Eighteenth Century French Theatre I: Background and Playwrights

In the eighteenth century, Paris reigned as the major cultural center of Europe.  Louis XIV continued his lengthy reign, and was succeeded by the powerful Louis XV, who continued in the style of his father - the pursuit of happiness. It was quite possible, if you

Mme de Pompadour was one of Louis XV's
favorite mistresses. Could she act? Didn't matter!
 "It's very good to be the king!"

 were among the nobility or some of the clergy, and as usual it was very good to be the king! But not so great to be a peasant. One of Louis XV's several mistresses, Mme de Pompadour, was occasionally drawn to the stage.  When Louis XV died his grandson became Louis VXI.

Unlike his predecessors, Louis XVI was reluctant ruler.  He was married to Marie Antoinette, an Austrian princess from the 

Louis XVI

powerful Hapsburg family. Great minds of the age in France began to criticize the oppression by the aristocracy and the Church against the average person.  Thinkers and philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot began to advocate for social and political change. Similar sentiments could be found in 
England and the rest of Europe as well, but in France, growing assertions of the rights and duties of humans led to the storming of 

Marie Antoinette

the Bastille in 1789, and blood ran through the cobblestone streets of Paris. Revolutionaries guillotined the French king and his wife, along with countless others, during what was called a reign of terror in the French Revolution. Thanks to that catastrophic conflict, the social order changed drastically in eighteenth century France, from aristocratic control to middle class control. And the effects of the Revolution were felt throughout Europe.

The death of Marie Antoinette - the executioner is holding her head up for the
people to see

French drama in the eighteenth century was not as revolutionary as French politics, nor as brilliant as that of the seventeenth century masters Molière, Racine and Corneille. In the realm of tragedy the most important name is Voltaire (1694-1778), one of the greatest minds of the eighteenth century. Voltaire is remembered for his

short novel Candide and for his philosophical works much more than for his plays, but Voltaire was attracted to the theatre as well and wrote over 50 plays.  His first was Oedipe (1718) an obvious imitation of Racine’s tragedy.  In his later works, however, Voltaire attempted to extend the subject matter of the tragic form by setting his plays in exotic locales. He wrote Alzire, for example, set in Peru, and set other plays in a harem in Jerusalem and in the Middle East. In l'Orphelin de la Chine he took the French all the way to China! The use of exotic places reflects 

eighteenth century Europe’s desire to search out (and colonize) other parts of the world, but it also has vital practical importance for the theatre.  Setting a play in Peru meant that Peru needed to be depicted on the stage.  As in England, local color became very important in French dramas, and increasingly important scenic artists painted specific, exotic settings.  The shift in locale also helped to freshen the subject matter of plays, moving it away from the nearly exhausted variations on the Greek and Roman classical themes, and they also begin to set the stage for the Romantic movement in drama. So! Voltaire is important for these innovations, but his tragedies are produced only occasionally on French stages today.
   

More popular were tales of middle class characters and values, a sentimental drama as we’ve already seen in England.  In the area of comedy, the “Honest Dick” Steele of France was Pierre Claude Nivelle de la Chaussée (1692-1754), who established the comédie larmoyante or “tearful comedy” on the stages of Paris.  As in Steele’s work, La Chaussée’s plays feature virtuous protagonists who are beset by obstacles but who overcome them and are made happy in the end. Indicative titles from La Chaussée’s plays include False Antipathy, Fashionable Prejudice, and The Man of Fortune.

      

A more sophisticated writer of this new tearful comedy was Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763).  His style is 

marked by gentility and subtlety, suggesting a polished, refined version of commedia dell’arte, and in fact Marivaux’s plays 
usually premiered at the Comédie Italienne. In the plays, Marivaux
concentrated on the pychological joys,
tortures and fears

that first love can provoke.  Marivaux frequently featured Arlecchino in his comedies, and transformed the rough, saucy serving maid of the commedia into the pert and delicate Columbine.  One of Marivaux’s finest pieces is The Game of Love and Chance (1730), another The Triumph of Love (1732), both of which have seen frequent revivals and adaptations in the late twentieth century.

In The Game of Love and Chance, two upper class lovers change places with their servants. Why?  There is talk of an arranged marriage. Neither Silvia, the young woman, nor Dorante, the young man, has seen the other, and both want to find out what the 

other looks like and acts like.  So, Silvia instructs her servant Lisette to pretend to be her, and Dorante instructs his servant Harlequin to pretend to be him.  As you might guess, Silvia, in observing Dorante-Harlequin finds herself disgusted by his behavior, and is disturbed to find herself falling in love with his servant (Harlequin-Dorante).  And Dorante discovers he’s not nearly as interested in Sylvia-Lisette as he seems to be in her servant (Lisette-Sylvia)!  After tortuous and heartbreaking twistings and turnings and discoveries, Dorante and Sylvia find that each has been playing the same game, and are married. Harlequin and Lisette have in the meantime become attracted as well! 

