1831.] Theatrical Affairs, at Home and Abroad. 313 



getting drunk ; or under the table, when both had accomplished that 

 object. But the oddity does not stop here. The actual commission of 

 the offence on the stage is to be punished with less rigour than the insti- 

 gation, though nothing should have come of it. The instigator who 

 succeeds in putting his attack into shape, is to be punished at the rate of 

 4,000 francs, and three years imprisonment ; the instigator who can per- 

 suade no one to move a pen is to be punished (for his failure, we pre- 

 sume), at the rate of Jive years and 6,000 francs. All very curious, but 

 we must recollect that it is in France. 



The next law strikes at the whole system of the drama: 



" Title III. Upon Outrages and Offences. 



" Every outrage against good morals, against the person of the King, to be 

 punished by an imprisonment of from six months to five years. Against members 

 of the royal family, against the Chambers, or one of them, or against the 

 persons of sovereigns, or the chiefs of foreign governments, to be punished by 

 various terms of imprisonment, from six months to three years, arid fines from 

 50 to 1,000 francs. 



" Every attempt to personify upon the stage any living individual, whether 

 he be named or hinted at in such a manner that every one may know the 

 original,~will be considered a crime, and punishable by imprisonment of the 

 director of the theatre, and the author of the piece, of from one month to two 

 years, and a fine of from 500 to 5,000 francs. 



" Personifying any deceased individual, whether by mentioning his name, 

 or designating him so that every one may know who is meant, when twenty- 

 five years have not elapsed from the time of his death, is also considered an 

 offence, unless with the formal consent, in writing, of the Minister of the Inte- 

 rior, and the nearest relations of the person to be represented on the stage. 



" This offence will be punished by imprisonment of from fifteen days to a 

 year, and a fine of from 300 to 3,000 francs. 



" The penal proceeding will preclude any action for defamation." 



Here is a catalogue of offences in which a lawyer of three months' stand- 

 ing would entangle every dramatist that ever wrote. Outrages against 

 morals, the king's person, c., may mean any thing the minister pleases. 

 As to the living personification, are we to have no Beau Brummels, no 

 dandy guardsmen, no lancer exquisites, on the boards ? of course the 

 offensive caricature of living characters must be avoided in any well- 

 regulated system, but the minister fights even for the dead : and no hint 

 must be given of any one removed from this troublesome and silly world 

 within the last quarter of a century. However there is one little hope : 

 the author may commence a correspondence, while he is making his 

 verses, with the minister on the subject; or he may argue with the rela- 

 tions the propriety of bringing the patriot in purgatory, on the stage. 

 In short he may buy the dead man's character, as the surgeons buy his 

 body, and both for the same purpose, dissection. 



" Title IV. 



<e Prescribes the mode of proceeding against the managers for the fines given 

 by preceding titles. The following is important : 



" ' An author shall not be responsible, and cannot be prosecuted, except at 

 the place where his piece has been represented for the first time. In every 

 other place, the responsibility shall fall upon the managers of the theatres.' " 



By this regulation the law may grasp every manager in France, con- 

 sisting of about three hundred, for so many are the theatres. Yet the 

 grasp may be more comprehensive still, for every one of those theatres 

 may have, and generally has, half-a-dozen people sharing the pro- 



M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 63. 2 S 



