Forman - Historical Dictionary of French Theater

The term French theater evokes most immediately, no doubt, the glories of the classical period and the peculiarities of the Theater of the Absurd, yet both these foci of attention are liable to be misunderstood. Racine, Corneille and Molire tend to be lumped together as one, regarded as wordy, static and stylized, and compared to their disadvantage with Shakespearedestructive where he is ennobling, bound by convention where he is liberating, repressed where he achieves health, hilarity and reconciliation. The rediscovery of Corneilles LIllusion comique and of Molires comdies-ballets as riotous and gleeful performance pieces has done something to redress the balance, but not enough in practice. In the modern period, too, an English-speaking critic summed up Samuel Becketts En Attendant Godot as a play in which nothing happens, twice, 1 thereby consolidating the reputation of French theater for verbal dexterity allied to a paucity of action, even though this reputation ignores the zany inventiveness of Eugne Ionesco, whose Rhinocros and Les Chaises came to overshadow his La Cantatrice chauve in popularity on the English stage in the late 20th century.