Historical Dictionary of French Theater

Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts
Jon Woronoff, Series Editor
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Science Fiction Literature, by Brian Stableford, 2004.
Hong Kong Cinema, by Lisa Odham Stokes, 2007.
American Radio Soap Operas, by Jim Cox, 2005.
Japanese Traditional Theatre, by Samuel L. Leiter, 2006.
Fantasy Literature, by Brian Stableford, 2005.
Australian and New Zealand Cinema, by Albert Moran and Errol
Vieth, 2006.
African-American Television, by Kathleen Fearn-Banks, 2006.
Lesbian Literature, by Meredith Miller, 2006.
Scandinavian Literature and Theater, by Jan Sjåvik, 2006.
British Radio, by Seán Street, 2006.
German Theater, by William Grange, 2006.
African American Cinema, by S. Torriano Berry and Venise Berry,
2006.
Sacred Music, by Joseph P. Swain, 2006.
Russian Theater, by Laurence Senelick, 2007.
French Cinema, by Dayna Oscherwitz and MaryEllen Higgins,
2007.
Postmodernist Literature and Theater, by Fran Mason, 2007.
Irish Cinema, by Roderick Flynn and Pat Brereton, 2007.
Australian Radio and Television, by Albert Moran and Chris Keating, 2007.
Polish Cinema, by Marek Haltof, 2007.
Old Time Radio, by Robert C. Reinehr and Jon D. Swartz, 2008.
Renaissance Art, by Lilian H. Zirpolo, 2008.
Broadway Musical, by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird,
2008.
American Theater: Modernism, by James Fisher and Felicia Hardison Londré, 2008.
German Cinema, by Robert C. Reimer and Carol J. Reimer, 2008.
Horror Cinema, by Peter Hutchings, 2008.
Westerns in Cinema, by Paul Varner, 2008.
Chinese Theater, by Tan Ye, 2008.
Italian Cinema, by Gino Moliterno, 2008.
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Architecture, by Allison Lee Palmer, 2008.
Russian and Soviet Cinema, by Peter Rollberg, 2008.
African American Theater, by Anthony D. Hill, 2009.
Postwar German Literature, by William Grange, 2009.
Modern Japanese Literature and Theater, by J. Scott Miller,
2009.
Animation and Cartoons, by Nichola Dobson, 2009.
Modern Chinese Literature, by Li-hua Ying, 2010.
Middle Eastern Cinema, by Terri Ginsberg and Chris Lippard,
2010.
Spanish Cinema, by Alberto Mira, 2010.
Film Noir, by Andrew Spicer, 2010.
French Theater, by Edward Forman, 2010.
Choral Music, by Melvin P. Unger, 2010.
Historical Dictionary
of French Theater
Edward Forman
Historical Dictionaries of
Literature and the Arts, No. 39
The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2010
Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.scarecrowpress.com
Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2010 by Edward Forman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Forman, Edward.
Historical dictionary of French theater / Edward Forman.
p. cm. — (Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts; no. 39)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8108-4939-6 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7451-0 (ebook)
1. Theater—France—Biography—Dictionaries. 2. Theater—France—
Dictionaries. 3. Dramatists, French—Biography—Dictionaries. I. Title.
PN2637.F67 2010
792.0944’03—dc22
2009046246
⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Since 1978, well over 2,000 Bristol undergraduates,
master’s students and doctoral students have followed
modules related to French theater.
I dedicate this volume to them,
with gratitude for their boundless curiosity and enthusiasm.
Contents
Editor’s Foreword
Jon Woronoff
ix
Chronology
xi
Introduction
1
THE DICTIONARY
17
Bibliography
259
About the Author
307
vii
Editor’s Foreword
Most national theaters are just that—national. The bulk of the plays are
written for domestic consumption, and unfortunately few dramatists,
let alone actors or directors, are known abroad. That is sad but understandable since English has become the most widely known and used
language and since Shakespeare and his successors have contributed so
much to world theater. But French is a clear runner-up. Indeed, French
theater sometimes took the lead, with Corneille, Racine, and Molière,
and in the Romantic era with Alexander Dumas and the surrealist
works of Alfred Jarry. But never was it more so than when the Theater
of the Absurd erupted in rationalistic France with Samuel Beckett and
Eugène Ionesco (not actually Frenchmen but writing in French) and
Jean-Paul Sartre. More recently one can look to Michel Vinaver and
Yasmina Reza.
Where French theater has never been exceeded, however, is in its
passion, which keeps the legitimate stage going and the somewhat less
than legitimate stage bubbling over at all times. A larger percentage
of French citizens than almost anywhere else like and go to theater
because they want to and not because they are supposed to. And they
have taken drama in the broadest sense out of the “theater” and into the
public space, as well as countless festivals.
This long and often impressive history is presented in the latest addition to the growing circle of Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the
Arts. It contains a clear history in both the chronology and introduction,
which trace the most important events over six centuries. The dictionary
examines some of the most significant playwrights, actors, directors,
managers, and plays themselves. While many are well known, others
have been largely forgotten and deserve mention, both to show their
contributions when they were in their prime and to illustrate that French
theater has an amazing depth that is not always recognized. Those who
ix
x •
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
want to know more can then pursue further reading with aid from the
bibliography.
This Historical Dictionary of French Theater was written by Edward
Forman, who has taught the subject for more than three decades at the
School of Modern Languages of the University of Bristol. In addition, he
has been the honorary secretary of the British Society for SeventeenthCentury French Studies and the president of the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature. He specializes in
the relationship between theater, music, and stage music, as well as
17th-century French theater. But his interests are much more diverse,
including French theater of any period and plays written by those in the
wider Francophone community. Moreover, this is not just an academic
pursuit. In addition to knowing about, studying, and teaching French
theater, Dr. Forman likes it and takes pleasure in helping others understand and appreciate it—possibly developing a passion for this great
tradition.
Jon Woronoff
Series Editor
Chronology
1283 Adam De La Halle is in the service of Charles d’Anjou, king
of Sicily and Naples. His Jeu de la feuillée had been performed around
1276, and the Jeu de Robin et de Marion is performed around 1285.
1402 The Confrérie de la Passion is formally authorized to perform
in Paris.
1470
Pierre Gringore is born.
1486 Charles VII establishes a fair at Paris on land belonging to the
Abbaye de Saint-Germain.
1506 Erasmus’s translations into Latin of plays by Euripides are published in Paris.
1512 Le Jeu du Prince des Sots et de la Mère Sotte is performed by
Les Enfants sans souci under Pierre Gringore.
1536 A performance of the mystery play Les Actes des Apôtres is
given at Bourges.
1537
Lazare de Baïf translates Sophocles’ Electra into French.
1545 Marc-Antoine de Muret’s Julius Cæsar is the earliest known
original tragedy on a nonbiblical theme to be composed (in Latin) in
France.
1547 A performance of the mystery play the Mystère de la Passion is
given at Valenciennes.
1548 The Hôtel de Bourgogne Theater is built by the Confrérie de la
Passion. Public performance of mystery plays is banned in Paris and
subsequently in other provinces.
xi
xii •
CHRONOLOGY
1552 Étienne Jodelle’s Cléopatre captive and Eugène are the first
original French texts in the forms of classical tragedy and comedy,
respectively.
1557 One of the last confirmed performances of a mystery play, the
Mystère du Vieux Testament, is given at Draguignan.
1570 Jean Baïf and Joachim Thibaut de Courville found the Académie de Poésie et de Musique.
1572 Jean de la Taille’s De L’Art de la tragédie, based on Aristotle’s
Poetics, codifies the principles of classical form in French for the first
time.
1573 Robert Garnier’s Hippolyte, one of the first and most notable
French tragedies written in imitation of Seneca, is composed.
1579
Pierre Larivey’s Les Esprits is composed.
1581
Le Ballet comique de la reine is performed.
1583
Robert Garnier’s Les Juives is written and performed.
1597 The Confrérie de la Passion discontinues its own performances
and seeks instead to let out the Hôtel de Bourgogne to other acting
companies. Italian and possibly English traveling companies also visit
Paris.
1599 Valleran Le Conte founds an acting company with Adrien
Talmy at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, adopting for the first time the title
Comédiens du Roi. They perform works by Alexandre Hardy.
1601 Antoine de Montchrestien’s L’Écossaise is written and performed.
1605 Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye’s Art poétique (written in the
1570s) anticipates the classical period by encapsulating Aristotelian
dramatic theory.
1610–20 The Paris stage is dominated by coarse comic actors:
Arlequin’s Italian company and the French company led by GaultierGarguille.
CHRONOLOGY
• xiii
1617 Théophile de Viau’s drama Les Amours tragiques de Pyrame et
Thisbé, performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, becomes one of the first
plays in French to be accorded a level of literary respectability.
1622 Both Charles Le Noir’s and Bellerose’s companies perform in
Paris. The former enjoys the patronage of the Prince of Orange; the
latter joins with the farce actors to form the Comédiens du Roi under
Gros-Guillaume.
1628 Jean Rotrou’s L’Hypocodriaque is performed by Bellerose at
the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
1628–30 Texts by François Ogier and Jean Chapelain open up a debate on the unities.
1629 Nicolas Guérin, leader of Les Enfants sans souci, cedes his limited remaining rights over the Hôtel de Bourgogne to the Confrérie de la
Passion. Pierre Corneille’s Mélite is performed by Le Noir’s company.
1634 Charles Le Noir’s company is established at the Théâtre du
Marais. Gros-Guillaume is succeeded by Bellerose as chief of the Comédiens du Roi. In December, the king obliges five members of the
Marais company, including Jodelet and Le Noir, to transfer to the Hôtel
de Bourgogne.
1637 Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid leads to controversy, involving the
recently founded Académie française. Floridor succeeds Montdory as
leader of the Marais company.
1641 Richelieu’s purpose-built theater is inaugurated at the PalaisCardinal (later Palais-Royal) and is used mostly for court spectacles.
1643 Madeleine Béjart, Joseph Béjart and Molière found L’Illustre
Théâtre; the company opens a theater in January 1644 and performs in
Paris for less than two years before leaving for provincial tours.
1644 The Marais Theater burns down and is rebuilt. Jodelet is established as the leading comic actor in Paris.
1647 Floridor leaves the Marais and joins the Comédiens du Roi, replacing his brother-in-law Bellerose as chief of that company, to which
Pierre Corneille’s new plays are henceforth given.
xiv •
CHRONOLOGY
1651 After the failure of Pertharite, Pierre Corneille retires temporarily from theatrical activity.
1653 Le Ballet royal de la nuit is performed at court, with Louis XIV
and Jean-Baptiste Lully among the dancers.
1656 Thomas Corneille’s tragedy Timocrate is performed at the
Marais Theater in the presence of the king and becomes the most successful play in 17th-century France.
1657 François Hédelin d’Aubignac’s Pratique du Théâtre is published.
1658 Molière and his company return to Paris and obtain patronage
from the king’s brother. They are allowed to share the Petit Bourbon
Theater with an Italian company until it is demolished in 1660.
1659 Pierre Corneille returns to theater with his Œdipe and the preparation of his Discours, three theoretical treatises on drama published
in 1660. Molière and Jodelet perform together in the former’s Les
Précieuses ridicules.
1660 The death of Jodelet leaves Molière more or less unrivaled as
the leading comic actor in Paris.
1661 Molière’s company moves into the Palais-Royal Theater, again
sharing the premises with an Italian company.
1662
Molière marries Armande Béjart.
1663 Controversy follows the first performances of Molière’s L’École
des femmes.
1664 The first version of Molière’s Tartuffe is performed at court,
as part of the major court festival Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée,
but banned from public performance. The first performance of Jean
Racine’s La Thébaïde is given, by Molière’s company.
1665 Molière’s Dom Juan is performed 15 times then dropped from
the repertoire. Racine’s Alexandre le Grand is performed by Molière’s
company, but during the initial run Racine allows the Comédiens du
Roi to mount a rival production at the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
CHRONOLOGY
• xv
1667 Racine’s Andromaque is performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
His dispute with his Jansenist teachers becomes public and bitter: Pierre
Nicole publishes 18 Lettres sur l’Hérésie imaginaire ou Les Visionnaires, containing a scathing attack on theatrical activity as “poisonous to public morality,” to which Racine responds with two vitriolic
letters.
1669 Foundation of the Académie d’opéra, giving monopoly rights
for stage music to Lully.
1670 Pierre Corneille and Racine both produce plays on the subject
of Berenices. Molière and Lully’s comédie-ballet, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, is performed at court (October) and in the public theater
(November). Baron joins Molière’s company.
1671 The machine play Psyché by Philippe Quinault, Pierre Corneille and Molière is performed.
1673 Following the death of Molière, his company and that of the
Marais Theater join forces, and move to the Guénégaud Theater.
1674 Nicolas Boileau’s L’Art poétique is published. Pierre Corneille’s
last play, Suréna, is written and performed.
1675 Thomas Corneille’s machine play Circé and comédies-ballets
L’Inconnu and Le Triomphe des Dames (1676) are performed at the
Guénégaud Theater despite Lully’s monopoly on large-scale music
theater.
1677 First performances are given of Racine’s Phèdre, after which he
retires from theatrical activity.
1680 The Comédie-Française is formed by royal decree, combining
the remaining elements of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and Guénégaud
companies.
1687 Dancourt’s La Désolation des joueuses and Le Chevalier à la
mode are both performed at the Comédie-Française.
1689 Racine’s Esther is commissioned by Mme de Maintenon for her
college of Saint-Cyr and performed there privately. It will be followed
by Athalie (1691).
1701
Theater censorship is introduced by Louis XIV.
xvi •
1707
CHRONOLOGY
Prosper-Jolyot de Crébillon’s Atrée et Thyeste is performed.
1717 Adrienne Lecouvreur makes her début at the ComédieFrançaise.
1718
Voltaire’s first play, Œdipe, is performed.
1720 Baron, having retired in 1691, returns to act alongside Adrienne
Lecouvreur until his death in 1729. Arlequin poli par l’amour is performed and gives Marivaux his first success.
1727 Philippe Néricault Destouches’s autobiographical Le Philosophe marié is performed.
1730 Adrienne Lecouvreur dies in mysterious circumstances. Marivaux’s Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard is written and performed.
1732
Voltaire obtains his first major dramatic success with Zaïre.
1733 Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée’s La Fausse Antipathie
establishes the new genre of comédie larmoyante.
1734 Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques, including his jaundiced assessment of William Shakespeare, are published.
1737 Mlle Dumesnil makes her début at the Comédie-Française as
Clytemnestre in Racine’s Iphigénie. Marivaux’s Les Fausses Confidences is written and performed.
1743 Mlle Clairon makes her début at the Comédie-Française in the
title role of Racine’s Phèdre.
1745 French translations by Pierre-Antoine de La Place of plays by
Shakespeare are published.
1750
Lekain makes his début at the Comédie-Française.
1757 Denis Diderot’s Le Fils naturel and Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel are published.
1760
Voltaire’s Tancrède is performed.
1765
med.
Michel-Jean Sedaine’s Le Philosophe sans le savoir is perfor-
1770
The Comédie-Française moves into the Palais des Tuileries.
CHRONOLOGY
• xvii
1773 Louis Sébastien Mercier’s Traité du Théâtre, ou Nouvel Essor
sur l’Art dramatique is published, containing ideas on dramatic realism
that will be put into practice in La Brouette du Vinaigrier (1775).
1775
Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville is performed.
1778 Voltaire returns to Paris from exile and attends rehearsals of
his last play, Irène. When he attends a performance of the play at the
Comédie-Française he is acclaimed in a triumphant apotheosis.
1782 The Odéon Theater is opened, and houses the ComédieFrançaise.
1784 Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro (completed by 1781) is
performed.
1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro is composed
and performed.
1789 Marie-Joseph Chénier’s Charles IX is Talma’s first starring role
at the Odéon.
1799 The Comédie-Française is re-established as the Théâtre-Français
at the former Théâtre de la République (still its main Paris home). Talma
stars as Rodrigue in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid at the opening performance. Mlle Mars makes her début at the Comédie-Française.
1806 The Odéon is rebuilt after a fire, and Napoléon charges LouisBenoît Picard with directing the reconstituted company as the Théâtre
de l’Impératrice.
1808 Intense rivalry between Mlle Duchesnois and Mlle George is
ended by the latter’s sudden retirement.
1812 The Moscow decrees define the statutes of the ComédieFrançaise.
1816 Members of the Debureau family join the Théâtre des Funambules in Paris.
1820 The Gymnase Theater is founded. A new purpose-built opera
theater is designed in Paris, using gas lighting for the first time in
France.
xviii •
CHRONOLOGY
1822 The Théâtre de Montmartre, subsequently known as the Théâtre
de l’Atelier, opens.
1823 Frédérick Lemaître creates Robert Macaire in Benjamin Antier’s L’Auberge des Adrets at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu.
1823–25
Stendhal’s essay Racine et Shakespeare is published.
1827 Victor Hugo’s Préface to Cromwell is published. Performances
of Shakespeare plays are arranged by Émile Laurent at the Odéon and
given by actors from a number of London, Dublin and provincial English companies, including Charles Kemble and Harriet Smithson. The
Théâtre de l’Ambigu is destroyed by fire.
1828 Alexandre Dumas père’s Henri III et sa cour is performed at the
Comédie-Française.
1829 Performances of Hugo’s Marion de Lorme are banned on
political grounds, and replaced by Alfred de Vigny’s adaptation of
Shakespeare’s Othello as Le More de Venise, starring Mlle Mars and
Joanny.
1830 The controversial first night (25 February) of Hugo’s Hernani
takes place at the Comédie-Française.
1831 Dumas père’s Antony is performed at the Théâtre de la Porte
Saint-Martin with Marie Dorval, Frédérick Lemaître and Bocage.
Eugène Scribe and Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, one of
the most notable successes of early Romantic opera in French, is performed.
1835
De Vigny’s Chatterton is performed, starring Marie Dorval.
1838 Rachel stars in a series of revivals of French classical tragedies
at the Gymnase, and her popularity in the classical repertory hastens the
decline of the Romantic movement in theater.
1841
Mlle Mars retires.
1842 Rose Chéri joins the Gymnase company under LemoineMontigny.
CHRONOLOGY
• xix
1843 Performances of François Ponsard’s neoclassical tragedy Lucrèce overshadow Hugo’s Les Burgraves, indicating further the decline
of the Romantic movement.
1844
Edmond Got makes his début at the Comédie-Française.
1848 Louis Arsène Delaunay moves from the Odéon to the ComédieFrançaise, where he makes his début as Dorante in Pierre Corneille’s
Le Menteur.
1851 Eugène Labiche’s farce Le Chapeau de paille d’Italie is performed at the Palais-Royal, with Jules Brasseur.
1852 Alexandre Dumas fils’s La Dame aux Camélias is performed at
the Théâtre du Vaudeville.
1853 Rose Chéri stars at the Gymnase in Dumas fils’s Diane de Lys,
which is dedicated to her.
1854 Performances of Émile Augier’s Le Gendre de M. Poirier at the
Gymnase, under Lemoine-Montigny, with Rose Chéri dominating the
cast, herald the approach of Realist theater.
1855 Jacques Offenbach’s Les Deux Aveugles is performed with
some notoriety at Les Bouffes parisiens.
1856
Léon Carvalho becomes director of the Théâtre-Lyrique.
1859 Virginie Déjazet presents Victorien Sardou’s Premières Armes
de Figaro as the opening production at the Théâtre Déjazet.
1861 Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser is produced at the Paris
Opéra without success.
1867 Mounet-Sully and Sarah Bernhardt appear in Jean-François
Ducis’s version of King Lear at the Odéon.
1869 Sarah Bernhardt stars in François Coppée’s Le Passant. Aimée
Desclée returns to Paris from abroad at the invitation of Dumas fils
to star in Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy’s comédie larmoyante,
Froufrou.
1872 At the instigation of Hugo and George Sand, Félix-Henri Duquesnel becomes director of the Odéon, supporting there the works of
xx •
CHRONOLOGY
Dumas fils, Coppée and Georges de Porto-Riche. Sarah Bernhardt stars
in a revival of Hugo’s Ruy Blas at the Odéon.
1873 Julia Bartet makes her début at the Odéon in Alphonse Daudet’s
L’Arlésienne. Hugo’s Marion de Lorme is revived at the ComédieFrançaise with Got, Delaunay and Mounet-Sully.
1874
Léon Carvalho becomes director of the Opéra-Comique.
1875 The Paris Opera building, commissioned by Napoléon III in
1860 and designed by Charles Garnier, is completed.
1879 An adaptation of Émile Zola’s novel L’Assommoir is performed
at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu.
1880 Paul Mounet gives his Paris début at the Odéon in the title role
of Pierre Corneille’s Horace. Julia Bartet makes her Comédie-Française
début in Sardou’s Daniel Rochat. Sarah Bernhardt leaves the ComédieFrançaise and embarks on the first of her international tours.
