The end of the 19th century was marked by multiple political, economic, social and cultural changes throughout Europe and in the Romanian Principalities. The ever changing times and the importance of the events (we distinguish the Union of the Principalities in 1859 – “Little Union” and the abdication of Cuza – 10/11 February 1866) can fascinate us and divert us from our preoccupations with Romanian folklore and the related comparative studies, but also with the valorisation of popular theatre in the cultured dramaturgy. And yet, the visiting card of our cultural identity would not be complete if powerful personalities such as Vasile Alecsandri, Theodor T. Burada, Ghe. Dem. Teodorescu (the list being, obviously, much longer) and – after a century – George Călinescu would not have been concerned with the flavour and the power of synthesis of ideas, specific to the “small theatre”. Through their works (collection, research or processing), Romanian drama was given the chance to be enriched with plays inspired by puppet and mask theatre. In this regard, we will bring to attention three reference texts, within which we can find folkloric roots: Iașii în Carnaval (Iasi in Carnival), Ion Păpușarul (Ion – the Puppeteer), by Vasile Alecsandri, and Brezaia, by George Călinescu. The link between them is based not only on the use of characters from the Romanian folk theatre, but especially on the subversive dimension revealed. Accepting the idea promoted by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, that ethnography, ethnology and anthropology are not three different disciplines, but three stages of the same research, we open a new perspective of approach: the anthropological one. The incorporation of themes, characters and plots from popular literature into the cultured literature is an additional way of fixing them in the national consciousness, but also a mirror of the way in which this type of performance can convey messages that go beyond the realm of entertainment and the barriers of censorship. The texts invoked are fragments of the vibrancy of the era to which they belong.