Abstract: It took Shakespeare two centuries to reach a leading position on the French stage. His early admirers criticized his outrageousness, but the new generation of young Romantics praised him to the skies. To those in the opposite camp, he was a barbarian whose plays jeopardised the pre-eminence of the neo-Classical French masterpieces. Since the Second World War he has established himself as the stage-director’s favourite author, to the point where the man who once heralded revolutions in form and substance has today become a pillar of our cultural Establishment.
