Hugo, Victor, 1802-1885. Works.

Based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name (penned when the author was only twenty-one), this macabre play begins in a morgue. The fearsome outlaw, Hans of Iceland, whose face has been seen by no one, determines to kill a regiment of Musketeers that he blames for the death of his son. His revenge intersects in a bloody way with the more conventional romantic plot of a young nobleman who loves the daughter of a political prisoner that the former Chancellor of Norway has held in thrall for many years. The tension ratchets up, culminating in a conflagration à la Samson that seems to anticipate the Grand Guignol movement by nearly a century. The story has the nightmarish logic of a bad dream. As one contemporary reviewer said: "If genius is very close to madness, then this work is very close to genius." Great drama from a great writer!

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