Victor Hugo's Plays
The first time you read a Hugo play, you may very well be disappointed. There's a great chance you'll find it ridiculous with its emotionally excessive outbursts and bombastic dialogue. Is this really the kind of drama that caused a generation to revolt and the censors of a regime to sharpen their quills?
For two centuries, the dominating force in French culture was Classicism. It celebrated the ancient Greek-Roman ideals of clarity and harmony, achievable through order, structure and planning. A poem, a painting or a play would improve if fitted to the judgment of learned men - like the pruned gardens of Versailles. More than anywhere else, this was the condition of the theatrical stages and their playwrights. Tragedies were always written in five acts, comedies sometimes in three. Preferably, the plot should be taken from ancient Rome or Greece; the characters should be of royal or noble descent - maybe with a jester for contrast. The scene had to be the same through the whole play and the plot had to take place within 24 hours or less.
Now, French-classicism produced masterpieces; Racine and Molière were some of its more prominent representatives. But in the beginning of the 19th century, it had become a travesty. Certain words and phrases were forbidden. Using the word 'dogs' ruined Racine's reputation irrepearably and de Vigny's Othello was not allowed because 'handkerchief' was mentioned. If you wanted to speak of a clock, you had to use the phrase 'ringing bronze' instead. The sea could not be called 'the sea'; you had to say 'the wet element'. These kinds of rules were not applied to dialogue alone; they affected the French theatre in all its aspects. French-classicism had simply grown rigid in absurdum.
It is with this in mind you should read Hugo's plays; it was in this cultural atmosphere the new Romantic dramas appeared as breaths of fresh air. It doesn't make them less ridiculous from our modern point of view, but certainly more understandable.
1829 MARION DE LORME
1830 HERNANI
