Pamphlet published by Stendhal in two instalments (1823, 1825). It starts as a manifesto in favour of national tragedy in prose, unhampered by the unities of time and place, and becomes an attempt to define Romanticism. Stendhal ridicules both the Académie Française's mediocre conservatism and the traditionalism of the liberal journalists. For him, Romanticism means writing for contemporary society. In their time Shakespeare and Racine were both Romantics. An imitation of Racine in 1823 is a dull anachronism, but it is just as wrong to imitate the admirable Shakespeare. What is needed is theatre capable of creating the maximum pleasure for the modern spectator.
— Peter France
