(•form? U Hniuprsity library Jtljaca, Went llnrh BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library PQ 536. J86 1921 3 1924 026 400 972 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026400972 DRAMATIC THEORY AND PRACTICE IN FRANCE 1690-1808 BY THE SAMS AUTHOR AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FRENCH CLASSICAL DRAMA CLARENDON PBESS, 1912. DRAMATIC THEORY AND PRACTICE IN FRANCE 1690-1808 BY ELEANOR F. JOURDAIN, MA.Oxon. DR. UNIV. PABIS, TAYLORIAN LECTURER IN FRENCH IN THE UNIVERSITY OP OXFORD, PRINCIPAL OF ST. HUGH'S COLLEGE OXFORD LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER BOW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 1921 All rights reserved. PREFACE This book, begun in 1914 as a series of lectures, was put aside owing to the pressure of other work till the present year. It attempts to trace the development of comedie, tragedie, and drame in France in the eighteenth century, and thus to define the relation between the dramatic art of the seventeenth and that of the nineteenth century. It will be seen that during the period from 1690 onwards drame gradually superseded classical comedy and tragedy, and that when these two genres revived toward the end of the century, they were both tinctured with the manner of the drame serieux. During the years of Revolution, serious drama took on a political colour, while the Napoleonic wars were fatal for the time to any new inspiration. The drama of the Romantic movement, together with the theories that accompanied that movement, will be seen to have had their roots in the dramatic experiments of the eighteenth century. A detailed study of certain plays of the Revolution period will be found in the Appendix. E. F. JOURDAIN. St. Hugh's College, Oxfobd. July 1921. NOTE In preparing this volume the author has consulted contem- porary memoirs and criticism of the drama of the eighteenth century in addition to modern works of criticism referred to in the notes : to these the author wishes to express her great indebtedness. The Chronological Table, though not exhaustive, will, it is hoped, be useful as a guide to the contemporary development of comedie, drame, and tragedie. CONTENTS PAGE Preface . v CHAPTER I Introduction CHAPTER II Comedy Imitators of Moliere : Regnard — Difference of method between Moliere and his imitators — Dufresny — Dancourt's painting of Bourgeois life — Fuller development of realistic description in Le Sage — Beaumarchais : rise of the Revolutionary spirit — His view of dramatic genres — Marivaux : his analysis of feeling in a restricted milieu — Followers of Marivaux : La Noue— Collin d'Harleville — His criticism of L'Homme sensible — Costume and scenery — Andrieux — His theory of comedy — Comedy after 1789 : Picard — Result of the experiments of the eighteenth century in comedy .... CHAPTER III Dbame Origins of Drame — Tendencies of Drome — The appeal to sensibility — Its moral teaching — Its social ideal — The imitation of nature — The Comidie Larmoyante — Destouches, a writer of the transition period Piron, inclusion of farcical and critical elements — Gresset — Voltaire and the drama of sentiment — Voltaire's theory of Drame — Nivelle de la Chaussee — The Drame bourgeois, Diderot's conflicting theories Sedaine — The Paradoxe sur le comtdien — Mercier — Mercier's theory of the stage — His theory of dialogue — The admis- sion of satire and romance into Drame 44 CONTENTS CHAPTER IV Tragedy PAGE Decadence of tragedy. Longepierre — La Fosse — Duch6 — L'Abbe Genest — La Noue — Declamation on the stage — Exaggerated intrigue : Campistron, Lagrange-Chaneel — Saurin — De Belloi — Cr^billon — The tragedies of Voltaire — Influence of trag&lie-opera : Semiramis, Tancrtide — La Harpe — The beginnings of a new era : Versions of Shakespeare — Ducis — Legouve — Marie-Joseph Chenier — Lemercier 93 CHAPTER V CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DsAMA Character of the criticism of the period — La Motte — Voltaire — New theories contributed by the study of La Chaussee, Voltaire, Diderot — Sebastien Mercier — Mercier's anticipation of the romantic formula — The ideal of a national stage — Poetic justice — Rousseau's criticism of the stage — Recovery of the sense of mystery and the sense of fatality by the Romantics — Conventional views of the drama in the eighteenth century — Marie-Joseph Chenier and the liberty of the stage — The plea for a national opera . . . . .155 CHAPTER VI Conclusion Cramping influence on the drama of philosophic views — Effect of political theories — New sesthetic theories derived mainly from the practice of drame — Traditional tragedy and comedy : remoteness of the stage from the experience of the spectators — The desire in the eighteenth century to bring together stage and audience — Realism displaces symbolism in representation — Interest roused by (i) the appeal to feeling, (ii) spectacle, (iii) ' pantomime,' (iv) tableaux— Rise of light opera — Liberty of the stage, 1791 : changes in production brought about by political bias : the new century . 178 APPENDIX (a) Plays acted before the French Court in the last days of the Monarchy 187 (6) Popular Republican Plays 200 (c) La Journie des Dupes, piece tragi-politi-comique . . . 205 (d) Chronological Table ......... 222 Index 229 Erratum Page 21, line 8, for Bratholo read Bartholo. DKAMATIC THEORY AND PRACTICE IN FRANCE 1690-1808 CHAPTER I EBB AT A. P. 16, lines 8, 9, read " public opinion has swung round, in the direction of the drame, " P. 18, lines 8, 9, read " whole play had the effect of satire, and it was not affected by the growing sentiment of the time." P. 21, line 8, for " Bratolo " read " Bartholo." three centuries of modern aramanc development, id is evident that the eighteenth century, which lay between two great dramatic periods, cannot be merely put aside as unimportant. It was a period of transition and of experiment in all forms of art, including those of dramatic art. For, during that period, Art was gradually adapting itself to the conditions of modern democratic life. In other countries where the political tension was not so severe as in France, a different development is observed. England, for example, after the break in dramatic tradition caused by the Puritan revolution, sought for inspiration from France and produced comedies of manners (after Moliere) x CONTENTS CHAPTER IV Tragedy PAGE Decadence of tragedy. Longepierre — La Fosse — Duch6 — L'Abbe Genest — La Noue — Declamation on the stage — Exaggerated intrigue : Campistron, Lagrange-Chancel — Saurin — De Belloi — Cr^billon — The tragedies of Voltaire — Influence of trageclie-opera : Semiramis, Tancrede — La Harpe — The beginnings of a new era : Versions of Shakespeare — Ducis — Legouve — Marie-Joseph Chenier — Lemercier 93 CHAPTER V CONTEMPOEARY CeITICISM OF THE DEAMA Character of the criticism of the period — La Motte — Voltaire — New theories contributed by the study of La Chaussee, Voltaire, Diderot — Sebastien Mercier — Mercier's anticipation of the romantic formula — The ideal of a national stage — Poetic justice — Rousseau's criticism of the stage — Recovery of the sense of mystery and the sense of fatality by the Romantics — Conventional views of the drama in — — „ MJ fwuL^oii uiaa i wio new century . 178 APPENDIX (o) Plays aoted before the French Court in the last days of the Monarchy 187 (b) Popular Republican Plays 200 (c) La Journie des Dupes, piece tragi-politi-comique . . . 205 (d) Chronological Table 222 Index 229 Erratum Page 21, line 8, for Bratholo read Bartholo. DRAMATIC THEORY AND PRACTICE IN FRANCE 1690-1808 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Classical drama of the seventeenth century in France, the Romantic drama of the nineteenth century, are both familiar to serious students of French literature. In both cases the plays in question gain by being known to genera- tion after generation of readers, and the fact of their being acted from time to time shows that they appeal to that general humanity in us which responded to the same touch in ancient Athens and in modern Paris, as Racine had observed. But now that we can look back on more than three centuries of modern dramatic development, it is evident that the eighteenth century, which lay between two great dramatic periods, cannot be merely put aside as unimportant. It was a period of transition and of experiment in all forms of art, including those of dramatic art. For, during that period, Art was gradually adapting itself to the conditions of modern democratic life. In other countries where the political tension was not so severe as in France, a different development is observed. England, for example, after the break in dramatic tradition caused by the Puritan revolution, sought for inspiration from France and produced comedies of manners (after Moliere) 2 INTRODUCTION and comedies of character and of situation, which reflected the variable customs of society from the Restoration to the present day. But in France the shock to social life and thought caused by the French Revolution came at a later period than the break caused in England by the Puritan revolution. In France a dramatic national tradi- tion had become fully established before 1789. The drama of the eighteenth century in France, while keeping to a large extent a traditional form, is thus useful as an illus- tration of contemporary social and political progress. Its criticism of society prepares our minds for the Revolution of 1789. Beaumarchais, before and after 1789, expresses, as well as any historian could do, the condition of the public mind ; and other writers, earlier in the century- even the imitators of Racine and of Moliere, and the creators of the new drama which was intended to appeal to the sentiment of the audience — foretold, before Beaumarchais, the coming social conflict and class hatred. They showed, too, how a theory was being sought to justify and account for this movement, and also how feeling was forcing its way into thought and disturbing the plans of the abstract thinker, long before Rousseau had arisen to give expression to a new philosophy of emotion. Meanwhile the writers of tragedy were urging upon a selfish and careless age the true ideal of kingship as responsibility to the people for the people : and all dramatic writers were appealing to the parterre instead of to a literary clique for a final judgment on a work of art. It may perhaps be objected that France was so pre- occupied in the eighteenth century with her own sudden and critical development that the atmosphere was not favourable to artistic detachment, and that the works of art produced during this period would not be in them- selves of high value, though they might have a historical interest as a faithful picture of the time. It is true that events moved too rapidly for the complete develop- ment to fixity of any new genre. But, apart from the fact that the essential thing in a work of art is not the detachment of the artist, but the truth of his perception, INTRODUCTION 3 and his power of giving to that perception a form, many dramatists of the eighteenth century who were in touch with political events were able to bring a sense of propor- tion to their reflection of the social movement. Such was Beaumarchais. There is, too, a special interest in tracing the reflection in art of a great upheaval of society in France, where political and social thought, as well as personal experience, tend to find expression with a rapidity unknown to all but the Latin peoples. Thus, even though each dramatic experiment was an incomplete type, and the hasty succession of events hardly gave time for one form to come to perfection before another one was projected, yet the effect of the whole series of experiments is remarkable, and foreshadows the many new directions of the fuller national art that was to come. And as also the French nation cannot produce works of art without immediately seeing the bearing of a new experiment on the old theories of aesthetic, there arose, side by side with plays that were often shapeless or uncertain in purpose, a criticism that was enlarged step by step to meet the new order of things. The theories of Chapelain and of Boileau were developed, criticised, attacked, supplanted, and formulated afresh. Voltaire and Rousseau both supplied new theories, in opposi- tion to each other, and Mercier reconciled them in a wider view, which was so far in advance of his time that he may almost be said to have anticipated the whole of the Romantic formula. Beaumarchais and Diderot too foresaw some of the stage-problems of modern times. From Boileau to the early years of the nineteenth century we have a long series of critical and explanatory prefaces to plays, and of pamphlets on dramatic theory, which show the regular and steady expansion of this branch of aesthetic in France. Every dramatic critic in France was also a playwright : every playwright as a rule a critic both of his own work and of the drama as a whole. 1 On many grounds it seems worth while to draw some writers from their ill-deserved obscurity, if only for the sake of the contributions to 1 Many of the plays of the period have novelties in treatment, but their form shows a great feeling for tradition. dramatic tneory wnicn nave Deen maae as a consequence of their works. And more familiarity with these little- read writers, with Dancourt and Dufresny and Regnard, Destouches and Piron and Gresset, for example, as well as with the better-known Marivaux, Le Sage, and Beaumarchais, La Chaussee and Mercier and Diderot, Chenier and Lemer- cier, will show that they had on the whole the dramatist's power of putting contemporary life on the stage, and a sense of the value of dramatic art in illustrating a national and social ideal, and thus they find their place when we attempt to trace dramatic development from the seven- teenth to the nineteenth century. Their plays, too, bear witness to the strong literary and moral tradition that binds together the French nation in history, even though, on the surface, rapid and revolu- tionary change may seem to govern its development. That literary and moral tradition may be thus defined : A nation which expresses in its art the social ideal of life, and rejects a selfish individualism, is a judge of the society it describes. In art which is rooted in such a tradition the moral judgment is shown in the measurement of real con- ditions by an ideal. Thus the morally constructive drama sets up an ideal, while a drama that is critical and destruc- tive in its tendency treats real conditions, where they fall short of an ideal, with satire. In the eighteenth century, however, there was an attempt for a time to set up two new standards of judgment in aesthetic, and these were opposed to the tradition just described. As a result of the theories of the Physiocrats, and of some types of Encyclopaedic thought, art began to be judged by its utility to the nation. It was to be a means of direct moral instruction. As a result, again, of the views on natural philosophy and metaphysics held by Diderot and his followers, the ideas of the equality and rights of man, and the equal value given to all natural processes and all actions, affected art in the direction of realism. It was agreed that everything natural was equally good, and therefore a fit subject for art. The two theories are mutually destructive, for it is evident that a literal description of fact leaves out the motive of utility INTRODUCTION 5 and of moral teaching, unless the artist combines and de- scribes his facts from a definite point of view. He must personally care to put a moral perspective into his scheme of things ; otherwise there will be no conflict, hence no tragedy ; no criticism, hence no comedy ; no feeling, hence no drame. Therefore, whatever was the theoretical adherence of the dramatist of the eighteenth century to the idols of utility and realism, practically the incompati- bility of the two views decided him to abandon one of them in some degree. Either his logical sense helped him out of the maze, or the instinct of an artist led him to express a personal view, or the great literary and moral tradition which he shared caused him to be the unconscious partisan of the good. Thus the drama of the eighteenth century has permanent artistic value in so far as it is itself incon- sistent with two mutually contradictory theories by which the nation was attempting to escape from its own fine tradition ; and we are led to see by a historical examination that a reaction caused by robust common sense and idealism is also to be traced in the eighteenth century. At the end of our period we find France recovering her relation to her great historical past, and dramatic art took a large share in enabling her to recover her equilibrium. The elements of idealism and criticism renew their force at the end of the Revolution period. When it is remembered that the theatres were the most general form of entertainment throughout the century, and that their doors were not altogether closed except for a rare moment at the height of the Terror, it will not be too much to assert that while the stage was not perhaps, as its writers desired, forming citizens by the sentiments uttered on the boards for that purpose, the wholesome salt of its satire and the bright flame of its enthusiasm were effective in time in restoring to a shaken society the power of self-criticism and self-determination. In the causes of the comparative failure of the art of the eighteenth century, as well as in its influence on a later age, there is, one cannot but believe, a field for interest and inquiry. CHAPTER II COMEDY Imitators of Moliere : Regnard — Difference of method between Moliere and his imitators — Dufresny — Dancourt's painting of Bourgeois life — Fuller development of realistio description in Le Sage — Beaumarchais : rise of the Revolutionary spirit — His view of dramatic genres — Marivaux : his analysis of feeling in a restricted milieu — Followers of Marivaux : La Noue — Collin d'Harleville — His criticism of L'Homme sensible — Cos- tume and scenery — Andrieux — His theory of comedy — Comedy after 1789 : Picard — Result of the experiments of the eighteenth century in comedy. It would have been difficult for any successors of Moliere to avoid the dangerous homage of imitation of his methods. Moliere had succeeded in making the theatre national in France, and in popularising the painting of manners in the middle classes of society. Now the whole tendency of the drama in the eighteenth century was to throw more light on the middle classes, and it is important to notice that from the days of Corneille onwards they had become regular playgoers in Paris. The early efforts of eighteenth- century comedy were therefore on Moliere's lines, though at first of the nature of caricature of his methods. When writers of comedy began to reflect their own time more exactly, the relation with the spirit of Moliere became greater, while the direct imitation of the master was slighter. Then appeared the more original dramatists of the comic stage of the eighteenth century, Marivaux and Beaumar- chais ; and definite homage was paid to Moliere by writers of the new genre, the drame serieux, 1 who did not yield to 1 The idea of direct moral instruction through comedy was first suggested by Boursault, Fables d'Ssope, Esope d la Com, where Aesop was laid under contribution and a contemporary painting of manners connected with his moral teaching. 6 COMEDY 7 the writers for the comic stage in their appreciation of Moliere's general aim. In the transition from the works of Moliere to those of the writers who are characteristic of the eighteenth century, the most important comedies are those of Regnard, Dan- court, and Le Sage. Le Sage marks the transition from the imitators of Moliere to the writers of comedy with a political and social bias, the greatest of whom was Beaumarchais. Marivaux (1688-1763), though historically earlier than Beaumarchais (1732-1799), is not in the same line of de- velopment, and his original treatment of a limited dramatic field must be considered separately. Of these writers, J. F. Regnard (1656-1710) was the closest to Moliere both in time and in the character of his work. Like Moliere he worked at first on the lines of Italian comedy, an early journey to Italy having interested him in the art of that country. His strange adventures gave him experience but did not damp his ardour. He was captured together with a Provencal lady by an Algerian corsair, and spent some years of slavery in Constanti- nople, from which condition he was finally ransomed. He travelled in Flanders, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, Lapland, Poland, Hungary, and Germany. Love and cards shared his interest with travelling, but at last he settled down to a quiet life in his country house at Grillon, and wrote most of his comedies there. He attempted at one time a tragedy, Sapor ; he worked sometimes alone and sometimes with Dufresny. But after making many con- ventional experiments, he took Moliere as his pattern, and his best comedies are formed on his master. As Moliere had drawn upon the humours of the provinces, Regnard imitated him, and in Le Joueur made fun of the Auvergnat, Toutalas, and in Le Bal of the Gascon, Le Baron, but he had also come across many other types in his travels of which he made full use. The form of his plays is very varied, their length may be one, or three, or five acts. For in Regnard the length of the play really depends on the size of the subject and thus his form is not conventional. A modern audience sometimes, 8 COMEDY and somewhat unfairly, finds him long-winded in th« longer plays. This is partly no doubt because his imitatior of Moliere leads Regnard to employ Moliere's plan of catch- words or catch-phrases (like Orgon's ' Le pauvre homme ') Regnard, like Moliere, repeats a comic effect when he onc€ has achieved it, but Regnard sometimes trusts to an earliei comic association to make the second or third allusion seem amusing. 1 So, in Le Legataire universel, he uses the catch- phrase of ' lethargies 2 The names given to the characters are the conventional ones. Lisette is a suivante, sometimes supplanted by Nerine : the heroine is Leonor, or Isabelle, the regular names of Italian comedy, or sometimes Angelique. The lover is Valere, or Dorante, or Eraste. Geronte is a name for an old man. The valet has many names : he is some- times Crispin, 3 or Merlin (who really produces wonders on the scene). 4 Valets and soubrettes play a large part in this drama, so do masques and music. 5 Lawyers and usurers are a butt for Regnard's sarcasm as doctors were for Moliere's, but the attack on lawyers is one common to the whole of the eighteenth century, as is the insistence on the comic characteristics of the provinces of Normandy, Brittany, Gascony, Burgundy, Auvergne. Madame Bertrand and Madame Argante (both usual comedy names) jostle one another in the drama of Regnard. One important difference between Moliere and the writers of comedy in the eighteenth century is that Moliere at his best does without accessories for his characters. 1 Diderot does this too, as e.g. in Est-il ton, est-il michant ? where Madame Bertrand counts ofi the victims of Hardouin's kind and unkind interference. 2 The language of the plays has gained in allusiveness from Regnard's journeys. A thief is an ' Arabe ' ; the hero in Le Bal wishes his enemy to be seized by corsairs. 8 Of the traditional Crispin on the stage, Grimm, Corr. Lift., 1753, p. 72, says : ' Crispin est done un valet singulierement habile, gai, souvent bouffon, ruse, fourbe, employe par son maitre aux mauvaises affaires et aux intrigues, ou occupe a le tromper et duper lui-meme.' 1 ' Merlin ' is an old name that ocours, e.g., in Boursault's Mercure galant, 1679. ' Pasquin ' is also an old name and oomes in Baron's L'Homme d bonnes fortunes (1686). 6 In Le Bal. COMEDY 9 Their calling and their views so far as they are external to the plot are neglected ; the necessary setting and no more is given to the personages of his drama. We are aware that the households in L'Avare and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme are the ordinary middle-class households of the time : we can see the stratum of cultivated society in which the characters in Le Misanthrope and Les Femmes savantes move. But we are given no previous history and practically no present details of their circumstances, except where, as in the case of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, it is important to know that M. Jourdain has prospered. But in eighteenth-century drama (and in this respect nineteenth- century drama has followed closely on its antecedents) „ opinions and social conditions are insisted on, even when these are quite external to the plot. Now Regnard is not himself exempt from this habit ; he shows, in fact, the first symptom of the change, in Le Joueur, and Le Legataire universel : though he has less of what, from the point of view of drama, we may call a defect, than the writers of the drame bourgeois. A good deal of time is however taken up in his plays by the description of circumstances that do not develop character. We are told at length in Le Legataire universel about Geronte's will, about his relations and the different plans for the disposal of his money : but Geronte is left by the dramatist in the last scene of the last act exactly where he was at first. In L'Avare we are aware of a conflict in the mind of the miser, but while Geronte's opinion in Le Legataire universel is puzzled and changeable, he goes through no crisis of feeling or thought. Regnard, however, possesses a power of psychological description in detail which shows that he can observe human nature even though he cannot con- centrate motives and action into the plot of his play. For example, he treats the subject of jealousy with great ability. 1 In the scene in Le Joueur between La Comtesse and Ange- lique, the subtle change from the well-mannered woman of the world to the jealous primitive woman is excellently indicated. Again, in the same play Angelique, softening 1 See Le Joueur, Act II. so. 2. 10 COMEDY to Vatere, is heard to say harder and harder things to him in a gentler and gentler voice : while the soubrette approves less and less as the scene goes on. 1 Here is an opportunity for a good actress to express the psychology of the real emotion of Angelique. But these character-studies do not control the plot. In Le Joueur, which had its English origin, and had been already treated by Dufresny, Regnard desired to make the character of Valere consistent all through the play. Valere goes off the stage saying to his valet : ' Va, va, consolons-nous, Hector : et quelque jour Le jeu m'acquittera des pertes de l'amour.' This trait certainly gives the play a unity of meaning, but the extreme consistency of the hero's behaviour removes the action from life to mechanism and destroys our interest. Regnard's plays thus are precursors of the ' well-constructed plays ' of Scribe in the nineteenth century ; the pleasure of the audience lies in an admiration of the author, who unravels a subtle mystery, or works out a problem set just one step in advance of the public which follows his moves. Besides exciting this interest in the plot as in a game to be guessed, Regnard produces amusement by insisting on laughable traits. This he does all through his thedtre, from the scene in Le Bal where the lover is hidden in the 'cello case, to the farcical scenes of plot and counterplot in Le Legataire universel. The sermon and the moral are to his mind of minor importance. Regnard was followed by Dufresny (1648-1724), a slighter writer, with whom he often worked, but the Esprit de contradiction and Beconcilation normande are both amusing and vivacious though long drawn out. In Le Mariage fait et rompu the last words show Dufresny's inheritance of Moliere's hatred of hypocrisy : ' Tout bien consider^, tranche coquetterie Est un vice moins grand que fausse pruderie. Les f emmes ont banni ces hypocrites soins ; Le siecle y gagne au fond, c'est un vice de moins.' 1 Le Joueur, Act II. so. 2. COMEDY 11 The titles of Dufresny's plays always take the form of the paradox which suggests the type of plot treated in them ; besides those already mentioned we might instance Le Double Veuvage and Les Mal-assortis, and La Malade sans maladie. They are written in prose, and are so witty that they repay reading, even though what Dufresny calls ' l'architecture de la piece ' is sometimes hurried and im- perfect. In some of his plays Dufresny has introduced ' vaudevilles ' and songs, obeying the taste of the time for bringing in music to vary the monotony of a play. 1 Like Regnard, Dufresny works on quite conventional lines, trusting to the brilliance of his dialogue to carry off his pieces. He enhances this effect by constantly bringing on ;o the stage some character who is acutely aware of the notives and absurdities of the others. Frosine acts this part in Le Double Veuvage. Dancourt (1661-1725) was attracted, like Moliere, by the lesire to paint the manners of the middle classes . At the end )f the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth ;here was a great deal to observe, for the love of money and ;he love of pleasure dominated all classes, and produced a rind of confusion of values in which we find the strongest;! jossible contrast to the century in which Corneille had eigned. Self-interest in every department was the motive" >f a society that lived under a corrupt government and had j he example of a corrupt court before its eyes. Hopelessrj >f being able to apply a remedy, the French at that time onsoled themselves by getting all the material pleasure i hey could out of life. The drama of Dancourt reflects this ondition, which he has finely observed. No character; tands out in heroic contrast to the rest, but a whole bevy'j ucceed one another in an eternal race for advantage.! )ancourt had the qualities necessary for getting sharp npressions of this society upon paper. He got his effect, y putting down a great deal of detail without feeling anyj jar of boring bis audience. Take a little one-act play ke Le Tuteur. The mystification of persons by night jreshadows a more famous scene in Beaumarchais' Manage 1 See the Prologue to Le Double Veuvage. de Figaro, but there is very little comparatively at stake in Le Tuteur. Bernard and bis accomplice, Lucas, are too evidently intended to be fooled by the rest. The moral is that only the person with wits can pursue an advantage and keep it. In the series of plays beginning with Le Chevalier a, la mode we have better characterisation. Madame Patin has her ambitions, which are like those of Monsieur Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but the idea of the play is carried out more farcically than was the case in Moliere's, and it is without the witty back-handed attacks by which the dupe, M. Jourdain, expresses his criticism of the society in which he attempts to move. There is, in the process, an immense amount of talking done on the stage, and this is in itself a satire on a class of society that engineered results by words instead of by wholesome labour. In Le Chevalier a la mode Migaud, who is courting Madame Patin, says that he has always been afraid of her disposition, but is willing to marry her on account of family interests, 1 while Le Chevalier, who also is courting her, says to Crispin, the valet, in the plainest words, that he is in love with her money. 2 He is in the meantime accepting presents of horses and a carriage from a baroness to whose hand he is also a pretender. In these circumstances Migaud's plan is successful and the Chevalier, who is ex- cluded, says that he only regrets Madame Patin 's money and is intending to pay further attentions to the baroness. 3 Dancourt has lifted the veil that obscures low motives, 1 ' Eooute, Iisette, puisque tu me paries franohement, je t'avouerai de bonne foi que le earactere de Madame Patin m'a toujours fait peur, et que, sans certains interets de mon fils, je n'aurais jamais songe a l'epouser. Monsieur Serrefort, eomme tu sais, apprehende que sa belle-soeur ne dissipe les grands biens que son mari lui a laisses en mourant ; et o'est pour s'assurer cette suoeession, qu'en dormant Lueile a mon fils il ne consent a ce mariage qu'a condition que j'epouserai Madame Patin.'— Act I. sc. 5. 8 ' Le Chevalier : Ce serait quarante mille livres de rente qu'elle possede, dont je pourrais etre amoureux. Crispin : C'est a dire, que ce sont les quarante mille livres de rente que vous epouseriez en l'epousant ? ' — Act I. sc. 7. 3 ' II n'y a que les mille pistoles de Madame Patin que je regrette en tout ceci. Allons retrouver la Baronne, et continuons de la menager jusqu'a oe qu'il me vienne quelque meilleure fortune.' — Le Chevalier d la mode, Act V. sc. 8. COMEDY 13 and thus his drama is an account not so much of what people were accustomed to say, but of what they actually thought. The truth of the painting was undeniable, and the fidelity of his dialogue to unavowed reasons for con- duct makes for a psychological realism that is at the same time strangely lacking in bitterness. While the attack on the vices of the time is as sharp as Balzac's on those of the age of Louis Philippe, there is no trace of resentment in Dancourt. He writes in a detached and good-humoured; way that at first hides from the reader the selfishness and brutality of the human nature he exposes to view. Dancourt works out his ideas further in Les Bour- geoises a la mode (1697) and Les Bourgeoises de qualite (1700). In the last-named play the characters only gradually detach themselves from their background, and this is one of the effects of Dancourt's very real art. They appear first of all to show some fixed idea, some clear tendency of the mind, and then touch after touch reveals them as persons. For example Naquart the procureur in the first scene ' II ne s'agit point de conscience la-dedans ; et entre personnes du metier ....' while Le TabeUion answers : ' ... Pourvu que je sois bien paye, et que vous ac- commodiais vous-meme toute cette manigance-la, je ne dirai mot, et je vous lairai faire, il ne vous en faudra pas davantage.' 1 In the next scene with the Procureur du Chatelet Naquart shows his extreme indifference to the evil of luxury, 2 while Blandineau regrets the better old times. 3 1 Les Bourgeoises de quality, Act I. sc. 1. » ' Votre femme aime le faste, la depense ; o'est la, je crois, sa plus grande folio ; laissez-la faire. Au bout du oompte, l'argent n'est fait que pour e'en servir ... vivons a present comme dans le temps present ...' — Les Bourgeoises de qualite", Act I. so. 2. 3 ' Je suis ennemi des superfluity, je me oontente du necessaire, et je ne eache rien au monde de si beau que la simplicite du temps passe.'— Les Bourgeoises de qualiti, Act I. so. 2. 14 COMEDY His wife has the gaming habit of the age : 'J'ai joue, j'ai perdu, j'ai paye, je n'ai plus rien, je vais rejouer, U m'en faut d'autre en cas que je perde.' and explains to her husband that it is by ' complaisance ' that she lives in a cottage in the country with him and his tire- some family, ' J'aime a paraitre, moi ; c'est la ma folic' 1 It is the waiting-maid, Lisette, who presently makes the situation clear. "While Blandineau considers that his wife njust be out of her mind, Lisette remarks that Madame is very wise, she takes her pleasure, and gives her husband all the trouble. ' Qui est le plus fou de vous deux ? ' Blandineau can make no real impression on the conditions round him. As one person after another comes on to the scene, all are moved by some spring of selfishness, but their selfishness reveals itself as different in different characters. Blandineau will not face the new standard of life, his wife will not give up her ambition, nor her sister her desire to be a great lady and to be worshipped as young and beautiful. Angelique is less unsympathetic because her faults are the faults of youth, and she is puzzled by life, while Lisette is clear-sighted ; but the scheme by which Angelique gains her lover and M. Nac quart marries Blandineau 's sister-in-law is a stage trick which would only be tiresome were it not that the result shows up the shallowness of La Greffi^re, who is to become Madame Nacquart, and of the other characters in the compact. Every one has been ready to take the easy path, and to give up love and honour for an income. It is thus a decadent society which Dancourt paints : the nobility has lost its glory, the bourgeoisie is losing its simplicity in imitating the decadent. As the chorus of peasants sing at the end of the play : ' Chacun ressent la verite Du ridicule ici traite : Tout est orgueil et vanite Dans la plus simple bourgeoisie. Du ridicule ici traite Paris fournit mainte copie.' 1 Les Bourgeoises de qualiti, Aot I. so. 6. COMEDY 15 /en as early as 1700, when this play was first acted, there jre many allusions to revolutionary feeling in the air. le high prices and expense of living are mentioned, gether with an assurance that the world was in an epoch revolution, while offices are bought by Madame Carmin id Madame Blandineau for their husbands. 1 The names Dancourt gives his characters show very little lange from Moliere. The suivante is generally Lisette, the igenue Angelique, the farmer Lucas, the valets La Fleur, 'Olive, L'Epine, La Montagne, or sometimes Crispin or ismin. Many peasants come in, whose names are those E the peasants of fight opera, and the dialect is (as i Moliere) that of the surburbs of Paris, or the country osely adjoining the capital. There is then the traditional •ame in Dancourt, but a realism of treatment which pre- ares us for the more bitter realism of the plays which sme later in the century, and the type of which is the 'urcaret of Le Sage. Piron and Gresset, Boissy and 'agan were writing comedies of society during this time f transition. Le Sage, in Turcaret (1709), which is his most remarkable lay, uses the method of realism which we have found in )ancourt, but succeeds in creating a type that is a worse atire on the bourgeois than Dancourt's characters had been. , 'urcaret has risen in the world, but brings up to the surface 11 the vices of the different strata of society with which e has mixed. And it is made clear that each section of ociety claims to rise in turn until the very lowest movesjj ip. At the end of the play Frontin, the valet trompeur,' ejoices at Turcaret's defeat, and believes that his own eign has begun. 2 In the critique of the play Le Sage makes ne character in the dialogue ask if Frontin's reign would Lot end, as Turcaret's did, in disaster. Asmodee, the Lemon, answers : ' Vous etes trop penetrant.' In the same Lialogue one of the two interlocutors says that the picture if the times is too true to fife : while a Spaniard is made o complain of the lack of intrigue in the play, for intrigue 1 Les Bourgeoises de qmliU, Act II. bc. 4 ; Act III. so. 9. * ' Vbjla le regne de Monsieur Turcaret flni ; le mien va oommenoer.' 16 COMEDY was still demanded in Spain at the time, though the French comedy of character did without it. From the point of view of public success, says the demon Asmodee, the piece is not interesting. It is realistic, and makes vice hateful, but it does not excite sympathy for the characters : ' faire aimer les personnages.' Le Sage's criticism of his own play, then, shows that public opinion has swung round, partly through the influ- ence of the drame, to demanding in comedy some characters with which the audience would be in sympathy. On the whole, however, Le Sage's plays take little part in this new development. Le Sage (1667-1748), in his "desire to live by the results of his literary work, expressed one change that was rapidly taking place in the eighteenth century. The literary patron who ensured the freedom of the artist from all the anxieties of life, and left him to exercise the highest and most deli- cate art in the most comfortable conditions, was already a thing of the past. In the future, art must appeal to the populace, and the artist must live upon the sale of his work. Not only then in the drama, but in other forms of literature, the writer had henceforth the public in his mind. He had gained his liberty from a sometimes oppressive aristocratic patronage, but he had bartered it for the favour of the crowd. Le Sage felt the difficulty of the position. ' Je cherche a satisfaire le public,' he said, when reproached for his bitter attacks against actors in Gil Bias, ' mais le public doit permettre que je me satisfasse moi-meme.' The country from which Le Sage drew his inspiration was Spain ; both his prose-writing and his drama bear the marks of this influence. As a dramatist Le Sage used several genres. He wrote for the Theatre de la Foire, and contri- buted largely to its temporary revival. He also wrote for the Opera-comique, and did a great deal for this new genre of drama. Even in the translations from the Spanish, which formed the material for all his earlier plays, Le Sage showed that he had the gift of style ; and a style that could accommodate itself to the delineation of many different types of characters. COMEDY 17 Spanish liveliness seems to have communicated itself to him ; he had the gift of beginning his scenes with appro- priate and easy dialogue, and ending them on a note of expectation which linked the different scenes and acts together. The facts that the Spanish play included a well-marked intrigue, and also that the characters were individual, were not without their influence on Le Sage, but he had also the native French sense of form, and reduced the play No ay Amigo para Amigo from five acts to three before its representation in Paris in 1702. His first original play, La Tontine, was written in 1708, but was withdrawn by the author, and then produced again in 1732. It is extremely slight and imitative. Crispin rival de son maitre, acted in 1707, marks a considerable advance on the earlier plays. The characters all bear the conventional names of comedy ; but Crispin, in this play as in La Tontine* is the person of invention and skill, the valet upon whom his master wholly depends, and who takes a tone of equality with him from the first moment of the action. The satire on a society in which the valet could be taken for a gentleman is sufficiently marked, and the. dishonesty of Crispin is equalled by the dis- honesty of his young master, who does not pay him his wages and lets him five by his wits. The selfish hunting for money is expressed here as in Dancourt's plays, but instead of bare realism, Le Sage uses satire, and the whole treatment is more fight and witty than in Dancourt. Valere is speaking of his attraction to Angelique, and the riches of her father : Valere : Oui, il a trois grandes maisons dans les plus beaux quartiers de Paris. Crispin : L'adorable personne qu'Angelique ! Valere : De plus, il passe pour avoir de l'argent comptant. Crispin : Je connais tout I'exces de votre amour ... 1 Madame Oronte, the mother of Angelique, with her weak heedlessness, is weU depicted. Though she is only moved by 1 Crispin rival de son maitre, so. 1. 18 COMEDY the emotion of the moment, and is subject to flattery, she believes herself to be guided by reason. ' Effectivement, Lisette, je ne ressemble guere aux autres femmes : c'est toujours la raison qui me determine.' 1 Le Sage treated vice like folly by making it ridiculous, but as there were few good traits in the play (except perhaps the honesty of Monsieur Orgon) upon which to dwell, the whole play had the effect of satire, and it was not under the prevailing influence of the drame. Turcaret (1709) was written at a bitter moment, when the war of the Spanish Succession was at its height. It is possible that the uncon- scientious juggling with money to serve private ends, which was one of the consequences of the condition of public finance, urged Le Sage to greater harshness in his attitude to all forms of making profit or pleasure out of money. Allusions to play occur all through the piece 2 : and in the third act occurs the conversation with M. Rafle in which the latter details to Turcaret the cases of honest men who have been swindled and beggared. The tone of the whole play would suggest a later date in the eighteenth century, but in reality it comes early, though the note of bitterness forestalls the attitude of the people under Louis XVI, when they revolted again, and with effect, against the pressure of money exactions on the part of the government. Le Sage then reflects satirically in his plays the elements of danger in contemporary manners. More than half a century later a very similar method was used by Beaumarchais, whose genius was more brilliant, and who has left plays written at different epochs of his development and at different stages of the revolutionary upheaval of society. His first interest, like Le Sage's, was in Spanish literature. He was an artisan by birth, then became a courtier, and was finally ennobled. In the course of his adventurous life he went to Madrid. On his return from Spain he wrote Euginie (1767), Les Deux Amis (1770), Le Barbier de Seville (1772-1775), and then Le Manage 1 Crispin rival de son maUre, so. 5. * See e.g. Act I. so. 2 ; Aot II. so. 3 ; Act III. so. 8. COMEDY 19 de Figaro. La Mere coupable was printed later, in 1792. Beaumarchais was an agent in secret politics, but was always a suspect, and was only saved by the death of Robespierre and the Revolution of the 9th Thermidor. He died in 1799. His first considerable success was Le Barbier de Seville. When the play was printed, he added to the title : ' repre- sentee et tombee sur le theatre de la Comedie Francaise.' The fact was that the original five acts were found to be too long and the play had to be shortened. The Spanish back- ground was in reality only a setting for the Gallic gaiety of the play. In later years Beaumarchais said 1 that the Barbier and the Manage de Figaro were slight attempts preparatory to the ' drame moral ' in which he wished to combine fun and pathos, the intrigue of a comedy and the emotional appeal of the drame. This points to the develop- , ment attempted later in La Mere coupable. Le Barbier de Seville was originally intended for an opera, and it has been twice set to music, by PaisieUo and by Rossini. The well-knit intrigue of the play, the amusing situations and witty dialogue, have gained immensely by the new type of valet whom Beaumarchais has put upon the scene, a man of wit and thought, ' le valet-maitre,' whose efforts are only counter-marched by the calumny uttered by Basile, the unsympathetic character in the play. The force of evil-speaking and slandering in checking the best-matured plans has never been more forcibly put. |£Beaumarchais knew that Le Barbier de Seville and Le Manage de Figaro were both politically hazardous as plays, since they reflected with uncompromising realism some shades of public opinion : but he meant to produce them, and storm convention in its citadel.' Of the Barbier he said : ' II faut qu'elle soit jouee ou jugee.' In a conversation with the King he is reported to have said that he would bring down the Bastille. The King repeated the phrase afterwards as a literal fore- cast of what was going to happen. 2 Beaumarchais was addicted to these sudden and bold flights of speech. He said, also, that he intended to have his play represented, even 1 See the Preface to La Mere coupable. 2 The King said the play was ' injouable.' — Grimm, Corr. Lift., vol. xi. p. 39. 20 COMEDY if it had to be in the chancel of Notre Dame. And again ; ' Ainsi, dans Le Barbier de Seville,' he says, ' je n'avais qu'ebranle l'Fjtat.' Napoleon afterwards said of Le Mariage de Figaro, ' C'etait la Revolution deja en action.' I It has been noticed by Sainte-Beuve that French society at that moment was itself exciting ridicule against the aristocracy, and against all law, order, and authority. A play which satirised and travestied society was sure to be popular .1— * But at the same time a group of operettas became popular which were mainly framed on the model of Le Boi et le Fermier by Monsigny, and they gave an unreal picture of the peasant's life and represented it as preferable to a king's. 2 f^Sach class of society had for different reasons an inaccurate view of the other, but when Beaumarchais wrote there was still a feeling of security, which turned out to be unfounded. Without this feeling of security, however, it would have been impossible for a French audience, with its love of pleasure, to have enjoyed seeing Figaro on the stage. \ The development of the character of Figaro, himself a new type, but an inheritor also of some of the best traditions of the stage, illustrates in Beaumarchais' three most im- portant plays the rise of the revolutionary spirit. While the drame was driving the valet and the soubrette off the stage, the comedie shows the development of the valet from the stock figure of the plays immediately succeeding Moliere to the ingenious Crispin and the unscrupulous Frontin of Le Sage ; and the series culminates in Figaro, who represents the rise of the tiers etat, and whose brain produces all the helpful expedients in the working out of the intrigue. The Figaro of the Barbier (1775) explains that he takes life gaily because he is so unhappy. 3 Immediately after- wards he assures the Count that he is governed by the desire for his own interest and can be thoroughly trusted to bring 1 Grimm, vol. iii. p. 219, notices that a comedy, Le Negotiant, played in 1763, was an attack on society. ' Tout est de la derniere grossieret^ dans oette com&Jie ... C'est un tissu d 'injures contre les gens de qualite.' 2 Hardly a year passed during the second half of the eighteenth century without seeing one or two rustio operas, all praotioally on the same theme. See Grimm, Con. Litt. passim. » Act I. so. 3. COMEDY 21 this about. 1 When Almaviva realises that Figaro can be useful to him, Figaro sees at once that it is the Count's self-interest that has brought them together. 2 Thus Figaro expresses the bitterness of the working class towards the masters, whose courtesy is only an occasional reward of continual service done for them. Beaumarchais supports the view of Figaro by the action of the other characters, Bratholo expresses to the Count his disdain of rank, 3 and in the same scene the Count criticises the administration of the law. 4 __ The Figaro of Le Manage (1784) is an older man, and is the critic of society as a whole. Beaumarchais explains in the preface that comedy, as understood by him at that time, satirises not one type of man but a whole set of social abuses. The author himself notices one curious fact, viz. that an eighteenth-century audience would have enjoyed the criticism if it had taken the form of serious or moral drama : in other words, if it had been constructive instead of destructive ; but the same incidents occurring in a comedy and treated with satire only alienated public sympathy. The truth is that in 1784 society felt the facts too acutely, and facts have to be somewhat remote from living experience to bear being treated with comic emphasis. The Figaro of this play is at once the defender of public morality and the comic satirist. It is not only Figaro who expresses these views. When Almaviva thinks he has convicted his wife of infidelity, Antonio the gardener criticises .the situation by saying that this would only be a fair return for the harm the Count himself has caused. 5 Thus the changed condition of society is reflected in this play (first acted in 1784). Figaro protests with Suzanne against the rights of the seigneur over the morals and fife of the villagers, and the 1 ' Je n'ai qu'nn mot ; mon interet vous repond de moi ; pesez tout a oette balance ...' — Act I. so. 4. 2 ' Peste ! comme l'utilite vous a bientot rapprocbi les distances ! ' — Act I. sc. 4. » ' Vous sentez que la superiority du rang est ici sans force." — Act IV. sc. 8. * ' Les vrais magistrate sont les soutiens de tous ceux qu'on opprime.' — Act IV. sc. 8. 6 Act V. 22 COMEDY Count answers in a sententious tone, agreeing that the shameful right should be abolished for reasons of abstract justice. 1 Then, in the scene where Marceline declares her history, a scene of which only a portion was acted, there is an attack on the selfishness and vice of men, and a clear explanation of the economic difficulties which were affecting the position of women, 2 and of the low esteem in which even men of high rank held their wives — all this reading like the manifesto of someone interested in the more serious side of problems concerning women. 3 Figaro too discourses on the helpless elements in the State : as, for example, the soldier who is under orders. 4 The last ' couplet ' which ends the play is the author's comment, though it is Brid'oison who speaks : ' Or, Messieurs, la comedie Que Ton juge en cet instant Sauf erreur, nous peint la vie Du bon peuple qui l'entend. Qu'on l'opprime, il peste, U crie, II s'agite en cent facons, Tout finit par des chansons.' 5 The two plays, Le Barbier de Seville and Le Manage de Figaro, are thus intimately connected. In the ' lettre ' which prefaces the printed edition of the first play Beau- marchais seems to see that the maxim ' All men are brothers ' is in opposition to the practical working of self-interest. Envy and jealousy, spite and traducement occur when interests are in opposition. Thus Beaumarchais takes the bases of encyclopaedic thought and shows that they are incompatible with one another. 1 ' L'abolition d'un droit honteux n'est que Paoquit d'une dette envers l'honnetete.' — Act I. so. 10. 2 Men were taking up trades which concerned women's dress, an employ- ment which Marceline felt should be left to women. 3 Act III. sc. 16. 1 ' Sommes-nous des soldats qui tuent et se font tuer pour des intergts qu'ils ignorent ? ' — Aot V. so. 12. 6 Or as Grimm puts it, Con. Litt., 1774, p. 474 :' le joli enfant que le peuple francais ! Comme il se depite quand on l'agaoe ! . . . Comme il se radouoit, et comme il est bon quand on le fait rire 1 ' COMEDY 23 In the same preface Beaumarchais outlines his view of dramatic genres. It is the will of the author, he says, which gives direction to the type of a play. And as he thinks the circumstances in life enshrine both the comic and the pathetic, he refuses to bind himself down to consider an event as ticketed for comedy or drame. The same events, read in a comic sense, might give us a play such as Le Barbier, and read in a pathetic sense might give us a drame such as he sketches out in this preface, full of reconnais- sances, predictions, and tragic situations. To show how Beaumarchais would treat a subject as drame it is sufficient to study La Mere coupable, in which the same characters appear as in the two preceding plays. La Mere cowpable was not acted till 1797. It bears the marks of the tragic time and of the movement of thought which had preceded it. The Count and Countess have ceased to be addressed ceremoniously. Figaro and Suzanne are unable, with all their old-time devotion, to protect their master and mistress against injury, loss of wealth and position, and mischief made by false friends. Family troubles bring in the discussion of divorce, formerly an impossible idea. 1 Clubs and political pamphlets are men- tioned in the variant of one scene, 2 and there are frequent allusions to the instability of government and society. Meanwhile the drame has influenced Beaumarchais. The Countess, when once her faults and those of her husband are made plain, appeals in the same breath to the mercy of God and to the sentiment and emotion of the audience. In an expansive sentence, which sums up the emotional and moral instability of the century, she says the Count's illegitimate daughter shall be as dear to her as her own, and then she assumes, in a way that is human, but not on a high level of social ethics, that in the case of the Count and herself one fault has wiped out the other. 3 But in La Mere cowpable Beaumarchais has tried to show that the oppressor and mischief-maker is not really 1 Act I. so. 4 ; Act III. so. 2. 2 Act I. so. 12. 8 ' Faisons, sans nous parler, l'echange de notre indulgence.'— Act III. sc. 2. 24 COMEDY ;he representative of the old aristocracy, but Begearss, ;he wire-puller and agitator. How many of his audience realised against whom the last words of the play were directed : ' Un jour a change notre etat ; plus d'oppresseur, I'hypocrite insolent : chacun a bien fait son devoir. Ne plaignons point quelques moments de trouble ; on gagne stssez dans les families quand on en expulse un mechant.' The word Begearss is a scarcely veiled variant of Ber- gasse, the name of the avocat who was Mesmer's first pupil in his experiments 1 and Beaumarchais' enemy, and who was himself one of the authors of La Joumee des dupes (1790), a trenchant satire on the politics of the day. Yet it does not take much imagination now to understand that Beaumarchais, who had suffered through Robespierre, had him also in his mind. The words, too, were true in more senses than perhaps Beaumarchais knew. Few of those who lived through the Terror knew that the Baron de Batz was exciting the envy and suspicion of the revolutionary leaders against one another in revenge for their attitude to con- stitutional government and the monarchy in France. The impossibility of understanding or of co-operation among political parties at that time is now known to be the result of his machinations. Money and secret intelligence gave him the power to destroy confidence by playing on evil passions and especially on the fear felt by one conspirator of another. But though Beaumarchais probably did not possess this clue to the uneasy situation, he has powerfully depicted both the atmosphere of insecurity produced, and the elusive and evil personalities that caused it. Begearss is a type of hatred incarnate : and this was the form of evil that was most feared in France when La Mere coupable was written. Beaumarchais completed his dramatic work by a fantastic and vigorous opera, Tarare, in which he attacked the vices of the monarchy under cover of a story 1 Grimm, Corr. Litt., vol xii. p. 172. See Appendix for a discission of this point. COMEDY 25 of Eastern despotism : he also attacked the unscrupulous use of power by the priests of the Church in France. The opera is original and fiercely satirical. 1 It was performed just before the outbreak of the Revolution, and shows no tendency to sentiment, or to the accommodation between new and old ideals which we trace in La Mire coupable, a piece which was not acted till a later date. The realism traced in the work of Le Sage and of Beau- marchais took an entirely new direction, and that a non- political one, with Marivaux (1688-1763). He lived and died before the outbreak of the great Revolution, but his work, though slight, was in its way prophetic, both of the condition of the ancien regime when society was restricted and trying to hold its own against the onslaught of the people, and also of the interest in psychology which is aroused in all strongly self-conscious social conditions. Thus the psychological method of Marivaux was true to his own time, and also likely to prove of interest in the nineteenth century, when, after the Revolution, France was consciously remaking her own social life. But in Marivaux 's time psychological analysis was exercised within limits deliberately set, and the grosser elements in life were eliminated. More modern psychological drama admits practically everything as material for analysis. What was new in Marivaux's comedy for his own time was that he renounced both intrigue and the notion of conflict in the play, and substituted a series of actions and reactions in the emotion of the characters of his drama. Marivaux's theatre is then really the thedtre of the salon, of the sheltered, cultivated, emotional life, with its subtle shades of expression. It leads on to the slight psychological 1 See Grimm, Corr. IAtt., 1787, p. 408: ' ... L'auteur de Tarare aura toujours le merite d'avoir present^ dans cet opera une action dont la conception et la marche ne ressemblent a celle d'aucun autre ; d'avoir eu le talent d'y dormer assez adroitement une grande lecon aux souverains qui abusent de leur pouvoir, et de consoler les victimes du despotisme en leur rappelant cette grande verity, que le hasard seul fait les rois et le caractere des hommes ... Apres avoir dit leur fait aux ministres, aux grands seigneurs dans sa comedie du Manage de Figaro, il lui manquait encore de le dire de meme aux pretres et aux rois ; il n'y avait que le Sieur de Beaumarchais qui put l'oser ...' 