ABSTRACT
[Alfred] Jarry finally had his way about the production, after carrying Ubu like a cancer inside him for eight years. Two excellent actors were found for the roles: FirminGémier, borrowed from the Comédie-Française, and Louis France. All literary Paris was primed for the event. Jarry's friends saw to it that every critic was present at the générale, and the old Théâtre Nouveau in the Rue Blanche was filled to the last seat with partisans and enemies, with symbolists, decadents, naturists, independents, and the Mercure faithful, to hear the enormity Jarry had perpetrated. Loyal subscribers scarcely knew what they were in for. December 1896, the opening night, is worth describing in detail. There had been nothing like it since the wild première of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830, when Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval carried the day for romanticism by highly organized demonstrations.