1882 Henry Becque’s Les Corbeaux is produced at the ComédieFrançaise.
1884 Sarah Bernhardt stars in Félix-Henri Duquesnel’s spectacular
production of Sardou’s Théodora, with incidental music by Jules Massenet.
1885 Hugo’s funeral is marked by a free performance of Hernani at
the Comédie-Française.
1887 André Antoine founds the Théâtre-Libre. William Busnach’s
adaptation at the Théâtre des Nations of Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris provides one of the most extreme manifestations of Naturalist theater with
its meticulous reconstruction of the Paris district of Les Halles.
1889 The centenary of the Revolution, 14 July, is marked by a performance at Reims of the Goncourt brothers’ La Patrie en danger,
previously performed at the Théâtre-Libre in Paris.
1890 Paul Fort founds the Théâtre d’Art, in which first performances
are to be given of many Symbolist plays.
CHRONOLOGY
• xxi
1891 Réjane, appointed by Paul Porel to the Odéon, gains a personal
triumph in a revival of Edmond Goncourt’s stage adaptation of the
Goncourt brothers’ Germinie Lacerteux (written in 1865, adapted for
the stage and first performed in 1888), and in other Naturalist plays.
Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin is produced at the Paris Opéra, the
first successful run in any Paris theater of a Wagner work.
1892 Lugné-Poe directs and stars in the first performance of Maurice
Mæterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande at the Théâtre d’Art.
1893 Sarah Bernhardt founds the Théâtre de la Renaissance, with
Lucien Guitry as her leading male actor. Bernhardt plays the title role
in the first production of Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio (written in
1834). Réjane stars in Sardou’s Madame Sans-Gêne and in Henry
Becque’s La Parisienne at the Théâtre du Vaudeville. Lugné-Poe
founds the Théâtre de l’Œuvre.
1896 Georges Feydeau’s Le Dindon is first performed. The première
at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre of Alfred Jarry’s grotesque spectacle Ubu
roi—a portrayal of the corrupting effect of power—provokes outrage.
1897 Coquelin l’aîné interprets the title role in Edmond Rostand’s
Cyrano de Bergerac at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. Oscar
Méténier founds the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, which he will direct
until 1899. The Théâtre-Libre is renamed Théâtre Antoine.
1898
Sarah Bernhardt takes over the Théâtre des Nations.
1901 Lugné-Poe produces André Gide’s Le Roi Candaule at the
Théâtre de l’Œuvre, with Édouard De Max.
1906 Antoine becomes director of the Odéon, being succeeded at the
Théâtre Antoine by Firmin Gémier.
1911 Gémier founds the Théâtre national ambulant. Maurice Mæterlinck is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1912 Lugné-Poe directs the first production of Paul Claudel’s L’Annonce faite à Marie.
1913
Jacques Copeau founds the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.
1917 Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie’s ballet Parade is performed at
the Théâtre du Châtelet by the Ballets russes (18 May). Guillaume
xxii •
CHRONOLOGY
Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias is performed, directed by Pierre
Albert-Birot (24 June).
1919
Julia Bartet retires after 47 years on the Paris stage.
1920 A Dada-based theatrical spectacle takes place at the Théâtre de
l’Œuvre on 27 March, incorporating the première of Tristan Tzara’s
Première Aventure céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine, André Breton and
Philippe Soupault’s S’il vous plaît and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes’s
Le Serin muet. Fernand Crommelynck’s Le Cocu magnifique is directed by Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. Gémier founds the first
Théâtre national populaire.
1921 Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, by Cocteau and members of the
Groupe des Six, is performed.
1922
The Théâtre de l’Atelier is relaunched under Charles Dullin.
1923 Louis Jouvet triumphs at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in
Jules Romains’s Knock. A performance at the Théâtre Michel (6 July)
of Tzara’s Le Cœur à gaz (first performed in June 1921) provokes a
violent altercation.
1924 Marcel Achard’s Voulez-vous jouer avec moâ? secures the
financial future of the Théâtre de l’Atelier. The Sept Manifestes Dada
are published.
1926 Édouard Bourdet’s La Prisonnière is performed. Antonin Artaud, Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron found the surrealist Théâtre Alfred
Jarry, in which Vitrac’s Victor, ou Les Enfants au pouvoir is performed
in 1928.
1927
tel.
Gaston Baty, Dullin, Jouvet and Georges Pitoëff form Le Car-
1929
Michel Achard’s Jean de la Lune is performed, with Jouvet.
1930 Romains’s Donogoo is directed by Jouvet at the Théâtre Pigalle.
1932 Gide’s Œdipe is performed by Pitoëff’s company. Artaud’s
Le Théâtre de la cruauté is published, to be followed in 1938 by Le
Théâtre et son double.
CHRONOLOGY
• xxiii
1934
Jouvet transfers to the Théâtre de l’Athénée.
1935
med.
Giraudoux’s La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu is first perfor-
1937 Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion comique (1636) is successfully
revived by Jouvet at the Comédie-Française. Pitoëff directs Jean
Anouilh’s Le Voyageur sans bagages.
1938 Claudel and Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, commissioned by Ida Rubinstein, is first performed in Basel, Switzerland.
(The French première will take place in Orléans in May 1939, and
Jean-Louis Barrault will first take the role of Frère Dominique in Paris
in June 1939.)
1941 Alain Cuny makes his stage début in Jean Giono’s Le Bout de
la route.
1942 Henry de Montherlant’s La Reine morte is directed by Pierre
Dux at the Comédie-Française.
1943 Cocteau directs his Renaud et Armide at the Comédie-Française.
Claudel’s Le Soulier de satin (composed between 1919 and 1924) is
first performed, directed by Barrault, with Marie Bell, Madeleine Renaud and Pierre Dux. Dullin directs Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mouches at
the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt. Marguerite Jamois inherits the Théâtre de
Montparnasse from Gaston Baty and directs herself in the title role of
Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.
1944 Performances of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone at the Théâtre de
l’Atelier, of Albert Camus’s Le Malentendu at the Théâtre des Mathurins, of Sartre’s Huis clos at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, and of
other works indicate that French creative life is not completely stifled
by the German occupation of Paris and northern France.
1946 The Odéon becomes a second home for the Comédie-Française
company, concentrating on modern classics. Barrault and Madeleine
Renaud form their own company at the Théâtre Marigny, directing
productions of Armand Salacrou’s Les Nuits de la colère and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
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1947 Jacques Audiberti’s Le Mal court is directed by Georges Vitaly
at the Théâtre de Poche Montparnasse. Salacrou’s L’Archipel Lenoir is
first performed. The Avignon Festival is inaugurated under Jean Vilar;
productions include Shakespeare’s Richard II. Jean Genet’s Les Bonnes
is first performed, directed by Jouvet at the Théâtre de l’Athénée.
1948 The Théâtre de la Huchette is founded by Vitaly. Roger Blin
directs August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata.
1950 Arthur Adamov’s La Grande et La Petite Manœuvre is directed by Jean-Marie Serreau at the Noctambules, and his L’Invasion
by Vilar at the Studio des Champs-Élysées. The first performance of
Eugène Ionesco’s La Cantatrice chauve, directed by Nicolas Bataille
at the Théâtre des Noctambules, inaugurates the Theater of the Absurd.
Gide’s own dramatization of his novel Les Caves du Vatican (1914) is
performed at the Comédie-Française.
1951 Ionesco’s La Leçon is directed by Marcel Cuvier at the Théâtre
de poche Montparnasse. Vilar directs Bertolt Brecht’s Mutter Courage
for the Théâtre national populaire at the Palais de Chaillot.
1952
Ionesco’s Les Chaises is directed by Sylvain Dhomme.
1953 Samuel Beckett’s En Attendant Godot (written 1948) is first
performed at the Théâtre de Babylone, directed by Blin. Claudel’s
Christophe Colomb is directed by Barrault at the Théâtre Marigny.
Vilar directs Molière’s Dom Juan for the Théâtre national populaire at
the Palais de Chaillot.
1954 Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is adapted for the Parisian stage by
Marcel Aymé. Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble visits Paris.
1955 The English version of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is performed in London. Barrault directs Æschylus’s Oresteia at the Bordeaux Festival and then at the Théâtre Marigny.
1956 Academic disputes between traditional university scholars and
the so-called “nouvelle critique” focus on drama as a result of several
studies of Racine; this leads to some experimental productions of his
tragedies.
1957 Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The
Absurdist double bill of Ionesco’s La Cantatrice chauve and La Leçon
CHRONOLOGY
• xxv
opens a run at the Théâtre de la Huchette, which is still continuing
unbroken in spring 2010. Vilar directs Racine’s Phèdre at the Théâtre
national populaire with Maria Casarès and Alain Cuny.
1959 Barrault becomes director of the Odéon. Ionesco’s Rhinocéros
is performed in German in Düsseldorf, bringing him to international
recognition for the first time (the play is directed by Barrault at the
Odéon in 1960).
1960 Vilar directs René de Obaldia’s Génousie at the Théâtre national populaire. Genet’s Le Balcon (1956) receives its first production in
French, directed by Peter Brook at the Gymnase in Paris.
1962
Marie Bell becomes director of the Gymnase.
1963 Madeleine Renaud creates the role of Winnie in Beckett’s Oh!
les beaux jours, directed by Blin.
1964 François Billetdoux’s Il faut passer par les nuages is directed at
the Odéon by Barrault, with Madeleine Renaud.
1966 Fernando Arrabal’s L’Architecte et l’Empereur d’Assyrie is
directed by Jorge Lavelli. Armand Gatti’s Chant public devant deux
chaises électriques is performed at the Théâtre national populaire.
Genet’s Les Paravents (written in 1961) receives its first production in
French, directed at the Odéon by Blin and Barrault.
1967 Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil achieves its first major
success at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes with a production of Arnold
Wesker’s The Kitchen. The Petit-Odéon, a studio theater attached to the
Odéon, is opened to enable the Comédie-Française company to perform
more intimate and experimental modern works.
1968 Marguerite Duras’s L’Amante anglaise is first performed by
Madeleine Renaud at the Théâtre Gémier.
1969 Beckett is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Théâtre
du Soleil performs Les Clowns at Vincennes and at the Avignon Festival.
1973 Brook becomes director of the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.
The Théâtre national populaire moves to Villeurbanne near Lyon, under
the direction of Roger Planchon, Patrice Chéreau and Robert Gilbert.
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CHRONOLOGY
Louis Calaferte’s Chez les Titch is directed at the Odéon by Jean-Pierre
Miquel. Victor Haïm’s Abraham et Samuel is performed at the PetitOdéon.
1975
René de Obaldia’s Monsieur Klebs et Rozalie is performed.
1976 Chéreau’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle, conducted by
Pierre Boulez, is performed at Beyreuth. Robert Wilson’s production
of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach is performed at the Avignon
Festival. André Engel directs Brecht’s Baal at Strasbourg with Gérard
Desarthe.
1978 Michel Vinaver’s double bill, Dissident, il va sans dire and
Nina, c’est autre chose, is directed by Jacques Lassalle, designed by
Yannis Kokkos, at the Théâtre de l’Est Parisien.
1979 Georges Lavaudant’s postmodernist collage Les Cannibales
combines extracts from the work of around 50 authors.
1983 Bernard-Marie Koltès’s Combat de nègre et de chiens is produced by Chéreau at Nanterre. Engel directs Frank Wedekind’s Lulu at the
Bataclan Theater in Paris. The Odéon becomes the home of the Théâtre
de l’Europe, explicitly designed to encourage international cooperation
in direction and theatrical exploration.
1984 Jean-Marie Villégier directs a historic revival of François Tristan L’Hermite’s La Mort de Sénèque at the Comédie-Française.
1986 Desarthe directs a historic revival of Tristan L’Hermite’s La
Marianne at the Paris Conservatoire.
1987 Villégier designs and directs a groundbreaking production
of Lully’s opera Atys at the Paris Opéra-Comique. Yasmina Reza’s
Conversations après un enterrement, directed by Patrice Kerbrat, is
performed.
1988 Lavelli produces Federico García Lorca’s Le Public at the Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris.
1989
The Opéra-Bastille in Paris is inaugurated.
1990 Lassalle becomes administrative director of the ComédieFrançaise. He produces Vinaver’s L’Émission de télévision at the
Odéon.
CHRONOLOGY
• xxvii
1993 The Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier is made available to the
Comédie-Française company. Significant or groundbreaking productions in this year include Jacques Lassalle’s production of Molière’s
Dom Juan at the Avignon Festival, Stéphane Braunschweig’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the Théâtre des Bouffes du
Nord, Bernard Sobel’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear under the
title of Threepenny Lear with Maria Casarès in the title role, and the
first performance of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s Le Visiteur.
1996 The Studio-Théâtre in the Carrousel of the Louvre is inaugurated
to provide an additional playing space for the Comédie-Française.
1998 The DMDTS (Direction de la musique, de la danse, du théâtre et
des spectacles) is created, under its first director Dominique Wallon, by
the fusion of the Direction de la musique et de la danse with the Direction du théâtre et des spectacles.
1999 Hélène Cixous’s Tambours sur la digue, directed by Mnouchkine with the Théâtre du Soleil, consolidates that company’s reputation
for innovative and experimental productions.
2000 Reza’s Trois versions de la vie is performed simultaneously at
the Théâtre Antoine in Paris, and in Vienna, Athens and London.
2001 Irina Brook directs Richard Kalinoski’s Beast on the Moon
(translated as Une Bête sur la lune) at the Théâtre de l’Atelier. Étienne
Bierry directs Daniel Besse’s Les Directeurs at the Théâtre de Poche
Montparnasse.
2002 Robert Hossein directs and stars in a revival of Sartre’s Huis
clos at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris. Desarthe directs a historic revival
of Alain-René Le Sage’s Turcaret. An adaptation of Miklos Laszlo’s
Parfumerie by Jean-Jacques Zilbermann and Evelyne Fallot, entitled
La Boutique au coin de la rue, is directed by Zilbermann at the Théâtre
Montparnasse. Victor Haïm’s Jeux de scène is performed at the Théâtre
de l’Œuvre.
2003 A modern adaptation of the medieval Jeu de la feuillée is presented by the Comédie-Française at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.
Engel directs Marie Ndiaye’s Papa doit manger at the ComédieFrançaise.
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CHRONOLOGY
2004 Calaferte’s Le Roi Victor is directed at Nantes by Gildas Bourdet. Vinaver’s Le 11 Septembre 2001 is produced at the Avignon Festival. Zabou Breitman directs Roland Topor’s L’Hiver sous la table, starring Dominique Pinon and Isabelle Carré, at the Théâtre de l’Atelier.
2005 Ariane Mnouchkine directs Le Dernier Caravansérail at the
Théâtre du Soleil. Georges Werler directs Michel Bouquet, Juliette
Carré and Valérie Karsenti in Ionesco’s Le Roi se meurt at the Théâtre
Hébertot. James Thiérrée directs his multimedia fantasy spectacle La
Symphonie du Hanneton at the Théâtre du Rond-Point.
2006 Engel directs Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Odéon. David Lescot’s Un homme en faillite is performed. Robert Hirsch stars in Didier
Long’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker (translated as Le
Gardien) at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. A new production by Denis Podalydès of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac stars Michel Vuillermoz.
2007 John Malkovich directs Zach Helm’s Good Canary at the
Théâtre Comédia.
2008 Yasmina Reza directs her Le Dieu du carnage, starring Isabelle
Huppert and Valérie Bonneton, at the Théâtre Antoine. A new stage
adaptation by Xavier Jaillard of the 1975 novel La Vie devant soi by
Émile Ajar (real name Romain Gary) is directed by Didier Long at the
Théâtre Marigny, starring Myriam Boyer. Christian Schiaretti’s production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is performed at the Théâtre national
populaire at Villeurbanne and in Paris.
2009 Sébastien Thiéry’s Cochons d’Inde is directed by Anne Bourgeois at the Théâtre Hébertot, with Patrick Chesnais and Josiane
Stoléru. New productions at the Comédie-Française include Molière’s
L’Avare directed by Cathérine Hiegel, Ödön von Horváth’s Figaro
divorce directed by Jacques Lassalle, Aymé’s Le Loup, Shakespeare’s
The Merry Wives of Windsor and Octave Mirbeau’s Les Affaires sont
les affaires.
Introduction
The term French theater evokes most immediately, no doubt, the glories
of the classical period and the peculiarities of the Theater of the Absurd,
yet both these foci of attention are liable to be misunderstood. Racine,
Corneille and Molière tend to be lumped together as one, regarded as
wordy, static and stylized, and compared to their disadvantage with
Shakespeare—destructive where he is ennobling, bound by convention
where he is liberating, repressed where he achieves health, hilarity and
reconciliation. The rediscovery of Corneille’s L’Illusion comique and
of Molière’s comédies-ballets as riotous and gleeful performance pieces
has done something to redress the balance, but not enough in practice.
In the modern period, too, an English-speaking critic summed up
Samuel Beckett’s En Attendant Godot as “a play in which nothing happens, twice,”1 thereby consolidating the reputation of French theater for
verbal dexterity allied to a paucity of action, even though this reputation
ignores the zany inventiveness of Eugène Ionesco, whose Rhinocéros
and Les Chaises came to overshadow his La Cantatrice chauve in popularity on the English stage in the late 20th century.
Knowledge of the French theater between those two periods is highly
sporadic: Beaumarchais apart, few in Great Britain or America could
name a significant number of 18th-century French dramatists, Voltaire’s enthusiastic involvement with theatrical activity would generally
be met with surprise, and the plays of Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny
and Alfred de Musset, as also those of Victorien Sardou and Maurice
Mæterlinck, are recognized if at all only as the source material for operas. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Marguerite Duras, like Hugo,
are better known in other realms than as dramatists, and even those
playwrights whose work has crossed the English Channel, notably Jean
Anouilh, Paul Claudel and Georges Feydeau, tend to be approached
with a certain precious caution: “sophisticated” rather than genuinely
1
2 •
INTRODUCTION
witty, brittle rather than humane in their social analysis, destructive
rather than creative. Much the same applies to Yasmina Reza, who is
almost the only contemporary dramatist working in French whose work
has had a real impact in Great Britain and the United States.
Yet the French themselves, and all knowledgeable enthusiasts for
French culture, would insist on the centrality of theater to their intellectual and artistic heritage. The Comédie-Française and the Odéon—
alongside the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Bastille—are second only to the
Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay as cultural cathedrals in Paris. Theatrical activity is pivotal in the work of the Maisons de la Culture established in all French municipalities since World War II, while at the
other end of the cultural spectrum, the fringe activities of the Avignon
Festival and thriving cafés-théâtres attest to the continuing appeal of
experimental drama. Although dramatists may elude the headlines,
many of the most iconic figures in 20th-century French culture have
had a theatrical connection: actors Sarah Bernhardt, Gérard Philippe,
Gérard Depardieu, Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud, as well
as stage directors Roger Planchon and Jacques Lassalle. If the historical
map of French theater has been dominated by three peaks—the 1660s,
the 1830s and 1950s—what follows attempts to show the rich contours
across all the ages that make up the hinterland, in terms of both creative
writing and performance history.
ORIGINS TO 1550
In France as in the rest of Europe, theatrical activity in the Dark Ages
and Middle Ages was divided between fairground entertainments and
liturgical practices. Traveling performers—troubadours and trouvères,
like Adam de la Halle, as well as the more mercenary opérateurs—drew
attention to themselves in fairgrounds and taverns, while dramatized
versions of religious stories—mystery plays, miracle plays and morality
plays—spilled out of church buildings into more public spaces. Gradually, both secular and religious dramas became more communal and organized activities; trade guilds, like Les Enfants sans souci and La Basoche,
took a lead in coordinating rehearsals and performances of satirical comedies, and a company known as the Confrérie de la Passion established a
monopoly in Paris for the production of mystery plays. Women as well
INTRODUCTION
• 3
as men participated in these activities in France, and as elsewhere, the
tone was often far from solemn even though the intention was to reinforce orthodox Christian teaching and values. These events became more
elaborate and spectacular, so that a version of The Acts of the Apostles
performed at Bourges in 1536 lasted 40 days and involved over 300 performers. For such performances, elaborate multiple sets were constructed
and special effects involving floods or fire could be envisaged to convey
the full force of supernatural powers for good and evil.
Alongside such portentous displays, a rich vein of social comedy developed in the medieval French farce. Recognizable character types—
henpecked husbands, domineering wives, exasperating mothers-in-law,
lascivious and gluttonous monks, boastful but cowardly soldiers, wily
servants—were involved in fanciful adventures, with convoluted plots
and eloquent, witty dialogue, directing sharp satire against current behavior and social or political authorities. They were often built around
practical jokes in which the perpetrator himself was liable to be caught.
Typical of this genre was the famous Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin,
an anonymous 15th-century text that held the stage for almost 100 years
and had an influence on Rabelais as well as laying the foundations for
the French comic drama tradition.
RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE DRAMA (1550–1640)
Anglophone students, focused on the contrast between Racine and
Shakespeare, would probably be surprised to learn that the chronological development of theater between 1550 and 1700 followed very
similar lines in England and France: a period of energetic creativity
characterized by variety and spectacle, broadly designated as baroque,
followed by a period of restrained concentration on decorum and harmony, less problematically defined as classical. But if the sequence
was similar, the legacy produces high contrast, because the first period
produced world-class drama in Great Britain, whereas it was the second
that did so in France. The French Shakespeare—in that chronological
sense—was Alexandre Hardy, who wrote dozens of plays for the Comédiens du Roi performing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, in a variety of
genres—tragedy, tragicomedy, pastorale and comedy—all characterized by irregularity and coarseness and using either mythological or
4 •
INTRODUCTION
romantic subjects. Such works, as well as historical dramas by Antoine
de Montchrestien and comedies by Pierre Larivey, gradually acquired
greater social respectability: by the 1630s a background existed against
which the plays of Théophile de Viau and the early works of Pierre
Corneille could flourish, and it would have required only the slightest
adjustment to the taste and mindset of the time for L’Illusion comique
and Le Cid to have been the prototypes of a strand of French drama that
would have challenged Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Middleton,
if not Shakespeare himself.
However, alongside that vigorous practical strand, an academic approach to the study and creation of drama had been evolving in studies and colleges. From the 1550s onwards, scholars self-consciously
fired by the need for a cultural Renaissance had been investigating the
theoretical writings of Aristotle and the plays of Seneca, and Étienne
Jodelle, Jean de La Taille and Robert Garnier produced tragedies on
this classical model, characterized by an elegiac tone and a moralizing
tendency. Some were no doubt performed in public, others in academic
environments, but many seem to have existed only as printed texts.
These two strands clashed spectacularly in the Querelle du Cid of 1637.
Theorists backed by the newly formed Académie française insisted that
Corneille’s tragicomedy did not comply adequately with the Aristotelian model that had by then been codified as a set of rules, and however
much Corneille insisted that if spectators wept at tragedy and laughed at
comedy his ambition was satisfied, it was the more refined and harmoniously controlled approach that captured the public taste. His Horace
(1640) is already much more easily recognizable as a classical structure,
and the path that led to the glories of Racine was laid out.
This somewhat arid theoretical dispute was no doubt stimulated in
part by healthy rivalry between the theatrical companies that were already vying for audiences in Paris. Italian players were familiar visitors;
a company founded by Valleran Le Conte and Adrien Talmy acquired
the title Comédiens du Roi, based at the Hôtel de Bourgogne; and the
remnant of a troupe led by Charles Le Noir, originally sponsored by
the Prince of Orange, was able to establish an independent existence
at the Marais Theater. The Italians and their French imitators such
as Gaultier-Garguille cultivated coarse farce, the Comédiens du Roi
concentrated on serious literary works, and the Marais soon gained a
reputation for more spectacular displays and machine plays. The young
INTRODUCTION
• 5
Molière, whose Illustre Théâtre was unable to gain a financial foothold
against such competition, took his actors off to the southern provinces.
By the time he returned in 1658, the theatrical landscape had markedly
altered.
CLASSICAL DRAMA (1640–1700)
The establishment of Molière and his company with royal patronage
in Paris, and the emergence of Jean Racine as a genuine rival to the
supremacy of Corneille and his imitators in the realm of serious drama,
combined to produce the first decade of true genius in the French theater. L’École des femmes, Le Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Andromaque,
Britannicus, Bérénice and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme were all composed between 1663 and 1670; and to those had been added by 1677
L’Avare, Le Malade imaginaire, Iphigénie and Phèdre, as well as the
theoretical support for classical ideals provided by Boileau in his Art
poétique. The decade was not without controversy: L’École des femmes
proved almost as provocative as Le Cid, with Molière being accused of
impiety and vulgarity as well as of breaking the all-important principles
of verisimilitude and unity; Racine behaved most unprofessionally
toward Molière the actor by transferring his Alexandre le Grand from
one acting company to the other during its opening season; and both
Bérénice and Phèdre were challenged if not seriously undermined by
performances of rival texts on the same stories. Nevertheless, few can
have doubted that they were in the presence of inventive mastery: spiteful criticism is generated by jealousy rather than contempt. Intellectual
controversy, box-office rivalry, royal patronage, professional vigor and
a perfect match between æsthetic priorities and the creative geniuses
who strove to meet them—circumstances conspired to generate new
levels of inspiration.
Where Corneille had felt the unities to be a straitjacket, Racine
found they corresponded perfectly to his conception of the tragic world
as a trap in which hapless humans are obliged to make life-defining
decisions without time, resources or hope of escape. Acting styles that
had tended to the bombastic became more naturalistic, pompous declarations of superhuman willpower gave way to poetic explorations of
all-too-human agony, confrontations were motivated by passion rather
6 •
INTRODUCTION
than posturing. In the comic mode, Molière succeeded in combining
the verbal virtuosity and wit of the native tradition with the gestural
fireworks of Italian commedia dell’arte, as also in combining sharp and
insightful observation of the foibles of his contemporaries in the real
world with the invention of the most fantastic and zany creations of his
imagination.
Although the period is rightly associated with plays that adhered
almost slavishly to the doctrines of verisimilitude, decorum and unity,
its theatrical life was by no means as austere as that reputation might
suggest. The machine plays that were the distinctive repertoire of
the Marais Theater continued to attract audiences, King Louis XIV’s
personal passion for dancing ensured that ballet was central to most
court festivities, the period was to see the emergence of opera as an accepted form of artistic expression, and in general an æsthetic based on
wonder (le merveilleux) was almost as strong as the classical æsthetic
based on verisimilitude (le vraisemblable). It was certainly a period
in which the sheer physicality of performance was fully appreciated:
actors and actresses were cult figures, dominating the stage by presence and reputation: Jodelet, Bellerose, Floridor, Montfleury, Molière,
Madeleine and Armande Béjart, Mlle De Brie, Marquise Du Parc, Mlle
Champmeslé and Baron stamped their individual personalities on the
public consciousness as much as any present-day cinema or television
star, and in defiance of any feeling that a dramatic performance should
be a team effort.
THE 18th CENTURY
The 18th century in France, so dynamic in terms of philosophy and
culture, was curiously static in its approach to drama. Only Marivaux
and Beaumarchais have really stood the test of time as world-class
dramatists: Voltaire and Diderot were passionately interested in theater
but are not seen by posterity as having contributed creatively to today’s
repertoire, and the most successful authors of the time are forgotten by
all but academic experts.
In comedy, the various strands that Molière had so successfully woven together—social comedy of manners, literary comedy of character,
the verbal dexterity of the French farce tradition and the physical exu-
INTRODUCTION
• 7
berance of commedia dell’arte—tended to be separated. Jean-François
Regnard, with Le Légataire universel (1708), may be seen as his successor in the comedy of intrigue, Alain-René Le Sage, with Turcaret
(1709), as his successor in social satire, and Dancourt, with Le Chevalier à la mode (1687), as his successor in the comedy of manners and
in farce. All were to be overshadowed by Marivaux, whose subtle psychological comedies in an Italianate style may have been in Voltaire’s
mind when he complained of dramatists “using cobweb scales to weigh
ants’ eggs,”2 but can be seen as fitting securely into a tradition that runs
from the early comedies of Pierre Corneille, through Alfred de Musset
to Jean Anouilh and such contemporary filmmakers as Eric Rohmer:
a tradition typically French in its insouciant yet sensitive morality
coupled with witty linguistic exuberance.
Serious drama in the 18th century began bleakly with the horrorladen Senecan dramas of Prosper-Jolyot de Crébillon, notably Atrée et
Thyeste (1707); and Voltaire seems to have been too concerned to avoid
the barbarisms he saw in Shakespeare to take tragedy beyond somewhat
static and formulaic imitations of Racine, although he achieved critical
acclaim with Zaïre (1732), Mahomet (1741) and Mérope (1743). More
original, and more in keeping with the sensitivities of the age, was the
new genre of comédie larmoyante, developed by Philippe Néricault
Destouches (Le Philosophe marié, 1727) and Pierre-Claude Nivelle de
La Chaussée (La Fausse Antipathie, 1733), and culminating in the gritty
but slightly sentimental realism of Michel-Jean Sedaine’s Le Philosophe sans le savoir (1765) and Louis Sébastien Mercier’s La Brouette
du Vinaigrier (1775).
If the middle years of the century were marked by a paucity of worldranking new dramatists, they were nevertheless strong in terms of theatrical performance, and a string of actors emerged whose names have
remained on the roll of honor of the French stage: Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mlle Dumesnil, Mlle Clairon, Brizard, Lekain, François-René
Molé, Préville, Mme Vestris, Louise-Françoise Contat and Dazincourt.
Their work was underpinned by theoretical interest in the nature of acting undertaken by Denis Diderot and Louis Sébastien Mercier. Into this
context, which seems to have been dominated by rather earnest attempts
to recapture an age that had in practice receded, exploded the comic
genius of Beaumarchais, with Le Barbier de Séville (1775) and above
all Le Mariage de Figaro, completed by 1781, performed in 1784 and
8 •
INTRODUCTION
turned into an internationally successful opera by Mozart in 1786—still
three years before the ancien régime, which it so mercilessly satirized,
was finally brought to an end by the French Revolution. Those two
plays seem to reassemble all the strands in French comic writing that
had been rather tentatively keeping themselves to themselves throughout the century since the death of Molière: sharp social observation,
sweet sentimentality, linguistic inventiveness, a wry but unflinching
demolition of all that was pompous and self-satisfied both in life and in
literature, and an endless vein of comic creativity in pithy text, telling
gesture and fantastic action.
The end of the century marked a new dawn in theater as in other
realms: the Comédie-française (briefly renamed the Théâtre-Français)
found its ultimate home; the Odéon (where Le Mariage de Figaro had
been performed) was also established as a theater house; and two new
stars, Talma and Mlle Mars, made their débuts in plays and on stages
that anticipated the excitements of the Romantic period.
ROMANTIC DRAMA
The second major flowering of French drama, that associated with the
Romantic period, was a good deal more explosive than the first, but
rather short-lived. The “querelles” of the classical period, largely dry
and academic, gave way to a veritable “bataille” over the Romantic
æsthetic that succeeded in displacing classicism for a decade or so. The
Romantics’ theoretical position was established before any of their practical achievements—not normally a recipe for artistic success, although
in this case the theory was derived from the most practically grounded
of experiences, that of Shakespeare on a real stage. Despite the dogged
resistance of Voltaire, there had been some attempts in France to publish
and perform Shakespeare, in English or in French, from around 1745:
translations by Pierre-Antoine de La Place and Jean-François Ducis,
and visits from David Garrick who befriended Mlle Clairon. During the
same period, the influence of Shakespeare was having a much stronger
impact on the development of German drama, but France was relatively
isolated culturally as well as politically, and actors and audiences—insofar as they survived the decade of the Revolution and the Terror—remained faithful to an essentially conservative view of the theater. It was
not until the 1820s that a Shakespearean attitude was espoused, first in
INTRODUCTION
• 9
theory through texts by Stendhal (Racine et Shakespeare) and Victor
Hugo (Préface to Cromwell), secondly through the model offered by
a successful series of Shakespeare performances given at the Odéon
by British actors including Charles Kemble and Harriet Smithson, and
finally in practice with new and groundbreaking plays by Alexandre
Dumas père (Henri III et sa cour and Antony), Alfred de Vigny (Le
More de Venise, adapted from Shakespeare’s Othello, and Chatterton)
and Victor Hugo (Marion de Lorme and Hernani). All the main acting
stars of the day were involved in this resurgence of theatrical vigor:
Mlle Mars, Joanny, Marie Dorval, Frédérick Lemaître and Bocage; and
it is clear that Talma was on Hugo’s side but died before a performable
play in the new style had been added to the repertoire!
Curiously missing from that list of authors is the one who produced
what is probably the most successful Shakespearean play in French,
Alfred de Musset, whose Lorenzaccio had to wait 62 years for performance: after the failure of his first play, La Nuit vénitienne, at
the Odéon in 1830, he renounced practical theater, but he continued
writing dialogues and dramatic texts under the heading Un Spectacle
dans un fauteuil, or “armchair theater.” Thus liberated from practical
considerations, he gave free rein to a wide-ranging imagination in the
construction of complicated plots using a variety of settings and tones:
Un Caprice, André del Sarto, Il ne faut jurer de rien, Les Caprices
de Marianne, Fantasio and On ne badine pas avec l’amour. Most of
these, along with Lorenzaccio itself, are now firmly established in the
repertoire as high points of French drama and comedy and as worthy
representatives of the Romantic æsthetic that inspired Musset the poet,
but few were performed in his lifetime and none before 1847. By that
date, Musset had not only witnessed but actively supported a revival
of French classical tragedies built around the person of Rachel at the
Gymnase Theater, and following the retirement or death of Mlle Mars
(retired 1841), Marie Dorval (retired 1848) and Joanny (died 1849), the
French stage was once again seeking a new direction and a fresh start.
REALIST AND NATURALIST DRAMA
In fact, the middle years of the 19th century were characterized by a
wide variety of directions in drama. A strand that will be immediately
recognizable under the label “French farce”—although its roots go back
10 •
INTRODUCTION
to the 15th century—took fresh impetus from the works of Eugène
Labiche, Georges Courteline, Georges Feydeau, Fernand Beissier and
Tristan Bernard. Elements of the Romantic tradition continued, particularly in opera but also in such plays as Victor Hugo’s Les Burgraves,
while the neoclassical resurgence generated both revivals of plays by
Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille and also new works like François
Ponsard’s Lucrèce.
The period was dominated, however, by a new focus on the portrayal of everyday life, of recognizable contemporary French character
types in their familiar context, as drama followed narrative fiction into
Realism. Alexandre Dumas fils’s La Dame aux Camélias—despite
its romantic plotline and its success in operatic form—anticipated
this movement in its exploration of the more sordid aspects of human behavior and motivation and in its contemporary setting; and the
“well-made play” developed particularly by Eugène Scribe provided
a formal structure that Realist dramatists could adopt and adapt. The
director of the Gymnase Theater, Lemoine-Montigny, supported this
trend, championing new works by George Sand, Honoré de Balzac and
Émile Augier. Henry Becque and Eugène Brieux continued in the same
direction with plays that were often controversial in their bleak analysis
of contemporary society, until André Antoine applied to the theater the
sorts of scientific analysis of the causes of behavior and social attitudes
that the Naturalist novelists Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant had
explored in narrative fiction. Zola’s own attempts at dramatic writing
and adaptation met with no success, but he was to provide material for
several productions at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu, when William Busnach
successfully dramatized L’Assommoir and other narrative texts. Paul
Alexis, Octave Mirbeau, François de Curel, Paul Hervieu, Jules Renard
and Émile Fabre continued to refresh the Realist/Naturalist repertoire
with new plays throughout the 1880s and 1890s, but few of them have
stood the test of time, and this is only in part because works that strive
to be up to date inevitably become dated in a more obvious way than
works that aim at more universal values.
As the Realist and Naturalist schools had been a reaction against the
wilder imaginings of the Romantic movement, so they in turn invited
a counter-reaction, which in France took the quite distinctive form of
Symbolism. Influenced by the poet Charles Baudelaire and paralleled
by the development of Impressionist painting, dramatists sought to
INTRODUCTION
• 11
prioritize mental realities over the physical, ideals over harsh cynicism;
and playwrights such as Paul Fort and Maurice Mæterlinck, championed by director Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre d’Art and the Théâtre de
l’Œuvre, produced highly poetic but rather static and suggestive works
in which ideas rather than action carried the weight of the performance.
These compartments were not altogether watertight, and they coincided
and overlapped with each other: a five-year period from 1892 saw the
first performances of Mæterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Alfred de
Musset’s Lorenzaccio (written in 1834), Victorien Sardou’s Madame
Sans-Gêne, Henry Becque’s La Parisienne, Georges Feydeau’s Le Dindon, Alfred Jarry’s outrageous Ubu roi and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano
de Bergerac. During that same period, Henry Bataille reversed the
dominant trend by moving from a broadly Symbolist æsthetic toward
greater psychological realism, while Edmond Rostand seems to be a
Romantic dramatist lost in the wrong decade. Throughout the latter part
of the 19th century the dominant figure—by a distance—on the French
theatrical scene was one who more than any other defies compartmentalization: Sarah Bernhardt, whose repertoire ranged from the classical
(Phèdre and Le Cid) through the Romantic (Ruy Blas, Lorenzaccio and
Hamlet) to both of the contemporary strands (Rostand on the one hand,
Sardou on the other).
FROM SURREALISM TO THE ABSURD
Even before those interactions had run their course or the century ended,
a new explosion had rocked the world of drama: Alfred Jarry’s Ubu
roi, whose wild brutality pushed to a new extreme the dehumanizing
tendencies of Symbolist art and seemed to set a tone for the innovative
experimentation of the next 50 years of French theater. A sequence can
be traced from Symbolism through Surrealism and Dada to the Absurd,
but each stage seems characterized afresh by the desire to shock, to jolt
audiences out of all complacency, about their lives, about the role of
art and literature within those lives, and about the place and status of
theater within the country’s literary heritage. Serge Diaghilev’s muchquoted exhortation, “Étonne-moi,” can be dated precisely enough,3 but
seems to be as relevant to the 1890s (Ubu roi) and the 1950s (En Attendant Godot and La Cantatrice chauve) as to Cocteau’s own responses in
12 •
INTRODUCTION
the second and third decades of the century (Parade and Les Mariés de
la Tour Eiffel). Between the two most explosive years, 1896 and 1917,
there was, to be sure, a slight lull so far as textual drama was concerned,
as highly literary authors such as André Gide and Paul Claudel composed plays that were destined to wait decades for performance.
The links in the chain between Symbolism and Surrealism in that
period were musical rather than textual but still bound up with experimental performances: Claude Debussy’s musical reflection of
Stéphane Mallarmé’s Après-midi d’un faune was composed in 1894
and choreographed for Vaslav Nijinski in 1912; the same composer’s
operatic version of Pelléas et Mélisande was premièred in 1902, and
Igor Stravinski’s epoch-making ballet The Rite of Spring was composed
and performed in 1913. These paved the way for the two dramatic
turning points of 1917: Pierre Albert-Birot’s production of Guillaume
Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias—the first work of performance
art to which the term “surrealist” was applied—and the performance by
the Ballets russes of Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie’s ballet Parade. The
first of these foreshadowed the Dada-based theatrical spectacle of 1920
at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, incorporating work by Tristan Tzara, André
Breton, Philippe Soupault and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. The
second launched the multifaceted dramatic career of Cocteau, who was
to spend the next 40 years experimenting with different combinations
of space, text, décor, music and film: Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, Orphée, Œdipe-Roi, La Machine infernale, Les Parents terribles and La
Voix humaine were all in different ways innovative and challenging to
expectations of theater practitioners and audiences alike.
Other landmarks that occurred during the first 20 or so years of the
century included the foundation of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier,
that of the Théâtre national populaire, and the relaunch of the Théâtre de
l’Atelier. That these are considered significant events indicates the early
existence of what was to be the most distinctive feature of 20th-century
French theatrical life, its domination not by authors, or even by actors,
but by directors.4 The Cartel of Gaston Baty, Charles Dullin, Louis Jouvet and Georges Pitoëff sought to combat the purely commercial pressures that dominated the Paris stage in the 1920s by providing mutual
aid to ensure the viability of experimental and innovative theatrical artistry. From that point onwards, most of the major dramatists and actors
of the century were essentially defined by their relationship with one or
INTRODUCTION
• 13
more of those directorial figures or their disciples and successors: Louis
Jouvet with Jules Romains and Jean Giraudoux; Charles Dullin with
Marcel Achard, Armand Salacrou, Jean-Louis Barrault, Jean Marais,
Marcel Marceau and Jean Vilar; Georges Pitoëff with Jean Cocteau,
Jean Anouilh and André Gide; Gaston Baty with Marguerite Jamois.
Between them, they also introduced French audiences to an everexpanding range of drama from abroad: Ben Jonson, Calderón, Henrik
Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O’Neill, Anton Chekhov and
Luigi Pirandello, as well as adaptations of novels by Gustave Flaubert,
Dostoevski, Cervantes and others. The surrealist trend was perpetuated
by Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, several
of the composers of the Groupe des Six continued to provide scores for
stage, screen and concert hall, and the first wave took place of the 20thcentury’s ongoing reappraisal of the great French classics, particularly
Molière, Racine and Marivaux, and including Jouvet’s historic and successful revival of Corneille’s L’Illusion comique in 1937.