26 COMEDY comedies de salon of Alfred de Musset : and, as we have suggested, it contributes something to the modern problem play, which, though raising larger issues, and deal- ing with more varied material, has this in common with Marivaux's drama, that the limits of the action are extremely narrow, and that the emotions in play are those of a highly sensitive social order. The differences are of course even more clearly marked than the likenesses. Other motives beyond those of passion and galanterie are given a place in the modern drama. Hereditary instincts, and family ties of a conservative order, at war with the ideals and desires of a younger generation— the claims of ambition and revenge and their destruction of the domestic instincts — the dis- cussion of these facts lets in fresh subjects of debate into a modern play. But Marivaux's drama reflects a sheltered hothouse condition of society which was even then rapidly becoming extinct. It is an isolated society, and the insist- ence on etiquette and on the psychology of the affections reminds the reader of the haunting picture of the aristo- crats in prison during the Terror, who within their prison and in spite of its discomforts carried on the game of social life up to the very guillotine. ' Marivaudage ' was really the study of social psychology in its isolated condition, and thus it was opposed to the political development of the time. It is with difficulty that the characters in Marivaux's plays remember what they ought to think at any moment about the general situation and the facts which surround them. The necessity for education, the excellence of a simple and virtuous life, uncomplicated by etiquette, the equality produced by a true affection— these are the real subjects of thought in Marivaux's period, but they seldom come to the surface in his plays. If they do, Marivaux is so good an artist as to bring them into direct connexion with the intrigue, as when in Le Jeu de Vamour et du hasard, the double disguise causes the hero and heroine to think that the one has fallen in love with the soubrette, and the other with the valet. In his first plays Marivaux exercises the diplomacy of love with a sort of precieux grace, very reminding of the lighter COMEDY 27 dialogues of the Elizabethan stage, 1 but in the later plays, beginning with Le Jeu de Vamour et du hasard (1730), there is indication of a conflict between the will and passion. It is conceivable that Marivaux, writing for the lady who took the part of the heroine, deepened his conception of Silvia to suit her powers ; for there are passages where Marivaux seems to rise above his usual manner. It is evident to anyone who examines the influence on Marivaux of the seventeenth-century stage, that he owes a good deal to the Misanthrope of Moliere. He has, in fact, developed the form of that play and used it for a much slighter presentation of life. Marivaux, then, without touching any very vital chord, reflects social life within conditions that are artificially limited, and however true the feeling of his characters, the mere fact of the positions in which he places them with regard to the world and with regard to one another prevents him from dealing with any problems beyond those of a delicate sentiment. His plays are an attempt at realism within ideal imaginary conditions. What he takes for the world is frankly called a salon by later writers. The characters in his plays do not moralise as do the characters in his novels, and Marivaux's attitude to the drame would probably be that it was a novel put upon the stage. His own novels affected the drame, but his thedtre is pure comedy and is itself unaffected by the new develop- ment in drama. Mention should be made here of a single excellent comedy by La Noue (1701-1761), whose chief inclination was to tragedy, but who in La Coquette corrigee (1756) gave the Theatre Francais a comedy in verse, light and amusing, full of esprit, closely studied from life and well constructed. The characters live in the same world as Marivaux, but they have more force, more real life, and the moral of the play is that affection discovers the true woman and makes her unable to play at love or to bear the artifi- ciality of a hollow society. Orphise, the aunt of Julie, still i E.g. in A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice. 28 COMEDY young and attractive, has her following of men, but though able to keep Clitandre by her side, she not only allows, but encourages him to make love to Julie, as she sees that the hope of a real love will cure Julie's insatiable thirst for flirtation. Orphise's scheme succeeds, and the develop- ment of Julie's heart makes the interest of the piece and the opportunity of the actress who plays the part. In a slighter comedy, UObstine, which was never acted, La Noue seems to have been able to combine grace of form with realism of observation. During the later years of the century another experiment of the same kind, though much less artistic, was tried by Collin d'Harleville. Like Marivaux, this writer used verse for the most part as his medium, and this at once separates both authors from the writers of drame, part of whose creed it was to use prose. D'Harleville, like Marivaux, chose a restricted frame for the action of bis play. Like Marivaux, too, he depends for its interest on the psychological analysis of mood and sentiment. But d'Harleville chooses the middle class rather than the cultured or fashionable class for his studies : and the transition from one writer to the other is the transition from the first to the second half of the eighteenth century. His popularity may be partly due to his traditionary merits and qualities. He was perhaps the only writer of his time who kept the classical formula for comedy, while at the same time he consulted the taste of the age in his painting of character. Diderot, whose criticism was acute, saw that d'Harleville was a writer but not a dramatist : ' II y a la-dedans du talent, il y en a beaucoup. Les vers sont faciles, bien tournes ; style comique ; mais une action faible ; cela n'a point de corps, point de soutien ; c'est une pelure d'oignon brodee en paillettes d'or et d'argent.' x His first choice of titles shows an imitation of the old type of comedy : L' Inconstant, UOptimiste, Le Vieux Celiba- taire ; but Monsieur de Crac dans son petit castel, Les 1 Notice sur Collin d'Harleville, ed. Laplace, Sanohez et Cie, p. xi. COMEDY 29 CMteaux en Espagne, are more original. His last two comedies are Les Mceurs du jour and Malice pour malice. It was through the help of a friend, Desalles, who prevailed on Madame Campan and the Due de Duras to ask the Queen's leave for L'Inconstant to be performed at Versailles in 1784, that d'Harleville first obtained a hearing. The names of the characters in this play are conventional, and suggest the usual types, but the heroine, Eliante, is a young English widow, and the inclusion of this character is in accordance with the fashion for what was English that marked those years. Crispin, the valet, is of the type put on the boards by Le Sage. He is inclined to take command of his master, Florimond, who, with the inconstancy that is his title-role, gets tired of the valet : Florimond : Crispin ! ... Oh le sot nom ! Crispin : Monsieur ? Florimond : (a part) : La sotte face ! x The valet, however, refuses to be driven away : ' Trouvons un stratageme Pour le servir encore en depit de lui-meme.' a But, like an eighteenth-century hero, Florimond gives a philosophical reason for his inconstancy. If everything is under the law of change, why not man's own mind ? 3 Crispin has a quickness of wit that corresponds to the emergency. He, too, can become another type of valet, La Fleur, with a Gascon accent. Florimond takes him back under the new name : ' Je te reprends. Mais si tu veux qu'on t'aime Plus de Crispin.' 4 The actual intrigue is not particularly interesting— but the speech of the inconstant Florimond at the end of the play is in character. He cannot act up to any principles, he will therefore make a principle of inconstancy. He will i L'Inconstant, Act I. scs. 7, 8. a Ibid., Act I. so. 8. s ' Tout passe, tout finit, tout s'efface, en un mot, tout change : changeons done, puisque e'est notre lot.' — Act I. sc. 9. * Act II. sc. 5. 30 COMEDY travel from place to place, be free to admire all the women he sees, being freed from the bondage of faithfulness to any one of them. 1 In 1788 L'Optimiste was performed. The title is a word which had been brought into use by Leibniz and by Voltaire his critic, and D'Harleville's play is a not unpleasing satire on a man who thinks everything delightful in his sur- roundings, while his niece, his daughter, his secretary, all have reason to be unhappy, and M. de Plinville the optimist does not see or is not afflicted by their ennuis. In fact^^w* lives in a happy dream which the cares of others do not destroy. His wife has no illusions, but tries in vain to pierce, the self-satisfaction, expressed, for example, as follows : ' Le chateau de Plinville est le plus beau du monde ' 2 ; and again ' L'homme n'est ni mechant, ni malheureux, ni sot.' 3 Even a fire and bankruptcy do not disturb his equanimity — only when his daughter's lover gives her up after the latter fact with pretended generosity to the lover she prefers, then at last M. de Plinville is ruffled. The play is rounded off by the lover producing money to redeem the estate, when, circumstances having become propitious, de Plinville considers that at any rate in this life happiness outweighs 1 Crispin : Quoi ! tout de bon, monsieur, vous renoncez aux femmes ? Florimond i Dis que j'y renoncais quand mon cceur enchante Adorait constamment une seule beaute ; Quand mes yeux, eblouis par un oharme funeste, Fixes sur une seule, oubliaient tout le reste : Car je faisais alors injure au sexe entier. Mais cette erreur, enfin, je pretends l'expier. Je le declare done, je restitue aux belles Un cceur qui trop longtemps fut aveugle pour elles, Entre elles desormais je vais le partager, Le donner, le reprendre, et jamais l'engager. J'offensais cent beautes quand je n'en aimais qu'une I J'en veux adorer mille, et n'en aimer aucune. . . . Aot III. so. 12. * Aot I. so. 4. s Act III. so. 9. COMEDY 31 sorrow in the case of ' l'homme sensible.' x Here is D'Harle- ville's criticism of the sensibility of the age. ' L'homme sensible,' like his master Rousseau, evades and flees from facts. If in the eighteenth century the drame could not be at the same time strictly realist and yet teach a moral lesson, as Diderot had to admit, the man of sensibility (who is the hero of the drame) could only exercise his emotion and seize the happiness of life by shutting his eyes to facts. D'Harleville has thus pointed out the inconsistency in the character of the hero of the drame to a nation that had just begun to realise the paradox implied in this form of dramatic art. It is the answer to the position of Rousseau. In 1791 D'Harleville gave a little one-act play, Monsieur de Crac, that charmed Paris even at that grave moment with its lively badinage of the Gascon's habit of exaggeration. It was not a time when anything more vital could have been put upon the stage. Two years before a five-act comedy, Les Ch&teaux en Espagne, took up again the theme of L'Optimiste. M. d'Orlange is a man of dreams : and the visions which solace him have nothing to do with reality. 2 While the optimist insisted on looking at reality through rose-coloured glasses, M. d'Orlange sees the possibility of change for the better in every circumstance. He stays for two days in the chateau of M. d'Orfeuil, and immediately sees himself as the son-in-law, inheriting the land, and disposing of it 1 ' ... tout chagrin qu'il est, Peut-etre il va sentir que dans la vie humaine, Le bonheur tot ou tard fait oublier la peine, Qu'il n'en est que plus doux, et que rhomme de bien, L'homme sensible, alors, peut dire : Tout est bien.' Act V. sc. 13. 2 ' Le pauvre paysan, sur sa beohe appuye, Peut Be eroire, un moment, seigneur de son village. Le vieillard, oubliant lea glaces de son age, Se figure aux genoux d'une jeune beaute ; Et sourit ; son neveu sourit de son c6t6 ; En songeant qu'un matin du bonhomme il herite ; Telle femme se croit sultane favorite ; Un commis est ministre ; un jeune abbe prelat ; Le prelat. ... II n'est pas jusqu'au simple soldat, Qui ne se soit un jour cru Marechal de France ; Et le pauvre, lui-meme, est riohe en esperance." Act III. sc. 7. ! COMEDY cording to the taste of the time. The French garden is yield to an English garden, arranged after the model of e Queen's garden at Trianon. 1 If he is threatened with duel he sees himself as victor, or as picturesquely wounded, hen he loses Mademoiselle d'Orfeuil to the rightful lover, s constructs in imagination an equally delightful future r himself. Represented in Paris in February 1789 this ay is a satiric comment on the hopeful fancy of France id her blindness to the coming horrors of revolution. 1 ' Ces grands appartements sont vraiment detestables, Nos bona aieux etaient des gens fort respectables, Mais iis ne savoient pas distribuer jadis. Dans cette piece, moi, je vons en ferai dix. Passons dans le jaidin : car c'est la que je brille. Je fais oter d'abord cette triste charmille ... Quoi ! Je fais tout 6ter. Nous avons du terrain ! Voila tout ce qu'il faut pour creer un jaidin. J'en ai fait vingt : ils sont tous dans mon portefeuille. Entre mille sentiers bordes de chevrefeuille, II en est un bien sombre : on n'y voit.rien du tout ; Et Ton est etonn6, quand on arrive au bout, De voir ... Qu'y verra-t-on ? un Amour, un vieux temple, Un kiosque ! Oh ! non, rien d'etonnant ; par exemple Un petit pavilion, au dehors tout uni, Plus modeste en dedans, le luxe en est banni. On gate la nature, et moi je la respecte. Du pavilion, moi seul, je serai l'architecte. Je serai jardinier aussi : je planterai Des arbrisseaux, des flours : je les arroserai Car j'aurai sous ma main une source d'eau pure, Et tout autour de moi la plus belle verdure ! De ce lieu tout mortel est d'avance exile : Mon beau-pere et ma femme en auront seuls la cle.' Les Chdteaux en Espagne, Act IV. so. 2. this passage there are allusions to the ' petits appartements,' the * char- lies,' of the old botanic garden which the Queen had had removed ; the ;h ground on the ' rocher,' the winding paths, the dark grotto ; the ' Temple Lmour,' containing the Cupid of Bouchardon, the smaller ' kiosque,' the Ued ' Belvedere,' the ' Salon frais.' Andrieux, D'Harleville's friend, in Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de CoUin-HarleviUe, prefaoing the latter's lected works, points out the connection of this play, Les Chateaux en Espagne, ;h the earlier one, L'Optimiste, and shows that the plot of the former was dosed to him by D'Harleville on the way to Versailles. ' L'Optimiste , comme de raison, joue a Versailles. Nous allames voir cette representa- n, Collin et moi, danB une petite voiture, et ce fut pendant ce voyage qu'il parla pour la premiere fois des Chdteaux en Espagne, dont il avoit tout lvellement ooncu l'idee et oommenoe a tracer le plan ' (Ed. 1821, p. xli). COMEDY 33 M. d'Orlange is even more dense than the philosophical optimist. D'Harleville succumbed to illness in the summer of 1789, but wrote when in bed the play Le Vieux Celibataire, which his contemporaries greatly enjoyed, and which differed from his other plays in the improved characterisation of the individuals in the drama. The actual production of the play was put off by the events of 1790 and the formation of the local gardes nationales in which project D'Harleville took an effective part. Though the plot of the play is not interesting (the old bachelor is a prey to his valet and to an intriguing housekeeper, who keep out the nephew from his rights), it reflects the desire of France at the time that riches should be distributed in order to ' faire un sort ' for the poor, and that men should fulfil every function of the life of a citizen, including marriage and the education of children. The dialogue is well written and expresses very subtly the mixture of real affection and self-interest in the minds of Dubriage's servants, and the gradual increase of their selfishness and evil-doing . Dubriage is represented as sinning through weakness. Too easily touched by feeling, he loses will-power and reasoning faculties. The dangers await- ing ' l'homme sensible ' are here too very clearly expressed. Les Mwurs du jour, first acted in 1800, is interesting in its mise-en-scene. The costumes on the boards have to be exactly up to date, and the whole action passes in one room. The same applies to the first two acts of Malice pour malice, 'representee pour la premiere fois sur le theatre Louvois le 18 pluviose an xi (1803).' Les Mceurs du jour describes the desire for a simple and. natural fife as opposed to the artificial one of Paris : but the audience to whom Fromont speaks consider his ideal as already an antiquated one. 1 They are full of social ambition, impatience of 1 ' Peu connue au dehors, meme du voisinage, La femme Tit, se plait au sein de son menage, Soigne, instruit, et gaiment, l'enfant qu'elle a nourri, Trouve tout naturel d'honorer son man. Tour a tour promenade, ou spectacle, ou lecture, On n'est blase sur rien ; c'est partout la nature.' Act II. sc. II. COMEDY js, 1 eagerness to make money, the whole veiled with unreal ntiment. 2 Malice pour malice is also a satire on the alicious misunderstandings in a small society : and ends ith a plea for tolerance : ' Oui, soyons desormais l'un pour l'autre indulgents ; Vivons entre nous tous comme de bonnes gens ; Et que notre gaite, toujours naive et tranche, Ne blesse plus, pas meme en prenant sa revanche. ' 3 In the history of French comedy in the eighteenth sntury these plays of D'Harleville, though not first-rate in ly sense, are not the least interesting, because they show te criticism of average opinion on the life reflected in the :ama, and on the art that would arbitrarily turn out ttire from the stage and only give a shadowy unreal cture of life. D'Harleville 's puppets are mainly of the d historic type, their characters are fixed, and they have certain part to play in the drama. But because D'Harle- ille, who sets them in motion, has powers of observation id also of invention, he makes a most ingenious attempt t producing comedy that is gay and rational and includes criticism of human nature as well as of the small foibles E his day. 4 Just as Mercier's plays are evidence that the ramatist could not banish romance from the drame, so •'Harlevfile's show us that the writer of comedies must se satire, and employ it like Moliere as a moral corrective f society. Since the criticism of life expressed by French rt always implies morality in the largest sense, there i room on the French stage alike for comedy, drame, and ragedy ; for morals can be influenced both by a satirical 1 Madame Derbin : Nous avons le divorce. M. Basset : Et rien n'est plus commode. Act II. so. 11. 2 Act IV. so. 11. 3 Act III. so. 9. 4 Other comedies of D'Harleville's are, Le VieiUard et lesjeunes gens (1803), I veut tout faire, Les Riches, M. Belmont, Les Querelles des deux frires (the .8t posthumous). COMEDY 35 description of real life and by an imaginative description of ideal conditions. The same general character as in D'Harleville's work is noticeable in the drama of Francois G. J. S. Andrieux (1759-1833), whose first play, Anaximandre, was written at the procureur's desk, and represented in 1782. Andrieux found his natural vein in the little comedy Les lUtourdis (1787). In his preface he explains that he was a friend of Collin d'Harleville, and owed to the latter the fine which happily brought about the denouement of his play. 1 As was the case with D'Harleville, Andrieux depended on lively and telling dialogue for the success of his play (which was written in verse), but there are also character- drawing and character-development which give Andrieux a place in the new school of writers of comedy who attend to the psychology of their characters. This may account, too, for the popularity of Andrieux's plays in England as well as in France. The comedy had learnt from the drame the use of emotional situations and their effect on the personages of drama. 2 On the background thus marked out, Andrieux developed the humorous side of the play. In Les £tourdis D'Aiglemont borrows money from Folleville, who has raised it by represent- ing to D'Aiglemont's uncle that his nephew is dead and has had an expensive funeral. The situation dawns gradually on the nephew, and then has to be revealed to the uncle. As in other plays of the period extravagance and dishonesty in the matter of money are the chief social evils blamed ; and scorn is poured on the usurers who lend themselves to the corruption of society. 3 The comic love scenes between L'Hotesse and Deschamps are meant to 1 D'Harleville visualised the last scene, in which the nephew of D'Aigle- mont (le mort supposg) is hidden in the cabinet, but his uncle is beginning to forgive the deceit which has been practised on him. D'Harleville then, in the character of the uncle, rapped out the line : ' Mais qu'on le voie au moins, s'il veut qu'on lui pardonne.' 2 As Mole the actor said of D'Harleville's plays, he found there ' quelque pature pour le cceur.' 3 Act III. sc. 3, 4. 5 COMEDY ring out the Self-seeking of the latter, 1 in contrast to the sal love which Julie and the younger D'Aiglemont show ) each other. Andrieux manages to work up this ■eatment of two planes of interest, the satirical and the notional, into a well-constructed play. In 1802 he wrote one-act drama, Helvetius, ou La Vengeance . nous ferons un menage si douz, Que dans votre maison ... La maison est a vous, N'est-ce pas ? Idtesse : Oui, vraiment ! schamps : Ah ! vous etes charmante. Je crois qu'elle vaut bien vingt mille francs ? Htoe ; Oh ! trente, Tout au moins. nhamps : Les beaux yeux ! Qu'ils sont vifs et percans. Utesse : Vous me flattez ... ^champs : Qui ? moi ? Je dis ee que je sens. Votre mobilier parait considerable f Idtesse : H vaut dix mille francs. schamps : Vous etes adorable ! etc Aot I. so. 2. 2 Priface de Hehitius. ' Je me suis propose un but qui me semble raison- )le ; c'est de montrer qu'il ne faut pas juger les hommes d'apres quelques nions speculatives, qu'il ne faut pas surtout les mepriser et les hair pour opinions, lorsqu'on leur voit faire des aotions pour lesquelles on est oblige les respeoter et de les aimer.' COMEDY 37 natural feeling and demanded on the stage an artificial propriety and even a prudery which the society of that date cultivated to cover up the organised licence of the First Empire. There was, too, an effort to recover the dignity and outer decorum of an aristocratic society that had passed away, and as Andrieux observes, the effort to keep up dignity kills spontaneous gaiety. 1 At the same time he observes that the old stage expedients, substitutions of one paper for another, exits and entrances without sufficient motive, would now be received impatiently, the drame has taught the play- going public that probability should be considered in a play, and that comedy as a criticism of society should deal with a present condition of life, and not with one which has ceased to affect the feeling of the time. Thus comedy should admit every type of subject and should be elastic in its methods. 2 In practice Andrieux carried out this theory, and his success in combining new and old methods is perhaps due to the fact that, unlike the authors of drame, he had a real appreciation of classical comedy— though it is unfortunate that he showed this by trying to introduce an adapted comedy of Corneille's on the French stage— and by writing another reconstruction of the fife of Moliere for the theatre. 3 In Le Tresor (1807) he took the idea of the play from a comedy of Plautus, and worked it up in imitation of Moliere's UAvare. But the characters and the setting are contemporary, and are realistically described. The same applies to Andrieux's other plays : they are a picture of society of the date of the representation of the play, and thus have an interest which is more permanent than the borrowed plot. Le Vieux Fat (1 810) has a dramatic 1 Preface de la Suite du Menteur de P. Corneille, avec des Changements, etc., 1803. ' A voir la maniere dont les comedies nouvelles sont ecoutees au Theatre Francais, il semble que les spectateurs s'y tiennent en garde contre la surprise du plaisir qu'ils pourraient avoir; il semble qu'ils ne veuillent permettre a l'auteur de les faire rire qu'aveo mesure et dignity ... Mais la dignity amine la gravity avec elle et tue la gaite et le rire.' 2 ' La comedie .doit eprouver, par l'effet du temps, plus de variations que la trageclie, oar la comedie doit Stre un tableau fiddle de la society, or la nociete" change, et le tableau, pour etre toujours ressemblant, doit changer comme le modele.' 8 Moltire avec ses amis, ou La Soirte d'Auteuil, 1804. 5 COMEDY ■ologue instead of a preface, in which, in the manner of . B. Shaw, the author gets in a hit at possible criticisms ifore the critics can say a word. Of La Comedienne adrieux had a private representation in 1812 before the iblic one in 1816, but he found that his classical notion comedy was diverging further and further from the self- >nscious moral theory of that date. His opportunity came hen Picard opened the Thedtre Royal de VOdeon in 1816 : id Andrieux was asked to write the prologue. From ds time onwards he wrote plays for the theatre imitated om the English {La Jeune Creole, Lenore), stories, and gitive verse ; but he gave up the genre for which he was pecially fitted, and yielded to the taste of the time for mantic sentiment. The unities give place to irregularity construction. Jane Shore, in the later play, is endowed ith the more harmonious name of Lenore, with its German sociations. Finally Andrieux wrote a poem describing larlotte at the tomb of Werther reading Ossian and weep- g over his urn, a poem which marks his sympathy with the odels of the early nineteenth century. 1 His part in the ghteenth-century drama is then confined to the plays ritten before 1816. After 1789 comedy written in verse according to the /ttern of seventeenth-century drama was thus only kept ive by the efforts of D'Harleville and Andrieux, who by judicious use of satire and of emotional situations managed keep the interest of an audience otherwise impatient of e manner of old French comedy. 2 An author of the insition period between the eighteenth and nineteenth nturies, L. B. Picard (1769-1828), used prose for his 1 ' Je viens nourrir ma tristesse Aux lieux oil tu te plaisais, Je porto avec moi sans cesse Le livre que tu lisais. II rcdoublait tes alarmes ; II augment e mes douleurs ; Tu le mouillas de tes larmes ; Je l'arrose de mes pleurs.' * Both D'Harleville and Andrieux trace the origin of their plays to gle maxims derived from Boileau or other moralists of the seventeenth itury. COMEDY 39 comedies, except when writing orks out the psychology of this appeal. What is the use a classical play ? he^says : what morality can it induce ? ir morality is a personal application of the thoughts oduced in our minds by an event. The classical play es not help in this. What is the use of a comedy ? It of very little use as a scourge of vice. But serious drama of use. It places us in a real relation to the events on e stage: ' Leurs traverses nous sont un objet de reflexion, une jasion de retour sur nous-memes.' x we suffer, we gain consolation ; if we are happy ' alors us exercerons delicieusement notre sensibilite, nous ferons preuve de notre faculte de bienveillance.' The pathetic 3n becomes ' useful,' and as such is justified by writers of 3 eighteenth century. The subjects which were chosen by dramatists during the iond half of the eighteenth century, for example Le Pere famille of Diderot and the Eugenie of Beaumarchais, 5 subjects which announce in practice the popular taste, e suffering of innocent people, benevolence exercised ivards them by the good, or reparation made by the bad— s simple list of events roughly covers all the stories put on the stage in the drame of the eighteenth century. The moral teaching of the play was then greatly empha- ed. The Church was no longer, as in the seventeenth ltury, the censor of morals, and lay writers had taken up 3 task. Their reasons for considering the stage a pecu- rly suitable vehicle for the teaching of morality are plained by all dramatic critics in the century. Voltaire, bastien Mercier, Grimm, and Diderot have the most nplete theories on the subject, which the opposition of iusseau only served to strengthen. Grimm went so far to hope that the statesmen of the new era would include ets who would have had their characters formed by that 1 See Beolard, Sebastien Mercier, p. 166. ' DRAME ' 49 excellent moral institution, the stage. The drama would then fulfil all the State obligations for educating its citizens in the ways of public morality : ' Alors les theatres deviendront un cours d'institutions politiques et morales, et les poetes ne seront plus seulement des hommes de genie, mais des hommes d'etat.' x The dramatists expressed in their prefaces the same desire to be useful to society through inculcating virtue. So Destouches explains his aim in his preface to the Curieux Impertinent : ... ' de corriger les moeurs, de tomber sur le ridicule, de decrier le vice, et de mettre la vertu dans un si beau jour qu'elle s'attire l'estime et la veneration publiques.' Mercier, dramatist and theorist, was ' echauffe par le desir de donner un drame utile.' 2 Comedy, thought Diderot, should give men a taste for duty : ' Dans ces jours solennels, on representera une belle tragedie qui apprenne aux hommes a redouter les passions ; une bonne comedie qui les instruise de leurs devoirs et qui leur en inspire le gout.' 3 The social ideal expressed in the drame is not new. It is found in all French literature since France became a nation, and is merely moulded from time to time to suit the freshness of new circumstances. Expressed in their different ways by Corneille, Moliere, and Racine, it is shown in the eighteenth century not only by the writers of drame, but also by the continuators of Racine's and of Moliere's tradition. For instance, the Abbe Genest, one of Racine's imitators in the eighteenth century, who gave to the ancient plots a more modern setting, expressed in the Preface de Penelope (1722) the social aim of the stage : ' Mon sujet m'a fourni l'idee de toutes les vertus qui sont 1'ame de la societe civile, les devoirs d'un fidele sujet envers son roi, d'une illustre femme envers son mari, d'un fils genereux envers son pere.' 1 Grimm, Con. Litt. viii. 80. ' Preface de Jenneval. * 2« Enttetien, 108, 109. ' DRAME ' e characters in this play act and speak with the ordi- ry manner and ways of thought of the later seventeenth ltury. The drams, then, was the expression of a political ideal. was moral and social in its tendency. It claimed to peal to sensibility and to avoid satire, and to see only $ romance of the simple life. But it claimed also to be ;rue picture of real circumstances. The imitation of nature in the drama was of, course no w thing. Brunetiere, in his essay on ' Le Naturalisme XVII e siecle,' shows that realism was characteristic of 3 age of Louis XIV. The lines, he says, of the classical ama were large and simple and opposed to exaggeration any direction. So the burlesque of Cyrano and of Scarron d but a short life ; the language of the precieux school on became a subject for irony, and the emphatic school the drama yielded to the more natural effects obtained ' Racine and Moliere. The eighteenth century repeated tne of the errors of the seventeenth. Thus we find ex- lples of preciosity in Fontenelle, of the grotesque in rrault, and of the over-emphatic school in Crebillon. it these experiments occurred comparatively early in the ntury, and were submerged by the great flood of scientific d critical thought that nearly extinguished the drama, d would in fact have done so had not the stage identified ielf with the undercurrent of sentiment and refreshed the erage mind with dramas of adventure and of rustic life. ius we have the figures of the ' Barbier de Seville ' and the )evin du Village ' side by side with the bourgeois types long which they move. We have also the spectacular : ects gained by the first attempt at opera, 1 and the pathetic ama which reflected the sensibility of the middle class. The first symptom of the change was the appearance of e comedie larmoyante, which developed into the drame urgeois. It had been foreshadowed as early as the six- 1 From the beginning of the century pastorals and ' tragedie-operas * re written, and from 1750 onwards rustic and comic operas appeared in iok succession, sometimes two new ones in one year. This helped to ert the taste of the nation from classical comedy. « DRAME ' 51 teenth century by the tragi-comedy of Hardy, where there was an effort to paint scenes of ordinary life without much criticism or comment ; and also perhaps by Corneille's early comedies, for exactly the same reason. Corneille's tragedies, too, had something in common with the drarne, through his desire to attain naturalness of action in them ; and had not Corneille himself said, before Diderot, that kings and princes were not the only necessary exponents of high sentiment ? 1 The primitive passion and excitement of the senses shown by the characters in Racine's tragedies were also near enough to life to ensure the interest of the bourgeois onlooker. Moliere had admitted serious subjects into drama, as, for example, in Tartufe and in Don Juan, though he treated them in a way that disengaged the comic element. But his followers were unable to combine the senti- ment for which they wished with the laughter of the comedy of manners. They fled from every temptation to satire and thus the drame was encouraged to the detriment of satire as it was also, in theory at any rate, to the destruction of romance. In the development of the drame from the theatre of the seventeenth century, the plays of Destouches (1680- 1754) supply a necessary link. This author had already stated, in the prologue to the Curieux impertinent, his desire to use the stage for a moral purpose. The very titles of his plays make it clear that Destouches is attempt- ing a criticism of society: L'Irresolu, Le Philosophe marie, L'Ambitieux et VIndiscret, Le Glorieux, Ulngrat, L'Envieux, Le Dissipateur, are examples of this. Very rarely do we find a different form, as in Le Triple Mariage, L'Obstacle imprevu, La fausse Agnes. What in Moliere was a secondary title or explanation of the scope of a piece becomes in Destouches the principal description of it. In the definition of character, and in the names of the charac- ters, Destouches stands between the new fashion and the old tradition. Valere is the name for a young lover and so is Cleon. These names occur in several plays, just as they did in Corneille and Moliere. Oronte, Ariste, Geronte are 1 B-pitre d M. de ZuyUchem. 52 ' DRAME ' older men, and, as in Moliere, the names of Belise and Ange- lique are used for the women's parts. Nerine, as we should expect, is a suivante. L'Olive, La Fleur, L'Epine are names of valets, derived from Moliere, but a new name is added, that of Pasquin, of Italian origin, probably derived from bhe Italian Pasquino, one of the makers of Pasquinades or satires at Rome. Pasquin comes in as a valet in the plays of Baron (1653-1729), 1 and when we meet him in the plays af Destouches he is a person of much wit and discretion who forces the action in the interest of the hero and heroine in the plays, and has obviously a moral end in view which prevents him from being only the valet of farce. Pasquin has a manner of uttering home-truths— a manner quite un- limited in its impertinence' — which reduces the other char- acters to helpless silence. In Le Triple Mariage he rushes an the stage, uttering the huntsman's yell, and finding Nerine there he explains to her that his master is no hunts- nan of romance, has not even shot a sparrow, but has bought game at the poulterer's on the way. 2 In L'Obstacle 'mprevu the Pasquin of the play assures the lover Valere, ;vho sees the Julie of his desire being snatched away, that lis father's action shows want of sense and reason. 3 On ;he other hand, he sees the moment when Julie cannot be yon. Acute as he is, Pasquin 's cleverness is counter- balanced and sometimes countermatched by that of Nerine, vho in L'Obstacle imprevu is his wife. In the plays of Destouches a contrast is marked between he manners of Paris and those of the provinces. Old- ashioned bourgeois virtues, faithfulness and domesticity tre to be found in the provinces. Paris provides a ' bel ir ' and destroys sincerity : 1 See also the play of Eegnard and Dufresny, Pasquin et Marforio, m&decin 'es moeurs (1697). 2 Nirine : Que diantre veux-tu dire ? Pasquin ; . Que nous ne venons point du chateau de Clitandre, comme ous voulons le persuader au pere de mon maitre. Nous n'avons £te qu'a n village, a demi-lieue de Paris, et nous n'y avons pas seulement tue un uoineau. — Le Triple Mariage, so. 10. 3 Pasquin : Mais au fond, de quoi vous plaignez-vous ? Julie ne vous st pas destinee, et votre pere n'a d'autre tort en eeoi que celui d'avoir perdu a sens et la raison. — V Obstacle imprivu, Act III. so. 1. ' DRAME ' 53 'Je ne suis point un mari du bel air,' says Pasquin. ' J'aime ma femme.' ' Elle lit depuis le matin jusqu'au soir et se pique de savoir tout,' says Valere of Angelique, and Pasquin answers, ' C'est un reste de province. Le grand monde la corrigera.' 1 The main fault which the new comedy attacks is that of pride. It is true fbat in Le Glorieux Destouches, who had visited England and been struck by the stiff coldness of the aristocratic manner there, probably forced the note and produced what to a French audience must have seemed like a caricature in the character of the Comte de Tufiere, but, on the other hand, he was attempting to see the French nobility from the point of view of the middle and lower classes, an attempt which Moliere had only made in certain plays, for example, in Don Juan and in Georges Dandin, and there the satire is disguised because Moliere satirises other groups as well. 2 The criticism of the arrogance of the Comte de Tufiere is put into the mouth of Pasquin, who speaks for the whole class of valets, and points out that the man who is arrogant to his social inferiors is also difficult and conceited with his social equals. Pride, in fact, is the root of all evil, as the mediaeval theologians felt, 3 and is the chief obstacle 1 L'Obstacle imprivu, Act I. sc. 1. 2 Le Glorieux was translated into English (Thos. Holcroft, Covent Garden) as The School of Arrogance in 1791. a ' Sa politique Est d'etre toujours grave avec un domestique ; S'il lui disait un mot il croirait s'abaisser, Et qu'un valet lui parle, il se fera ohasser. Enfin pour ebaueher en deux mots sa peinture, C'est l'homme le plus vain qu'ait produit la nature ; Pour ses inferieurs plein d'un mepris ehoquant ; Avec ses egaux meme il prend Pair important : Si fier de ses aleux, si fier de sa noblesse, Qu'il croit etre ici-bas le seul de son espece ; Persuade d'ailleurs de son habilete, Et decidant sur tout avec autorit6 ; Se croyant en tout genre un merite supreme, Dedaignant tout le monde, et s'admirant lui-meme. En un mot, des mortels le plus impeiieux, Et le plus suffisant, et le plus glorieux.' Le Glorieux, Act I. sc. 4. ' DRAME ' bh to courtesy and to the recognition of the natural lality of man. In Le Glorieux Destouches carries Ms thesis so far as make it appear that the suivante Lisette, though of simple idition, is a good enough match for the hero, but Des- iches is conventional enough as a dramatist and thinker make her turn out to be well-born. 1 It has been noticed by Lanson 2 that the characters in stouches are all self-conscious. They moralise on their n type of conduct and consciously express it. Sometimes s action is ironical, as when Nerine the suivante ex- ins that she is obliged to be in love with the valet because s is ' selon les regies ' ; but sometimes it is a case of serious iracter-drawing and the characters all express the parti- al purpose for which they have been put upon the stage, the first case the comedy leans to satire, in the second s inevitability of the result produces an effect of mechanism it sometimes suggests Moliere without the saving humour the great seventeenth-century writer. According to Destouches the love of virtue was to be lulcated, but too much amusement was not to be excited the process. There was to be tie pure et same morale moderement assaisonnee de tines plaisanteries et de quelques traits delicatement istiques.' 3 id in the prologue to L'Ambitieux Destouches explains it this produces what he calls noble comedy. 4 Again in the preface to Le Glorieux Destouches makes it Ldent that the moral purpose of a play should lead to 1 Le Glorieux, Act IV. sc. 3 ; and Act I. so. 8. ! 6. Lanson, Nivette de La Chaussie et la comidie larmoyante, pp. 38, 39. ss peisonnages de Destouches sont si bien des moralistes qu'ils se detachent ux-memes, se regardent curieusement et moralisent sur leur propre r61e. mettent leur caractere en maximes, et se conduisent selon les regies qu'ils tirent.' 3 La Force du naturel, Preface. 4 ' II traite un sujet noble, elev£, serieux . . , II tache d'egayer le sublime tragique, Non par des traits fac6tieux, Mais par ceux d'un noble comique.' ' DRAME ' 55 the virtuous action being put in a clear and admirable light, and that amusement was to be a secondary considera- tion. 1 Thus Destouches has no fear of an anti-climax. When in Le Glorieux Lycandre turns out to be the father of the boaster and humiliates him, finally saying : ' Redoute mon courroux, Ma malediction, ou tombe a mes genoux,' 2 the count gives way and says : ' Je ne puis resister a ce ton respectable.'' The connexion between the drama of Destouches and the next stage, that of the comedie larmoyante, may now be more precisely stated. In 1742 Destouches, in the Lettre sur la comedie de V Amour use, was still of opinion that a play should only occasionally awaken tears, but the methods he used to impress his audience, the self-conscious pre-occu- pation with simple virtue which he encouraged, were just what appealed to the sensibility of an eighteenth-century playgoer. Thus it has been said that only the character of Pasquin and certain amusing situations stand between Destouches and the comedie larmoyante. But there is perhaps this difference between them — that in Destouches virtue comes in to show up vice, while in Nivelle de la Chaussee vice is admitted to show up virtue. Destouches is a far closer and keener critic of society than were the authors of the later serious drama. Destouches also to some extent essayed a comedy of character. So far as he did this he was anticipating the idea of Diderot, that vice or absurdity can be studied in different forms in different grades of society : ' Un ridicule ou un vice, quoique toujours le meme, prend une forme particuliere dans les differentes personnes selon les rangs qu'elles occupent dans la societe.' 1 ' J'ai toujours eu pour maxime incontestable que quelque amusante que puisse etre une comeclie, c'est un ouvrage imparfait, et meme dangereux, si l'auteur ne s'y propose pas de corriger les mceurs, de tomber sur le ridicule, de decrier le vice, et de mettre la vertu dans un si beau jour, qu'elle attire la veneration publique.' 2 Le Glorieux, Act V. sc. 6. 56 ' DRAME ' Alexis Piron (1689-1773) chose subjects for his comedies that might also be said to lead to the comedie larmoyante. L'ficole des P&res (1728) is an example of a comedy meant to appeal to the sentiment of the audience. But Piron himself belonged to the old school of the seventeenth century. He thought that comedies were intended to please and amuse an audience. At the same time he felt that they ought to be useful to society. Hence his attempt to mingle the useful and the agreeable, as he explains in the Preface to L'lUcole des Peres. His method was to introduce some farcical or some critical element. A soupgon of Moliere was to enter into the drame. ' Cette pi6ce,' he said of L'lllcole des Pbres, ' est du genre noble, et fut jouee avec le plus grand succes : le denouement en est pathetique, mais l'auteur a introduit le role d'un Paysan, qui repand beaucoup de gaiete dans cette comedie.' x And again, ' Le but de la comedie fut toujours d'inspirer le plaisir et la gaiete, loin de faire naitre l'horreur et la pitie. Elle ne doit done offrir sur la scene que de riantes peintures de ridicules ...' 2 Side by side, therefore, with the touching sight of the father ill-treated by the ungrateful sons, Piron puts the picture of the peasant father, naively indignant at the impertinence of his son Pasquin. The father supplies the farcical element ; Pasquin, as his name implies, the critical one. 3 Both elements take away from the larmoyant character of the play. Pasquin brings in a political tendency which is not without importance, while Piron shows his tradi- tionary prejudice in making Pasquin boast— untruthfully — that he is really of good birth though serving as a lackey. In Act I. sc. 6, Pasquin declares himself to Nerine : 1 P. 52, ed. of 1775. • P. 63. 3 That the names of Pasquino and Marforio, the satirist and the questioner of Roman university tradition, had a definite connotation on the French stage is proved by the use of the name Marphurius for the questioning philosopher in Moliere, and the entrance of the name Pasquin into literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Franoe, when ' Le Pasquin de la troupe ' became a general expression. In 1697 Kegnard and Dufresny produced Pasquin et Marforio midecin des mceurs. ' DRAME ' 57 ' J'ai, par libertinage, endosse la mandille, Mais je n'en suis pas moins un enfant de famille, D'un riche Procureur l'heritier et l'aine : Et Ton se sent toujours, tiens, de ce qu'on est ne.' When Nerine objects : ' Fils d'un pere opulent, honnete homme peut-etre, S'abaisser a servir ! Vivre aux gages d'un maitre ! Quelle honte ! ' Pasquin replies : ' Oh que non ! J'ai consulte le cas : Pour etre un peu laquais, on ne deroge pas.' Pasquin has no difficulty in moralising over the ungrateful sons, though he himself has overstated his social position and been ashamed of his peasant father. ' On tient mes garnemens, et je te venge enfin, Pauvre pere, aveugle si longtemps sur leur compte ! Puissent-ils en crever de depit et de honte.' 1 When the action is at the crisis, Pasquin, confronted with his peasant father, says that he has denied his origin merely from humility. On this tone the play ends as far as Pasquin is concerned : ' Ma foi, non ! maintenant, je pense, en verite Que ce que j'en ai dit, c'est par humilite.' 2 But Angelique, who wishes to succour the deserted and deceived father, brings the moral out relentlessly : ' Je ne vous parle plus, que devant ces barbares. Par une offre si juste, et des refus si rares, Inspirons, ou du moins faisons leur concevoir Vous, le mepris des biens, moi, l'amour du devoir. Reduisons aux remords l'avarice inhumaine, J'attends qu'ici bientot Finteret les ramene.' 3 Angelique, in fact, must have an audience for her sermon among the characters in the play, in order that the moral may strike the real audience with more effect : they see 1 L'Scole des Pires, Act V. bo. 3. ' Ibid. Act V. bo. 5. 8 Ibid. Act V. so. 6. 58 < DEAME ' the object-lesson and have it commented upon, they can hardly go wrong. Piron, writer of tragedies, comedies, farces, odes sacred and secular, used on the whole the traditional methods for his plays and the conventional names for his characters. But he has given us certain personal studies of eccentric characters in which, as in the plays of Diderot, we can trace the writer's confession of his own personality. Cresset (1709-1777) was also conventional and seems to have repeated in his own person the experience of the sixteenth-century dramatist— that is, he wrote for a literary circle and only reflected in his plays the small stratum of society that would appeal to it. In character-drawing he was very successful, and his comedies on the classical pattern mark an advance in characterisation. In the development of the comedie larmoyante, however, Gresset plays but a small part. Like Piron and Destouches, he uses the virtuous characters to show up the vice of the un- sympathetic ones. As with all French writers of comedies the vice he attacks is a social vice. The play depends for its interest on the delineation of character rather than on plot or intrigue. In Le Mediant, for example, he shows the harm done to society by the cold malice of the central character. The crisis of the play, when Cleon is driven out but threatens the household which has sheltered and now rejects him, foreshadows the modern problem play and escapes from classical procedure. The piece ends on a note of tension— the expulsion of Cleon has not destroyed the evil that he has done. Thus Gresset's chief comedy teaches a moral lesson through the plot and not through the speech of any individual character. It is more realistic than didactic, and more successful in its genuine moral influence and also in its construction than the regular drame. But Gresset, in his revival of the Eclogue and the Ode, expressed the desire for the simple lif e which is so character- istic of his time. The fipttre d M. Gresset explains the view of the anonymous writer x that Gresset was aiming, 1 Now known to be M. Selis, professeur a Amiens (on the authority of Grimm, Con. Lilt., vol. iii. p. 90). < DRAME ' 59 not at the heights of Parnassus, but at a peaceful spot sacred to Pastorals. ' On craint dans ce reduit paisible Le merveilleux et le terrible. La nature en fait les honneurs, L'Art y vient rendre son hommage, Mais c'est dans le simple equipage D'un Berger couronne de fleurs. On y prefere un Paiisage Rendu d'apres le naturel, Au pinceau, quoique docte et sage De Rubens et de Raphael. La voix d'une aimable Bergere, * Unie au son d'un Chalumeau, Y touche Fame de maniere A nous faire oublier Rameau.' In his imitation of nature Gresset was considered by his contemporaries to have abandoned classical tradition ; and just as the scenes of Piron's pastorals read like drawing-room dialogues between the lady, the lover, and the bore, even though the first two may be called Themire and Sylvandre, and the last Hylas, so the tragedy of Gresset named lUdouard III is the expression of a moral and sentimental drama, quite bourgeois in its moral teaching and self- conscious in its phrases. Very little attempt is made to keep the historical names of the personages except in ' iSdouard ' and ' Vorcestre ' and ' Arondel.' ' Eugenie ' and ' Ismene ' suggest the atmosphere of the piece, and in the last scene Eugenie dies, expressing her love for Edouard. ' Pardonnez, mon Pere, aux feux que je deplore, lis seroient ignores si je vivois encore . . . Oui, le ciel, Fun pour Fautre, avoit forme nos cceurs : Prince . . . je vous aimois ... je vous aime . . . je meurs.' 1 Sometimes the phrases are lightened in Gresset by a genera- lisation that suggests the great days of the drama. So Vorcestre says 1 Edomrd III, Act V. so. 13. 60 « DRAME ' ' Un lache, au gre des terns, varie et se dement, Mais l'honneur se ressemble, et n'a qu'un sentiment.' 1 A play of Gresset's performed under the name of a comedy in 1745 is perhaps the closest approach to the drame. Sidnei is a play to be read rather than to be acted : its interest is reflective. The background is England, and the scene a country village, a ' sepulture ' according to the valet Dumont, who in this play is the only survival of the old comedy in his impertinence and his devotion to his master. Sidnei is a prey to melancholy sentiment. ' Je connais la raison, votre voix me l'apprend ; Mais que peut-elle enfin contre le sentiment ? ' 2 he says to his friend Hamilton. He contemplates suicide, as a result of his passion for Rosalie. ' Je suis mal oii je suis, et je veux etre bien.' ' A la societe je ne fais aucun tort, Tout ira comme avant ma naissance et ma mort, Peu de gens, selon moi, sont d'assez d'importance Pour que cet univers remarque leur absence.' 3 The discovery of Rosalie near at hand rouses Sidnei to love and remorse, but he has taken poison, as he believes, before meeting her. The character of the play is melodramatic, and the entry of the valet, who has suppressed the poison and changed the glass, is not sufficient to give it the appearance of comedy. On two grounds, then, Gresset's Sidnei, with its appeal to feeling and reflection and its melodramatic conclusion, suggests the drame. ._ - It is, then, in this one comedie, in Gresset's tragedy, and in the general tendency of his writings that we find characters tending to those of drame ; for he desires to paint unspoiled nature and to draw the natural moral from circumstances. 4 1 Edouard III, Act V. so. 9. 8 Aot II. so. 2. 3 Act II. so. 6. 1 In 1759 Gresset wrote an apology, Lettre sur la Comidie, in which he explained that he found the art of the theatre incompatible with revealed religion and with morality. He therefore abandoned the writing of drama. It is clear that he did not adopt the ourrent theory that the drama could be ' DRAME ' 61 Voltaire, in Nanine (1749) and V Enfant Prodigue, also used the drama of sentiment to affect the sensibility of his hearers. But then Voltaire had no prejudice against a new genre. ' Tous les genres sont bons,' he said, ' hors le genre ennuyeux.' Voltaire leaned to new ways and also had the sense of tradition and he tended to use paradox to cover his conflicting views. So in the letter to the Marquis de Thibouville, 26 Janvier, 1762, he takes Boileau's view, ' une comedie, ou il n'y a rien de comique, n'est qu'un sot monstre.' On the whole Voltaire's view of the drame was that the appeal to pathos was a proof of want of invention, sterilite. This view is expressed under the heading 'Art Dramatique ' in the Dictionnaire Philosofhique. Freron, in L'Annee Litteraire, 1767, viii. 73, says very much the same thing when he asserts that the author can produce tears in the audience without possessing much power of invention or of style. 1 The truth is that the tendency of the age to moralise and sentimentalise the drama is expressed just as much in Voltaire's tragedies as in Nanine or L'Enfant Prodigue, which were meant to be drames. Only, though Voltaire avoided the satiric drama, he did not intend to dismiss the romantic element or to subordinate it entirely as the writers of pure drame consciously did. This was in part due to his classical sympathies and in part to the strong influence upon his mind of Shakespeare's plays. What contemporary popular tragedy there was in Voltaire's time was distinctly larmoyant in tendency : for example, Lamotte's Ines de Castro (1723), which was throughout an appeal to sensibility. Voltaire's admiration for Shake 7 speare, however, impelled him to force on to the French stage violent action and. philosophical tirades. His Brutus (1730) is introduced by a Discours which explains this a school of morals : he was greatly penetrated with the old ^French sense of satiric comedy, and with the desire to paint life vividly, and he could not connect this genre with the ideals of the writerB of drame. His attitude to the stage, however, drew down on him the hatred of Voltaire, and this accounts for the ill-deserved abuse heaped on his comedy, Le Mbchant. 1 Grimm too, Corr. Litt., vol. iii. p. 229, says of La Mori de Bocrate : ' Cette piece touche et fait pleurer sans qu'on puis so faire cas du talent de l'auteur.' 62 « DRAME ' point of view. 1 Zaire is of course a definite adaptation of Othello, but the centre of the action is in Zaire herself : not in Othello as in the English play : and the titles convey this meaning. The thesis in Zaire is not throughout a moral one : nor is it so in Voltaire's succeeding tragedies. Is the avowed object the duty of toleration, as in Zaire ; is it that of the forgiveness of enemies, as in Alzire ? (where Voltaire says he is going to exalt forgiveness ' the most respectable and striking Christian virtue ') ; or is it a tirade against fanaticism as in Mahomet, or is it the development of mater- nal love as in Merope ? A second purpose, an emotional one, is visible in all the plays, and there is generally no relief from this. Meantime the moral purpose has become external to the play. In these ways and in others too we can trace the influence of the age. The plays of Voltaire appealed to a less learned and more numerous audience than those of Corneille and Racine had done, and therefore there was a tendency in tragedy, even when classic in form, like Voltaire's, to become garish, emotional, spectacular, or sen- sational. Voltaire's Semiramis marks the beginning of this decline. 2 During his latter years Voltaire's desires to teach a moral and also be true to historic fact get rather in each other's way, as in L'Orphelin de la Chine. 3 By 1759 the transformation of the French stage was complete— the spectators were removed from the stage and a dramatic crowd could supply their places. 4 1 In La Mort de Cisar the crowd appears on the stage, instead of being represented symbolically by messengers or delegates, as was the case in French classical tragedy ; but the form is French and not Shakespearean, the play has three acts and the crisis is at the end. 8 See Voltaire's Correspondance, 1772 : ' Helas, j'ai moi-meme amene la decadence, en introduisant l'appareil et le spectacle. Les pantomimes l'em- portent aujourd'hui sur la raison et la poesie.' See Grimm, Corr. Litt., vol. i. pp. 383-5, in which he criticises the length of L'Orphelin de la Chine and the charaoter of Gengis Kan. Of the latter he says : ' II ne sait ce qu'il veut, il est feroce, il est indecis, il est doux, il est emporte, mais surtout il est raisonneur et politique, qualites insupportables dans un Tartare.' 4 In the Elizabethan drama there were instances of stage characters being given the r61e of onlookers at a play, thus enhancing the impression of reality, as e.g. in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. The French spectators, like the English ones, had been accustomed to carry out the precepts of The Gull's ' DRAME ' 63 In the last period of Voltaire's life we cannot say what was the predominant characteristic of his drama. Some- times he says he is giving instruction, sometimes lacerating the feelings of his audience, sometimes presenting them with a spectacle. Voltairean tragedy as such was melting into melodrama, opera, or the drame bourgeois. 1 The only ex- ception was when Voltaire was defending a thesis at all points. Thus in Les Guebres (1769) he was defending freedom of conscience. Of the purely larmoyant work of Voltaire's, Nanine (1749) is a good example. If Voltaire had been writing a thesis to show the melancholy result of indulgence in sensi- bility he could not have done better. Author and characters alike seem unable to produce any reasonable or likely chain of events. Nanine only manages to be consecutive when she is alone— in the presence of others she loses what little strength she possesses. The play is said to owe its existence to Richardson's Pamela, the ill-success of two plays of the same name having induced Voltaire to change the name of the heroine. The interest aroused in Nanine is largely the pity excited for a helpless woman, who, overwhelmed with emotion, bears a large part of the world's suffering and very little of its responsibilities. The mystification is of the slightest, Nanine 's letter to her peasant father being mistaken for one to her lover. The best attempts at characterisation are the jealous Baronne and the loquacious Marquise. In Voltaire's preface to Nanine, he marks out clearly that in his view tragedy should be kept on a high social plane, where too great effects of terror and pity find their place. Comedy should naturally admit the passion of love in its more tender aspect. Certain early tragedies, e.g. Mairet's Sophonisbe, had admitted galanterie, and Corneille in Polyeucte, La Mort de Pompee, and Rodogune, had allowed verses on love of the familiar and domestic type ; in pro- portion as this happened in tragedy, comedy avoided the subject. Voltaire concludes that comedy must provide Horn Booh, and thus to destroy and ridicule the effect of a tragedy, rather than to translate its feelings to the audience. 1 Guimond de la Touche developed Voltaire's ideas on the larmoyant side. 64 ' DRAME ' pleasure, but may also legitimately move the spectator. 