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 aux camélias (The Lady of the Camellias, 1852), better known in English (through the agency of Matilda Heron and Greta Garbo) as Camille, despite the fact that it is perhaps his least characteristic major play. If asked his historical importance as a dramatist, students might produce the standard textbook answers--that he was important in introducing social realism into nineteenth-century French theater and that he was the father of the pièce à thèse (thesis play)--although hardly anyone today actually reads his thesis plays (most of which are unavailable in English), and virtually no one produces them. Yet...