The Theatre in 17th Century France I: Background, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Early Writers, Corneille and Racine

France is a predominantly Catholic country, but a religious struggle developed there in the early part of the 16th century between the Catholics and the French Protestants or Huguenots.  Frequent acts of physical violence culminated in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, during which thousands of Protestants were slaughtered.  The religious and civil strife 

Henry of Navarre, Henry IV of France

continued until nearly 20 years later when a Protestant, Henry of Navarre, converted to Catholicism in order to gain the throne of France, reputedly declaring, “Paris is worth a Mass.”  His liberal policies towards Protestants gradually calmed the unrest, and by the end of the century some stability returned, but during the precarious late 1500s France struggled to remain stable. Thus it was hardly a time when theatre flourished, but after Henry of Navarre took the throne, France began to regain its equilibrium and entered a period of growth culturally and politically so that by the seventeenth century it became one of the strongest states in Europe.  

Under the influence of the Italian Renaissance French scholars and artists began a search for classical inspiration during the sixteenth century.  In 1550, a group of writers was dedicated to building a French literature (as opposed to one based on different regional dialects), which could be understood from one portion of France to another. These men banded together to form what they called the Pléiade.  Its writers produced several plays among other work, perhaps the most noteworthy the mediocre tragedy Cleopatre Captive, by Etienne Jodelle.  This play followed the Italian neoclassical rules, and like most of the Italian plays on which it was modeled it is interesting today only academically.

   

Along with the scholars’ and the court’s interest in the Neoclassical ideal, there existed in France a strong tradition of Medieval theatre, both religious and secular.  A mix of Renaissance and Medieval methods would influence the important drama and theatre of seventeenth century France, in some ways making for a rather strange mix of styles.

Whereas public theatre suffered during the time of turbulence, the kings and queens of France enjoyed spectacular entertainments.  The most important of these was the ballet de cour, the French

counterpart to the Italian intermezzi and to the Stuart court masque.  As did its cousins, the ballet de cour featured scenic splendor in the Italian style, dancing by courtiers, and just enough text to hold the music and spectacle together.  Perhaps the most famous and opulent of these ballets was presented in 1581 at the Salle du Petit Bourbon in Paris. Called the Ballet Comique de la Reyne, its story (such as it was), was based on the Circe legend, but was manipulated into an allegorical victory over evil (Circe) by good (the king) very much as was done in Stuart court masques.

      

What were the common people able to see at this time? Some theatre, including crude farces featuring native comic characters 

like Gros-Guillaume (“big Bill!”) and Turlupin, along with commedia dell’arte stock troupes that were already infiltrating France from Italy.  As we know from our look at medieval theatre, religious plays had once been very popular but as was true with most other countries in Europe, struggles between Catholicism and emerging Protestantism in France made it apparent that religious dramas were provoking more harm than good, and they were banned in 1548.  All in all, during this unstable half-century from 1550 to 1600 the growth of French theatre was stunted, t the very time when in England, for example, it was beginning to flourish. It was not until early in the seventeenth  century that stability returned to France and to its theatre.

      

Interestingly, just as the ban on religious plays was issued in 1848, the Confrérie de la Passion, a quasi-religious group that raised money for hospitals and the poor from the profits it made by controlling religious drama in Paris, was building a brand new 

  Confrérie a fee so that it might play in another space in Paris!

comedy on the stage of the Hôtel de Bourgogne

theatre!  The Confrérie had been in existence and had acted as a very positive force in Paris since the early fifteenth century, so the city fathers felt guilty that, just at the time the Confrérie was building its new theatre, the reason for it, religious drama, was banned.  So Paris gave the Confrérie the right to stage secular plays in its new theatre, which was called the Hôtel de Bourgogne.  In fact, they were given the SOLE rights to the production of theatricals in Paris.  If a theatre group (of Italian comedians, for example) wanted to do theatre in Paris, it either rented the Hôtel de Bourgogne from the Confrérie, or it paid the

      

So, in a strange twist of fate, the community support group that specialized in religious drama had been converted into a 

The Hôtel de Bourgogne in the 18th century

commercial producing organization just at the time that throughout Europe a hunger arose for theatre.  The city fathers had unintentionally instituted the beginnings of legitimate, commercial theatre in Paris.  Some scholars say that around the turn of the seventeenth century the Confrérie gave up its participation, others claim that the Confrérie continued to collect money most of the way through the 17th century.  Whatever the truth of it, because of this strange historical accident, the Hôtel de Bourgogne was inaugurated in 1548 and continued as the only permanent public theatre in Paris until 1634.    