The dark years of the late 1930s and World War II did not see a
total eclipse of theatrical activity: actors including Barrault, Madeleine
Renaud, Alain Cuny, Pierre Dux and Marie Bell continued to perform
new works by Jean Giono, Henry de Montherlant, Cocteau and Claudel, before a new generation led by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
ensured the continuing political relevance of theater in the face of aggression and occupation.
The third and most powerful explosion of theatrical creativity in
the history of French drama was, as has often been pointed out, led by
writers from elsewhere who adopted French as their creative language:
the Irishman Samuel Beckett, the Romanian Eugène Ionesco, along
with Fernando Arrabal of Spanish origin, Arthur Adomov of Armenian
origin, and Jean Genet, who was French but made much of his denigration of, and isolation from, French society. The Theater of the Absurd
continued the challenge to audience expectations that had characterized
the works of Jarry, the Surrealists and Cocteau: like them, Absurdist
authors sought to provoke rather than convince or entice spectators.
They took to a new level their demonstration of the inadequacy of
language for human communication, and their systematic devaluing of
all conventional theatrical resources, such as character, plot and diction. Although their works often explored social issues implicitly—and
in the case of Ionesco’s Rhinocéros and Genet’s Les Paravents quite
14 •
INTRODUCTION
explicitly—their general tendency was not so much to have a direct
social impact as to question and undermine the potential of theater or
other literary and artistic forms to have any impact at all on the deadened sensitivity of modern humanity. This defeatist and nihilist attitude
received the predictable reactions of ribaldry, rejection and scorn, but
it did succeed in jolting at least some of the complacency of traditional
theater audiences and in highlighting above all contemporary society’s
inherent conformism.
Although dominant, works that fit the Absurdist label unreservedly
were by no means unchallenged, and the 15 years following World
War II also saw historic productions in Paris of works by Shakespeare,
Arthur Miller and August Strindberg, the influential visit of Bertolt
Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, and new works by Jacques Audiberti,
Armand Salacrou and Paul Claudel, as well as further productions of
French classics from Racine to Musset. The period was still dominated
by directors more than by playwrights: among dramatists of the postwar
generation, Michel Vinaver and Yasmina Reza seem assured of an international reputation, but are considerably outnumbered by stage practitioners and designers such as Roger Planchon, Jean-Marie Serreau,
Antoine Vitez, Jacques Lassalle, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine and
Yannis Kokkos.
French theater in the past half century has always been characterized
by creative interactions—between tradition and innovation; between
authors and theater practitioners; between theorists, semiologists and
creative artists; between theater itself and cinema or other performance
media—and although these have sometimes brought tension and controversy, they have all contributed to a vigor, inventiveness and exuberant life that seem to ensure the ongoing centrality of live performance
art to the French artistic consciousness.
NOTES
1. Vivian Mercier (1919–1989) writing in the Irish Times, 18 February
1956, p. 6.
2. Voltaire used the phrase in a letter to Nicolas Trublet, 27 April 1761. See
his Œuvres complètes, ed. Theodore Besterman, vol. 107, p. 187. For its application to Marivaux, see, for example, Marivaux, Théâtre complet, ed. Marcel
INTRODUCTION
• 15
Arland, Paris: Gallimard, 1949, p. x; Henry Lagrave, Marivaux et sa fortune
littéraire, Bordeaux: Ducros, 1970, p. 165.
3. In his 1946 collection of essays, La Difficulté d’être (Paris: Editions du
Rocher, 2003, p. 45), Jean Cocteau recalled that Serge Diaghilev issued this
challenge to him in 1912.
4. See M. Vinaver, Théâtre de Chambre, edited with introduction and notes
by David Bradby, London: Bristol Classical Press, 1995, p. vii.
The Dictionary
– A –
ABIRACHED, ROBERT (1930– ). French national director of theater
and spectacle under Jack Lang (minister of culture), following François Mitterrand’s election victory in 1981. Abirached was responsible
for considerable increases in the state subsidy of regional and national
theater, and for a major reorganization of systems of control. Also active as a journalist and critic, he had a distinguished academic career
as professor at the Universities of Caën and of Paris X-Nanterre,
publishing among other works La Crise du personnage dans le
théâtre moderne (The Crisis of Character in Modern Theater, 1978),
Le Théâtre et le prince (Theater and the Prince, 1992), and La Décentralisation théâtrale (Decentralization and the Theater, 1995).
ABSURD, THEATER OF THE. Label widely applied to French
theater of the 1950s, dominated by Eugène Ionesco and Samuel
Beckett. Also referred to as theater of derision and as anti-theater, it
emphasized either a philosophical stance that explores the meaninglessness of existence (see CAMUS, ALBERT) or a total resistance
to the idea that theater can expound meaning or reflect reality. It had
roots in Alfred Jarry and Surrealist theater and was influenced by
the complex theatricality of Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936). In France
its seminal works were Ionesco, La Cantatrice chauve (The Bald
Prima Donna, 1950), and Beckett, En Attendant Godot (Waiting for
Godot, first directed by Roger Blin in 1953), which explore the inadequacy of language for human communication. Undermining conventional notions of character, plot and diction, Absurd Theater often
attacks social injustice and individual conformism or inadequacy, but
its true target was the complacency of traditional theater audiences.
17
18 •
ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE
See also ADAMOV, ARTHUR; APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME;
ARRABAL, FERNANDO; BILLETDOUX, FRANÇOIS; COMEDY; GENET, JEAN; HUCHETTE, THÉÂTRE DE LA; KOLTÈS,
BERNARD-MARIE; MARTIN, JEAN; OBALDIA, RENÉ DE; ROMAINS, JULES; SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL; TARDIEU, JEAN.
ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE. A learned society founded by Cardinal
Richelieu in 1634, officially recognized by Louis XIII in 1635,
entrusted initially with the preservation and purity of the French
language, and as part of that task with the compilation of an authoritative dictionary of French (the first edition of which did not appear
until 1694). The Académie was also involved from its earliest days
in controversies surrounding theatrical texts (see LA QUERELLE
DU CID). It has more recently taken on an additional role as patron
of the arts, awarding grants and around 60 literary prizes. Of the 27
members originally appointed in March 1634, no fewer than six were
dramatists, or critics particularly associated with drama—Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595–1676), François Ogier, François Le
Métel de Boisrobert (1592–1662), Jean Chapelain, Guillaume Colletet (1598–1659) and Claude de L’Estoile (1602–1652)—and they
were joined or replaced by a further 10, including Pierre Corneille
and Jean Racine, before the end of the 17th century. Since then, the
proportion of academicians directly involved in theater has declined;
the Académie’s website lists 115 dramatists, four film directors and
four actors among the 719 “Immortals” elected before August 2009.
In that month, three of the 40 members, Florence Delay, Félicien
Marceau and René de Obaldia, were dramatists. See also FLERS,
ROBERT DE.
ACHARD, MARCEL. Authorial pseudonym of Marcel Augustin Ferréol (1899–1974), dramatist. He obtained some notoriety with his third
play, Voulez-vous jouer avec moâ? (You Coming to Play with Me?),
an avant-garde farce with circus-based elements, directed in 1924 by
Charles Dullin at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, but his international reputation was assured by Jean de la Lune (The Dreamer) in 1929. His
work is characterized by humor, emotion and poetic melancholy, and
has never lost touch with its roots in commedia dell’arte and circus;
the eponymous hero of Jean de la Lune, incarnated by Louis Jouvet,
ACTOR
• 19
combines the ridicule and the pathos of a clown with the naïve confidence of a Harlequin. Other key works include Domino, also first
performed by Jouvet in 1932, Noix de coco (Coconuts, 1936), Adam
(1939), Auprès de ma blonde (Alongside My Blonde, 1946), Nous
irons à Valparaiso (We’ll Go to Valparaiso, 1947), Le Moulin de la
Galette (1951), Les Compagnons de la marjolaine (The Companions
of Marjoram, 1953), Patate (Spud), first performed by Pierre Dux
in 1954, and L’Idiote, first performed by Annie Girardot (1931– ) at
the Théâtre Antoine in 1960. Achard also wrote scenarios or screenplays for early films, notably Mayerling (1936) by Anatole Litvak
(1902–1974), Madame de . . . (1953) by Max Ophüls (1902–1957),
and La Femme et le Pantin (The Woman and the Puppet, known as A
Woman Like Satan, 1959) by Julien Duvivier (1896–1967). Achard
was elected to the Académie française in 1959. See also ŒUVRE,
THÉÂTRE DE L’; PALAIS-ROYAL.
ACTOR. The French word comédien (feminine comédienne) is generally used to refer to all actors, although it can also mean “comic
actor,” in contrast with tragédien(ne). Pejorative terms in common
use include cabotin, histrion and baladin. As in other Western cultures, actors in France have generally been treated with some disdain
by social and intellectual snobs. In the 17th century, acting troupes
were generally run as cooperatives, so actors such as Jodelet, Bellerose and Molière also had responsibility for stage direction and
for company management. In that period most actors were identified with a particular character type—king, old man, wily servant,
young lover—and often retained the same character name in roles
that were written for them. Following the formation of the ComédieFrançaise in 1680, a stronger sense of repertory theater and team
work emerged, although most generations produced distinctive
stars. From the Romantic period through to the early 20th century,
the French stage was again more dominated by individuals, such as
Mounet-Sully, Rachel and Talma. The increasing importance of
stage directors in 20th-century theater has led to a relative decline
in the status and individuality of actors, although the cinema has ensured that major figures continue to have celebrity status.
Twentieth-century theories of acting have described the relationship between the actor and his role in many different ways: Gordon
20 •
ADAM, PAUL
Craig (1872–1966) saw him as no more than a puppet obeying
the instructions of the director, whereas Constantin Stanislavski
(1863–1938) and the Actors’ Studio in New York under Lee Strasberg (1901–1982) developed a more psychoanalytic approach based
on exploration of the actor’s subjectivity, and Vsevolod Meyerhold
(1874–1940) attached importance rather to the physicality of acting.
Bertolt Brecht insisted on the separation of the intellect and emotion
and on the deliberate stimulation of the audience’s critical faculties
by his theory of defamiliarization: for him, the actor was a demonstrator rather than an incarnation of his role. Every one of these
influences was developed outside France but had significant impact
on the work of major French directors in the 20th century.
ADAM, PAUL (1862–1920). Symbolist poet, novelist, journalist and
dramatist. His early drama L’Automne (Autumn) was a victim of censorship in 1893, but his comedy Les Mouettes (The Seagulls) was
directed by Jules Claretie at the Comédie-Française in 1906.
ADAM DE LA HALLE (c1240–c1285). Also known as Adam Le
Bossu, French trouvère who can be considered the first French secular dramatist. His Jeu de la feuillée (Play of the Greenwood, c1276)
contains both satire and fantasy, while the Jeu de Robin et de Marion
(c1285) is a dramatic dialogue with musical intermèdes. Adam had
studied at Paris and in Italy and was in the service of Count Robert
d’Artois in 1271 and of Charles d’Anjou, king of Sicily and Naples,
in 1283. A modern adaptation of the Jeu de la feuillée was presented
by the Comédie-Française at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in
2003.
ADAMOV, ARTHUR (1908–1970). French dramatist of Armenian
origin. His early life was disrupted by World War I, when he was exiled in Germany, and this experience, allied to the influence of Franz
Kafka (1883–1924), Carl Jung (1875–1961) and early Surrealism,
led to a strong sense of personal alienation. His involvement in theatrical activity, initially triggered by Antonin Artaud’s productions
of August Strindberg (1849–1912) and later influenced by Marxism,
embraced allegorical parables, didactic plays in the style of Bertolt
Brecht’s theater of commitment, and Absurd dramas. Key works
ADAPTATION
• 21
include La Parodie (written in 1947, published and performed in
1950), La Grande et La Petite Manœuvre (The Big Maneuver and the
Small, 1950), Le Professeur Taranne (1953), Le Ping-Pong (1955),
Paolo Paoli (1957) and Off Limits (1969). See also MARTIN, JEAN;
PLANCHON, ROGER; VIEUX-COLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
ADAPTATION. Either the transcription of a nondramatic text (most
commonly a novel) for the stage or the transposition of a play
from its original setting to a different context. In one sense all
productions of dramatic texts are adaptations, so the term is most
commonly retained for examples where there is a definite change
of medium or a significant change of period: dramatic adaptations
of Realist and Naturalist novels, for example (see DUMAS, ALEXANDRE FILS; DUQUESNEL, FÉLIX-HENRI; GONCOURT,
EDMOND AND JULES HUOT DE; ZOLA, ÉMILE), or productions in modern dress of plays from an earlier period. The domination of directors in 20th-century Parisian theater has meant that
adaptation of established nondramatic authors to the stage, or of
stage classics to new settings, has been a prominent and often
controversial phenomenon: Jean-Louis Barrault’s Rabelais and
Jean-Paul Sartre’s version of Euripides’ Trojan Women as an
antiwar oratorio in 1965, with reference to Vietnam and Algeria,
are significant examples.
In the case of translations, a delicate balance must be struck: literal
fidelity to the original generally produces a translation that is simply
bad, so some adaptation to the language and culture of the target
audience is essential. Almost all translations of the work of William
Shakespeare into French, for example those by Jean-François Ducis, Alfred de Vigny, Fernand Crommelynck, Léon Marcel and
Valère Novarina, involving significant linguistic or dramaturgical
modification, are adaptations rather than translations.
Sometimes significant chains of adaptation span continents and
periods: the works of Plautus, adaptations of Greek originals, were
themselves adapted into French by such dramatists as Jean Antoine de Baif and Molière. The latter’s Le Misanthrope (1666) was
adapted into English as The Plain Dealer (1677) by the Restoration
playwright William Wycherley (c1640–1716), which in turn became
the source for Voltaire’s comedy La Prude (1740).
22 •
ALBERT-BIROT, PIERRE
A number of French plays have become most widely known
internationally in operatic adaptations: this is the case for several
Romantic dramas by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas fils,
and for Beaumarchais’s best-known comedies, Le Barbier de
Séville (The Barber of Seville, 1775), adapted as Il Barbiere di
Siviglia (1816) by Gioacchino Rossini, and Le Mariage de Figaro
(Figaro’s Wedding, 1784), adapted as Le Nozze di Figaro (1786) by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). See also ADAM DE LA
HALLE; AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE DE L’; ANOUILH, JEAN; AYMÉ,
MARCEL; BATY, GASTON; CÂFÉ-THÉÂTRE; CARRIÈRE,
JEAN-CLAUDE; CÉSAIRE, AIMÉ; CIXOUS, HÉLÈNE; CORNEILLE, PIERRE; CORNEILLE, THOMAS; DARD, FRÉDÉRIC;
DENNERY, ADOLPHE; DOM JUAN; DUBILLARD, ROLAND;
DURAS, MARGUERITE; ENGEL, ANDRÉ; FABIEN, MICHÈLE;
FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU, NICOLAS-LOUIS; GIONO,
JEAN; HADING, JANE; JAMOIS, MARGUERITE; KOKKOS,
YANNIS; LEKAIN; MARAIS, JEAN; MÉTÉNIER, OSCAR; MIRBEAU, OCTAVE; MOLÉ, FRANÇOIS-RENÉ; MOUNET, PAUL;
MOUNET-SULLY; MUSSET, ALFRED DE; OHNET, GEORGES;
PAGNOL, MARCEL; PINGET, ROBERT; PIXÉRÉCOURT, RENÉCHARLES GUILBERT DE; PLANCHON, ROGER; RÉJANE;
RENARD, JULES; ROTROU, JEAN DE; SAINT-ÉVREMOND,
CHARLES DE MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS DE; SOBEL,
BERNARD; SOULIÉ, FRÉDÉRIC; VIAN, BORIS; YOURCENAR,
MARGUÉRITE DE.
ALBERT-BIROT, PIERRE (1876–1967). Dadaist poet, dramatist
and theater manager. Having trained as an artist and sculptor, he
abandoned work in that sphere after World War I and devoted himself to journalism, directing the influential modernist journal SIC, to
which the leading figures of Futurism and Surrealism contributed,
including Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy (1889–1960),
Louis Aragon (1897–1983), Philippe Soupault (1897–1990), Raymond Radiguet (1903–1923) and Tristan Tzara. Albert-Birot’s
own poetic output was initially influenced by Symbolism, and he
remained totally hostile to all kinds of Realism in art. He directed
the first performance of Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias
ALEXANDRINE
• 23
(Tiresias’s Breasts, 1917) and wrote about a dozen plays between
1917 and 1924, including Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard), Matoum et
Tévibar, L’Homme coupé en morceaux (The Dismembered Man) and
Les Femmes pliantes (The Flexible Women), but when he himself
founded a theater under the title Le Plateau in 1929, he could not
afford to produce these, and he wrote a series of short performance
pieces entitled Pièces-Études for this company.
ALBERT-LAMBERT. Stage name of Raphaël Albert Lambert (1865–
1941), actor. The son of an actor, he made his début at the Odéon in
François Coppée’s Severo Torelli (1883) and moved quickly to the
Comédie-Française, where he specialized in Romantic and tragic
roles, including Ruy Blas and Hamlet, but also achieved success as
Alceste (in Molière’s Le Misanthrope) and in contemporary plays by
Paul Hervieu and Victorien Sardou. He retired in 1935.
ALEXANDRINE. A line of French verse consisting of 12 syllables,
which was the basic metrical constituent of most verse plays from the
Renaissance to the Romantic period. The alexandrine is particularly
well suited to the expression of balanced conflict, as in these lines
from Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid:
Je travaille à le perdre, et le perd à regret (l. 115)
[“I strive to lose him but lose him with regret”]
Ce que je méritais, vous l’avez emporté (l. 215)
[“The prize that I deserved, you carried off”]
Contre mon propre honneur mon amour s’intéresse (l. 302)
[“Against my own honor my love is engaged”]
Je cours à mon supplice, et non pas au combat (l. 1480)
[“I hasten to execution, not to combat”]
Jean Racine was able to impart to the alexandrine a more lyrical
flexibility to express fatalistic inevitability:
Je me livre en aveugle au destin qui m’entraîne (Andromaque, l. 98)
[“Blindly I embrace that fate that claims me”]
static quietude:
Mais tout dort, et l’armée, et les vents, et Neptune (Iphigénie, l. 9)
[“But all is at rest: the troops, the winds, the sea”]
24 •
ALEXIS, PAUL
and the haunting effect of obsessive despair:
Tout m’afflige et me nuit et conspire à me nuire (Phèdre, l. 161)
[“All things afflict me, harm and conspire to harm me”]
The Romantic dramatists retained the use of 12-syllable lines but
made almost a game of rendering them unrecognizable—for example, the opening couplet of Victor Hugo’s Hernani:
Serait-ce déjà lui? C’est bien à l’escalier
Dérobé. Vite, ouvrons. Bonjour, beau cavalier
[“Can that be him already? Steps on the hidden
Staircase anyway! Quick, open up. Goodday, gentle knight”]
where the splitting up of the phrases into irregular groups (further interrupted in practice by knocks on the door and stage action) conceals
the underlying rhythmic pattern.
ALEXIS, PAUL (1847–1901). Journalist and dramatist in the Naturalist school. His works were initially rejected by Paul Porel, director
of the Odéon, but were taken up by André Antoine and performed at
his Théâtre-Libre, notably Mademoiselle Pomme (1887) and La Fin
de Lucie Pellegrin (The Demise of Lucie Pellegrin, 1888 dramatization of his 1880 novel), which caused a scandal by its treatment of
lesbianism. See also MÉTÉNIER, OSCAR.
ALIENATION. See DEFAMILIARIZATION.
AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE DE L’. Paris theater house, in the boulevard du
Temple, formerly known as the Théâtre d’Audinot, then as the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique. Under its director Jean-Baptiste Labenette
(1759–1815), who used the pseudonym Corse or Corsse, and with
Louis Daguerre as its ambitious and inventive set designer, it was
particularly associated with the works of René-Charles Pixérécourt
and other boulevard melodramas in the early 1800s, and it was
the venue for Frédérick Lemaître’s outstanding success as Robert
Macaire in 1823. Following a fire in 1827, and despite a brief resurgence during the directorship of Antony Béraud (1792–1860) in the
1840s, the theater was eclipsed until melodrama returned to popularity
during the Second Empire. Thereafter it turned to the new domain of
Realism, staging a number of successful adaptations of novels by
ANOUILH, JEAN
• 25
Émile Zola (L’Assommoir in 1879, Nana in 1881). In the 1880s the
theater was bought and managed by Sarah Bernhardt’s son Maurice
(1864–1928). Having been used as a cinema, it was reopened as a
theater by the actor Christian Casadesus (1912– ) in 1954, performing
a contemporary repertoire including works by François Billetdoux
and Roger Vitrac. It was finally closed and demolished in 1966. See
also MÉNIER, PAULIN; PIERSON, BLANCHE ADELINE.
