All translations

The printed edition of Diderot's Pere de famille included the playwright's essay -...-the spirited theory of dull practice . A century later , when the naturalists began to dismantle the maechanics of the well-made play , they could do not better than Diderot in his fight against the conventionality of French classical tragedy .

While the Diderot essay was chiefly concerned with dramatic reforms,the following excerpts contain his ideas concerning the staging of domestic drama(genre serieux).