          

During the last years of the 16th c, France’s first professional

playwright emerged.  His name was Alexandre Hardy (1572-1632) and he wrote for a group of professional players who called themselves les Comédiens du Roi, not because they were receiving subsidy or protection from the king (as did Shakespeare’s company under King James) but more likely because they’d played once before the king and the name sounded good.  This troupe performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne regularly from 1598 to 1612, and it was led by the actor Valleran le Comte, the first actor-manager of a professional theatre in Paris.  Valleran produced several of Hardy’s plays, of which several (34) survive, but few if any are performed today.  Hardy was popular because he catered to the audience’s tastes.  He made use of some of the neoclassic “rules” but he did not observe the three unities and he often put violent scenes on stage.  In some ways Hardy was similar to Shakespeare, but with nowhere near the talent.

      

In spite of Hardy’s success with his rule-busting plays, his style was not copied, primarily because of one man’s ambitions for France and for himself!  Cardinal Richelieu worked at bringing order to French society, and became incredibly powerful from 1624 to his death.  In 1624 he became chief minister to the child-king Louis XIII, and pretty much controlled France until 1642.  Richelieu’s concept of bringing order was cultural as well as political – order and form in the French language might help bring order to France.

      

In 1636 Richelieu re-organized the French Academy, a group that had been devoted to discussion and improvement of literature since its first meetings in 1629, meetings that sought to emulate the academies set up earlier in Florence and Rome.  Beginning in 1636 Richelieu appointed these men arbiters of French literary taste, increasing their power significantly.  

“Order” during this time meant application of the Neoclassic ideal (verisimilitude, decorum, the three unities) to current French writing.  The French Academy, a group of 40 of the most famous literary figures of their age (as well as of the present – the academy still continues today) continued to meet, but now not only discussed, but critiqued current literature, and even passed down judgments on the quality of poetry, prose, and also of plays.

      

It happened that, just as the French Academy had gained power via Richelieu, a tremendously popular play was produced in Paris, based on the Spanish piece by Guillen de Castro, Las Mocedades 

del Cid.  Written by Pierre Corneille and called Le Cid, it tells the story of Roderigue and Chimène, two young people in love who must choose between loyalty to each other and their loyalty to their families.  In the play Roderigue kills Chimène’s father in order to save his own family’s honor. Of course to uphold HER family’s honor, not only must she refuse to marry Roderigue, but she must also insist on his death!  After a series of complications -- she doesn’t really want him dead, but honor must be served -- a way is found, after much soul searching and breast beating on both sides, for the two to marry at the end of the play.  This play, by the way, is still very much in the French repertoire, (I just missed a very sexy and popular production of it when I was in Paris in 1999) and is occasionally done in other languages as well.  

The theatre where the production described just above
and pictured just below played in 1999 - beautiful
theatre in a beautiful setting in central Paris

But wait!  The French Academy had major problems with this play.  You see, Corneille had crowded all these events, the love

One way to bring in the crowds (except for Dr Jack
who could not score a ticket) to Le Cid

 between Chimène and Roderigue, the death of Chimène’s father, a war (which Roderigue wins astonishingly quickly), a plot to kill Roderigue in revenge, and the working out of all these problems, into the neoclassically correct 24 hours – the unity of time.  So of course the Academy took it to task!  Le Cid strained the cardinal rule (no pun intended, heh, heh) of the Neoclassic ideal; it strained verisimilitude.  Much worse, it strained decorum.  You cannot marry the man who murdered your father, at least not within 24 hours of the homicide, please!  Finally the Academy decided it did not fit any recognized form -- it couldn’t be a tragedy if it ended happily and with a marriage.

      

You need to read (or better see) Le Cid  (of course you won’t -- you say you will, but you won’t) to realize that in fact it’s not at all the disaster the French Academy claimed -- it hasn’t held the stage

Not the best of Corneille's plays, it still held the stage
as long as stars such as this one, an eighteenth
century actress who died in Voltaire's arms

 for nearly 400 years for nothing.  The mindset of the French Academy was looking literally at things in the play they should have taken figuratively, metaphorically.  But the slap that Corneille received from these arbiters of taste stung, so much so that he wrote no plays for three years, and when he began again to write, his plays, which include Horace (1640) and The Death of Pompey (1643) all followed the neoclassic rules.  While these later plays were deemed excellent in their time, and while they are still revived in France today, the great irony is that Corneille’s finest play is the one the academy most reviled!