ANCEY, GEORGES. Pseudonym of Georges Mathevon de Curnieu
(1860–1917), minor comic dramatist, author of M. Lamblin (1888),
Les Inséparables (1888)—in which Lugné-Poe made his first appearance at André Antoine’s Théâtre-Libre—and Grand’mère (1890).
ANOUILH, JEAN (1910–1987). Prolific dramatist, excelling in all
genres from light vaudeville to tragedy. His bittersweet comedies
are in the tradition of Marivaux, his classical tragedies—often
informed with a strong sense of the theatrical—use the linguistic
dexterity of a Jean Giraudoux to evoke the intensity of a Jean
Racine. His works are difficult to classify in conventional terms,
partly because of the secrecy with which he surrounded his private
life and influences, and partly because of his refusal to align himself either with mainstream popular theater or with the avant-garde.
The writing of Giraudoux—particularly the first performance of his
Siegfried in 1928—the acting of Louis Jouvet, for whom he worked
for a time in 1930, and the direction of Georges Pitoëff were clear
influences. Performances of L’Hermine (Ermine) at the Théâtre
de l’Œuvre in 1932 were well received critically, but Anouilh’s
first real success came with Pitoëff’s productions of Le Voyageur
sans bagages (The Traveler with No Luggage, 1937) and La Sauvage (The Shrew, also known as Restless Heart, 1938) and André
Barsacq’s production at the Théâtre des Arts of Le Bal des voleurs
(Thieves’ Carnival, 1938).
Anouilh himself divided his output into categories that he labeled
Pièces roses: Le Bal des voleurs; Pièces noires: Le Voyageur sans
bagages, La Sauvage, Antigone (1944); Pièces brillantes: L’Invitation
au château (1947), Colombe (1951); Pièces grinçantes: La Valse des
toréadors (The Toreadors’ Waltz, 1952), Pauvre Bitos (Poor Bitos,
1956); Pièces costumées: Beckett ou L’Honneur de Dieu (Beckett, or
26 •
ANTIER, BENJAMIN
God’s Honor, 1959); Pièces baroques: Cher Antoine (1969); Pièces
secrètes: L’Arrestation (The Arrest, 1975); and Pièces farceuses
(Chers Zoiseaux, 1976), although the rationale for such divisions is
not always clear. A number of his plays give original twists to traditional dramatic sources: as well as Antigone, Eurydice (1942) and
Médée (1953), he wrote L’Alouette (The Lark, 1953), a play about
Joan of Arc, Ornifle ou Le Courant d’air (Ornifle, or The Draught,
also known as It’s Later Than You Think, 1955), a version of the Don
Juan myth, and Tu étais si gentil quand tu étais petit (You Used to Be
So Nice When You Were Little, written in 1969, with some reference
to the events of 1968, but not performed until 1972), which retells the
story of Electra and Orestes.
In the last-named play and many others (Cher Antoine, Le Directeur de l’Opéra, 1972), as well as indirectly through his pervasive use of figures representing self-conscious actors or a chorus,
Anouilh explores the nature of theatrical illusion in a self-referential
way. His strengths in the use of theatrical space, trenchant dialogue
and wit to expose banality are always directed toward a bitter and
ultimately pessimistic exposure of social convention, of commercialism, of hypocrisy and of blind allegiance to traditional values such as
democracy, love and the family.
Anouilh’s Antigone, written in 1942 and first directed by Barsacq
at the Théâtre de l’Atelier in 1944, caused controversy because of
its ambivalent stance on resistance and collaboration.
L’Invitation au château (The Invitation to the Castle) was successfully adapted by Christopher Fry (1907–2005) as Ring Around the
Moon in 1950. See also BROOK, PETER; DEFAMILIARIZATION;
NARRATOR; ROMAINS, JULES.
ANTIER, BENJAMIN (1787–1870). Author of melodramas, most
notably L’Auberge des Adrets (1823), which catapulted Frédérick
Lemaître to fame in the role of Robert Macaire. See also SAINTAMAND.
ANTI-THEATER. See ABSURD, THEATER OF THE.
ANTOINE, ANDRÉ (1858–1943). Innovative stage director, the
first to claim directorial credit and to insist on the integral unity of
APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME
• 27
production. Strongly influenced by Naturalism, he mounted a dramatization of Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir in 1900 and several plays
by the Goncourt brothers. After a season as director of the Théâtre
Montparnasse, he founded the Théâtre-Libre in 1887, renaming it
Théâtre Antoine in 1897. He championed polemical authors marginalized in mainstream theater, such as Paul Alexis, Eugène Brieux,
Georges Courteline, François de Curel and Jules Renard, and foreign dramatists, including Lev Nikolaïevitch Tolstoy (1828–1910),
Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), August Strindberg (1849–1912) and
Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946). The world première of Tolstoy’s
play The Power of Darkness, which had been banned in Russia, was
mounted by Antoine in 1888. As director of the Odéon, 1906–1914,
Antoine renewed interest in authentic period productions of classical
texts, including both Jean Racine (Andromaque, 1909) and William
Shakespeare (Roméo et Juliette, 1910).
Antoine articulated the theory of the fourth wall: when the curtain
rises, the spectator observes the interior of the set as though a wall
has been removed from a real venue. He took the quest for naturalistic production—summed up in his phrase the “slice of life”—to an
extreme, by introducing real props, insisting that the audience sat
in darkness, using actors without formal training and rejecting the
grandiloquent acting style that was current at that time. Following
the example of the German Meininger company whose work he had
seen in Brussels in 1888, he introduced huge crowd scenes into his
production of the Goncourts’ La Patrie en danger (The Fatherland
in Danger, written in 1873, but not hitherto performed). After World
War I, confronted with a reaction against Naturalism led by Jacques
Copeau and Louis Jouvet, Antoine had little involvement with
theatrical activity but concentrated on cinema and on criticism. See
also ACHARD, MARCEL; BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH; EXPRESSIONISM; FABRE, ÉMILE; FORT, PAUL; GÉMIER, FIRMIN;
ICRES, FERNAND; LUGNÉ-POE; PORTO-RICHE, GEORGES
DE; ROCHER, RENÉ; ROMAINS, JULES.
APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME (1880–1918). Surrealist author,
whose real name was either Wilhelm Apollinaris or GuillelmusApollinaris-Albertus de Kostrowitzky. Primarily a poet, he first
applied the term “surrealist” to his drama Les Mamelles de Tirésias
28 •
ARISTOTLE
(Tiresias’s Breasts, 1917), directed by the Dadaist Pierre AlbertBirot, to whom it is dedicated. The première of this play provoked
a scandal, seeming to push performance art to shocking new limits,
both by its theme—the urgent one, in the context of World War I, of
depopulation—and by the parodic, even cynical and nihilistic, attitude expressed toward both society and theater. Apollinaire also wrote
a three-act verse play, La Couleur du temps (Color of Time, 1918).
Although Cubism, Dadaism and Futurism did not create many successful individual works of theater, they provided a link between
the Symbolist theater of the 1890s and Absurd Theater. See also
AUDIBERTI, JACQUES; POULENC, FRANCIS; RIBEMONTDESSAIGNES, GEORGES; ROINARD, PAUL-NAPOLÉON.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 BC). Ancient Greek philosopher and literary
theorist whose Poetics provided a constant source of ideas on classical drama, particularly tragedy (it is believed that a section of the
Poetics devoted to comedy was lost). Allegiance to the ideas of Aristotle, as interpreted by theorists, was an essential test of orthodoxy
in literary circles in the 16th and 17th centuries (see LA QUERELLE
DU CID). Several key concepts that are considered integral to the
special qualities of tragedy can be traced to the Poetics—the generation of catharsis by arousing pity and fear, the use of peripeteia and
anagnorisis to produce a dramatic climax, and the notion of hamartia
as the basis of ethical ambiguity—although Aristotle gave less weight
than has often been thought to formal considerations such as the unities, and much of what he said on other topics is condensed and
contradictory. Nevertheless, almost all the most significant theorists
and practitioners of serious French drama from 1550 until the 18th
century insisted on their fidelity to the letter and/or the spirit of rules
that were ascribed to him (see AUBIGNAC, FRANÇOIS HÉDELIN,
L’ABBÉ D’; CORNEILLE, PIERRE; JODELLE, ÉTIENNE; LA
TAILLE, JEAN DE; MAIRET, JEAN; RACINE, JEAN; SCALIGER, JULES-CÉSAR; SOPHOCLES; VAUQUELIN DE LA
FRESNAYE, JEAN). Only in the 20th century was his basis for serious theater as an emotional experience of value to society challenged,
particularly with Bertolt Brecht’s explicitly “anti-Aristotelian” theater of defamiliarization and commitment.
ARRABAL, FERNANDO
• 29
ARLECCHINO, ARLEQUIN. See HARLEQUIN.
AROUET, FRANÇOIS-MARIE. See VOLTAIRE.
ARRABAL, FERNANDO (1932– ). Writer and dramatist of Spanish
origin who has lived in Paris since 1955; his plays were written predominantly for the French stage, some being translated into French
by his wife. His drama, strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud,
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Alfred Jarry, draws on carnival traditions to explore serious social and political themes. Eroticism, mysticism and dream combine to produce a brutal theatricality of joyful
subversion. His work is haunted by his reaction to the dictatorship
of Spain (1939–1975) under Francisco Franco (1892–1975): ecclesiastical corruption, military oppression and social misery are all
challenged by heartless derision. Like Absurd Theater, his output
combines farce with tragedy, fantasy and caricature with pitiless
realism, vulgarity with poetry. He himself used the term “panique” to
convey both the Dionysian tone and the cruel content of his theater.
Key works include Fando et Lis (1955), Le Grand Cérémonial (The
Grand Ceremonial, 1963), Le Jardin des délices (The Garden of Delights, 1967) and Bestialité érotique (1968), in which love is allied
to death, sickness, bestiality or sadomasochism; Guernica (1959),
which explores the indifference of alienated characters to political
turmoil; La Bicyclette du condamné (The Condemned Man’s Bicycle, 1959), Le Labyrinthe (1967) and L’Architecte et l’Empereur
d’Assyrie (1966), in which the individual becomes a guilt-ridden
puppet at the mercy of legal or other systems of oppression; and
L’Aurore rouge et noire (Red and Black Dawn, 1968), which uses a
multiplicity of audiovisual resources to explore the theme of social
revolution and moves Arrabal’s theater from the absurd toward the
theater of commitment.
Despite his controversial and iconoclastic qualities, Arrabal obtained the Grand Prix de Théâtre for Jorge Lavelli’s successful production at the Théâtre Montparnasse of L’Architecte et l’Empereur
d’Assyrie, which was also directed in 1971 by Laurence Olivier
(1907–1989) in London’s National Theatre. More typically, Arrabal
received the Grand Prix de l’Humour Noir in 1968, and he went on
to be awarded the New York World Theater Prize in 1984 and the
30 •
ARTAUD, ANTONIN
Prix de Théâtre de l’Académie française in 1993. Overall, his output
is disconcerting and provocative through its combination of fantasy,
social didacticism and destructive humor. He has also written 12
novels, film scenarios and several volumes of poems and essays and
created a wide range of visual artworks.
ARTAUD, ANTONIN (1896–1948). Surrealist stage director, actor and theorist about theater. Born in Marseille, he was brought
up and educated there and in Smyrna (the home of his mother and
grandmother). He spent several periods of his life, amounting to
about seven years in total, in institutions undergoing treatment for
mental disorders. In 1921 he acted for Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre de
l’Œuvre and for Charles Dullin at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, before
being engaged by Georges Pitoëff in 1923. He was a cofounder in
1926 with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron (1898–1975) of the Surrealist Théâtre Alfred Jarry. In Le Théâtre de la cruauté (The Theater
of Cruelty, 1932) and Le Théâtre et son double (The Theater and
Its Double, 1938), he expounded his theory of a totally free theater,
prioritizing mise-en-scène (production) over text and challenging
audiences to (or beyond) the limits of emotional tolerance. He saw
the theater not as a direct copy of superficial reality but rather as a
different reality (hence “double”) akin to the world of dreams and
bloodthirsty primitive instincts (hence “cruelty”).
Artaud was influenced in this direction by the ritualistic violence
and expressive gestures of oriental, particularly Balinese, theater, as
well as by the incantatory abstract language of Symbolism. Apart
from a short text, Jet de sang (Spurt of Blood), scheduled for performance at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry in 1926, but not performed until
1964, Artaud’s only play, Les Cenci (1935), based on a drama by
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and a short story by Stendhal,
was not a success, although its innovative use of theater in the round,
and of mechanical devices to generate a visible and audible frenzy,
was influential on later directors, including Jean-Louis Barrault
and Peter Brook. Despite this lack of commercial success, Artaud
continued to expound his dream of founding a new kind of French
theater that would be less an artistic spectacle than a theater of magic,
a communion between spectators and actors, based on awe and terror
rather than logic. See also ADAMOV, ARTHUR; ARRABAL, FER-
AUBIGNAC, FRANÇOIS HÉDELIN, L’ABBÉ D’
• 31
NANDO; BLIN, ROGER; COPEAU, JACQUES; GENET, JEAN;
RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, GEORGES; VIEUX-COLOMBIER,
THÉÂTRE DU.
ASIDE. A type of double enunciation: a remark uttered by an onstage
character in such a way as to indicate, by convention, that other persons
on the stage cannot hear it. Information, usually a cunning plot or a ploy
to deceive, can thereby be transmitted to the audience. This practice
was frowned on by 17th-century theorists such as François Hédelin
d’Aubignac and Nicolas Boileau in the name of verisimilitude, although it remained common practice in comedy—Molière, Marivaux
and Beaumarchais had little if any hesitation in using the device.
ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’. Theater building and company in
Paris. The first purpose-built theater in suburban Paris, it opened in
1822 as the Théâtre de Montmartre, specializing in Romantic melodrama, operetta and vaudeville, became a cinema in 1914, and was
relaunched as the Théâtre de l’Atelier in 1922 with Charles Dullin
as artistic director. The box office success of Marcel Achard’s
Voulez-vous jouer avec moâ? (You Coming to Play With Me?) in 1924
provided a financial foundation on which the company built a reputation for the exploration of an original repertoire, under Dullin and his
successor (from 1940) André Barsacq. Jean-Louis Barrault made
his first stage appearance there in 1930. Under subsequent directors
Pierre Franck from 1973 to 1999 and Laura Pels since 1999, the
company has maintained its artistic reputation with productions of
Jean-Claude Carrière’s La Controverse de Valladolid (The Valladolid Controversy) in 1999, Yasmina Reza’s L’Homme du hasard
(The Unexpected Man) in 2001, Marivaux’s L’Île des esclaves (The
Island of the Slaves) in 2005 and Simone de Beauvoir’s La Femme
rompue (The Broken Woman) in 2007. See also ANOUILH, JEAN;
ARTAUD, ANTONIN; MARCEAU, FÉLICIEN; NDIAYE, MARIE; SAGAN, FRANÇOISE.
AUBIGNAC, FRANÇOIS HÉDELIN, L’ABBÉ D’ (1604–1676).
Writer and theorist of drama, remembered chiefly as an opponent of
Pierre Corneille in a number of literary controversies in the mid17th century. He wrote three prose tragedies—Zénobie, La Pucelle
32 •
AUDIBERTI, JACQUES
d’Orléans (The Maid of Orleans) and Cyminde—around 1640, and
his Pratique du Théâtre (Theater in Practice) may have been begun
then, but it was not published until 1657, by which time its uncompromising defense of the strictest interpretation of classical principles seemed old-fashioned and unimaginative. He was the strongest
exponent of the notion of verisimilitude in the theater, insisting on
strict observance of the unities; and his unyielding attitude, coming
from one with so little practical experience of theatrical creativity,
was dismissed derisively by the more pragmatic and inventive Corneille in his Discours sur le poème dramatique in 1660. D’Aubignac
responded with pedantic criticisms of Corneille’s recent plays, Sertorius and Sophonisbe, although his polemical dissertations probably
had little effect on the dramatist’s reputation.
AUDIBERTI, JACQUES (1899–1965). Dramatist, author and journalist. He was associated with Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Valéry
(1871–1945) and published articles, a novel and poetry before accidentally entering the world of theater when two actors performed a
text, Quoat-Quoat (1946), which he had written in dialogue form although not intending it for staging. His most significant play, Le Mal
court (Evil in the Air, 1947), directed by Georges Vitaly (1917–2007)
at the Théâtre de Poche Montparnasse, is typical both in its exuberant
linguistic virtuosity—at a time when theater was generally characterized by neoclassical sparseness and austerity—and in its engagement
with deep themes, such as the nature of evil.
Although criticized by some as an exponent of outmoded styles
of boulevard theater, Audiberti was receptive to those modern
theatrical techniques that are associated with carnival, and his
intense and joyful verbal dexterity is reminiscent of Renaissance
and baroque drama. Other key works include Les Femmes du
bœuf (Wives of the Ox, 1948), first performed at the ComédieFrançaise, Le Cavalier seul (The Solitary Knight, 1954), L’Effet
Glapion (The Glapion Effect, 1959), La Brigitta (1962), and the
scenario for the film La Poupée (The Doll, 1962). He was awarded
the Grand Prix National des Lettres in 1964. Overall his output
is disconcerting for its Rabelaisian mixture of riotous language,
eroticism and fantastic imagery combined with deep nihilism and
an apparent obsession with the disgusting aspects of human expe-
AUDIENCES
• 33
rience. See also LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE; HAÏM, VICTOR;
HUCHETTE, THÉÂTRE DE LA.
AUDIENCES. In France as elsewhere in Western Europe the original
audiences of dramatic spectacles were passers-by at open-air performances by traveling players. By the 16th century, performances
in colleges and other educational establishments were aimed at more
learned humanist scholars, but the public theater remained a barely
respectable place, dominated by the violent tragicomedies and pastoral dramas of Alexandre Hardy and later by the broad farces of
Gros-Guillaume, Gaultier-Garguille and Turlupin. Only with the
arrival in Paris of Bellerose (about 1622) and Montdory (by 1624)
and the repertoire of Pierre Corneille (beginning with Mélite in
1629) did the prestige of theater begin to rise, and with it the social
and intellectual level of the average audience. The support of Cardinal Richelieu ensured that as early as 1636, Corneille could assert in
L’Illusion comique (Theatrical Illusion) that
. . . le théâtre
Est en un point si haut que chacun l’idolâtre,
Et ce que votre temps voyait avec mépris
Est aujourd’hui l’amour de tous les beaux esprits,
L’entretien de Paris, le souhait des provinces,
Le divertissement le plus doux de nos princes,
Les délices du peuple, et le plaisir des grands.
[“Theater has reached a point today where everyone worships it, and
although your generation looked down on it with scorn, it has become
the idol of the finest minds, the talking-point of Paris, the desire of
the provinces, the sweetest recreation of our princes, the delight of the
populace and the charm of the court.”]
Even allowing for a degree of self-flattery, this suggests that theater
was appealing to a very wide social mix, and in the following year the
appeal of drama both to sophisticated intellectuals and to society figures was firmly established by the success of Le Cid. From that date,
although comic dramatists have often poked fun at the varied tastes,
prudishness or vulgarity of different elements in their audience, they
have seldom had cause to complain about the mass appeal of theater
to a wide public in France.
34 •
AUDIENCES
The popularity of Le Cid in 1637 led to the practice of allowing
spectators to sit on the stage, where they remained a lucrative source
of income, but an intrusive presence, until the practice was discontinued at the instigation of Lekain in the 1770s.
Victor Hugo rather provocatively drew attention to the existence
of a full social and intellectual range of spectators by asserting in his
preface to Ruy Blas (1838) that he felt it was his duty to satisfy the
tastes of several categories at once: the crowd, which demanded action, intellectuals, who demanded characterization, and women, who
demanded the exploration of feeling.
In the 20th century many dramatists, notably Antonin Artaud,
Jean Cocteau, Eugène Ionesco and other exponents of Absurd
Theater, and Boris Vian, implicitly or explicitly criticized the
complacency of conventional theater audiences by their assaults on
normal standards of taste and dramatic form. Like Bertolt Brecht,
they remained convinced that the purpose of theater should be to
challenge the expectations and prejudices of the spectators, not to
be complicit with them. Such an approach to drama exploits to the
full the devices associated with double enunciation—chorus or
narrator, aside and soliloquy—to remind the audience at all times
that they are witnessing a performance. This approach contrasts both
with the classical period’s concern over verisimilitude and the need
to convince the spectators that what they were watching was true, and
also with André Antoine’s theory of the fourth wall, through which
he sought to persuade audiences that they were observing a slice of
real life.
