Auguste Comte—(1798-1857) French Philosopher. Comte’s ideas about "positivism" strongly influenced the development of Realism. His books Positive Philosophy and Positive Polity helped define his feelings about the ultimate "aim" of knowledge (to improve society). He felt that the problems of society could be observed, analyzed and then solved. Many artist began to adopt his ideas and began to make art "scientific" and "realistic."

Eugene Scribe—(1791-1861) Scribe’s formula for the "well-made play" became a template for latter works. This format included: Careful and deliberate exposition, cause and effect arrangement of plot incidents, building scenes to a climax, and the skillful use of withheld information, startling reversals and suspense. Although these plays were very effective at the time, they seem quite shallow today. Scribe is not normally associated with Realism, but his formula for the well-made play was adopted by both Dumas fils and Augier. Their works also emphasized the logical development from cause to effect.

Alexandre Dumas fils—(1824-1895) Writer. Dumas was one of the very first to implement the new ideas of Realism. His dramatic adaptation of his own novel The Lady of the Camellias was a forbidden production for three years due to its realism. The play’s protagonist was based on a well-known prostitute of the time and had a happy ending. The Demi-Monde presented an opposite view about a prostitute. Dumas wanted to show that a "woman with a past" must be prevented from marrying into good families. He wrote for the betterment of society and sometimes his work seemed a bit preachy. As he said, "…if I can exercise some influence over society…if I can find some means to force people to discuss the problem, and the lawmakers to revise the law, I shall have done more than my duty as a writer, I shall have done my duty as a man."

Emile Augier—(1820-1889) Writer. Augier (like Dumas fils) was a pioneer with regard to Realism. He started writing in the style called "theater of the common sense." He then moved into a more realistic style. His play, Olympe’s Marriage was a direct reply to Dumas fils’ "Camille", showing the disastrous results of a prostitute who marries into an aristocratic family.

Both Dumas fils and Augier shocked audiences by dealing with subjects concerning the middle class of Napoleon III’s materialistic and conservative Third Empire. They were not considered extremists, but rather dramatists who sought to raise the moral tone of their time.

Victor Sardou—(1831-1908) Playwright. Sardou is considered Scribe’s true heir. He was one of the world’s most popular playwrights. He adapted the formula for the well-made play and applied it to almost every dramatic type; comedy, satire, and lavish historical spectacle (also for Sarah Bernhardt.) George Bernard Shaw considered Sardou’s plays shallow because they epitomized the decadence and mindlessness of late 19^th century theatre. He coined this state of the theatre "Sardooledum."

Eugene Labiche—(1815-1888) Writer. Labiche is considered one of the finest writers of Farce in the 19^th century. He wrote primarily for the popular audience and only reluctantly agreed to publish his plays. Many of his plays are delightfully irresponsible, while others are deep observations on human nature.

Francois Delsarte—(1811-1871) Actor/Teacher. Since acting techniques were mostly passed down from teacher to student, the styles and techniques of this age were simply imitations. Delsarte decided to approach acting more analytically and "scientifically." He set out to demonstrate that the laws of stage expression could be formulated. He sought to analyze emotions and ideas then determine how they are outwardly expressed. Human experience and behavior were divided into physical, mental, thought and emotion. He related each of these into each action, thought and emotion. He further subdivided the body into parts, relating each to physical, mental and spiritual. He then created an elaborate system to describe how the parts of the body are used to communicate these emotions, attitudes and ideas. It is no surprise that this technique seemed overly mechanized. It is important, however, because it is the first significant attempt to create a method for training as an actor. During this time in America, a favorite pastime at the salons of society women was to interpret literary texts using the appropriate gesture described by Delsarte. Delsarte's work went on to greatly influence the pioneers of American modern dance, including dancers and choreographers Ruth St. Denis, Isadora Duncan, and Ted Shawn.

