Gain-Montaignac, or theater without a stage

Gain-Montaignac is a neglected pioneer of the audacity of Romantic theater. The failure of his comedy Fouquet on the stage, shortly before the first fall of Napoleon, did not dissuade him from writing three plays published posthumously under the title Théâtre and intended to be read. In this work, Gain-Montaignac aims, in his “Discours préliminaire,” to reform theater, which foreshadowed Stendhal’s recommendations in Racine et Shakespeare and Hugo’s in the preface to Cromwell.