The growth of cinema, television and other forms of cultural experience has at times threatened the ability of live theater to command
an audience in market terms, and competition for spectators faced
with a wider range of activities and with the rising relative cost of
theater tickets has led to tensions between artistic and commercial
theater, and between practitioners and business interests. Theaters
depend on box office income for their continued existence, and the
current response of the French theater world to competition has been
dynamic, with considerable expansion of drama in public places,
fringe festivals and continued support for local activity based on the
network of Maisons de la Culture. Such activities extend the aspiration of the Théâtre national populaire to reach a wide public, an
AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’
• 35
aspiration summed up in Antoine Vitez’s phrase, “un théâtre élitaire
pour tous” (“quality theater available to all”). See also BOILEAUDESPRÉAUX, NICOLAS; BOULEVARD, THÉÂTRE DU; LA
CANTATRICE CHAUVE; CHÉREAU, PATRICE; COINCIDENCE;
COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE; DADAISM; DEFAMILIARIZATION;
GÉMIER, FIRMIN; JARRE, JEAN-MICHEL; TZARA, TRISTAN;
VINAVER, MICHEL.
AUGIER, ÉMILE (1820–1889). Dramatist and poet whose moralizing social comedies (following the example set by Eugène Scribe)
advocated common-sense bourgeois values, law and order and
conventional respectability, although this was linked to a degree
of anticlericalism typical of the 19th century. His works remained
popular at the Comédie-Française until the 1880s, and his comedy,
Gabrielle (1849), was awarded the Prix Montyon, but they are all
but forgotten today. Other key works include La Ciguë (Hemlock,
1844), L’Aventurière (The Adventuress, 1848), Philiberte (1853), Le
Mariage d’Olympe (1855), Les Effrontés (Shameless, 1861), Maître
Guérin (1864), Paul Forestier (1868), Madame Caverlet (1874),
Les Fourchambault (1878) and in collaboration with Jules Sandeau
(1811–1883), Le Gendre de M. Poirier (M. Poirier’s Son-in-Law,
1854). The last-named, in which Rose Chéri dominated the cast at the
Gymnase, was a significant step in the evolution of social Realism in
French drama. Augier was elected to the Académie française in 1857
and entered the French Senate toward the end of the Second Empire.
AURIC, GEORGES. See SIX, GROUPE DES.
AUZOULT, JEANNE. See BARON.
AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’. Annual festival of music and drama. Its
inauguration in 1947 is seen as a turning point in the liberation of
French culture from traditional centralization: the provincial, openair and popular focus gave theater in particular a new lease on life.
Initially associated with Jean Vilar, the festival quickly established
itself as a major center for the creation of new works, including
plays by Paul Claudel, André Gide, Jules Supervielle and Bertolt
Brecht, and of lesser-known foreign classics, including plays by
36 •
AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’
Georg Büchner (1813–1837), Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811)
and William Shakespeare, the French première of whose Richard
II featured in the opening season. Leading young actors attended
regularly, including Maria Casarès, Alain Cuny, Silvia Montfort
(1925–1991), Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philipe, already a cinema star, whose performances in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid, Alfred
de Musset’s Lorenzaccio and Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
became emblematic of the festival’s adventurous programming.
By the early 1960s the festival was established also as an international meeting place for students, who camped and debated as well as
attending formal and informal performances. Vilar strove constantly
to renew the festival’s image, introducing semistaged concerts of musical works in 1966 and cinema showings in 1967. Almost equivalent
in importance to the official festival is the “Festival off” (fringe festival), consisting of a huge array of informal performances. It became
a focus for controversy in 1968: in the spirit of that year, Vilar made
a space available for an iconoclastic young company, Living Theatre,
which then failed to cooperate with the festival authorities, refused to
negotiate with Vilar himself, and finally precipitated violent clashes
in which the riot police (CRS) intervened.
Vilar was succeeded in 1971 by Paul Puaux (1920–1998); colleagues of Vilar, including Jorge Lavelli, Roger Planchon and
Georges Wilson, ensured continuity, while younger actors and
directors such as Peter Brook, Jacques Lassalle, Ariane Mnouchkine and Antoine Vitez maintained the tradition of innovation. The
repertoire became more consistently contemporary. In 1980 Puaux
was succeeded by Bernard Faivre d’Arcier (1944– ), who was entrusted with the task of putting onto a modern and professional footing a festival that had outgrown its municipal and informal scale of
operations. He also encouraged multimedia events and experiments.
From 1985, director Alain Crombecque made the festival more international, introducing music and dance events from Africa and Asia
as well as contemporary music and poetry readings. Despite this
diversity, the focus of the festival remains French theater. Since September 2003, its codirectors have been Vincent Baudriller (1968– )
and Hortense Archambault (1970– ).
The spirit of controversy that marked the origins of the festival has
continued in more recent years: the 2003 festival had to be cancelled
BAÏF, JEAN ANTOINE DE
• 37
at the last minute following a trade union dispute with temporary
stage and backstage staff, and that of 2005 was characterized by
confrontation between supporters of text-based theater and those
who wished to continue with more experimental productions. See
also CIXOUS, HÉLÈNE; DOM JUAN; EN ATTENDANT GODOT;
ENGEL, ANDRÉ; GATTI, ARMAND; KOLTÈS, BERNARDMARIE; MESGUICH, DANIEL; NOVARINA, VALÈRE; PINGET,
ROBERT; SCHMITT, ERIC-EMMANUEL; SOBEL, BERNARD;
SOLEIL, THÉÂTRE DU; THÉÂTRE NATIONAL POPULAIRE;
VINAVER, MICHEL; WILSON, ROBERT.
AYMÉ, MARCEL (1902–1967). Dramatist, also journalist and novelist. His childhood was disrupted by the death of his mother and by
World War I, and after two bouts of illness in the 1920s, and two
false starts as a student in engineering then in medicine, he devoted
himself to writing from 1925. It was through writing early film dialogues that his theatrical career was launched, and he concentrated
on dramatic writing in the 1950s. He was briefly involved in the
theater of commitment, adapting The Crucible by Arthur Miller
(1915–2005) in 1954 for the Parisian stage. Thereafter his work, classical in form, combined satirical elements with fantasy and is generally considered rather lightweight, partly because he does not link his
bitter, often shrewd, social observations with any heavy or explicit
moralizing. Key works include Lucienne et le boucher (Lucienne and
the Butcher, written in 1932, rejected by Louis Jouvet, and not performed until 1948), Clérambard (1950), La Tête des Autres (Other
People’s Heads, 1952), Les Oiseaux de lune (Moon Birds, 1956), Les
Maxibules (1961) and La Convention Belzébir (1967).
– B –
BAÏF, JEAN ANTOINE DE (1532–1589). Poet and dramatist, responsible for adaptations in French of classical plays, including
Le Brave (The Swaggerer, 1567) after Plautus. He was cofounder
in 1570 with Joachim Thibaut de Courville (c1535–1581) of an
Académie de Poésie et de Musique, which sought to imitate Ancient
Greek and contemporary Italian models in its combination of music
38 •
BALADIN
and poetry in drama. His father, Lazare de Baïf (1496–1547), was
one of the first humanist scholars to translate Ancient Greek plays
into French, notably Sophocles’ Electra (1537) and Euripides’
Hecuba (by 1544).
BALADIN. French term (feminine baladine) for a strolling actor, now
generally used with an archaic flavor to indicate a clownish improvised acting style. See also CABOTIN; HISTRION.
BALETTI, ELENA. See LÉLIO.
BALLANDE, HILARION (1820–1887). An impresario whose support of the Société de patronage des auteurs dramatiques inconnus,
founded in 1867, helped overcome the resistance of commercial and
conservative forces in the Paris theater to experimental drama, particularly in the Realist tradition. He arranged matinée performances
of little-known works, in which he persuaded both established actors
and rising talents to appear.
BALLET DE COUR. A genre combining music, dance and text to
produce spectacular pseudo-dramatic effects, which flourished in
France with direct support from successive monarchs from the 1570s
until Jean-Baptiste Lully finally founded the Académie royale de
musique in 1673 and devoted himself to the invention of French
opera. The most notable examples included Le Ballet comique de
la reine (The Queen’s Theatrical Ballet, 1581), Le Ballet royal de la
nuit (Night, A Royal Ballet, 1653), Alcidiane (1658, to which Lully
contributed music) and Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée (The Delights
of the Enchanted Isle, 1664, in which Molière as well as Lully were
involved).
BALORÉ, MARGUERITE. See FLORIDOR.
BANVILLE, THÉODORE DE (1823–1891). Poet and journalist
whose dramatic output is all but forgotten today, although his 19
plays, particularly the one-act prose comedy Gringoire (1866),
achieved over 1,000 performances at the Comédie-Française.
BARON
• 39
LE BARBIER DE SÉVILLE (THE BARBER OF SEVILLE).
Four-act prose comedy by Beaumarchais, first performed at the
Comédie-française in 1775 with Préville in the title role. Originally
devised as a parade, then as an opéra-comique, it was swiftly revised
after an unsuccessful première, and the final version has remained internationally popular both as a play and in its operatic adaptation as
Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816) by Gioacchino Rossini. Count Almaviva employs Figaro—barber, apothecary and general factotum—to
help in his pursuit and courtship of Rosine, kept under tutelage by Dr
Bartholo. In successive disguises as a soldier and a singing teacher,
the count attempts to hoodwink the jealous and perceptive Bartholo,
but in the end it is the straightforward theft of a key and deceit of a
notary that enables the young couple to marry. The originality of
Beaumarchais’s play lies less in its scenario—very similar to that
of Molière’s L’École des femmes (The School for Women)—than in
the vitality and wit of the dialogue, the incorporation of several musical episodes, the slickness of the plotting and the charm of the characterization. Le Mariage de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding) is a sequel to
this play and takes much further its witty dialogue and sociopolitical
implications. See also THE BITER BIT; BRIALY, JEAN-CLAUDE;
DUX, PIERRE.
BARON. Stage name of Michel Boyron (1653–1729), actor. He was
the son of an acting couple, André Boyron (1601–1655, who also
used the stage name Baron, and took part in the original performances of Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid) and his wife Jeanne Auzoult
(1625–1662), both distinguished members of the Hôtel de Bourgogne company. Michel started acting by the age of 13, was taken
under Molière’s wing from 1670, transferred to the Hôtel de Bourgogne on Molière’s death, and was then a founding member of
the Comédie-Française in 1680. Although he retired in 1691, he
returned to act alongside Adrienne Lecouvreur from 1720 until his
death. He was also a dramatist whose 10 prose comedies included
Le Rendez-vous des Tuileries (The Meeting in the Tuileries Garden,
1685), L’Homme à bonne fortune (The Fortunate Fellow, 1686) and
Les Adelphes ou L’École des pères (The School for Fathers, 1705).
See also PRADON, JACQUES.
40 •
BAROQUE
BAROQUE. Artistic term of uncertain origin applied to European art
and architecture of the early 17th century and to music of the mid- to
late 17th century. By analogy it came to be used for literature, both
poetry and drama, that shared with baroque art its elaborate complexity, dramatic effectiveness and taste for the fantastic. In most artistic
spheres it was defined retrospectively by contrast with a tendency
toward greater classical regularity and harmony, which followed it.
The dramatist most frequently referred to as baroque is the Englishman Ben Jonson (1572–1637); in French drama the term is applied
to Pierre Corneille and to the elaborate machine plays that were
popular through the middle of the 17th century. Baroque dramas are
complex in structure, grandiose in style and often explore themes of
illusion and deceit. See also AUDIBERTI, JACQUES; DESTOUCHES, ANDRÉ-CARDINAL; DULLIN, CHARLES; LAVELLI,
JORGE; MESGUICH, DANIEL; VIAU, THÉOPHILE DE; VILLÉGIER, JEAN-MARIE.
BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS (1910–1994). Actor and stage director.
He did more than any other individual to break down barriers of convention and vested interest in postwar theater. A highly inventive and
original actor, trained in mime as well as classical diction, he was
inspired by Charles Dullin and influenced by Antonin Artaud; he
acted in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid at the Comédie-Française, portrayed the composer Hector Berlioz in the film La Symphonie fantastique (1942) by Christian-Jaque (Christian Maudet, 1904–1994)
and the famous 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard (“Baptiste”)
Debureau in Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of the Gods, 1944) by
Marcel Carné (1909–1996). As stage director, particularly in association with his wife Madeleine Renaud, Barrault took modern French
drama to an international audience.
The success of his productions of Jean Racine’s Phèdre and
of Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de satin (The Satin Slipper) at the
Comédie-Française in the early 1940s encouraged him to found his
own company with Renaud at the Théâtre Marigny in 1946; their first
production was André Gide’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s
Hamlet. As director of the Odéon from 1959 to 1968, Barrault championed new work by Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Marguerite Duras and Samuel Beckett, and from 1966 he was also associated with
LA BASOCHE
• 41
the innovative work of Peter Brook. As director of the Théâtre du
Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées from 1981, he developed a reputation he had already acquired for spectacular dramatizations of works
that had not been conceived for theater, including texts by François
Rabelais (1494–c1554), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Voltaire. In all aspects of his eclectic repertoire he stressed the physicality of performance and the power of multimedia spectacle. See also
BÉRÉNICE; BLIN, ROGER; CARRIÈRE, JEAN-CLAUDE; DUX,
PIERRE; MARCEAU, MARCEL; PALAIS-ROYAL; PINGET, ROBERT; WILSON, GEORGES.
BARSACQ, ANDRÉ (1909–1973). Crimea-born theater director.
Having first worked as a scenic artist with Charles Dullin and
Jacques Copeau, he gained experience working in cinema and directing stage plays in New York, then took charge of the Théâtre
de l’Atelier in 1940 and was responsible for the first performances
of plays by many new dramatists, including Jean Anouilh, Marcel
Aymé, Félicien Marceau, René de Obaldia and Françoise Sagan.
He also became a specialist in productions of the Russian repertoire.
See also CARRIÈRE, JEAN-CLAUDE.
BARTET, JULIA. Stage name of Jeanne-Julia Regnault (1854–1941),
actress. Having performed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, she made her
début at the Odéon in L’Arlésienne (The Girl from Arles, 1873), by
Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897), best remembered now for Georges
Bizet’s incidental music, and her Comédie-Française début in
Victorien Sardou’s Daniel Rochat in 1880. She enjoyed a versatile
career in both comedy and tragedy, in plays from both the classical
and the contemporary repertoire, including the first performances
of new plays by Alexandre Dumas fils, Paul Hervieu and Henry
Bernstein, until her retirement in 1919. See also BÉRÉNICE.
BARTHES, ROLAND (1915–1980). See LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE.
LA BASOCHE. A guild of legal and administrative officials, established in Paris in the 13th century by Philippe le Bel (King Philippe
42 •
BATAILLE, HENRY
IV of France, 1268–1314). Its members performed entertaining dramas on the occasion of their annual festival and then on public holidays. They introduced morality plays and farces into the repertoire,
performed either in public places or in the hall of the Palais de Justice
in Paris. See also LES ENFANTS SANS SOUCI.
BATAILLE, HENRY (1872–1922). Dramatist. His first play, La Belle
au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty, 1894), reflected the Symbolist
æsthetic that was then current and was performed at Lugné-Poe’s
Théâtre de l’Œuvre, but his later development brought him more
into line with psychological Realism, challenging late Romantic
assumptions about feminine character and portraying emancipated
women with authentic sexual appetites. Key works include Maman
Colibri (1904), La Marche nuptiale (The Wedding March, 1905), La
Vierge folle (The Mad Maiden, 1910), La Phalène (The Moth, 1913)
and L’Homme à la rose (The Man with the Rose, 1920).
BATY, GASTON (1885–1952). Stage director who, in conflict with
Jacques Copeau and Louis Jouvet and under the influence of German Expressionism, subordinated the text to innovative forms of
movement and lighting, in quest of atmospheric productions. After
working in collaboration with Firmin Gémier from 1919 to 1921,
and a number of short-lived enterprises, he became established at the
Studio des Champs-Elysées from 1924 to 1928 and at the Théâtre
Montparnasse from 1930 to 1942. In 1936 he adapted for the stage
the novel Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880);
he produced Jean Racine’s Phèdre in 1939 and Bérénice in 1946,
directed Marguerite Jamois as Hamlet, as Lorenzaccio and as
Lady Macbeth, and mounted a successful production of Crime and
Punishment (written in 1866, adapted and produced by Baty in 1933)
by Fëdor Dostoevski (1821–1881), before retiring from the theater
with the intention of devoting himself to puppetry. He wrote a play
based on the work of Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) with the title
Dulcinée. See also LE CARTEL.
BAUHAUS. A style of architecture and art based on functionality that
arose in Germany after 1919. In architecture it was dominated by
Walter Gropius (1883–1969), whose design school in Weimar, Ger-
BEAUMARCHAIS, PIERRE-AUGUSTIN CARON DE
• 43
many, gave the movement its name, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
(1886–1969); its most prominent exponent in France was CharlesÉdouard Jeanneret (1887–1965), known as Le Corbusier. Their use
of asymmetrical designs, of constructions in reinforced concrete and
glass, of contrast between the opaque and the transparent, and of
open-planned interiors had an influence on Surrealist art in Paris in
the 1920s, where Hans Arp (1887–1966), Yves Tanguy (1900–1955)
and others incorporated both geometrical and organic forms into
paintings and sculptures; this in turn had an impact on theater, stage
design, and décor, particularly through the work and influence of
Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943) and Erwin Piscator.
BAUSCH, PINA (1940–2009). Dancer and choreographer, performances of whose work at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris after 1979
had a profound effect in making design and stage movement more
balletic and exotic. Her Tanztheater (“dance theater”) had an influence on many innovative directors working in Paris, including Peter
Brook. Her work, often brutal in its physicality, conveyed a cynical
view of human relationships and frequently used collage effects
combining fragments of text, music and dance. Having trained and
performed in Essen, Germany, and New York, she won the European
Theater Prize in 1999 and was a commander in the Ordre des Arts et
des Lettres, among other international awards. Her creative energy
remained constant until her sudden death.
BEAUMARCHAIS, PIERRE-AUGUSTIN CARON DE (1732–
1799). Comic dramatist. His eventful career included financial
speculation, involvement in the American Revolution (1775–1781)
during its early stages, and several major lawsuits through which he
acquired a reputation for challenging the corrupt judicial practices of
the ancien régime. Political satire forms an important element in his
output. His early plays, Eugénie (1767) and Les Deux Amis (The Two
Friends, 1770), were serious dramas that attracted little attention,
and it was only with Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville,
1775) that he achieved success. Although witty and sparkling, that
play is closely derivative of works by Molière, and Beaumarchais’s
only really original and significant masterpiece is its sequel, La Folle
Journée (A Day of Madness), better known by what was originally
44 •
BEAUVOIR, SIMONE DE
its subtitle, Le Mariage de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding, completed by
1781, performed only in 1784 after disputes with Louis XVI and his
censors). A highly complicated and breathless comedy of intrigue,
full of wit, parody and satire against the feudal system and judicial
corruption, Le Mariage de Figaro has been seen as a precursor of the
French Revolution, although the title character seems determined
to exploit the existing system to his own advantage, rather than to
undermine it fundamentally, and it is hard to believe that he would
have sought an outcome that involved the execution of his fiancée’s
beloved mistress, the Comtesse Almaviva.
He wrote a further sequel, entitled La Mère coupable (The Guilty
Mother, 1792), in which one of the more enigmatic features of Le
Mariage de Figaro is resolved when it transpires that only a few
months after the events of that play, the Comtesse conceived an illegitimate child by the pageboy Chérubin. La Mère coupable, however, was more akin to the comédie larmoyante than Beaumarchais’s
previous comedies, and was not a success.
The Revolution itself involved Beaumarchais in financial loss
and a period of exile, but he returned to Paris, deaf and broken in
health, in 1796. His two successful comedies are still frequently
performed in France, although internationally each is better known
in operatic adaptations, both remarkably faithful to the original
drama: Le Nozze di Figaro (1786) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791) and Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816) by Gioacchino Rossini. See also ASIDE; THE BITER BIT; BRIALY, JEAN-CLAUDE;
CARICATURE; COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE; COQUELIN, BENOÎT
CONSTANT; DAZINCOURT; DUX, PIERRE; MARAIS, THÉÂTRE DU; MARCEAU, FÉLICIEN; MUSIC; ODÉON; PARADE;
PRÉVILLE; SOLILOQUY; TAYLOR, ISIDORE; VAUDEVILLE;
VINCENT, JEAN-PIERRE.
BEAUVOIR, SIMONE DE (1908–1986). Author, highly influential
feminist and lifelong companion of Jean-Paul Sartre. She did not
have a strong relationship with theatrical activity, but Les Bouches
inutiles (Useless Mouths, known as Who Shall Die?, 1945), a thesis
play putting forward a specific pro-Resistance message in the postoccupation period, had some impact, and several characters in her novels
have a theatrical connection. See also ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’.