Benoit Coquelin—(1841-1909) Actor. Though there were many stars during this time period, Coquelin is considered one of the most important. He began his career at Comedie Francaise and created a major scandal by breaking the rule that forbade actors who left Comedie Francaise to perform elsewhere in Paris. After he returned from his world tours, he began performing at other Parisian theatres. With this act, he set the stage for other disgruntled actors to leave thus undermining Comedie’s discipline. He is best known for creating the role of Cyrano de Bergerac, which written especially for him. He was also known for his technical proficiency, which he wrote about in his book "The Art of the Actor."

Sarah Bernhardt—(1844-1923) Actor. Bernhardt is probably the most famous star of the late 19^th century. Her slim figure, dark eyes, "golden" voice combined with a magnetic personality and her technical skill created for her an image of a "grand actress." She became a great attraction at Comedie Francaise and was at the center of great controversy. After much unpleasantness, she left the company and spent the rest of her career touring the world. Like Coquelin, she also returned to Paris to play at other theaters. She is still considered the greatest actress of her age.

Dion Boucicault—(1822-1890) Boucicault was perhaps the greatest dramatist of his period. He began his career with a comedy of manners and continued to become very prolific. While in France, he mastered French Romantic drama and Melodrama. Then in England and the U.S., he perfected the basic ingredients for his plays—sentimentality, wit, sensationalism, and local color. Boucicault was well known for skillfully using the latest scientific inventions as important elements to his plots. Many of his plays were resolved through scenes of spectacle; fires, explosions, snowstorms, avalanches…His two most well known plays are The Sidewalks of New York and The Corsican Brothers.

William S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)

Before a quarrel broke up this famous partnership, Gilbert and Sullivan created such memorable shows like H.M.S. Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. Inspired by the work of Planche, their lighthearted melodies and whimsical humor turned extravaganza into a form of satire. They teamed up with Richard D’Oyly Carte, who built The Savoy Theatre to house their plays (This first in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.) Although Gilbert is primarily known for his work with Sullivan, he wrote some forty plays (mostly comedy) independently. By the 1870’s, burlesque-extravaganza was being replaced by comic opera.

Samuel Phelps—(1804-1878) Manager. Phelps proved that (beyond the popular opinion of that time) fine drama could also bring success. He first experimented with management when he took over Sadler’s Wells (a rundown, out-of-the-way theatre in London.) He gave Poetic drama a home and at the same time turned Sadler’s Wells into a financially successful venue. His productions of Shakespeare’s works were more complete than any other of Shakespeare's works since Shakespeare’s himself. Due to smaller budgets, costumes and settings were less fancy and he used lesser, cheaper actors whom he coached himself. As an actor, he was universally praised. Despite the mediocre company, Sadler’s Wells established the most devoted audience of any theatre in London.

Phelps continued the work of Macready, but succeeded where Macready had failed—he reestablished faith in poetic drama, which Macready’s financial trouble had undermined. After touring for a while, Phelps returned to England to restore Drury Lane to its former glory with a series of Shakespearean productions.

Charles Kean—(1811-1868) Actor, Manager. Son of Edmund Kean, Charles perfected pictorial realism and brought fashionable audiences back to the theatre. Until 1838, he worked in his father’s shadow, receiving little acclaim for himself. He began directing in 1841 with the staging of Romeo and Juliet. Successful productions in North America encouraged Kean to go into management. In 1850, he leased the Princess Theatre, which was the last theatre to be opened before England’s Theatre Regulation Act.

Significant points about Kean’s work:

• With the help of Queen Victoria, he brought fashionable audiences back to the theatre. The queen appointed Kean Master of Revels.
• He influenced changes in the evening’s program. Kean opened some productions with a short piece to offset late dinner arrivals. The "curtain raiser" replaced the "after piece" in many theaters. Also, incidental entertainment and variety acts were relegated to the music halls. Theaters began to specialize.
• Kean continued Macready’s trend toward "gentlemanly" Melodrama. He presented fewer than half of Shakespeare’s works and had great success acting in Boucicault’s The Corsican Brothers.
• Kean helped establish the director has the primary artist in the theater.
• Kean developed antiquarianism further than any other English producer did. His passion to perfect historical accuracy earned him the great honor of being elected to the Society of Antiquarianism.

