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We went that same night to see Sardou's "Cleopatra." I asked Maitland how he liked the piece, and the only reply he vouchsafed was: "I have recently read Shakespeare's treatment of the same theme."
This transition was very striking. The changes in the expression of Irving's face were marvelous as wonderful as those in his Louis XI; but that was very nearly all. In everything else, Coquelin, as I had seen him in Sardou's "Thermidor," was infinitely better. Besides this, the piece was, in general, grotesquely unhistorical.
If we compare the 'League of Youth' with Scribe's 'Bertrand et Raton, or with Sardou's 'Rabagas'; if we compare the 'Pillars of Society' with Dumas's 'Étrangère, or Augier's 'Effrontés' we cannot fail to find a striking similarity of structure.
With 'La Tosca, which was produced in 1899, Puccini won another success, though for very different reasons from those which made 'La Bohème' so conspicuous a triumph. The libretto is a clever condensation of Sardou's famous drama. The scene is laid in Rome in the year 1800.
As it is, the logical deduction from M. Sardou's fable is that, though spirit communications are genuine enough, they are never of the slightest use; but we can scarcely suppose that that was what he intended to convey.
Either the redoubtable Bowles disagreed with him, or he disagreed with Bowles, because clouds have crowned his brow since his return home. Mrs. Beaufort by this time has got to Sardou's last comedy, and Dicky, who never heard of it or its author, comes to a conversational stand-still. This means uninterrupted quiet all round, as nobody else is saying anything.
In fiction Milady and Madame Marneffe come in for first honors in each the leopard crossed on the serpent and united under a petticoat, beautiful and wicked but since the Balzac and Dumas days the story-tellers and stage-mongers have made exceeding free with the type, and we have between Herman Merivale's Stephanie de Mohrivart and Victorien Sardou's Zica a very theater or shall we say a charnel house of the woman with the past; usually portrayed as the victim of circumstance; unprincipled through cruel experience; insensible through lack of conscience; sexless in soul, but a siren in seductive arts; cold as ice; hard as iron; implacable as the grave, pursuing her ends with force of will, intellectual audacity and elegance of manner, yet, beneath this brilliant depravity, capable of self-pity, yielding anon in moments of depression to a sudden gleam of human tenderness and a certain regret for the innocence she has lost.
James's Theater, in 1862, she was playing a small part in a version of Sardou's "Nos Intimes," known then as "Friends and Foes," and in a later day and in another version as "Peril." She had from childhood acquired a habit of studying every part in every play in which she was concerned, so she was as ready as though she had been the understudy.
In A Doll's House there are two peripeties: Nora's fall from elation to despair in the first scene with Krogstad, and the collapse of Helmer's illusions in the last scene of all. A good instance of the "great scene" which involves a marked peripety occurs in Sardou's Dora, once famous in England under the title of Diplomacy.
He could not go on, and put his hot lips against her beautiful pure forehead to avoid the embarrassment that distressed him so powerfully. Thanks to Sardou's gifts as a raconteur, the supper passed off pleasantly enough. This great man could unfold the varied pages of his mind with disconcerting ease. He knew everything, and could talk and act with inimitable vivacity.
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