In previous chapters some mention has been made of Zola's repeated efforts as a playwright, and as after 1893 he only penned some _libretti_ for the music of his friend, M. Bruneau, one may here add a few words respecting his plays. None of those which he wrote without assistance proved a success, though he often claimed that some of the public were favourable to "Le Bouton de Rose," which, said he, was damned mainly by the critics. On the other hand the stage-craft of M. Busnach made a success of "L'Assommoir" and of one or two other adaptations. In all probability the correct view to take of Zola's writings for and about the French stage is that their influence, however considerable, was chiefly indirect. Realism has come to dramatic literature--on which the novel always reacts--but the younger French dramatists rightly regard M. Henri Becque as their more immediate sponsor. At the same time several things that Zola desired to see have come to pass; a good many of his philosophical and social ideas are to be found in the contemporary French drama. Now and again they appear somewhat conspicuously, as in M. Octave Mirbeau's play "Les Mauvais Bergers," and in some of the works of M. Brieux. Again, M. Gustave Charpentier's famous _roman musical_, "Louise," produced in 1900, was distinctly Zolaesque in its inspiration; one of its chief features, the frequent evocation of Paris, proceeding directly from "Une Page d'Amour." Further Zola's influence was at times destructive. Soon after "La Terre" had been published in Paris the Comédie Française revived George Sand's peasant-play "François le Champi," which since its first production in 1849 had been frequently played with success at the Odéon Theatre. But the revival at the Comédie proved a complete failure, the play which had lived for nearly forty years being slain in a few nights. Originally regarded as ultra-realistic, it appeared quite insipid to the generation which had just perused "La Terre." To sum up, even as the influence of Balzac (though he wrote little for the stage) was apparent in dramatic productions from 1850 to 1870, something similar though, perhaps, less pronounced may be observed with respect to the more recent influence of Zola. He, by the way, was once asked his opinion of the influence of Ibsen on the French stage, and of Tolstoï and other Russians on the French novel, and he replied that he did not attach much importance to the question, for he held that the ideas which were supposed to rain on Paris from the North were in reality French ones, which had been disseminated by French writers, and had come back to their place of origin, occasionally crystallised or intensified by the more sombre imagination of Scandinavian and Russian minds. [1] See a clever study of "Nana," by H. Schutz-Wilson in the "New Century Review," Vol. V, No. 26, February, 1899.