Produced by Dagny and John Bickers                       THE RESOURCES OF QUINOLA                 A COMEDY IN A PROLOGUE AND FIVE ACTS                                  BY                           HONORE DE BALZAC  First Presented at the Theatre de lOdeon Paris March 19 1842                           AUTHORS PREFACEHad the author of the following play written it merely for the purposeof winning for it the universal praise which the journals havelavished upon his romances and which perhaps transcended theirmerits _The Resources of Quinola_ would still have been an excellentliterary speculation but when he sees himself the object of so muchpraise and so much condemnation he has come to the conclusion that itis much more difficult to make successfully a first venture on thestage than in the field of mere literature and he has armed himselfaccordingly with courage both for the present and for the futureThe day will come when the piece will be employed by critics as abattering ram to demolish some piece at its first representation justas they have employed all his novels and even his play entitled_Vautrin_ to demolish _The Resources of Quinola_However tranquil may be his mood of resignation the author cannotrefrain from making here two suggestive observationsNot one among fifty feuilleton writers has failed to treat as a fableinvented by the author the historic fact upon which is founded thepresent playLong before M Arago mentioned this incident in his history of steampublished in the _Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes_ the author towhom the incident was known had guessed in imagination the greatdrama that must have led up to that final act of despair thecatastrophe which necessarily ended the career of the unknowninventor who in the middle of the sixteenth century built a shipthat moved by steam in the harbor of Barcelona and then scuttled itwith his own hands in the presence of two hundred thousand spectatorsThis observation is sufficient answer to the derision which has beenflung upon what was supposed to be the authors hypothesis as to theinvention of steam locomotion before the time of the Marquis ofWorcester Salomon de Caus and PapinThe second observation relates to the strange manner in which almostall the critics have mistaken the character of Lavradi one of thepersonages in this comedy which they have stigmatized as a hideouscreation Any one who reads the piece of which no critic has given anexact analysis will see that Lavradi sentenced to be transported forten years to the _presides_ comes to ask pardon of the king Everyone knows how freely the severest penalties were in the sixteenthcentury measured out for the lightest offences and how warmly valetsin a predicament such as Quinolas were welcomed by the spectators inthe antique theatresMany volumes might be filled with the laments of feuilletonists whofor nearly twenty years have called for comedies in the ItalianSpanish or English style An attempt has been made to produce one andthe critics would rather eat their own words than miss the opportunityof choking off the man who has been bold enough to venture upon apathway of such fertile promise whose very antiquity lends to it inthese days the charm of noveltyNor must we forget to mention to the disgrace of our age the howl ofdisapprobation which greeted the title Duke of Neptunado selectedby Philip II for the inventor a howl in which educated readers willrefuse to join but which was so overwhelming at the presentation ofthe piece that after its first utterance the actors omitted the termduring the remainder of the evening This howl was raised by anaudience of spectators who read in the newspapers every morning thetitle of the Duke of Vittoria given to Espartero and who must haveheard of the title Prince of Paz given to the last favorite of thelast but one of the kings of Spain How could such ignorance as thishave been anticipated Who does not know that the majority of Spanishtitles especially in the time of Charles V and Philip II refer tocircumstances under which they were originally grantedAn admiral took that of _TransportReal_ from the fact that thedauphin sailed with him to ItalyNavarro was given the title _La Vittoria_ after the seafight ofToulon though the issue of the conflict was indecisiveThese examples and as many others are outdone by that of the famousfinance minister a parvenu broker who chose to be entitled theMarquis Insignificant lEnsenadaIn producing a work constructed with all the dramatic irregularity ofthe early French and Spanish stage the author has made an experimentwhich had been called for by the suffrages of more than one organ ofpublic opinion as well as of all the firstnighters of Paris Hewished to meet the genuine public and to have his piece represented ina house filled with a paying audience The unsatisfactory result ofthis ordeal was so plainly pointed out by the whole press that theindispensability of _claqueurs_ has been now forever establishedThe author had been confronted by the following dilemma as stated bythose experienced in such matters If he introduced into the theatretwelve hundred dead heads the success secured by their applausewould undoubtedly be questioned If twelve hundred paying spectatorswere present the success of the piece was almost out of the questionThe author chose to run the risk of the latter alternative Such isthe history of this first representation where so many peopleappeared to be made so uncomfortable by their elevation to the dignityof independent judgesThe author