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What is the role of elegy and the elegiac in Romantic theatre? At a time when the poetic genres are nourishing those of the theatre, the circulation of the elegy within the plays of the Romantic repertoire is part of a fruitful aesthetic dialogue. This paper focuses on the way the elegiac is part of the emotion produced by the Romantic performance. Elegiac intertextualities participate in the sensibilities of a dramatic work, at the same time as they structure its characters. But conversely, the so-called femininity usually associated with elegy can become a failing, emotions taking control of the “drama” and of the development of action.