 

The operatic version of Le Cid, by Massenet   

There is one other play Corneille wrote, more unique than Le Cid, that became his second most produced in the late twentieth century (in fact in the US regional theatres during the 1990s it was produced quite frequently). That is because Tony Kushner read it, probably in college (ah!), admired it, and adapted it.  The name? The Illusion.  It tells the story, which seems quite heart wrenching, of a father who had neglected his son, and who has lost his now grown child.  He visits a magician, who can conjure up the location of his son as well as what he is doing.  Three different times (in three acts) the conjuror shows the old man his son, in very different, always exciting, sometimes comic, sometimes dangerous situations...at the end of the third situation, the son is killed!  A tragedy!  Mais non! For we (and along with the father) find out that the son hasn’t really been killed, or done any of the things he seems to have done. His son has become an actor!  The scenes that have been conjured are scenes from plays his son was performing.  Clever Corneille! It plays well today, by the way, either in Kushner’s rather loose adaptation or in a more strict translation of Corneille’s text.  Critics have called it an early example of a new form at the time, tragicomedy.

      

Corneille is what I would call a closet romantic.  He reached out for big, sprawling stories, plots that wanted to jump, as Shakespeare’s had, from court to country and back, and his characters remained rather simple, in the sense that they embodied clear cut moral and ethical qualities.  Corneille’s simple characters, tied up in complex plots, had to be forced into the neoclassic mould, and although Corneille’s talent was great (we must remember that he and the man we’ll speak of next are THE important serious writers of what is considered a golden age in French drama), he would have been better off in an age or place that welcomed the scope, and didn’t insist that it be confined to one place or one day.  More appropriate to Neoclassic France were, as one critic put it “Racine’s sensitive heroines.”

      

Jean Racine (1639-1699) was a student and admirer of Pierre Corneille, but he seemed to have learned how NOT to write

 neoclassical tragedy from the older man.  Racine discovered that the way to success with the unities and other neoclassic rules was to limit the plot, to simplify it into what could reasonably occur in one day and one place; and to let the complexity of the play come from the characters – his “sensitive heroines.”  If you had to create a formula for the two writers, it might look like this:

Racine = simple plots + complex characters

Corneille = complex plots + simple characters

      

How did Racine make his characters complex?   By focusing on the inner struggles of a Bérénice, Andromache or Phèdre (to mention the titles and lead characters of three of Racine’s most important plays). His most famous play is Phèdre (anglicized to Phaedra), which, interestingly enough, was a failure on its opening night. 

      

The play is based on Euripides’ Hippolytus.  Phèdre is married to

Theseus, but develops a tremendous desire for Theseus’ son Hippolytus (by the king’s first marriage to the Amazon Shakespeare calls Hippolyta in Midsummer – it’s such a small 

world, theatre).  At one point in the play, it’s announced that Theseus is dead.  Urged on by her attendant, Phèdre confesses her love to Hippolytus, who is revolted by it.  Of course almost immediately we find that Theseus is NOT dead, and in fact is just about to return (24 hours..unity of time)!  When he does return, Phèdre’s attendant tells him why everything seems so strange at the palace, but with a twist!  In the attendant’s version, Hippolytus, not Phèdre, made the unwanted advances.  Theseus, furious, invokes the god Poseidon who has Hippolytus destroyed as he rides his chariot to the sea (in a somewhat tacky “modernized” film version with Tony Perkins and Melina Mercouri, Perkins drives his Mazerati sports car off a cliff into the ocean to the strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor) and Phèdre then dies by poisoning herself. 

   

In Phèdre a woman struggles with her soul, where a battle between reason and impulse is being waged.  Impulse, emotion, wins 

(which any good classicist or neoclassicist would tell you is NOT a good thing). In fact this is the play’s message:  no matter how strong a foolish, even passionate (especially passionate!) impulse may seem, it must be overcome by rational control.  In fact of Phèdre, one scholar said,

“Her tempestuous passion, despite her will, cannot be controlled.  In Racine, when you lose rational control, you lose the most desirable thing in the world.”

Given the rules for drama in this age, an internal battle works much better than an external one, a war, for example.  In addition, the character Phèdre runs the gamut of emotions, making her a great role for an actress to play.

You can see from this and other productions above, Phèdre, or adaptations
of it, is produced regularly

If Racine’s characters were complex, his verse was even more so!  The accepted style in writing verse for the stage in 17th c France was the Alexandrine, which one scholar defined as: “a quatrain of six-foot iambic lines, each couplet rhyming...each line having a momentary pause (caesura) after the 6th syllable.”  In effect, every line, or every 4 lines, of a 17th c French play was a word puzzle!  Racine was a master at these puzzles, and it’s important to realize that any writing of verse (or prose, the game is more formal with verse) involves conquering a form, not always as complicated as the alexandrine, but sometimes more so.  Part of the pleasure of writing for the theatre during that period lay in the writer’s ability and agility with the verse form.  Unfortunately, while I assure you (I have it on expert opinion) that Racine was a master of the form, writing this formal doesn’t always or even usually translate well.

Next time, Moliere!