1 Hence no doubt bis attempt to put life into Richardson's story by characterising in some degree La Baronne and La Marquise : and by making Blaise the gardener a stupid instrument of intrigue, and by opposing to Nanine's sub- missive view of the married state the travesty of it which the Count imagines if he is to marry the Baroness : ' Helas ! il a raison, II prononcait ma condamnation ! Et moi, du coup qui m'a penetre l'ame Je me punis, la baronne est ma femme, II le faut bien, le sort en est jete. Je soufixirai, je l'ai bien merite. Ce mariage est au moins convenable.' 2 The work of Nivelle de la Chaussee (1692-1754) con- centrated those elements in the drama of the eighteenth century which were of the serious rather than of the amusing or critical type. His drama was perhaps intentionally framed to suit a period when men were taking themselves and their moral function in society with all solemnity, when they were not afraid of being considered ridiculous or pedantic, and were sure that their lives held sufficient interest to make their usual course of action one to be approved of and enjoyed. The fact that Nivelle de la Chaussee was able to put this picture of life on the stage with considerable success is however proof that he himself was able to look upon it as an artist would : and thus he was in reality detached from the sensibilite he described. A study of his life con- firms this view. He had felt the influence of the English drama, chiefly through the criticisms in the Spectator ; he had read his French classics and seen them acted ; he liked a somewhat gross kind of humour, and was accustomed to a theory which was in fact Boileau's, namely, that comedy was meant to amuse, but not to move an audience to tears. His production of a comidie larmoyante was then not due 1 ' La com^die, encore une f oia, peut done se passionner, s'emporter, attendrir, pourvu qu'ensuite elle fasse rire les honn§tes gens. Si elle manquait de comique, si elle n'etait que larmoyante, e'est alors qu'elle Berait un genre tres-vioieux et tres desagreable.' — Priface de Nanine. 2 Nanine, Aot III. so. 3. ' DRAME ' 65 to any narrow view of the drama. He himself was not dominated by a sensibilite that would have this effect. But he could gauge the taste of the day for maxims, for realism, for emotion, and thus he avoided in his plays what was then out of date or out of the picture for the time, that is, ' une farce surchargee, un badinage abstrait et clair-obscur,' x and being in the region of the drama a very Rousseau, he made sensibilite the mainspring of every action he de- scribed. His notion of comedy, then, was not confined to the classical one : it impinged upon the classical notion of tragedy. The awakening of emotion, rather than of amuse- ment, was to be the object of the dramatist. Pleasure, was to be interpreted in its social aspect. It was a theory likely to be accepted at a time when a nation had the making of its history in its own hands. The Prologue to the Fausse Antipaihie makes it quite evident that Nivelle de la Chaussee considered the drama from many points of view before deciding on the fare he was to put before the public. Le Bourgeois advises him to try the ancient comedy which excites to laughter : ' Or sus, pour commencer, tout d'abord, je conclus Que la meilleure piece est oil Ton rit le plus ! ' 2 La Critique advises the satiric drama : ' Quittez tout autre gout, embrassez la Critique, Armez-vous de ses traits, devenez satirique.' 3 La Pr&cimse, wishes philosophy to be popularised in the drama : 'Ces sujets sont trop bas. Le Public vous en quitte, Genie ; elevez-vous a des objets plus grands. Prenez le ton Philosophique, Ajustez la Metaphysique A Fusage du sexe et des honnetes gens. Pour la mettre a portee, otez-lui les echasses. Mais ne lui donnez pas des allures trop basses, Ayez le badinage abstrait et clair-obscur, Toujours enveloppe d'un tendre crepuscule. Faites vous deviner, vous plairez a coup sur.' 4 1 See the prologue to the Fausse Antipathie, 1733. « Sc. 3. 8 So. 4. * So. 5. 66 ' DRAME ' L'Admirateur has a very general view : ' Je suis de tous les gouts et de tous les plaisirs.' * Le Petit-Maitre explains how a piece can become popular : ' Les nouveautes sont toujours belles, Sans vous embarrasser du choix, Ne vous donnez jamais que des Pieces nouvelles ; Amchez-les d'abord pour la derniere fois ; Prenez double, rendez vos plaisirs impayables, Exceptez le Parterre. II pourrait au surplus Vous envoyer a tous les diables. C'est, du reste, a quoi je conclus.' 2 Finally V Homme Sense expresses the sense of the audience in general : ' Je cherche a m'amuser ; encor plus a m'instruire .... Le vrai, le naturel ont des charmes pour moi. Renvoyez aux Forains ces folles rapsodies, Que Ton veut bien nommer du nom de comedies, Qu'on ne voit qu'une fois, que jamais on ne lit, Ou l'esprit et le coeur ne font aucun profit. Quoi ! nous aurons toujours des farces surchargees ? Une intrigue cousue a des scenes brochees ? Des suppositions, des caracteres faux, Absurdes, indecens, charges outre mesure ; Des portraits inventes, dont jamais la nature N'a fourni les originaux ? He quoi ! dans le siecle ou nous sommes, Quelle necessite d'imaginer des hommes ! De pousser leur f olie au supreme degre ! C'est assez des travers que chacun d'eux se donne. Peignez-les tels qu'ils sont. Un ridicule outre Fait rire, et cependant ne corrige personne. Je m'explique peut-etre avec t6merite. Bien d'autres cependant osent penser de meme. Toutefois je n'en tire aucune autorit£. A vos decisions, je soumets mon systdme.' s ' Les terns sont malheureux ' concludes Le Genie when he accepts the work of the new author, Nivelle de la Chaussee. 1 So. 6. * So. 7. » So. 8. ' DRAME ' 67 His first comedy La Fausse Antipathie (1733) was really on the same lines as the Democrite of Regnard. Two people who are married quarrel and part, and after many years meet again at the Court of Athens, where each attempts to gain the other's affection ; and then, having discovered their relationship, they begin life again, this time without illusions. In 1735 Le Prejuge a la mode was played, as a result of an idea communicated to La Chaussee by Madame Quinault. New names of characters come into this play. Durval is the husband, the wife is Constance (the latter a very favourite name with La Chaussee), and the artificial names derived from Greece and Rome, and made classic by Moliere and other dramatists of his time, are now gradually abandoned. The valet-de-chambre is Henri. In 1737 appeared Vkcole des Amis, where the hero and heroine are Monrose and Hortense, but the friend is still Ariste. Melanide (1741) was a greater play and a greater success ; it is a clear example of the new development of the drama, from which the valet and the soubrette, with any amusement they may have caused, have both disappeared. 1742 saw Amour pour Amour, a fanciful play, satiric in design, 1 and in 1743 La Chaussee essayed Pamela, but the ill-success of the play was evident the first night. Richardson's heroine was the heroine of this piece. L'ficole des Meres was a great success. The heroine, Marianne, is put into a series of false situations which ensure for her the sympathy of the audience. There are, however, elements of interest in the weak husband and imperious wife, M. et Mme. Argant, and the classic valet comes in again as Lafleur. He appears also in the little play Le Rival de Lui- Meme (1746) where incidentally he refers to the ' Opera forain ' which produces ready-made scenes and characters. 2 La Gouvernante (1747) is however totally larmoyant again, though a valet and a soubrette are actually on the stage, the latter under the name of Juliette. Of the remaining plays the most interesting is U Homme de Fortune, but there are others of a more experimental kind, such as L 'amour Castillan, which help to give an impression of La Chaussee's versatility. 1 See Nadine's soliloquy, Act I. so. 4. a Act I. so. 2. 68 ' DRAME ' If we look at La Chaussee's plots as a whole, we see that he has reproduced from his knowledge of ordinary life % whole series of delicate and difficult situations ; and that these very same situations have formed the material For the later nineteenth-century plays of Dumas fils, Augier, ind especially Sardou. Thus La Chaussee's drama reflected the movement of French life, which was tend- ng to define society in a wider way, and this continuous movement furnished the material for plays a century later. It is perhaps difficult for us to realise that in La Dhaussee's time the plots were new, 1 more especially as he embarrassed simple situations with a network of intrigue, md thus he shows us how difficult it was for him to get away rom what was then the conventional art and technique of ;he stage. For example he did not escape from the tyranny )f the five-act play, and he fills in the acts with long narra- ives, which the great classical writers, Corneille, Moliere md Racine, had tried to avoid, at any rate until the audience ras sufficiently interested in the actors to bear a lengthy ecital. But La Chaussee's plan has a peculiarity which erved the intrigue. By giving the characters so much to ay in explanation of themselves and their past history, he action moves slowly, and the audience is left in doubt or quite a long time about the real subject of the play, Luce the author's point of view is for the time obscured r concealed. For instance, La Chauss^e threw the public ff the scent in Melanide, and then returned to the obvious ubject suggested by the title. Sometimes La Chaussee saves the object of the play vague, and then the form tends o be episodic rather than dramatic (as in La Gouvernante). 'hus a new and undramatic form of play is being prepared, rhere there is no steady movement towards a solution, 'his will be the best mould for the problem play of Diderot ud later writers. Lanson is of opinion 2 that this type of lay makes the audience share more fully in the suspense 1 See G. Lanson, Nivette de la Chaussle, etc., pp. 180, 181, notes. * J bid. p: 186. ' C'est la un art inferieur, mais ces effets sont ties puissants ir le peuple, o'est a dire suitout ce qui n'a pas developpe en soi le sens critique i eathetiquo ; et o'est preoisement oe qu'on designe du nom d'inteiet melo- amatique. 1 ' DRAME ' 69 in which the characters find themselves. It is a new art, he says, but of a low type, and is rather melodrama than drama. Thus the crisis in these plays is often not a dramatic crisis which grows out of the action, but it is a part of the original imbroglio which comes to light later and might just as well have come to light earlier. This applies to the discovery of persons in La Gouvernante and in Melanide. Circumstances have often to be very violently twisted to put off the declaration, and the reconnaissance is then artificially prepared for. In many cases the lengthening out of the denouement, as in farce, might have its comic side, but in serious drama this process wearies the audience. However, given this considerable and grave defect, there remain counterbalancing qualities in La Chaussee's drame. The contrast in La Gouvernante between the view of Le President, as man of the world, and his son Sainville is well marked : ' La raison meme a tort, quand elle ne plait pas,' 1 says , Le President, recalling the efforts of galanterie. Sainville, the representative of the new democratic age, objects to every sign of aristocracy, even of the aristo- cracy of mind. He dislikes the term ' bonne compagnie ' : ' Ce sont les mceurs qui font la bonne compagnie.' 2 The President's language is old-fashioned as well as his thoughts. He still uses the climaxes of Corneille : ' Que son abaissement l'eleve et m'humilie ! ' 3 Sainville's speech is not ornate and appeals to plain fact, and Angelique asks naively : ' Ne faut-il pas toujours dire la verite ? ' 4 The transition in society from the old order to the new is here finely and clearly marked. The actual plot of La Gouvernante found its way into later literature, and is the precursor of a novel with the same tendency, East Lynne, 1 Act I. sc. 3. s Act I. sc. 3. ' Act III. sc. 11. * Act IV. sc. 4. 70 ' DRAME ' which in its turn has been dramatised to appeal to the sensibility of a London and provincial audience of the poorer kind. The farther romance and dramas of sentiment are from lives crushed down by the needs of every day, the more such pictures are appreciated. In the time of La Chaussee one thing that the public found interesting was the occasional fine action done by some of the characters. But it would be untrue to suppose that these characters were always drawn in such a way as to make the fine action seem natural to them. It was part of the eighteenth-century theory that a commonplace person could be just as great a hero as a gifted man, and thus nothing in La Chaussee's characters seems to contri- bute to any final great result. The audience were often more ready to accept this illogical position than one would imagine. While they were looking on at a realistic play they still had a romantic expectation about it ; they would like to see the ordinary men on the stage doing impossible things in complicated situations. Where the drama was most untrue to life La Chaussee was most sure of the in- dulgence of his audience. They were not disturbed bv any lack of dramatic verisimilitude, unity, or significance in the events. It seems surprising that the audience should have been affected by the moral taught by these plays, for the moral does not come naturally out of the development of character or action. But here again we have to realise the kind of audience to which the plays appealed. The people were already addicted to a proverbial philosophy and an easy way of disposing of difficult questions. To such listeners the ready maxims of La Chaussee's characters might convey something familiar. They sympathised, too, with the tone of scorn in which he spoke of society. The revolutionary spirit afterwards seen in Rousseau can be traced in La Chaussee, and marks him as the man of his time. Take for example L'Homme de Fortune. Here the son of M. Brice reminds one of a hero of Beyle-Stendhal in his sense of unlimited power and capacity, while, as he conceives, he is unjustly oppressed by past and present social forces. ' DRAME ' 71 In the first scene where Laurette the suivante is talking of Melanie to whom the younger Brice pays attention, Laurette defines the irascible vanity of the man for us : ' L'abus continuel qu'il fait de son merite ; Le faste qu'il affecte, et dont chacun s'irrite ; L'air jaloux dont il voit les gens de qualite ; Le depit qu'il en a, sa sensibilite D'avoir une naissance ordinaire et commune, De n'etre que le fils d'un homme de fortune.' 1 The scene between the elder Brice and his son might indeed have been satirical. The son explains that he has rushed into extravagance in order to obtain any sort of consider- ation in society : ' Qui vous diroit pourtant que le faste et l'eclat Ne sont ni dans mon gout, ni dans mon caractere, Que, si j'y suis plonge, rien n'est moins volontaire ; Que ce ne fut jamais que par pur desespoir, Par la necessity de me faire valoir ; Pour mortifier ceux qui me font trop connoitre De quel sang fortune le sort les a fait naitre.' 2 Even M. Brice pere is unable to suggest seriously that bourgeois virtues would have stood his son in good stead, though he himself holds firm to his belief in the bourgeois class : ' Apprenez qu'un faux noble est bien moins qu'un bourgeois.' 3 The son at the end of the scene, by a curious piece of self- analysis, sees the security and happiness of his father's point of view : ' Mon pere, avec raison, se refuse a mes vceux : Si je pensois ainsi, je serois trop heureux ! ' 4 The play, while confessedly bourgeois, really turns on the romance of the alliance between the younger Brice and Meranie, daughter of the Vicomte d'Elbon. At the moment 1 VEomme de Fortune, Act I. so. 1. s Act II. so. 1. " Ibid., Act I. so. 3. i Act II. so. 1. -L»XV£i.lV±.Hi hen the Vicomte, mourned as dead, reappears, Brice the der ceases to control the issues of the plot. As he himself ,ys: ' Conduis le reste, Ciel, je t'en laisse le soin.' * e is only secure in his scrupulous refusal to encourage s son's suit. In these conditions the varied impulses the other characters have their way, and as La Chaussee lagines these impulses to be good, all works out well, eranie secures her love, Brice the younger with Meranie position that his ambition desired. At one point 2 when ents seem to be turning in a different direction the icomte cries out : ' Que vois-je ? Ici tout est en larmes.' it the play ends as all desire and the fantastic and scrupu- iis obstacles to the happiness of the lovers vanish away. In the course of the play Meranie has seen clearly the sakness of Brice : ' Vous me livrez sans cesse a la douleur am&re De partager votre ame avec une chimere,' 3 e says, realising that ambition on the side of the bourgeois i helps to divide them. Le Marquis, who is well born, sputes with Brice the elder, who does not see how it will vance his family if his son becomes ennobled : ]u'est-ce qu'un nouveau noble est de plus qu'un bour- geois ? ' 7& M. Brice, and the Marquis answers : II faut bien commencer. Les noms les plus celebres Etoient auparavant caches dans les tenebres.' * . the whole, while the plot is valueless in UHomme de rtune, the characterisation is interesting, and the moral not preached by the characters but comes out through s play. It is not a moral represented by the point of 1 Act IV. so. 13. • a Aot V. so. 4. 3 Aot II. so. 2. « Aot IV. so. 4. ' DRAME ' 73 view of any of the characters : but is the contrast expressed between the artificial principles of an elaborate society and the natural principles of kindness which really reign among men, as La Chaussee, following the philosophers, firmly believed to be the case. -... It is clear that the love of sensibilite which came into fashion at the end of the seventeenth century counted for ' a good deal in the popularity of La Chaussee. The strict view of love as at its best in sacrifice, which distinguished Corneille, and the almost ascetic philosophy of the seven- teenth century in which the power of the will was exalted, yielded to a loose reading of the sensation theory in philo- sophy (which made much of the senses as the only vehicle of knowledge) and to a sentimental view of the passions, which abandoned the old morality and was satisfied with any act so long as it expressed sensibilite and kindness of heart. The use of abstract terms such as vertu encouraged inaccuracy of thinking. All feeling was extolled, and France was close to Diderot's philosophy, with its exaltation of all nature and all natural acts as good. Feeling, it is true, was shown chiefly in the guise of excitability to tears, and the characters in the drame larmoyant obviously enjoy the sensation. In particular the idea that whatever is natural is good has a maleficent effect on morals, because it destroys some- thing at least as natural and more helpful to the progress of society, namely, the desire to be better. La Chaussee's characters express this false view. They think that ac- quired virtues are a mistake and are hardly to be reckoned with : ' Les vertus qu'on acquiert sont si peu naturelles, Que Ton doit au besoin fort peu compter sur elles.' x They are guided by impulse, therefore, and not by reason, and they exercise power over others through their own weakness. On the other hand they have no rational hold on life or health : they faint and even die at the lightest 1 L'Scole de la Jeunesse, Act IV. so. 1. 74 ' DRAME ' provocation. The obstacles put in their way are of the surprising and romantic order, and misfortune is exaggerated in order to give full play to sensibilite. It is obvious that the women in these plays would have to be specially con- structed in order to bear all these things : they are, in the first place, astonishingly ignorant of life (stage ingenues in fact), and also without balance or judgment. They ask tiresome counter-questions whenever they want to seem moved by reason and are only moved by feeling. They are fractious, not argumentative. Lanson has noticed that they also lose the sense of grammatically constructed sentences, and that there is a want of the simplicity and sincerity that distinguished Racine. 1 While Voltaire and others of his school were still using caustic wit and fine sense, La Chaussee appealed to the large mass of people who were beginning to feel the need for softer, easier, more emotional words. Thus he was preparing the way for Rousseau, who brought sensibilite off the stage into ordinary fife. And La Chaussee's work would not have been so easily done if he had not with great dramatic skill fitted the subject to the exigencies of the stage. Like all successful French dramatists he knew the technique of the theatre and the true value of a situation. 2 The rise of the drame larmoyant answered the public expectation at a time when ancient tragedy had ceased to move the audience, and comedy satirised society too pain- . fully. The drames described, namely, those of Nivelle de la | Chaussee, and the larmoyant work of Voltaire and of Gresset, (are practically contemporary with one another : thus though •Destouches marked the transition between comedy and drame, there was otherwise no gradual development in the genre in the eighteenth century. It carried on, it is true, a serious tradition, but it was applied in an exclusively modern way, to fit the taste of the time. The desire for larmoyant drama seems to have been general in Europe, if we are to judge by the translations 1 G. Lanson, Nivelle de la Clianssee, p. 262. a Take for instance the scene in Melanide, where Darviane forces his father to recognise him in order to avoid a duel on a point of honour. • DRAME ' 75 and adaptations of Nivelle de la Chaussee's works. Many of them were translated into Dutch and Italian, and some freely adapted for the English stage. 1 In many ways the dramejg/rmoyant prepared the way f 01 the Romantic drama of the nineteenth century. Except ir the case of rare phrases it banished satire from the stage it exalted_feeling above reason and the rights_of_the in- dividual above the traditions of society. It broke _dbwi conventional distinctions between tragedy and comedy claimed to find romance within the bourgeois circle, anc aimed at a paintLng_af-hfe full of realistic detail, from whicl the commonplace and the unpleasing were not excluded. A good deal of Victor Hugo's, de Vigny's and Stendhal's theory in the nineteenth century was thus anticipated . But with th< development of the drame larmoyant into the drame bourgeoi comes the theory and practice of Diderot's drama, anc we have a critical problem raised which was not acute ii Nivelle de la Chaussee : how far does the teaching of morality conflict with the painting of life ? Can the problem bi solved in the drama by the admission of irony ? Thesi points are now to be discussed. The drame bourgeois which developed from the dram larmoyant is chiefly connected with the name of Diderot But in the eighteenth century most of the plays of Louis Sebastien Mercier were considered by himself and hi literary friends to be true specimens of drame. 2 It wil therefore be convenient to examine both his plays am Diderot's in order to ascertain what were the distinguishinj characteristics of this genre. Diderot's drame is complicated by his philosophi theory. He had as a basis for his theatre the idea of in spiring a love of virtue, but his philosophic position was ii reality non-ethical. It was this : — ' Nature is good, and a] I natural acts are good.' But the imitation of nature doe 1 See St. G enest 's History of the Stage. Amour four amour was translate into Italian, 1762'; ~7?Ecole des Meres in 1796 ; La Gouvernante in the sam year. Melanide was translated into Dutch 1759, and Italian, 1762. L PrQjugi d la Mode into Italian, 1762, etc., etc. 2 Among his forty-two plays, thirty-one of which were printed, some wei historical dramas, some imitations of Shakespeare. 76 * DRAME ' not always instruct the spectator in the way of virtue as Diderot thought it should. Diderot, when he considered nature, did not think of it as the ideal or ultimate purpose of life, but rather as the present manifestation of it. Thus any accident or accessory fact would seem to him as ' natural ' as a principle of life or law of nature would to us. By an extraordinary twist of thought he imagined that a union of comedy and tragedy would be contrary to this ' nature ' in which he believed, and this led him to consider all dramatic possibilities as marked out on a scale. Beyond tragedy lies melodrama, beyond comedy farce ; between comedy and tragedy, in undiscovered country, the new genre, genre serieux, tragedie domestique ou bourgeoise : which was not a compromise between comedy and tragedy, but included a study — then completely new — of the conditions of life of the middle classes. 1 Diderot's theory of ' con- ditions ' is that a man may avoid finding his likeness in a stage character, but he will always find a state similar bo his own, with which he can sympathise. 2 (Even the audience, Diderot conceives, go to the play with the social Eact in their minds.) Thus situation should, he thinks, control character in the drama. Contrast is however produced between character, dramatic situation, and social jonditions. Problems here arise too complicated for a simple solution on the stage ; and this is one reason why Diderot's drama is said to foreshadow the modern problem Dlay. Another reason is that, as we have shown, there is m underlying ethical problem in Diderot's own mind with vhich he never really grappled, and he was never sure 1 ' Le genre serieux, ou il n'y a pas le mot pour rire, n'a rien a voir avee la omedie, et n'inspirant pas la terreur, il n'est pas non plus la tragedie. C'est in genre a part, qui a sa raison d'etre particuliere. II n'a pas pour but de iresenter a la scene les ridicules, les vices, ou les grandes passions, mais, ce [ui est un fonds non moins riche, les devoirs des homines, les actions ou affaires erieuses, qui, etant les plus communs, augmenteront tout ensemble et l'etendue t l'utilite du genre. Or les devoirs des hommes, c'est-a-dire d'hommes ourgeois, sont a la fois sociaux et domeBtiques. II faut done presenter ur la scene les " conditions " des hommes et leurs " relations de famille." ' e Entretien. 2 ' Pour peu que le caraotere fut charge, un speotateur pouvait se dire a ii-m§me : ce n'est pas moi. Mais il ne peut se oacher que l'etat qu'on joue .evant lui ne soit le sien ; il ne peut miconnaitre ses devoirs.' ' DRAME ' 77 whether a play should be didactic or realistic. The differ- ence between Diderot's drama and a modern play is chiefly that in a modern problem play the actual force of the problem is expressed in the dramatic crisis, which is always at the end, and that the play rarely extends over more than three acts. In Diderot the sense of the problem and the dramatic sense do not so clearly co-operate. The modern play combines the form of the classical drama with the aim of Diderot's thedtre. 1 Of Diderotf s plays, some — e.g. Le Fils Naturel — are only interesting from the point of view of the comedie iourgeoise, and as a study of seTisibilite ; others — e.g. Est-il^bon^est-ii m echan t ? — are instances of the problem play in its earliest form, developed later by Ibsen, and invading the drama of all European nations in the nineteenth century. The evolution from one style to another is, as we have seen, partly con- nected with the form. A lo ose episo dic play, not really dramatic, is the soil on which the problem thrives, especially! the problem which is never intended to have any solution ; while if the author's mind is preoccupied by problems, as Diderot's undoubtedly was, he will be unable to express his thought in any concise form. In contrast with La Chaussee, Diderot avoids romantic incident and imbroglio. The events that happen to his characters are as dull as the characters themselves. But he develops quite remark- ably the social side of experience in the drama. The interest of the events is that they happened to someone in a particular social relation, either domestic (e.g. to father and son) or civil (to magistrate, merchant, soldier, lawyer)., The problem is not that of the individual life, but that of the individual in a particular and denned relation to society. For his successors in the drama Diderot had to wait till the romantic revival was over, but in the eighteenth century bis dramatic experiment had a flavour that was all its own. 2 1 Cf. Hindis Wakes, Rutherford and Son, Typhoon, and certain of Gals- worthy's plays. 2 Grimm (Corr. Lift., vol. ii. p. 104-7) notices the ' Morale elevee et path- etique ' of Le Fils Naturel and also says : ' ... il ne tient qu'a M. Diderot de faire une revolution salutaire dans les moeurs, en ramenant les conditions sur la scene, et son P&re de famiUe accomplira cette prediction.' 78 ' DBAME ' The most interesting play to examine is Est-il bon, est-il mediant? — in which the chief character, Hardouin, has a strong resemblance to Diderot himself. The title marks out the problem. When at the end of the play it is put again by Madame de Chepy in the form of a question the answer is : ' L'un apres l'autre ' ; while another character finishes the phrase : ' Comme vous, comme moi, comme tout le monde.' The dialogue is a contrast to the somewhat artificial tone of La Chaussee's. It is modern, full of verve and esprit, and the movement is rapid. Hardouin has ' des mouve- ments de cceur ' which always come at the wrong time. He yields too soon, or too late, holds out when it is not necessary, gives in uselessly. His sensibilite is nothing but a snare in the practical life. His imagination too combines events in such a grotesque way that the judgment which issues from them is always false. But perhaps Diderot had a double end in view in writing this play. His description of Vhommejiensible may be not merely a subject for drama, but also a subject for satire. Possibly he meant to satirise contemporary life, and the drame which reflected it. Take for example Hardouin's soliloquy on play-writing" (Act II. sc. 1), and the description of M. de Crancey as he followed (or rather preceded in the guise of a postillion) Madame de Vertillac and her daughter. Even the entrees of the characters (a propos of the difficulties in which Hardouin is soon to be enmeshed) resemble ironically the unexpected entrances in a romantic play, though Diderot always manages to produce some sufficient and common- place reason for them when all is examined. Then the character of Hardouin himself falls into the picture. He has I'dme sensible. He is touched to tears by distress, and this impels him to take the most gauche methods of succouring the afflicted. The working out of this thesis is ingenious, and the whole play witty. The same cannot be said of Diderot's other plays, which move slowly, are not always illuminated by humour, and translate life as Diderot ' DRAME ' 79- sees it with less satire and also less grace than Est-il bon, est-il mechant? The universal philanthropist is generally treated by him with the solemnity befitting the occasion. 1 — , The fact that Diderot himself hesitated between didactic j and realistic drama gave his productions uncertainty of aim , and inequality in construction. This latter point can be illustrated by comparing his treatment of the subject of Le Pere de Famille with Sedaine's treatment of the same theme in Le Phihsophe sans le savoir. Sedaine deliberately recast the play and improved its form. Sedaine's play simplified the action, and removed the moral outbursts that were characteristic of the genre bourgeois. He was accustomed to write opera, in which every word has to have its immediate appeal on simple lines. His delicate delineation of character in the play makes it still inter- esting ; and this domestic drama has gaiety as well as sentiment. 2 The uncertainty of aim in Diderot's plays goes so far that it is a question whether even in Le Fils Naturel or Le Pere de Famille he really threw himself into a drame bourgeois, or whether we must consider these plays as serious experiments, and Est-il bon, est-il mechant ? as a flippant one. The difficulty induced Diderot to work out a new theory of the drama, which was certainly not that of the drame as then understood, but which opened new opportunities for the stage. He had recommended a certain procedure to I the actor in the Paradoxe sur le comedien. 3 In this pamphlet ' Diderot shows us that he considers all the world a stage, where the fools are the actors, the wise men sit in the parterre, criticise and make copy out of the follies they see. Thus the dramatist in an eighteenth-century world must- 1 Two earlier sketches, Plan d'un divertissement domestique and La Piece et le Prologue, worked up in Est-il bon, est-il micJiant ? both satirise the drama. 8 See e.g. M. Desparville's soliloquy, Act I. sc. 3 : ' II faut que cet homme marie justement sa fille aujourd'hui, le jour, le meme jour que j'ai a lui parler, c'est fait expres. Oui, c'est fait expres pour moi. Ces choses-la n'arrivent qu'a moi.' 3 The Observations sur Oarrich written in 1770 contained exactly the same ideas that were afterwards worked up in the Paradoxe. 80 ' DRAME ' afford to do without sensibiliti, and the actor, who is the dramatist's collaborator, had better do without it too. 1 Everything is imitation, ' singerie sublime,' for art is only the imitation of nature. ' C'est la manque de sensi- bilite qui fait les acteurs sublimes.' 2 Diderot's desire that the actor should be conscious, and not moved by pure sensibilite only, seems to be connected with an argument in defence of beauty of attitude and action on the stage. Thus he insists that a death on the stage should be calculated to produce the right and noble effect : a woman must fall modestly and with a movement natural in appearance and yet artistic in its result. Pure nature, says Diderot, certainly has her sublime moments, but it takes an artist to seize them and reproduce them. As we should say now, he must intuitively seize them, but consciously express them. 3 Here Diderot's real position is opposed to the didactic theory of the century and also to pure realism in the drama. His ideal drama is personal, depending on the conscious artistic choice of the author. But Diderot is with his century when he thinks of the actor, not as a brilliant star, but as a member of a society all of whom are taking part in the same artistic effort. It is perhaps for the reason given by Diderot that French acting is so superior as an art. The French actor measures his role, compares it with that of others, and instead of shining individually he plays his part for the good of the com- 1 ' Dans la grande comedie, la comedie a Iaquelle je reviens toujours, celle du monde, toutes les ames chaudes occupcnt le theatre, tous les hommes de genie sont au parterre. Les premiers s'appellent des fous ; les seconds, qui s'amusent a copier leurs folies, s'appellent des sages ; c'est l'ceil fixe du sage qui saisit le ridicule de (ant de personnages divers, qui le peut, et qui nous fait rire ensuite du tableau de ces facheux originaux dont tous avez etc quelquefois la victime ... C'est qu'il (l'acteur) s'ecoute encore au moment ou il vous trouble, et que tout son talent oonsiste non pas a se laisser aller a sa sensibility comme vous le supposez, mais a imiter si parfaitement tous les signes exterieurs du sentiment que vous voub y trompiez.' P. 119. ! ' Qu'est-ce done, que le vrai t C'est la conformity des signes exterieurs, de la voix, de la figure, du mouvement, de Faction, du discours, en un mot de toutes les parties de jeu, aveo un modele ideal ou donne par le poete ou imagine de tite par l'acteur. Voila le merveilleux.' P. 121. 3 See Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic. ' DRAME ' 81 pany. 1 Cool reflection and judgment, Diderot urges, are necessary for this. 2 The collaboration between actor and dramatic author was well understood by Diderot. He quotes Voltaire's remark on seeing Clairon in one of his pieces. ' Est-ce bien moi qui ai fait cela ? ' Then, in the Paradoxe (p. 186), he points out that the actor has to lose himself in the poet's conception. ' II faut quelquefois que l'acteur se sacrifie au poete.' Diderot comes to a point at which he asks himself if there is not such a thing as a sensibilite artificielle. By this he probably means imaginative sensibility as opposed to instinctive sensibility. The second interlocutor in the Paradoxe has just been quoting Locke: "... or, il n'y a rien dans l'entendement qui n'ait ete dans la sensation,' 3 when Diderot begins to analyse sensibility. The analysis of sensi- bility leads Diderot further, and he analyses realism in order to find out what is truth in art. He defines it as proportion, as conformity with an ideal imagined by the writer. 4 Diderot in his Paradoxe thus really opened the way to a wider criticism of art. He himself gave a more elevated meaning to the term sensibility than was usual in his cen- tury. He admits the part of imagination in the reflection of life on the stage, and he admits, too, a poetic and imagin- ative rendering of a part by an actor who thus collaborates with the author. Diderot's plays, written dining the progress of his critical ideas, are thus experimental and reflect different 1 ' C'est comme dans une society bien ordonnee, ou chacun sacrifice de see droits primitifs pour le bien de l'ensemble du tout. Or qui est-ce qui connaitra le plus parfaitement la mesure de ce sacrifice ? L'homme juste dans la society, rhomme a la tete froide au theatre.' 2 See also in the Paradoxe : ' Et savez-vous l'objet de ces repetitions si multipliees ? C'est d'etablir une balance entre les talents divers des acteurs, de maniere qu'il en resulte une action generale qui soit une ; et lorsque l'orgeuil de l'un d'entre eux se refuse a cette balance, c'est toujours aux depens de la perfection du tout, au detriment de votre plaisir ...,' p. 145. 3 P. 158. * ' Le poete sur la scene peut etre plus habile que le comedien dans le monde, mais croit-on que sur la scene l'acteur soit plus profond, soit plus habile a feindre la joie, la tristesse, la sensibility, l'admiration, la haine, la tendresse, qu'un vieux oourtisan ? ' p. 189. o 82 ' DRAME ' phases of his theory. They are hardly clear examples of the drame bourgeois. They hesitate, as we have seen, between expressing a didactic purpose or a realistic picture of life. They reflect the changing mood of the author as sensible or reflective, as tending to romance or to satire. It is the insoluble or at any rate the unsolved problem which Diderot can then most easily throw into the artistic form which was a necessity to him as a playwright. His drama had no succession at the time, but takes its place in the history of eighteenth-century experiments. After romance in the nineteenth century had had its great blossoming, the subtle questionings of the plays of Diderot were re- peated in modern shape by a more critical age. 1 The plays of Mercier are more rigidly limited to the notion of drame as it was then understood than were Diderot's. While he was opposed to the idea of a strong contrast between comedy and tragedy, and considered the word drame as the general and collective name, embracing all genres, 2 he was clear that each play should have its unity of conception, and should be a picture of life seen with the eye of an artist. In this way Mercier, like La Chaussee, simplified his subject by exercising artistic choice. His adaptation of English plays gives a very good idea of his method of work. For instance, his first play, Jenneval, was taken from Lillo's London Merchant, but the incoherence of the play struck Mercier with force, especially when he con- trasted it with the other English play 3 which had suggested Regnard's Le Joueur, and Saurin's Beverley ; and he re- duced the scenes in Lillo's play to order, and recast the whole in Jenneval, where, whatever are the other merits or the demerits of the play, 4 there is a unity given by the visualising of one aspect of life. 5 When we consider that ~ l See especially the drama of Ibsen and of his followers in England. 2 Du TJiidtre, p. 95. ' Drame, qui est le mot colleotif, le mot original, le mot propre.' 3 Moore's The Gamester (1753), also translated by Diderot in 1760. 4 Mercier changes the ending, and makes Jenneval (Barnwell) repent. 6 See Du Thb&tre, p. 147, where Mercier dwells on the fact that the unity of interest in a play must be kept. He sees that the Tragi-comedy of the sixteenth century in France failed from this lack of unity. Ibid. p. 96. ' DRAME ' 83 Mercier could read and enjoy Shakespeare and Lope de '/ Vega, we see that his understanding of dramatic unity was not narrow : he could feel, for example, the unity of interest in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and could contrast it favour- ably with the English drama of the Restoration which kept the loose and episodic form of the Shakespearean drama but was without its strong unity of appeal. He felt, too, that a play must be intelligible to the public, 1 and that plays ought only to be judged as acting plays, and not as litera- ture intended for private reading. 2 On many grounds, chiefly on that of enabling the author to produce a truer picture of life, he preferred that plays should be written in prose. 3 Mercier's plays are usually dismissed in histories of literature in one brief and chilling sentence. It is true that very few of them have survived, none have been lately reprinted or put upon the stage. But when they are read without prejudice they do not seem to have deserved their complete oblivion in contrast with the plays of other writers contemporary with Mercier, and in his lifetime they had a considerable measure of success. It seems necessary to seek for further reasons to account for the disparaging view usually taken of this writer's work. One reason appears on the surface. Mercier was not only a dramatist and a dramatic critic, but he was a political enthusiast and a critic of society. His publication, L'an 2440, was put on the Index by Rome, and also drew down on Mercier the dislike of the many classes of men who were satirised in this Reve. His Songes Philosophiques, his two pamphlets, De la IAtterature and Du Theatre, his Tableau de Paris, all contained a criticism of French administration and social life. This was partly a result of Mercier's travels and wide reading ; his experience of England, for example, urged him to a greater sense of proportion in the comparison of Paris and London than was usual among his contemporaries. 1 Du Thi&tre, p. 195. 2 Ibid. p. 293. ' Mais il faut avouer (quoi qu'on exige aujourd'hui) que le Drame est fait pour la representation et non pour la lecture.' 3 Ibid. p. 295. 84 ' DRAME ' Mercier's opinion then divided sharply from the common opinion of his day. His views on political corruption, on town sanitation, on the place of a national theatre in public life, were too advanced to gain for their author a hearty reception. In some plays, e.g. in Ulndigent, he makes a definite attack not only on the corruption of manners of the time but also on the selfishness of the class of land- lords, thus anticipating more than one play of this cen- tury in both France and England. Again, Mercier's quarrel with the Comedie Francaise was fatal to his reputation as a dramatist. Only one of his plays, La Maison de Moliere, ever got into their repertory. A recent play on the same subject with the same title, produced in Paris, does not owe much in treatment to Mercier's example, but the two objects of the modern play, the celebration of Moliere as the national dramatist, and the opening of the difficult question of his domestic life as a subject for drama, both reproduce the aims of Mercier's play, which was acted in Moliere 's own theatre in 1787 and before the King and Queen at Versailles. 1 But Mercier, if working against difficulties in France, was not without his recognition elsewhere. His plays, like those of La Chaussee and Diderot, 2 were translated and reproduced in other countries. They were nearly all printed in England or Holland and sold at Paris. Jenneval (1771) was translated into German and Italian, Le Deserteur into Italian and German, La Brouette du Vinaigrier (1771) into Tcheck, Dutch and German, Ulndigent (1772) into English as The Distressed Family, while it was also curiously com- bined with the plot of Destouches' Le Dissipateur by Mrs. Inchbald. 3 Le faux ami (1772) was translated into Italian and Dutch, Le Juge (1774) into Dutch, Jean Hen- 1 On November 14. The play was adapted by Mereier from Goldoni's II Moliere. 2 Dorval was translated into English 1767, Dutch 1775, Italian 1796. Le Pire de Famille into English 1781, Italian 1762, and republished in Italy 1796. 8 Under the title of Next-door Neighbours. All Diderot's plays were trans- lated into German, and many into English, Dutch, and Italian, and La Chaussee's plays into Dutch, Italian and English. ' DRAME ' 85 nuyer (1775) into English and Dutch, Natalie (1775) into Dutch, German and Italian, L'Habitant de la Guadaloupe (1778) into English, Dutch and Italian, Les Tombeaux de Verone (1796) into Italian and Spanish, 1 and this list is not exhaustive. History and foreign plots (in Timon d'Athenes, La Maison de Moliere, Les Tombeaux de Verone) have been laid largely under contribution by Mercier himself. , When we come to examine Mercier's drama in detail it is evident that the value of his plays varies according to Mercier's bent at the time of writing. Is he intending toi give a true picture of life ? He gives us striking scenes| like those which occur at the beginning of Jean Hennuyer: and Ulndigent. But is he wishing to teach a moral inf direct words ? Then he either makes the characters utterf long-winded speeches about right and duty, as in the latter i half of Jean Hennuyer, or he is obliged to turn aside from realism and produce a plot which will illustrate his thesis. I This occurs in the rather romantic conclusion of U Indigent,] in the melodramatic end of Le Deserteur, in the setting^ and conclusion of La Brouette du Vinaigrier. For the' moralist in the drama must be something else than the| recorder of photographic detail. Nature is not necessarily; moral, and the observance of natural facts does not always'' tend to individual or social morality. Thus the dramatic! moralist is obliged either to construct an ideal or to de- scribe the real satirically. Mercier is on the whole more! often a moralist than a realist, but he has the artistic t, instinct of getting his work within compass and on onel' plane. If it is not like life it is harmonious. If it is not useful or moral it is harmonious. And all the plays are conspicuous by possessing unity, though they are equally conspicuous in avoiding the notion of conflict which is the note of tragedy. Mercier was too strong an optimist to admit the overpowering sense of evil that is characteristic of great tragedy. At the same time his optimism is strong and not weak. He cares intensely that the right should prevail, and this warmth is so infectious that the audience finds itself sympathising with the characters in his plays, 1 This is a curious case of returning a play to its birthplace. 86 ' DRAME ' even though there is no doubt that all will be well with them in the best of all possible stage worlds. He observes, he faces evil, and desires to reform the world, but his own conflict was over before he could express it in literature. What he carried into the artistic field was the zeal of the social reformer. Therefore some of his plays are not more interesting than the projects of a town councillor for municipal reform would be if dramatised. They represent a series of hoped-for and expected events— and if the facts surrounding his heroes are likely, but do not make a play, Mercier has no hesitation in introducing unlikely facts and so drawing his plays to a conclusion. His first play, Jenneval ou le Barnaveld frangais, was a clever adaptation : Mercier himself appears more truly in Le Deserteur of the same year. Here we see his cosmo- politan interest, for the scene is laid in Alsace, and the characters are a German mother and daughter, Madame Luzere and Clary, a French lodger, Durimel (the Deserteur), in love with Clary ; the French officers, St. Franc and Val- court, billeted on the household, and the disappointed lover, who as an inhabitant of the town has the opportunity of bringing about a tragedy, in which he nearly succeeds, and of betraying Durimel. In the final act (the play is thoroughly well constructed and there are not too many words, nor even too many phrases) the character of Madame Luzere comes out well. She is firm, self-reliant, alert, not despising danger, but facing it with excellent judgment. Living on the borderland between two nations, she knows both France and Germany, and estimates the national as well as the individual qualities of the other characters. Clary has the restrained self-respect of her mother, with an effective mix- ture of obedient confidence and abandon. Of her two lovers she prefers Durimel, even when her frank preference seems to expose him to danger, and she keeps at bay Valcourt the fiery subaltern who looks upon her as fair game. The tran- sition in Valcourt, in whom all feelings are centralised in women and his pleasure in them, to a chivalry derived from the same source and purified by a sense of honour, is excel- lently done . St . Franc 's test of Durimel and satisfaction that ' DRAME ' 87 the latter, who turns out to be his own son, can face death, raises the play above the merely sentimental plane ; as originally conceived there was a tragic ending with a moral satisfaction in it, but Mercier bent to the desire of the public for a happy ending. In its final form Valcourt's interven- tion saves Durimel, and turns the play into melodrama : 'Je ne suis qu'un homme sensible,' says Valcourt, ' mais voici deux Heros ! ' pointing to the father and the son. 1 'J'ai sauve deux Heros, j'ai rendu la vie a une famille respectable, et j'ai reconcilie mon Pere et mon ami.' In fact he has done all that was necessary for melodrama, drame and comedy. But a truer note is struck in the last words of the play : ' Quand un Francais entreprend une bonne action, le bonheur de reussir est sa plus glorieuse recompense.' The play abounds in shrewd remarks, generally of a moral character. ' L'extreme malheur enfante l'extreme courage,' says St. Franc. 2 Durimel in the same scene says ' Le trepas ne sera pour moi qu'un instant. C'est vous qui souffrirez, et longtems.' Another successful play of Mercier's, freely translated into many languages, was La Brouette du Vinaigrier. This is a purely sentimental drama without the lively action that helped Le Deserteur or L'Indigent. The scene is laid in commercial circles. Delomer is the successful trades- man, keeping up a kindly interest in Dominique pere, who possesses the brouette, and in Dominique fits, who knows modern languages and acts as his secretary, and who falls in love with Mademoiselle Delomer. Dominique ftls retires from the unequal combat, as Delomer wishes to marry his daughter well : but the inevitable loss of fortune occurs at the right moment, and Mademoiselle Delomer is faced with the convent, for her admirer, having only wished to marry a rich wife, leaves her in the lurch. Dominique ftls is then subjected to a test by his old father who insists on calling on the Delomers while pushing his brouette. Of this 1 Act V, so. 6. a Act V, so. 3. 88 ' DRAME ' the son is somewhat ashamed— and the brouette is put in the corner of the porte-cochere. Dominique pere, having thus exposed the latent snobbishness of his son, opens the barre], and takes out bags and bags of gold, the ' fruit of honest labour,' restores the Delomer family and makes the lovers happy. In this drame, then, Mercier allows himself an im- possible romantic situation, and a little fun at the foibles of class which occur in every condition of society. In his preface he had said that any part of life could be material for drama, but also that it could be material for amuse- ment as well as for a moral lesson. His play, so far as it goes, seems to justify the theory, 1 if we give up the idea that the plot need be a likely one. The characters in this play, as in others of Mercier's, utter many things that are pointed and full of good sense. So Mademoiselle Delomer, accusing Dominique fils of bitterness, says ' Vous etes ironique '—and his prompt answer is ' Je ne suis que malheureux.' 2 Dominique also says, in discussing poverty, ' On est toujours riche, quand on a tout paye,' while another remark is ' Sans un peu d'abondance l'amour lui-meme se detruit et fait place a la discorde.' 3 In L'Indigent (1772) we get a more interesting back- ground in the contrast between rich and poor. Joseph and Charlotte, supposed to be brother and sister, live together in the deepest poverty. Joseph weaves and Charlotte sews. Their affection for each other is the only light in their lives. With a scrupulous care for the setting of the stage, worthy of Ibsen, Bernard Shaw, or Galsworthy, Mercier describes the miserable room in which Joseph and Charlotte live. A dressing-room opens out of the main room, through which the north wind blows, and in the dressing-room Charlotte is asleep. The end of her bed, containing her feet, projects on to the stage. M. de Lys, a rich young man, has seen Charlotte, and wishes to possess 1 Preface de La Brouette. ' Tout le detail de la vie humaine est egalement son objet ... Que lui importe un diademe ? Sous oette eioffe grossiere il a touob.6 une ame sensible ... II devient fecond, anime, riant, et moral." 2 Aot II. so. 2. s Act III. sc. 4. ' DRAME ' 89 her. He sends a messenger to see the condition in which she lives, and gives the brother money. Charlotte is thus enticed to the house, but having been brought up to read the literature of the day, she knows her Pamela x and sus- pects De Lys. Finding herself locked in with De Lys, she seizes his gun and batters the door with the butt-end. In the action she discharges one barrel. No one is hurt, but the valet opens the door and Charlotte escapes. 2 Mean- while De Lys is searching for a sister who was put out to nurse, and whom he only desires to find in order to destroy, since his father's will commanded him to divide possessions with her. In an extremely amusing scene between De Lys and the honest notary, each wishes to tell the other of the near discovery of the sister, and neither will listen to what the other has to say. 3 Finally Joseph and Charlotte find Charlotte's foster-father, who is arranging at the honest notary's for a marriage between the two young people when De Lys comes in. Hurried into an adjoining room, Joseph, Charlotte and her foster-father hear the secret of Charlotte's birth. De Lys when he realises the facts and is confronted with the indigent family becomes generous and brotherly and his former conduct is forgiven. Mercier makes dramatic use of the words of De Lys and of Charlotte, when the latter is first introduced into De Lys' presence expecting to find her brother there. De Lys assures her that her brother is there, has been there, which in the light of the denouement turns out to have been an unconsciously true remark, though he intended at the time to deceive her. 4 And again the good birth of Charlotte and likeness to De Lys has been noticed by his servant. But no ingenuity can disguise the fact that the last events are stage events. Le Juge (1774) turns upon a conscientious judgment made by a judge ' representant sur un petit theatre obscur comme s'il etait devant l'Assemblee de la Nation.' Before 1 ' Hie parle comme Pamela,' says De Lys, and extracts the confession that Charlotte has read the book. Act II. so. 5. 2 In an English version in Next-door Neighbours, Eleanor seizes the pistol but does not discharge it. ' Act II. sc. 6. * Act L so. 5. 90 ' DRAME ' we pass on to that part of Mercier's work which is outside the drame proper, it will be convenient to notice two charac- teristics of the drame which he shares with Diderot. First, there is Mercier's desire to put upon the stage what he calls ' un beau moment de la vie humaine ' 1 ; the crisis is always one of feeling, of generosity, of noble action, prepared for by a chain of events that in Mercier has the character of the old-fashioned intrigue, only in Mercier the elements deftly woven together are not simply dis- entangled, they are torn apart in some violent - crisis of emotion. He thinks the effect of the drama should be to produce a picture that is at the same time interesting, moral, critical, amusing and realistic. 2 We have already seen that these ideas are not all compatible with one another. Into this picture of life he wishes to admit people of mixed characters, of variable development, of obscure origin, of the provinces, not only of Paris, while other nations should be alluded to with understanding and respect instead of with scorn and insolence. Among the characters he suggests for dramatic treatment are the spendthrift, the intriguer, the honest peasant, the atheist, the envious man, and the Stoic (in opposition to Rousseau, for Mercier thought self- control a quality to be portrayed in art, while Rousseau only contemplated uncontrolled emotion and simple im- pulses), the business man, the doctor. If a really imaginary character is to be admitted, a combination never actually seen is that of the philosopher-king. 3 We have here something very like Diderot's theory of the interest which can be excited by describing virtue and vice in different professions and grades of society. Then again, Mercier's theory of dialogue is very like 1 Du TUdtre, p. 106, 2 ' Le drame peut done etre tout a la fois un tableau interessant, parce que toutes les conditions humaines viendront y figurer ; un tableau moral, parce que la probite morale peut et doit y dieter lea loix ; un tableau de ridicule et d'autant plus avantageusement peint, que le vice seul en portera les traits ; un tableau riant, lorsque la vertu, apres quelques traverses, jouira d'un triompke complet ; enfin, un tableau du siecle, paroe que les caracteres, les vertus, les vices seront essentiellement oeux du jour et du pays.' Du Thidtre, p. 105. 3 Du Thtdtn, p. 157 note. ' DRAME ' 91 the psychological theory of Diderot. If, says Mercier, man really knows himself, he becomes aware of a perpetual struggle between two parts of his own being. Let him study this conflict— and express it in monologue. This is the best training for stage dialogue, Here Mercier seems to have realised the special function of the monologue, used by Shakespeare and by Racine, as detailing the inner struggle ; and also to have seen that the conflict is between the conscious and subconscious elements in man. Where one takes the form of goodness and the other of evil we have the germ of plays such as Britannicus, where Neron has a good genius and evil genius on each side who together express his own personal struggle between good and evil. 1 ' L'homme, quand il le veut,' concludes Mercier, ' est un animal qui se connoit bien.' In a skit dated ' 2440,' called Les Comediens ou le Foyer, Mercier brings in the shade of Moliere to protest in the name of common sense against theatrical mannerisms, and the stage language that in La Maison de Moliere Mercier happily called un jargon brillante? The same admiration of Moliere and inclination to admit comedy into the drame is shared by an obscure writer Patrat, who in a divertissement called Le Conciliateur a la Mode brings in Thalie to explain that the public want something more than sentiment in the theatre. The authors chosen for commendation are Mari- vaux, Favard (in vaudeville), Gretry (in opera), and Mercier (in drame). Le Drame comes in as a character, mainly uttering these lines : ' Dieux !— Juste ciel ! Helas ! Amour ! Honneur ! Devoir ! Nature ! Je pleure.' 1 ' L'art du dialogue, si peu perfectionne dans nos meilleurs poetes, oonsiste, si je ne me trompe, a se bien connaitre, a sentir ces deux §tres qui resident au dedans de nous, ce double moi de Pascal, l'un, qui est l'instinct de la nature, et qui nous domine, l'autre, 1'instinct de la volonte, qui s'efforee a maitriser son adversaire : tour a tour vainqueurs, tour a tour vaincus, ils sont toujours dans une lutte e^ernelle. Quand le poete aura suivi l'art du soliloque, qu'il se sera vu sans detour, qu'il aura sonde son ame, l'art du dialogue, si rare aujourd'hui, lui deviendra familier.' Du Thedtre, p. 182 (note). 