small—seating as it did only from three to four hundred people—and inconvenient. The strange mixture of all sorts of plays is also open to criticism. Among the dramatists represented were Corneille, Racine, Molière, Marivaux, Regnard, Beaumarchais, Musset, Ponsard, Hugo, and Augier. Courteline is a favorite, together with Tristan Bernard, Labiche, and Grenet-Dancourt. Rostand and Pailleron are also performed, and even the lightest comedies of Capus, Meilhac, Porto-Riche, Véber, and Francis de Croisset. Among the more truly popular plays may be mentioned Maurice Pottecher's Liberté, which was seen at the opening performance; Les Mauvais bergers, L'Épidémie, and Le Portefeuille of Mirbeau; Brieux's Blanchette, Descaves' La Cage and Tiers état; François de Curel's La Nouvelle idole: a number of plays of Jean Jullien (among them Le Maître), Ancey, Marsolleau, Trarieux, Henri Dargel; Jean Hugues' La Grêve, and Romain Rolland's Les Loups. I have already said enough of such indiscriminate eclecticism to enable me to dispense with further criticism. Even for the cultured few this is sufficiently thin fare, but it may prove fatal for a new and ignorant public: they risk being overwhelmed by so great a collection of contradictory and varied styles and sentiments. But we cannot deny the vitality and good spirit behind this artistic venture. During the first three years of its existence the little society produced about two hundred plays, of which thirty were in more than three acts, some of them
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