EIGHTH SITUATION
REVOLT
(Elements: Tyrant and Conspirator)
As already observed, this situation is, in a measure, the converse of Class B of Situation VI.
Intrigue, so dear to the public of the past three centuries, is obviously supplied by the very nature of the subject we are now to consider. But, by some strange chance, it has, on the contrary, always been treated with the most open candor and simplicity. One or two vicissitudes, a few surprises all too easily foreseen and extending uniformly to all the personages of the play, and there we have the conditions which have almost invariably been attached to this action, so propitious, nevertheless, to doubts, to equivocation, to a twilight whose vague incertitude prepares the dawn of revolt and of liberty.
A (1) — A Conspiracy Chiefly of One Individual: — "The Conspiracy of Fiesco," by Schiller; Corneille's "Cinna;" to some extent the "Catilina" of Voltaire (this tragedy belongs father to the Thirtieth Situation, "Ambition"); "Thermidor;" "The Conspiracy of General Malet" (Auge de Lassus, 1889) ; "Le Grand Soir" (Kampf); "Le Roi sans Royaume (Decourcelle, 1909): "Lorenzaccio" (Musset).
(2) — A Conspiracy of Several: — The Conspiracy of the Pazzi" by Alfieri;" Le Roman d'une Conspiration" (by Fournier and Carre, after the story of Ranc);