2 Priface de La Maison de Moliire, p. ix. 92 ' DRAME ' while Thalie puts her view into a stanza : ' Je respecte beaucoup tout ce qui peut vous plaire, Racine, Crebillon, Voltaire, Corneille, dont partout on respecte le nom ; Mais vous auriez grand tort, vous qui faites la fiere, De mepriser dans votre humeur altiere, Destouches, Regnard et Piron, Et de ne pas idolatrer Moliere.' It transpires from an examination of the plays of Diderot and Mercier that a problem play, even if in a conventional or harmonious setting, nearly always forces the note : that the realistic play has no inevitable moral : while the moral force of a play, so greatly desired by both authors, is seen to depend largely on the power of a dramatist to present it with the help of romance or satire. While the drame tended in the case of Diderot to be tinctured with satire, and in the case of Mercier to be influenced by romance, drame itself, which had affected comedy at the end of the century, will be seen to have influenced tragedy too at the same period. CHAPTER IV TRAGEDY Decadence of tragedy. Longepierre — La Fosse — Duche — L'Abbe Genest — La Noue — Declamation on the stage — Exaggerated intrigue : Campistron, Lagrange-Chancel — Saurin — De Belloi — Crebillon — The tragedies of Vol- taire — Influence of trag^die-opera : Semiramis, Tancrede — La Harpe — The beginnings of a new era : Versions of Shakespeare — Ducis — Legouve — Marie-Joseph Chenier — Lemercier. French tragedy after Corneille and Racine follows a down- ward course in the eighteenth century. The change comes very gradually, because Racine's immediate successors, though they often avoid the classical manner for tragedy, and use for their setting the circumstances of a later time, still exhibit a psychology of feeling that is very reminiscent of their master. Thus Longepierre's Medee, represented in 1694, illustrates the conflict between a strong emotion and the sense of duty of the individual to society. In this play the traditional confidants act as the other selves of Jason and Medee : thus recalling Racine's method in Britannicus. Iphite begs Jason to consult his reason : ' Si vous daigniez encor consulter la raison.' x But Jason is in the power of a strong emotion : 'Mais, transports d'amour en voyant ce que j'aime, J'oublie et mon devoir, et Medee, et moi-meme. Je m'enivre a longs traits d'un aimable poison : L'amour devient alors ma supreme raison. Et d'un feu violent l'imperieuse flamme Etouffe tout le reste, et triomphe dans mon ame.' 2 1 Act I. sc. l. * Act I. sc. l. 93 94 TRAGEDY In contrast to Jason's struggle between his love for Creuse and his gratitude to Medee, we have MedeVs fierce jealousy and blame of Jason for deserting her. By an effect of passion which is very telling in Longepierre's play the strength of M6dee's magic powers seems to be connected with the violence of her love and hatred. The powers are psychic, as well as magic ; she only cares to exercise them when impelled by her hatred or her overpowering desire. However, this side of Medee's character only gradually dawns on the reader. At first she is a mere woman ima- gining that she is reasoning out her revenge and deciding that it shall fall on Creon, though it is clear that her love for Jason and her jealousy of interference, rather than her reason, have dictated her action. Her soliloquy, full of questions and exclamations, like the soliloquies in Racine's plays, bears out this reading of her character : ' La haine avec l'amour, le courroux, la douleur, M'embrasent a present, d'une juste fureur : Que n'enfantera point cette fureur barbare ? Le crime nous unit, il faut qu'il nous separe.' 1 Then again, though in the interview with Creon Medee can be ironical : * Qu'a ces rares bont£s j'ai de graces a rendre ! Vous m'otez mon epoux, vous le prenez pour gendre : Vous me chassez enfin. Dites-moi seulement Quel attentat m'attire un si doux traitement ? ' 2 when alone with Rhodope she appeals to love : ' toi qui vois mon trouble et cause ma douleur Amour, daigne amollir l'ingrat en ma faveur ! Remets-le dans mes fers, efface son injure : Rends-moi, dieu tout-puissant, le cceur de ce parjure : Tout mon art n'y peut rien, seul tu peux le flechir, Prete un charme a mes pleurs qui puisse l'attendrir.' 3 In her scene with Jason M6dee first appeals to his gratitude to her, then, as this fails, to his love, and to the love he bears to their children. When she hears that Jason means 1 Act II. so. 1. » Aot II. so. 3. » Aot II. so. 4. TRAGEDY 95 to take the children from her she swears bitter vengeance. And in the rest of the play we see the conflict in Medee's mind between her maternal love and the desire she feels to revenge herself on Jason. Creuse, in contrast with Medee, expresses a strictly conventional and regulated affection to Jason : ' Mon cceur suit mon devoir : tous mes soins, tous mes vceux N'aspirent qu'a vous plaire et qu'a vous rendre heureux.' 1 Jason in his attitude to Creuse is also on entirely natural lines. He assures her that the other love was an obsession, the feeling he has for her is the only true love, that which turns out fears and conquers death : ' D'une pressante ardeur l'extreme violence Surmonta ma raison, forca ma resistance ; Et je sentis enfin que, jusques a ce jour, Je n'avais pas connu le pouvoir de l'amour.' 2 Medee, coming in to deceive Jason, assures him that love and reason have overcome her hatred : ' L'amour et la raison ont vaincu ma fureur.' 3 But Jason instinctively fears her in this mood : ' Ah, je crains votre amour plus que votre courroux.' 4 Medee, left alone with Rhodope, addresses, in an abstracted mood, Jason, who has left her : ' Va, quand tu le voudrais, il y va de ma gloire ; Je t'empecherai bien d'en perdre la memoire. Je sais, quand il me plait, dans l'ame des ingrats Graver des souvenirs qui ne s'effacent pas.' 5 The uprush of the subconscious mood into speech at moments of crisis reminds us of Racine. 6 In a fine scene of soliloquy Medee calls on the forces of the underworld to support her, and the spectres of her father and her brother rise up in turn. When she is left 1 Act III. so. 1. ! Act III. so. 2. 8 Act III. so. 3. 4 Hid. 6 Ibid. 6 Iphiginie, Act I. so. 1. 96 TRAGEDY along with the vision of Tisiphone she knows the charm will work : ' Obeissez, sourdes divinites, Le charme reussit, poursuivons ma vengeance.' x The entry of the children, the silent victims of the drama, brings out the fear aroused in unconscious and innocent things of the storm of her wrath. It seems to blast them before it is their turn to suffer. After the poisoning episode, in which Creuse's love for Jason is represented as keeping her alive for some moments, 2 Jason upbraids Medee, and asks her how she could have sacrificed the innocent children. Her answer is Racinian in its simplicity and force : ' lis etaient nes de toi ; demandes-tu leurs crimes ? ' 3 Medee shakes off with Jason the human love and hatred she has known. She returns to the condition in which she was before she fell in love with him and with human life and passion : 'Et je recouvre enfin ma gloire, mon repos, Mon sceptre, mes parens, la Toison et Colchos.' * Medee in the play punishes anti-social crime : Jason reaps the direct fruit of ingratitude and disloyalty. But in herself Medee also stands for all human emotion which has become degraded through disillusion. The play is no unworthy successor to Racine's. Certain modern phrases have crept in to change the style of the seventeenth cen- tury. 5 Four years after the performance of Longepierre's Medee, a play by La Eoss e (1653), Manlius Capitolinus, was performed. The style of La Fosse is nearer to Cor- neille's than to Racine's ; something of the strong direct- ness of Corneille, and of his appeal to other and more virile 1 Act IV. so. 2. 2 ' Et l'amour seul, plus fort que Ies enchantemens, M'anime et me soutient encor quelques momens.' Aot V. so. 3. 3 Aot V. so. 4. » Aot V. so. 4. 6 As e.g. in the speeoheB of Medee. TRAGEDY 97 passions than that of love, shows a different heritage from Longepierre's. The piece, which was La Fosse's one good play, was even less directly Roman than Longepierre's was Greek : it was derived from a play of Otway's, who himself had borrowed his subject from St. Real's Conjuration contre Venise, a historical romance. La Fosse used a historical plot that was Italian in origin and he gave his characters Roman names, but drew his pictures from contemporary French life. The intentional glamour of the Roman names allows La Fosse to include topical allusions and painting of character in his tragedy ; this shows that the realism used by Voltaire had begun to invade the tragic plays of other authors. The play was good enough and interesting enough to the audience to make it a rival to Voltaire's Rome Sauyee which was played at the same time. Hence perhaps the damaging criticism levelled at the time at La Fosse's play, which it does not appear to deserve. Certainly in its development of character and sincerity of presentment this play is not unworthy of the traditions of the stage in France. It gives great opportunities, too, for the co-operation of the actor with the author. Manlius, e.g. in Act I. scene 1, shows that he knows how to cover his real audacity by not screening it unnaturally : ' Sous mon audace, Albin, je me cache a leurs yeux.' Then again, Rutile, trying to judge of Servilius, says, when the latter joins the conspiracy, ' II n'examine rien, rempli de sa vengeance.' It is mainly in the stage soliloquies in Manlius that we trace the influence of Racine and the form of the classical tradition which he built up. 1 But even here a change is creeping in. It is the dictates of the heart that put Servilius into such great straits : and he calls upon the Gods, as patterns of virtue, to point out to him some way of escaping with honour from the dilemma in which he finds himself. Valerie, who stands in the play for the social ideal, puts before Servilius the good of the universe as his aim. 2 i Act IV. so. 1, so. 5. 2 Act IV. so. 2. 98 TRAGEDY The subjects of Greek and Roman story and of Biblical history were those chiefly treated by the immediate followers of Racine. So Duche treated the story of Absalon (1712), but with the exception of an expression of David's faith in God, which is Biblical in tone, the language is bombastic, and the characters professional and not individual x : the conspiracy is described in theatrical terms, but it is a conspiracy of state, not really applicable to the simplicity of the original story. The moments of crisis, too, lose their effect from the necessity felt by Duche to introduce soliloquies at all the conventional points, 2 and the force of these is injured by the self-conscious moral application that Absalon makes, 3 and the artificial phrases of Achitophel. 4 Sometimes a remark that is almost philosophical in its tendency relieves what would otherwise be a trite and commonplace passage, 6 but the conclusion is unconvincing. Absalon, dying, makes his testamentary dispositions, but David's grief does not appear and the scene does not ring true. 6 This play of Duche's has neither the serene force of the classic tragedy nor the realism of the eighteenth century. It marks a dreary attempt to recover the interest of Esther and of Athalie. L' Abbe Gene st (1636-1719) had also attempted in 1710 a biblical subject, Joseph, but his reputation was made by his version of the story of Penelope (1722) in which Made- moiselle Clairon made a success of the part of the heroine in the famous scene of the reconnaissance. The opening soliloquy in this play concentrates ably the story of Penelope and Ulysses up to the moment of the action, and in the next scenes the contrast between Penelope's troubled and anxious 1 E.g. Act I. eo. 2, Aot III. sc. 7, Act IV. so. 5. 2 E.g. Aot III. so. 5. 8 ' Ah que j'eprouve bien, en ce fatal moment, Que le crime aveo soi porte son chatiment ! ' 4 Aot IV so. 8. 6 ' Et tout homme, a son gr6, peut defier le sort, Quand il voit du meme ceil et la vie et la mort.' Aot IV. so. 8. 6 ' Veuille le juste oiel, oomblant mes derniers voeux, Aux depens de mon sang vous rendre tous heureux.' Aot V. so. 6. TRAGEDY 99 mind and the eagerness of her entourage is well managed. The dialogue, too, is lively, and the style good. There is a considerable variety in the use of the Alexandrine. In the third act, when Ulysses enters, he soliloquises on Ithaca and the familiar old scenes, which have become the dream as the wandering life has become the reality. The dia- logue with Telemaque has good points, as when Telemaque breaks off the conversation to pray to the gods and the ocean : ' Mer, sois-lui favorable ; ' Ramenez-le, grands dieux ! ' 1 When he recognises Ulysses, the words have the accent of sincerity : ' Mon pere, je vous vois ! Je perds en cet instant l'usage de la voix. Mais, mon pere, est-ce ainsi qu'on eut du vous attendre? ' 2 In the same way Penelope's words to the stranger, whom afterwards she knows to be Ulysses, are naturally felt : ' Ulysse est done vivant ? suis-je en son souvenir ? Vous parloit-il de moi ? Quand doit-il revenir 1 Me celant qu'il vivoit, etoit-ce son envie Que mes longues douleurs terminassent ma vie ? Ne m'aime-t-il done plus ? ' 3 It is clear that a faculty which the Abbe Genest shares with Racine is the sense of dialogue. The characters speak to one another's minds. This is the case also in the plays of La Noue (1701-1761). Though his most successful play waTaTcomedy, 4 yet La Noue attempted a tragedy, Mahomet Second (1739), which preceded Voltaire's Mahomet, and was recognised by Voltaire as anticipating his own. 5 i Aot HI. so. 3. a Act IV. so. 7. a A c t V. so. 3. * La Coquette Corrigie, 1756. 6 In the following lines : ' Mon cher La Noue, illustre pere De l'invincible Mahomet, Soyez le parrain d'un cadet, Qui sans vous n'est pas sur de plaire. Le vdtre fut un Conquerant, Le mien a Phonneur d'etre apotre, Pretre, filou, devot, brigand ; Faites-en l'Aumonier du votre.' 100 TRAGEDY In Mahomet Second the phrases are vigorous, 1 there is an attempt at local colour, as in Racine's Bajazet, and the effect of mind upon mind in the dialogue of the characters is carefully studied from life. La Noue also arouses in each act an expectation of the events to follow. Thus in Act I he suggests through Le Visir to Theodore the existence of a mystery to be disclosed, and also encourages the latter to think of some way of freeing Irene from her chains. 2 The actual motif of the play is more genuinely a religious motif than that professed by Voltaire : for the impulse felt by Irene to defend her honour and her faith is a sincere one. 3 The conflict in Mahomet's mind between love and his glory as a conqueror is also worked up to a crisis in Act V, when in his savagery he sacrifices Irene. 4 The denouement, though criticised at the time as unhistorical, is in its essential character dramatic. The same qualities appear in the fragments left by La Noue of other tragedies, none of which were acted. Some of them are so vivid in expression that they reflect, as Racine had done, the life of the author's age. Take for example a passage describing the court of Egypt in La Mort de Cleomene : ' Je vous vois a regret dans une cour perfide, Ou regnent les forfaits, sous un Roi parricide ; Oh la corruption leve un front enhardi, Et repand les f aveurs sur le crime applaudi ; Oh, dans les flots impurs de leurs fausses delices, Nagent de vils mortels, orgueilleux de leurs vices. Abhorrez ces exces : conservez, Argiris, Pour rfigypte et ses moeurs le plus constant mepris ; Mais menagez le Roi, cachez-lui votre haine. II n'est pas sans vertus, il cherit Cleomene. Cleomene bienot va vous servir d'appui. Vainqueur de la Syrie, il revient aujourd'hui. II revient : tout ici parle de sa victoire : Le Roi respectera l'artisan de sa gloire.' It is however in the fragments of an Antigone that La Noue's power is most apparent. He puts on the stage, in 1 E.g. in Aot I. in the opening conversation between Aehmet and Le Visir. 2 See also Aot III. so. 9. 8 Aot II, sob. 5 and 6 ; Aot V. so. 4. 1 Aot V. so. 9. TRAGEDY 101 the Greek fashion, a chorus which produces the atmosphere of the play : and this is succeeded by a long and varied monologue spoken by Antigone herself who describes her interview with her brothers under the walls of Thebes. The speech of Creon, refusing sepulture to the body of Polynice, and Antigone's pleading have great emotional force : ' . . . Je vois le Dieu des morts, Des tombeaux avilis vengeant le privilege, De ses droits usurpes punir un sacrilege, Je vois autour de toi voltiger irrite Mon frere malheureux des enters rejette ... Ombre sainte ! descends sur sa tete coupable, Dechire, aneantis son ame impitoyable ; Rends-lui tous les tourmens qu'il t'avoit destines ; Attache a ses cotes tes manes obstines. Epouvante ses jours par tes clameurs funebres, Souille-le de ton sang, dans l'horreur des tenebres. Venge-toi ; suis ses pas ; qu'il te craigne en tous lieux, Et qu'il trouve par-tout ton spectre furieux.' But in the colder plays of Guimond de la Touche, and to some extent in those of La Fosse, the speeches are declamatory and might all have been addressed to the audience from a pulpit or rostrum. Unfortunately it was this latter fashion that prevailed in the eighteenth century Plays became recitals rather than acted and passionate life. It is this peculiar decadence of the drama which is pointed in all Voltaire's work, and in fact the public that applauded his plays seem chiefly to have enjoyed the speeches because they were directly addressed to the onlookers, who thus felt themselves to be part of the action. It is this new view of the theatre which, together with scenic displays on the stage, ended by destroying the vitality of the tragedy of the country. For natural dialogue and for the influence of one character upon another, people went to the comedy or to the drame. Another form of deterioration of tragedy is that in which the intrigue is exaggerated and the events treated tend to become increasingly improbable. So Campistron's Tiridate (1691) exaggerates Racine's idea of a plot, and 102 TRAGEDY Lagrange-Chancel in Ino et Melicerte embarrasses the stage with a complicated intrigue which is only tiresome. The same author in Amasis treats the subject of maternal love but does not make it the centre of the action. There is a tendency in Lagrange-Chancel, a tendency which afterwards becomes more decisive in Crebillon, to make sensationalism and not real feeling the pivot of the play. Unlikely events are connected with unusual springs of action. This disturbs the moral as well as the artistic proportion of a play. Crebillon suggests that a successful crime crowns a life of virtue : Lagrange-Chancel seems to hold that the magnitude of an event or of a position alters the moral point of view : ' II n'est point de forfait que le trone n'efface,' 1 and so does Renou : ' Mais trahir un tyran ne fut jamais un crime.' 2 Guimond de la Touche also errs by over-emphasis ; in his case this is perhaps more evident in the language and phrasing than in the plot. In 1757 his play Iphigenie en Tauride was represented. His language is overloaded with epithet ; in the introductory scene between Iphigenie and Ismenie, the priestess of Diana is declamatory from the outset. The recital of Iphigenie's dream is founded on a more famous one in Racine's Athalie but is much less striking. 8 De la Touche has occasional happy expressions, but nearly always overbalances them and destroys the effect he has produced. See, for example, Thoas' soliloquy : ' Sans etre criminel, j'eprouve des remords, J'entrevois sous mes pieds le rivage des morts, La foudre autour de moi dans la nuit etincelle, Sur mon front innocent ma couronne chancelle.' 4 In the same way Iphigenie's real distress in the face of the choice she must make between Oreste and Pylade is 1 Lagrange-Chancel, Ino et Milicerte. ' Renou, La Mort d'Hercule. * Aot I. so. 2. ' Act I. so. i. TRAGEDY 103 spoiled by the tone of galanterie in the whole scene, 1 and at the end Oreste's really good lines : ' L'horreur me fuit ; tout semble autour de moi renaitre ; Dans un monde nouveau je prends un nouvel etre,' 2 are spoiled by Pylade's anti-chmax : ' Marchons, et sous l'auspice Du ciel fecond pour nous en miracles divers, Allons en etonner la Grece et l'univers.' B. J. Saur in (1706-1781) is the only writer of drama in the century who attempted with any success the three genres of comedy, tragedy and drame. His principal tragedy is Spartac us (1760), in which the hero, enslaved by Rome, and then conquering her, revenges himself by imposing a yoke of slavery on the Romans. The play is conventional in its presentment, but distinguished in style and language. Emilie, in describing to her confidante the gladiatorial games in which Spartacus took a part and was applauded by the spectators, expresses excellently the disdain of the Gaul for the applause he has called out. 3 Emilie, as in the case of Corneille's heroine of the same name, stands for personal and civil liberty 4 ; and for a sense of duty which is also reminiscent of Corneille. 8 The feeling of Spartacus is true to life. When he recalls the cruelty of Rome he gives to the Romans the name of barbarian, which had been 1 Act in. sc. 6. z Act V. sc. 9. 3 ' Tout le peuple a grands oris applaudit sa victoire. Cet homme alors s'avance, indigne de sa gloire. " Peuple romain," dit-il, " vous, consuls, et senat, Qui me voyez fremir de ce honteux combat, C'est une gloire a vous bien grande, bien insigne, Que d'exposer ainsi, sur une arene indigne, Le sang d'Arioviste a vos gladiateurs ! ..." ' Act II. sc. 1. 4 ' Que Ton naisse monarque, esclave, ou citoyen, C'est l'ouvrage du sort, un grand homme est le sien.' Act II. sc. 1. 5 ' I/amour est mon tyran, mais il n'est pas mon maltre.' Act II. sc. 1. ' Si Rome doit perir, m'exeeptez en vain.' Act II. so. 2. 104 TRAGEDY attributed to him. 1 And he also expresses for all subject races the feeling for the rights of man which appeared in France in literature even before it became a political war- cry. The origin of Rome itself was found, he says, in a handful of men escaping from servitude : ' Rome, voila quels sont tes dignes fondateurs ! ... (d Messala) Laissez done la mes fers ; non pas que j'en rougisse : La honte en est a vous, ainsi que l'injustice ; La gloire en est a moi, qui de ce vil etat, Qui du sein de l'opprobre ai tire mon £clat, Qui, votre esclave enfin, sus, creant une arm6e, Me faire le vengeur de la terre opprimee. Que Rome quitte done cette vaine hauteur, Qui lui sied mal sans doute, et devant son vainqueur : En barbares, surtout, ne faites plus la guerre.' 2 With Spartacus the love interest is secondary, but it is dignified and significant : ' II faut, belle Emilie, 6tre digne de vous, Et vous perdre ... Le ciel, de mon bonheur jaloux, Ne permet pas ...' 3 ' Ah ! cesse, Spartacus, de t'abuser toi-meme. Ce pouvoir de l'amour, il le tient des mortels : C'est notre lachete qui dressa ses autels. Sous un nom revere consacrant la mollesse L'homme s'est fait un dieu de sa propre faiblesse. Allons ; et, tout entier a mes nobles desseins, Ne songeons plus qu'a vaincre, et marchons aux Romains.' i The conflict in Spartacus' mind is between the love he bears to Emilie and the vengeance he owes to those who injured his mother. Rome becomes a symbol of evil, and therefore to be conquered. He refuses Crassus' offer of peace and the hand of Emilie : peace is 'the sleep of death.' 5 The 1 ' ... I'ame d'un barbare, ou plut6t d'un Remain.' Act III. so. 4. 8 Act III. so. 4. a Act III. so. 5. 4 Act III. so. 7. « Act V. so. 4. TRAGEDY 105 fortune of war turns, however, against him, and in a rapid last act of the play he asks from fimilie, as a proof of her love,* a dagger or poison. She kills herself and gives him the dagger. The rapidity of the events excuses their melodramatic character, and the play is on the whole more natural in tone than many of Crebillon's dramas. Saurin also attempted, as Crebillon had done, a romantic tragedy ; and his play Blanche el Guiscard failed for the very exaggeration of the dramatic qualities noticed in Sjpartacus. De BelloiJP . L. Buyrette), 1727-1775, was also an author of tragedies, one of which, ig #je(/e d&.C®}j£yL na, d a great and topical success, for it was produced immediately after France had lived through nine years of a disastrojis war, ' and had signed a humiliating peace. The picture of the French forcing the admiration of their conquerors for their moral qualities was one which was greatly appreciated at the time. As a stage in the decline of tragedy, however, de Belloi's work is significant. He does not appeal to the strength either of elemental or of political passion in his audience, but develops speeches full of heroic sentiment which have a certain comforting false glitter about them, together with a great deal of movement. It is Saurin set at a quicker pace and with poorer psychology. The style is, at its best, narrative and vigorous rather than poetical, but the speech of Saint-Pierre to the citizens of Calais 1 is a good piece of rhetoric— not however equal to Shake- speare's speech put into the mouth of Henry V, with which it has some analogy. The conclusion, with the speeches of Fjdouard of England, is melodramatic rather than psychological. The chief examples, however, of this kind of over- emphasis in tragedy are to be found in Crebillon. 2 His first play, Idomenee, has a plot that is partly legendary and 1 Act I. so. 6. * The depreciation of tragedy can be illustrated from a page in Marmontel's Memoirs. Voltaire was advising Marmontel to write comedy : ' Helas, Monsieur, comment ferai-je des portraits ? Je ne connais pas les visages.' Voltaire replied : ' Eh bien, faites des tragedies,' and this advice was taken. 106 TRAGEDY partly invented. The King of Crete, eon of Deucalion, has vowed to Neptune to sacrifice the first person he meets on return from a sea-voyage in which he has been in great danger. The predestined victim is his son. In the original story Idomenee kills his son. In Crebillon's version the son slays himself to secure the father's safety. The plot of the play was not unlike that of many other subjects of tragedy, but the motive for the sacrifice of an innocent victim has generally been the safety of a nation (as in Iphigenie) or the obedience to a Divine command. It is a question whether the motive of Idomenee is a legitimate one for true tragedy, which seems to demand an adequate aim if a person is to sacrifice his fife, and it is doubtful if Crebillon's plays, submitted to this test, are not melodrama rather than tragedy. Idomenee's opening speech, putting the fife of his people before his own life, has an accent of insincerity in it, since in analysing the whole play we find the cause of the tragic conflict to be his selfishness. The King's character goes through no development. His fear for himself is never quite true, for in his mind he knows he would not allow the sacrifice of his own safety. Crebillon has recourse like Racine in Phedre to an hereditary cause as an explanation of the evil root in Idomenee's character. Treated as the tragedy of a race the play would bear the interpretation assigned to it by its author, and it appears sometimes as if the allusions in the first act justified this view. 1 But Sophronyme the confidant considers that Idomenee's virtuous fife has given him command over himself, and asks who could have made him succumb ? Idomenee expresses in his answer more than the sense of guilt which the Greeks felt before the mysterious government of the Universe : 1 Sophronyme speaks to Idomenee : ' File de Deucalion, petit-fils de Minos.' — Act I. so. 2. Idomenee to Sophronyme : ' Tii sais de quels forfaits ma race s'est noircie. Comrae Pasiphae, Phedre, au crime endurcie, Ne signalent que trop et Minos et Venus. Tous nos malheurs enfin te sont assez connus.' — Act I. so. 2. TRAGEDY 107 ' On n'est pas innocent lorsqu'on peut les deplaire ; Les dieux sur mes pareils font gloire de leurs coups.' 1 This is the expression of a fatalistic belief in the original sin in the race, and as such is also characteristic of Crebillon's great predecessor, Racine. The king goes so far as to urge the anger of the gods as an excuse for his weak love for Erixene. 2 The fact that his son, Idamante, also loves Erixene, and is rejected by her as the son of the assassin of her father, does not lend the plot any relief. Shock succeeds shock of fierce feeling and there is an improbable confusion of events. Idomen6e believes that the death of Merion has quenched his hatred for his adversary, but cannot really expect that this fact should render him acceptable to Merion's daughter, Erixene, nor that she should sympathise with the love he expresses to her and which makes his own fate a pitiable one. There are efforts, however, at character- drawing in Crebillon's play which make it interesting in spite of the extravagance of the main idea. Idomenee recognises for example that he is not fighting against his love for Erixene, he is really influenced by his feeling for her and thus is combating his reason and his habit of mind. 3 On the other hand, like most weak people, he can analyse himself relentlessly but wishes to be treated with considera- tion and gentleness by his friend. 4 Again, on hearing that 1 Act I. so. 2. * ' Sophronyme : MenacS chaque jour du sort le plus affreux Nourrissez-vous, seigneur, un amour dangereux ? Idominie : Je ne le nourris point, puisque je le deteste : C'etait des dieux vengeurs le coup le plus funeste.' ' Je sens toute Phorreur d'un amour si funeste ; Mais je cneris ee feu que ma raison deteste ; Bien plus, de ma vertu redoutant le retour, Je combats plus souvent la raison que 1'amour.' Act I. sc. 2. Act II. so. 3. ' A ma raison du moins laisse le temps d'agir, Bt combats mon amour sans m'en faire rougir. Aveo trop de rigueur ton entretien me presse, Plains mes maux, Sophronyme, ou flatte ma faiblesse.' Act II. sc. 3. 108 TRAGEDY his son is his rival, Idomenee expresses the overpowering force of jealousy : ' Dans le nom de rival tout nom est confondu.' x Even in the scene of his son's death, the king of Crete reproaches the gods, and not himself, for having led to this tragedy. It would almost seem as if Crebillon had depicted the type of weakness that is fatally followed by strange events and cruelties through which others suffer. To the sufferers an inexorable fate seems to he behind their injuries, to the audience it is clear that the original weakness of character is the crime. It is to be regretted that the last scene between the father and son is so lacking in artistic restraint as to be almost intolerable, and it does not do justice to the fine idea behind the play. The story of Atree et Thyeste as treated by Crebillon i was especially suitable to the fierce play and counter-play j of passion which he invoked. It was represented in 1707, j and its success rather unfortunately decided the type of subject to which Crebillon afterwards gave himself. In the first act Crebillon traces the relationship of blood and the instincts of hate and love which are found among the members of the house of Atreus. In the second act Thyeste is the victim of the fatal dream which his daughter Theodamie treats as an illusion ; the love she already bears to Plisthene having bound her to Chalcis. She consents, however, to ask Atree for a ship by which she and her father can leave the country, and there is a very energetic and well-conceived scene between Theodamie and Atree, after which the latter forces Thyeste to appear before him. 2 Atree is represented as the tyrant over the souls of his niece Theodamie, his brother Thyeste, and the unhappy Plisthene, who is really his brother's son, though reputed to be Atree's. It is in the third act, when Atree is pre- paring his coup, that we see the real defect of the piece. Atree's motives are revenge for his wife's faithlessness, and hatred of her lover and her child, but there is in his nature a cruelty and vainglory that are below the level of humanity, 1 Aot III. so. 5. » Aot II. so. 2. TRAGEDY 109 and the whole tragedy is lowered in tone by AtreVs desire to excel all other inhuman crimes : ' Courons tout preparer ; et par un coup funeste, Surpassons, s'il te peut, les crimes de Thyeste.' * It is difficult to imagine that the best actor could deal successfully with this speech. Theodamie manages to keep a superb demeanour, and while leaning on Plisthene, whom she trusts, she sees that the older men need to be saved from themselves and from one another. 2 Plisthene, in the momentary calm of the apparent reconciliation of the brothers, feels instinctively the under-current of danger. The last act has dramatic power. When Thyeste recoils before the cup of blood and Atree says to him : ' Meconnais- tu ce sang ? ' Thyeste's answer is : ' Je reconnais mon frere.' s The last words of Atree are well-imagined and leave, as is desired, the impression of tragic doubt : 'A ce prix j'accepte le presage ; Ta main, en Fimmolant, a comble mes souhaits, Et je jouis enfin du fruit de mes forfaits.' 4 Crebillon's answer to the attacks made upon him for the extreme terror inspired by his tragedy marks out his theory of aesthetic. He claims that all those who have suffered, in a lesser degree, wrongs similar to Atree's ought to bear the representation of the tragedy. 5 Next he asserts that the imagination of evil need not come out of the fulness of the heart, 6 therefore that the artist is not to be blamed for describing inhuman wickedness, lastly that it is by exciting terror in tragedy that pity is called out. Crebillon then regards the tragic drama much as Corneille had done, though where Corneille had put upon the stage the exalta- tion of virtue, Crebillon painted vice in a repulsive way. Both writers claimed to touch the feeling of the audience. i Act III. sc. 7. * Act IV. so. 2. 8 Act V. so. 7. 4 Act V. so. 8. 6 ' Je n'aurais pas cru que, dans un pays ou il y a tant de maris maltraites, Atree eut eu si peu de partisans.'— Priface d'Atr&e et Thyeste. « ' Comme si tout oe que l'esprit imagine devait avoir sa source dans le cceur ! * 110 TRAGEDY ^ Crebillon agrees with Corneille in his notion of the part played by the imagination of the author. In his preface to llllectre he explained that a poet might impute what motives he pleased to the characters in a well-known plot so long as these motives were psychologically probable in his own day. 1 He might also employ his own imagina- tion to render a story more tragic or more picturesque. 2 What he failed to see was that when the note is forced to any great extent the onlooker becomes insensible to horror, or at any rate, instead of losing himself in the play he contrasts it at once with real life and regards the story as artificial. It was this particular danger that the drame was intended to avoid. By keeping the action on a more natural plane the audience never need lose the sense of reality on the stage. 3 To readers of the two Greek Electras it may seem that Crebillon has claimed a great deal for his own interpretation of the play, but though Voltaire sneered at the ' partie carree d'tflectre,' which Crebillon had produced by adding a second love intrigue, the play, considered apart from the Greek originals, which it in no way resembles, is a well- constructed one, and is filled with feeling that, though derived from the French and not the Greek character, is true to type, filectre, represented in 1708, escapes from the difficulties of Atree et Thyeste and is a very good acting play. In her first soliloquy Electee appeals to the spirit of her father and imagines him touched and pained by the mis- fortunes of his family on earth. 4 At the end of the play, Oreste, a prey to the Furies, is in touch with unseen forces, 1 ' Sophoole ne pouvait donner a son Electre des sentiments qui n'etaient point en usage sur la scene de son temps ; s'il eut recu du notre, il eut peut- etre fait oomme moi.' * ' II ne s'agit que de rendre Eleotre tout a fait a plaindre ; je crois y avoir mieux reussi que Sophoole, Euripide, Eschyle et tous eeux qui ont traite le meme sujet. C'est ajouter encore a l'horreur du sort de cette princesse que d'y joindre une passion dont la oontrainte et les remords ne font pas toujours les plus grands malheurs.' s That this sense of reality was strong is instanced by the story of the young man who impulsively pulled out his purse to succour the necessitous characters in L'Enfant Prodigue. The comment at the time was that the man's heart was warm ; from another point of view it would be that the drama was convincing in its realism. 1 Aot I. so. 1. TRAGEDY 111 and his own name pronounced by himself comes to his ears as a shivering echo from the underworld, a summons to depart. 1 Between these two scenes we have the story of Electee. She moves, a very touching figure, conscious of her evil ancestry, conscious of the crime which lost her her father ; and yet loving Itys, the son of the murderer of Agamemnon, with what would in different circumstances have been an innocent love. 2 She appeals to the mother in Clytemnestre against the cruelty of the fate which that mother has provided for her. 3 The part of Clytemnestre is less happily conceived. The queen's account of her dream and its presage verges on the absurd, though it is not more absurd than figisthe's commonplace explanation of dreams in general. The recognition of Oreste by Palamede, who sees his temptations and his character through the dis- guise, is dramatically effective in its use of irony. 4 The play gains as a play by the alternation of such scenes with the gentler ones between Electre and Itys, 5 where the tone of galanterie helps to mark the contrast with the surrounding tragic situation, and Crebillon moves with great skill from , the easy converse of love to an atmosphere of strain. Electre is the consistent character, holding the play together. At the crisis in the last Act she appeals to the duty urged on her and Oreste by the implacable gods. 6 Bhadamiste et Zendbie fo llowed in 1711. In this play, 1 * Quelle triste clart6 dans ce moment me luit ? Qui ramene le jour dans ees retraites sombres ? Que vois-je ? Mon aspect epouvante les ombres ! Que de gemissements ! que de oris douloureux ! " Oreste ! " Qui m'appelle en ce sejour affreux ? ' Act V. sc. 9. 2 Act I. sc. 3. 3 Act I, sc. 5. * * Palam&de : Un si coupable amour n'est digne que d'Oreste, Mon flls de son devoir eut et6 plus jaloux. Et quel est done, seigneur, cet Oreste ? Palamide : C'est vous.' Act III. sc. 5. 6 E.g. Act V. sc. 2. ■ ' Bespectez un heros qui ne fait en ces lieux Que son devoir, le mien, et que oelui des dieux.' Act V. sc. 4. 112 TRAGEDY considered to be Crebillon's chef-d'ceuvre, the author has borrowed some of the circumstances of the plot from the Annals of Tacitus, but the play which he has produced is simple in effect, though extremely romantic in setting. 1 The form of the title points to the fact that two reconnais- sances are to be expected in the play. Pharasmane must recognise his son Rhadamiste, and Zenobie must be dis- covered by her husband. Zenobie, like filectre in the earlier play, moves with dignity through a terrible history of murder and degradation. Injured by her husband, whom she had reason to believe was murdered afterwards by his father Pharasmane, Zenobie is obliged to take refuge at the latter's court. Here, believing herself to be widowed, she falls in love with Arsame, her husband's brother. The return of Rhadamiste and his fierce jealousy obliges Zenobie to declare her innocent passion for Arsame and her in- tention to be loyal to her husband. 2 This occurs in a scene of reconnaissance that is strong and simple and is com- parable with some of the best work of Corneille in Polyeucte. Zenobie stands for a love of duty that is above all fear, and this gives her a personal dignity far beyond that of the commonplace heroine of tragedy. Crebillon is conventional 1 Tacitus, Annate, bk. xiii. oh. 37. s ' (a Rhadamiste) Ton frere me fut cher, je ne le puis nier ; Je ne cherche pas merne a m'en justificr ; Mais, malgre son amour, oe prince, qui l'ignore, Sans les laches soupcons l'ignorerait encore. (a Arsame) Prince, apres cet aveu, je ne vous dis plus rien. Vous connaissez assez un coeur oomme le mien, Four croire que sur lui l'amour ait quelque empire, Mon epoux est vivant, ainsi ma flamme expire, Cessez done d'ecouter un amour odieux, Et surtout gardez-vous de paraitre a mes yeux. (a Rhadamiste) Pour toi, des que la nuit pourra me le permettre, Dans tes mains, en ces lieux, je viendrai me remettre. Je connais la fureur de tes Boupcons jaloux, Mais j'ai trop de vertu pour craindre mon epoux.' Act IV. bo. 5. TRAGEDY 113 in nearly all the opening scenes of his dramatic works, where he represents the heroine as captive at an enemy's court and yet dominating her captor by her physical grace and charm. 1 Zenobie has not escaped this scene, 2 but she diminishes the poor effect by giving the true tragic note to her recital of her misfortunes 3 : in which her account of them is restrained by their very magnitude. The relations between Pharasmane and Rhadamiste are treated by Crebillon with great force and with psycholo- gical verity. The son approaches the father in the quality of the Roman ambassador, 4 and rendered desperate by his fate and the loss of Zenobie, all his feeling is concentrated in mad fury against Pharasmane. 5 His speech as ambassador is marked by an audacity that draws down on him the anger of Pharasmane, and when the latter defies Rome and up- holds his own right of succession Rhadamiste breaks out in words that cut into the heart of Pharasmane 's sin : ' Quoi ? vous, seigneur, qui seul causates leur ruine ! Ah ! doit-on heriter de ceux qu'on assassine ? ' 6 In the last act Pharasmane murders Rhadamiste, but by an effect of pathos which is naturally expressed, Rhadamiste dying has the consolation of feeling that fatherly pity has been at last aroused in Pharasmane by this last great act of the tragedy : ' Enfin, lorsque je perds une epouse si chere, Heureux, quoiqu'en mourant, de retrouver mon pere.' 7 The play ends in the romantic manner, for Zenobie is to be given to Arsame, whom she loves. This play of Crebillon 's is an example of his best manner. The intrigue is not very complicated ; the language is i Idomenie, Act I. sc. 5 ; Atrie et Thyeste, Act I. so. 6 ; Electre, Act I. sc. 1. 2 Rhadamiste et Zinobie, Act I. sc. 1. a Ibid. Act I. sc. 1, sc. 2, sc. 4. 4 Act II. so. 1. 6 ' Je ne sais quel poison se repand dans mon coeur ; Mais, jusqu'a mes remords, tout y devient fureur.' Act II. sc. I. « Act III. so. 2. ' Act V. sc. 6. i 114 TRAGEDY original and well sustained ; the great scenes are imposing in their simplicity ; there is a development of character in the plot : and though the events have the violence and the horror attached to them which are characteristic of Crebillon's manner, they are balanced by scenes of a dif- ferent type, and the varied chances of human life are fairly represented in them. The failure of Crebillon's Semiramis (1717) is due to the author's neglect of a law of the stage. Since the drama is a presentation of social and progressive life, the public is always unable to bear the representation in art of an evil or corrupt condition which society now altogether repudiates. Corneille's Theodore failed for a similar reason. Crebillon's Semiramis made allusions to vice which would not be tolerated in his day. The moral teaching of the play is not in fault, but society finds that certain stages through which human life has passed are overcome by a newer moral sense, and it is only the moral sense of the age of the author which can be represented on the stage, even through the means of an ancient story. The psychological truth must be modern, or else it should be so general as to be easily applicable to all ages. Another play, Xerxes, could not be allowed to remain on the reper- toire because Crebillon represented Artaban as cynical and impious. Such a type was not considered suitable for the tragic stage, and was only capable of being treated by the scourge of satiric comedy. Pyrrhus (1726), written after a considerable interval, is a play much more in the manner of Corneille ; it is elevated and skilful in construction, but it seems to have been Crebillon's last great effort. He wrote, it is true, a Catilina, in which the type of tragedy verges on the declamatory rather than the sensational, and this shows how sensitive Crebillon was to the many currents of influence of his own time. Le Triumvirat ou la mort de Ciceron was a play written by him at the advanced age of eighty to mark his reverence for the memory of Cicero. Pyrrjms remains as his last great work. Here we have a teuly'tjornelian conflict, first in the mind of Glaucias, the tuteur of Pyrrhus, who finds his own son a hostage in the TRAGEDY 115 hands of the enemy Neoptoleme, and can only recover him by betraying Pyrrhus who is his king, but passes as his son. 1 Next there is the conflict in the mind of Glaucias' son, Illyrus, who cannot believe that his father will not save him, but in the atrocious doubt a deeper certainty pierces through and he guesses that his reputed brother Helenus is really Pyrrhus the King. 2 Lastly there is the conflict in the mind of Pyrrhus himself who accuses Glaucias of barbaric indifference to his son Illyrus. 3 It is this scene which is the central one in the play and the one in which the other conflicts have their share. For the reputed Helenus at first accuses Glaucias of delivering up Pyrrhus under the name of Illyrus, a treachery which Glaucias indignantly repudiates.* Helenus then is attacked by Glaucias who says that if Helenus once knew the identity of Pyrrhus the courage he now displays would vanish. 5 1 Act I. so. l. * Act m. so. 5 : • Illyrus : Oui, je vous ferai voir par un effort insigne De quel amour, seigneur, Illyrus etait digue ; Que ce fils malheureux, sans le faire eclater, Des plus rares vertus aurait pu se flatte* ; Qu'il sait du moins mourir et garder le silence, Quand son propre interet peut-§tre l'en dispense. Je pourrais d'un seul mot eviter mon malheur, Mais ce mot echappe vous percerait le coeur. C'est dans le fond du mien qu'enfermant ce mystere Je vais sauver Pyrrhus, votre gloire, et me taire.' • Act III. so. 6. * ' Je ne suis point surpris qu'un lache cceur soupconne Qu'Ulyrus soit Pyrrhus, des que je l'abandonne : Mais vous, jusqu' a ce jour eleve dans mon sein, Vous, a qui des vertus j'aplanis le chemin, Que j'instruisis d'exemple, auriez vous ose oroire Que d'une lachete j'eusse souille ma gloire ? Non, mon oher Helenus : ce fils abandonne N'en est pas moins celui que les dieux m'ont donne ; Et plut au sort cruel qu'il eut un autre pere I ' Act III. sc. 6. ' ' Glaucias : Ah ! si vous connaissiez celui dont vous parlez, Vous changeriez bientdt de soins et de langage, Et je verrais mollir ce superbe courage.' Act III. so. 6. 116 TRAGEDY Helenus then presses Glaucias so closely that his identity is revealed to him : ' Glaucias. Ah ! quel emportement ! C'en est trop, levez- vous. Reconnaissez Pyrrhus a ma douleur extreme. Helenus. Achevez ... Glaucias. Je me meurs ... Malheureux ! c'est vous-meme.' It has been urged against Crebillon that the love-interest in his plays takes the second place, and Voltaire is known to have held the opinion that unless this motive takes the first place it had better be absent from a play. But Vol- taire tried, not altogether successfully, both the plans he suggests, and the fact remains that Crebillon's plays gain by the introduction of love-scenes, although these do not have a supreme influence on the action. Without them the psychology of his characters would be incomplete. Con- flict would exist between different interests and different persons, but not necessarily within the mind of the chief actors. Thus Crebillon follows the precedent of the French tragic stage set by Corneille and by Racine, while Voltaire was in reality departing from tradition 1 and looking for- ward to a condition of the stage where elaborate setting and accompaniments would give a new sense of reality and provide a new source of aesthetic enjoyment similar to that obtained at the opera, while the introduction of the crowd on the stage, following the precedent of Shakespeare, would produce a new type of contrast between the action of iso- lated heroes or leaders and that of the populace with its incalculable impulses. What had been the distant and fateful background of the picture in the seventeenth century was to become a part of the action in the eighteenth. Here again the stage was reflecting the movement of history. 2 1 See Grimm, Corr. Litt., vol. iii. p. 74. ' On vantait oontinuellement les tragedies de Crebillon : et l'on jouait sans oesse oelles de Voltaire.' 2 Among the writers of tragedy Lemierre is credited by his contemporaries with considerable talent. In 1758 his play Hypermnestre attained in places to a Racmian simplicity, and is approved by Grimm on that account. In 1764 his play of I dominie was performed ; but the tone was too argumentative for Grimm's taste. Corr. Litt., vol. iii. p. 413. ' Les personnages de Lemierre ont un defaut bien insupportable au theatre, oelui d'etre raisonneurs.' In TRAGEDY 117 The plays of Voltaire follow in every way a different line of development from those of Crebillon. In Voltaire's Efitre Dedicatoire to Madame de Pompadour on the occasion of the production of his play Tancrede, the author explains that the moral tone of the tragic drama in France is high, and the audience takes part in the good sentiments enounced by applauding them. 1 We are then prepared for the guiding principle of Voltaire's drama. Other tragic dramatists of the period, while thinking little of the realism of stage pre- sentation, had depended on the psychology of feeling for interest in the piece, and this was emphatically the case with Racine. A tragedy need not, he thought, be archaeo- logically nor historically likely, but it must be true to the working of the human mind. Thus in the drama of the seventeenth century the only attempt to teach a moral was by the exaltation of virtue as a motive for action. In the drama of Crebillon the relentless presentation of Jvice in all its evil contortions implied a moral. Voltaire departed from both precedents, for he, in common with the writers of drame, not only implied a moral in his painting of life, but expressed it in the plot and in the words of "his characters. It is clear that in the history of the de- generation of the drama during the eighteenth century, while some plays err by being sensational and exaggerated, others do so by becoming rhetorical and philosophical. When the transition had taken place it was the drame rather than tragedy that fulfilled the common desire for a moving play. 1767 he was obliged to keep out of his new play, Ouillaume Tell, all mention of the House of Austria. Grimm's comment is : ' ... S'il avait mis dans leur bouche (des oomediens) le sentiment energique et genereux de la liberte, la police l'aurait prie de garder son ouvrage dans son porte-feuille.' La Veuve de Malabar, 1770, was rather an unfortunate effort at placing Voltaire's philosophic ideas within a frame of sentimental drama. 1 ' De tous les arts que nous cultivons en France, l'art de la tragedie n'est pas celui qui excite le moins l'attention publique, car il faut avouer que o'est celui dans lequel les Francais se sont le plus distingues. C'est d'ailleurs au theatre seul que la nation se rassemble ; c'est la que l'esprit et le gout de la jeunesse se forment ; les estrangers y viennent apprendre notre langue, nulle mauvaise maxime n'y est toleree, et nul sentiment estimable n'y est debite sans etre applaudi ; c'est une ecole toujours subsistante de poesie et de vertu.' 118 TRAGEDY The drama of Voltaire is so extensive in range that it is not easy to place it in the history-of French tragedy except in the most general terms. But although Voltaire asserted in his Lettre au Pere Poree that ' une scene de genie ' was worth all the poetics, his experiments in drama are chiefly interesting when connected with the dramatic theory he expresses, and with the judgments he pronounces on other writers. Thus he is perpetually justifying on rational and artistic grounds any new departures he may make, and insisting on his close reference to the best literary tradition : while as a fact he was breaking away from this tradition and judging with great harshness men like Crebillon who had much more of the ancient fire and simplicity. Voltaire as a dramatic author came into contact with the literary public through his difficulties with the Comedie Francaise. After the time of Moliere these comedians had formed a close mutual partnership ; they shared profits in certain fixed proportions, they had a pension scheme and ensured work and privileges to the actors and actresses in their close corporation, and they gave a collective opinion on works submitted to them. 1 They were adverse to Mercier's drames, and refused them for many years. They made great difficulties with Voltaire's tragedies, because these works did not always contain parts suited to the actors, who had their prescriptive rights to play certain roles, and objected to these roles being left out of a play. (Edipe, Voltaire's first play, was refused on account of the lack of love interest in it, and the same objection was put forward against others of his plays. But Voltaire used interest to get his plays acted, 2 and while affecting to despise the attitude taken up by the comedians, he always discovered some way of circumventing them and of appealing to the general public. It was this constant appeal to a wide public that laid the foundation of Voltaire's 1 See the Lettre d'un Gom&dien du Thtdtre de la Ei-publigue, where the editor Bays that the comedians ' se pretendent une society libre, maitresse de recevoir ou de repousser oe qui bon lui semble.' 2 Lettre au Pire Porte, 1729. TRAGEDY 119 popularity and eventual triumph. His first academical conflict was with La Motte, whom Voltaire suspected of urging tragi-comedy (such as Hardy's) on his audience in the place of true tragedy ; and Voltaire made in conse- quence a more vigorous application of the three unities than even French stage tradition would bear out. Vol- taire also appeared at first to fear the influence of the Opera, 1 which he considered to be a mixed and untrue genre in art, with music and dancing as external and unessential elements. At the same time he opposed the idea of a tragedy in prose, without noticing that measure in poetry is of the same nature as measure in music ; if the one is artificial and external, so is the other. In all these directions Voltaire afterwards contradicted his own theory. The influence of Shakespeare's drama on his mind after his English period, and the necessity for the expansion of drama which he felt in later years, modified his early views ; but they are in- teresting in the first period as showing that Voltaire shared in the French instinct to seek measure and form at the time of his greatest natural spontaneity. As the spontaneity diminished, so did the prejudice in favour of a poetic theory and of regularity of method. (Edipe is imitated from Sophocles, and the experiment of bringing a chorus on to the French stage is one which no doubt influenced Voltaire later when he became aware of the effect gained by the admission of the crowd to the stage in England and the banishment of spectators from the boards of the theatre. In the third Act of (Edipe Voltaire gives an opportunity for the chorus, even though not on the scene, to manifest itself, by making I§gine allude to the menacing cry of the people. 2 This is continued through three following scenes. There is a unity of sug- gestion in the play, which is imitated from the Greek, and the original plot has certainly been sympathetically observed by Voltaire. Thus (Edipe, in the soliloquy he 1 Preface d'(Edipe. a ' Vous entendez d'ioi leurs oris s6ditieux ; Us demandent son sang de la part de nos dieux.' Act III. so. 1. 120 TRAGEDY utters when the blow falls upon him, is filled with a sense of the darkness of night. 1 The high priest, foretelling CEdipe's destiny, speaks of it as a darkness. 2 Everything portends the punishment which (Edipe will inflict on himself, though in Voltaire's play (Edipe does not mutilate himself on the stage, and it is left to the imagination of the reader to decide whether the blindness is real, or is the moral deprivation of exile. Voltaire suggests too, in more than one place, that (Edipe is morally blind before the exposure and has feared the light of truth 3 which comes upon him with blinding force. (Edipe (1718), though in some ways crudely expressed, reflected the most advanced and revo- lutionary spirit of the century. The attack on the human and fallible quality of both kings and priests is followed up in the last scene by a defiance of the Gods by Jocaste. The form only of this play is classical : and the same can be said of other plays on Greek subjects that Voltaire wrote later. 4 In his Brutus (1730), for which Voltaire gathered material during his stay in London, we see the new spirit working more completely. 5 In the Discours sur la Tragedie which precedes it Voltaire expresses his conviction that French tragedy will never be able to shake off the yoke of rhyme. 6 1 ' ... ou suis-je ? Quelle nuit CouvTe d'un voile afireux la clarte qui nous luit ? Ces murs sont teinta de sang ; je vois les Eumenidea Secouer leurs flambeaux vengeurs des parricides.' Aot V. so. i. a ' Le oiel, oe oiel temoin de tant d'objets funebrea, N'aura plus pour vos yeux que d'horriblea tenebres.' Act III. sc. 4. 8 ' J'abhorre le flambeau dont je veux m'eclairer, Je orains de me cdnnaitre, et ne puis m'ignorer.' ' Malheureux, epargne-moi le reste ; J'ai tout fait, je le vois, o'en est asaez. dieux, Enfin aprea quatre ans vous dessillez mes yeux.' Act V. sc. 2. Act IV. so. 2. 1 M&rope, Oreste, Sophonisbe, Atrie et Thyeste. 6 Brutus is the first of a series of Roman plays, in which the interest is mainly political : La Mori de Cisar, Rome Sauvie, Le Triumvirat, and Mahomet (considered as a satire). * ' II y a grande apparenoe qu'il faudra toujours des vers sur toua les theatres tragiques, et, de plua, toujours des rimea aur le n6tre.' TRAGEDY 121 His feeling is that rhyme helps to define the poetical character of language ; and that a language like French which follows, whether in prose or verse, a certain order which is mainly a logical one, and therefore cannot bear poetical inversion, would not be sufficiently distin- guished into prose and verse without the help of rhyme. But Voltaire does not examine the subject to its depths. It is a fact that tragedy demands a romantic background ; and the sense of aloofness, of detachment from everyday life, is symbolised by measured and rhymed lines. It is true that tragedy is often now written in prose : but the prose is measured, rhythmical, and sometimes archaic x : and the most romantic works still are written in verse. 2 It is probable that measure and rhyme will always help the expression of a strong personal feeling which demands a universal response, and which is characteristic of a tragic situation. In the drama of Shakespeare, ' ces pieces si monstru- euses,' Voltaire admits that there are admirable scenes : and he also admits that there is a dryness 3 and rigidity about the French method which is due to the presence of spectators on the stage and the narrowing of the space available for the actors, who were too close to their audience. The same want of pictorial detachment prevents (says Voltaire) the representation of certain scenes with appro- priate realism. The audience would confront with ridicule any attempt to bring on the shade of Pompey or the body of Marcus. 4 In these conditions the practice of the stage has injured the play of Brutus. The absence of life in the setting of the play finds no compensation in the action of the characters. Brutus, it is true, is energetic, and has emotional sentences that strike rapid notes in succession, as for example in his examination of Titus : 1 See Jeanne D'Arc by Peguy and L'Annonce faite d Marie by Paul Clandel. 2 E.g. Cyrano de Bergerac (Bdmond Rostand). 3 SScheresse. * ' Mais si nous hasardions a Paris un tel spectacle, n'entendez-vous pas deja le parterre qui se recrie, et ne voyez-vous pas nos femmes qui detournent la tete 1 ' — Diacours sur la Tragidie. 