- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
Gringoire is a philosophical and very even-tempered man who likes to contemplate (but not experience) extreme emotions. He also enjoys classical ideas and pretty, harmonious things.
Hugo refers here to an artistic and cultural debate which went on in the late 1700s and early 1800s, when Hugo was writing—the debate between Neo-classicism and Romanticism. Neo-classicism was an art form, architectural style, and philosophy that was based on Ancient Greek and Roman ideas and imitated classical philosophy. Neo-classical philosophy became popular after the medieval period, during the Renaissance (a period of intense scientific and philosophical development), and it focused on rational…