INTRODUCTION

Throughout the nineteenth century the terms ‘populaire’ and ‘du peuple’ crop up frequently and carry an assumption that the reader or audience will know what is meant. For example, a number of plays, such as Deslandes and Didier’s L’Enfant du faubourg (Palais-Royal, 1836), are classified as belonging to a subgenre, the ‘tableau populaire’. This sub-genre seems to be defined by the fact that all the characters are working class. The genre which we associate most with the popular theatre of the nineteenth century is the melodrama, with its clear-cut notions of right and wrong and its strong appeal to the less fortunate members of society, who found an echo of their own harsh lives in the sufferings of the protagonists, and encouragement in the ideal solutions that providence could provide.