122 TRAGEDY 'Brutus. Arrete, temeraire. De deux fils que j'aimai les dieux m'avaient fait pere; J'ai perdu l'un ; que dis-je ? ah ! malheureux Titus ! Parle, ai-je encore un fils ? Titus. Non, vous n'en avez plus ! ' x and again, in the conversation between Brutus and Valerius : ' Brutus. Eh bien ! Valerius, lis sont saisis sans doute, ils sont au moins connus ? Quel sombre et noir chagrin, couvrant votre visage, De maux encor plus grands semble etre le presage ? Vous fremissez. Valerius. Songez que vous etes Brutus. Brutus. Expliquez-vous ... Valerius. Je tremble a vous en dire plus. (II lui donne des tabhttes) Voyez, seigneur : lisez, connaissez les coupables. Brutus (prenant les tabhttes). Me trompez-vous, mes yeux ? jours abominables ! pere inf ortune ! Tiberinus ? mon fils ! Senateurs, pardonnez ... Le perfide est-il pris V z Take another example : ' Proculus. ' Vous etes pere enfin. Brutus. Je suis consul de Rome.' 3 The conclusion of the play, the main test of a tragedy, has a good deal of appeal to feeling in the picture of the treacherous Titus, strengthened by his father to undergo the death he has deserved. 4 Again the oratorical force of some of Brutus' speeches has some literary value — but they are mainly academic expressions of opinion or treatises on history. In the first act a good deal of variety is introduced by the speech of Aruns, representing the smooth-tongued Etruscan. But the two main defects of the play are evident. Voltaire, skilful though he is as a versifier, falls into the trap set for all rhetorical writers, and spoils his effects too often by banalite and counter-climax. Examples are : 1 Act V. so. 7. * Act V. so. 3. a Act V. so. 6. « Aot V. so. 7. TRAGEDY 123 ' Colosse, qu'un vil peuple eleva sur nos tetes, Je pourrai t'ecraser, et les foudres sont pretes,' *■ and ' Je suis fils de Brutus, et je porte en mon cceur La liberte gravee et les rois en horreur.' 2 Again, the action does not control the development of character in the play. The real force of the play is in the idea of Rome ; which is the ideal of her citizens, the object of their passionate and patriotic worship, and the arbiter of the destiny of each one. In the list of the charac- ters in the play each is important only by his professional interest in his country. The idea is in truth the monarchical one, and is drawn from the age of Louis XIV rather than from that of a free republic. The result of this ' troisieme personnage ' in the action is that in the play of Brutus the patriotic idea is so strong that there is really no room for conflict in the individual mind. Titus wavers because he is weak, but no strong character has a moment's doubt. Even in the otherwise good last act, Brutus has no spark of faith or hope in his son — he even feels no great surprise at his treachery, but accepts it with all the consequences, and treats Titus as no longer a human being but a ' case ' to be psycho- logically analysed. 3 When he is assured that Titus is ready to die he gives him the estime Titus desired. 4 Voltaire is in fact enslaved by one poetic theory, the tradition of the tragic stage, and attracted by another, the ideal of liberty : but the motive which made Shakespeare a national poet — the love of the people for the soil on which naturally free institutions had sprung up — was wanting to Voltaire. With all his desire to describe the Romans, he cannot translate the feeling of democracy on the stage. He was by tradition even though not by birth an aristocrat : and by artistic interest and by intellectual curiosity, though not by real political comprehension, he belonged to the new world. A careful examination of Voltaire's plays shows, however, that 1 Act II. so. 4. 8 Ibid. ' Act V. so. 7. 1 Voltaire's heroes are therefore either strong and obstinate, or weak and wavering. In neither case is there true tragic conflict. 124 TRAGEDY he reflected one great characteristic of eighteenth-century literature. The fact that so much was written and thought on philosophic and scientific subjects has inclined critics to speak of the eighteenth century as the cold age of reason. This phrase would be far more applicable to the early part of the seventeenth century. It is in times of political security that reason can have full scope. Where the back- ground of national and individual life is not attacked it can be analysed with safety. But in the eighteenth century, when the old order was breaking down, people were moved as much by feelings as by opinions. Even the Encyclo- pedic and Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique breathe emotional partisanship : so do the works of D'Alembert and others of the group of Encyclopaedists. Buffon treated zoology with large feeling ; the novel under Prevost and Marivaux and Le Sage reflected the inner strong emotion of the individual life. The sceptics and atheists were sus- tained by their emotional faith in the future of humanity : and the very instability of human society made it impossible to analyse coolly the forces there at work. Movement and action were the notes of the literature of the day and criticism passed swiftly from one point of interest to another. It could be sympathetic or adverse but was never un- emotional. Thus Voltaire had the instinct for admitting touching situations into his drama, and for dwelling on the force of feeling. The last act of his Brutus is successful in so far as it touches any chord of emotion, and in his lUpitre Dedicatoire a M. Falkener with which he introduces Zaire he admits in the plainest words what he considers to be the secret of the success of the new play. He has entered into the taste of his audience for the ' tender passion.' 1 It is permissible perhaps to refer to Voltaire's own experience. The two great emotions of his life were 1 ' Si Zaire a eu quelque succes, je le dois beauoonp moins a la bontd de mon ouvrage qu'a la prudence que j'ai eue de parler d'amour le plus tendre- ment qu'il m'a et6 possible. J'ai flatt6 en oela le gout de mon auditoire ; on est assez sur de reussir quand on parle aux passions des gens plus qu'a leur raison.' See also the Epitre d Mademoiselle Oaussin, where Voltaire refers to the pleasure of the audienoe as ' le plaisir de repandre des Iarmee.' TRAGEDY 125 perhaps his feeling for Madame du Chatelet and his friend- ship for Frederick of Prussia. The crises in his life were produced by these feelings. It was after Madame du Chatelet's death that he left France for Prussia ; and his deep disillusionment at Frederick's court induced him to return to France. The weak and painful jealousies and hatreds which embittered his character were due to an emotion which was perverted and selfish, and in this he fell below the social ideal of all great French writers. In Voltaire's criticism of other dramatists, it is noticeable that he always puts Racine first, though he has a great feeling for ' le grand Corneille,' and in describing a tragedy he always leans to an appreciation of pathos. 1 It was, too, the sentiment of the eighteenth century which first attempted to smooth down Moliere's criticism of life by giving it the garment of verse, 2 and then to put upon the stage a whole new scale of simple and domestic emotions which could only be expressed in the prose drame. In the HljAtre Dedicatoire which precedes Zaire, Voltaire attempts to make a distinction under this head between French and English dramatic practice : but when he says that the lovers on the English stage speak in poetry and on the French with passion, he is probably alluding to neo- classical work such as Addison's Cato, which he had learnt to admire in England, or to Dryden's, which he criticised severely. 3 Another fact that he mentions is certainly de- rived from the practice of the Shakespearean stage : that is, the English habit of using real names and real historical 1 In his preface to the works of Thomas Corneille, we note the following, apropos of Ariane : ' La situation est tres touohante.' Again, in speaking of Thomas Corneille : ' C'<5tait d'ailleurs un homme d'un tres grand merits et d'une vaste litterature ; et si vous exceptez Racine, auquel il ne faut comparer personne, il etait le seul de son temps qui fut digne d'etre le premier au-dessous de son frere.' ' L'art d'exprimer sur le theatre des sentiments vrais et delicats fut ignore jusqu'a Racine.' Seconde lettre d Mr. Falhener. Voltaire's sense of pathos is due to his great and unusual sensibility to both pain and pleasure; This made much of his life, including his last triumph in Paris, almost tragic. 2 See e.g. Thomas Corneille's verse edition of Le Festin de Pierre (1677) and Andrieux's version of La suite du Menteur (1808). 8 ' Nos amants parlent en amants ; et les vdtres ne parlent encore qu'en poetes.' 126 TRAGEDY events as a background for national tragedy. 1 This practice was imitated by Voltaire in Zavre and Tancrede, and Sebastien Mercier suggested the same plan in his plea for a national historical drama. This became the ideal for the writers of historical drama in the nineteenth century. 2 When Voltaire, in Zaire, gives the practical outcome of his theories, it is impossible not to feel some disappoint- ment at this successful play. In the first scene of the first Act Zaire explains to her fellow-slave Fatime that all religions are alike the effect of the instruction of the young. 3 She really acknowledges no law but that of the inclination of the heart ; and the play would have been as good a play if Zaire had not attempted to reason out her impulses. Orosmane, the Mahometan, is represented as having a self-discipline and ideal of married life which is really Western and not Eastern, 4 and Voltaire insensibly gives away his thesis by making Orosmane's austerity deny the tradition of his race. This austerity in regard to more usual pleasures is derived from his pure and strong love for Zaire. 5 Again, when Orosmane deviates from Oriental practice in allowing Nerestan to appear before him, he claims 1 ' C'est au theatre anglais que je dois la hardiesse que j'ai eue de mettre sur la scene les noma de nos rois et des anciennes families du royaume. II me parait que cette nouveaute pourrait §tre la source d'un genre de trag&lie qui nous est inconnu jusqu'ici, et dont nous avons besoin.' 2 In the same letter Voltaire explains that the translation of Zaire suffered at the hands of English actors, who, though at that time learning to use only natural emphasis, still over-acted certain lines. It shows that the French ideal of acting was to foreshadow without exaggeration the words which the dramatist has supplied ; the work of both actor and author are acts con- tributory to one effect. 3 ' J'eusse ete pres du Gange esclave des faux dieux, Chretienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux, L'instruction fait tout ; et la main de nos peres Grave en nos faibles cceurs ces premiers caraoteres Que l'excmplo et le temps nous viennent retracer, Et que peut-etre en nous Dieu seul peut efiacer.' Aot I. so. 1. 4 Act I. so. 2 : ' J'atteste ici la gloire, et Zaire, et ma damme, De ne choisir que vous pour maitresse et pour femme.' 6 ' Je vous aime, Zaire, et j'attends de votre ame TJn amour qui reponde a ma brulante flamme.' Aot I. so. 2. TRAGEDY 127 to be exercising liberality of spirit 1 ; whereas he is really treating Christians more kindly by reason of his interest in Zaire. Nerestan, too, engaged in delivering the Chris- tians, and obtaining their ransom, evidently cares so much more for the person of Zaire herself than for the liberty of the other captives that his words to Orosmane do not ring true. 2 He too is swayed by the love motive : and it would have been better for the play if it had been openly acknow- ledged by Nerestan to himself. 3 It is true that Chatillon makes good dramatic use of the situation, when he suggests to Nerestan that it is of no consequence to Zaire's salvation whether she is a Christian or a Mahometan : ' Qu'importe de quel bras Dieu daigne se servir ? ' 4 And this brings out Nerestan's fierce retort : ' Leurs refus sont affreux, leurs bienfaits font rougir.' 5 The conflict then in Nerestan's mind is not a true dramatic conflict. He is moved by one motive and avows another ; and his moral vagueness is a reflection of Voltaire's double aim in the drama. This is to teach a thesis, but the play must also be popular and appeal to the heart. 6 The case, as Voltaire puts it, is not borne out by the play itself. If Zaire were a thesis in favour of religious toleration, then it could only succeed as a play if this mental attitude were made central to the plot. Zaire is, however, a play in which love supplies the motive of the action. Therefore the moral maxims uttered by Zaire and Orosmane are not only out of place but are psychologically insincere : they do not correspond to a real truth in the minds of the characters. 1 ' Je vois avec mepris oes maximes terribles Qui font de tant de rois des tyrana invisibles.' Act I. sc. 3. 8 Act I. so. 4. 3 ' On la retient ... Que dis-je ? ... Ab ! Zaire elle-meme, Oubliant les chr6tiens pour oe soudan qui l'aime ... N'y pensons plus ... Seigneur, un refus plus cruel Vient m'accabler encor d'un deplaisir mortel : Des chretiens malheureux l'esperance est trahie.' Act II. sc. 1. 1 Act II. sc. 1. * Ibid. • Act III. sc. 1. 128 TRAGEDY Voltaire too is guilty of the insincerity of reducing the acts of Christians and Mahometans to one type of social virtue : and this dislocation of fact spoils the appeal of his play. The action takes place in a fanciful land where there is neither Jew, Turk, infidel nor heretic. It would seem as if Voltaire's drama suffers from this constant blurring of motive. Thus in Lusignan's recogni- tion of his children, the prevailing motive in his appeal to Zaire to be Christian is really his sense of the solidarity of the family and the necessity that the daughter should be obedient to her father. It is as a father and not as a Christian that he makes his primary appeal to her : and it is as a brother that Nerestan makes his appeal. 1 Zaire is torn by a real conflict ; but it is not one between Chris- tianity and Mahometanism, it is one between her duty to her father and her love for Orosmane. 2 The toleration practised by Orosmane comes quickly to an end when Zaire repels him and he suspects she is drawn to Nerestan. 3 At the end of the play, when having slain Zaire and been reassured about her fidelity to him Orosmane is about to kill himself, he recovers his attitude of tolerance to the Christians and overloads them with kindness. 4 Apart from these defects, which are inherent in all Voltaire's work, the character of Orosmane is well studied, and the shades of feeling shown by him under the trial of his doubt of Zaire are psychologically true. For instance, 1 ' Lusignan. Je retrouve ma fille apres l'avoir perdue ; Et je reprends ma gloire et ma felicite, En derobant mon sang a l'mfidelitfi. Nirestan. Je revois done ma sceur ! ... Et son ame ... Zaire. Ah, mon pere. Cher auteur de mes jours, parlez, que dois-je faire ? Lusignan. M'6ter par un Beul mot ma honte et mes ennuis, Dire : Je suis chretienne. Zaire. Oui ... seigneur ... je le suis.' Act II. sc. 3. 2 Aot III. so. 5. 3 ' Allons ! que le serail soit ferm6 pour jamais ; Que la terreur habite aux portes du palais ; Que tout ressente ioi le frein de l'esolavage. Des rois de l'orient suivona l'antique usage.' Aot III. so. 7. 1 Aot V. so. 10. TRAGEDY 129 when Zaire is with him he listens to instinct, though not to reason or suggestion, and believes in her, 1 until he thinks that he has in Nerestan's letter the proof of her guilt. Only then does he allow himself the use of savage irony : 'Zaire. Vous doutez de mon cceur ? Orosmane. Non, je n'en doute pas. Allez, rentrez, madame.' 2 Again, after the slaughter of Zaire and the proof of her innocence Orosmane's first words are convincingly natural : ' Tu m'en a dit assez. ciel ! j'etais aime ! Va, je n'ai pas besoin d'en savoir davantage ...' 3 It is usual to see in Zaire considerable influence on Voltaire's mind of Shakespeare's Othello. But love and not jealousy is in Voltaire's play the real centre of the action, for Orosmane refuses to admit jealousy into his mind until driven to avenge the insult he conceives has been laid upon him. Shakespeare's hero suffers, and causes Desdemona to suffer, because his reason and judgment are blinded, and his instinct leads him wrong. It is only in the last scene of Voltaire's play, where Orosmane speaks the elegy of Zaire, that there is direct imitation of Shake- speare's Othello : 'Dis-leur que j'ai donne la mort la plus affreuse A la plus digne femme, a la plus vertueuse Dont le ciel ait forme les innocents appas ...' 4 Alzire, represented in 1736, is preceded by a letter appealing to the charity and tolerance of artists and men of letters among themselves : an attitude on which Voltaire's own was a curious comment. Alzire, the daughter of Monteze, has abandoned the false gods of her nation for the true God : but she finds herself drawn into a conflict between her obedience to her father, who wishes her to marry Don Gusman, and her hatred of a tie with the con- queror of her country. Here again, as in Zaire, the question i Act IV. sos. 2, 3, 6, 7. * Act IV. so. 6. 8 Act V. so. 10. ' Act V. bo. 10. 130 TRAGEDY of religion is really external to the play. In Alzire's case it is after the marriage that her former lover, Zamore, appears, and her words to Zamore in which she admits no excuse for her want of faith to a lover whom she believed dead, are on a high level. 1 Zamore, like Orosmane, moved by an entirely emotional impulse, wishes to be satisfied that Alzire still loves him. Alzire, when in the next scene she is confronted with Gusman's treachery, sees no way out with honour but by death. Gusman's departure to the war fills in the interval between the third and fourth acts. On his return, Alzire sees that she has pleaded for Zamore 's life in vain : ' J'assassinais Zamore en demandant sa vie.' 2 The play of Alzire is dramatically superior to Zaire in this : that Alzire's prayer to the unknown God, who if He exists is the Father of all peoples, comes at the crisis of her fate, when the loss of earthly support has led her to question her own soul. 3 But when she is accused and left without 1 ' Je pourrais t'alleguer, pour afiaiblir mon crime, De mon pere sur moi le pouvoir legitime, L'erreur ou nous etions, mes regrets, mes combats, Les pleurs que j'ai trois ans donnes a ton trepaB ; Que, des chr^tiens vainqueurs esclave infortunee, La douleur de ta perte a leur Dieu m'a donnee ; Que je t'aimai toujours ; que mon cceur eperdu A detest^ tes dieux qui font mal deiendu : Mais je ne cherche point, je ne veux point d'excuse ; II n'en est point pour moi, lorsque l'amour m'accuse. Tu vis, il me suffit. Je t'ai manque de foi ; Tranche mes jours afireux, qui ne sont plus pour toi.' Act III. so. 4. a Act IV. so. 3. s ' O toi, Dieu des Chretiens, Dieu vainqueux et terrible, Je connais peu tes lois ; ta main, da haut des cieux, Perce a peine un nuage epaiSBi sur mes yeux ; Mais si je suis a toi, si mon amour t'ofiense, Sur ce cceur malheureux epuise ta vengeance. Grand Dieu, conduis Zamore au milieu des deserts ! Ne serais-tu le Dieu que d'un autre univers ? Les seuls Europeens sont-ils nes pour te plaire ? Es-tu tyran d'un monde, et de l'autre le pere f Les vainqueurs, les vaincus, tous ces faibles humains, Sont tous egalement l'ouvrage de tes mains.' Act IV. so. 5. TRAGEDY 131 hope, Alzire turns, as Voltaire had done, against a God who permits evil in the world. 1 She stands, when appealed to by Zamore, for the rights of conscience and honesty against the offer which would tempt Zamore to be converted to Christianity and thus save both himself and Alzire. Gusman, in the last scene, really redresses the balance of the play. He pardons Zamore in the name of the God of the Christians. 2 The thesis of the play, then, is that true Christianity is above other religions in its lessons of mercy and peace. 3 Happily for Voltaire's play the last two acts show a harmony between the spiritual emotions of the characters and their human love. The result is that the play is unified. But this has been done by a tour de main that is only justified in a tract. What is there in the character of Gusman in the earlier acts of the play to lead us to imagine that he is either clear-sighted to his own faults or capable of mercy and unselfishness ? A miracle must have occurred to turn him into the saint of the last act. And Voltaire gives no sort of hint that such a miracle has been worked. Gusman's conversion happened long ago, and apparently left him untouched. The loss of Alzire's esteem is the only possible motive which could bring Gusman to his better self. And if this is so, Alzire is a drama of love, and the motive is not a religious motive at all. It offers, however, a singularly good opportunity for a study of the outbreak of religious despair, in the case of someone who has lost earthly happiness. Mahomet, ou le Fanatisme (1742) is an even more audacious exhibition of a pretended religious thesis. The play is supposed to be an illustration of the evil effects of a belief in a fanatical religion, and the impulse which urged Voltaire to dedicate this drama to Benedict XIV leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader of the play that in the 1 Act IV, so. 3. * ' Vis, superbe ennemi, sois libre, et te souviens Quel fut et le devoir et la mort d'un Chretien.' Act V. bc. 7. > ' Ah I la loi qui t'oblige a oet effort supreme Je commence a le croire est la loi d'un Dieu meme.' Act V. sc. 7. 132 TRAGEDY character of Mahomet Voltaire meant to put in the pillory the pretensions of the Church in the person of the Pope. Some of the allusions are too evident not to be recognised. 1 Mahomet is represented as playing on the credulity of the people, and founding his empire on their ignorance. But the argument of the play — while it represents Mahomet as forcing Seide to slay, in the name of the Mahometan re- ligion, Zophire, who is (unknown to him) his father — dis- closes motives in the minds of Mahomet himself and of Seide which have an entirely different origin. Seide yields to temptation because he loves Palmire, ignorant of the fact that she is his sister : Mahomet impels Seide to his act of cruelty in order to obtain possession of Palmire, whom he loves, and with the deliberate intention of re- moving Seide from his path. The plot is, however, disclosed, and Palmire follows her brother and her father to death. The good construction of the play is possible because there is no doubt of the motives which move the characters in it. Seide, when weak and fearful of the results of his crime, deliberately accuses Palmire and not Mahomet of being his tempter : ' Non, cruelle I sans toi, sans ton ordre supreme Je n'aurais pu jamais obeir au ciel meme.' 2 The Lettre a M. Maffei which precedes Voltaire's Merope (1748) incidentally illustrates Voltaire's theatrical practice in a way that he perhaps did not intend. He argues that a love interest should either be the whole soul of a piece 1 Mahomet t ' Je veillerai sur vous comme sur l'univers.' Act II. bo. 3. ' Oni, je connais ton peuple, il a besom d'erreur ; Ou veritable ou faux, mon oulte est neoessaire." Act II. so. 5. ' Non, mais il faut m'aider a tromper l'univers." Act II. so. 5. ' Loin de moi les mortels assez audacieux Pour juger par eux-m§mes et pour voir par leurs yeux ! Quieonque ose penser n'est pas ne pour me croire.' Aot m. so. 6. ' Je dois regir en dieu l'univers prevenu ; Mon empire est detruit, si l'homme est reoonnu.' Aot V. so. 4. • Aot IV. so. 4. TRAGEDY 133 or be excluded from it, 1 and he takes credit to himself for excluding galanterie from his version of Merope. But what he has not excluded is the emotional interest aroused by Merope's love for her son, and the tragic situation in which mother and son are placed. Merope is an emotional play, though the emotion is a maternal one. In the Lettre already quoted, Voltaire gives an interesting account of the different versions of the story with which he is acquainted, and points out that he was unable to offer a translation of MafEei's play to a French audience because the simple realism of treatment in the Italian version would have roused French criticism, ridicule, and dislike. Voltaire here deviates from the ideal of Racine which he so much admires, and clearly shows that he edits nature for the use of a critical and artificial society. Here is perhaps a reason for the compara- tive failure of Voltaire to impress us. He speaks to his age, but not for humanity and therefore not to us. The play of Merope has simplicity of motive, a romantic re- connaissance ; and after the crisis in the third act, where Merope is only just saved from slaying her son, mistaking him for the assassin, 2 the play moves with rapid pace towards the inevitable conflict between the will of Poly- phonte the usurper and the right of figisthe the true heir. The recognition of Fjgisthe by Merope has brought about a new relation of all the characters, in the light of which Merope moves from excited transport to almost superhuman courage, and the young Egisthe shows his royal birth. It is to be regretted that the last great scene is represented only in the recital of the confidante ; however lively and varied is her speech, it produces emotion at second-hand, 3 and thus just misses a realism of which the Greeks, Italians, and English were capable in their versions of the play, and from which Voltaire shrank owing to what he felt were the conditions of the stage when he wrote the play. Merope fulfils the conditions of a tragedy, but it is one represented 1 ' C'est la passion la plus theatrale de toutes, la plus fertile en sentiments, la plus variee : elle doit etre Fame d'un ouvrage de theatre, ou en etre entiere- ment Dannie.' 2 Act III. so. 4. " Act V. so. 6. 134 TRAGEDY in shadow-pictures ; there is a want of convincing power, of robustness of presentation. Still it is greatly superior to the other plays we have examined, in which the characters give the impression of starting on their course in the most mondain way, and of scattering tracts on duty and toleration out of the stage-coach windows in their flight. La Mort de Cesar (1743) is a short play in three Acts : more definitely affected by Shakespeare's play of Julius Caesar than Voltaire's other Roman play. The oath of the senators, 1 Caesar's speech, and his appeal to Brutus, 2 Brutus' description of the multitude, 3 Antoine's speech, 4 all have points of resemblance with the English play. But the characteristic note of Voltaire's thedtre appears when Brutus is supposed to be the son of Caesar, and is recognised by his father directly after the fatal oath. 5 Voltaire has approached to a criticism of the French monarchy more nearly in this play than in his other dramas ; but he cannot resist the feeling of hatred and dislike to the populace which cringes before the tyrant : ' Chacun baise en tremblant la main qui nous enchaine.' 6 The beginning of the decline of Voltaire's art is perhaps most noticeable in his Semiramis (1748), which he wrote to overcome his rivals. It is preceded by a dissertation on ancient and modern tragedy, in which Voltaire notices that eome elements of Greek tragedy, notably the sense of the spectacle and the habit of declamation, survive in the modern opera, and he also remarks that the Italian recitative has i some analogy with the Greek method of chanting. Thus Voltaire considers that the Tragedie-Opera, 7 a genre very much in the ascendant in the latter part of the eighteenth century, represents the Greek atmosphere better than the so-called classical tragedy has done, while he considers it inferior to tragedy because it appeals to the senses. But he immediately applies some of the theory of the tragedie- opera to his new drama of Semiramis. The setting was to 1 Act II. so. 4. « Aot I. so. 3. s Act II. so. 4. 4 Aot III. so. 8. 6 Aot I. so. 1 ; Aot It Bo. 5. 6 Aot II. so. 2. 7 E.g. Atys 1677, Thisie 1675, Alceste 1674, and Gluok's operas, Iphig&nie and Armide, which were contemporary productions. TRAGEDY 135 be large, varied and attractive : and the central episode in tlie play was the entry of the shade of Ninus on the stage to confound Semiramis, and this was to be followed by the slaughter of the Queen by her son. At the early represen- tations of the play room had to be made among the spec- tators on the stage for the shade of Ninus to emerge : and the singular inappropriateness of these incidents led to the reform of the stage and the abolition of the spectators from the boards. Scenery, crowds and spectacular effect then became possible : but tragedy began to go the way of the tragedie-opera or of melodrama. Voltaire makes in his dissertation the usual contem- porary claim for his tragedy, namely, that its influence is moral. 1 We shall see on examination whether this claim is any more true for Semiramis than for the rest of Voltaire's thedtre, where the spring of action has been a purely emo- tional one, and the moral dissertations an excrescence on the main idea. Although Voltaire allowed himself in the Dissertation that precedes Semiramis to criticise Shakespeare's Hamlet as ' une piece grossiere et barbare,' it is evident that Hamlet has affected his treatment of the story of Semiramis. The hesitation of Arzace before the duty that opens out to him of vengeance on his mother for the murder of Ninus by poison, is very suggestive of Hamlet's attitude towards the discovery of his father's murder. 2 Voltaire has, however, rendered the presence of the King's phantom in an almost ludicrous way by the audible groans proceeding from the tomb. 3 Arzace is represented as being goaded into energy 1 ' La veritable trageclie est l'ecole de la vertu ; et la seule difference qui soit entre le theatre epur6 et les livres de morale, o'est que l'instruction se trouve dans la trag^die toute en action, c'est qu'elle y est interessante, et qu'elle se montre relevee des channes d'un art qui ne fut invent^ autrefois que pour instruire la terre et pour benir le eiel, et qui, par cette raison, fut appel6 le langage des dieux.' 2 ' Ah ! si ma faible main pouvait punir ces crimes ! Je ne sais, mais l'aspect de ce fatal tombeau Bans mes sens 6tonnes porte un trouble nouveau.' Act I. so. 3. 3 ' Oroes. Ces accents de la mort sont la voix de Ninus. Arzace. Deux fois a mon oreille ils se sont fait entendre.' Act I. so. 3. 136 TRAGEDY by the taunts of Assur, 1 and at the same time as being/ overcome by pity for his mother, who is haunted by the phantom of Ninus. 2 Assur, who actually prepared tie poison, is like Hamlet's stepfather in the French version 1 of the play, living in a dense security. 3 But — and here comes in Voltaire's interference with the simplicity of his model — Assur the poisoner is represented as in love with Azema whom Arzace adores. 4 The play has to be brought up to the point Voltaire desires by the rivalry of those two men. As in Shakespeare's play Hamlet demands to see his mother in private, so in Semiramis the Queen desires to see Arzace, 5 but to propitiate him by naming him as King and as her husband. The spectre of Ninus emerges on the scene at the moment of Semiramis' decision, and utters words not unlike those of the ghost of Hamlet's father, 6 but the effect of the scene is disturbed by the very personal application of the events made by Arzace and by Azema, 7 and it is in consequence of Azema's warning that Arzace, now known as Ninias, attacks in the tomb of Ninus the per- son whom he takes for Assur, but who is really Semiramis. 8 The play is a great spectacle of emotion : and as such is melodramatic without any high appeal. Voltaire in at- tempting to rival Crebillon has perhaps unconsciously been influenced by the latter's method, as well as by his re- collections of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The whole is a strange confusion in which there is no real unity of appeal, and thus no moral in the sense in which Voltaire claimed it for the play. 1 ' J'y cours de oe pas meme, et voua m'enhardissez : C'eat l'effet que sur moi fit toujours la menace.' Act I. so. 4. 2 Act I. so. 5 : ' Je erois le voir enoor, je crois encor l'entendre.' 8 ' Assur fut en effet plus ooupable que vous : Sa main, qui prepara le bieuvage homicide, Ne tremble point pourtant, et rien ne l'intunide. 1 Act I. so. 5. « Act II. so. 1. « Act II. so. 5. ' ... Souviens toi de ton pere." — Act III. so. 6. ' Act III. so. 6 ; Aot IV. so. 1. 8 Act V. so. 6. TRAGEDY 137 The play of TancrMe (1760), which we shall next examine, is another effort to obtain a romantic background and spectacular effect. Voltaire in the lUpitre Dedicatoire a Madame de Pompadour explains that he wishes the appeal of the play to be helped by the eye. 1 Voltaire aims also at a certain freedom of expression by using ' vers croises ' which depart from the strict practice of the rhymed couplet. The stage directions give a definite date to the play (1005) and include the idea of a historic setting. But the intrigue of the play centres in the love of Amenaiide for Tancrede. Tancrede fights for her to save her from death, but believes the calumny that has been uttered against her by her father Argire for reasons of state. Having by his valour obtained the victory in war for his fellow-countrymen, Tancrede, who is an outlaw, discloses himself, and hears too late that Amenaide has been faithful to him. The grief and despair of the heroine are a revolt against the claims of her father, country, customs, religion, public opinion, and are the assertion of the right of the individual. This rebellion is strangely modern in tone. 2 So also is the attitude of Tancrede, who in his last hour, like more than one of Voltaire's heroes, thinks his fife well lost if he is assured of the heroine's love, but then bitterly regrets both his lost happiness and life. 3 1 * Je sais que toute la pompe de l'appareil ne vaut pas une pensee sublime ou an sentiment ; de meme que la paiure n'est presque rien sans la beaute. Je sais bien que ce n'est pas un grand m6rite de parler aux yeux ; mais j'ose etre stir que le sublime et le touchant portent un coup beauooup plus sensible quand ils sont soutenus d'un appareil oonvenable et qu'il faut frapper Tame et les yeux a la fois.'< — Epitre Didicatoire. 2 ' Que m'importe a present ee peuple et son outrage, Et sa favour credule, et sa pitie volage, Et la publique voix que je n'entendrai pas ? D'un seul mortel, d'un seul depend ma renommee, Sachez que votre fille aime mieux le trepas Que de vivre un moment sans en etre estimee.' Act V. so. 4. ' Eh ! que fait 1'univers a ma douleur profonde ? Que me fait ma patrie, et le reste du monde ? Tancrede meurt.' Act V. so. 5. 8 Act V. sc. 6. 138 TRAGEDY The remaining plays of Voltaire fall naturally into groups, of which the plays just examined are the more important examples. Some have, like Zaire, their thesis — such, for example, is Les Guebres (1769) ; others retell the old Greek mythological plots, others have a more romantic background. 1 But in the whole of Voltaire's drama the ancient tragic spirit is languishing for want of the natural expression and preoccupation with the emotion of the mo- ment which Racine could have given to it. 2 The characters in Voltaire's tragedies are moved by the spring of feeling, but it is frequently the melodramatic feeling characteristic of drame. The difference between his tragedies and drame is that the characters speak verse and not prose. The difference between them and those of tragedie-opera is even slighter. Par from recovering the spirit of the classical tragedy Voltaire then abandoned it, though he tried, except when under the influence of French opera and the English theatre, to keep its form. The continuation of this particular type of decline in the tragedy can be traced in some less known plays of the century. The plays of La Harpe (1739-1803) are very much on the model of Voltaire's, though La Harpe's considerable interest in drama ancient and modern led him in his versions of Greek plays to transport something of Greek language and of Greek incident on to the French stage. This is the case with his Philoctete, which is a close imitation of Sophocles. His first play was a historical drama, the tragedy of Warwick, 3 and this was followed by several less 1 Olympie, e.g., performed in 1764 was a reflection of French life and was also spectacular. See Grimm, Can. Liu., vol. iii. pp. 441-7. ' C'est qu'en effet toute cette tragedie porte le caractere de nos moeurs ' ... ' elle plaira toujours au peuple par la pompe et la variete de son spectacle.' 2 See e.g. Les Triumvirs, whioh was played anonymously and roused a criticism from Grimm whioh was more severe than it would have been if he had known the name of the author. 8 Performed in 1763. Grimm, Con. Litt. iii. 366, says of this play : ' Le principal defaut de cette tragedie c'est de manquer d'interet, de sentiment, et de vigueur. Quoique le sujet soit tres touchant, M. de la Harpe ne sait pas f aire pleurer j mais en revanche il a de la chaleur dans les details, de la sagesse, de l'elevation et de la noblesse.' TRAGEDY 139 successful plays all of which had a romantic background. Such were Timoleon, Pharamond, 1 Gustave, 2 Les Brames and Jeanne de Naples. Two Roman plays, Coriolan and Vir- ginie, can be added to the list. La Harpe is at his best in Philoctete and Coriolan, and it is fair to judge him from these instances, where the stimulus of the drama of other nations was in conflict with the somewhat cramping in- fluence of Voltaire's drama. In Philoctete La Harpe wrote with extreme simplicity of language. He made use of a method which Greek tragedians employed, and which can also be traced in Corneille : that is, he gives an illustration of the clash of feeling by the use of short sharp sentences of one line each. Pyrrhus and Ulysse use these lines, when Ulysse is asking Pyrrhus to obey him and work in with his concerted plan. 3 The monologues in La Harpe's version are partly narrative, as in some of the earlier French tragedies, but also partly psychological, and describe an etat d'dme as Racine's did.* Coriolan owes something to Plutarch's Lives and to Shakespeare's play Coriolanus. The apostrophe to the changeable populace is Shakespeare's in another form 5 ; so is Volumnius' advice to Coriolan to subdue himself to the people's desire, 6 and so is Coriolan's speech in which he says he cannot flatter the people, 7 and Volumnius' account of Coriolan's presentation of himself to the populace. 8 But La Harpe has a conciseness of expression that is his own, and he has knit together his material with care and 1 Grimm, who approved of a good deal of Voltaire's criticism, said that La Harpe was mistaken in admitting a love motive into his play. Corr. Litt., vol. iv. p. 447. 2 Partly founded on Qustavus Vasa, by H. Brook, 1739. 3 Act I. sc. 1. 4 Act I. so. 2 ; Act II. sc. 3. B ' Des cornices vendus l'aveugle preference Sur mes obscurs rivaux a fait tomber leur choix. Telle est la multitude, et sans frein et sans lois, Lrjuste sans pudeur, et sans remords ingrate, Elle halt qui la sert, et cherit qui la flatte ; Et craignant son vengeur, aime mieux aujourd'hui Fuir sous d'indignes chefs, que de vaincre avec lui.' Act I. sc. 1. 6 Act I. sc. 1. ' Act I. sc. 3. 8 Act II. sc. 3. 140 TRAGEDY skill. 1 He also gives a full psychological account of the mind of Coriolan among the Volsci. More is made in La Harpe's play than in Shakespeare's of the strong family tie which disposes Coriolan to obey bis mother Veturie ; it is un- questionably a deeper feeling with him than either patriot- ism, honour, or revenge. La Harpe said of his own plays, ' Si je n'ai pas contribue aux progres de Fart dramatique, on ne peut m'aocuser d'en avoir accelere la decadence.' Later generations will admit this judgment in the case of the two plays examined, but where La Harpe has followed Voltaire, he has merely accentuated the tendencies of his master. This is the case too with his drame, Melanie ; which followed instead of leading public taste. The last ten years of the eighteenth century ought rather to be considered as the beginning of a new era than as the end of the old. The tragedies that were produced after the Revolution are singularly diverse in quality and in aim ; they are all tentative, and mark out no definite programme. Without doubt the translations and imita- tions of Shakespeare were having an effect on France inde- pendently of Voltaire's treatment of Shakespeare's plots and characterization. J. F. Ducis (1733-1816), a native of Versailles, formed his taste at first upon Corneille and Racine, and then having discovered Shakespeare, in Le Tourneur's translation, he attempted a representation in alexandrines of Shakespeare's plays, in which he used the invention of the original author with considerable skill, and gave the French public what they could bear to accept at that moment of an alien art. His first attempt was Hamlet (1769), which had a very great success. In spite of the conventionalism of the phrasing a good deal of the original 1 See e.g. ' Veturie. Sans suites, sans secouis, sans ressource certaine 1 ... Coriolan. Non, je ne veux de Rome emporter que sa haine, Sa haine me suffit.' Act II. so. 3. And again : ' Ooriolan. ' ... Frappe : j'ai trop veou.' Aot III. so. 3. TRAGEDY 141 vigour of the play is transmitted, 1 and it gave the French public a new sensation, that of the natural expression of emotion in the subsidiary characters of a play. 2 In Shake- speare's play the sense of the responsibility for avenging the murder, which crushes Hamlet, also disturbs the moral and emotional atmosphere of every character, either directly through Hamlet, the King and Queen, or indirectly through Ophelia and through the minor characters. French tragedy had treated the lesser personages as shadows and ' other selves,' echoing one side or another of the great struggle ; and this was due to the influence of Racine's tragic method, which had concentrated the interest of the conflict in the central personages. Ducis' Hamlet dispersed the interest and thus widened the general appeal of the play. 3 The reflective monologues in Hamlet are reproduced with modi- fications in Ducis' version ; this accustomed an audience to psychology on the stage and to a monologue which was not only ejaculatory or narrative. 4 The version of Ducis ends by Hamlet taking up the responsibility of kingship : 1 Mesmalheurs sont combles, mais ma vertu me reste, Mais je suis homme et roi ; reserve pour souffrir, Je saurai vivre encor ; je fais plus que mourir.' 5 1 Though Ducis used Le Tourneur's translation and did not go direct to the original. * See e.g. Act III, so. 3 i ' Claudius. Madame, Le prince ignore tout. Gertrude. Le trouble est dans mon ame.' a See Act II. scs. 1, 5 ; Act III. sc. 6 ; Act IV. so. 2. 1 Hamlet's most famous soliloquy is thus rendered : — 4 Mourons. Que craindre encor quand on a cess6 d'Stre ? La mort ... o'est le sommeil ... c'est un reveil peut-etre. Peut-§tre ... Ah ! c'est ce mot qui glace epouvantfi L'homme au bord du cerceuil par le doute arret6. Devant ce vaste abime il se jette en arriere, Ressaisit l'existence, et s'attache a la terre. Dans nos troubles pressants, qui peut nous avertir Des secrets de ce monde ou tout va s'engloutir ? Sans Peffroi qu'il inspire, et la terreur sacree Qui d6fend son passage et siege a son entree Combien de malheureux iraient dans le tombeau, De lours longues douleurs deposer le fardeau ? ' s Act V. so. 9. 142 TRAGEDY Ducis has left out the scene with the grave-diggers, and substituted for the play-scene a questioning of Gertrude by Hamlet, and the test of an oath on the urn which con- tains her late husband's ashes. In Ducis' other versions, e.g. in Macbeth, there is the same kind of re-arrangement. Lady Macbeth is called Fredegonde, and the sleep-walking scene loses in simplicity through the introduction of lines describing Fredegonde's attachment to her children and desire to see them on the throne. 1 The scene with the porter is left out and that with the witches much reduced. There is a desire to account for everything, which in Ducis' play destroys a good deal of the atmosphere of fate and terror. But the play, like Hamlet, accustomed a French audience to real self -revelation on the part of the characters. In 1795 Ducis put upon the French stage a drama of his own composition, Abufar ou La Famille Arabe, in which the effects of the freedom he had studied in Shakespeare are very noticeable. The stage directions for the setting of the first act are very full, and include elaborate scenery to represent stretches of fertile and of desert country ; and the play is intended to describe the simplicity of nomad and of peasant life in contrast with the civilisation of towns. Ducis treats in this play subjects which were of general interest at the time, and thus neither in background nor in plot is the play on the usual lines. The intrigue is slight, and concerns the innocent love of Farhan for Salema, which overwhelms them both with the sense of guilt as they wrongly believe themselves to be brother and sister. Round this plot is woven the description of patriarchal manners, the horror of sin shown by Abufar, 2 the sense of worship, 3 the nobility of work, 4 the feeling of happiness that comes from the common life and tasks fulfilled in common. 5 There is a great deal of eighteenth-century idealism in this play, with its assertion of the right to live, to work 1 This scene is absurdly marred by the stage directions, which note that Lady Macbeth comes in smelling her hand ; twice over, too, she scratches and rubs it in the effort to get off the stain of blood. ' Act IV. so. 9, and passim. B Act I. so. 3. 1 Act I. scs. 1, 3. 6 Aot I. so. 5. TRAGEDY 143 and to be happy in close touch with nature and in freedom from all restrictions. The speech of Pharasmin, the Persian courtier, who is captured by the Arabs and learns to love their life, expresses what in 1795 the idealist wished to believe was the true view of the Revolution which had just occurred. 1 Another character, Farhan, expresses the desire of Prance in the eighteenth century for intercourse with other nations and other minds : and for the cosmopolitan ideal of litera- ture which was to have so much effect in the nineteenth century. 2 The claim is the immense one of having seized 1 'Odtide. La favour de Cambyse, un palais ... Pharasmin. Je 1'ai fui. Combien j'en ai connu la splendour et l'ennui ! Las de voir de trop pros l'eclat du diademe, De me ohercher toujours sans me trouver moi-meme, Mais sans perdre jamais tous oes vains prejuges, Ces besoins de l'orgeuil dont les grands sont charges, Entraine vers les camps par le droit de la guerre, Sous ce ciel embrase j'ai suivi votre pere. C'est la que sous ses lois, priv6 de tout seoours, J'ai desappris l'orgeuil et le faste des cours ; Que, loin du vice heureux, de l'oisive opulence, Soumis a mes travaux, aimant ma dependance, A l'ecole des moeurs et de la pauvretS J'ai senti le bienfait de mon adversite. Je fus un homme enfin. Mon epaule tremblante Se courba fierement sous la hache pesante.' — Act I. so. 5. 2 ' Je dis que le destin, que le ciel dans mon ame Versa de nos climats et l'ardeur et la flamme, Qu'un besoin fatigant, un desir furieux De Bortir de moi-meme et de voir d'autres cieux, Un de ces mouvements qui commandant en maitre Que l'instinct nous inspire, ou la raison peut-Stre, M'ont emporte partout dans ces champs fecondes Par les tresors du Nil dont ils sont inondes, Sous ces aflreux rochers battus par la tempete, Ou ce fleuve s'enfonce et cache encor sa tete. J'ai couru les deserts et les palais des rois, Observe chaque peuple, et leur culte, et leurs lois, Leurs tresors, leurs soldats, leurs moeurs, leurs origines, Visit6 des tombeaux, des temples, des ruines ; Quelquefois sur l'Atlas medite pres des cieux L'Eternite du temps, l'immensite' des lieux. C'est la que, m'emparant de le nature entiere ...' — Act II. sc. 7. 144 TRAGEDY nature and made it all his own : Farhan has travelled and has learnt not only to know men and things but actually to possess the world through the power of mind. The moral precepts uttered by Abufar in the play chiefly enforce the sense of duty to the family. Utopia has no politics. The theory is that of the simple life working freely : it is Rousseau's, and is a reflection of all the mass of literature and thought that in the eighteenth century centred in the same idea. 1 But the unit in Ducis' plays is the family, not the individual : and this points to a cleavage which had taken place in the eighteenth century between Voltaire's and Rousseau's idea of freedom ; that of Rousseau involved, it is true, in the Contrat social, the consent of the individual to an organized life, but the general tendency was to make the individual the political unit. Thus the most advanced among the reformers who followed Rousseau were in favour of self-chosen groups, clubs or associations, in which the individual could best express his aims ; and the development of such societies had been a mark of the early days of the Revolution. But Turgot, Voltaire, and others of their school had seen that this individualism was a menace to family life, and they put all their strength into urging that the family, and not the individual, was the true social unit. It would be difficult to bring home to the uneducated individual a sense of political morality : he could only learn this through his sense of duty to those who were near to him, and then apply what he had learnt to greater charities and to greater self-abnegations and efforts. In the literature of the eighteenth century the drama follows on the whole the line of thought that was closest to Voltaire's view : the novel under Prevost and Le Sage had anticipated some of the excitable individualist view that was concentrated and expressed once and for all by Rousseau. Thus, in the very days of the Revolution, not only tragedy, but also comedy and drame show a sane- ness of moral view and a moderation of tone that are not shared either by the novel or by the political pamphlet. 1 The play is not free from great absurdities recalling the sentimental scenes which characterise Rousseau. See e.g. Act I. so. 3. TRAGEDY 145 The theology of the later tragedies we are describing may be broad or vague, but their moral tone was high, and prescribed the fulfilment of near duties. Legouve" (1764-1812), in his pastoral tragedy La Mart d'Abel 1 produced in 1792, chose for the setting of his play a part of Mesopotamia ' a quelque distance du paradis terrestre, autrement appele le jardin d'Eden.' The play is not interesting in itself, but it may be noticed as affording the greatest possible contrast to the state of men's minds at the time, and as encouraging, as Ducis had done, a simple self-governing habit of life. But the plays of two other writers, Chenier and Lemercier, are more significant. Marie-Joseph Chenier (1764-1811), brother of the more famous Andre Chenier, was drawn to tragedy as his brother was to lyric poetry. His first important play was produced some months only after the taking of the Bastille ; and as Chenier was a politician as well as a man of letters, it was inevitable that the play should bear some mark of his views. Charles IX, ou la Saint-Barthelemy (1798), was a denun- ciation of the tyranny that was represented in concrete form to the people by the actual edifice of the Bastille. Chenier's strong republican tendency gave his play a warmth of reality that was of his own day; the thoughts of 1789 were clothed externally in the story of St. Bartholomew's Day. In Charles IX the conflict centres in the nature of the weak King, 2 to whom Catherine acts as an evil genius and Coligni as a good angel. The scene of Charles' yielding is extraordinarily vigorous and tense. 3 The King's soliloquy in Act IV. sc. 1, where he sees what the effect of his action will be, is probably influenced by Shakespeare, and illus- trates the fact that Ducis had introduced the psychological monologue on to the French stage. Together with the attack on absolute monarchy we find an attack on Rome, for Chenier saw only too clearly the part that the Church 1 The plot was imitated from a work of Gessner's. 2 The play was at first censored, but after 1791 neither the King nor the Church was able to enforce its decision. 3 Act II. sc. 4. L 146 TRAGEDY had played in oppressing the people and inflaming party spirit and producing wars of religion. 1 As a play, Charles IX is still somewhat under the influence of Voltaire. This is noticeable in the scene where L'Hopital comes to tell Henri of the massacre, and falls into the Voltairean narrative style. But the play has its own force apart from the political application. 2 In fact justice is hardly done to Chenier, if the success of his tragedies is put down to their significance in the political order. His vision of France, which dominates his whole ' theatre,' expresses an ideal beyond that of the majority of writers of his day. In Charles IX he suggested a closer co-operation of the nations of Europe for the common good 3 : in Timoleon he risked the failure of his play by attacking tyranny, whether on the part of the people or the ruler * : ' Songeons que la terreur ne fait que des esclaves ; Et n'oublions jamais que sans humanite II n'est point de loi juste et point de liberte.' He emphasised his point by printing with the play an Ode against the tyranny of Robespierre, 5 in which he arraigned Robespierre's crimes against the state : ' Liberte des Francais, que d'infames complots Ont ralenti ta noble course ! La Liberte marche au cercueil: Les lois l'accompagnent voilees.' The spirit of Ch6nier was in the invocation of liberty and the opposition to anarchy. For this reason he was ordered to burn the sheets of Timoleon. 6 1 ' Us n'etaient que sujets. Qui les a rendus maitres ? ' ' Faut-il nous etonner si les peuples lass^B, Sous l'inflexible joug tant de fois terrasses, Par les decrets de Home assassines sans eesse, Des qu'on osa oontre elle appuyer leur faiblesse . . . ? ' Act III. so. 2. 2 See in further illustration of allusions to the monarchy in Charles IX, Appendix, pp. 195-198. 3 Act II. sc. 3. 4 Act II. so. 6. 6 Ode sur la situation de la Rlpvblique franfaise durant I'oligarchie de Robes- pierre et de ses complices. 6 A oopy was saved by the aotress, Mile. Vestris. TRAGEDY 147 His other plays, Fenelon, Cyrus, Caius Gracchus, Henri VIII, La Mort de Calas, are all marked by the same high- minded conviction : but they differ in the appeal they make. Like all playwrights of the classical school Chenier took great incidents in history and legend that had been the subjects of many plays, and treated them in an individual way. But he also attempted subjects of contemporary interest, as in La Mort de Calas, or subjects from French and foreign history : Fenelon, Philip II. He thus recognised the necessity in tragedy of a romantic background to a strong situation, and also of the appeal to present experience, which he skilfully combined with the setting and the plots. The greatest of his plays in many ways is Tibere. The latter was censored in 1810 by the Emperor and was not played till 1 845. The date is significant. An examination of Chenier's most important play, Tibere, as compared with his first and most striking ex- periment, Charles IX, will show how far he was successful in producing a national tragic drama, as distinct from purely narrative plays. In his pamphlet, De la Liberte du Theatre en France, Chenier showed that he considered the function of the stage to be the representation of the ideal national life, while by a counter current the representations on the stage should affect that Kfe. The function of tragedy, he considered, was to draw the whole attention of a people to historic fact that had threatened this life. Thus he makes his characters a symbol of the country and the period they represent. 1 The distance of time which has elapsed since the events recorded enables the nation to see her past, with its irretrievable mistakes, unrolled before her eyes as tragic drama. The emotions aroused will help the public morality of the present in the highest degree. But although Charles IX is built upon an episode in national history, many of Chenier's plays adopt" a more distant background. While however Voltaire's Roman 1 ' ... J'avais CO119U le projet d'introduire sur la scene francaise lea epoques celebres de l'histoire moderne, et particulierement de l'histoire nationale ; d'attacher a des passions, a des evenements tragiques un grand interSt politique, un grand but moral.' — De la Liberti, Sect. 12. 148 TRAGEDY plays breathe the spirit of Rome rather than of contemporary France, Chenier's Roman plays, like his French historical play, treat under Roman names a problem in history that has an application to the France of his day. The play of Tihhre must then be regarded in its relation to the theory of sovereignty in the France of Chenier's time. To the classic form of tragedy as seen in Racine, Chenier had added two qualities of his own, which are in touch with the eighteenth-century spirit : that of an eloquent appeal to a nation drawn from the facts of its own history, and that of drama as a pageant, vividly conceived and vividly executed. The sense of the inevitable crisis found in Racine, as in the Greek plays from which he adapted his plots, is kept in Chenier. The reader will be able to judge if Chenier's dramatic and poetic faculty was equal to this new type of tragedy. The subject is drawn from the Annals of Tacitus, and Chenier has followed the main outlines of the story, adding however the part of Cneius, to which he gives considerable significance in the plot. The scene is laid in Rome, and Pison, suspected of the murder of Germanicus, and pursued by Agrippine, the widow of Germanicus, has just returned to attempt to make his cause good before the Senate. He enters at once into an atmosphere of secret intrigue, jealousy, and suspicion, in which murder is the common explanation of sudden death. Tibere in his palace is the source of the terror ; but Pison and his son recognise in the people a latent power which is capable of asserting itself at any time : ' Tibere, a ses genoux, voit Punivers trembler ; Et, subissant lui-meme un tyrannique empire, Eprouve, en l'ordonnant, la frayeur qu'il inspire, ... Quand la nuit sur nos murs etend son voile epais, Des regrets importuns fatiguent son oreille, Des Romains opprimes la douleur se reveille ; Et leurs cris menacans, par Tibere entendus, Vont lui porter ces mots : Rends-nous Germanicus. ' x Tibere, speaking as the representative of tyranny, says: 1 Aot I. 80. 1. TRAGEDY 149 ' Intimide et corromps : c'est ainsi que Ton regne ; Rome peut me hair, pourvu qu'elle me craigne.' 1 But Agrippine, before the Senate, claims freedom for both accuser and accused. In the first two acts of the play Chenier expresses the conflict between justice and human force. He also suggests the discrepancy between truth as seen by partial human minds, and the disclosure of facts which would build up the living picture of history. He suggests through his characters that there is a pressure from the invisible world upon the living : and the shade of Germanicus is dimly felt by both Agrippine and Pison. 2 In the third act the human motives of the principal characters begin to appear, Tibere's jealousy of his adopted son Germanicus, and Agrip- pine's fierce defence of his glory : and then in the scene between Tibere and Pison, Tibere's resolve to let the letter of the law rid him of Pison. Pison on the other hand is determined on a public exposure if he is not supported by Tibere, whose orders he has carried out in ridding Tibere of Germanicus. Here is the crux of the play. The antagonists both know that only a day stands between them and the decision. ' Demain ! la nuit me reste ' 3 is Tibere's last word. He sends for Sejan and makes it clear that the disappearance of Pison, preferably by suicide, is necessary, while the blame is to be arranged to fall on Agrippine. Cneius, after an interview with Tibere, meets Agrippine, and their sincerity brings about an understanding. Both realise that no justice or liberty is to be found in the Senate. Agrippine, supported by her consciousness of Germanicus' wishes, decides to pardon Pison, and the conditions of the tragedy are complete. For Pison dare not accept a pardon from Agrippine whom he has too greatly injured : and he had threatened Tibere to confound him by reading in the Senate the orders for the murder of Germanicus. In the last act events move swiftly. Agrippine startles the Senate by her pardon of Pison : but Cneius declares the truth and meantime Pison, attacked by the crowd, kills 1 Act I. sc. 4. * Act II. so. 2. * Act II. so. 3. 150 TRAGEDY himself outside the Senate House. Cneius kills himself just before the fall of the curtain, protesting, in his death as in his life, against the Emperor : ' J'ai vecu, je meurs libre, et voila mes adieux . II est temps de placer Tibere au rang des dieux.' 