- 1691 Florent Carton Dancourt (1661–1725) Le Chevalier à la mode (comedy) - 1687 Les Bourgeoises à la mode (comedy) - 1693 Les Bourgeoises de qualité (comedy) - 1700 Alain-René Lesage (1668–1747) Turcaret (comedy) - 1708 Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1674–1762) Idoménée (tragedy) - 1705 Atrée et Thyeste (tragedy) - 1707 Electre (tragedy) - 1709 Rhadamiste et Zénobie (tragedy) - 1711 Xerxes (tragedy) - 1714 Sémiramis (tragedy) -1717 18th century Jean-François Regnard Voltaire Œdipe (1718) Mariamne (1724) Éryphile (1732) Zaïre (1732) Mahomet (1741) Mérope (1743) La princesse de Navarre (1745) Nanine (1749) L'Orphelin de la Chine (1755) Marivaux Denis Diderot Beaumarchais Eugénie (1767) Les Deux amis (1770) Tarare (1787) Le Barbier de Séville ou la Précaution inutile (1775) La folle journée ou Le Mariage de Figaro (1778) L'autre Tartuffe ou La Mère coupable (1792) Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset (Le Méchant) The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in addition to writing several dramatic works, also considered the theatre's relation to politics and society in his Letter to M. D'Alembert on Spectacles. 19th century The major battle of romanticism in France was fought in the theatre, but was not against the theatre. The early years of the century were marked by a revival of classicism and classical-inspired tragedies, often with themes of national sacrifice or patriotic heroism in keeping with the spirit of the Revolution, but the production of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830 marked the triumph of the romantic movement on the stage (a description of the turbulent opening night can be found in Théophile Gautier). The dramatic unities of time and place were abolished, tragic and comic elements appeared together and metrical freedom was won. Marked by the plays of Friedrich Schiller, the romantics often chose subjects from historic periods (the French Renaissance, the reign of Louis XIII of France) and doomed noble characters (rebel princes and outlaws) or misunderstood artists (Vigny's play based on the life of Thomas Chatterton). By the middle of the century, theatre began to reflect more and more a realistic tendency, associated with Naturalism. These tendencies can be seen in the theatrical melodramas of the period and, in an even more lurid and gruesome light, in the Grand Guignol at the end of the century. In addition to melodramas, popular and bourgeois theatre in the mid-century turned to realism in the "well-made" bourgeois farces of Eugène Marin Labiche and the moral dramas of Émile Augier. Also popular were the