to grow in the form of the Romantic movement, that wanted freedom from the strictures of the classical unities. It turned into a fierce literary conflict. The opposition included Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and others. Hugo, in the preface to his play, Cromwell, criticizes the unities, saying in part,

Hugo ridicules the unities of place and time, but not the unity of action, which he considers "true and well founded". The conflict came to a climax with the