1 The first impression made on the mind of the reader by this fine play is regret for the conventional use of the classic formula in phrasing and language which obscures its deeper qualities. We have echoes of Racine, especially in the suggestion of the mysterious shadowy presence of Ger- manicus, in the insistence on the moments and hours of decision, which are marked in proportion to the depths of the tragedy. We have echoes of Corneille, in the charac- ter of Cneius, and in the treatment of the scenes of conflict where the attack and riposte are in single lines ; echoes too of Voltaire, in the large and vague descriptions, and the occasional banal expressions. But as the play moves on it becomes evident that Chenier has made full use of the methods of emotional appeal and spectacular effect. The silent groups of Senators, the procession of lictors and sol- diers, surround the main action and dramatise its effect in gesture and feeling. The character- drawing is remarkable and the development of the characters under the pressure of the tragedy brings about the denouement. The action is, in effect, staged between the present circumstances, where the people have forgotten their heritage of justice and liberty, and are too easily moved by the machinations of a Sejan, and another world which holds the menace of re- tribution for crime, and from which the unseen influence of Germanicus presses into the minds of the actors. Ch6nier has told us that he had the crisis of the play clearly in mind from the first : hence the play is not episodic, but united in interest. The new method inaugurated by Chenier was, in its turn, imitated, though with a slighter touch, by Lemercier. Nepomucene-Louis Lemercier (1773-1840), although sur- rounded in his early youth by the kindness of Marie- 1 Aot V. so. 6. TRAGEDY 151 Antoinette and the Princesse de Lamballe, had the same republican tendencies as Chenier ; with the same hatred of tyranny, whether of the monarch or the people; in fact in one of his plays, Tartufe Bevolutionnaire, he clearly showed his anger at the homicidal passions of the moment. He broke, too, with Napoleon as soon as he realised Napoleon's designs on the republic ; and felt that he was protesting against the worst type of tyranny, that over thought and conscience, over moral and intellectual liberty. This profound independence of spirit caused Lemercier to shake himself free of traditional literary influences. Thus he wrote tragedy without being affected by Voltaire : and produced in Pinto a new kind of drame with an inter- mingling of comic scenes. Again, in Le Panhypocrisiade, ou le Spectacle Infernal, he produced a long poem which is brilliant in parts, but belongs to no one particular genre. Two of his tragedies, Agamemnon and Fredegonde et Brunehaut, illustrate as Chenier 's did the desire of the writer of tragedy not alone to instruct the people, but to raise up a political ideal before the eyes of ruler and ruled alike. It is difficult to avoid believing that Lemercier, who is generally accused of ingratitude to the Queen and to Madame de Lamballe, had one of those rare characters which, without ingratitude or fickleness, quickly puts the relations of life into proportion. He must have judged the monarchy critically, not only from a general point of view as Chenier did, but out of an intimate knowledge of the weakness and inner life of the Court. We may even possibly see an attack on the Queen under the name of Clytemnestre in the Agamemnon ; if so, it is strangely compensated in the next play, Fredegonde et Brunehaut, where traits of the life of the unfortunate Queen can be traced in that of Brune- haut. In the Agamemnon, the criticism of Clytemnestre by ^gisthe is that she is a bad ruler and wife, though a devoted mother : 'Fatale epouse autant que mere courageuse,' and her excitement and vanity are not suitable to the life 152 TRAGEDY of a great Queen. 1 Cassandre's inspired frenzy sees the evil of the house of Atreus and the horror of bloodshed : ' Oubhait-on qu'ici les deesses des morts Sont du dieu des banquets les compagnes cruelles, Et que dans le carnage il s'enivre avec elles ? ' 2 Agamemnon recognising the failure of his kingship recom- mends his son Oreste to live for his people and to know how to use mercy even in time of war. 3 Apart from the political allusions, however, Lemercier has produced a fine and moving play, austere in expression, and sometimes recalling the manner of Racine and of the Greek original. Thus, in the scene where Egisthe plans the death of Agamemnon occur the words : ' Clytemnestee. Quelle affreuse lumiere ? ... Ah ! mon sang est glace ! D'ou vient ce mouvement dont mon sein est presse ? Qui doit done nous ravir, iSgisthe, a sa puissance ? ISgisthe. Je ne le sais. Clytemnestee. Sa mort ? Sgisthe. Qui l'a dit ? Clytemnestee. Ton silence.' 4 By a happy application of the use of the supernatural in Hamlet and other Shakespearean plays, Lemercier has given to Egisthe a speech describing the images of crime and of the success of an evil hope that came into his mind as a presage, 5 and Cassandra's frenzy is remarkable in its presentation : the horror of bloodshed in the Terror must have been in Lemercier's own mind and imagination for him to have been able to paint it so vividly. ' Act I. so. 1. « Act IV. so. 5. * ' A former tes vertus oonsaorant dfisormais Les ans, nombreux encor, que mon age me laisse, Je feiai de mon fils un heros pour la Grece. Qu'il sache, ne prenant que le ciel pour appui Et vtvre pour son peuple, et s'immoler pour lui ; Et si la guerre un jour reclame sa vaillanoe, Que la gloire le guide, et surtout la olemence.' Act V. so. 1. 1 Act IV. so. 1. s Act I. so. 1. TRAGEDY 153 In Fredegonde et Brunehaut Lemercier gives up the classical story, and his Agamemnon remains as the last fine example of that genre. The new play has a mediaeval background and story. Here again we have passages of singular interest derived from the consideration of the fall of the monarchy. Brunehaut speaks : ' Les rois n'ont de soutiens, prince, que les soldats, Et l'arbitre de tout est le dieu des combats. Que nous sert le secours d'une vaine innocence, Si la rigueur du sort confond notre impuissance ? Je crois voir, a l'autel, mon front d^couronne Sous un voile honteux a jamais profan6 ...' x Again Gombaut says that the people are a better protection than the army, 2 and it is very likely that the local colour here too is contemporary. As Brunehaut stands for the lady of gentle birth, who suffers in disastrous times, 3 so Fredegonde stands for the woman of the people, brutal and vigorous and plain of speech, with no imagination, and no fears, beautiful but ferocious, 4 and here it is very likely that Lemercier's knowledge of the early position of Marie- Antoinette as Dauphine in relation to Madame du Barry helped him in the characterisation of the two women Brunehaut and Fredegonde. Brunehaut has a sense of a rightful position, Fredegonde's pretensions are intolerable to her. The ideal of Monarchy set forth by Lemercier is expressed in the words of Brunehaut : ' Seigneur, vous etes roi : vous savez quel devoir A ceux de notre sang impose leur pouvoir : La foi dans leur parole, et le vceu d'etre justes, Sont de leur majeste les attributs augustes.' 5 1 Act I. so. 1. * ' J'expliquerai les voeux du peuple qui vous aime ; Et, vous le demandant au nom de voa Etats, Je vous deiendrai mieux qu'un reste de soldats : Leur viotoire est douteuse ; un vain droit de conquete Peut du bandeau des rois depouiller votre t§te.' Act I. so. 1. This may be an allusion to the Ring giving himself into the hands of the Legislative Assembly on August 10, 1792. 3 Act III. sc. 3 ; Act IV. so. 3 ; Act V. so. 1. « Act III. ao. 2, so. 5. 6 Act III. so. 3. 154 TRAGEDY Lemercier expresses, very much as Chenier did, an aspira- tion to a noble religion of the heart and of the reason : and he sees too, how, in times of national calamity, faith is depressed. In the play, Pretextat the bishop urges the love of God as a motive both for action and for bearing an evil fate 1 : but Merovee, reduced to despair, cries out for a God who watches over and controls the fate of all : ' Vceux trop tardifs ! ce cceur le confesse et l'expie, Mon desespoir fatal me rend presque un impie, La cruelle, qu'ici je n'ai pu retenir, M'ote les biens presents et les biens a venir, Son crime ainsi m'enleve, en mon malheur extreme, Les consolations de la piete meme ! Sans Pavoir merite, frappe de coups soudains, Je demande quel Dieu veille au sort des humains, Mon esprit eperdu cherche une Providence ...' 2 Although the form of the play has escaped from the in- fluence of Voltaire, the pathetic desire for a God who is above evil and does not permit it is an echo of Voltaire's deepest distress and of that of his country. Lemercier's play is free in style and treatment and the conflict is sus- tained into the last Act, where Merovee dies poisoned by Fredegonde, and is able with his last breath to accuse her to Chilperic. Lemercier founded, we may almost say, the new national tragic drama on history or historic story, and this was the very drama for which Sebastien Mercier had wished. His plays mark the beginning of the nine- teenth-century spirit on the stage. But it is fair to add that it was Voltaire who had foreseen this ; who realised that the genius of the French tended to a treatment of history rather than mythology in tragedy, and that Roman history had accustomed them to put political plots on the stage. 1 Act I. so. 3, so. 5 ; Act IV. so. 5. * Act V. so. 5. CHAPTER V CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA Character of the criticism of the period — La Motte — Voltaire — New theories contributed by the study of La Chaussee, Voltaire, Diderot — Sebastien Mercier — Mercier's anticipation of the romantic formula — The ideal of a national stage — Poetic justice — Rousseau's criticism of the stage — Recovery of the Bense of mystery and the sense of fatality by the Romantics — Conventional views of the drama in the eighteenth century — Marie- Joseph Chenier and the liberty of the stage — The plea for a national opera. The literary criticism of the drama in France has been a fertile subject for discussion ever since the fierce battle that raged for and against Corneille's novelty Le Cid. Moliere set the fashion of criticising his critics in La Critique de VlS cole des Femmes, in which he claimed that criticism should be the direct and honest judgment of the individual mind, untrammelled by tradition or fashion in art, and unaffected by the * rules ' ; but the work of Boileau went far to destroy the effect of this healthy advice. For al- though Boileau made a considerable advance on contem- porary critical thought, he had in the main modelled his method on that of Aristotle : principles were stated, and deductions made from them. A revolution as great in criticism as that signalised by Bacon's inductive method in Logic was necessary to bring about the condition of opinion at which Moliere had aimed. Boileau had recognised a historical interest in the development of different forms of literature, and he had shaken himself so far free of the old habit of prejudice against individual authors as to be ready to arraign a whole theory of literature for approval or condemnation, instead of the work of any individual 155 156 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA writer. But his idea of the evolution of literary genres was compatible with a desire to fix them very rigidly in their relative positions according to his own individual reading of the principles of criticism. Boileau and the other lesser literary critics that were nearly his contem- poraries, Chapelain, Bussy-Rabutin, St. Evremond, all claimed for the literary critic the position of a tyrant over the taste of the multitude, ' controleur-general de Parnasse.' The first important change in this attitude of the critic became evident in the dispute between the Ancients and Moderns. In the view of the latter party, a wider public, not only a small literary set, should judge of the value of the genre, as well as of the merit of the individual author. The method of judgment tended to be less academic and to bring in the appeal to feeling, which, with a large public, prevails over reason. Thus the principles of judgment were recognised as themselves subject to change and develop- ment : and the direction of the change was in sympathy with the democratic movement of the eighteenth century. One of the effects of this change was an impatience of tradition in literature. The public judges of the immediate interest of a work of art and relates it to the experience of the moment. When the feeling of the eighteenth-century public was directed by Encyclopaedic thought, men judged of art by the contribution it offered to the progress of society, and a definite moral purpose was demanded in a play. Another effect was to produce greater realism of treatment. Boileau had denned * nature ' as the conscious rational sense of man, finding its direct expression in literature, and arriving at truth of perception through avoidance of ex- tremes and of any exaggeration of the personal view. In the eighteenth century ' nature ' was taken to denote all usual impulses whether controlled and balanced by reason or not, and whether at one with a moral development of character or tending to diverge from its real purpose. Much attention was then paid to all ordinary facts of life, and to uncriticised sense-impressions ; and the result was that on the stage and in narrative fiction there was a reduction of scale from the heroic pattern to that of normal CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 157 and even of humdrum life. The critic in the eighteenth century tended to judge of the drama largely on its own merits as a picture of life, not necessarily comparing it with the ' classical ' plays of a bygone age ; though the greatness of Moliere was still instinctively felt by all who were considering a comedy of manners, and allusions to Moliere are frequent in the pages of Mercier and Diderot. Where classical tragedy was quoted, the comparison Was generally to the detriment of traditional art. In the early part of the eighteenth century dramatic criticism is chiefly found in the prefaces to plays ; later the prefaces, as in Diderot, expand into pamphlets at- tached to plays, and at the end of the century Marie- Joseph Chenier, Marmontel, and others, together with Mercier, wrote separate critical treatises on dramatic art. A critic of the transition period, who saw the changes on the way, and was only affected by certain of them, was Houdart de la Motte. In the edition of his works in 1754 there are three Discours, on Tragedy, Comedy, and the Opera, in which he disclaims any idea to legislate on aesthetic but declares the necessity of admitting art of the second order into any literary scheme. La Motte complains that the love-interest is too strong in the tragedies of his time (this was owing to the necessity of pleasing the women in the audience), and that the idea of the unities had been too strictly enforced. But his chief contention is that an aesthetic is not helpful apart from its practical illustration in a play : and that plays made in the study with the help of the rules are likely to have ' des regularitez supersti- tieuses ' because they have not ' l'experience de la repre- sentation.' This experience makes La Motte see that measured virtue does not excite great interest on the tragic stage : ' la vertu mesuree ne nous passionne gueres. Nous voulong* des exces, et les exces sont des vices.' For La Motte isl still under the influence of the traditional view that playsj were intended to give pleasure to the audience. It is fori this reason that he would admit extremes in character ini 158 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA tragedy, though he says with some regret that the moral lesson taught in this way would be only indirect. 1 La Motte believes, too, that interest can be excited on the stage in characters that have mixed good and evil in them. He thinks that poetic justice is, and should be, generally done by the end of the play. He would advise less dialogue and more action, which brings out the plot, and makes it more natural. 2 In the matter of form La Motte has the French classical ideal in his mind, and thinks that, as in the plays of Racine, the crisis should come at the conclusion ; but he dismisses the confidants from the stage, and holds that monologues should be restrained to lesser dimensions. This is chiefly for a reason which shows that La Motte is affected by the current attachment to the idea of realism on the stage. The actor speaking alone is, he says, not really alone, for the audience is present, and thus the monologue appears to him to be artificial. La Motte also sees that silence and gesture are sometimes as effective on the stage as speech. 3 Voltaire undertook to attack La Motte's views, urging that the unities should be kept : but La Motte replied by the argument that the unity of interest is really independent of the ' rules.' 4 On one point Voltaire seems to have conducted the attack on La Motte with great fervour. La Motte had looked forward to the possibility of a prose tragedy : Voltaire insisted that poetry was inseparable from tragedy. 5 Here it is evident that La Motte was feeling his way to the new genre of serious prose drama. Voltaire's position as a critic of the drama comes out more clearly when we consider his theory in relation to those of La Chaussee, Diderot, Mercier, and Rousseau ; for in these controversies he does not confine himself to the dis- cussion of any one genre, nor to that of the technique of the 1 Discours sur la tragidie, a Voccasion de Romulus, and note : ' Quelle pitoy- able mepriae de faire valoir oontre l'interet du plaisir, des regies qui n'ont ete inventees que pour le plaisir meme.' * Discours sur la tragidie, a Voccasion des Macchabies. 3 Discours sur la tragidie, a Voccasion d'In&s. 1 Suite des rSjlexions sur la tragidie. B Ibid. CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 159 theatre, but he enters into the question of the intention and ultimate aim of all dramatic art. In the development of these theories in France in the eighteenth century the chief part was played first by La Chaussee, who while keeping the old conventions of verse and form used the pathetic as the spring of action, and thus made his appeal to ' sensibility ' ; next by Voltaire, who disturbed the authority of the unities, though he was anxious that the ancient good taste of France should govern the stage, and felt that in some degree the drame was a derogation from this, and even a sign of the dramatist's weakness ; then afterwards by Diderot, who made use of these two breaches into customary theatrical procedure and evolved plays that were free of the rules, could exploit pathos, and do without dramatic crisis. Therefore in Diderot's hands the drama tended to become a mere instrument of philosophic education. The teaching of morality, he said, is that which gives utility to the drama. There is not much difference between his view of the aim of the drama and that of Chapelain on the aim of poetry in the seventeenth century. In Les Entretiens sur le Fils naturel (1757), and the Discours sur la Poesie Dramatique, published at the end of the Pere de Famille, occur the pas- sages in which Diderot explains his dramatic theory. Inf reality Diderot did not attempt to destroy the old distinc- tion between tragedy and comedy, but he held that a certain unconquered territory lay between them, and of this he intended the stage to take possession. There is a genre serieux, 1 but that genre can be still further distinguished into the drama which deals with domestic sorrows and that which deals with the more usual occupations of a family. 2 He also expanded the limits of conventional tragedy and comedy by considering that the one develops at its extreme margin into spectacle and at the other end falls into farce. 3 ^. 1 See also Freron, Ann. Litt. 1768, vii. Article on Beverley, pp. 217 and fi. * De la Poesie dramatique, p. 308. 3 3Ume Entretien, vii. 135. ' Le theatre est le simulaore de la vie humaine. Voila le point qui importe au philosophe pour le parti qu'il se reserve d'en tirer, mais aussi le point conteste par ceux qui pretendent renfenner l'imitation dans oertaines bornes. S'il se propose de reproduire le train de notre existence, 160 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OP THE DRAMA In certain ways Mercier 1 seems to have concentrated in his own work many elements of eighteenth-century theory which appear to be isolated in other writers. All are aware that the stage in Prance gives, a quick and sensitive re- flection not only of the life but of the ideas of the moment. Some dramatists, however, like Destouches, put on the stage a criticism of society, describing in detail the good and evil of the present time and giving it artistic relief. Here a philosophic theory of the perfectibility of society is implied by contrast. Others again, like La Chaussee, attempted to awaken in the audience a great sensibility to emotions of pity and kindness : and this was thought to induce the practice of virtue. Then the slighter plays and operas like Rousseau's Le Devin du Village described the simpler life in its ideal conditions. In all cases the stage was to be useful in teaching a moral lesson about social and political circumstances. Mercier's own plays freely combine all methods, and his theory admits them all, though direct moral teaching is in his case subordinated to indirect teaching, for he considers that art is in its nature moral — and he is inclined to appeal first to the national instinct of the Prench for accepting a statement of fact, and to their power of artistic appreciation, and leave the moral to reach them in a natural way. This method was of course con- bien certainement il y trouvera autre chose que de la douleur et de la joie. L'entre-deux c'est justement le serieux, c'est a dire Fhumeur, la disposition d'esprit que nous apportons a nos relations de famille et de societe, a nos devoirs, a nos affaires, a nos interets, aux rapports, combinaisons et complications de toute sorte qui en resultent. On apercoit la toute la matiere du genre serieux, et, com me elle est la plus abondante, la plus commune, il sera, lui aussi, le plus utile et le plus etendu.' — Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, p. 162. 1 Louis-Sebastien Mercier, born at Paris in 1740, lived, thought, and wrote during the years that preceded and immediately followed the great Revolution. He was a political enthusiast, a writer of Utopias, a dramatist, and a critic of the drama. No one, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, reflected more fully than he did the astonishing belief in the coming perfection of human nature and of society that characterised the thinkers of that time ; but on the other hand he was far beyond his contemporaries in his judgment of present society (as e.g. in the Tableau de Paris), and more especially in his view of the place of a national theatre in publio life. He foresaw, too, in a remarkable way, the development of the drama which would come about through its adaptation to a democratic age, and his literary theories anticipate those of many of the Romantics, from Madame de Stael to Stendhal. CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OP THE DRAMA 161 nected with his strong optimism. To Mercier good was an underlying force that was bound in the end to prevail, and truth was all-powerful and could only be for the time obscured and not destroyed by error. Much of Mercier's theory of the stage is found in his pamphlet Du Thedtre. 1 The later essay De la Litterature (1775) covers part of the same ground. Beclard, in his study of Mercier, 2 has completed these by quotations from hitherto unpublished notes and documents, the general effect of which is to produce an impression of greater coherence in Mercier's theory. Like that of most writers of his day Mercier's attitude to the drama of the seventeenth century was a destructive one. To the classical drama with its insistence on great events and unusual characteristics, 3 he prefers a description of the ordinary course of events, claiming that character is more truly revealed in this way. In fact he considers that the representation of modern social conditions should displace the ancient spectacle which has no message to the people. 4 The dramatist should paint his equals 5 : truth is under our eyes, — ' Le vrai est sous nos yeux 7 (De la litterature, p. 26). It will take time, Mercier considers, to accustom the public to the contemplation of ordinary virtue. He notices, though, that contempo- rary literature tends to become uniform, and that all over literary Europe and in America the moral and political tone 1 Du Thidtre ou Nouvel Essai sur Fart dramatique (1773) was composed under the influence of Rousseau, but the MS was lost, and the substance reproduced in De la IAttirature. The Nouvel Examen appeared in 1777. 2 Sebastien Mercier, sa Vie, son (Euvre, son Temps, 1903. * ' La tragedie en France a peint Phomme en efforts et non dans ses ha- bitudes, qui revelent le fond des caracteres,' De la IAttirature, p. 81 (note). * ' ... qu'il est terns que la verite soit plus respectee, que le but moral se fasse mieux sentir, et que la representation de la vie civile succede enfin a cet appareil imposant et menteur qui a decore jusqu'ici l'exterieur de nos pieces. Biles aont muettes pour la multitude.' — Du Thidtre, Priface, pp. viii, ix. s ' ... Les tragedies grecques appartenaient aux Grecs, et nous, nous n'oserions avoir notre theatre, peindre nos semblables, nous attendrir et nous interesser avec eux.' — Ibid. p. 102. Deloit quotes Mercier : ' Greuze et moi, disait-il, nous sommes deux grands peintres, du moins Greuze me reconnaissait pour tel ... II a mis le drame dans la peinture et moi la peinture dans le drame.' — Mes voyages aux environs de Paris, ii. 250. M 162 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA prevails. 1 The theatre, he thinks, is ' Fecole des vertus et des devoirs du citoyen. ' 2 It is the most rapid and efficient means of distributing knowledge and rousing the moral sense of the nation. His reason for destroying the old conventions of stage technique is that they might interfere with the appeal of philosophy to the crowd from the boards of a theatre. And when he became aware of the comparative failure of his own projects he thought that this could be traced to the seventeenth-century tradition on the stage, to its pedantry and academic flavour, which prevented the people of his time from gaining the instruction the stage should be able to give. In support of this argument he quoted Jodelle and Gamier and the learned tradition of the sixteenth cen- tury, but he did not appear to realise that the art of the seventeenth century was national. He would throw down in a common destruction the whole work of the seventeenth- century dramatists : the magnificent figures of Corneille's and Racine's stage as well as the traditional confidant — ' qui recoit stoiiquement une averse d'alexandrines ' — the captain of the guard, the valet, the soubrette. He would destroy the painting of types in Molieresque comedy, and replace it by a realistic description of individual characters. He would destroy the violent contrasts which made Diderot say that whenever a rough and impatient person appears on the traditional stage, it is clear to the onlooker that a gentle and quiet one is not far off. 3 But, after all, what 1 ' Tous les citoyens eclaires agissent aujourd'hui presque dans le meme sens ... L'esprit d'observation enfin, qui se repand de toutes parts, nous promet les manes avantages dont jouissent quelques-uns de nos heureux voisins ... II est a presumer que cette tendance general produira une revolu- tion heureuse ... il faut apres l'ouvrage de la vertu, l'ouvrage encore du terns ; parce que lui seul rend la vertu commune et familiere. H est curieux en attendant de considerer 1'efEort des esprits depuis Philadelphie jusqu'a Venise. La Litterature universelle prend un oaractere de moral politique.' — De La Littirature (1778), pp. 8-10. See also Grimm, op. cit. ii. 332-334. Grimm in his Gorrespondance Littiraire gives a formula for comedy whioh is intended to include the new drame as well as Molieresque plays : — ' La comedie est le tableau de la vie mis en action.' 2 An 2440, i. p. 283. 8 ' Quand on voit arriver sur la soene un personnage impatient ou bourru, ou est le jeune homme echappe du college et oaohe dans un ooin du parterre qui ne se dise a lui-meme: " Le personnage tranquille et douz n'est pas loin " ? ' — De la Poisie Dramatique, oh. xiii. CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 163 eighteenth-century criticism failed to discover in the great genres of tragedy and comedy that were being imitated to boredom, was this : that they represented a type of art which was true to their own time, though — except when employed by Marie-Joseph Chenier and Lemercier — not to the new period of revolution. On the other hand, Mercier at any rate saw in Shakespeare, in Calderon, in Lope de Vega, and in certain seventeenth-century plays such as Don Sanche d'Aragon, Don Juan, Le Menteur, the possi- bility of future developments of the drama. 1 The ideal of the drama which is proposed is defined further in Mercier's pamphlet : ' Enchainer les faits conformement a la verite, suivre dans le choix des evenements le cours ordinaire des choses, modeler la marche de la piece de sorte que l'extrait paraisse un recit ou regne la plus exacte vraisemblance, faire naitre enfin par ces moyens le sourire de l'ame.' 2 Mercier does in fact add that some opportunity should be left to the imagination, the realism is not to be complete. 3 Here he separates from Beaumarchais, who in the preface to Eugenie advises that the curtain should not come down between the acts of a play, but that servants should walk to and fro on the stage in the interval, to give a greater air of probability to the scenes.* Nature, says Mercier, must speak, but not shout out : ' II faut faire parler la nature, et non la faire crier.' 5 Reason and feeling, he says, should dominate the action. It is interesting that he does not mention will. Therefore the circumstances that he suggests as stage subjects are really surroundings, not plots, 6 and they have certainly been employed with effect in the same way in nineteenth- century drama by Augier and Dumas fils, and have been 1 See Corneille's preface. 2 Du Thb&tre, p. 106. 3 Ibid. p. 141. • See also I^eron, Ann. Litt., 1767, viii. Article on Euginie. 5 Du TUdtre, p. 141. 6 They are, in fact, the material of the novel dramatised. It is to be noted that Diderot, Mercier, Marivaux, all wrote narrative fiction, and that the stage of the eighteenth century was largely affected by the English novel (especially the novels of Richardson and Melding). 164 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA lately seen on the English stage in such plays as Hindle Wakes and The Eldest Son, though the moral drawn by the authors is a different one in the twentieth from that of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when reparation of wrong-doing was considered to be completely possible, and was admitted as the rightful conclusion of a play. The modern play treats certain wrongs as irreparable. Mercier anticipates the nineteenth century in many other ways. Like Victor Hugo he feels that the drama should reflect the present life of the nation and comments on the 'gout bizarre et bien Strange de denaturer un ancien theatre, au lieu d'en construire un neuf relatif a la nation devant laquelle on parle.' 1 Victor Hugo in the Preface de Cromwell reproduced what is practically the same thought — that the drama should re- present the life, though not necessarily the past history of a nation. All the arguments he advances in this connexion in favour of realism and local colour correspond to Mercier's. 2 His feeling that the time and place unities observed in the seventeenth-century drama are artificial was anticipated by Diderot. 3 Verse and rhyme, and similar limitations, appeared to Mercier as they did to Houdart de la Motte and to other eighteenth-century minds, merely as difficulties to be got over as creditably as possible. The harangues and mono- logues of the ancient drama, repeated in the French classical age, are however explained by Mercier as due to a demo- cratic force in French life. The crowd in a French seven- 1 Du TMSire. Ep. dedic. p. viii. " ' ... de la fin du xviii 6 siecle a l'avenement du romantisme, on n'a rien ecrit en faveur de la revolution du theatre qui ne repioduise le sentiment ou m§me le langage de oe precurseur meoonnu.' — Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, p. 336. See De V AUemagne, 2e partie, ohs. 9, 10, 11, 15, 18; Guizot, Shakespeare et son temps. Paris : Perrin, 1893, pp. 2, 3, 100 ; Remusat, Passi et prisent ; Stendhal, Racine et Shakespeare, 1823. s See Diderot, Bijoux Indiscrets, iv. p. 285. ' La oonduite d'une de nos tragedies est ordinairement si oompliquee que oe serait un miracle qu'il se fut passe tant de choses en si peu de temps. La mine ou la conservation d'un empire, le mariage d'une princesse, la perte d'un prince, tout cela s'execute en un tour de main.' CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 165 teenth-century play, even though not in evidence on the stage, was the final appeal of society, and represented the counsel and sanction of the Gods : on the stage of the eighteenth century the actor felt himself to be on a tribune, addressing the audience. He thus considered the specta- tors to be the symbol of the nation which is present, though it does not invade the boards of the theatre. Sometimes indeed in the eighteenth century the parts were reversed, the crowd led and the actors followed : the audience came to the play to find its own theory expressed and it frequently twisted dramatic allusions to serve its own purpose. 1 Mercier imagined that the authors and actors in a national theatre would be the leaders of the national life. But he was also aware that this could not be successfully done unless creative force were awakened in the youth of the nation. Here again his theory suggests the coming Romantic movement. He wishes the literary youth of the nation to read Shakespeare in order to be able to take their own line and inspire a national drama. 2 This national drama should include a tragedy which should be capable of enlightening the people, 3 and it should be subsidised by the state ' car on en fait une ecole publique de morale et de gout.' This drama should above all be drawn from contemporary life — and thus drame, as distinct from tragedy, would find its place on a national stage. The drame would have both pathos and charm, for Mercier considers that it is harmful and untrue to decompose emotion and arbitrarily separate joy and pain.* Comedy in the national theatre was 1 ' C'est ainsi que le public se venge en certaines occasions : il n'ecoute plus les vers que pour saisir ceux dont il peut detourner le sens et le rendre applicable a ses anathemes.' — Tableau de Paris, ix. pp. 348-349. 2 ' Nous avons l'imprimerie, la poudre a canon, les postes, la boussole, et avec les idees nouvelles et fecondes qui en resultent, nous n'avons pas encore un art dramatique a nous.' — Nouvel Exarnen, p. 134. 8 ' Quelle sera done la tragedie veritable ? Ce sera celle qui sera entendue et saisie par tous les ordres de citoyens, qui aura un rapport intime aves les affaires politiques, eclairera le peuple sur ses vrais interets, exaltera dans son cceur un patriotisme eclaire. Voila la vraie tragedie qui n'a guere ete connue que chez les Grecs.' 4 ' Le poete laissera dormir les monarques dans leurs antiques tombeaux ; il embrassera de son coup d'ceil ses chers contemporains, et trouvant des lecons plus utiles a leur donner dans le tableau de mceurs actuelles, au lieu 166 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA to be the scourge of vice, 1 and this was to be brought about not only by the natural process of ridicule, as used by Moliere, but by the process of throwing a strong light on all the dark and evil places in life. ' Le propre de la comedie seroit de porter le flambeau de la verite dans le repaire obscur ou les mechans travail- lent leurs iniquites.' Mercier then admits everywhere in drama a double method of treatment : the encouragement of virtue by an example which should stimulate feeling, and the placing of virtue in a high light by an artistic process which deepens the shadow in which vice lies. His appeal is equally to the feeling and to the artistic response in the nature of the audience. The actual dogmatic insistence on a moral comes last with Mercier, though he looks forward hopefully to this function in the stage of the future, considering that morality is implicit in all art. In this view of the necessary function of the stage Mercier was again in advance of his contemporaries. Mercier also attempted to restate a theory of poetic justice. Why, he asks, should the good be rewarded and the evil punished in drama ? It is a thing, he reminds us, which does not necessarily happen in ordinary life, and the drame is intended to reflect ordinary life. The main thing then which the drama has to do, according to Mercier, is to point out who is good and who is wicked, not to arouse distress by the contrast between the reward of the good and evil in the real world and on the stage. But behind this uncompromising belief in facts, and in realism of treat- ment, there lies the dramatic creed of Mercier himself. There can be no drama, he thinks, unless the writer believes implicitly in the essential goodness of human nature. It must matter intensely to him that ultimately good will prevail even if temporarily crushed, else there could be no de composer une tragedie, il fera oe qu'on appelle un drame. ... (Un drame devrait reunir) tout l'interet de la tragedie par sea scenes pathetiques, et tout le charme naif de la, oomedie par la peinture de moeurs ... toute emotion est composee, il est done absurde de la vouloir absolue et extrSme.' 1 ' Toute oomedie qui ne oorrige pas le vice est une meohante comedie.' CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 167 play : there would be an absence of crisis and of general significance. The satirist who has no faith need not aspire to write drama 1 : Again, Mercier believed in the permanent character of intellectual truth. His contemporaries found their theory of a perfectibility gained through the acquisition of knowledge, and their idea that what was universally ex- perienced could not have the character of moral evil, both expressed in Mercier, who made the test of truth its power to bear universal dissemination. In Mercier's picturesque phrase, truth must leave the study and become ' pont-neuf ' — that is, of common knowledge. 2 Thus, while philosophy was teaching the equality of men, and the duty of individuals in society, the stage accommodated itself to a democratic choice of subjects and attempted to teach the duties incumbent on each member of a social state. 3 It is evident that so far as this appeal was to the sensi- bility of the audience the drama was a suitable vehicle for it. 1 ' H doit surtout avoir uue idee haute de la nature humaine, en reconnaitre l'excellence et la respecter dans le fond de son ame. H doit oroire que l'homme est ne bon. S'il pensait le contraire, de quel droit s'imaginerait-il pouvoir le toucher, le convainere, le porter au bien ? S'il croyait ne parler qu'a des coeurs endurcis, il devrait briser sa plume et juger son art infructueux.' — Du Th&dtre, p. 218. 2 ' La verite n'est verite que quand elle devient pont-neuf, il faut la mettre en couplets de chanson pour qu'elle fructifie nniversellement, il faut qu'elle descende de nos livres pour etre habillee en opera-comique ou en vaudeville.' See Beelard, Sebastien Mercier, p. 152. An 2440, iii. 216. 3 ' ... On n'a point apercu toute la fecondit6, toute l'6tendue de cet art important ... L'Ecrivain, moins audacieux qu'esclave, n'a gueres vu que son cabinet, au lieu de la soci^te. Meme de nos jours, l'assemblee qui compose ordinairement les auditeurs de nos pieces, ne peut etre considered que comme une compagnie particuliere a laquelle les poetes ont eu le dessein de plaire exclusivement. Nos pieces ressemblent assez a nos salles, car la physique gouverne en plus d'un genre (et que trop) le moral ... Cependant le moyen le plus aotif et le plus prompt d'armer invinciblement les forces de la raison humaine et de jeter tout a coup sur un peuple une grande masse de lumieres, seroit, a coup sur, le theatre ; c'est la que, semblable au son de cette trompette percante qui doit un jour frapper les morts, une eloquence simple et lumineuse pourroit reveiller en un instant une nation assoupie ; c'est la que la pensee majestueuse d'un seul homme iroit enflammer toutes les ames par une com- motion electrique ; c'est la, enfin, que la legislation rencontreroit moins d'obstacles et opereroit les plus grandes choses sans effort et sans violence.' — Du Thidtre. Epitre, pp. v, vi. 168 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA Sensibility belongs distinctly to the ' ame de la foule,' and is infectious. Here, on the stage, was an opportunity for the individual to appeal to the mass and to provoke in the crowd that emotion which was thrilling him as an individual and had to be dispersed among a sympathetic audience. This is another likeness to the appeal of the Romantic movement in the nineteenth century. Then again, as subjects of political and social concern (as well as more personal matters) provoked the sensibility of the individual, these two found their reflection on the stage. There is hardly an event in the eighteenth century — from society scandals to religious disputes and financial breakdowns — which is not alluded to in the drama. Thus realism reigns over dialogues, characters, events, 1 and disputes the stage with the didactic theory. As the stage reflected a desire to set up a standard of civic life it also entered a protest against contemporary restrictions of liberty, the whole stated in terms of emotion, and set in a frame that was so like life that the audience really felt themselves to be taking part in what happened on the stage. 2 The subjects sought for the stage were serious ones, of a usual kind. ' La nation,' said Colle, 3 ' est devenue triste.' People wished to find interest and likelihood on the stage but not satire. La Harpe works out clearly the reason for this attitude of mind : ' La disposition des esprits est autre que dans le siecle passe. Nous sommes au moment de la satiete et nous voulons des emotions fortes. Nos mceurs sont plus cor- 1 ' A la louange de la paix de 1763 Favart donne L'anglais d Bordeaux ; pour la consolation des revers recents, du Belloy emprunte a nos annales le Si&ge de Calais ; dans L' Amour Francais Rochon de Chabannes livre aux applaudissements du parterre les jeunes exploits de Layfaette.' — Beclard, Sebastien Merrier, p. 155. See also Desnoiresterres, La Comidie Satirique au XVIII e siecle (Paris: Perrin, 1885), La Fontaine, Le Th&dtre de la Phih- eophie (Paris : Cerf). 8 A curious consequence of this was that the theatre in the eighteenth century was sometimes the only subject of conversation. In 1784 the author of Paris en miniature, p. 44, says : ' Des miliers de jeunes gens et de vieillards demeureraient absolument muets, s'ils n'avaient pour entretien les actrices et les pieces de theatre.' » iii. p. 242. CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 169 rompues, et nous aimons qu'on nous parle de vertu ... C'est le genre le plus fecond qui nous reste.' 1 The theory held by both Mercier and Diderot, that the theatre exists for purposes of moral and political utility, was opposed by Rousseau, who, steeped in the classical literature of the seventeenth century, and aware that, according to the classical writers, the drama was intended to give pleasure, combated it on that ground, and argued that the theatre was merely an amusement, and a very useless and harmful one. 2 According to Rousseau, the purgation of the passions was the least likely result of the drama, which was apt to move them only too greatly. 3 Rousseau's strongest argument is that the pity and emotion which find their way out in useless tears can never produce a moral good, especially as the cause is illusory and not real. They only lead to a passive self-satisfaction. 4 Mercier however was so convinced that morality resided in the very art of the theatre that he was not disturbed by Rousseau's view. 5 He thought that what man did as a group before a group of others who were listeners must bring out the social idea so strongly that individual selfish- 1 Mercure de France, 1770, pp. 141-147. 2 ' Un spectacle est mi amusement ; ... tout amusement inutile est un mal pour un etre dont la vie est si courte et le temps si precieux.' Rousseau's letter produced in 1759 a reply from Marmontel among others. His views were not popular in Geneva itself. 3 ' L'emotion, le trouble, et l'attendrissement qu'on se sent en soi-meme et qui se prolongent apres la piece, annoncent-ils une disposition bien prochaine a surmonter et a regler nos passions ? ' 4 ' Une emotion passagere et vaine qui ne dure pas plus que l'illusion qui l'a produite, un reste de sentiment naturel etouffe bient6t par les passions, une piti6 sterile qui se repait de quelques larmes ... En dormant des pleura a ces fictions, nous avons satisfait a tous les droits de l'humanite, sans avoir plus rien a mettre du notre ... Quand un homme est alle admirer de belles actions dans des fables et pleurer des malheurs imaginaires, qu'a-t-on encore a exiger de lui ? N'est-il pas content de lui-meme 1 Ne s'applaudit-il pas de sa belle ame ? Ne s'est-il pas acquits de tout ce qu'il doit a la vertu par l'hommage qu'il vient de lui rendre 1 ' — Lettre d d'Alembert. 6 Marmontel, in the Apologie du Thidtre (1761), considers the stage as ' une ecole de politesse et de gout,' as against Rousseau : ' celui qui, pour notre bien, eut voulu nous mener paitre.' He allows that sensibility is the base of violent passions, but argues that it is also the root of all good and virtuous impulses and that it is incorrect to assume that passions can be bridled by cold reason alone. 170 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA ness would be lost. Sensibility, thus exercised, would become social sympathy, the source of all the virtues. 1 Both Rousseau and Mercier believed in the ideal perfecti- bility of man, but Rousseau thought that man could only recover primitive goodness through renouncing society, Mercier, that his salvation was to come through society. Of the two ideals Mercier's has been the more prophetic of modern political conditions, and it is also evident that his has the more strongly influenced the history of the stage. For though Mercier's own drama has not persisted to the present day in France as an example of his method, it was played for several years, both in the provinces and later in Paris, and it became a part of the theatrical tradition. Also it was known together with Diderot's, La Chaussee's, and Destouches', in England, Italy, Germany, Holland, and helped to contribute to the formation in those countries of the atmosphere which was favourable to the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century. In France itself the influence became again apparent when in that century Dumas fils, Augier, and Sardou made an effort to use the stage as a means of establishing a moral idea ; and the same desire controls certain types of English drama of the present day. Mercier then believed that ultimately the good of the individual and the good of society are one. Natural and social man make one being. Just as Mercier cannot bear the over-analysis of emotion nor the false distinctions that result from this, so he cannot bear to see the functions of man's individual and social life considered apart ; natural right in his view is also the right of man to the greatest possible happiness. 2 Mercier's idea of freedom is emphati- 1 See Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, p. 74, and Du Thidtre, Mercier, p. 7. ' Laissez dormir les precieuses facultes de l'homme, elles s'aneantiront peut- etre, il deviendra dur par inertie, par habitude ; eveillez-les, il sera tendre, sensible, compatissant.' a ' Qu'il saohe que tous lea publioistes ont dit une sottise quand ils ont avanc6 que l'homme social 6tait autre que l'homme de la nature ... que les lois de la society ne doivent pas contredire les lois de la nature, qu' elles en sont la perfection, ... que le droit naturel est le droit de l'homme a son plus grand bonheur possible ... qu'il saohe que l'erreur n'est jamais utile ... qu'il saohe CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 171 cally that of Corneille in the seventeenth century, it con- sists in the strength of soul. But when once character is firmly established taste can be varied and free. In projecting his ideal for the stage and for the nation further than other men of his time, Mercier not only collected and completed their views, but was able to give a formula for the Romantic movement of the next century. Almost every point mentioned by Madame de Stael, and many that formed part of the theories of the later Romantics, can be traced in Mercier 's writings. The belief in a national literature, the artist's necessity for self-expression, and for affecting his world — these words perhaps define the out- standing lines of his thought. 1 But he looks beyond early Romanticism to the beginning of socialism with its new effect upon literature ; he sees literature not only as the expression of societies but as helping through national education to mould new forms of society. His idea of the moral function of the stage is connected with his wish for political progress. Even in the last years of his life he es- caped from the weariness of a disappointed individualism that was characteristic of the Romantic period. He was que la verite dite one bonne fois laisse une impression profonde que toute verite est done bonne a dire aux hommes ... Enfin qu'il aime la gloire et qu'il ne ment point sur oet article. C'est le cri de l'estime public' — Du Th&dtre, p. 221 et seq. 1 See, for illustration, Tableau de Paris, x. 38, where Mercier speaks of his * esprit amoureux des beautes vastes et irregulieres.' Hon bonnet de Nuit, iv. 196-254 : ' Vous, hommes de lettres et dignes de ce nom, vous ne profanerez point une plume qui ne doit §tre consaeree qu'au bien public. ...' L'homme sauvage, p. 87 : ' J'apercus de meme le rapport sensible des etres crees, toutes les creatures correspondaient entre elles sous la main du Dieu unique, la nature etait vivante sous l'oeil d'un LMeu vivant ; j'etais moi-meme une portion animee d'un souffle divin, envel- oppee dans une masse terrestre, et jo disais dans ma pen see : " Tu ne periras point ; tu vivras toujours avec l'unite sublime, aveo l'harmonie eternelle." ' Songes philosophiques (1768), p. 8 : ' L'ame de l'homme vertueux ne veut point etre heureuse, on veut l'etre avec Punivers.' It is possible that the publication of Lessing's (1729-1781) Uamburgiscke Dramaturgie in 1765, and Zur Oeschichte und Literatur in 1773 had some influence on Mercier's thought. He was at any rate acquainted with some of Lessing's plays, but makes no direct reference to Lessing's criticism. Lessing's first interest in the drama, it may however be noted, began about 1746 when he was at the University of Leipzig, and translated French plays for the town theatre. 172 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA upheld by a faith in human nature that for his immediate successors was eclipsed. In some directions the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century did not follow the lines suggested by Mercier. It was not mainly a dramatic manifesto by the Moderns against the Ancients ; not only the claim of the present day as against the past to be represented in art. The national literature invoked in the nineteenth century claimed to be more than this. It desired to make the past live again as material for a representation of life both in the novel and on the stage. The sense of mystery and the sense of fatality, both bequests of mediaeval life and experience, were recovered by the Romantics. It is difficult to put too strongly Mercier's instinctive opposition to mediaevalism. He was unable to read with any patience a drama of fatality like Phedre or Romeo and Juliet. His hardest words are for Racine's masterpiece, though this is not avowedly on account of the element of fatality in it, but because unguarded passion is its theme. Mercier, with his incurable optimism and his sentiment that human feeling must triumph over fate because in his view it ought so to do, believes that the hero of a drama must be a law to himself, responsible for his own actions, and quite able to direct their course, and that when he does so, Providence inevitably seconds him in every way. Now in Racine's Phedre, the hereditary instinct which is her snare, and which prevents her from having complete command of herself, produces a justification of her acts as drama, while Racine (himself sharing in the moral tone of the period) would not have been able to place these on the stage but for the interpretation given to them as in part a result of hereditary evil. Tragedy is nearly always the problem of the attack on the conscious power of the in- dividual over his own destiny. Mercier's dramatic theory is averse from the presentation of tragedy of this type, whether the fatality is drawn down by human error and lack of judgment, or whether, as in Romeo and Juliet, it is the result of a blood-feud, which is external to the imme- diate actors on the scene, involving them in the results of an enmity which is contrary to their own impulse and CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 173 has not been adopted by them. In his adaptation of Shake- speare's play, Mercier therefore brings his Borneo et Juliette to a happy conclusion, and he reduces the tragedy of Lear and his daughters to that of a bourgeois household where family disputes arise over the misdeeds of the servants. Mercier thus does not realise, though he is a moralist in comedy, that the morality of tragedy entirely depends on the acceptance of the elements of fatality and heredity, and of the sense of sin, both individual and social. Tor if no historical causes were invoked in the shipwreck of life the attack on the integrity of personality would be impossible for humanity to bear. Mercier, however, was naturally disposed to express himself in comedy rather than tragedy. Even here it will be seen that the effort to express a moral in bis play strains the description of life that Mercier has at his disposal, and he often brings in unlikely romantic situations or makes a melodramatic appeal, in order to bring his play into dramatic form. On the whole, the success of France, both in the great romantic tragedy of the seventeenth century, and in the satiric drama of Moliere and his followers, was that of the true moralist, and the genres were those that did not obscure the moral. French art in the eighteenth century was faced with new problems, and the comparative failure to produce good work, which is noticeable in so many dramatists of this time, is due to their trying to find a definite prescription for the drama without realising that the moral aim must be attained by different means within each genre. For most writers this prescription included the union of a realistic method with the moral aim of tragedy, comedy, or drame ; and speaking generally they failed as dramatists in propor- tion as they attempted to carry out their intentions, and succeeded when their unconscious artistic perception guided them away from the prescribed path. We are far from suggesting that the realistic method cannot produce a good acting play, but it does not necessarily produce, as the eighteenth-century dramatists required it to do, a play with an obvious moral. And a play must be a failure when an author who is a realist suddenly remembers at one point 174 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA that he must be moral (as Diderot did) and blurs his own unity of conception, or when a moralist thinks at intervals that he must do nothing but observe and picture life (as Mercier sometimes did). One can imagine that it would be possible to have a play in which the dialogue and painting of character are true to life, and the result at the same time moral in its teaching. But then the plot would be made to serve the moral purpose and be frankly imaginative, the general lines of the play being romantic ; they would ex- press the unity of idea and artistic choice of one mind, and carry out one intention. This is the origin of the lively domestic drama of the twentieth century in England, 1 while the more sombre dramas 2 have a relentlessly realistic plot and presentation, without losing the power of producing a moral effect. On the other hand, a play may be moral in the sense that it is a criticism of society, and it may include photographic observation of reality. But just as the con- structively moral play only secures its aim by slightly overdoing the description of ideal conditions, so the destructive play, or satiric drama with a moral aim, only produces its effects by exaggerating the real : a fact which all readers of Moliere will have noticed. So Diderot's successful play, Est-il bon, est-il mechant ? concentrates and exaggerates the clumsy kindness and ingenious falsity of Hardouin, which are really non-social qualities. Dancourt and Le Sage both lay on the colours thickly where they are describing actual conditions. The greatness of Marivaux and of Beaumarchais in the eighteenth century seems to be that Marivaux successfully accomplished the feat of de- scribing with psychological analysis characters placed in an imaginative setting, Beaumarchais placed his more vigorous observation of life within a romantic setting. But Marivaux spoils his scenes when his characters begin to moralise, and Beaumarchais when he wishes the audience to be touched by what he has said. Both great authors when they were most successful were being led by their own artistic sense and were avoiding the snare of philosophic advice. Part of the theory 1 The Great Adventure, and Bunty Pulls the Strings. * Such as Rutherford and Son. CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 175 of the eighteenth century, namely, that a play should be useful to the country and that it should obtain its moral effect by touching the emotions, really concerns the judgment of the critic and of the audience more than that of the writers of plays. Where these points are made much of in the preface it frequently happens that the preface was an afterthought. Mercier was, then, as we have seen, no critic of tragedy, and no apologist for the past. He does not look backward to find romance, but forward to seek melodrama, which really owes much to Mercier's first introduction of ' strong ' situations on the stage. But he was right in urging that present and national conditions could be a background for drama ; and it was in this way, as well as in his defence of the idea of a national theatre, that he looks beyond bis immediate successors in the theory of dramatic art. To the ordinary mind it is easier to imagine an historical back- ground for a drama than one of the present time, because it seems that time must elapse before a series of events can be seen sufficiently in perspective to afford interest of an artistic kind ; this generally means that the dramatist is guided in his choice of events by legendary views and by common opinion. Thus the legends of Charles V x and of Louis XI 2 have afforded subjects of this kind for drama. It is, however, the privilege of the artist, by the choice of a point of view and in relation to a critical moment, to produce an imaginary perspective of character and events ; thus a central fact detaches itself to his vision and the rest is seen in relation to it. Such art can be exercised on the conditions that are immediately present to us. Mercier himself refers to the agreement with his theories on the part of Buffon, who in his Discours a la reception de M. de Bur as a V Academic frangaise 1775, two years after Mercier's pamphlet Du Thedtre was composed, pleaded for a national drama which should be useful to the state : ' J'admire cet art illusoire qui m'a sou vent arrache des larmes pour des victimes fabuleuses ou coupables : mais cet 1 Victor Hugo, Hernani. "• Mercier, Louis XI ; Casimir Delavigne, Louis XI. 176 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA art ne serait-il plus vrai, plus utile, et bientot plus grand, si nos hommes de genie l'appliquaient, comme M. de Belloy, aux grands personnages de notre nation ? ' ' Enfin quel doit Stre le but des representations theatrales, quel peut en etre l'objet utile ? si ce n'est / d'echauffer le cceur et de frapper 1'ame entiere de la nation par les grands exemples et par les beaux modeles qui l'ont illustree V 1 Mercier's plea found another echo in the year of the Revolution in a fiery pamphlet on La Liberte du Thedtre en France written by Marie-Joseph Chenier. It is difficult not to assume some conscious repetition of Mercier's thought by Chenier. The difference is that Chenier's pamphlet was written in the heat of revolution and stimulated by the thought that freedom was the first necessity to art as to politics : ' il n'y a pas de patrie sans liberte.' Like Mercier Chenier looks upon the theatre as a means of affording instruction to the people : ' Le Theatre est comme la chaire, un moyen d'instruction publique ' ; its influence is rapid and hardly to be measured : ' La sensation que fait eprouver, a deux mille personnes rassemblees au Theatre francais, la representation d'un excellent ouvrage dramatique, est rapide, ardente, unanime ... ' ' L'homme est essentiellement sensible. Le poete dramatique, en peignant les passions, dirige celles du spectateur. Un sourire .... des pleurs ... suffisent pour nous faire sentir une verite que l'auteur d'un traite de morale nous aura longue- ment demontre.' A government should then control the theatre and encourage its work : ' Un gouvernement equitable encouragerait tout ce que peut corriger les mceurs publiques ... Tout depend done, pour une nation, de la masse de ses lumi^res.' ' Ainsi Part de penser et d'ecrire rendra chaque jour les hommes plus eclaires, et par consequent plus vertueux, et par consequent plus heureux.' 