SOURCE: Carlson, Marvin. “Realism & Symbolism (1870-1900).” In The French Stage in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 177-80. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1972.

In the following essay, Carlson proclaims Becque a major victim of the French theatre's prejudices towards new playwrights and the reintroduction of censorship in 1874.

In France, as elsewhere in Europe, the final decades of the nineteenth century provide the richest variety of theatre. Identifying the period with a single movement is therefore even more misleading here than identifying the 1830s and 1840s with the then-dominant romantic school. Nevertheless, there is considerable justice in the common association of the end of the century with realism. Realism, like romanticism, is subject to a wide range of interpretation, even if we restrict ourselves only to its manifestations in the theatre. It may suggest the literal reproduction of everyday life, a trend already present to some extent in such reformers...