FOREIGN DRAMA ON ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STAGE 289 



is surprising that none of them is known on the regular stage. 

 In Germany Les precieuses ridicules (1659) and Le malade imaginaire 

 (1673) are frequently given in the municipal theaters. 



If the golden age of French literature has bequeathed us practically 

 nothing, the eighteenth century has done no better. It is not until the 

 nineteenth century that we begin to draw plays from France as from 

 an unfailing source. Strangely enough the Hernani of Victor Hugo 

 seems to have had no career on the American stage, though its memo- 

 rable production in 1827 made its author the foremost poet-dramatist of 

 his time. No mention of Hernani is to be found in the old programs 

 of Booth, Salvini, Forrest and other actors who would have been likely 

 to give the play. On the other hand, Victor Hugo's Ruy Bias (1838) 

 is well known to American playgoers. Edwin Booth was a famous 

 Ruy Bias in his younger days, the last actor of distinction to play the 

 part being Alexander Salvini. With his death in 1893 the play has 

 vanished, at least temporarily, from the American stage, though when 

 the right romantic actor appears we may look for a revival of what is 

 without doubt Hugo's dramatic masterpiece. Hugo's other dramas 

 remain unknown to us in English versions, though two of them, Her- 

 nani and Le roi s' 'amuse, have furnished the plots for well-known Italian 

 operas, the Ernani (1844) and Rigoletto (1851) of Verdi. On the whole, 

 the romantic drama of Victor Hugo seems not to have held its own 

 very well, even in Paris. Hernani, Ruy Bias, and Le roi s'amuse are 

 all that are now retained in the repertory of the Theatre Francais. The 

 revival of Angelo (1835) a few seasons ago was a failure in spite of the 

 fine acting of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt. 



A few years after the heyday of Hugo's dramatic fame, we meet 

 with an author whose name and plays are well known to American 

 theater-goers. Though famous chiefly as a writer of romances and 

 stirring historical novels Alexandre Dumas the elder (1806-70) has 

 contributed plays to the stage which still possess great drawing powers. 

 First and foremost must be mentioned Monte Christo, which, though 

 dating from 1848, is still being presented as for the past thirty years by 

 Mr. James O'Neill. This record may fairly be said to rank with that 

 of the late Joseph Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle or Kate Claxton in 