1 M. de Duras, said Bufion, had suggested to de Belloy the subject of his tragedy, Le Siige de Calais. CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM OF THE DRAMA 177 A similar appeal was made for a national opera : in the Bibliotheque historique de la Revolution an anonymous writer points out the necessity to the nation of beautiful spectacles, and emphasises the fact that an opera always has to be subsidised by King or State. So in 1749 the town of Paris directed the opera under the King's immediate authority. In 1780 the King took over the opera entirely and gave it great financial support. ' II faut de grands spectacles a une grande nation, a un peuple de heros. C'est la que le citoyen, soldat de la liberte, eprouve l'amour de la valeur, l'enthousiasme des belles actions.' The history of the stage during the years immediately following 1789 is a comment on the exalted theories held by Mercier and Chenier. The direction of the censorship fell into the hands of different parties in turn, and the stage was used (it is true rather ineffectively) during those years for political propaganda rather than for spreading the light. 1 1 In the critical years of the century it came to be worthy of remark if the audience listened quietly to the play throughout its course. In 1793, for instance, the play was judged according to its republican tendency (Lettre de Perriere, Tableau de la Involution Francaise, vol. ii. pp. 109-17) ; in 1795 many theatres were closed on account of their bad moral tone (Lettre de Houdeyer, ibid. vol. ii. p. 498) ; in 1799 all plays of a royalist tendency were cut out, and aristocratic liveries were forbidden (Milly et Le Tellier, ibid. vol. iii. p. 411). In the same year only one play was found which fulfilled the real expectation of the representatives of the people, L'Officier de Fortune, and one opera, Toute la Grece, ou Oe que peut la liberti (ibid. vol. iii. p. 454). In 1800 pieces which were classical or historical were again put upon the stage. Where the play did not exactly represent the temper of the nation the audience chose out portions for applause or condemnation. So in 1796 those who were seeing PhMre applauded the lines ' Ne distinguera-t-on jamais sur le front des mortels le crime ou rinnocence ? ' (ibid. (Rapport special) vol. iii. p. 52). In 1795 Pamela was taken off because of the republican speech of one character, and the aristocrats were allowed to recover their places in Le Conteur (ibid. Lettre de Houdeyer, vol. ii. p. 528). CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION Cramping influence on the drama of philosophic views — Effect of political theories — New aesthetic theories derived mainly from the practice of drame — Traditional tragedy and comedy : remoteness of the stage from the experience of the spectators — The desire in the eighteenth century to bring together stage and audience — Realism displaces symbolism in re- presentation — Interest roused by (i) the appeal to feeling, (ii) spectacle, (iii) ' pantomime,' (iv) tableaux — Rise of light opera — Liberty of the stage, 1791 : changes in production brought about by political bias : the new century. In reviewing the evidence for the connexion between dramatic theory and practice in the eighteenth century it has become clear that the theory, suggested as it was by the current philosophy of the period, tended to cramp the development of the stage by making the practice of dramatic art subordinate to the moral function which was supposed by eighteenth-century thinkers to be its special privilege. Not only were the plays loaded with moral axioms and exhortations, but the dramatic movement was hampered by the self-revelation of motive which was attributed to the principal characters, who all attempted to explain their conduct. Such an explanation was unusual in seventeenth- century comedy, where the disclosure of motive was brought about through action on the part of several characters, but in the weaker structure of eighteenth-century plays it appeared to become necessary. There was however a deeper error in the practice of the eighteenth-century dramatists, than was involved in their pointing of a moral. There was an absence of the masterly analysis of mind which Corneille and Racine and Moliere shared with the rest of the genera- tion taught by Descartes. Voltaire himself perceived that 178 CONCLUSION 179 some tragedies represented a desultory conversation rather than action or effect of mind on mind. 1 The language of tragedy or drame tended to become ' de la prose lethargique.' Marivaux was the last of the writers of comedy who depended upon psychology to illustrate the springs of action of his characters. His successors explain heavily and unconvin- cingly why an impossible situation has come about. There were certain other influences upon the drama which may be described as political, rather than moral. Such an influence, though it dictated the conditions of the play, had a less unfortunate effect than a philosophical bias. It is to this political motive that we trace the portrayal of the professional, the commercial, the industrial and finally the oppressed classes in dramatic art. All forms of eight- eenth-century drama illustrate this tendency. The histori- cal tragedy of the latter part of the century, while attempting a picture of national life, puts the bourgeois elements in the foreground, while the kings and princes recede. This is the case with the plays of Marie-Joseph Chenier and Nepomucene Lemercier. In comedy the valet and the soubrette are dis- missed and the serving men and maids come to life and show their individual character. Even stock comedy characters like Arlequin become ordinary beings with individual life and feeling. 2 The drama of the eighteenth century expresses a generous admiration for the virtues of the bourgeois class, and ex- hibits its republican principles by the manner in which it treats the subject of the uneducated, the oppressed and the criminal classes. The plays were intended to be interest- ing to a large and varied audience. The aesthetic theories (as distinct from the philosophic and political theories) which dominated the character of the plays presented during the period, were deduced, like the aesthetic theories of the seventeenth century, from the 1 Discours sur la tragidie A Milord Bolingbrohe, 1731. ' Nous avons en Ranee des tragedies estimees qui sont plut6t des conversations qu'elles ne sont la representation d'un evenement.' 2 Cf. the description of Florian's Arlequin as ' bon, doux, ingenu, simple sans etre bete, parlant purement et exprimant avec naivete les sentiments d'un cceur tres tendre.' 180 CONCLUSION actual practice of the stage. 1 Thus we find more dramatic theory of an aesthetic kind in the prefaces to plays such as those of La Motte, Le Sage, Beaumarchais and Voltaire, than in the pamphlets by Mercier, Chenier, Rousseau, Marmontel, which appeared in the latter part of the century independently of the authors' dramatic work, and which were all intensely coloured by their political views. 2 It was recognised in the eighteenth century that tragedy and comedy were generally written according to the rules, and the new elements in aesthetic were supplied by the drame and by the plays which were affected by that new type of dramatic work. In the Petite Biblioiheque des Thedtres (Le Prince et Baudrais) published in 1784-1789, a series of essais historiques connect the forms of the tragedy, tragi-comedy and comedy with their origins in the Greek, Roman and mediaeval art of the theatre. From these essays it appears that the tra- gedies of Voltaire were regarded in the eighteenth century as plays which took their place in a long development of classical tragedy, while contemporary comedy was linked to the mediaeval farce, and also to Latin comedy, from which it drew its form and to a certain extent its traditions. The innovation of the drame was not critically considered by the authors of the collection in question : this genre appeared to them to have come naturally into being as a result of the inclusion of the element of sentiment in the 1 The student of the eighteenth century will, however, realise that public opinion was influenced in the direction of aesthetio theory by writers who were not primarily dramatic critics. The strongest influence of this kind was perhaps that of the Abbe Dubos (1670-1742), whose Mfkxions sur la Poisie et la Peinture deny to art any intellectual quality, and find the basis of aesthetic enjoyment in pure sentiment. Both in the drame and the novel of the eighteenth century we find forms which correspond to these ideas, and which have been directly derived from them. 2 Chenier, in his prefaces to his plays, produced something more of a poetic See in the Discours prUiminaire de Charles IX : ' La tragedie doit peindre les passions humaines, dans leur plus grande energie. La difference des epoques et des contrees exige quelques legeres differences dans les formes; mais le fond doit dtre le m§me. L'esprit change : le ooeur humain ne saurait changer. Cependant, s'il faut peindre la nature, ou la trouver autour de nous ? Elle est si fardee, si voilee, si ohargee de vStements etrangers, qu'elle n'est plus reconnaissable. Jetons au loin ces pretendus ornemens qui la couvrent et la deguisent, nous retrouverons la purete des formes antiques.' CONCLUSION 181 comedy, and of the attention to the claims of the bourgeoisie to be represented in the art of the stage. But as a fact the appearance of drame coincides with a new type of dramatic theory in France. Traditional tragedy and comedy demanded a stage- setting which emphasised the remoteness of both types of drama from ordinary life. Tragedy, with its appeal to pity and terror, was expressed in rhymed and measured verse, which served to remove its phrases from the language of the day. The scene was laid in the historic past, or in some distant place. The actors were kings and queens or heroes and heroines of romance. The events described, in- cluding stories of treachery, adultery, incest, and an account of the punishments of these crimes by the Gods, would only be tolerated by an eighteenth-century audience if the histories of the persons represented were quite separated from the experience of every-day life. 1 Comedy, too, depended for its effect on the contrast between real life and the events on the stage. A play was amusing because it was an exaggeration of life, because, in fact, it was overdrawn. Elaborate stage trappings and dresses accentuated this impression. An artificial manner and exaggeration of speech were characteristic of the actors both of comedy and of tragedy. ^ About the year 1739 Voltaire noticed that people were going less to Moliere's comedies. In 1746 Moliere's plays were taken off for a time, and after 1766 they were hardly ever acted. The same fate befell classical tragedy, though in a modified way. Corneille's Les Horaces and Racine's Andromaque and PhMre were not for any length of time absent from the repertoire until the Revolution and the Terror and the Napoleonic wars destroyed the general taste for tragedy. But the classical tradition in tragedy was fiercely attacked at the same period as that of comedy, La Motte and Fontenelle both opposing the ' aristocratic ' and superhuman type of character represented, together 1 Even in the 17th century the scandal about Racine's Phedre was chiefly due to the vividness of the presentation of such facts at a time when a corrupt society had recalled them to mind. 182 CONCLUSION with the plots of the great plays, and the narrative and monologues. An influence had come in, as early as 1739, which threatened the position of classical art in France. Coincidently with the philosophic desire to teach a moral on the stage, and with the political desire to see all conditions of people represented on it, came the wish to unite actors and audience by a common bond of sympathy, and destroy the remoteness of the classic stage. To a large extent this latter change was due to foreign, and especially to English influence. The plays of Shakespeare, as they became known in France, 1 showed a large canvas, on which all conditions of life were represented, and in some of which every playgoer could interest himself. The playgoers, too, were no longer only the educated class, but included every other class. Earlier than the influence of Shakespeare was the influence of contemporary English drama on France. The plays of Lillo 2 and Moore 3 accustomed the reader to the portrayal of contemporary life, in which a great deal of crude realism was displayed, and the audience were satisfied to judge the play on the ground of its exact re- semblance to ordinary experience. The success of these plays entirely depended on such a recognition. In the English plays there is frequently a prologue and sometimes an epilogue addressed to the audience. The players, when they uttered their lines, often turned to the house rather than to the other actors with whom they were playing. This helped to create a current of sympathy and to unite the stage and the house. The German domestic drama (Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson was 'written three years before Diderot's Le Fils Naturel) had a similar though more limited effect. The appeal of such plays was the stronger since no shadow of satire or ridicule interfered with the serious treatment of bourgeois life, and thus the play remained on the level of common experience. Since the remoteness of the stage was being given up, all symbolism of representation was bound to disappear. 1 From 1756 onwards. See, however, the ThMtre Anglois, 1749. 2 Especially The London Merchant, 1731 ; first translated 1748. 8 Especially The Gamester, 1763, adapted by Saurin, 1760. CONCLUSION 183 Dress and scenery became realistic and intonation natural. This last was a difficulty to the classically trained actor, and it was not until about 1780 that we find the necessary simplicity of diction had been obtained. There was, 'how" ever, a danger that the new form of dramatic work would be flat in effect, and so it proved. The slightest exaggeration : led to melodrama. Thus, although more classes and con- ditions were represented on the stage, there was very little sense of contrast and no perspective. Even the best plays of the type, Sedaine's Philosophe sans le savoir, and Diderot's Est-il bon, est-il mechant ? though they have characterisation, are each set in a very monotonous milieu. Mercier and Voltaire both take trouble to weaken the colouring of the English pieces they adapt. Artistic relief is, therefore, obtained in other ways, either by the strongest possible appeal to the emotions of pity and kindness — no play of the type of drame was considered a success unless the audience had been moved to tears — or by an appeal to the sensations of the eye and the ear. The history of the drame larmoyant illustrates the first point : that of tragedie- opera the second. The actual structure of the drame larmoyant has been already discussed (Chapter III) ; the theory of the genre, as deduced from the prefaces of the plays, appears to be that the appeal to the audience should include that of pity and exclude that of terror. With this difference almost any of the old plots could be utilised, as indeed they were. But the problem, as presented by Nivelle de la Chaussee, is artificial, and therefore it is not an insoluble one. 1 As presented by Diderot the play draws to a conclusion which is hardly a solution, but a different stage in the history of the characters. 2 As presented by Mercier an impossible romantic ending caps the play at a moment when the problem becomes exasperating to common sense. 3 In every case the appeal is to feeling and not to logic or probability. An attempt to attract the popular interest by spectacles 1 Milanide, La Gouvemante, L'Homme de Fortune. 2 Le P&re de FamiUe, Le Fih Naturel. 3 As in the case of La Brouette du Vinaigrier. 184 CONCLUSION of varied kinds on the stage is characteristic of tragedie- opera, and a play framed on an ancient plot and not adapted to contemporary life almost always found its way out into tragedie-opera. Voltaire argued that this genre represented more closely the simple structure of the Greek play, with the popular elements of spectacle and choric movement, than did the classical French tragedy. 1 Voltaire's own plays of the later period were assimilated to tragedie-opera, and he learned to depend on spectacular effect to keep the interest of his audience. But the tendency is not confined to tragedy, and one of the most interesting contributions of eighteenth-century dramatic art results from the movement. At the beginning of the period 1690-1808 Moliere's attempts to produce a more vivacious stage-method instead of the ordinary fixed recitation had already had an effect. The larger stage, and greater freedom of movement of the characters, the beginnings of natural scenery in the place of the fixed stage-interior, had made the whole process of acting more elastic. But at the beginning of the eighteenth century the reform was mainly felt in the opera, where elaborate and realistic settings were prepared. Diction in tragedy still leant to the type of a recitation. Mercier in his Nouvel Essai 2 says ' la tragedie devint apres Corneille une sorte de farce serieuse, ecrite avec pompe, qui visait a satisfaire Poreille, mais qui ne disait rien a la nation et ne pouvait rien lui dire.' In this criticism he points out the change which is taking place in the attitude of the people to a tragedy. The play must mean something to the audience ; and its appeal must be not only to the ear, as was the case with the educated audiences of the seventeenth century, but to the eye. Hence all conventions on the stage gradually gave way to a repre- sentation which was as nearly as possible that of actual life. 3 The scanty stage-directions in certain plays of 1 Diderot, in De la Po&sie dramatique, holds the same view. 2 Pp. 30 and 85. 8 There are many examples given of the effeot of this illusion. At a per- formance of L'artiste Infortuni in 1788, when the financier is refused by Angelique and her parents, someone called out from the ' Seoondes loges,' ' C'est bien fait.' — Pet. Bibl. des thidtres, torn. v. CONCLUSION 185 Corneille x and Racine a develop into the detailed directions we find in Diderot and Mercier. In fact Diderot, some years before he produced his first play, had framed his conception of it : ' La perfection d'un spectacle consiste dans l'imita- tion si exacte d'une action que le spectateur, trompe sans interruption, s'imagine assister a Faction meme.' 3 The spectacular effect is then connected with the wish to draw the interest of the audience over the footlights and on to the boards. The idea is not confined to the use of appropriate scenery : ' pantomime,' or expressive though silent movement and gesture, comes in to reinforce the effect on the eye. ' Pantomime ' is in fact the spectacular expression of action and emotion. Thus the 'entre-actes pantomimes ' invented by Beaumarchais in Eugenie are intended to provide that the spectator shall be, as Diderot had suggested, ' trompe sans interruption,' for on this continued illusion depended the success of his drame. Long waits between scenes are fatal to realistic treatment. 4 In cases where the actual plot-interest was slight, and the play much more definitely a spectacle than a drama, recourse was had to the grouping of the characters to form suggestive ' tableaux,' and also to the introduction of music into the play itself. Plays of this type were of the ' vaude- ville ' character : and the most characteristic examples were the adaptations of Goldoni's Italian comedies, the adaptations of English plays, 5 and the plays verging on light opera which were produced during the period of Revolution. 6 A new genre, which was more decidedly operatic, though with elements of drame and comedy, was produced by Sedaine and others with the co-operation of musicians such as Duni, Philidor and Gretry. This was a most graceful and charming genre, and originated in light opera composed (usually on the theme of The King and the Miller of Mans- field) for the entertainment of the court in the pre-Revolu- tion period. 7 An example of this genre is Rousseau's 1 Clitandre. s Esther, Athalie. 8 Lea Bijoux Indiscreta. 4 The Blench stage has always avoided the incongruous music between the acts which punctuates an English play. 6 Such as Poinsinet's Tom Jones. 6 Suoh as MarmonteFs Sylvain. 7 See A. Jullien, La Oour et Vopira eoua Louia XVI. 186 CONCLUSION Le Devin du Village. Between 1771 and 1780, when drame proper suffered an eclipse, there were many experiments of this kind. Another was also due to Rousseau, that is, his pre- sentation of the story of Pygmalion in a kind of monologue supported by an orchestra with a background of appropriate scenery. Grimm x notes the effect : — ' Pygmalion prend avec fureur, et la singularite du spectacle est un puissant aiguillon pour le public' In 1780 the Comedie Italienne was allowed not only to produce French plays such as those of Marivaux, leave for which had been taken away for some years, x but also to produce the light operas mentioned above. During the actual period of revolution light opera degenerated into melodrama, especially after 1791, when the proclamation of the liberty of the stage did away with all copyright five years after the death of an author, and allowed anyone who wished to exercise it, the freedom to produce a play. That freedom was, however, greatly curtailed by the censor, and after 1791, though there was the appearance of liberty, the political necessities of the government controlled all dramatic production. Thus the bourgeois element gave way during the Napoleonic period to military hero-worship, and was succeeded at the Restoration by plays with a monarchical tendency. 1 Corr. LUt. xi. p. 139. APPENDIX (a) Plays acted before the French Court m the last days of the monarchy. (&) Popular Republican Plays. (c) La Journee des Dupes, piece tragi-politi-comique. (d) Chronological Table. (a) plays acted before the French court in the last DAYS OF THE MONARCHY. The quick reflection of political life in France on the stage which is noticeable all through her dramatic history, has a great interest to the student of the revolution of 1789. The history of eighteenth-century stage production shows that public opinion, as exhibited in the attitude of the parterre, expressed the forces of democracy and not as in the seventeenth century the feeling of a literary clique. If the play produced did not suit the opinion of the moment, words were twisted out of their natural sense and made to bear other politically suitable interpretations, while if the tone was radically unsympathetic to the populace, the play was damned and the actors hissed off the stage. 1 Tragedy, comedy, and the opera went on all through the years of Revolution, and the opera was only closed for a rare moment at the height of the Terror, when the spangled dancers were turned back and the doors shut at the news of the death of 1 ' C'est ainsi que le public se venge en eertaines occasions : il n'ecoute plus les vers que pour saisir ceux dont il peut detourner le sens et le rendre applicable a ses anathemes.' — Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ix. pp. 348-349. 188 APPENDIX Marat. 1 Up to 1 789, while the Court was at Versailles, plays were acted before the King and Queen both there and at Paris, while the visit to Fontainebleau in December of each year was an occasion for testing new plays before their public production in the capital. Until Marie Antoinette became Queen these new plays were heard in a courteous but dead silence ; but she decided to allow applause, and thus a success at Fontainebleau became a real test of the way a play would be received at Paris. The police censor- ship was exercised over revolutionary lines such as those which occurred in Voltaire's Brutus, 2, and also reflected the King's desire not to have any scene verging on impropriety put upon the stage. It appears that this was his real objection to Le Mariage de Figaro, while the Queen was interested in the political character of the play, and herself encouraged and allowed free criticism of any drama. Of the four types of dramatic work in vogue in the eighteenth century — tragedy, comedy, drame and the opera — it was tragedy which expressed the serious desire of the nation for reform together with its monarchical ideal; comedy which reflected the changing condition of society ; drame which gave effect both to philosophical theories and to the emotions and ideals of the middle class. As drame became general, with Diderot and Mercier, both tragedy and comedy began to share in its characteristics ; tragedy swerved from the classical form and became historical and romantic, comedy included an appeal to feeling, while the approach of the Revolution produced plays with a political tendency treated satirically by Beaumarchais and by his enemy Bergasse. In 1789 D'Harleville's Monsieur de Crac, 1 July 13, 1793. 2 Voltaire's tragedy, (Edipe, written as early as 1718, was already revolu- tionary in tone. It attacked kings and priests, the sense of fatality and the immortal Gods ; and the long series of plays which followed (Edipe had their political allusions, and not only signalised the democratic movement, but helped to hasten it. Brutus (1730) and La Mart de C&sar (1743) were two of the most important plays in this series from the point of view of political prophecy. Brutus, Act IV. sc. 8 : ' Et que la terre avoue, au bruit de ses exploits, Que le sort de mon sang est de vainore les rois.' APPENDIX 189 a small piece full of fast and joyous fun, was the only real success of the year : in the height of the Terror the pastoral play Abel by Legouve soothed the minds of a Parisian audience : but these plays were intended to distract and had no political tendency. The political satires, though not as a rule good in their plot and construction, are those which will mainly interest the student of the Revolution. Comedy itself was developing on the political side. The aristocratic comedy in which the servants played the farcical parts had begun to go out of fashion in the eight- eenth century. Either serious drama was performed, in which the scenes were laid in middle-class life and the nobility and court were ignored, or the comedy produced represented the servants as gradually getting the upper hand over their masters. The valet, instead of being the traditional butt of the piece, gradually acquired a name, individual character and a share in the plot. Instead of being called L'Olive, or L'Epine, or some similar generic name, he is Merlin, or Pasquin, or Crispin, or Frontin, the character varying in each case. Though capable of devotion to his master he is a person of boundless impertinence who serves his own interest. By the time that Beaumarchais began to write, the times were ripe for the appearance of Figaro, the valet-maUre, who is the central character in all his plays, and can be literally said to represent the tiers-etat just rising into prominence at the time of the calling of the fitats Generaux. All Beaumarchais' plays combine the idea of the exaltation of the middle and lower classes with depreciation of the traditional methods of society, especially as shown in the persons of the King and courtiers. Historians of the period hardly ever make any allusion to the coming democratic forces as expressed in the drama, though they quote the famous description of the growth of scandal from Le Mariage de Figaro ; but Beaumarchais himself knew that his plays would have an effect on politics. The history of the opera is closely connected with that of the Court. Between the years 1780 and 1790 there seems to have been a story of obscure intrigue which involved 190 APPENDIX them both. The Queen had under her special protection the Italian composer Sacchini, and this musician together with Salieri and Piccinni were the unhappy objects of the hatred and rivalry of the party of Gluck. In 1781 Sacchini was presented to the Queen at Trianon, and heard Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride, on which the Queen and the Emperor Joseph, then staying with her, asked his opinion. From that time onwards every effort was made to frustrate Sacchini's career, and the ' Surintendant des Menus Plaisirs,' the two brothers La Fert6, and the committee of the Opera, made a combination to defeat his work and embarrass the Queen. They even went so far as to quote the Queen in a letter desiring Sacchini's work to take precedence of others in the ' repertoire.' The malicious intention was evident, but Marie Antoinette had no idea of giving up her own preferences, and at the same time would not suffer her dignity to be attacked. She therefore brought La Ferte to book and made him apologize for mistaking and misquoting her. The persistence with which she tracked down the conspiracy and seized little external indications of what was wrong showed how alive she was to her difficult position. The Queen had acquired the right of uttering the last word in matters concerning music and the stage, 1 and was insistent that it should be attended to and might not be misquoted. 2 She demanded that Sacchini's opera Renaud should be re- hearsed at the time agreed upon, though all the factions of the Opera were against it ; and she commanded a special representation of his Dardanus at Trianon in 1784, and insisted on its being given afterwards at Paris. There came a time, however, in 1786, when even the Queen could not hold out against the force of public opinion. Berton, a pupil of Sacchini, narrates the fact : 1 The finances of the Opera were subsidised by the Bang. 2 Her methods were sometimes expeditious and frank in the extreme. When La Ferte asked to be allowed to justify himself to her, Campan, her Secretary, wrote that the Queen would never consent to read such a mass of scrawled manuscript : ' la reine ne consentira jamais a lire tant de grifionnages ' ; while when La Ferte went on to deny what he had written, Campan replied that he could not ask the Queen to believe she had not read what she really had. APPENDIX 191 ' La reine Marie Antoinette, qui aimait et cultivait les arts, avait promis a Sacchini qu'CEdipe serait le premier ouvrage qu'on representerait sur le theatre de la cour, au voyage de Fontainebleau. Sacchini nous avait fait part de cette bonne nouvelle et continuait a se trouver, selon son usage, sur le passage de Sa Majeste, qui, en sortant de l'office divin, l'invitait a passer dans son salon de Musique. La elle prenait plaisir a entendre quelques-uns des beaux morceaux d'Arvire et Evelina. Ayant remarque que, plusieurs dimanches de suite, la reine semblait eviter ses regards, Sacchini, tourmente, inquiet, se placa un jour si ostensiblement devant Sa Majeste qu'elle ne put se dispenser de lui adresser la parole. Elle le recut dans le salon de Musique et lui dit d'une voix emue : " Mon cher Sacchini, on dit que j'accorde trop de faveur aux etrangers. On m'a si vivement sollicitee de faire representee au lieu de votre (Edipe, la Phedre de M. Lemoine, que je n'ai pu m'y refuser. Vous voyez ma position, pardonnez-moi ! " ' Sacchini went away to Paris and could not contain his grief. Three months later he was dead, and his opera of Arvire et Evelina was left unfinished. The Queen in 1788 ordered Piccinni to finish it, but the actors at the Opera were indignant that the honour should be bestowed on another Italian, and Piccinni dared not contest the point, for had not the actors burnt Rousseau in effigy not so long ago merely for daring to criticise modern French music ? Therefore the conductor of the band wrote the final scenes, and appar- ently no one at Court asked if they were Piccinni's or not. From the year 1783 onwards groups of plays were performed before the King, Queen, and Court which had a very definite political bearing. In addition to the plays of Beaumarchais the following list will supply allusions of some interest. In 1783 a parody of Shakespeare's Lear by Pariseau was played : and it was intended to show that even a King was helpless before the forces of the world and of nature : ' Je n'ai pas un ami : cependant j'etais roi,' says Lear, and he is mocked in the following lines :— ' Philosophons a l'air sur ce terrible orage.— On est roi,— c'est egal,— tu vois,— il pleut sur vous.' 192 APPENDIX In the same year, 1783, Le Fevre's play Elisabeth de France was censored by the police, but acted privately. Grimm (Corr. litt. ii. 368-9) says : ' Un des endroits de la tragedie qui a ete le plus applaudi, et qui l'a meme ete avec une affectation fort indiscrete, mais encore plus deplacee, c'est la lecon qui Philippe donne a la reine de s'occuper a plaire, et de lui laisser le soin de regner ...' In 1786 the play of Numa Pompilius by Florian was acted before the Court. It was clearly intended to refer to the episode of the diamond necklace and to suggest that the Cardinal had every excuse for his mistake when he met Oliva in the Bosquet. Grimm's review of the play is as follows : ' Ce qu'il y a de plus singulier dans ce roman poetique, c'est la reconnaissance d'Anais sous le voile mysterieux de la nymphe Egerie : mais je ne sais si cette idee paraitra fort heureuse, a moins qu'on n'y cherche quelque motif secret, comme celui de justifier l'etrange meprise de M. le Cardinal de Rohan. Aurait-il voulu nous prouver que puisqu'un prince aussi sage, aussi eclaire" que Numa Pom- pilius a bien su prendre la petite Anais, avec laquelle il avait vecu plusieurs mois, qu'il etait sur le point d'epouser, pour une nymphe, pour une divinite destinee a faire le bonheur des Romains, M. le Cardinal peut bien avoir pris, la nuit, dans les bosquets de Versailles, une demoiselle Oliva pour une personne auguste ? ' It was probably slightly in defence of the situation that the Queen, when asked to give her opinion of the play, pronounced it insipid : ' En lisant Numa? disait l'autre jour la reine au baron de Besenval, ' il m'a semble que je mangeais de la soupe au lait.' In June 1785 the Queen went to see the play Musta'pha, in which the chief incident was a great rush of the crowd to invade a mosque and assert their power. Afterwards she expressed her extreme interest : APPENDIX 193 ' La maniere dont on avait traits ce sujet m'avait tant interessee, je l'avoue, que je ne croyais pas qu'il fut possible de m'interesser encore davantage.' In 1786 a ' com6die-episodique ' by Sedaine, Le Marchand d'esprit et le Marchand de Memoire, was represented at the Theatre de l'Ambigu-Comique. The treatment is frankly satirical, and is reminiscent of Voltaire's attacks on Leibniz. Momus, who has been driven from earth, returns as a merchant and meets ' L'homme a projets ' who has plans for reforming the world. He explains himself thus : 'Sans doute, j'ai fait ce que j'ai du faire— L'homme ordinaire voit le bien et le mal, et laisse les choses comme elles sont. L'homme de genie tache de reprimer l'un et d'ajouter a l'autre, en cherchant a decouvrir le mieux. J'y travaille, depuis cinquante-trois ans. Sciences, Morale, Politique, j'ai tout etudie, tout calculi. J'ai approfondi toutes les causes, j'ai multiplie les effets, en diminuant les moyens ; enfin, Messieurs, j'ai prouve que tout est mal, que tout pourrait etre bien, qu'il falloit seulement tout renverser, et que la chose etoit faisable.' Momus notes that in the condition of society at the time such a person may fail, or make a temporary success of an impossible plan. In the following scene a woman comes in, in conversation with an abbe, and Momus ironically addresses her, blaming the women of fashionable life for the evils and inequality of the time : ' En un mot, si la coquetterie est la cause d'une foule de desordres ... c'est la faute de Plutus, qui ne prodigue pas les richesses a ceux qui savent en faire un si bel usage, et jamais la faute des femmes, qui doivent donner tous leurs instans aux plaisirs sans prendre la peine d'ouvrir les yeux sur ce qu'il pourrait couter a qui il appartiendra.' Sedaine's irony is next turned on the stage itself, on the carelessness of actors, and the absence of wit in the writers, since they fear the effects of attacking social evils and follies. His own play is itself a refutation of his theme : and it is evident that the anxiety of the times would lead to plainer speech in the theatres. 194 APPENDIX In 1787 Beaumarchais' opera Tarare, with music by Salieri, was played before the Court. Even more strongly than the Barbier de Seville and the Manage de Figaro the new opera attacked the existing order of things and the institution of monarchy. The Queen had promised to be present at the first repre- sentation of Tarare, but she gave way to remonstrances, and seeing that she might do harm by seeming to authorise Beaumarchais' words by her presence, she remained at Versailles. There were other incidents in 1787. One was the per- formance of Doigni du Ponceau's Antigone. Here four lines were suppressed by the police because of the danger to public feeling : ' Creon. Les grands 1'ont approuve, pourrait-il vous deplaire ? Vous avez vu le peuple obeir et se take. Hbmon. La voix du courtisan soutient d'injustes lois ! Quand le peuple se tait, il condamne ses rois.' In the same year Le Roi- Theodore, an opera by Paisiello, was given at Versailles. Theodore in the play was ex- pressing distress, when a person in the parterre cried out ' Que n'assemblez-vous les notables ? ' The Queen, who was present, forbade any notice to be taken of the offender or any punishment inflicted. In 1788 Chabanon put upon the stage the comedy of Le Faux noble, but in spite of its challenging title the play failed because the States-General were about to assemble, and the people, recognising that the King had kept his pro- mise, would not look on patiently while the nobility and royalty were treated with derision. As Grimm says, ' (ils) ont paru voir avec indignation l'exces de l'avilissement dans lequel on osait lui presenter un grand seigneur.' The idol of monarchy may have been broken, but the people were not ready to see the emblems of the ancient system treated with anything but respect. The year of the Revolution, 1789, was marked by several APPENDIX 195 more direct attempts to warn the King and Queen of their danger. D'Harleville, who owed his early success to the Queen and to the good offices of Madame Campan, and who, in an early play, L'Optimiste, had treated with gentle irony the opinions of the Encyclopaedists, wrote in the summer of that year a play called Les Chateaux en Espagne in which he satirised the false security of the Court, and parodied the hopeful feeling of the nation and the belief in a political Utopia. 1 A severe warning is uttered in the play : ' If I were King,' says the actor, ' Je choisirais d'abord un ministre honnete homme, Le choix est bientot fait quand le public le nomme.' A play by Puysegur, written in the 8th year of the Republic, gave an account of the prisons during that dan- gerous time ; of the element of tragic chance in the so- called trials, and of the alternate cruelty and venality of the judges. Nothing more terrible could well have been uttered as a warning, but it was not only the maker of political plays who spoke clearly to the facts of the destroyed monarchy, and the Terror to come. The message of the tragedies played in these fateful years was even more clear than that of the comedies. The first important play of Marie- Joseph Chenier (1764- 1811) Charles IX ou VEcole des Rois (1788) was produced some months only after the taking of the Bastille, and as Chenier was a politician as well as a man of letters it was inevitable that the play should bear some mark of his views. In the dedication to the King which precedes the play, Chenier asks the King to accept his frank statement of the responsibilities of kingship : 'Permets qu'une voix libre, a l'equite soumise, Au nom de tes sujets te parle avec franchise :— Prete a la verite ton auguste soutien, Et, las des courtisans, ecoute un citoyen.' 1 See pp. 31, 32. 196 APPENDIX The JtSpttre Dedicatoire contains a warm appeal to the King to be present at the play : ' Ah ! venez au Theatre de la Nation quand on re- presente Charles IX ; vous entrendrez les acclamations des Francais : vous verrez couler leurs larmes de tendresse : vous jouirez de l'enthousiasme que vos vertus leur inspirent ; et l'auteur patriote recueillera le plus beau fruit de son travail.' The indications in the play itself were meant to be clear. The continual insistence on the family name of Bourbon, and the topical allusions, put the moral beyond a doubt. 1 The following extracts will prove the point : c Vous ne pretendez pas imiter, je Pespere, Ces rois qui, sur le trone, eleves du vulgaire Font regner tout Pamas des superstitions, Enfants qui du sommeil gardent les passions, Et qui, sur les projets qu'on songe leur inspire Risquent, a leur reveil, le destin d'un empire.' 2 And the duel between Charles and Catherine : ' Charles. Immoler tout un peuple ! ' Catherine. II s'agit de regner.' 3 Or this : ' Charles. Cependant je ne puis concevoir aisement Comment le Roi des rois, le Dieu juste et clement, Devenant tout a coup sanguinaire et perfide, Peut ainsi commander la fraude et Phomicide, Comment il peut vouloir qu'a Pombre de la paix Un roi verse a longs nots le sang de ses sujets.'* Or this, the last apostrophe of Henri to Charles : ' Et, quand la mort viendra frapper votre jeunesse, Vous chercherez partout des yeux consolateurs ; Et vous verrez, non plus vos indignes flatteurs, 1 As a result, the paper called Les involutions de Paris in 1792 freely alluded to the Queen as ' Mediois-Antoinette,' and the Court was accused of wishing to repeat the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. 2 Aot I. so. 2. a Aot II. so. I. * Aot II. so. 2. a± , ±mi;jn.ujusl 197 Mais de vos attentats l'epouvantable image, Mais votre lit de mort entoure de carnage, Et votre nom royal a l'opprobre livre, Et l'eternel supplice aux mechants prepared Vous repandrez alors des larmes impuissantes ; Vous gemirez : du fond des tombes menacantes Un cri s'elevera vers le ciel offens6 ; Et vous rendrez le sang que vous avez verseY 1 Coligni, in the play, opposes to the evil counsels of Catherine the ideal of kingship : ' Sachons, il en est temps, tout oser, tout connaitre, Et qu'a la voix d'un roi vraiment digne de l'etre, Le commerce et les arts, trop longtemps negliges, Par mes concitoyens ne soient plus outrages. L'Ocean reglera le destin de la terre ; Le paisible commerce enfantera la guerre ; Mais, ramenant les rois a leurs vrais interets, Le besoin du commerce enfantera la paix ; Et cent peuples rivaux de gloire et d'industrie, Unis et rapproches n'auront qu'une patrie. Le plaisir, instruisant par la voix les beaux-arts, Embellira la vie au sein de nos remparts. Ah ! de cet heureux jour qui ne luit pas encore, Du Tibre a la Tamise on entrevoit l'aurore. L'art de multipher, d'eterniser l'esprit, D'offrir a tous les yeux tout ce qui fut 6crit, Renouvelle le monde, et dans l'Europe entiere, Deja de tous cotes disperse la lumiere ; L'audace enfin succede a la timidite, Le desir de connaitre a la credulite. Ce qui fut decide maintenant s'examine Et vers nous pas a pas la raison s'achemine. La voix des prejuges se fait moins ecouter, L'esprit humain s'eclaire ; il commence a douter. C'est aux siecles futurs de consommer Fouvrage. Quelque jour nos Francais, si grands par le courage, Exempts du fanatisme et des dissensions, Pourront servir en tout d'exemple aux nations.' 2 1 Act V. so. 3. ! Act II. so. 3. 198 APPENDIX And again : ' Evitez les malheurs des rois trop complaisants, Ne laissez point sans cesse au gr6 des courtisans Errer de main en main l'autorite supreme ; Ne croyez que votre ame, et regnez par vous-meme ; Et si de vos sujets vous desirez l'amour, Soyez roi de la France, et non de votre cour. Que sous de justes lois le peuple enfin respire ; II fait par ses travaux l'eclat de votre empire, II cultive nos champs, il defend nos remparts : Mais un voile ennemi vous cache a ses regards : Mais, tandis qu'il se plaint, son monarque sommeille, Et ses cris rarement vont jusqu'a votre oreille.' x Together with the attack on absolute monarchy we have an attack on Rome, for Chenier saw very clearly the part that the Church had played in oppressing the people, and inflaming party spirit and producing wars of religion : ' Faut-il nous etonner si les peuples lasses, Sous l'infiexible joug tant de fois terrasses, Par les decrets de Rome assassin6s sans cesse, Des qu'on osa contre elle appuyer leur faiblesse, Bientot dans la reforme ardens a se jeter, D'un pontife oppresseur ont voulu s'ecarter.' 2 The (Edipe Roi by M.-J. Chenier is an interesting contrast to Voltaire's treatment of the same subject. Chenier used this play as he did that of Charles IX to recall the King of France to his duty as patriot-king. The threats used by the high priest to (Edipe are changed in view of this context : ' Soyez encore (Edipe, et sauvez vos sujets ; Pour nous avec les dieux que la terre conspire ; Ou bientot, roi ou non, vous n'aurez plus d'empire.' 3 The people are then recalled by the King to their allegiance : ' Ecoutez, retenez, rappelez-vous sans cesse Les ordres, les sermens, les vceux de votre roi.' 4 1 Aot II. bo. 3. « Act III. so. 2. a Aot I. so. 1. ' Act I. so. 2. APPENDIX 199 The appeal is to equity beyond the private interest of King or people. In the dialogue between (Edipe and Creon (the latter is represented as self-sacrificing and self -controlled), (Edipe says : ' Vous desobeissez aux volontes d'un roi ? ' and Creon answers : ' Oui, son pouvoir n'est rien, separe de la loi.' 1 Finally (Edipe calls on the Thebans, and Creon acquiesces : ' C'est moi qui les appelle, Nos libertes, nos jours, ne sont pas votre bien, Vous etes roi de Thebes, et j'en suis citoyen.' z Chenier's other tragedies, Fenelon, Cyrus, Caius Gracchus, followed Charles IX, and a line in the latest tragedy, ' des lois et non du sang,' was greatly applauded by the people, who saw in it Chenier's political creed. If in the early part of the eighteenth century the ideal of the stage was the enlightenment of the people, at the end of the century it was desired to teach a dying monarchy what were the opportunities it had lost ; and it is difficult to avoid great surprise at the blindness of Louis XVI and his Queen to a message so clearly conceived and so frankly uttered. In February 1790 Ronsin's Louis XII was played, and was found to be full of allusions to contemporary events : ' Notre capitaine a la suite de la garde nationale a voulu plier l'histoire de son heros a tous les evenemens du jour ; a la prise de la Bastille, a l'insurrection de la bourgeoisie, au role interessant que joue M. le Marquis de Lafayette, figure dans la piece par le brave Chevalier Bayard.' 3 In the same year Le Presomptueux ou VHeureux Imagin- aire, by Fabre d'Eglantine, renewed the irony of Les Chateaux en Espagne, and Voltaire's Brutus was recalled to the stage. The words of Brutus, ' Je mourrai comme toi, Vengeur du nom Romain, libre encore et sans Roi,' 1 Act III. so. 2. 2 Act II. so. 2. 3 Grimm, Gorr. Litt. 200 APPENDIX provoked a storm of hisses and applause. Finally a ihan shouted ' Quoi ! Ton ne veut done plus de monarchfe en France ? Qu'est-ce que veut dire ' Vive le Roi ! ' ? ' The feeling was contagious and in a moment everyone had sprung up and was shouting ' Vive le Roi ! ' It was the last outbreak of public loyalty to the monarchy in France. (6) POPULAR REPUBLICAN PLAYS Among the plays which were produced immediately before the year 1789, none had so great a vogue as Chenier's Charles IX. It was played again and again, and acted as an outlet for the Revolutionary spirit, which found its justification in the sentiments of the play. Chenier's Tibbre partly covers the same ground, but was not printed till after the death of the author. During the years of Revolution the plays which had a political significance were not very numerous. 1 Any assembly of people was liable to be riotous, and the only performances that escaped molesta- tion were comparatively colourless plays at the Comedie or the Opera. Such were D'Harleville's Monsieur de Crac, Legouve's Abel, and the many musical plays or operettas of the period. One writer of operettas, however, Monvel, produced in 1791 a drame called Les Victimes Cloitrees, which expresses the anti-clerical side of the Revolution spirit, a spirit that had already been shown when the Constituent Assembly in 1780 refused to recognise Catholi- cism, and suppressed monastic orders. Monvel's drame was then certain of success. A very large proportion of the 1 Certain plays which symbolically represented the Revolution should, however, be mentioned : V Annie 1789, by N. de Bonneville, and La France regeneree, by J. B. Chaussard. These plays are in the form of a pageant, or Revolutionary fete on the stage, and have no dramatio value. All the charac- ters represent abstract ideas. The lowest stage in this type of pageant was reached in 1794 when Les peuples et les rois ou la tribunal de la Saison was per- formed. Here the Virtues appeared on the stage flanked by busts of Rousseau, Marat, Le Pelletier and Brutus. (Welschinger, Le Thidtre de la Revolution, p. 205.) With the exception of two anonymous plays in defence of Marie Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth, the plays of the period attaoked the monarchy, the nobility and the olergy, and they owed all their popularity to their sympathy with the hatred of the people for their anoient institutions. APPENDIX 201 clergy had refused to take the oath imposed upon them, and it was to the lasting regret of the King, Louis XVI, that the dissentients were not supported by what little influence remained to the monarchy. The story told of the attack made on Pere Laurent in the play by a person in the audience, who professed to see a likeness to his former superior in the convent, (though the incident was probably itself staged for a purpose,) proves that in the drame before us the law which prevailed in the conditions of eighteenth-century drama applied strongly to Monvel's play. The relation between the stage and the house was so close that in moments of excitement the audience joined in the action on the boards, and itself became, as it were, a chorus to the play. Les Victimes Cloitrees, though a ' piece a these,' is interesting because it places on the stage an external conflict, between the secular and cloistered life, and an internal conflict in the minds of the two principal characters, Dorval and Eugenie. Pere Laurent is their evil genius. He is opposed by Prancheville, by the old servant Picard, and by Pere Louis, while Madame de St. Alban, Francheville's sister and the mother of Eugenie, is a tool in his 1 hands. The play ends with the release of the two lovers, and the popular approval bestowed on Pere Louis, who has been the means of freeing them, and who breaks the chains which bound him to the cloister. From 1791 onwards the history of the stage was affected by the decree of January 13th of that year, which gave leave to any individual to set up and direct a theatre under the control of the municipality. The result was to destroy the literary standard of the drama, which had been kept up by the Opera and the Comedie francaise, and to open the way for a number of popular experiments that were political in character. During the two years 1791-3 the history of the Revolu- tion was rapid and intense. It was not reflected on the stage, for the actors of the Comedie francaise only produced light pieces, such as D'Harleville's Monsieur de Crac, or repeated Moliere's plays, with the object of amusing the audience or lulling it into security. Picard's two plays, 202 APPENDIX Les Suspects and Andros, failed because they had a poetical view and satirised the extremists. One play, however, Laya's 1 UAmi des Lois, was a manifesto of the Girondist party, and appealed at the same time so strongly to the popular taste that it was suppressed by the Oommune. This was not done without rioting. The trial of Louis XVI was going on at the time, and the Commune was determined to avoid anything which might develop a strong and mode- rate public opinion. The people, however, supported by the Conseil Municipal, insisted on the representation of the play, and it was not until armed force intervened that the performances were stopped and the actors thrown into prison. The author himself acknowledges that his play is a satire, and he reverts to the old form of comedy in verse. His object is expressed in a speech by Forlis, one of the characters 2 : ' Mais si vous entendez par ce mot 3 l'homme sage, Citoyen par le cceur plus que par le langage, Qui contre l'intrigant defend la verite, En dut-il perdre en peu de popularite, Sert, sachant l'estimer, et parfois lui deplaire Le peuple pour le peuple, et non pour le salaire, Patriote, et non pas de ceux-la dont la voix Va crier Liberie jusqu'au plus haut des toits, Mais de ceux qui sans bruit, sans parti, sans systemes, Prechent toujours la loi qu'ils respectent eux-memes, Si fuir les factions, c'est etre modere, De cette injure alors j'ai droit d'etre honore ! '* He shows the motive of self-interest in the extreme party which has nothing to lose, and discloses the atmosphere of suspicion and treachery which reigns everywhere when the men in power use force for their own purposes and not for the sake of their country. The portrait of Robespierre in the character of Nomophage was close in its characterisation. The people in 1793 had suffered sufficiently to recognise 1 Author of Galas and other plays. * Act III. sc. 3. 3 Modiris. « Aot V. so. 6. APPENDIX 203 where the evil lay, and they rejoiced in the sentiments that conclude UAmi des his : ' Vous nous montrez si bien, Que le seul honnete homme est le Vrai citoyen.' 1 The vein of irony and the defence of the moderate party connect this play with a satire which was not written to be acted, though it was in the form of a drama. La Journee des Dupes has an interest that is mainly historical, and it had little or no opportunity of influencing public opinion. It was printed anonymously, the author being probably Bergasse. The problem of the authorship and the historical allusions are considered later. 2 The use of satire is the strongest characteristic of the work of the writers who in the period 1793-1800 succeeded in gaining the ear of the people. 3 Two days after the execution of Marie Antoinette, a ' prophetie en prose,' Le Jugement Dernier des Bois, by Marechal, was put on the stage. Its motto was ' Tandem ! ... ' 4 The author explains in the preface that he is heaping ridicule on kings in revenge for the ridicule expended in earlier days on the ' peuple souverain.' As in La Journee des Dupes savages appear on the stage. Kings are treated as ' brigands couronnes.' A volcanic island is chosen for their place of exile, where they find an old man who has suffered all the injuries possible under the ancien regime. ' Un sans-culotte ' speaks to the old man : ' ... Tu vas les voir tous ici, un pourtant excepte. Le vieillabd. Et pourquoi cette exception ? lis n'ont jamais guere mieux valu les uns que les autres. Le sans-culotte. Tu as raison ... excepts un, parce que nous l'avons guillotine.' 1 Act V. so. 6. * Pp. 205-231. 8 It should be noted that by the decree of August 2, 1793, ' patriotic ' plays were definitely encouraged by the Convention, and, in practice, classical comedy and tragedy were banned. * See Louis Moland, Thidtre de la involution, Introduction, p. 23. 204 APPENDIX Such savage irony proved impossible on the stage, and the last sentence was omitted in performance. The sovereigns of Europe, all caricatured to excess, quarrel with one another in this play, and are finally exterminated by a volcanic eruption. As the years passed, satire moved to the opposite camp. Ducancel in 1795 wrote, in response to an over-mastering impulse, the three acts of L'interieur des comites Revol-w- tionnaires. Here classic names, Aristide, Caton, Scevola, Brutus, Torquatus, are used to give an impression of the characters of the members of the committee ; while the persecuted people have simple modern names. This is a curious mixture of symbolic and realistic treatment. 1 The desire of the people for a reversion to law and order is expressed in the last act of this play 2 by ' Pofficier municipal ' : ' Gendarmes, saisissez ces mis6rables, et conduisez-les, affubles de leurs bonnets-rouges, a la maison d'arret, oh nous allons tous les rejoindre. Qu'ils traversent a pied, et au milieu des justes imprecations du peuple, une commune qu'ils ont baignee de sang et couverte de brigandage, jus- qu'a ce que le glaive de la loi en ait purge la terre.' Justice and humanity, he concludes, have resumed their reign on the earth. In 1796 Lemercier's Tartufe Revolutionnaire attacked the policy connected with the Terror in an unmistakable way, and in the same year Maillot (le citoyen Eve) put on the stage of ' Le Theatre d'Emulation ' the satirical picture of the * poissarde-parvenue,' Madame Angot ; and this was 1 As a rule, during the inflated period 1793-7, the names of characters in the plays are purely symbolic, and suggest an unreal world. Thus we have a return to the names in vogue in the seventeenth century, e.g. La Fleur for a valet, and to those used in the sentimental drama of the eighteenth century, e.g. Dorval, Zelmire, Denonville, eto. The charaoter of Arlequin, brought from Italy in the sixteenth century and used with much effect in the eighteenth century by Marivaux, reappeared in political farces from 1792 on- wards. The entry of this character into a play is an assurance that politics will be treated with the lightest touch. Thus in Arlequin Perruquier the death of Robespierre is celebrated as opening the way to the revival of fashionable hairdressing. * So. 8. APPENDIX 205 followed by several other comedies on the same theme before the author had exhausted their popularity. 