As another special feature of French romanticism, we may note the important part taken by the theatre in the history of the movement.  The stage was the citadel of classical prejudice, and it was about it that the fiercest battles were fought.  The climacteric year was 1830, in which year Victor Hugo’s tragedy, “Hernani, or Castilian Honour,” was put on at the Theatre Francais on February 25th, and ran for thirty nights.  The representation was a fight between the classics and the romantics, and there was almost a mob in the theatre.  The dramatic censorship under Charles X., though strict, was used in the interest of political rather than aesthetic orthodoxy.  But it is said that some of the older Academicians actually applied to the king to forbid the acting of “Hernani.”  Gautier has given a mock-heroic description of this famous literary battle quorum pars magna fuit.  He had received from his college friend, Gerard de Nerval—­who had been charged with the duty of drumming up recruits for the Hugonic claque—­six tickets to be distributed only to tried friends of the cause—­sure men and true.  The tickets themselves were little squares of red paper, stamped in the corner with a mysterious countersign—­the Spanish word hierro, iron, not only symbolizing the hero of the drama, but hinting that the ticket-holder was to bear himself in the approaching fray frankly, bravely, and faithfully like the sword.  The proud recipient of these tokens of confidence gave two of them to a couple of artists—­ferocious romantics, who would gladly have eaten an Academician, if necessary; two he gave to a brace of young poets who secretly practised la rime riche, le mot propre, and la metaphore exacte:  the other two he reserved for his cousin and himself.  The general attitude of the audience on the first nights was hostile, “two systems, two parties, two armies, two civilizations even—­it is not saying too much—­confronted one another, . . . and it was not hard to see that yonder young man with long hair found the smoothly shaved gentleman opposite a disastrous idiot; and that he would not long be at pains to conceal his opinion of him.”  The classical part of the audience resented the touches of Spanish local colour in the play, the mixture of pleasantries and familiar speeches with the tragic dialogue, and of heroism and savagery in the character of Hernani, and they made all manner of fun of the species of pun—­de ta suite, j’en suis—­which terminated the first act.  “Certain lines were captured and recaptured, like disputed redoubts, by each army with equal obstinacy.  On one day the romantics would carry a passage, which the enemy would retake the next day, and from which it became necessary to dislodge them.  What uproar, what cries, cat-calls, hisses, hurricanes of bravos, thunders of applause!  The heads of parties blackguarded each other like Homer’s heroes before they came to blows. . . .  For this generation ‘Hernani’