Few major playwrights in world literature are as well known by reputation but so little known for their actual works as Alexandre Dumas fils. Indeed, when asked to name the plays of Dumas fils, few people could come up with a single title after La Dame...

The parodists have it wrong. They’ve turned the phrase most identified with Greta Garbo—“I want to be alone”—into something that might have issued from Bela Lugosi. Garbo did not pronounce the “w” as a “v” (she says “want,” not “vant”); she did not declaim those...