1 Madame Angot belongs to the class of nouveaux riches, who desire to ally themselves with persons of rank. Her disappointment comes about when the prospective son-in-law turns out not to be the chevalier he has professed to be. The fact that this play could have the immense success it obtained is a proof that France was able to look with some detachment on the social absurdities of the day, and it marks a return to a social equilibrium. In the following year, 1797, the Indicateur Dramatique notes the revival. The stage is the most influential of the artistic institutions of the day. There are twenty-six theatres open in Paris, the pieces played there are recovering the ancient qualities of comedy, gaiety and satire : ' Aujourd'hui l'horizon s'epure ; les plaies que nous a faites le vandalisme commencent a se cicatriser et les arts vont reprendre leur influence sur la prosperity d'un empire. Les etrangers admireront, nous envieront encore nos spectacles. Si dans tous les terns, ils ont fait la gloire des peuples justement eelebres, leur eclat, leur magnificence ne doit rien laisser a desirer chez une nation qui, par ses succes et sa moderation, a merite le nom de grande.' The final blow to the stage of the Revolution was given when, on November 9, 1799, General Bonaparte established consular government in France. A new group of plays was immediately produced to flatter the Dictator. The titles all refer to St. Cloud, 2 where Bonaparte was to take up his abode, and where he produced a reflection of the glory of the kings of France. (c) *LA JOTTRNEE DBS DUPES : PIECE TRAGI-POLITI-COMIQTTE.' The play here referred to was printed anonymously in 1789, three months after the events of October 5 and 6, 1 Le Mariage de Nanon (1797) ; Le Bepentir de Madame Angot (1800) ; Aude, Madame Angot au Strail de Constantinople (1800) ; Madame Angot au Malabar, and others. Favart, Joseph oulafin tragique de Madame Angot (1797). 2 Les Mariniers de St. Cloud, La Qirouette de St. Cloud, La Journie de St. Cloud. 206 APPENDIX 1789, which form the central subject of its satire. It was attributed to Nicolas Bergasse, a prominent figure at the time, whose political views corresponded with those of the author of La Journee des Dupes. The authorship, so far as we know, was never acknowledged, and the argument for attributing it to Bergasse rests only on tradition and on the internal evidence afforded by the play. x Some time before 1861 a copy of the play attributed to Bergasse was bound up together with three ' pieces d'actu- alite ' by the Marquis de Puysegur, a friend of Nicolas Bergasse. The British Museum copy 2 is in this form. It contains a MS. note which attributes La Journee des Dupes to Bergasse : but it is catalogued as by ' Bergasse et Puy- segur,' evidently because the three other plays in the volume were written by Puysegur. 3 An examination of the four plays will convince the reader that the authorship of La Journee des Dupes is distinct from that of Ulnterieur d'un Menage Bepublicain, Paul et Philippe, and Le Juge Bien- faisant, which bear the name of ' le citoyen Chastenet ' (the family name of the Puysegur house). Puysegur's plays are not in any way distinguishable from many other slight ' pieces d'actualite ' that were printed during the Terror. Their scope is limited, and they are conventional in treat- ment. Like other plays of the same description the form is that of the vaudeville ; the characters break freely into verse in which republican sentiments are set to old melodies. The subject treated is generally an episode in the life of a bourgeois republican family. In one play, Paul et Philippe, the death of Robespierre delivers the family, in another Le Juge Bienfaisant, founded on fact, an upright judge causes the escape of innocent prisoners. But La 1 In 1821 a play under the same title was written by Nepomucene Lemercier. This play refers, not to the events of 1789, but to the original Journie des Dupes, during the Fronde. It has, however, been frequently confused with the earlier play. 2 It is catalogued 11738 bbb 39 (4). Other copies are to be found in the Bibliotheque Nationale and in the Municipal Library at Versailles. 3 Grimm, Corr. Lilt., vol. xvi. pp. 552-3, reports the common impression of the authorship : ' Cette fao6tie a eti faite, dit-on ... par messieurs de Puysegur et Bergasse ; on croit y reoonnaitre en effet le meme ton de plaisanterie que dans la comedie de La Cour Pliniire, attribute egalement a M. Bergasse.' APPENDIX 207 Journee des Dupes differs in every way from the other three plays mentioned. It is primarily satire, not drama. The title-page declares that it is a play acted by 'les grands comediens de la Patrie,' on the ' Theatre de la Nation.' It recapitulates the events of 1789. In some cases the per- sonnages are symbolic : ' La Maitresse du Club ' stands for the French nation as a whole ; the Revolutionary party is a ' Troupe de Brigands ' ; ' Monsieur Garde-Rue ' expresses the class of sergents ; ' La Peyrouse ' is the aristocrat, and ' Paria ' the Indian who judges the political condition of France from the point of view of the noble savage. In other cases the characters are the political personages of the time, the names transparently travestied. Thus Mira- beau becomes ' Bimeaura,' Le Chapelier ' Pecheillar,' Bailly 'Laibil, on ne sait pas bien ce que c'est encore,' and La Fayette ' Yetafet.' Necker is referred to as ' Reken.' x Mounier, president of the National Assembly, appears under his own name as a ' citoyen vertueux,' and represents the political views of the author. As Mounier, Lally-Tollendal and Bergasse formed a close political group, this fact points among others to Bergasse's authorship of the play. The group is referred to in La Journee des Dupes 2 : ' Mais tu n'envies pas autant les roles de Mounier, Lalli, et Bergasse.' Bergasse's distrust of and opposition to Mirabeau is faithfully reflected in the play ; and the fact that Bergasse was at Versailles during the days of October 5 and 6, 1789, and was an eye-witness of the events of those days, would account for the peculiar vividness of their presentment in the play. He expresses a certainty about some otherwise doubtful historical points, for example, about the inten- tion of the people to kill the Queen on the morning of October 6, and about the conspiracy which led up to it ; and he shows a close acquaintance with the motives of action of Lafayette. 1 Catepane, according to Grimm, loc. cit, is Castellane ; Montmici, Mont- morency; Mola, Malo de L. . . . ; Almenandre, his brother Alexandre. 2 Act III. sc. 8, p. 70. 208 APPENDIX A short account of the play is now appended. Mirabeau discloses himself in the first Act, and describes Lafayette : 'Non, sans doute, ce foible esprit est pour toujours abandonne a la honte et aux remords. Mais comme les evenements semblent se jouer de la prudence des humains, rhomme qui, sans genie, sans projet, s'est jette dans le tourbillon, uniquement pour avoir l'air de jouer un role, est celui que les circonstances veulent en vain elever au-dessus de moi. Yetafet veut aneantir la monarchie, pour former une association foederative. II compte obtenir le com- mandement des mihces des provinces confederees, c'est Ik la recompense que lui promet le parti dont il sert les projets, mais il le flatte d'un fol espoir. En vain il cherche a couvrir son ambition du voile de la popularity ; en vain il affecte de prendre avec son mission les ordres de Laibil ; la fausse modestie est un cadre qui fait ressortir l'orgueil ; c'est inutilement encore qu'il l'entoure de livrees somptueuses, qu'il charge son ecusson des anciennes abeilles des Rois francs, il faut autre chose qu'un mannequin dore pour faire un maire du palais.' The method is to make use of the vanity of Lafayette : ' Je me sers de la vanite de Yetafet, qui veut avoir le monarque sous sa garde ... Le roi prendra la fuite, et son epouse ... ' Mirabeau then meets the people and addresses them : ' Songez que nous avons des ennemis communs, on vous les fera toujours connaitre sous le nom d'aristocrate ; il n'en faut epargner aucun.' The people respond, and ' un homme de la troupe ' shouts out : ' Je vais mettre quatre charges dans mon fusil, et le premier aristocrate que je rencontrerai payera pour le veto.' Meanwhile the poissardes have been made to under- stand that their interest is opposed to all government and all vested interests. With coarse simplicity they resolve upon action and the understanding between them and the military is complete. APPENDIX 209 In the next scene La Peyrouse, the aristocratic officer, comes upon the stage, and holds official language to the people : ' Tes yeux vont Stre Sblouis de l'eclat du trone. Tu vas voir le plus grand monarque de l'univers temperant sa puissance et sa force par sa moderation et ses vertus pacifiques, pres de lui une reine brillante de gloire et de beaute, adoucissant par une affabilite touchante cet air de majeste qu'elle tient de la nature et de son grand caractere.' This is brutally interrupted by ' un homme du peuple ' : ' Quel langage ! c'est bien la un aristocrate. Courons vite chercher du monde pour l'arreter.' La Peyrouse meantime continues his exordium, and applies it to the French nation, its learning, palaces and arts, and even to the people : ' Tu vas surtout admirer l'urbanite et la douceur de ce peuple aimable, son idolatrie pour son roi ...' The crowd rush in shrieking ' A bas la cocarde blanche ! ... a la lanterne ! ' The aristocrat appeals to a guard, Mon- sieur Garde-rue, who temporises as follows : ' Monsieur, les droits de l'homme sont en vigueur, et je n'ai que la voie de la representation, jusqu'a ce que la loi martiale soit publiee. Mais ces messieurs sont des citoyens qui aiment autant la justice que la liberte ... vous savez bien, Monsieur, que depuis que nous sommes libres, on ne voyage pas sans permission de sa paroisse ...' La Peyrouse cannot produce this passport : the garde calls to the soldier to ' envelopper ' his prisoner ; while Monsieur Garde-rue concludes : ' ... Vous voila justement entre les droits de l'homme et la loi martiale ... nous avons obtenu les droits de l'homme ; des ee moment tout ce que vous appelez, dans votre langage aristocratique, brigands, canaille, regne, et fait tout ce que lui plait; quand cela devient trop fort, on publie la loi martiale ; c'est une finesse des aristocrates, parce qu'alors on tue tout le monde, ce qui etablit l'equilibre, et fait une compensation ...' 210 APPENDIX Lafayette soliloquises in the second act : ' Mon role est secondaire, il manque quelque chose a ma gloire ... s'il faut un roi de France, je veux en etre maitre ; s'il doit perdre l'empire, je veux pouvoir m'en faire un merite.' La Peyrouse comes in again, hounded by the multitude ; he appeals to Laibil, who, full of his new office and dignity, questions him in the most banal way. The crowd at first protests ... ' j'allons le mettre a la lanterne, et vous ferez vot' metier apres ... ' and the people excitedly imagine that La Peyrouse is bringing ships up the Seine to attack Paris, and that he is perhaps the Comte d'Artois ; but they finally acquiesce in Bailly's plan, which is to leave La Peyrouse at liberty in order that he may further compromise himself ; so he is set free, that is, he walks off guarded by two fusiliers. The people then turn savagely to new game : ' ... je voulons aller couper la tete a ces chiens de garde- du-corps, qui font des gueuletons pendant que je mourons de faim ... et puis ils ont dit au roi et a la reine qu'ils l'aimons bien ; je n'aimons pas ces facons-la.' In the excitement they ask Lafayette to lead them to Versailles, and he is pleased to seem to yield to force. La Peyrouse enters a hostelry, kept by La Maitresse for the nation. She cannot give him plain food, only game from the estates of the aristocrats— and for that he has to wait till the men have done their military service and can go out hunting. He is unable to obtain a piece of bread, and La Maitresse is sure that the aristocrats have stopped the mills from working and the rivers from flowing. Then follows the attempted murder of La Peyrouse by the men who break in, and La Maitresse swoons for fear. The account of the march to Versailles is given by hearsay, but in language that only an eyewitness could have used. The attack failed in its first purpose, owing to the King's kindness, and the courage of the Queen, who was three times summoned to the balcony to be faced with charged guns, and each time disconcerted her murderers, who had already failed to find her in her rooms the night before. The APPENDIX 211 scene changes to Paris, where La Peyrouse, who has been cut down from the gibbet, goes off into exile. If there are any men who are not the dupes of politics, he asks, will they be able to see in the ensuing century who has been able to benefit by revolution, by abstract freedom and by the Rights of Man ? The form of this work has a considerable likeness to that of three other political pamphlets which preceded it, and were suggested by contemporary events. These were ' La cour pleniere, heroi-tragi-comedie,' which was fathered on the Abbe de Vermond, and published ' chez la veuve Liberty, a l'enseigne de la revolution,' a sequel, ' Le Lever de Baville,' written under the name of Lefranc de Pompignan, archeveque de Vienne, and ' Le Grand Baillage, comedie historique ... chez Liberte, a la Justice triomphante.' Although the evidence points to Gorsas x as one author of these three satires, the others being Duveyrier and Fielval, and though they are inferior to La Journee des Dupes, it is likely that the author of the latter satire was acquainted with the earlier ones. There is a similarity not only in the idea of the satire, but in the references to a conspiracy against the national life, and an attack against the leaders and men in office. The plays contain, too, certain allusions which might point to some collaboration with Bergasse, as for example the appearance of Beaumarchais in Le Lever de Baville. The characters revile one another, and revile the theories of the Encyclopaedists, in the manner of the later play. But Bergasse used his material to point a very different moral. Bergasse's political pamphlets are still in existence, and a comparison of these with the play before us, together with some account of the circumstances of his life, may help to solve the question of the authorship of La Journee des Dupes, which would seem to have historical importance as a criticism of persons and parties of the time, though it cannot claim to have much interest of a purely literary kind. Nicolas Bergasse (1750-1832) was an independent thinker 1 Editor of the Courrier de Versailles, which gave the signal for the events of the 6th and 6th of October : afterwards a Girondin. 212 APPENDIX and politician during the period of revolution in France. His profession was that of an avocat, but by inclination he was a writer on subjects connected with the theory of the state. As a young man he was attracted by Mesmer's principles, so far as he could apply them to the subject of politics. The idea of a vital fluid in organisms suggested to him a corre- sponding theory of a continuous life in the state ; which he conceived would be destroyed by revolution and by the overthrow of traditionary methods in government. Thus his interest in political science threw him at once on the side of monarchical principles and against violent reforms. Prom the outset he was opposed to theorists of the school of Rousseau, who considered that progress was hindered by hereditary ties and prejudices. A prejuge, thought Ber- gasse, was a natural inheritance of moral influence : and the new generation should profit by the experience of the old until they were themselves able to give their own indepen- dent contribution to thought. Only by a close connexion between the present and the past could men gain 'une certaine severite de principes, une certaine tendance vers tout ce qui est juste et genereux.' Liberty, in Bergasse's mind, then stood for the power of conformity to a moral law which was exhibited in progress ; it was not the mere freedom from restraint which in the popular mind it appeared to be. Though not a believer in the necessity of revolution, Bergasse wished for reform within existing political conditions. He conceived that the will of the people should be expressed through a majority of the better instructed among them. With these views he became a deputy of the Tiers-fitat, standing for the Senechauss£e of Lyon in 1789 : and soon after his admission was chosen to be one of the sixteen members who were to confer with the other two orders. His political programme now became definite. He was in favour of one Chamber and against separate deliberation. The events of the next few months culminated in the for- mation of the National Assembly, and the committee of this Assembly made use of Bergasse to help them to formulate and work out the details of a new constitution for the nation. But the same cleavage that appeared in the country between APPENDIX 213 the constitutional politicians and the revolutionary leaders appeared too within this committee. The revolutionary party wished the Declaration of the Rights of Man to appear as a preface to the new constitution. Bergasse opposed this, partly on the ground that the Declaration was vague and unpractical, partly on the ground that it did not contain in its political theory anything about adherence to a Divine law of liberty. Both parties accepted the formula, ' La loi est l'expression de la volonte generate,' but Bergasse thought there should be a ' corps legislatif ' which should have considerable permanence in the State. Together with Mounier, Malouet, Lally-Tollendal and others he wished also to keep the principle of a royal sanction to laws. Malouet saw that in practice legislation was a rational application of the general will, and not its pure expression. ' La loi est l'oppose de la volonte simple. Partout oh il n'y a que volonte il y a despotisme, partout oh il existe un accord de la raison et de la volonte, il y a loi.' But after the votes of September 10 and 11, 1789, Bergasse, with Lally-Tollendal and Mounier, retired from the Committee. Bergasse was one of those members of the National Assembly who were at Versailles during the days of October 5 and 6, and being aware of the intrigues for forcing the King and the Assembly to Paris, he courageously went to the help of the royal family at the critical moment. It was in Bergasse's rooms, in the ' ^curies de Monsieur,' that about thirty deputies of the Right and Right Centre collected on the morning of October 7 to talk over the depressing and dangerous situation caused by the events of the two pre- ceding days, and to decide whether they should send in their resignations. Mounier, who as President of the Assembly had had the chief burden of the last two days, and whose firmness had put him in daily danger of assassination, decided to leave Paris at once : but Bergasse remained. One of his letters written at the time gives his impression of the political conditions : ' J'ai ete, pour ainsi dire, temoin de 1'assassinat de la famille royale ; j'ajoute que j'en ai tous les details et que personne ne les a que moi ; j'ai vu l'assembl^e Nationale 214 APPENDIX toujours conduite par les memes hommes, ne pas dire un mot de cet assassinat, le faire envisager dans les provinces comme une bonne action, s'applaudir de tenir le Roi prison- nier a Paris, car il Test. II n'ose pas sortir des Tuileries, de peur qu'on n'egorge la Reine, qui n'a ete manquee a Versailles que d'une seconde. J'ai vu la lachete des ministres ... Tout le monde est fou a Paris, manquant de pain chaque jour, allant aux spectacles tous les soirs et dansant sur un volcan allume. Ce delire a quelque chose de surnaturel. Ce qu'il y a de sur, c'est que du temps de la Ligue, tout le monde etait ligueur ou anti-ligueur, excepts le chancelier de l'Hopital. On l'appelait mauvais citoyen, etillesouffrait. Jefais comme lui. Surement s'il eut vu les journees du 5 et du 6, il aurait donne sa demission comme apres la Saint-Barthelemy, car c'6tait aussi une saint- Barthelemy qu'on meditait, et je suis persuade qu'on n'y a pas encore renonce. On verra si j'ai tort. Quand la conjuration sera decouverte (car il faut qu'elle le soit afin que la paix revienne), on rendra alors justice a Mounier, a Lafiy- Tollendal, et a moi. Jusque-la nous devons nous laisser calomnier, et souffrir que des hommes qui ne croyent a rien, l'emportent sur nous.' Bergasse — if we assume him to be the author of La Journee des Dupes — did all he could to expose the 'con- juration.' Here we have a list of ' conjures du grand college,' and ' conjures du petit college,' and Mirabeau's methods are shown up, notably in the analysis he makes in the play of the characters of Necker and of Lafayette, and in his determination to use or destroy anyone who possessed influence with the people. Of Necker, Mirabeau says x : ' II a balance dans sa marche, je l'ai pris sur le terns, et l'attaquant avec courage, j'ai affoibli cette grande popularity ; j'ai devoile la foiblesse, intimid6 son genie, mais Reken n'est point aneanti ; il convient encore k mes projets qu'il se traine sans gloire sur le chemin de la liberte, dans lequel son ambition a imprudemment engage ses premiers pas.' The account of the ' conjuration ' is continued through- out the play ; the most striking passages being those in 1 Act I. so. 1, p. 8. APPENDIX 215 which Mirabeau consults with his creatures, 1 when this is taken in connexion with Mirabeau's statement of his own plan 2 : ' Je veux etre maitre, Pecheillar, et n'ai encore rien fait pour le devenir. Les deux premiers ordres de l'etat aneantis, l'armee debauchee, les tribunaux supprim6s, l'honneur frangois souille par mille atrocites, la discorde k la voix de mes agens, secouant par-tout les flambeaux ; tout est inutile sans le coup qu'il faut frapper aujourd'hui. La presence du monarque m 'off usque, le grand caractere de la reine m'effraye, il faut que tous ces phantomes importans disparoissent.' In a second letter written in October 1789 Bergasse described the present condition of despair and uncertainty in society : ' On ne rit point ici, tout est triste et monotone. La liberte regne toujours comme de votre terns. D'un moment a l'autre, vous pouvez etre accroche a la fatale lanterne, et le premier faquin a qui votre mise d6plait, est maitre de votre vie.' Compare with this letter the satirical passages in La Journee des Dupes on the subject of liberty. Thus, when the aristocrat appeals to the sergent for protection we have the words of M. Garde-Rue 3 already quoted : ' Monsieur, les droits de l'homme sont en vigueur, et je n'ai que la voie de la representation, jusqu'a ce que la loi martiale soit publiee.' And again * : ' Vous savez bien, Monsieur, que depuis que nous sommes libres, on ne voyage pas sans permission de sa paroisse.' And again 5 : 'Monsieur, je ne sais qu'y faire. Je vois que vous ne connoissez pas encore bien la liberte. Vous etes venu dans un mauvais moment, et vous voila justement entre les droits de l'homme et la loi martiale.' 1 Act III. so. 7, pp. 61 fi. * Act I. sc. 1, p. 11. 8 Act I. sc. 3, p. 24. * Ibid. p. 25. 6 Ibid. p. 27. 216 APPENDIX On October 12, 1789, the 'Seance' of the Assembly opened in Paris. About one hundred and twenty of the monarchical party had resigned. Bergasse had offered his resignation to the electors at Lyon, but had been asked to remain their representative. He merely lived, however, for a time at Versailles and avoided the sittings of the Assembly. On February 4, 1790, the Assembly demanded from its members both an oath of fidelity and an oath to maintain the constitution. This latter request was rejected by Bergasse, on the ground that the constitution in its present form was incompatible with true liberty. He was therefore excluded from the deliberations of the Assembly, and treated as its ' detracteur,' because of his critical attitude towards its policy (for example, towards the plans for con- fiscating ecclesiastical property, and for dividing France into Departments) as well as towards the general tone of the revolutionary advance. Meanwhile, though refusing to join ' les patriotes ' in the Assembly, Bergasse, who wished France to have a liberal constitution, entered into daily, though secret, rela- tions with Louis XVI. The result was that Mirabeau's counsels were rejected, and Mirabeau himself soon discovered the reason. ' C'est Bergasse, he said, qui conseille en ce moment, et qui pousse la cour ; j'ai meme (et ceci est capital au plus haut degre) la copie de la lettre que le Roi doit ecrire a l'Assemblee.' Bergasse had reason for seriously distrusting Mirabeau, whose growing influence was due, he thought, to the strength of a fixed personal ambition, which was able to prevail at a time of general unrest. Mirabeau himself was still anxious to use Bergasse, and approached him with an invitation to combine in making the plan of a constitution. The invitation was refused. This effort made by Mirabeau to gain Bergasse for his own ends was the continuation of a policy witnessed to by the depositions at the Chatelet, December 11, 1789, where the evidence of Jean Pelletier is as follows x : 'Depose ... qu'il a su de la sorte, que M. le Due d'Orleans fomentoit un parti avec quelques membres de 1 October 1790. APPENDIX 217 l'Assemblee Nationale, pour s'emparer de l'administration du royaume ; qu'on lui a dit que le comte de Mirabeau, depute d'Aix, et M. de la Clos, officier d'artillerie, 6toient ses principaux agens ; que le comte de Mirabeau s'etoit charge de faire entrer dans le complot les membres les plus purs de l'Assemblee et entre autres M. Mounier, depute du Dauphine, lequel Sieur Mounier avoit assure que M. de Mirabeau avoit adresse les paroles qui suivent : Eh mats, bon homme que vous etes ! qui est ce qui vous a dit qu'il ne faut pas un Boi ? Mais que vous importe que ce soit Louis X VI ou Louis X VII ? Voulez-vous que ce soit toujour s le Bambin qui nous gouverne ? Que ce propos, deja repandu dans le public, a ete repete a lui deposant, avec cette seule variation, Louis ou Philippe : observe qu'il lui paroit essentiel d'appeler M. Mounier a confirmer, par son temoignage, un propos aussi grave ; qu'il lui a ete dit pareillement que le Sieur comte de Mirabeau avoit entrepris de seduire M. Bergasse, depute de Lyon, et membre, ainsi que M. Mounier, du premier comite de Constitution ; mais qu'on varie entre M. Bergasse lui-meme ou Me. Duveyrier, avocat, a qui s'adressa la proposition ; que lui, deposant, se rappelle meme avoir entendu dire que pour flatter l'amour-propre de M. Bergasse, M. le Comte de Mirabeau avoit propose de se contenter d'un poste inferieur a celui qu'il se reservoit pour lui-meme : ce deposant observe que le temoignage de MM. Duveyrier et Bergasse, de present a Paris, detruira ou confirmera cette deposition qu'il declare encore une fois n'etre fondee que sur des bruits publics.' x Compare with this account the description of Mirabeau 's methods in La Journee des Dupes 2 : ' Tu connais mes principes, j'ai mis en mouvement les deux grands agens du monde : l'interet et la vanite. Deja ces avocats", dont la horde obscurcit l'assemblee, se croyent autant de potentats.' And again 3 : ' Je me sers de la vanite de Yetafet qui veut avoir le monarque sous sa garde, je l'ai excite par mes emissaires : mais tout sera consomme par les mains les plus viles.' 1 This deposition was confirmed by Bergasse, by Regnier and others. 8 Act I. so. 1, p. 11. * Ibid. p. 13. 218 APPENDIX Bergasse strongly criticised the constitution of 1791, but against his advice Louis XVI accepted it. In a communi- cation to the ' Correspondance Politique ' of 1792, Bergasse thus summed up the situation : ' ... le temps de la sagesse est passe, la raison n'a plus de voix, les crimes appellent la force, et il n'appartient plus qu'a la force de faire la destinee des empires.' The relations between the King and Bergasse continued to be close. 1 After the invasion of the Tuileries by the people on June 20, 1792,' Louis XVI wrote to Bergasse to ask him to compose a royal address to the Departments. This was done, and proved to some extent effective, since seventy Departments protested against the late events. Louis XVI also charged Bergasse with the duty of preparing a plan for a new constitution to come into effect on the day when royalty should have recovered its power. When on August 10, 1792, the Royal family were compelled to take refuge with the Legislative Assembly, these papers of Bergasse's were found in the armoire de fer and burnt. Bergasse, however, had placed a copy at Lyon, and though that too was burnt, a precis remains of this document, so illustrative of the pathetic hopefulness and denseness of Louis XVI. This attitude of the King, repeated by the Royalist party, is suggested in the character of the aristocrat, La Peyrouse, in La Journee des Dupes. 2 Bergasse did not leave Paris after August 10. He was appointed one of the ' Conseil de defense ' for the King at his trial, and remained at hand till after the execution of Louis XVI, of which he has left a striking account. 3 The history of Bergasse during the Terror, his retirement to Bagneres with his wife, his arrest there and journey to Paris in a charette, his final imprisonment and release, form an interesting episode of the time. Later he became in turn an adherent of the First Empire and of the restored Bourbon dynasty. From time to time he made an appear- ' Mirabeau died April 3, 1791. * See Aot I. so. 3 and 4 ; Aot II. bo. 4. 3 See Lamy, Nicolas Bergasse, p. 179. APPENDIX 219 ance on the political stage, as for example when he came forward as a personal friend of the Tsar Alexander of Russia to help in the formation of the Holy Alliance, believing that it expressed two of his principles : a faith in the sovereignty of God, and in the solidarity of nations. The Revolution of 1830 was a disappointment to him, but his eternal hopefulness showed itself in the note written on the corner of his last unfinished MS., ' Dieu encore.' His last years were spent in composing philosophic essays on liberty, on universal harmony, and on the place of man in creation. He was most at home in the society of political mystics lite Bonald and Joseph de Maistre, while his idea that political liberty could only be gained by education in the severe discipline of citizenship expressed a view afterwards stated by De Tocqueville. Besides the definite allusions to persons and parties in La Journee des Dupes, there are frequent allusions to the political principles which controlled the acts of Bergasse throughout his career. We find recalled in the play his respect for property, and especially for the property of the Church. This is shown in the exposure of Mirabeau's plans for diverting ' les biens du clerge.' 1 Again, Bergasse's care for the protection of the individual is shown in the scenes where La Peyrouse comes in, and also in the dialogue between Mourner and ' Bimeaura,' 2 where Mounier re- proaches Mirabeau for his treatment of the King— ' le premier citoyen de 1'lStat,' and accuses him of causing ' une calamite publique ' under the name of liberty : tyrannising in the name of authority over opinion and feeling. All through the play we find satire on unpractical theories, on abstract ideas that are not related to sanctions of religion and morality. Thus the author satirises the common notion of liberty 3 ; he inquires what it practically means for France, and hears that it brings with it submission to military despotism, and the destruction of commerce and social fife. ' Mais qui profite done de ce changement ? ' asks La Peyrouse. La Maitresse answers 'On dit que e'est » Act III. 80. 8, pp. 67-68. ' Act IV. bo. 2, pp. 76-77. » Act III. so. 2. 220 APPENDIX l'homme.' ' Mais quel homme ? ' is the question. ' Ma foi, ce n'est pas nous toujours. Si nous avions seulement du pain ! ' At the end of the play La Peyrouse asks again if anyone can have profited by the terrible Revolution : ' ... et si tout le monde n'est pas dupe, la decouverte des gens qui profitent de cet affreux bouleversement sera le probleme dont la solution occupera mes vieux jours.' 1 It remains to be considered how it was that Bergasse, with his clear and active mind, and his deep interest in the principles of politics, should have faded out of the picture of the Revolutionary period, as he appears to have done. Probably this was partly due to the calumny heaped on his name and character at the time of the Kornmann case, in which he acted as avocat. This affaire was one of great dimensions at the time, though it was originally only a process involving a private household, because the avocats put into their speeches their most intimate political convic- tions. Bergasse's side was defeated, and he incurred the hatred of Beaumarchais, who chose to pillory him under the name of ' Begearss ' in La Mere Coupable. This play was acted on June 26, 1792, and increased Bergasse's personal unpopularity by the unfounded suggestion that he had destroyed the peace of a household. Bergasse himself knew that a long time would elapse before he would be judged fairly in either his public or private character. But the incident throws some light on the actual opinions of that elusive political character, Beaumarchais. Bergasse's biographer, Etienne Lamy, in a recent study 2 gives a more fundamental reason for the neglect of Ber- gasse as a political and literary force in France. His chief tenets were the organisation of society under a Divine dispensation, and the conception of society as built upon the unit of the family. These tenets, which represent the conservative side of French thought, were opposed at the time of the Revolution by the advanced party, who were determined to experiment with the reverse order of ideas. 1 Aot IV. bo. 7. * Nicolas Bergasse, Introduction par Etienne Lamy. Perrin et Cie. APPENDIX 221 Thus they put forward a belief in the efficiency of man as a builder of the state, and in a structure of society in which the individual and not the family group should be the real unit. The one party based politics on the moral sanction, the other on natural right. When once the Revolution had begun, therefore, Bergasse could get no hearing for his ideas. As his genius was of the type suited to political oratory rather than to literary expression, and the former outlet was denied him by circumstances, he had no oppor- tunity of bringing his own theories to the test of experience. But the play, La Journee des Dupes, if it is indeed Bergasse 's, would seem to demand a hearing not accorded in his own day to Bergasse's political pamphlets ; for he was here attempting to explain to the France of 1790 what were the forces which were actually moving her, and in what direction they were tending. He estimated the ideas and practice of the Assembly with just and severe criticism : and the appeal of the play, though hardly dramatic, is that of the political orator who is forcing attention from the mob in the effort to make the people rationally conscious of their action at a moment of grave national crisis. That crisis was at hand in 1789. The whole feeling of the people was aroused to complete the destruction of the political edifice, the three estates, with the monarch at the head. While Bergasse's play fulfilled a condition of drama by its criticism of con- temporary life, the pamphlets in dramatic form which came out later act as reflections of a militant and aggressive spirit and are tracts rather than literature. Such is, for example, Le Triomphe du Tiers-Etat, ou les ridicules de la noblesse, comedie heroi-tragique. Here the noble is made to confess in the end his adherence to a belief in liberty and equality. With the fall of the Bastille and the hastening of the Revolutionary movement the particular ' genre ' represented by La Journee des Dupes, and the other satires mentioned, ceased to exist. 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S" g* . § 1* © .-J «a ad as © CO CO OS l> I> t> 1— 1 1— 1 ^H t «3 V 3 §> §> •^ C) ^3 1 1 1 a CO OS CO GO I> !> CO OS ■_ l> I> CO i> i> r y £££ oo oo to to 00 00 c- t- i I 4 s •3 4 i3 :*8 1 -go g.a" S> 2 Hi O O fti : 00 o o 00 00 eo -# io cd i> od © © OO OOOOO-h 0000 000000000000 8 si .all J ° ok| h I> 00 o © 00 00 o © 00 00 m cd i> oo © © © © © © © rH 00 00 00 00 CO 00 3 -»*«|. ^ .§ £~3 3 § ■a JO J*" § J ia "3 3 S4, J § 3 g Jl| Harle card, Harle an 3 S © S3 I> t- •s I * 1? =§ •8 s M |^H? 3 3 1g - 4 o ,3 I a ooqo ^23 OS o> o oo r- i> go co oo C0-* W CO 1> GO OS © OO OOOOO"-" COCO GO CO CO 00 00 oo INDEX Abel, 145 and note, 189, 200 Absalon, 98 Abufar ou La Famille Arabe, 142 ff. Abufar, 142, 144 Addison, 125 Aesop, 6 note Agamemnon, 151 f. Agamemnon, 110 f., 152 Agrippine, 148 f. Alceste, 134 note Almaviva, 20 f. Alzire, 62, 129 ft. Amasis, 102 Amenaide, 137 A Midsummer Night's Dream, 27 note Amour pour Amour, 67, 75 note Anaximandre, 35 Andrieux, 32 note, 35 f., 125 note Andromaque, 181 Andros, ou les Francois a Bassora, 40 note, 202 Angelique, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 52, 53, 57, 69, 184 note Arigot, Madame, 205 Annals (Tacitus), 112 and note, 148 Antigone (du Ponceau), 194 Antigone (La Noue), 100 f. Antigone, 101 Antonio, 21 Apologie du Theatre, 169 note Argant, M. et Mme., 67 Argante, Mme., 8 Ariane, 125 note Ariste, 51, 67 Aristotle, 155 Arleguin, 179 note Arlequin, 43, 179, 204 note Arlequin Perruquier, 204 note Armide, 134 note Arondel, 59 Arsame, 112 f. Artaban, 114 Arvire et Evelina, 191 Arzace, 135 f. Asmodee, 15, 16 Assur, 136 As You Like It, 27 note Athalie, 98, 102, 185 note Atree et Thyeste (Crebillon), 108 ff ., 113 note Atree et Thyeste (Voltaire), 120 note Atreus, 108, 152 Atys, 134 note Aude, 205 note Augier, 41, 68, 163, 170 Azema, 136 B Bacon, 155 Bailly, 207 ff. Bajazet, 100 Balzac, 13 Barnwell, 82 note Baron, 8 note, 52 Bartholo, 21 Basile, 19 Bastille, the, 19, 145, 195, 199, 221 Baudrais, 180 Beaumarchais, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 18 ff., 39, 48, 163, 174, 180, 185, 188, 189, 191, 194, 211, 220 Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, 48 note, 160 note, 161 and note, 164 note, 167 note, 168 note, 170 note 230 INDEX Begearss, 24, 220 Belise, 52 Belmont (M.), 34 note Benedict XIV, 131 Bergasse, Nicolas, 24, 188, 203, 206 fi. Bernard, 12 Berton, 190, 191 Bertrand, Mme., 8 and note Beverley, 82 Bibliothique historique de la Revo- lution, 177 Blaise, 64 Blanche et Ouiscard, 105 Blandineau, 13, 14 Blandineau, Mme., 14, 15 Bobeche, 43 Boileau, 3, 38 note, 61, 64, 155, 156 Boissy, 15 Bonald, 219 Bonaparte, General, 205 Boulevard du Temple, perform- ances in, 43 Boursault, 6 note, 8 note Brid'oison, 22 Brilannicus, 91, 93 Brook, H., 139 note Brunehaut, 151, 153 Brunetiere, Le Naturalisme an XVII' sitele, 50 Brutus, 61, 120 fE., 188 and notes, 199 Brutus, 121 fE., 134, 199 Buffon, 124, 175 Bunty Pulls the Strings, 174 note Bussy-Babutin, 156 Buyrette, P. L., 105 C Caius Qracchus, 147, 199 Calas, 202 note Calderon, 163 Campan, 190 note Campan, Mme., 29, 195 Campistron, 101 Carmin, Mme., 15 Cassandre, 43, 152 Castellane, 207 note Catherine de Medicis, 145, 196 f. Gatilina, 114 Cato, 125 Chabanon, 194 Chapelain, 3, 156, 159 Characters, conventional names of, 8, 15, 17, 29, 43, 51 f., 6?, 204 note Charles V, 175 Charles IX, ou la Saint-Barthe- lemy, 145 f. and notes Charles IX, ou V&cole des Bois, 195 fE., 200 Charlotte, 38 Chatillon, 127 Chaussard, J. B., 200 note Chenier, Andre, 145 Chenier, M.-J., 4, 145 ft. and notes, 151, 154, 157, 163, 176, 177, 179, 180 and note, 195 fE., 200 Chilperic, 154 Church, the, 25, 132, 145 f., 198, 200, 219 Clairon, Mile., 81, 98 Clary, 86 Claudel, Paul, 121 note Cleomene, 100 Cleon, 51, 58 Clitandre, 185 note Clitandre, 28 Clytemnestre, 111, 151 f. Cneius, 148 f. Coligni, 145, 197 Colle, 168 Comedie Francaise, 47, 84, 118, 201 Comedie Italienne, 184 Comidies de Salon, 27 note Comic Opera, 50 note Commedia delV Arte, 43 Conjuration contre Venise, 97 Constance, 67 Contrat social, 144 Coriolan, 139 f. Coriolan, 139 f. Coriolanus, 139 Comeille, P., 6, 11, 37, 44, 49, 51 and note, 62, 63, 68, 69, 73, 92, 93, 96, 103, 109, 110, 112, 114, 116, 125 and note, 139, 140, 150, 155, 162, 163 note, 171, 178, 181, 184, 185 Corneille, T., 125 notes INDEX 231 Costume, 33, 47, 183 Courrier de Versailles, 211 note Ciebillon, 45, 50, 92, 102, 105 ff., 117, 118, 136 Creon, 94, 101, 199 Creuse, 94 ff. Crispin, 8 and note, 12 and note, 15, 17, 20, 29 f., 189 Crispin rival de son mattre, 17 f. Croce, Benedetto, Aesthetic, 80 note Cromwell, 164 Curieux impertinent, 49, 51 Cyrano, 50 Cyrano de Bergerac, 121 note Cyrus, 147, 199 D D'Aiglemont, 35 note D'Aiglemont (the younger), 36 D'Alembert, 124 Dancourt, 4, 7, 11 ff., 17, 174 Dardanus, 190 Darviane, 74 note de Batz, Baron, 24 de Belloi, 105, 168 note, 176 and note de Bonneville, N., 200 note de Chabannes, 168 note de Chepy, Mme., 78 de Crancey, M., 78 de Duras, Due, 29, 176 note d'Eglantine, Fabre, 199 De la Liberte du Theatre en France, 147 and note De la Litterature, 83, 161 f. and notes De VAllemagne, 164 note de Lamballe, Prinoesse, 151 De la Poesie dramatique, 47 note, 184 note de la Touche, Guimond, 63 note, 101, 102 Delavigne, Casimir, 175 note d'Elbon, Vicomte, 71, 72 Deloit, 161 note Delomer, 87, 88 Delomer, Mile., 87, 88 de Lys, M., 88, 89 de Maistre, Joseph, 219 Democrite, 67 de Musset, Alfred, 26, 27, 41 Denonville, 204 note de Plinville, M., 30 de Pompadour, Mme.; 117 de Rohan, Cardinal, 192 Desalles, 29 Descartes, 178 Deschamps, 35 f., 39 Desdemona, 129 Desnoiresterres, La Comedie Satir- ique au XVIII e siicle, 168 note Desparville, M., 79 note de Stael, Mme., 160 note, 171 Destouches, 4, 49, 51 ff., 58, 74, 84, 92, 160, 170 de Thibouville, Marquis, 61 de Tocqueville, 219 de Tufiere, Comte, 53 de Vertillac, Mme., 78 de Vigny, 75 Devin du Village, 50, 160, 185 D'Harleville, Collin, 28 ff., 38 note, 188, 195, 200, 201 Dialect in the comic writers, 15 Dictionnaire Philosophique, 61, 124 Diderot, 3, 4, 8 note, 28, 31, 47 notes, 48, 49 and note, 51, 55, 58, 68, 73, 75 ff., 84 and note, 90 1, 92, 157, 158, 159, 162 and note, 163 note, 164 and note, 169, 170, 174, 182, 183, 185, 188 Die histige Wittwe, 39 note Discours a la reception de M. de Duras a VAcademie frangaise, 1775, 175 Discours pr&liminaire de Charles IX, 180 note Discours sur la Poksie Dramatique, 159 and note, 162 note Discours sur la tragedie (Brutus), 120, 121 note Discours sur la tragidie, a Vocca- sion d'Ines, 158 note Discours sur la tragidie, a Vocca- sion de Romulus, 158 note Discours sur la tragedie, a Vocca- sion des Macchabies, 158 note Discours sur la tragedie, a Milord Bolingbroke, 179 note Dominique fils, 87 f . 232 INDEX \ Dominique plre, 87 f . Don Gusman, 129 ff. Don Juan, 51, 53, 163 Don Sanche d'Aragon, 163 Dorante, 8 d'Orfeuil, M., 31 d'Orlange, M., 31 f. Dorval, 84 note Dorval, 201, 204 note Dryden, 125 du Barry, Mme., 153 du Belloy. See de Belloi Dubos, Abbe, 180 note Dubriage, 33 Ducancel, 204 du Chatelet, Mme., 125 Duche, 98 Ducis, J. F., 140 ff., 145 Dufresny, 4, 7, 10 f., 52 note, 56 note Duhautcours, 41 Dumas fils, 41, 68, 163, 170 Dumont, 39, 60 Duni, 185 du Paillasse, 43 note du Ponceau, Doigni, 194 Durimel, 86 f. Durval, 67 Du Thedtre ou Nouvel Essai sur I'art dramatique, 82 notes, 83 and notes, 90 notes, 161 ff. and notes, 170 note, 171 note, 175 Duval, 40 Duveyrier, 211, 217 E East Lynne, 69 Bdouard in, 59, 105 Edouard HI, 59 f . Egisthe, 111, 133, 151 f. Electre, 110 f., 113 note Bleotre, 110 i., 112 Eliante, 29 Elisabeth de France, 192 Elizabethan drama, 62 note Emilie, 103 ff. Encyclopidie, the, 124 Encyclopaedists, the, 4, 124, 156, 195, 211 Epitre a Mademoiselle Qaussin, 124 note Hlpttre hM.de ZuyUchem, 51 note Epitre a M. Gresset, 68 and note Epitre Didicatoire a Madame de Pompadour, 117 and note, 137 and note Epitre Didicatoire a M. Falkener, 124, 125, 126 note Eraste, 8 Erixene, 107 Esope a la Cour, 6 note Esprit de Contradiction, 10 Esther, 98, 185 note Est-il-bon, est-il m&chant ? 8 note, 77, 78 £., 174, 183 Eugenie, 18, 48, 163, 185 Eugenie, 59, 201 Fables d'Esope, 6 note Fagan, 15 Farce : the Parades, 42 f. Farhan, 142, 143, 144 Favard, 91 Favart, 168 note, 205 note Findon, 147, 199 Fielding, 163 note Fielval, 211 Figaro, 20, 21, 23, 189 Florian, 179 note, 192 Florimond, 29 f. Foire St. Germain, 42 Folleville, 35 Fontenelle, 50, 181 Fridigonde et Brunehaut, 151, 153 f. Fredegonde, 142, 153, 154 Frederick of Prussia, 125 Freron, L 'Annie Litteraire, 61, 159 note, 163 note Fromont, 33 Frontin, 15, 20, 189 Frosine, 11 G Galimafre, 43 Galsworthy, 77 note, 88 Gamier, 162 Gaspard, 40 INDEX 233 Genest, Abb6, 49, 75 note, 98 f . Gengis Kan, 62 note Geoffroy, 41 note Oeorges Dandin, 53 Georgette, 40 Germanious, 148 ff. Geronte, 8, 9, 51 Gertrude, 142 Gessner, 145 note Gil Bias, 16 Gilles, 43 Glauoias, 114 f. Gluck, 134 note, 190 Goldoni, 84 note, 185 Gombaut, 153 Gorsas, 211 and note Greek comedy, 47 note Gresset, 4, 15, 58 ff., 74 Gretry, 91, 185 Greuze, 161 note Grimm, Correspondance Littiraire, 8 note, 19 note, 20 notes, 22 note, 24 note, 25 note, 45 note, 47 note, 48, 49 and note, 58 note, 61 note, 62 mote, 77 note, 116 motes, 138 notes, 139 Mote, 162 raote, 186 and note, 192, 194, 199 raote, 206 note, 207 note Guillaume Tell, 117 wote Guizot, Shakespeare et son temps, 164 note Gustave, 139 ararf note Gustavus Vasa, 139 mote H Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 171 mote Hamilton, 60 Hamlet, 135 i., 140 t, 152 Hamlet, 141 f. Hardouin, 8 note, 78, 174 Hardy, 51, 119 Helenus, 115 f. HelvUius, on La Vengeance d'un Sage, 36 and note Henri (valet-de-chambre), 67 Henry V, 105 Henry VIII, 147 Hernani, 175 note Hindle Wakes, 77 note, 164 Historical drama, 126, 138, 147 i., 154, 175 Holcroft, Thos., 53 note Hortense, 67 Hugo, Victor, 41, 75, 164, 175 note Hylas, 59 Hypermnestre, 116 note Ibsen, 77, 82 note, 88 Idomenee (CrebiUon), 105 ff., 113 note Idominie (Lemierre), 116 note Illyrus, 115 II Moliere, 84 note II veut tout faire, 34 note Inchbald, Mrs., 84 Indicateur Dramatique, 205 Ines de Castro, 61 Ino et Melicerte, 102 and note Iphigknie, 95 note, 106, 134 note Iphigenie en Tauride, 102, 190 Iphite, 93 Irene, 100 Isabelle, 8, 43 Ismene, 59 Itys, 111 Jane Shore, 38 Janot, 43 note Jasmin, 15 Jason, 93 f. Jean Hennuyer, 84, 85 Jeanne D'Arc, 121 note Jeanne de Naples, 139 Jenneval, ou le Barnaveldfraneais, 49 note, 82 and note, 84, 86 Jocrisse, 43 note Jodelle, 162 Joseph, 98 Joseph, ou la fin tragique de Madame Angot, 205 note Jourdain, M., 9, 12 Julie, 27 f., 36, 52 Juliette, 67 Julius Caesar, 83, 134 Jullien, A., La Cour et Vopira sous Louis XVI, 185 note 234 INDEX K King Lear, 173, 191 Kornmann case, 220 La Baronne, 63, 64 La Brouette du Vinaigrier, 84, 85, 87 f., 183 note La Chaussee, Nivelle de, 4, 55, 64 ff., 75, 77, 78, 82, 84 and note, 158, 159, 160, 170, 183 La Comidienne, 38 La Comtesse, 9 La Coquette Corrigie, 27, 99 La Cour Plini&re, 206 note, 211 La Critique de VEcole des Femmes, 155 Lafausse Agnls, 51 La Fausse Antipathie, 65 f. and notes La Fayette, 199, 207 ff., 214, 217 La Ferte, 190 La Fleur, 15, 29, 52, 67, 204 note La Fontaine, 168 note La Force du naturel, 54 note La Fosse, 96 f., 101 La France rkginirie, 200 note La Girouette de St. Cloud, 205 note La Gouvemante, 67, 68, 69 and notes, 75 note, 183 note La Grande Ville, ou Les Provin- ciaux a Paris, 41 note Lagrange-Chancel, 102 and note La Greffiere, 14 La Harpe, 138 ff., 168 La Jeune Creole, 38 La Journie de St. Cloud, 205 note La Journie des Dupes (Bergasse), 24, 203, 205 ff. La Journie des Dupes (Lemercier), 206 note La Liberti du Thidtre en France, 176 Lally-Tollendal, 207, 213, 214 La Maison de Moliere, 84, 85, 91 and note La Malade sans maladie, 11 L'Ambitieux, 54 L'Ambitieux et I'Indiscret, 51 La Mere CoupabU, 19 and note, 23 ff. and notes, 220 L'Ami des Lois, 202 f . La Montagne, 15 La Mort d'Abel, 145 and note, 189, 200 La Mort de Colas, 147 La Mort de Cksar, 62 note, 120 note, 134, 188 note La Mort de Cleomine, 100 La Mort d'HercuU, 102 note La Mort de Pompie, 63 La Mort de Socrate, 61 note La Motte, Houdart de, 61, 119, 157 f., 164, 180, 181 V Amour Castillan, 67 L' Amour Francais, 168 note Lamy, Fjtienne, Nicolas Bergasse, 218 note, 220 and note L'An 2440, 83, 162 and note, 167 note L' Anglais a Bordeaux, 168 note V Annie 1789, 200 note L'Annonce faite a Marie, 121 note La Noue, 27 f., 99 ff. Lanson, G., Nivelle de La Chaussie et la comidie larmoyante, quoted, 54 and note, 68 and notes, 74 and note La Perruque Blonde, 40 La Petite Ville, 39 and note La Prise de Toulon, 40 L'artiste Infortuni, 184 note La Suite du Menteur, 36, 37 and note, 125 note La Tontine, 17 Laurette, 71 L'Avare, 9, 37 La Veuve de Malabar, 117 note La Vraie Mire, 47 note Laya, 202 Liandre, 43 Le Bal, 7, 8 notes, 10 Le Barbier de Seville, 18 ff., 50, 194 Le Baron, 7 Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 9, 12 Le Chapelier, 207 Le Chevalier a la Mode, 12 and notes Le Cid, 155 L'&cole de la Jeunesse, 73 and note INDEX 235 UEcole des Amis, 67 L'Ecole des Mires, 67, 75 note V Stole des Peres, 56, 57 Le Collateral, 41 Le Conciliateur a la Mode, 91 Le Conteur, 177 note Le Deserteur, 84, 85, 86 f. Le Devin du Village, 50, 160, 185 Le Dissipateur, 51, 84 Le Double Veuvage, 11 and note Le Faux Ami, 84 Le Faux Noble, 194 Le Festin de Pierre, 125 note Le Fevre, 192 Le Fils Nature!, 77 and note, 79, 182, 183 note Le Oil-Bias de la Resolution, 39 Le Glorieux, 51, 53 fl. and notes Legouve, 145, 189, 200 Le Grand Baillage, 211 Leibniz, 30, 193 Le Jeu de I 'amour et du hasard, 26, 27 Le Joueur, 7, 9 f., 20 Le Juge, 84, 89 Le Juge Bienfaisant, 206 Le Jugement Dernier des Rois, 203 f. Le Lkgataire universel, 8, 9, 10 Le Lever de Baville, 211 Le Marchand d' esprit et le Mar- chand de Memoire, 193 Le Mariage de Figaro, 11 f., 18 fi., 25 note, 188, 189, 194 Le Mariage de Nanon, 205 note Le Mariage fait et rompu, 10 Le Mediant, 58, 61 note Le Menteur, 163 Lemeroier, N.-L., 4, 145, 150 ff., 163, 179, 204 Lemierre, 116 note Le Misanthrope, 9, 27 L'Enfant Prodigue, 61, 110 note Lenore, 38 Lenore, 38 L'Envieux, 51 Leonor, 8 Le Panhypocrisiade, ou le Spectacle Infernal, 151 Le Passe, le Prksent, I'Avenir, 39 Le Plre defamille, 48, 77 note, 79, 84 note, 159, 183 note Le Philosophe Marti, 51 Le Philosophe sans le savoir, 79, 183 L'Epine, 15, 52, 189 Le Prejugi a la mode, 67, 75 note Le President, 69 Le Prince, 180 Le Presomptueux, ou VHeureux Imaginaire, 199 Le Repentir de Madame Angot, 205 note Le Rival de Lui-Meme, 67 Le Roi et le Fermier, 20 Le Roi Theodore, 194 Le Sage, 4, 7, 15 ff., 20, 25, 29, 124, 144, 174, 180 Le Siige de Calais, 105, 168 note, 176 note Le Tabellion, 13 Le Tartuferevolutionnaire, 151, 204 Le Theatre de la Philosophic, 168 note Le Tourneur, 140, 141 note Le Tretor, 37 Le Triomphe du Tiers-Etat, 221 Le Triple Mariage, 51, 52 Le Triumvirat, 120 note Le Triumvirat ou la mart de Ciceron, 114 Le Tuteur, 11 Le Vieillard et les jeunes gens, 34 note Le Vieux Celibataire, 28, 33 Le Vieux Fat, 37 f. Les Amis de College, ou L' Homme oisif et artisan, 40 and note Les Bijoux Indiscrets, 164 note, 185 note Les Bourgeoises a la mode, 13 Les Bourgeoises de qualite, 13 ff. Les Brames, 139 Les Chateau xen Espagne, 29, 31 and note, 32 and notes, 195, 199 Les Comidiens ou le Foyer, 91 Les Conjectures, 40 Les Deux Amis, 18 Les Deux Philiberts, 41 Les Entretiens sur le Fils naturel, 47 notes, 49 note, 76 note, 159 and note Les Etourdis, 35 and notes Les Femmes savantes, 9 236 INDEX Les Gu&bres, 63, 138 Les Horaces, 181 Les Mal-assortis, 11 Les Mariniers de St. Cloud, 205 note Les Marionettes, 39 f., 41 Les Mceurs du jour, 29, 33 f. and notes Les peupks et les rois, 200 note Les Querelles des deux fr&res, 34 note Les Revolutions de Paris, 196 note Les Riches, 34 note Les Ricochets, 41 Leasing, 171 note, 182 Les Suspects, 40 and note, 202 Les Tombeaux de Verone, 85 Les Triumvirs, 138 note Les Trois Maris, 41 Les Victimes Cloitries, 200 f. Les Voisins, 41 Lettre a d'Alembert, 169 note Lettre a M. Maffei, 132, 133 Lettre au Pire Poree, 118 and note Lettre d'un Comkdien du Theatre de la Rkpublique, 118 note Lettre sur la Comidie de V Amour usk, 55 Lettre sur la Comedie (Gresset), 60 note L 'Habitant de la Ouadaloupe, 85 VHomme a bonnes fortunes, 8 note VHomme de Fortune, 67, 70 ff., 183 note VHomme, Sauvage, 171 note L'Hotesse, 35 f. Lillo, 82, 182 V Inconstant, 28, 29 f. V Indigent, 84, 85, 87, 88 f. VIngrat, 51 L'interieur des comitis Rivolu- tionnaires, 204 VIntkrieur d'un Menage Republi- cain, 206 VIrresolu, 51 Lisette, 8, 12 note, 14, 15, 18, 54 V Obstacle imprivu, 51, 52 f. VObstine, 28 L'Officier de Fortune, 177 note L'Olive, 15, 52, 189 Longepierre, 93 ff., 97 Lope de Vega, 83, 163 VOptimiste, 28, 30 f., 32 note, 195 VOrphelin de la Chine, 62 and note Louis XI, 175 note Louis XII, 199 Louis XVI, 18, 19 and note, 84, 153 note, 188, 194-202 passim, 210, 213 ff. Lucas, 12, 15 Lucile, 12 note Lusignan, 128 and notes Luzere, Mme., 86 Lycandre, 55 M Macbeth, 142 and note Macbeth, Lady, 142 and note Madame Angot, 204, '205 and note Maffei, 132 f. Mahomet, 100, 131 f. Mahomet, ou le Fanatisme, 62, 99 and note, 100, 131 f. Mahomet Second, 99 f. Maillot, 204 Mairet, 63 Malice pour Malice, 29, 33 f . Malouet, 213 Manlius Capitolinus, 96 f. Manlius, 97 Manon Lescaut, 48 Marat, 188 and note Marceline, 22 and note Marechal, 203 Marforio, 56 note Marianne, 67 Marie Antoinette, 29, 84, 150 f., 153, 188, 190 and note, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196 note, 199, 200 note, 203, 207, 210, 214 f. Marivaux, 4, 6, 7, 25 ff., 28, 91, 124, 163 note, 174, 179, 186, 204 note Marmontel, 105, 157, 169 notes, 180, 185 note Marphurius, 56 note Medie, 93 ff. Medee, 93 ff. Midiocre et Rampant, 41 INDEX 237 MOanide, 67, 68, 69, 74 note, 75 note, 183 note Melanie, 71 Melanie, 140 Menander, 47 note Meranie, 71, 72 Mercier, Louis Sebastien, 3, 4, 34, 48, 49, 75 and note, 82 ff., 118, 126, 154, 157, 158, 160 ff., 169 ff., 177, 180, 183, 184, 185, 187 note, 188 Mercure galant, 8 note Merlin, 8 and note, 189 Mirope, 62, 120 note, 132 f. Merope, 133 Merovee, 154 Mesmer, 24, 212 Mes voyages aux environs de Paris, 161 note, 189 Miss Sara Sampson, 182 Migaud, 12 Mirabeau, 207 f., 214 ff., 218 note, 219 Moissy, Mde., 47 note Moland, Thk&tre de la Revolution, 203 note Mole, 35 note Moliere, 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 20, 27, 34, 36, 37, 44, 45 and note, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56 and note, 67, 68, 84 and note, 91, 92, 118, 125, 155, 157, 162, 166, 173, 174, 178, 181, 184, 201 Moliire avec ses amis, ou La Soiree d'Auteuil, 37 and note Mom us, 193 Mon Bonnet de Nuit, 171 note Monrose, 67 Monsieur de Croc dans son petit castel, 28, 31, 188, 200, 201 Monsigny, 20 Montmorency, 207 note Monvel, 200 f. Moore's The Gamester, 82 note, 182 and note Mounier, 207, 213, 214, 217, 219 Murray, Professor, English Litera- ture and the Classics, 47 note Music in the play, 11, 185 Mustapha, 192 N Nanine, 61, 63 f. Nanine, 63, 64 Napoleon, 20, 151, 205 Naquart, 13, 14 Natalie, 85 Neoker, 207, 214 Nerestan, 126 ff. Nerine, 8, 52, 54, 56 f. Neron, 91 Next-door Neighbours, 84 note, 89 note Ninus, 135 f. No ay Amigo para Amiga, 17 Nouvel Essai sur Fart dramatique, 161 note, 184 and note Nouvel Examen, 161 note, 165 note Numa Pompilius, 192 O Observations sur Garrick, 79 note (Edipe, 118, 119 f. ; 188 note, 191 CEdipe, 119 f., 198 (Edipe Roi, 198 Olympie, 138 note Opera, 50 and note, 119, 134, 177, 185 f., 189 f. Opera-Comique, 16, 40 Ophelia, 141 Oreste, 120 note Oreste, 102 f., 110 f., 152 Orgon, 8, 18 Oronte, 51 Oronte, Mme., 17 Orosmane, 126 ff., 130 Orphise, 27 f. Ossian, 38 Othello, 62, 129 Othello, 62, 129 Otway, 97 Paisiello, 19, 194 Palamede, 111 Palmire, 132 Pamela, 63, 64, 89 and note Pamela, 67, 177 note 238 INDEX ' Pantomime,' 185 Parades, the, 42 f. Paradoxe sur le comidien, 79 f. and notes Pariseau, 191 Paris en miniature, 168 note Pascal, 91 note Pasquin, 8 note, 52 f., 55, 56 f. and note, 189 Pasquin et Marforio, mkdecin des mceurs, 52 note, 56 note Pasquino, 52, 56 note Passe et Present, 164 note Pastorals, 50 note Patin, Mme., 12 and notes Patrat, 91 Paul et Philippe, 206 Peguy, 121 note Pelletier, Jean, quoted, 216 Penelope, 49, 98 f. Penelope, 98 f. Perrault, 50 Petite Bibliotheque des Th&dtres, 180, 184 note Pharamond, 139 and note Pharasmane, 112 f. Pharasmin, 143 and note Phidre, 106, 172, 177 note, 181 and note, 191 Philidor, 185 Philip II, 147 Philoctete, 138, 139 and notes Physiocrats, the, 4 Picard, L. B., 38 ff., 201 Piccinni, 190, 191 Pinto, 151 Piron, Alexis, 4, 15, 56 ff. 59, 92 Pison, 148 f. Plautus, 37 Plisthene, 108 f. Plutarch's Lives, 139 Poinsinet, 185 note Polyeucte, 63, 112 Pope, the, 132 Preface de Jenneval, 49 note Pretextat, 154 Prevost, 124, 144 Problem play, the, 25 i., 77. Psychological monologue, the, 139, 141, 145, 178 f. Puysegur, Marquise de, 195, 206 Pygmalion, 186 Pyrrhus, 114 ff. Pyrrhus, 114 ff., 139 Q Quinault, Mme., 67 Pv Racine, 1, 2, 45, 49, 50, 51, 62, 68, 74, 91-102 passim, 106, 107, 116, 117, 125 and note, 133, 138-141 passim, 148, 150, 152, 158, 162, 172, 178, 181, 185 Racine et Shakespeare, 164 note Rafle, M., 18 Reconciliation normande, 10 Reflexions sur la Po&sie et la Peinture, 180 note Regnard, J. P., 4, 7 ff., 11, 36, 45, 52 note, 56 note, 67, 82, 92 Regnier, 217 note Remus at, 164 note Renaud, 190 Renou, 102 and note Revolutionary spirit, rise of the, 15, 20 ff., 32, 33, 45 f., 70, 104, 120, 144, 188, 200 Rhadamiste et Z&nobie, 111 ff. Rhodope, 94, 95 Richardson, 63, 64, 67, 163 note Robespierre, 19, 24, 146 and note, 202, 204 note, 206 Rodogune, 63 Romantic drama, 75 Romantic movement, the, 3, 156, 160 note, 165, 168, 170 ff. Rome, Church, of, 145 f., 198 Rome Sauvie, 97, 120 note Romeo and Juliet, 172 Romio et Juliette, 173 Ronsin, 199 Rosalie, 60 Rossini, 19 Rostand, Edmond, 121 note Rousseau, 2, 31, 40, 45, 48, 70, 74, 90, 144 and note, 158, 160, 161 note, 169 and notes, 170, 180, 185 f., 191, 200 note, 212 Rustic operas, 20 note, 50 note Rutherford and Son,!! note, 1 74 note IJNJJUA 239 S Sacchini, 190, 191 St. Bartholomew's Day, 145, 196 note, 214 St. Cloud, the country fair at, 43 Sainte-Beuve, 20 St. Evremond, 156 St. Franc, 86 f. St. R<§al, 97 Sainville, 69 Salema, 142 Salieri, 190, 194 ' Sans Quartier,' 43 Sapor, 7 Sardou, 41, 68, 170 Saurin, B. J., 82, 103 ff., 182 note Scarron, 50 Scenery, 33, 41, 47, 183, 184 Scribe, 10, 41 Seconde lettre a Mr. Falkener, 125 note Sedaine, 79, 183, 185, 193 SeMe, 132 Se>n, 149, 150 Selis, M., 58 note Semiramis, 62, 114, 134 ff. Semiramis, 135 f. Serrefort, M., 12 note Shakespeare, 61, 75 note, 83, 91, 105, 116, 119, 121, 123, 125, 129, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 145, 152, 163, 165, 173, 182, 191 Shaw, G. B., 38, 88 Sidnei, 60 and notes Silvia, 27 Songes Philosophiques, 83, 171 note Sophocles, 110 notes, 119, 138 Sophonisbe (Mairet), 63, 120 note Sophonisbe (Voltaire), 120 note Spanish comedy, 15, 17 Spanish Succession, the, 18 Spartacus, 103 fi. Spartacus, 103 ff. Spectator, the, 64 Stendhal, Beyle-, 70, 75, 160 note, 164 note Suite des reflexions sur la tragedie, 158 note Suzanne, 21, 23 Sylvain, 185 note Sylvandre, 59 Tableau de la Revolution Francaise, 177 note Tableau de Paris, 83, 160 note, 165 note, 170 note, 187 note Tacitus' Annals, 112 and note, 148 Tancrede, 117, 126, 137 Tarare, 24 f., 25 note, 194 Tartufe, 51 Tartufe Bevolutionnaire, 151, 204 Telemaque, 48 Tflemaque, 99 Terror, the, 5, 24, 26, 152, 181, 187, 189, 195, 204 Thalie, 91, 92 Theatre Anglois, 182 note Theatre de la Foire, 16 Theatre d'Emulation, 204 Theatre des Boulevards, ou Becueil des Parades, 42 Theatre Royal de TOddon, 38 The Distressed Family, 84 The Eldest Son, 164 The Gamester, 82 note, 182 note The Great Adventure, 174 note The GulVs Horn Book, 62 note The King and the Miller of Mans- field, 185 The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 62 note The London Merchant, 82, 182 and note The Merchant of Venice, 27 note Themire, 59 Theodamie, 108 f. Theodore, 114 Theodore, 194 The School of Arrogance, 53 note Thisie, 134 note Thyeste, 108 f. TiUre, 147, 148 ff., 200 Tibere, 148 ff. Timoleon, 139 Timoleon, 146 and note Timon d'Athines, 85 Tiridate, 101 Tisiphone, 96 Titus, 121 ff. 240 1JN.DKX. Tom Jones a Londres, 185 note Toutalas, 7 Toute la Qr&ce, ou Ce que pent la libertk, 177 note Tragedie-Opkra, 50 note, 134 and note, 138, 183, 184 Trianon, the Queen's garden at, 31 and note Turcaret, 15, 18 Turcaret, 15, 18 Turgot, 144 Typhoon, 77 note U Ulysses, 98 f., 139 V Valcourt, 86 f. Valere, 8, 10, 17, 51, 52, 53 Vaudevilles, 11, 185, 206 Vestris, Mile., 146 note Veturie, 140 and note Virginie, 139 Voltaire, 3, 30, 40 and note, 48, 61 fi., 74, 81, 92, 97, 99 and note, 100, 101, 105 note, 110, 116 and note, 117 ff., 138, 139 and note, 140, 144, 146, 147, 150, 151, 154, 158 f., 178, 180, 181, 183, 184, 188 and note, 193, 198, 199 Voltaire's Correspondance,, 62 note Volumnius, 139 Vorcestre, 59 W Warwick, 138 and note Welschinger, Le Thidtre de la Resolution, 200 note Werther, 38 Xerxes, 114 Zadig, 40 and note Zaire, 62, 124 ff., 130, 138 Zaire, 62, 126 ff. Zamore, 130 f. Zelmire, 204 note Zenobie, 112 f. Zophire, 132 Zur Oeschichte und Literatur, 171 note Printed at Thb Ballantynr Press Spottiswoode, Ballantyne &■ Co. Ltd. Colchester, London & Eton, England