34 PROLEGOMENA. Worms, Brindeau, Bressant, Thiron, Barre, they certainly did not wait in vain. They were things so unique that it needed at least twenty years to elapse before actors and audiences alike could prize and delight in their beauty. Musset, as we have seen, did not value the unities and their accompaniments overmuch, nor the wild revolt against them overmuch. He made the combination which he sug- gested in the essay just quoted. He could not employ the expressed idea of destiny which dominated Greek tragedy, but without substituting for it any such device as the Castilian Honour in Hernani, he contrived to impress upon his hearers or readers the idea of an implacable fate waiting silently and surely to enwrap in its deadly embrace the men and women who until the destined moment laughed and wept and exchanged jests and threats and vows, unconscious of the horror that was to overwhelm them. He understood and he could draw human nature in its wit, its joy, its sorrow, its whim, and its passion ; but he drew it at his own will, in his own guise, and so it happened that his dramatic genius was never recognised for what it was worth until after his death, and that, save for such flashes as have been caught by M. Feuillet and in perhaps a more marked degree by M. Pailleron, his torch has been handed on to no follower. IV. Introduction to ’ On ne badine pas avec l’amour. On fie badine pas avec P amour, published in 1834, was put on the stage for the first time at the Frangais on November 18, 1 86 1. The distribution of parts was as follows : — The Baron M. Provost. Perdican Me. Blazius . Me. Bridaine The Young Chorus The Old Chorus . M. Delaunay. M. Barre. M. Monrose. M. COQUELIN. M. E. Provost.
