During the July Monarchy, a type of so-called “social” or “human” drama, which literary history has tended to leave in the shadow of the serial novels, of the romantic dramas, or of the “panoramic” literature of the time, was not only theorised but also written and staged, by playwrights who were often Republicans, such as Souvestre or Pyat. These dramas, anchored as they are in the world contemporary to them, bring dignity through aesthetic representation to new and often poverty-stricken social types and base their plots on violent class antagonisms and interests, or on the revelation of the apparently secret underpinnings of the economy. Although this drama remains, with its manicheistic and simplistic characteristics, dependent on the spectacular but also on the limits authorised by censorship, it nonetheless offers some keys to the understanding of the social reality of the time and constitutes particularly convincing evidence of nascent sociological thinking, still intuitive in character but dynamic and efficient.