FOREIGN DRAMA ON ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STAGE 29 1 



college, and in English translation it has been performed within recent 

 years in Chicago under semi-amateur, " hole-in-the-wall " auspices. 

 But the great public knows nothing of him, though he is ranked at 

 home among the foremost French dramatists. Back in 1855 he pro- 

 duced a play, Le manage d'Olympe, which was intended as a protest 

 against the success of Dumas' Camille, a protest against the sentimen- 

 tality of Dumas' rehabilitation of the fallen Marguerite Gautier. In 

 Augier's play the heroine, Olympe, though temporarily reclaimed by 

 marriage into a respectable family, nevertheless falls back into her 

 past life, for the reason that she was at heart common, brazen, and 

 not repentant nor desirous of rehabilitation. The father of the young 

 man who has married her finally shoots her dead and the curtain falls 

 on an unnecessarily violent ending, which leaves the spectator not only 

 horrified but dissatisfied. It may be that Augier, otherwise an author 

 of moderation and poise, made his Manage d'Olympe as revolting as 

 possible in order to emphasize his disapproval of the success which 

 Dumas' play had attained three years before, in 1852. In La dame aux 

 Camelias, Dumas had endeavored to show the complete repentance 

 and rehabilitation of his heroine through a pure love. But it will be 

 remembered that she dies in the last act, and, therefore does not marry 

 Armand and enter into the Duval family. Augier in his play took up 

 the thread where Dumas left off, and carried the idea through. He 

 did not beg the question, but faced his problem, a real problem, and 

 settled the fate of his heroine, as fearlessly and logically as Pinero 

 settled the fate of "The Second Mrs. Tanquary " some forty years later. 

 In view of the fact that Le manage d'Olympe is a genuine problem play 

 and an interesting and well-constructed one, it is surprising that in 

 this day of problem plays, Mr. Clyde Fitch's adaptation of it a few 

 years ago under the title, The Marriage Game, met with no success, 

 but neither his skilful stagecraft nor the interesting personality of Miss 

 Sadie Martinot, for whom he adapted the piece, could keep the play 

 long before the public. It soon disappeared, whereas Camille is still 

 with us, and continues to be, as it always has been, the most popular 

 and famous play that has come to us from France. This is not saying 

 that it is to be ranked in merit with the Cid of Corneille, the Phedre 