BEDEAU, JULIEN AND FRANÇOIS
• 45
BECKETT, SAMUEL (1906–1989). Principal exponent, alongside
Eugène Ionesco, of Absurd Theater. Born in Dublin, and influenced by James Joyce as well as by French Surrealist poets, he
settled in France in 1937 and wrote in French from 1945, although he
translated several of his texts into English. With En Attendant Godot
(Waiting for Godot, 1948, published in 1952 and directed by Roger
Blin in 1953), he established the voice of the marginalized—clowns,
tramps and other downtrodden individuals—as central to the exposition of a philosophy of emptiness. Although his plays contain much
wit and verbal dexterity, they lack the virtuosity of Ionesco and are
characterized by minimalist techniques and bitter irony in which
huge energy is misdirected at pathetic or trivial aims. Other key
works include Fin de partie (Endgame, 1957), directed by Blin at
the Royal Court in London and at the Studio des Champs-Élysées in
Paris, and Oh! Les Beaux Jours (Happy Days, 1963), first performed
by Madeleine Renaud at the Odéon. Beckett was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. See also DURAS, MARGUERITE; MARTIN, JEAN; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL; SERREAU,
JEAN-MARIE; WILSON, GEORGES.
BECQUE, HENRY (1837–1899). Dramatist who struggled against
conservative commercial forces in the Parisian theater of the 1870s to
establish Realism as a serious and viable approach to drama. Having
failed to persuade any of the Paris theaters to produce his drama Les
Corbeaux (The Crows), he arranged for it to be published; as a result,
a production was mounted at the Comédie-Française in 1882, but
although supporters of Émile Zola praised the work’s tough engagement with contemporary society, critics complained of its sordid cynicism, and the public was largely indifferent. His second major play,
La Parisienne, was accordingly rejected by the Comédie, entrusted
to the less prosperous Théâtre de la Renaissance in 1885, and had
to wait for a performance by Réjane at the Théâtre du Vaudeville
in 1893 before gaining due recognition of its significance. Although
Becque wrote five further plays, the rest of his career was largely
dominated by journalism and criticism.
BEDEAU, JULIEN AND FRANÇOIS. See JODELET.
46 •
BEISSIER, FERNAND
BEISSIER, FERNAND (1856–1936). Author of farces in the style of
Georges Feydeau and Eugène Labiche, notably Les Justes Noces
(The Just Wedding, 1891). He used his income from these to further
what he considered a more serious literary career as novelist and
librettist.
BÉJART, ARMANDE (c1642–1700). Actress, sister (or perhaps
daughter) of Madeleine Béjart. When Molière married Armande
in 1662, his rivals and enemies, notably Montfleury, tried to cause
scandal by suggesting she might have been his own daughter, but it
seems clear that she was born and baptised before Molière’s liaison
with Madeleine began. Armande achieved success in both tragedy
and comedy, creating the roles of Elmire in Le Tartuffe (1664),
Célimène in Le Misanthrope (1666), Henriette in Les Femmes savantes (The Learned Women, 1672) and Angélique in Le Malade
imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid, 1673), as well as performing in
the opening runs of Jean Racine’s Alexandre le Grand (1665) and
Pierre Corneille’s Tite et Bérénice (1670). After Molière’s death,
his troupe joined forces with the Marais company and moved to the
Théâtre de Guénégaud, where Armande met and married the actor Isaac François Guérin d’Estriché. Together they moved to the
Comédie-Française when it was founded in 1680, where until she
retired in 1694 Armande retained most of the roles created for her
by Molière.
BÉJART, JOSEPH (c1616–1659). Actor. Madeleine Béjart’s brother, he was a founding member of L’Illustre Théâtre, but he died
very soon after Molière’s establishment in Paris in 1658. He overcame a stutter to succeed in young male leads.
BÉJART, MADELEINE (1618–1672). Actress. Cofounder of
L’Illustre Théâtre with Molière and with her brother Joseph Béjart, she remained the most distinguished actress in that company
throughout her life, creating many of Molière’s major female roles,
including Magdelon in Les Précieuses ridicules (The Pretentious
Young Ladies, 1659) and Dorine in Le Tartuffe (1664). She had
also been successful in tragedy. Contemporaries bore witness to her
talent as a musician, dancer and witty conversationalist as well as to
BEN JELLOUN, TAHAR
• 47
her acting gifts. Her brother Louis Béjart (1630–1678) and her sister Geneviève Béjart (1624–1675, known as Mlle Hervé) were also
members of Molière’s company.
BELL, MARIE (1900–1985). Actress who entered the ComédieFrançaise in 1927 and excelled in the major roles of Jean Racine
(Hermione, Phèdre) as well as in modern works, including the
première of Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de satin (The Satin Slipper,
1943). Leaving the Comédie-Française in 1953, she continued to
work in boulevard theaters and for Jean-Louis Barrault. From
1962 to 1985, she directed the Gymnase company and continued
to support both established plays and new work by, for example,
Françoise Sagan. See also BÉRÉNICE; MARCEAU, FÉLICIEN.
BELLEROSE. Stage name of Pierre Le Messier (1592–1670), actor
and theater manager. He was a member of Valleran Le Conte’s
troupe in Paris in 1610, acted in Bourges in 1619, and was director
of a troupe in Marseille in 1620, but little is known about his early
career. From about 1622, he was a regular and significant member of
the company known as the Comédiens du Roi and became its chief
after the death of Gros-Guillaume in 1634. He continued in that position until 1647, when he is thought to have sold his interest in the
company for an unprecedented sum to his brother-in-law Floridor.
BELLEROSE, MLLE. Stage name of Nicole Gassot (1605–1679),
wife of Bellerose, sister of Du Croisy, and the most distinguished
actress in Paris between 1630 and 1660. In 1618, at the age of around
13, she was associated with a troupe directed by her father Jean Gassot, known as La Fortune, and she was married successively to two
actors, Mathias Mélier and Bellerose. A member of the Comédiens
du Roi at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, she excelled in tragic roles. See
also BENSERADE, ISAAC.
BELLEVILLE. See TURLUPIN.
BEN JELLOUN, TAHAR (1944– ). Moroccan novelist, poet and
journalist, encouraged by Jean Genet and others to explore links
between psychiatry and literature. He emigrated to France in 1971.
48 •
BENSERADE, ISAAC
His first play, Entretiens avec M. Saïd Hammadi, ouvrier algérien
(Conversations with the Algerian Worker, M. Saïd Hammadi, 1984),
was directed by Antoine Vitez at the Théâtre national de Chaillot.
Other dramatic work includes La Fiancée de l’eau (Water Is My
Dowry, 1984).
BENSERADE, ISAAC (1612–1691). Court poet and dramatist, best
remembered for ballet scenarios and for epigrammatic poetry. A
noble, destined for an ecclesiastical career, he appears to have been
distracted into theatrical activity by his affection for Mlle Bellerose,
for whom he composed a version of the Cleopatra story in 1635. He
wrote a further half-dozen irregular tragedies, including La Mort
d’Achille (The Death of Achilles, c1635) and La Pucelle d’Orléans
(The Maid of Orleans, 1641) before concentrating on the 27 ballets to
which he contributed between 1651 and 1681. These included major
court festivals such as Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée (The Delights
of the Enchanted Isle, 1664) and Le Grand Divertissement royal de
Versailles (1668), to which Molière also contributed. His particular
talent was the composition of short poems for ballet libretti, in which
he described a character in terms that made witty allusion to the private life of the dancer. He was elected to the Académie française in
1674. See also HÔTEL DE BOURGOGNE.
BÉRÉNICE. Five-act verse tragedy by Jean Racine, first performed
at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1670. Considered to be the purest
example of classical tragic form, the play takes to an extreme its
adherence to the unities and its reduction of all action to the barest
minimum. Titus had been in a relationship with the exiled Queen
of Palestine Bérénice for five years before he inherited the imperial
throne on the death of his father Vespasien. That moment (described
by Titus in II, 2) is presented as critical for his perception of himself
and his role: he is suddenly conscious that, as emperor, he can no longer dream of marriage, or even a long-term relationship, with someone who is of foreign extraction and who is of regal status—both of
these factors would under Roman constitutional law be unacceptable
in the consort of the emperor. Accordingly, with considerable hesitation and internal agony, he resolves to banish Bérénice. The play
charts his attempts to persuade her of the necessity of this outcome, at
BERLIOZ, LOUIS HECTOR
• 49
first through the intermediary of Antiochus, another Middle Eastern
prince who is himself in love with Bérénice, and then on his own
account.
In his defensive Préface to the play, Racine acknowledges the
paucity of material in this intrigue, and he insists that his creativity
is all the greater: it succeeded in performance, he claims, because
it aroused passionate emotions and generated a “majestic sadness”
(tristesse majestueuse), which Racine saw as more crucial for tragedy
than bloodshed and death. For the play to succeed as a tragedy, it is
essential that the audience be fully convinced of the depth of Titus’s
love for Bérénice, so that there is no risk of his giving the impression
that he is simply seeking an easy excuse to abandon her, and that all
three of the protagonists accept the inevitability of ongoing suffering, so that the ending, even without physical bloodshed or violence,
can be perceived as a doom-laden fate worse than death. To this, the
dignified expression of internal agony and the strength of Racine’s
elegiac poetry make a major contribution.
The first performances of the tragedy were not particularly successful, partly because Racine’s rival Pierre Corneille—in circumstances that are not entirely clear—produced his own tragicomic
version of the same story performed by Molière’s company at the
Palais-Royal within a few days of Racine’s première. Floridor, La
Champmeslé and the latter’s husband took the main roles. Adrienne
Lecouvreur took the title role in the early 18th century; in the 19th,
Talma performed both Antiochus (1807) and Titus (1812), while the
part of Bérénice was entrusted to Mlle George, Mlle Duchesnois,
Rachel and Julia Bartet, who played the role at the ComédieFrançaise more than 80 times between 1893 and 1919. A controversial production at the Comédie-Française by Gaston Baty in
1946 was succeeded by productions by Jean-Louis Barrault (1955)
with Marie Bell, by Roger Planchon (1966) and by Antoine Vitez
(1980). See also BÉJART, ARMANDE; LASSALLE, JACQUES;
LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE.
BERLIOZ, LOUIS HECTOR (1803–1869). French Romantic composer whose work includes the operas Benvenuto Cellini (1838),
Béatrice et Bénédict (1862)—rather loosely based on William
Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing—and Les Troyens (The
50 •
BERNANOS, GEORGES
Trojans, 1863). He was married from 1833 to 1840 to the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson (1800–1854), who performed in
Paris in 1827. See also BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS; CARVALHO,
LÉON; MUSIC.
BERNANOS, GEORGES (1888–1948). Prize-winning novelist and
essayist whose only dramatic work, Dialogues des Carmélites, was
published posthumously in 1949 and was subsequently turned into
an opera (1957) by Francis Poulenc. The story of the martyrdom
of 16 Carmelite nuns from Compiègne a few days before the end of
the Reign of Terror (17 July 1794) appealed to the idealism of the
conservative catholic Bernanos, who made of it a reflection on purity
and the power of prayer. His novels include Sous le soleil de Satan
(Under the Sun of Satan, 1926) and Journal d’un curé de campagne
(Diary of a Country Priest, 1936), both of which have been turned
into films. He refused an offer to be nominated to the Académie
française.
BERNARD, TRISTAN. Pseudonym of Paul Bernard (1866–1947),
journalist, poet, novelist and brilliant author of boulevard farces,
including Les Pieds Nickelés (Nickel-plated Feet, 1895), L’Anglais
tel qu’on le parle (English as It Is Spoken, 1899), Triplepatte (Triplepaw, known as Toddles, 1905), Les Jumeaux de Brighton (The Brighton Twins, 1908), a parody L’Étrangleuse (The Strangler, 1908)
and Jules, Juliette et Julien (1929). His works combine wit, often
expressed in memorable aphorisms, with satire and gentle fantasy.
See also ŒUVRE, THÉÂTRE DE L’; PALAIS-ROYAL.
BERNHARDT, SARAH. Stage name of Henriette Rosine Bernard
(1844–1923), actress. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at the
age of 16 and rapidly rose to fame, starring in François Coppée’s
Le Passant (The Passer-by, 1869) and a revival of Victor Hugo’s
Ruy Blas (1874) at the Odéon, and in Jean Racine’s Iphigénie and
Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid with Mounet-Sully at the ComédieFrançaise. She was particularly renowned for her voice and diction,
both in the classical repertoire and in Shakespearean and Romantic
plays—in which she made a speciality of cross-dressing, performing
as both Hamlet and as the exiled son of Napoléon in Edmond Ros-
BERTRAND, EUGÈNE
• 51
tand’s L’Aiglon (The Eaglet, 1900). At the Théâtre du Vaudeville in
the 1880s, she had a particularly close and fruitful relationship with
Victorien Sardou, who wrote Fédora, Théodora, La Tosca and La
Sorcière (The Witch) for her. Bernhardt also wrote some plays of her
own, including L’Aveu (The Confession, 1888) and had a parallel
career as a sculptress from 1875.
After disputes with the Comédie-Française director Émile Perrin, Bernhardt went to work in London and America. From 1893
she directed the Théâtre de la Renaissance, took on another huge
masculine role in her own production of Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio (written in 1834 but never before staged), and launched the
careers of Lucien Guitry and Édouard De Max. In 1898 she took
over the Théâtre des Nations, which was renamed the Théâtre Sarah
Bernhardt in 1949. She continued to act even after her right leg had
to be amputated in 1915. See also AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE DE L’;
BERTRAND, EUGÈNE; BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH; COQUELIN,
BENOÎT CONSTANT; CROIZETTE, SOPHIE; DUQUESNEL,
FÉLIX-HENRI; GONCOURT, EDMOND AND JULES HUOT
DE; LE JEU DE L’AMOUR ET DU HASARD; PHÈDRE; SAGAN,
FRANÇOISE; TRAGEDY.
BERNSTEIN, HENRY (1876–1953). Boulevard dramatist who specialized in psychological studies exposing the secret workings of
closed social circles. Key works include La Griffe (The Claw, 1906),
Le Voleur (The Thief, 1906), Le Secret (The Secret, 1913), Félix
(1926) and Mélo (1929), made into a successful feature film in 1986
by Alain Resnais (1922– ). See also BARTET, JULIA; BOUFFES
PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE DES.
BERTRAND, EUGÈNE (1834–1900). Theater manager who as director of the Paris Opéra from 1892 till 1900 mounted the first successful Paris productions of operas by Richard Wagner, as well as the
first performances of Thaïs (1894) by Jules Massenet (1842–1912)
and a new production of Samson et Dalila (1892) by Camille SaintSaëns (1835–1921). He had previously been director of several
Parisian theaters: the Théâtre des Funambules, where he introduced acrobats; the Théâtre du Vaudeville, where he briefly worked with Sarah
Bernhardt; and the Théâtre des Variétés, achieving some distinction
52 •
BEYLE, HENRI
for his heroic efforts to adapt this site as a sort of field hospital during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He was also significant for his
attempts to make opera available to a much wider public through
successful low-cost concert and matinée performances.
BEYLE, HENRI. See STENDHAL.
BIENSÉANCE. Propriety, one of the governing principles of French
classical drama, derived from the concept of decorum personæ
described in the Ars Poetica of Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus,
65–8 BC), lines 178–184: “Always adopt what suits and belongs to a
given age [. . .] But don’t reveal on stage what should be hidden, keep
things from sight that eloquence can relate to us directly.” Horace’s
main point was the realistic one that characters in drama should
behave in a manner appropriate both to their social and historical
context (so Greek characters must retain Greek habits in a Latin
play) and to the received view of their characterization (so Achilles
must be portrayed as angry and violent, Andromache as virtuous and
faithful). In 17th-century France this concept of verisimilitude was
linked to a broader sense that dramatic representation should not
offend against good taste. The most obvious result of this attitude
was that plots were arranged in such a way that violent actions took
place offstage or between acts and were reported: this leads to some
awkward moments, as when Camille, in Pierre Corneille’s Horace
(1640), has to run offstage pursued by her brother, who kills her
and returns immediately to continue the dialogue, but in general it
enables classical tragedy to avoid melodramatic effects and to concentrate on the psychological impact of distress and conflict. The two
interpretations of decorum could come into conflict, as Jean Racine
found when Pyrrhus, in his Andromaque (1667), was criticized for
not being as cruel as he was in the established source documents, and
also for being too cruel for his behavior to be acceptable. See also
BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX, NICOLAS; BOUFFON.
BIGOTTINI, ÉMILIE (1785–1858). Ballet dancer who made her
Paris début in 1801 and was a dominant figure from 1813 to 1823.
Her work shifted the emphasis of French ballet from technical brilliance toward elegance, sentiment and expressiveness, and under the
BIZET, ALEXANDRE CÉSAR LÉOPOLD, KNOWN AS GEORGES
• 53
influence of her success ballet scores began to be written expressly,
by such composers as Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer (1785–1852)
and Ferdinand Hérold (1791–1833), rather than arranged from other
works.
BILLETDOUX, FRANÇOIS (1927–1991). Dramatist, radio dramatist, novelist, actor and critic, disciple of Charles Dullin. After an
early career devoted to radio journalism and criticism he achieved
dramatic success with Tchin-Tchin in 1959, Il faut passer par les
nuages (We Must Go through the Clouds), directed at the Odéon by
Jean-Louis Barrault with Madeleine Renaud in 1964, and Comment va le monde, môssieur? Il tourne, môssieur! (How Goes It with
the World, Sir? Round and Round, Sir, Round and Round!) for which
he was awarded the Prix de la Jeune Critique in 1964. Other awards
included the Prix de la Littérature Dramatique de la Ville de Paris for
Réveille-toi Philadelphie (Wake Up, Philadelphia) in 1988 and the
Molière for the best dramatic author in 1989. He cultivated a physical theater written in a poetic style and at his best achieved the fusion
of the grotesque and the tragic that characterizes Absurd Theater.
See also BLIN, ROGER; MIQUEL, JEAN-PIERRE.
THE BITER BIT. Standard plot device (in French, le trompeur
trompé), particularly for comedy, in which a character who attempts
to deceive a rival is in practice caught in his own trap. La Farce de
Maître Pierre Pathelin, Molière’s Le Tartuffe and Beaumarchais’s
Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville) are prime examples.
BIZET, ALEXANDRE CÉSAR LÉOPOLD, KNOWN AS
GEORGES (1838–1875). Composer of operas and other stage
music. His Le Docteur Miracle won a prize in a competition organized by Jacques Offenbach in 1857. Other key works include Les
Pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl-fishers, 1863), La Jolie Fille de Perth
(The Fair Maid of Perth, 1867), incidental music for L’Arlésienne
(The Girl from Arles, 1872) by Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897), and
Carmen (1875), which was significantly less successful during the
composer’s lifetime than it subsequently became. His music is characterized by its tunefulness, and his operas by their dramatic intensity.
See also HALÉVY, LUDOVIC; MEILHAC, HENRI; ODÉON.
54 •
BLIN, ROGER
BLIN, ROGER (1907–1984). Actor and stage director, follower of
Antonin Artaud, pupil of Charles Dullin and colleague of JeanLouis Barrault. Making his directorial début in 1948 with a production of The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg (1849–1912), he
became the most prominent promoter of avant-garde dramatists after
World War II, directing the first performances of many plays by
Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet and François Billetdoux. As director
he was particularly sympathetic to actors, giving them freedom to
follow their own instincts in gesture, diction and humor. See also
DUBILLARD, ROLAND; EN ATTENDANT GODOT; MARTIN,
JEAN; NOVARINA, VALÈRE; ODÉON; RENAUD, MADELEINE; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL; SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE.
BOCAGE. Stage name of Pierre Tousez (1797–1863), actor. Failing at
first to achieve success in Paris, he trained in the provincial theater,
then acted at the Odéon from 1826 and at the Théâtre de la Porte
Saint-Martin from 1831, alongside Marie Dorval, in new plays by
Alexandre Dumas père, most notoriously Antony (1831), before
being invited to join the Comédie-Française company in 1833. His
modest and restrained acting style suited him well for the role of the
melancholy Romantic hero, although the opposition of traditionalists at the Comédie prevented him from becoming established there,
and he spent most of his career in the boulevard theaters. See also
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM.
BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX, NICOLAS (1636–1711). Poet and critic
(known in his lifetime as Despréaux, but now generally referred to
as Boileau), whose Art poétique (1674) provides one of the firmest
and wittiest summaries of the principles of classicism. Emphasizing
the supremacy of reason, moderation, good taste (bienséance) and
verisimilitude, he encapsulated in pithy rhyming couplets his strict
interpretation of the unities and other main precepts of classical
drama in both tragedy and comedy:
Qu’en un lieu, qu’en un jour, un seul fait accompli
Tienne jusqu’à la fin le théâtre rempli.
Jamais au spectateur n’offrez rien d’incroyable :
Le vrai peut quelquefois n’être pas vraisemblable.
BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH
• 55
Une merveille absurde est pour moi sans appas :
L’esprit n’est point ému de ce qu’il ne croit pas.
Que la nature donc soit votre étude unique,
Auteurs qui prétendez aux honneurs du comique.
