The comedy of the Revolution and the first empire. Vaudevilles, etc. From this point the history of the French drama becomes that of a conflict between an enfeebled artistic school and a tendency which is hardly to be dignified by the name of a school at all. Among the successful dramatists following on Diderot may be mentioned the critical and versatile J. F. Marmontel, and more especially M. J. Sedaine, who though chiefly working for the opera, produced two comedies of acknowledged merit.[133] P. A. C. de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), who for his early sentimental plays,[134] in which he imitated Diderot, invented the appellation _drame_--so convenient in its vagueness that it became the accepted name of the hybrid species to which they belonged--in two works of a very different kind, the famous _Barbier de Séville_ and the still more famous _Mariage de Figaro_, boldly carried comedy back into its old Spanish atmosphere of intrigue; but, while surpassing all his predecessors in the skill with which he constructed his frivolous plots, he drew his characters with a lightness and sureness of touch peculiar to himself, animated his dialogue with an unparalleled brilliancy of wit, and seasoned action as well as dialogue with a political and social meaning, which caused his epigrams to become proverbs, and which marks his _Figaro_ as a herald of the Revolution. Such plays as these were ill suited to the rule of the despot whose vigilance could not overlook their significance. The comedy of the empire is, in the hands of Collin d'Harleville, Louis Picard (1769-1828), A. Duval, Étienne and others, mainly a harmless comedy of manners; nor was the attempted innovation of N. Lemercier--who was fain to invent a new species, that of historical comedy--more than a flattering self-delusion. The theatre had its share in all the movements and changes which ensued in France; though the most important revolution which the drama itself was to undergo was not one of wholly native origin. Those branches of the drama which belong specifically to the history of the opera, or which associate themselves with it, are here passed by. Among them was the _vaudeville_ (from Val de Vire in Calvados), which began as an interspersion of pantomime with the airs of popular songs, and which, after the Italian masks had been removed from it, was cultivated by Ponsard and Marmontel, while Sedaine wrote a didactic poem on the subject (1756). Sedaine was the father of the _opéra-comique_ proper;[135] Marmontel,[136] as well as Rousseau,[137] likewise composed _opérettes_--a smaller sort of opera, at first of the pastoral variety; and these flexible species easily entered into combination. The melodrama proper, of which the invention is also attributed to Rousseau,[138] in its latter development became merely a drama accentuated by music, though usually in little need of any accentuation. The stage. Transition to the romantic school.