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Updated: August 31, 2025
How infinitely cleverer than the dramatist who constructs the tragi-comedy of life." This is what we inevitably exclaim as we watch Victorien Sardou, in whom French ingenuity culminated and caricatured itself, laying the foundations of one of his labyrinthine intrigues.
Indeed, in half the works composing the prodigious Comédie Humaine are passages of immense dramatic force. Clearly, too, the author of "The Cloister and the Hearth" could paint character and was a splendid storyteller into the bargain. Why, then, should Balzac and Browning have failed where Shakespeare and Sardou have succeeded?
"I'm mighty glad to know that you wrote Alessandra, Douglass. It is worthy of Sardou, and it will win back every dollar we've lost in the other plays." "That's what I wrote it for," said Douglass, sombrely. Westervelt had no further scruples no reservations. "Well, now, as to terms and date of production. Let's get to business." Helen interposed. "No more of that for to-day. Mr.
For Sardou always preferred the spontaneous expressions of workmen and common people to the compliments of his own confreres. The distant skurry in the wings that always precedes the raising of the curtain was audible on the stage. This rattling of properties is very noticeable to actors new to the theatre, though it is quite unsuspected by the general public. The first act began.
Sardou enslaved himself to Bernhardt; there are grounds for thinking that but for this slavery he might have been a great dramatist and not merely a rich, supremely skilful play fabricator. For a long time the players have had the upper hand, mainly because of the servility of the dramatists, but there are signs of a change.
Esperance was wild with excitement. The time of waiting for the event seemed interminable to her. Her father tried in vain to calm her with philosophical reflections. Creature of feeling and impulse that she was, nothing could control her excitement. Sardou had also asked Francois Darbois to invite Mlle. Frahender, whose generous spirit and whose tact and judgment he much esteemed.
Sardou, behind the scenes, was coming and going, arranging a chair, changing the position of a table, catching his foot in a carpet, swearing, nervous in the extreme. He made a hundred suggestions to the manager, which were received with weariness. He entered into conversation with the firemen. "Watch and listen, won't you, so that you can give me your impression after the first act?"
Kendal's marital tendernesses and the abortive platitudes of Messrs. Pettit and Sims; the music-hall is a protest against Sardou and the immense drawing-room sets, rich hangings, velvet sofas, etc., so different from the movement of the English comedy with its constant change of scene.
"It seems to me," said Madame Darbois, timidly, "that this is rather premature. Do you feel able to play so soon in a real theatre, before so many people?" "I feel ready for anything," said the radiant girl quickly, in a clear voice. Sardou raised his head and looked at her.
Clarissa remembered the room very well it was Lady Laura's own especial sanctum, the last and smallest of four drawing-rooms a nest lined with crimson silk, and crowded with everything foolish in the way of ebony and ormolu, Venetian glass and Sevres china, and with nothing sensible in it except three or four delicious easy-chairs of the pouff species, immortalised by Sardou.
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