Page:Musset - On ne badine pas avec l'amour, 1884.djvu/48

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36 PROLEGOMENA. admirable in their way than the two chief personages. Rosette is the very ideal of the simple, tender-hearted pea- sant girl, who, when the noble and brilliant Perdican makes love to her, can know no trifling, but must needs give him her whole heart, and break it when she finds she has nothing to hope. The Baron is a fresh and most engaging study, and is a singular instance of the versatility of Musset, who, in so well-worn a field of character as that of stage fathers and uncles, never repeated himself. Nor, perhaps, could any other poet of modern times have drawn with such exquisite skill two characters so like yet so unlike as Maitre Blazius and Maitre Bridaine. Dame Pluche, lightly touched as she is, is also as living a personage as are all the others in this play, which is certainly among the most perfect, if it is not actually the most perfect, of Musset’s dramatic works. The introduction of the Chorus is a bold and happy stroke which is in keeping with those views of Musset’s on the relation between classical and romantic drama which will be found set forth elsewhere in this volume. It may be noted further that from the moment when Perdican, irritated by Camille’s conduct, resolves to make love to Rosette, one is conscious, through all the brightness of the dialogue, of that strange sense of an impending fate hanging over the characters that pass before us which Musset has conveyed, in several of his plays, more piercingly than any poet outside the severe classical school ; and which is the more remarkable in his drama because he had not the machinery of an actual Fate to work with. V. Introduction to ’Fantasio.’ Fantasio, written in 1833, was not represented on the stage until 1866, nine years after the author’s death, when it was produced at the Theatre Frangais with the following distri- bution of characters : — Elsbeth .... Mi.le Favart. Fantasio M. Delaunav.