Sardou, VICTORIN, a French dramatist, was born at Paris on 7th September 1831. He studied medicine, but took to the writing of dramas instead of practising. His first efforts were decidedly failures, but through his marriage with an actress, who nursed him when sick and in the extremity of want, he became acquainted with the celebrated Déjazet, for whom he wrote two very successful pieces, Monsieur Garat and Les Près Saint-Gervais (1860). In a few years he had amassed a fortune. He has been almost as prolific as Scribe, with whom he may be fitly compared, but whom he in many respects excels. With a first-rate knowledge of stage-effect he combines an unrivalled instinct for what will just suit the taste of the playgoing public. His comedies are in general loosely constructed, but full of rapid action; the character-sketching and the emotional elements are both superficial; the dialogue is brilliant and witty, but the episodes are often very improbable. Sardou makes fun of the foibles of his contemporaries in a very clever, amusing fashion. His works are hardly literature; they are much better suited for acting than for being read. Pieces like Nos Intimes and Lcs Ganaches (1861), Les Vieux Garçons and La Famille Benoît (1865), Nos Bons Villageois and Maison Neuve (1866), Rabagas (1872), Dora (1877), Daniel Rochat (1880), Odette (1882), and Marquise (1889) make a fair sample of his capabilities and style. For Sarah Bernhardt he wrote the well-known
Fédora (1883), Théodora (1884), and La Tosca (1887). He has, moreover, attempted the higher historical play in pieces like La Patrie (1869), La Haine (1874), and Thermidor (1891). Sardou was elected to the Academy in 1877. See Montégut in Revue des Deux Mondes (1877).