How did William Shakespeare influence Victor Hugo’s ideas about drama?

Victor Hugo’s ideas about drama were profoundly influenced by the works of William Shakespeare, whom he viewed as a model for the freedom and truth that theater should strive to achieve.1

In the influential preface to his play Cromwell (1827), Hugo rejected the rigid formal rules of classical tragedy, which he felt constrained artistic expression. Instead, he advocated for a new form of Romantic drama that embraced the contradictions of human existence. Drawing inspiration from Shakespeare’s practice of mixing genres, Hugo argued that plays should resolve the tension between opposing elements—such as good and evil, beauty and ugliness, and tears and laughter—by incorporating both tragic and comic elements into a single work.12

This vision of dramatic diversity, which Hugo famously described as the ability to yoke together the "sublime and the grotesque," sought to reflect the complexities of modern life. His commitment to this Shakespearean-inspired freedom helped define the Romantic movement in French theater, moving away from classical constraints toward a more natural and expansive dramatic form.231