Today it is no longer acceptable to consider the relationship between melodrama and Romantic drama as something solely dictated by chronology. The connection between such works is instead better defined by reciprocal influences that defy the generic boundaries described in textbooks. This essay seeks to reveal the characteristics and exceptional quality of the mises en scène of Polder, ou le Bourreau d’Amsterdam by Guilbert de Pixerécourt and Victor Ducange and Le Siège de Saragosse, d’Antony Béraud, melodramas first performed in 1828, and attempts to show the relationship of those productions to the mises en scène of the Romantic dramas of Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo that follow.