INTRODUCTION XI

Musset hère shows the lesson of his own life as to the irrésistible power of debauchery. While not lackîng in strength and picturesqueness, Lorenzaccio, though more prétentions, is less satisfactory than the best of the other plays/ Less sombre are the succeeding comédies, La Quenouille de Bartmn^, . published in 1835 in two acts, and afterwards rearranged in three acts with the title Barherine, Le Chandelier (1835), ^^ ^^ f^^^ jurer de rien (1836), and Un Caprice (1837). Thèse appeared first in the Revue des Deux Mondes, In 1840 ail the prose plays were republished in one volume under the title Comédies et Proverbes. The two-volume édition of 1853, with the same title, and the later éditions (those from 1878 on in three volumes) contain also II faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée (1845), Louison (1849; î^ verse). On ne saurait penser à tout (1849), Càrmosine (1850), and Bettine (1851). While they do not attain the level of the earlier comédies, thèse last works are nevertheless interesting. . Nowhere has Musset shown more clearly than in // faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée his art of making something out of nothing. A half-hour's conversation between two people whose names, even, he does not tell us, ending at last, in spite of interruptions while thé door is neither open nor shut, in a proposai of marriage, — this is the substance of the little picture of Parisian society. It is based on an actual conversation, which took place, Paul de Musset tells us, almost exactly as in the play : '* Je reconnaissais les per-

^ The six prose plays mentioned were published in two volumes by the Revue tUs Deux Mondes in August, 1834, with the title, Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil, prose : seconde livraison. Ail of them, except La Nuit Vénitienne and Lorenzaccio, had already appeared in the Revue, whose editor, Buloz, was very friendly to Musset. The title Spectacle dans un Fauteuil is now usually given only to the two plays in verse. Lorenzaccio was not performed until 1896.

Xll INTRODUCTION

sonnages. Celui du comte était si ressemblant que je voyais mon frère prenant son chapeau à chaque coup de sonnette, laissant la porte entr'ouverte. . . Le dénoûment seul a été ajouté." The central idea of this pièce is consistent with ail Musset's writings. " Le comte, tout homme du monde qu'il est, n'en garde pas moins avec l'auteur sa foi dans l'amour, — la seule religion que Musset ait conservée jusqu'au bout" (Lenient, Comédie en France, vol. ii, p. 348). Written at a fortunate moment during the years of his life that were for the most part idle and aimless, and performed in 1848, Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée contests with Un Caprice the honor of being the most successful of Musset's Works on the stage.

Musset's drama includes, then, fifteen comédies et proverbes, ail but one in prose; three plays in verse in the Premières Poésies; and further, L'Ane et le Ruisseau, written in 1855 and published in the Œuvres posthumes (first édition, 1860), with sevejal fragments and sketches. In 1849 ^^ produced in collaboration with Augier L'Habit vert, which is not included in his works. The most interesting of the fragments is La Servante du Roi, containing scènes of a tragedy begun in 1840 for the great actress Rachel, and abandoned on account of â quarrel with her. Musset's views on classical tragedy, to which Rachel's acting had brought renewed popularity, are set forth in his volume Mélanges de littérature et de critique. The drame, he says, is a legitimate form of art; the rules of tragedy concern only those who wish to write tragédies; but to Write a tragedy without regard to the classical rules is monstrous. This indicates why none of Musset's plays are called tragédies, since none of them regard the rules. For entirely serious plays like Loremaccio the proper name is drame, while the plays with comic éléments, however tragically they may end, are comédies.

INTRODUCTION XIU

The proverbe is supposed to illustrate some proverbial saying, and, like the more modem saynète, is usually short and simple. It is not always easy to classify Musset's plays. On ne badine pas avec l'amour, originally called a proverbe, is now, in spite of its title, known as a comedy.

For seventéen years after the failure of La Nuit Vénitienne in 1830, none of Musset's plays were performed. In 1847 Mme. AUan-Despréaux, a favorite Parisian actress, saw Un Caprice acted in Russian at St. Petersburg, and determined to hâve it produced at the Comédie Française. The performance, on November 27 of the same year, was highly successftd. During the foUowing year Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée, Il ne faut jurer de rien. Le Chandelier, and André del Sarto were performed in Paris; actors, critics and public discovered that thèse plays, intended only to be read, were also admirable behind the foot-lights. The rest of Musset*s plays hâve since been performed. Only a few of them hâve held their place on the stage; but whether or not they ought to be acted, in any case their greatest value is as literary works. The thème of them ail is love.* Though Musset has been compared to Shakespeare for his freedom in dramatic composition, and to Marivaux for the élégance of his language, y et few writers, even among the greatest, hâve been so entirely original and individual.

The aim of this édition is to give as full and as definite information as is possible in a limited space about Musset as a dramatist, together with the text of three of his plays. It need hardly be said, however, that, in order to form a proper idea of his place in literature, one must read also

^ "Son théâtre tout entier n*est qu'un hymne à l'amour; là est le secret de sa force dramatique ** (Brunetière, Manuel de P histoire de la littérature française).