"ANTONY is not a melodrama, ANTONY is not a tragedy, ANTONY is not a stage play. ANTONY is an acting-out of love, jealousy and anger in five acts."
Alexandre Dumas (pere)
"...the evening of the first performance of ANTONY in 1831. It was an uproar, a tumult, an effervescence... no exaggeration could describe it. The audience was delirious; they clapped, sobbed, wept and shouted. The young women were all hopelessly in love with Antony; the young men would have blown their brains out for Adele d'Hervey. Modern love was admirably portrayed, with quite extraordinary intensity by Bocage and Mme Dorval: Bocage the man of destiny and Mme Dorval the susceptible woman par excellence. The burning passion of the play set every heart aflame....
These are really characters speaking, and not the author, as is often seen today. Alexandre Dumas really has the impersonality without which there is no true playwright. He takes men and women, shoves them into a passionate action, makes them live, love, suffer, work, according the play's fatality, but does not reveal himself."
Theophile Gautier
"Our author, drunk on youth and vitality, tossed to the crowd, avid for emotion, ANTONY, whose vogue was a frenzy. Drawing-rooms were suddenly filled with crowds of young men with pale faces, bushy eyebrows, bony frames, long black hair, and eyes veiled by tortoise-shell spectacles."
Eugene de Mirecourt
Alexandre Dumas (pere)
"...the evening of the first performance of ANTONY in 1831. It was an uproar, a tumult, an effervescence... no exaggeration could describe it. The audience was delirious; they clapped, sobbed, wept and shouted. The young women were all hopelessly in love with Antony; the young men would have blown their brains out for Adele d'Hervey. Modern love was admirably portrayed, with quite extraordinary intensity by Bocage and Mme Dorval: Bocage the man of destiny and Mme Dorval the susceptible woman par excellence. The burning passion of the play set every heart aflame....
These are really characters speaking, and not the author, as is often seen today. Alexandre Dumas really has the impersonality without which there is no true playwright. He takes men and women, shoves them into a passionate action, makes them live, love, suffer, work, according the play's fatality, but does not reveal himself."
Theophile Gautier
"Our author, drunk on youth and vitality, tossed to the crowd, avid for emotion, ANTONY, whose vogue was a frenzy. Drawing-rooms were suddenly filled with crowds of young men with pale faces, bushy eyebrows, bony frames, long black hair, and eyes veiled by tortoise-shell spectacles."
Eugene de Mirecourt
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