Frenzied Romans at the First Performance of Hernani

Abstract

The censors of France had prohibited one of Victor Hugo's plays, the Marion de Lorme, from being performed. To ensure that this did not happen to Hernani, Hugo assembled a Romantic Army to ensure that there was enough of a crowd on opening night so that the play could not be shut down. Eight hours before the premiere, 25 February 1830, Hugo arrived at the Theatre Francais to position his troops. The auditorium turned into a spectacular field of battle ; Liberals versus Royalists, Romantics versus Classicists, free expression versus aesthetical conformism and the young versus the old. On premiere night, these proto-bohemians were locked in the auditorium for three hours, and in that time managed to make quite a mess of it, mostly due to the lack of facilities provided for them. When the bourgeois audience members arrived for the show, they were appalled at the damage. Hernani stayed on the stage for one hundred performances, but never went on without a scuffle or argument