Alfred de Musset’s gigantic drama

was written in 1834, but was not performed until 1896. This follows a pattern that had applied to most of the Romantic poet’s dramatic writing: after the failure of his first play,

[

], at the Odéon in 1830, he renounced theatre, but continued writing dialogues and dramatic texts under the heading

or “armchair theatre”. Thus liberated from practical considerations he gave free rein to his wide-ranging imagination in the construction of complicated plots using a variety of settings and tones in the style of the Romantic

. Musset’s plays combine a playful tone with a bleak and often proverbially moralistic ending, providing at times grotesque contrasts between…

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Citation: Forman, Edward. "Lorenzaccio". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 September 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23253, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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