Blanchette and the Escape: Two Plays

Excerpt from Blanchette and the Escape: Two Plays
"After the death of Ibsen," says George Bernard Shaw, in his preface to the first English translation of Brieux's plays, "Brieux confronted Europe as the most important dramatist west of Russia. In that kind of comedy which is so true to life that we have to call it tragi-comedy, and which is not only an entertainment but a history and a criticism of contemporary morals, he is incomparably the greatest writer France has produced since Moliere."
A somewhat extravagant statement, perhaps - who, indeed, looks for restraint and niceness in a Shavian preface? - but still one with a certain unmistakable flavor of truth in it. All the acknowledged giants of the French drama since Moliere have been giants of dramaturgy rather than giants of truth. Working in series from Beaumarchais to Sardou, with Scribe as the master of them all, they have brought the form of the stage play very close to perfection, but they have not added much that is of consequence to its content.

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