SOURCE: Bradby, David. “Introduction: The Inter-War Years.” In Modern French Drama: 1940-1980, pp. 1-15. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

In the following introduction to Modern French Drama: 1940-1980, Bradby presents a brief overview of the state of French theater following World War I.

When the second war broke out in Europe, the French theatre had come to the end of an era. The inter-war period had witnessed the triumph of literary drama and poetic production style; Jouvet, Dullin and other outstanding directors had achieved world-wide fame with glittering productions of plays by a new school of playwrights led by Giraudoux, Cocteau, Salacrou. By the end of the thirties, this literary and poetic theatre was firmly established in the public eye as the distinctive French contribution to modern drama. It received the official seal of approval when Jacques Copeau, the man who was considered to be its chief architect...