Background
Félix-Henri Bataille is French dramatist. After youthful experiments in verse and painting, he turned to the theater. Although influenced in his playwriting by the Realism of his time, Bataille departed sharply from the Realist pattern. He ignored almost entirely social problems and environmental influence. His chief characters belong to the romantic tradition in their exclusive obsession with love. Bataille's lyricism, while giving a passionate sweep to some of his plays, tends to make the dialogue sound false in others. Theatrical devices, such as the suicide to musical accompaniment in La Marche nuptiale (1905), mar the construction. Bataille's chief merit is his understanding of women in love and his ability to make credible their overwhelming passions. Thus in Maman Colibri (1904), his most famous play, he treats compassionately the aging woman who snatches desperately at the love of her son's friend.