      

In the serious drama, a new form created in France equates roughly to English Domestic tragedy, which was epitomized by George Lillo’s The London Merchant.  Denis Diderot (1713-1784),

another great mind of the eighteenth century, created this form and called it le drame or le drame seriouse).   Diderot argued that, while classical subjects had their merits, they no longer spoke to the average citizen of France.  He called for a new form, “a serious play, whose office it is to depict the virtue and duties of man.”  In order to illustrate his concept, Diderot wrote two plays: The Natural Son; or, The Trials of Virtue (published 1757, produced 1771) and The Father of the Family.  A “natural” son by the way is not what you may think it means. It refers to an illegitimate son – a bastard. These plays are almost never produced today but they are historically significant because they formed an entirely new genre relevant to the age and to the people of that age. All this in rule-bound, Neoclassical France!

Diderot’s work is significant another level as well.  There were social and political reasons for this highly moral drama.  As I’ve noted, the social order was changing drastically in the eighteenth century, from aristocratic control to middle class control.  Sometimes the change was bloody, as was certainly the case in the American revolution against its mother country England, and even more certainly in France, where Diderot’s assertions of the rights and duties of humans led to the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and to heads lopped off by the new & “humane” Madamoiselle Guillotine!

      

Diderot was also important in other aspects of theatre.  He wrote a fascinating treatise on acting called The Paradox of the Actor.  He also is credited with some of the earliest moves towards stage realism.  He was perhaps the first person to use the term “fourth wall” in connection with the theatre. We think of this “wall” as the curtain on a proscenium arch stage, dividing the world of the play from the world of the audience. Diderot’s idea was that the fourth wall was the back of the auditorium. I prefer his notion, don’t you?

      

The greatest French playwright of the eighteenth century was Pierre August Caron (1732-1799), better known as Beaumarchais.  If anyone came close to inheriting Moliere’s mantle in French 

drama, it was Beaumarchais. He started by writing comedies in the sentimental, tearful form. Eugenie (1767) is an example. But his reputation rests on two laughing comedies, written in France at exactly the same time that Goldsmith and Sheridan were writing similar plays in England:  The Barber of Seville (1775) and The Marriage of Figaro (1784).  Both of these plays are better known in their operatized versions, Barber by Rossini, and Marriage by Mozart, but it’s worth running down the 

This is Rossini's opera, not the play

plots of these brilliantly structured and highly comic pieces.

   

In The Barber of Seville (1775) Old Bartolo wishes to marry his ward, Rosine, who for her part loves a gentleman, Lindoro, who is really the Count Almaviva in disguise.  Figaro, the barber of Seville, comes to this couple’s rescue, by intriguing to get Almaviva into Bartolo’s house.  Figaro succeeds, Bartolo is outwitted, the Count and Rosine marry, and Figaro is made the Count’s valet.  Voila!

In The Marriage of Figaro, written in 1784, the curtain goes up on the Count and Rosine several years after their marriage, when the count has lost interest in his wife.  He transfers his attentions to Suzanne, Figaro’s fiancée.  In fact, Almaviva demands that he be 

allowed droit de seigneur, an odious practice: when a couple in the aristocrat’s service marries, the aristocrat, by his right as their lord, gets first shot at the woman in bed.  Figaro manages to foil him in this attempt, but the Count next tries to marry Figaro off to the elderly Marceline, until it’s discovered to everyone’s surprise that Marceline is Figaro’s mother!  To make things even more complicated, Rosine, the neglected countess, persuades Suzanne to agree to meet the Count for an assignation in a dark place, but the countess will replace Suzanne in the dark and thus trick her husband into sleeping with her again. In the very clever last scene, the count is caught in his machinations, gains a new respect for his wife, and Figaro is now free to marry his Suzanne!

The humor of these plays is tempered by Figaro’s position as an honest sturdy Frenchman.  Audiences not only laughed with him, but felt with and for him too.  Figaro is a man of the people. His jokes about the aristocracy in Barber of Seville carried a revolutionary resonance.  The tone grows darker in the Marriage of Figaro, when Figaro speaks of the worthlessness of the aristocracy directly to his master: “What have you done to deserve such advantages? Put yourself to the trouble of being born—nothing more.” This honest, clever man of the people outmaneuvers the Count in the Marriage of Figaro, but only by the skin of his teeth.   It was said that at performances of that play the aristocracy, sitting in the boxes, giggled at the audacious but funny jokes, while the common people, sitting in the paradis, laughed ruefully. In a few years the Bastille would fall! Louis XVI wanted to ban the play, stating that “the Bastille would have to be torn down before such a play could be staged.” Oh, his prophetic soul! Ironically, Marie Antoinette insisted that the show go on – whoops! You might say she lost her head...
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