The _Théâtre de la Revolution_ includes the three Revolutionary plays I have just mentioned. They were written not as experiments for some vague stage dreamed by the author, but for theatrical production before the people, the masses of France. That they were not wholly successful matters little; Romain Rolland might well refer us to the "moral" of _Saint Louis_: he has opened a new field and laid before his countrymen--perhaps the world--an ideal which may well require half a century to bear fruit. The idea of writing a series of plays on the French Revolution was suggested to M. Rolland by a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, dated March 10, 1794: 1. That the Théâtre-Français shall henceforward be solely dedicated to productions given by and for the people at stated intervals each month: 2. That the building shall bear the following inscription on its façade: PEOPLE'S THEATER, and that the various troupes of actors already established in the Paris theaters shall be requisitioned in turn to act in these popular productions, which are to take place three times in every decade. A few weeks later there appeared another decree, inviting the poets "to celebrate the principal events of the French Revolution, to compose Republican plays, and picture for posterity the great epochs of the regeneration of the French, and give to history that solid character which is fitting for the annals of a great people who have fought victoriously for their liberty, in spite of the opposition of all the tyrants of Europe." "All these projects for Republican art," says M. Rolland, "fell, on the 9th of Thermidor, together with the chiefs of the Republic." When, early in 1903, Romain Rolland and a few associates began writing for the _Revue d'Art Dramatique_ a series of articles on the people's theater, they were merely "following the tradition interrupted by the events of the Revolution; and it was but natural that one of them was led to select the Revolution itself as the natural subject for popular productions. The three plays were to have been part of a dramatic cycle on the Revolution--a sort of epic comprising ten plays. _Le 14 Juillet_ was the first page, and _Danton,_ the center, the decisive crisis, wherein the reason of the chiefs of the Revolution seemed to waver, and their common faith be sacrificed to personal hatred. In _Les Loups,_ where the Revolution is depicted on the field of battle, and in _Le Triomphe de la Raison,_ where it goes out into the provinces in pursuit of the Girondin proscripts, it devours itself." Thus M. Holland. The remaining plays are three in number, and inferior in dramatic and literary quality to the six just discussed. The first of these is an anti-war propaganda piece, _Le Temps viendra,_ published in 1903, and inspired by the Boer war. _La Montespan,_ a French historical drama, followed in 1904, and _Les Trois Amoureuses,_ also based upon history, in 1906.