Squire Bancroft (1841-1926) and Marie Wilton Bancroft (1839-1921)—

The career of this husband and wife management team is quite significant because together they combined a number of innovations to create a theatre that was unlike any other of that period. They won acceptance for the box set and put acting behind the proscenium arch. They were instrumental in establishing the popularity of orchestra seating and they helped establish "matinees."

Marie was a child actor, appearing with both Macready and Charles Kean. She was also a successful adult burlesque-extravaganza actress who went on to manage her own company at the out-of-the way, low rent Queens Theatre…also known as the "dust hole." In 1865, it was renamed The Prince of Wales’s Theatre. In 1867, she married her leading man, Squire Bancroft. Together with Robertson, (their main playwright and director) they established a form of domestic realism. Robertson worked with the Bancroft troupe to create a new kind of realism in England.

Henry Irving—(1838-1905) As an actor and a manager, Irving dominated the English theatre. By the time he became a manager in 1878, he was considered the finest serious actor in London. His most popular role was that of a Jewish peddler in a Melodrama called The Bells. He once played Hamlet for 200 nights (a new record for a Shakespearean play.) His roles were boldly conceived and carefully portrayed. Like Charles Kean, he was best in melodramatic roles. He is remembered as a Shakespearean actor, though his only consistently successful role was Shylock. He never appeared in new realistic drama.

Ellen Terry—(1847-1928) Before Ellen Terry became Irving’s leading lady, she was one of many performers from a large family of actors. Her sister, a child actor, is the grandmother of John Gielgud. Ellen had played the provinces for the Bancrofts and after Irving retired, she went on to manage the Imperial Theatre. As an actor, she had an excellent sense of timing and a masterful command of movement and speech. It is said that she brought a freshness and vitality to all her roles.

Free Plantation System—At the Lyceum Theatre, Irving abandoned the 200 year-old practice of using grooves to move scenery. Instead he adopted "free plantation." This allowed flexible placement of scenery. Edwin Booth’s theatre in the U.S. was, perhaps, the first stage to have level floors, dispensing with grooves. Booth introduced "free plantation" of scenery many years before Irving in England used it.

Combination Company—Combination Companies were acting troupes that had both stars and a full company travelling actors for touring. These complete touring productions helped to undermine resident groups. Boucicault claimed to have been the first to do this, but in the U.S., combination companies already existed. Combination Company work was interrupted by the Civil War and resumed at the end of the war. When a combination company came to a theater, the resident group was dismissed for the duration. Only a few of the resident managers held out, like Edwin Booth, Augustin Daly and Steele MacKaye.

Augustin Daly—(1836-1899) Critic/Writer/Playwright. Daly became one of the most influential figures in the American theatre. He leased the Fifth Avenue Theatre and formed his own company. He was successful in both the U.S. and London. His contributions included:

• Helped develop Realism
• Adapted plays by Dumas and Sardou.
• His original works included special effects that were to become legendary. (He was famous for the hero tied to the tracks of an approaching train, a heroine locked in the stateroom of a burning steamboat…)
• He popularized new subject matters (i.e. Native Americans in the role of the villain instead of the noble savage.)
• Daly helped establish the Director as a major force in the theatre. (Like Irving and the Bancrofts he controlled every element of his productions, including the actors’ interpretation, stage business and blocking.)
• He is considered to be one of the earliest "star makers." Many of his students went on to win fame of their own.

Steele MacKaye—(1842-1894) Actor, Playwright, Director, Inventor, Designer, & Teacher. Mackaye’s major contribution to the American theatre was to introduce the Delsarte method to the U.S. He promoted the method through a series of acting schools to help reform the American stage. At the St. James’s Theatre in New York, he established what was probably the first training program for actors. His most important contribution was the actor’s training program at the Lyceum Theatre. It is this program that later becomes the American Academy of Dramatic Art.

His inventions:

• His Madison Square Theatre had two large elevators, which allowed complete scene changes in 40 seconds.
• His Lyceum Theatre was the first to use electric lighting and emphasize safety devices.
• He created a realistic cyclone and stampede for "Buffalo Bill" Cody at Madison Square Garden.

