We were in the theatre by two o'clock on the day of the performance. We knew well enough that the victory achieved by de Vigny was not far-reaching. It was not of Shakespeare or Goethe or Schiller that sensible people were doubtful, it was of ourselves. What we wanted was a theatre that should be national, original, French, and not Greek or English or German; and this it was our mission to create. _Henri III._, whether good or bad, was, at least, an original piece of work, drawn from our own chronicles, wherein traces of the influence of other theatres could be discerned, but no slavish imitation. _Marion Delorme_, which could not be got back from the Censorship, and _Hernani_, which was soon to be played, were both pieces of the same type. But _Henri III._ was intrinsically a stronger piece of work, whereas _Hernani_ and _Marion Delorme_ were more remarkable for their style. Unluckily, French comedians were rigid in certain of their traditionary habits: it was usually quite an impossibility to get them to pass from tragedy to comedy without their making some dreadful slip in expression or even intonation. We have recounted the anecdote of Michelet and the four lines with reference to the cupboard scene. We ought also to mention that, in Hugo's work, comedy and tragedy often intermingle without any intermediate stages, and that this renders the interpretation of his thought more difficult than if he had attempted to set up an ascending or descending scale to bridge over the gulf between familiarity and grandeur of situation. The English language, when rhymed, scanned and divided into short or long syllables, has a great advantage over ours, of which advantage Shakespeare availed himself to the full: his plays were generally written in three styles--in prose, in blank verse and in rhymed verses. Now, the people, the lower classes, talk in prose; the middle classes in blank verse; and princes and kings in rhyme. Moreover, if the ideas of the plebeian become exalted as he speaks, Shakespeare puts at his disposition two ascending styles in which to express his thoughts; if baser thoughts spring to the lips of kings and princes, he allows himself the liberty of making use of the language of the common people, or even of the middle classes, rather than injure that particular expression of thought. But the public that listens to our work knows nothing at all of these matters and is quite indifferent to all these shades of distinction: they merely come to applaud or to hiss; they applaud or hiss, that is all.