human
La Parisienne. The other is
gpt
Les Corbeaux. Once, when I was in Paris, I saw exposed among a million other books in front of the window of Stock's shop near the Théâtre Français, a copy of
human
Les Corbeaux. Opening it, I perceived that it was an example of the first edition (1882). I asked the price, and to my horror the attendant hesitated and said that he would
gpt
I feared the price was going to be fancy. He came back and named four francs, adding,
human
It's our last copy. I paid the four francs willingly. On examining my trophy I saw that it was published by Tresse. Now Stock became Tresse's partner before he had that business to himself. I had simply bought the play at the original house of its publication. And it had fallen to me, after some twenty-five years, to put the first edition of
gpt
Les Corbeaux out of print! I went home and read the play and was somewhat disappointed with it. I thought it very fine in its direct sincerity, but not on the same plane as
human
La Parisienne.
gpt
La Parisienne. He had long expressed his intention of producing
human
Les Corbeaux, and now he has produced
gpt
Les Corbeaux at the Odéon, where it has been definitely accepted and consecrated as a masterpiece. I could not refrain from going to Paris specially to see it. It was years since I had been in the Odéon. Rather brighter, perhaps, in its more ephemeral decorations, but still the same old-fashioned, roomy, cramped, provincial theatre, with pit-tier boxes like the cells of a prison! The audience was good. It was startingly good for the Odéon. The play, too, at first seemed old-fashioned--in externals. It has bits of soliloquies and other dodges of technique now demoded. But the first act was not half over before the extreme modernness of the play forced itself upon you. Tchehkoff is not more modern. The picture of family life presented in the first act was simply delightful. All the bitterness was reserved for the other acts. And what superb bitterness! No one can be so cruel as Becque to a
human
character. He exposes every foolishness of the ruined widow; he never spares her for an instant; and yet one's sympathy is not alienated. This is truth. This is a play. I had not read the thing with sufficient imagination, with the result that for me it
gpt
much better than it had