ABSTRACT
The notorious disturbances which marked the first run of Victor Hugo's tragedy Hernani at the Thtre-Franais in Paris in the spring of 1830 had a very different cause from the English and American theatre riots of the nineteenth century. The Thtre-Franais was founded by King Louis XIV in 1680 by merging the two most prominent theatre companies of the time. Originally it was not seen as the national theatre company, for its name merely distinguished itself from the company who played in Italian at that time. The Thtre-Franais had managed to reform in that year, and in 1800 Napoleon granted the company permanent possession of its building, where it stands today, on the Rue Richelieu in Paris. Elsewhere melodrama was increasingly popular in the theatre, which made the formal restraint of traditional theatre seem old-fashioned. There began to be some breaks with tradition in neo-classical tragedy at the Thtre-Franais.
