SOURCE: Lowin, Joseph. “The Frames of Lorenzaccio.” French Review 53, no. 2 (December 1979): 190-98.

In the following essay, Lowin describes Musset's structural framing of action, character, and theme in Lorenzaccio.

Were one to view a full-length play, not as one observes a stage production, through perception of its temporal, linear development, but, spatially, as one views a painting, with an immediate impression of a static whole, one would perceive the most “important” scene of the play at or near the center of the canvas, receiving the greatest concentration of light. It would be less clear but no less true that the first and last acts of the play would be at or near the margins of the canvas in a subtle play of darkness, shadow, and diffused light. One might find as well, embedded in works of art of considerable technical subtlety and nuance—for example in Las Meninas by...