Ruy Blas

Ruy Blas has held the stage better than any other of his dramas and has been popular in America. Here Hugo's dramatic theory of contrast of grave and gay, rapid alternation of tragic and grotesque, is pushed to its utmost verge. The scene is Madrid; the time 1699. Don Salluste de Bazan, scorned by Maria de Neubourg, second wife of the do-nothing King, Charles II, plots revenge. Failing to enlist t...