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"IN a truly
great dramatist the situations spring from the characters, but
in Hugo’s plays, as in Calderon‘s and
Corneille‘s, the situation dominates
the characters." This fault will be found alike in Hugo’s
first produced play, Cromwell, which appeared when its
author was only twenty-five years old, and his two greatest stage
successes, Hernani and Ruy Blas. The critic remarks
further: "The situation in Hernani is strained and
dramatically unreal, the sentiment is mawkish, the oratory grandiloquent;
but a throbbing life and intensely expressed emotion maintain
the interest, though this is a lyric rather than a dramatic one."
The same might be said of Ruy Blas. Yet these two dramas
are still played in France and go far toward explaining Hugo’s
contemporary popularity.
Hugo’s father was an officer in the French army, and most
of his early life was spent in Paris with the exception of a
year in Madrid where his father’s military duties had taken him.
This youthful experience left its imprint both on Hernani
and Ruy Blas.
Hugo’s interest in literature began young. In his early teens
he was already entering poetical contests and was occasionally
successful. At seventeen he founded a fortnightly journal which,
however, was short-lived. At nineteen he wrote a play, Amy
Robsart, taken for the most part from Scott’s Kenilworth.
This was put aside, and when at twenty-five, his Cromwell
was successfully produced, he did not consider it fitting that
his earlier effort on a borrowed subject should appear under
his own name. He gave Amy Robsart to his brother-in-law,
Paul Foucher, but when the latter produced it anonymously it
was enthusiastically hissed. The youthful Hugo promptly claimed
his share of the failure, a welcome character contrast to his
later years which were "devoid of humor and filled with
a self-glorifying vanity."
When Hugo was twenty-eight his much fought-over Hernani
was produced, playing for 100 nights to audiences almost equally
divided between disapproving classicists and adherents of the
new romanticism. His thirtieth year saw the production of L’
roi s’amuse which later became the libretto for Verdi’s opera,
Rigoletto. A great many critics consider Ruy Blas
which appeared in 1838 his best dramatic effort, although, if
popularity be the test, the laurels must rest with Hernani.
When Hugo died in Paris at the age of eighty-three his funeral
became a pageant any sovereign might envy. He is probably better
known to posterity as the author of the lengthy novel, Les
Miserables, than as a successful playwright.
†This
document was originally published in Minute History of the
Drama. Alice B. Fort & Herbert S. Kates. New York: Grosset
& Dunlap, 1935. p. 74.
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