_Drama and Poetry since 1830._--Although the immediate subject on which the battles of Classics and Romantics arose was dramatic poetry, the dramatic results of the movement have not been those of greatest value or most permanent character. The principal effect in the long run has been the introduction of a species of play called _drame_, as opposed to regular comedy and tragedy, admitting of much freer treatment than either of these two as previously understood in French, and lending itself in some measure to the lengthy and disjointed action, the multiplicity of personages, and the absence of stock characters which characterized the English stage in its palmy days. All Victor Hugo's dramatic works are of this class, and each, as it was produced or published (_Cromwell_, _Hernani_, _Marion de l'Orme_, _Le Roi s'amuse_, _Lucrece Borgia_, _Marie Tudor_, _Ruy Blas_ and _Les Burgraves_), was a literary event, and excited the most violent discussion--the author's usual plan being to prefix a prose preface of a very militant character to his work. A still more melodramatic variety of _drame_ was that chiefly represented by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), whose _Henri III_ and _Antony_, to which may be added later _La Tour de Nesle_ and _Mademoiselle de Belleisle_, were almost as much rallying points for the early Romantics as the dramas of Hugo, despite their inferior literary value. At the same time Alexandre Soumet (1788-1845), in _Norma_, _Une Fete de Neron_, &c., and Casimir Delavigne in _Marino Faliero_, _Louis XI_, &c., maintained a somewhat closer adherence to the older models. The classical or semi-classical reaction of the last years of Louis Philippe was represented in tragedy by Ponsard (_Lucrece_, _Agnes de Meranie_, _Charlotte Corday_, _Ulysse_, and several comedies), and on the comic side, to a certain extent, by Emile Augier (1820-1889) in _L'Aventuriere_, _Le Gendre de M. Poirier_, _Le Fils de Giboyer_, &c. During almost the whole period Eugene Scribe (1791-1861) poured forth innumerable comedies of the vaudeville order, which, without possessing much literary value, attained immense popularity. For the last half-century the realist development of Romanticism has had the upper hand in dramatic composition, its principal representatives being on the one side Victorien Sardou (1831-1909), who in _Nos Intimes_, _La Famille Benoiton_, _Rabagas_, _Dora_, &c., chiefly devoted himself to the satirical treatment of manners, and Alexandre Dumas _fils_ (1824-1895), author in 1852 of the famous _Dame aux camelias_, who in such pieces as _Les Idees de Madame Aubray_ and _L'Etrangere_ rather busied himself with morals and "problems," while his _Dame aux camelias_ (1852) is sometimes ranked as the first of such things in "modern" style. Certain isolated authors also deserve notice, such as Joseph Autran (1813-1877), a poet and academician having some resemblance to Lamartine, whose