ABSTRACT
After Lady Windermere’s Fan, a well made, well written play of plot and incidents, rather than an incisive study of character, one had a right to hail in Oscar Wilde an English Sardou. Some people may see in this a reproach, for in these days of realism one is wont to sneer at Sardou, as, in the heyday of Sardou, one lustily jeered at Scribe. We call it, on the contrary, a compliment to place Mr. Oscar Wilde on the same level as Sardou, the more as no other among our playwrights equals this distinguished Frenchman either in imagination or in brilliancy of style. We prefer the more vigorous, the more direct, the more sincere methods of the Ibsen type of play wright, or even that of Emile Augier, to the indirect, we would almost say, insidious craftsmanship of Sardou; but that is our own opinion, and we do not hesitate to add that we shall never cease to admire such of his earlier works as Les Pattes de Mouche, La Famille Benoîton, and Patrie.