Few American producers have been so inventive yet been so dogged by so many misfortunes. Many of his inventions never made it passed the planning stages.

Edward Harrigan—(1845-1911) and Tony Hart (1857-1891)—Comic playwright Edward Harrigan extended the "bowery boy" tradition. He teamed up with Tony Hart to produce full-length plays about various immigrant groups of New York. They combined knockabout farce and realism. Most of their plays ended with some outrageous spectacle like an explosion of a fireworks factory. Harrigan often performed in his own works.

William Gillette—(1855-1937) Playwright. Gillette was an important figure in the development of Realism. His play Held by the Enemy is the first major play on a Civil War theme. Gillette’s most realistic drama, Secret Service, also had a Civil War theme. The stage directions for this play take up more room than the dialog. (One act requires a realistic telegraph office with working telegraph key.) His plays are essentially Melodramatic, but create the illusion of real life. He sought to create the "illusion of the first time" by concentrating on moment-to-moment action. He was also known for writing a play about Sherlock Holmes.

James A. Herne—(1839-1901) Actor turned Playwright. Though Herne was not a great playwright, he did more than any other American dramatist of his time to establish Realism. After writing a play (Drifting Apart) about the evils of drink in a Massachusetts fishing village, Herne was encouraged by William Dean Howells and other Realists to continue his "fidelity" to life in his acting, staging, and writing. His play Margaret Fleming is considered the most realistic American drama of the 19^th century.

Tony Pastor—(1837-1908) Before the "striptease" was added to the Burlesque show, this type of production consisted of variety acts mingled with musical numbers that featured beautiful women. Vaudeville grew out of this movement and Tony Pastor reshaped Burlesque to suit a family audience. Vaudeville, which was extremely popular from 1890-1930 featured variety acts and comedy sketches or short plays.

Joseph Jefferson III—(1829-1905) Jefferson became an actor at the early age of four. He later became one of the most beloved actors of the 19^th century. He established himself as a comic actor, but was well known for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle. His strengths were his ease, expressive action, and inventive by-play. His stage work was unique in the way he was able to combine pathos and humor.

Bronson Howard—(1842-1908) Howard is considered America’s first professional dramatist. He was one of the first writers to receive regular royalty payments. He founded the Society of American Dramatists and Composers, which is the forerunner of the Dramatists’ Guild.

Tomasso Salvini—(1829-1915) Salvini began his career at age 14 in Gustavo Modena’s troupe in Padua. By 1848, he was in Ristori’s company in Rome. He excelled at McBeth, Lear, Alfieri’s heroes, and most of all Othello. His great passion and energy on stage often frightened his leading ladies. He earned fame throughout the world with his fiery tragic acting.

Ernesto Rossi—(1829-1896) Actor. Salvini’s replacement in Modena’s company was Ernesto Rossi. Like Salvini, he later performed with Ristori. He then took his own troupe to Vienna in 1857. He toured all over the world in productions by Alfieri and Shakespeare. Though he was a polished performer, he was considered by many to be too studied. His fame did not rival Ristori or Salvini.

Ivan Turgenev—(1818-1883) Playwright. Realistic drama started earlier in Russia than it did in France. Ivan Turgenev was at the forefront of this movement. His finest work, A Month in the Country, concerns itself with the inner life of its characters. His treatment is faithful to the realistic daily routines of a country estate. The realism is his means to show the permanent psychological changes wrought in several characters by the presence of a young tutor. Concerned with political and social change, he was an advocate for the Westernization of Russia. In his dramas, Turgenev reveals the realistic inner turmoil of his characters. Chekov was to build on his work.

Alexander Ostrovsky—(1823-1886) Before Turgenev, Realism was popularized in Russia by Alexander Ostrovsky. He was Russia’s first professional playwright/writer to confine his work exclusively to drama. Writing at least one new drama each year, his work was completely independent and free from Western influence. Before Ostrovsky helped to establish the Russian Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers, dramatists received no pay other than a small stipend from performance companies. After 1866, playwrights gradually won full copyright protection. In his plays, he used symbolism and strong relationships instead of Gogol-like caricatures and cheap stage tricks.