at any rate taken firm hold on him. In a letter to Paul Foucher, written in his seventeenth year, he says, fuUy in the spirit of Fantasio: "Je m*ennuie et je suis triste, mais je n'ai pas même le courage de travailler. . . Je n'ai plus le courage de rien penser. Si je me trouvais à Paris, j'éteindrais ce qui me reste d'un peu noble dans le punch." ^ Fantasio's ennui, like Paris in 1833 after the riots and the choiera of the previous year, is relieved by flashes of gaiety. What he needs, to make him enjoy life for at least a few moments, is to commit some wild act of folly; good advice would be thrown away on him. The death of the court fool gives him a chance to take part in the " royal comedy." The romantic little princess, resigning herself for the good of the kingdom, is about to marry a ridiculous prince. Her sacrifice of love to duty appears to Musset a sacrilège, and in the person of Fantasio he comes to tell her so; peace and war are of no moment compared to her tears. Thus the lesson of the play is, in the words of M. Brunetière : " Que la jeunesse et la grâce et la poésie ne soient pas une fois de plus immolées à la prose ! " We must not ask for much logic in this capricious comedy, whose very title suggests fantaisie, — that quality rare in French literature, but preëminently Musset's. Truly, nothing is worse than médiocre fancies; but, in spite of the unfavorable

1 See Foucher, Entre cour et jardin, Paris, 1867, cfaap. vu; cf. Paul de Musset, Biographie d* Alfred de Musset, chap. vit