Le comique, ennemi des soupirs et des pleurs,
N’admet point en ses vers de tragiques douleurs ;
Mais son emploi n’est pas d’aller, dans une place,
De mots sales et bas charmer la populace.
(Art poétique, chant III, 45–46, 47–50, 359–360, 401–404)
[“Ensure that a single action, confined to one place and one day,
occupies the stage. Never offer anything unbelievable to the audience:
what is true is not necessarily credible. A wonder has no appeal to me
if it is absurd: the mind is not touched by what it cannot believe in. Let
nature therefore be your guide in all things, if you seek to be honored
as a dramatic author. Comedy is no friend of sighing and weeping, so
bans from its verses all tragic pain—nevertheless it has no business to
descend to the market and seduce the common people with low and
vulgar language.”]
In his lifetime Boileau was best known as a satirical poet, and in
that capacity he showed himself to be a perspicacious literary critic.
He supported Molière in the querelle de L’École des femmes and
Jean Racine at the time of the controversial opening run of Phèdre
and was scathing about many contemporary writers, including
Isaac Benserade, Jean Chapelain, Jacques Pradon and Philippe
Quinault, who were successful and popular in their own time but
have indeed been comparatively neglected by posterity, as Boileau
foretold. In 1677, alongside Racine, he was appointed the king’s official historiographer, and in 1684 he was elected to the Académie
française. See also ASIDE; LA CHAMPMESLÉ; LA FONTAINE,
JEAN DE; MERCIER, LOUIS SÉBASTIEN; SOLILOQUY; VISÉ,
JEAN DONNEAU DE.
BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH (1810–1870). Dramatist who specialized
in melodrama in the tradition of René-Charles Pixérécourt. Key
works included Gaspardo le pêcheur (Gaspardo the Fisherman,
1837), Paris le bohémien (Paris the Gypsy) starring Frédérick
Lemaître at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin (1842) and
56 •
BOUCHER, VICTOR
L’Armurier de Santiago (The Armorer of Santiago, 1868). André
Antoine, in dismissing Sarah Bernhardt’s production of Lorenzaccio, said that the play was “more reminiscent of Bouchardy than of
Shakespeare.”
BOUCHER, VICTOR (1879–1942). Actor who specialized in rather
timid or naïve young male leads. Building on his success in Les
Vignes du Seigneur (The Lord’s Vines, 1923) by Robert de Flers and
Francis de Croisset (1877–1937), he became particularly associated
with the plays of Édouard Bourdet before moving into cinema. His
film credits include Le Sexe faible (The Weaker Sex, 1933) by Robert
Siodmak (1900–1973) and L’Habit vert (The Green Jacket, 1937) by
Roger Richebé (1897–1989).
BOUFFES DU NORD. See BROOK, PETER.
BOUFFES PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE DES. Paris theater, built as a
drama school in 1826 and taken over in 1855 by Jacques Offenbach
for productions of his own operettas. Lugné-Poe directed stage
plays there in 1898; from 1913 it was associated with new plays by
Henry Bernstein and Sacha Guitry; productions of historic importance included those of Jean Cocteau’s La Machine infernale (The
Infernal Machine) starring Jean Marais in 1939 and those of Marcel
Achard’s La Bagatelle in 1960. Under the direction of Jean-Claude
Brialy since 1986, the company has remained loyal to its essentially
light staple repertoire. See also PAGNOL, MARCEL.
BOUFFON. French word (derived from Italian buffone) for a clown,
generally applied with pejorative connotations to comic acting that
depends on vulgar or crudely physical effects. In contexts influenced
by a classical æsthetic, this would offend against the principle of
bienséance. Victor Hugo and Romantic dramatists sought deliberately to integrate the grotesquely comic alongside sublime or tragic
elements in their works, because this provided a truer reflection of
the complexities and ambiguities of existence. Modern drama similarly seeks to break down artificial boundaries between the serious
and the bouffon (see ABSURD, THEATER OF THE).
BOURDET, ÉDOUARD
• 57
BOULEVARD, THÉÂTRE DU. The name is derived from the boulevards of north central Paris, between the Madeleine and the Place de
la République, although the witty and zany style of farce associated
with the label is much more widespread. In the early 19th century,
the Boulevard du Temple, a street that was to be destroyed in 1862
as a result of the reconstruction of central Paris under Baron George
Eugène Haussmann (1809–1891), became known as the “boulevard
du crime” because of its association with theaters that specialized in
violent melodramas, particularly the Théâtre des Funambules, the
Théâtre de l’Ambigu and the Folies-Dramatiques. The term “boulevard theater” thus began to be applied to popular and commercial
theater as opposed to work of more artistic or literary ambition. As
tastes changed and the vaudevilles and farces of Eugène Labiche
and his imitators became more popular, it was to that style of play
that the label “boulevard” became more permanently attached. Critics
consider that it makes inadequate intellectual demands on complicit
audiences and that theater should challenge rather than connive at
the spectator’s social and artistic presuppositions. On the other hand,
avant-garde and literary drama is more likely to depend on patronage
or subsidy, and there will always be a place in the world of theater for
plays that draw audiences at commercial rates. See also AUDIBERTI,
JACQUES; BELL, MARIE; BERNARD, TRISTAN; BERNSTEIN,
HENRY; BOCAGE; BOURDET, ÉDOUARD; COURTELINE,
GEORGES; CROMMELYNCK, FERNAND; DORVAL, MARIE; FEYDEAU, GEORGES; GUITRY, SACHA; LEMAÎTRE,
FRÉDÉRICK; MOREAU, JEANNE; PALAIS-ROYAL; SALACROU, ARMAND; SCHMITT, ERIC-EMMANUEL; VILLENEUVE,
THÉODORE FERDINAND VALLOU DE.
BOURDET, ÉDOUARD (1887–1945). Satirical dramatist whose sensitive treatment of lesbianism in La Prisonnière (The Prisoner, 1926)
brought him notoriety and launched his career as a creator of successful boulevard comedies. Vient de paraître (Just Out, 1927) exposed
the manipulation of the literary market by the publishing world,
while Le Sexe faible (The Weaker Sex, 1929) mocked the machinations of fortune-hunting men. Skillful in dramatic construction and
in witty dialogue, he opened the realm of satire to new areas such as
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BOURDET, GILDAS
finance. Other key works include La Fleur des pois (The Dandies,
also known as The Snobs, 1932), Les Temps difficiles (Hard Times,
1934), Fric-Frac (1936), Hyménée (1941) and Père (1942). He
was also successful as an innovative administrator of the ComédieFrançaise from 1936 to 1940, working closely with the actor Victor
Boucher and with the Cartel.
BOURDET, GILDAS (1947– ). Director of the Centre dramatique
national in Lille, he established a strong reputation for innovative
productions of standard texts from Jean Racine to Samuel Beckett
and also for his own original works, including a dramatization of
the life of Molière (1973), Le Saperleau (1982) and Une Stationservice (A Filling-station, 1985), many of which were subsequently
performed in Paris. He was appointed director of the Théâtre national
de Marseille-La Criée in 1995 and of the Théâtre de l’Ouest Parisien
in 2002. Bourdet’s repertoire continues to contain classical works
by, for example, Marivaux and Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793), modern
plays (Bertolt Brecht, Louis Calaferte), operas and his own new
plays (Petit Théâtre sans importance, 1996) and adaptations. He
won a Molière as best director in 1999. See also ROUSSILLON,
JEAN-PAUL.
BOUTEILLE, ROMAIN. See CÂFÉ-THÉÂTRE.
BOUTET DE MONVEL, ANNE FRANÇOISE HIPPOLYTE. See
MARS, MLLE.
BOUTET DE MONVEL, JACQUES-MARIE. See MONVEL.
BOVY, BERTHE (1887–1977). Belgian actress who performed at
Liège before joining the Comédie-Française in 1907 and acted in
her first film, L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise (The Assassination of
the Duc de Guise) by André Calmettes (1861–1942) and Charles
Le Bargy (1858–1936) in 1908. Jean Cocteau’s La Voix humaine
(The Human Voice, 1930) was written for her. Apart from a break
between 1941 and 1950, she continued her acting career onstage and
in films until 1967, when she gave a farewell performance as Mme
BRECHT, BERTOLT
• 59
Pernelle in Molière’s Le Tartuffe. See also PATHELIN, LA FARCE
DE MAÎTRE PIERRE.
BOYRON, ANDRÉ AND MICHEL. See BARON.
BRASSEUR, JULES. Stage name of the actor Jules-Victor-Alexandre Dumont (1829–1891), who starred at the Palais-Royal in Paris
from 1851 to 1871, becoming its director. He excelled in eccentric
and fantastic roles involving disguise, mime and song, obtaining his
greatest success with Eugène Labiche’s farce Le Chapeau de paille
d’Italie (The Italian Straw Hat, 1851). He founded the Théâtre des
Nouveautés in 1877, but taste had moved on and he had less success there, finally retiring in 1890. His son Albert-Jules Brasseur
(1862–1932) also acted at the Nouveautés until his father’s death and
thereafter at the Théâtre des Variétés, excelling in operatic roles
composed by Jacques Offenbach.
BRAUNSCHWEIG, STÉPHANE (1964– ). Stage and theater director. Having trained at the Théâtre national de Chaillot under Antoine
Vitez, he became artistic director of the Centre dramatique national
first at Orléans (1993–1998), then at Strasbourg (since 2000). He
was awarded the Prix de la Révélation Théâtrale du Syndicat de la
Critique in 1991 for productions of plays by Georg Büchner (1813–
1837), Bertolt Brecht and Ödön Edmund von Horváth (1901–1938)
at Bernard Sobel’s Centre dramatique national in Gennevilliers and
went on to direct groundbreaking productions of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale in 1993 and The Merchant of Venice at
the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in 1999. He is also a distinguished
operatic director.
BRECHT, BERTOLT (1898–1956). German playwright and stage
director (full name Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht) whose ideas
had considerable influence in postwar France. He directed the Berliner Ensemble, which visited Paris in 1954 and 1955. A communist,
he lived in exile in the Nazi period, returning to East Germany in
1948. His ideas on didacticism in theater, on the theater of commitment and on defamiliarization techniques in performance were at
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once controversial and influential in France. Brecht considered it
the theater’s prime function to awaken a critical response from the
audience and was hostile to all conventional notions of escapism or
empathy: defamiliarization (Verfremdungseffekt) was thus intended
to challenge the spectators’ expectations of theatrical activity as
much as their perceptions of reality. Although Brecht used the terms
“anti-Aristotelian” and “epic” to define his theoretical approach,
his true target was a 20th-century bourgeois view of theater, and in
practice his conception of theater as a vehicle for the social exploration of ethical issues arising out of major decisions to be made by
a dignified but flawed individual is less distinct from Aristotle’s
notion of tragic drama than is sometimes alleged. See also ACTOR;
ADAMOV, ARTHUR; AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’; BOURDET,
GILDAS; BRAUNSCHWEIG, STÉPHANE; CATHARSIS; CÉSAIRE, AIMÉ; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; HAÏM, VICTOR; PISCATOR, ERWIN; PLANCHON, ROGER; SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE;
SOBEL, BERNARD.
BRÉCOURT, GUILLAUME MARCOUREAU DE (1638–1685).
Author and actor who worked with all three Paris theater companies in the mid-17th century—the Marais, the Hôtel de Bourgogne
and Molière’s company—before becoming a founding member
of the Comédie-Française. He was probably the original Alain in
Molière’s L’École des Femmes (The School for Women, 1662) and
appeared in the first performances of several plays by Jean Racine.
His father, Pierre Marcoureau (?–1664), had also been an actor, using
the stage name Beaulieu. Brécourt also achieved some success as a
dramatist; key works include La Feinte Mort de Jodelet (The Fake
Death of Jodelet, 1659), Le Jaloux invisible (The Invisible Jealous
Man, 1666) and L’Ombre de Molière (Molière’s Shade, 1674).
BRESSANT, JEAN-BAPTISTE PROSPER (1815–1886). Actor
who made his début at the Gymnase in 1846 and created much of the
contemporary repertoire by Eugène Scribe and Émile Augier there
as a young male lead before transferring to the Comédie-Française
in 1854. He retired in 1875. He is remembered for having made fashionable a hairstyle, short at the front and long at the back, mentioned
in the novels of Marcel Proust (1871–1922).
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BRIALY, JEAN-CLAUDE (1933–2007). Actor, stage director, film
director, journalist and radio presenter. Algerian by birth, brought up
in France, he directed the Théâtre Hébertot in Paris and the Festival
d’Anjou and acted in a wide range of theater, including vaudeville,
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands, also translated as
Crime Passionnel and The Red Gloves), Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville) and the first performance of
Félicien Marceau’s Madame Princesse (1965). He has also directed
plays, operettas and films and from 1986 was director of the Théâtre des Bouffes parisiens. See also PALAIS-ROYAL; TESSIER,
VALENTINE.
BRIEUX, EUGÈNE (1858–1932). Realist dramatist whose plays, including Blanchette (1892), La Robe rouge (Red Robes, 1900) and Les
Remplaçantes (Substitute Mothers, 1901), depicted social problems
such as prostitution and exploitation. Les Avariés (Damaged Goods)
was banned for four years, 1901–1905, and Brieux’s consequent
struggle against censorship had wide-ranging consequences for liberty of expression in the theater. His work was supported by André
Antoine at the Théâtre-Libre, and he was elected to the Académie
française in 1909.
BRISSE-BARRE, JEAN-BAPTISTE BERNARD. See JOANNY.
BRITARD, JEAN-BAPTISTE. See BRIZARD.
BRIZARD. Stage name of Jean-Baptiste Britard (1721–1791), actor. Having acted in Lyon in the early 1750s, he was a member of
the Comédie-Française from 1757 to 1786, performing in several
of Voltaire’s tragedies and in Michel-Jean Sedaine’s Le Philosophe sans le savoir (The Unwitting Philosopher, 1765), as well as
in Jean-François Ducis’s translation of William Shakespeare’s
King Lear.
BROHAN, MADELEINE (1833–1900). Actress who made her début
at the Comédie-Française in Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé’s
Les Contes de la Reine de Navarre (1850) and consolidated her reputation in Scribe’s Mademoiselle de la Seiglière (1851).
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BROOK, PETER
BROOK, PETER (1925– ). English stage director who has been
based in Paris (Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord) since 1973, combining
innovative productions, often incorporating non-European elements,
with a Centre international de recherches théâtrales. Responsible
in the 1940s and 1950s for introducing the contemporary French
repertoire (notably Jean Cocteau and Jean Anouilh) to the London
stage, he has subsequently directed performances in English of William Shakespeare at the Bouffes du Nord. His production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest won him the Molière for best director in 1991.
He also has a distinguished career as a producer of operas in London,
New York and Paris, as a film director and as author (The Empty
Space, 1968, The Shifting Point, 1987 and There Are No Secrets,
1993). See also ARTAUD, ANTONIN; AVIGNON, FESTIVAL
D’; BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS; BAUSCH, PINA; CARRIÈRE,
JEAN-CLAUDE; GENET, JEAN; KATEB, YACINE.
BRUEYS, DAVID AUGUSTIN DE (1641–1723). Poet and dramatist,
forgotten today but whose works have been performed more than
2,000 times at the Comédie-Française. On his own or in conjunction
with Jean de Palaprat (1650–1721), he wrote comedies, most notably
a reworking of the late medieval farce, La Farce de Maître Pierre
Pathelin, as L’Avocat Patelin (1706).
BRUNET, MARGUERITE. See PALAIS-ROYAL.
BRUSCAMBILLE. Stage name of Jean Gracieux (?–1634), also
known as Des Loriers (Desloriers or Des Lauriers). One of the most
exuberant actor-authors of the early 17th century, he acted in Valleran Le Conte’s company from 1611. See also OPÉRATEUR.
BUCHANAN, GEORGE (1506–1582). Scottish humanist scholar and
teacher whose Latin plays were influential in the development of
early classical French tragedy. He translated Euripides’ Alcestis and
Medea into Latin and wrote his own dramas on the biblical stories
of Jephthah and John the Baptist. The essayist Michel de Montaigne
(1533–1592) acted in plays by Buchanan and by Marc-Antoine de
Muret when at school in Bordeaux.
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BUFFEQUIN, DENIS AND GEORGES. See LA FLEUR, MLLE.
BURLESQUE. A form of comic writing, not exclusively dramatic,
that features exaggerated stylistic effects often applied inappropriately to trivial or low subjects for the sake of satire (to mock
pompous attitudes or behaviors) or parody (to mock overblown
literary styles or genres). In French drama it was most widely
used in the 17th century, when comic authors, including Paul
Scarron—Abrégé de comédie ridicule de Matamore en vers burlesques (Matamore in Burlesque Rhyme, an Abbreviated Comedy,
1646)—and Thomas Corneille—Le Berger extravagant (The Eccentric Shepherd, pastorale burlesque, 1652), used it to parody the
more serious heroic works of Pierre Corneille and others. In the
18th century, burlesque was again associated with parody of opera
and of the more stultified forms of neoclassical tragedy: examples
include Panurge à marier, ou La Coquetterie universelle (1720)
by Jacques Autreau (1659–1745), La Mort de Goret, tragédie burlesque (1753) by Jacques Fleury (1730–1775) and Momie, comédie
burlesque, avec prologue et divertissements (1778) by JeanÉtienne Despréaux (1748–1820). Nineteenth-century burlesque
formed part of the popular pantomime or vaudeville traditions in
which innuendo and titillation undermined pretentious attitudes
toward art and prudish attitudes toward sexual activity. See also
GAULTIER-GARGUILLE; MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE
CHAMBLAIN DE.
– C –
CABOTIN. French term (feminine cabotine, the masculine form sometimes abbreviated to cabot) used to refer to a mediocre or ham actor.
See also BALADIN; HISTRION.
CÂFÉ-THÉÂTRE. A phenomenon particularly but not solely associated with Paris, consisting of informal theatrical or pseudotheatrical
performances in small venues where refreshments (ranging from
full haute-cuisine menus to a bowl of soup during the interval) are
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CALAFERTE, LOUIS
generally served. Inheriting the spirit of cabaret from Saint-Germaindes-Prés, it reached its heyday between 1970 and 1978 and was
generally satirical and often participatory. Early examples included
La Rose Rouge and La Vieille Grille, where artists such as les Frères
Jacques and Raymond Devos (1922–2006) performed sketches, as
well as experimental versions or adaptations of plays by Boris
Vian or Marivaux, or parodies of classical texts. One of the most
famous is Le Café de la Gare (neither a café nor a station, although
the company was based at Montparnasse Station from 1968 until it
moved in 1972 to its present venue in the rue du Temple), animated
by Romain Bouteille (1937– ) and Coluche (Michel Gérard Joseph
Colucci, 1944–1986). Others included Le Fanal, Le Café-Théâtre
des Blancs Manteaux and Le Splendid. The tradition is kept alive at
Le Lucernaire and also by the tendency of major theater houses to
operate a second auditorium in the style of a studio theater.
CALAFERTE, LOUIS (1928–1994). Dramatist, also author and artist, best known for his erotic novels Septentrion (North, 1963) and
La Mécanique des femmes (The Mechanics of the Female, 1992).
His dramatic work was encouraged by Jean-Pierre Miquel, who
directed his Chez les Titch (1973) at the Odéon. In 1984, he won the
Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris for his overall dramatic output, and
in 1992 he won the Grand Prix National des Lettres. His plays were
published in 1993–1994 in three volumes: Pièces intimistes, including Chez les Titch, Tu as bien fait de venir (Glad You Came), Pierre
and Les Miettes (Crumbs), and two volumes of Pièces baroques,
including Un riche trois pauvres (A Rich Man and Three Paupers),
Opéra bleu (Blue Opera) and Le Roi Victor (King Victor), a grotesque satire directed in 2004 at Nantes by Gildas Bourdet.
CAMUS, ALBERT (1913–1960). Exponent of the philosophy of the
Absurd, and influential journalist and novelist. His early dramatic
works reflect his commitment to wartime resistance—L’État de
Siège (State of Siege, 1948) and Les Justes (The Just, 1949). Caligula, written in 1938, published in 1944, and first performed in 1945
by the then unknown Gérard Philipe, reflects the absurd philosophy of Camus’s novel L’Étranger (The Outsider). He was awarded
the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. See also LA CANTATRICE
CARICATURE
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CHAUVE; CASARÈS, MARIA; COMMITMENT, THEATER OF;
STREHLER, GIORGIO; VINAVER, MICHEL.
LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE (THE BALD PRIMA DONNA). Oneact prose farce by Eugène Ionesco, described by him as an
“anti-pièce” and a defining example of Absurd Theater. Its first performances, directed by Nicolas Bataille (1926–2008) at the Théâtre
des Noctambules in 1950, were badly publicized and unsuccessful,
but some significant literary figures, including Jacques Audiberti,
Albert Camus and Armand Salacrou, defended the originality and
spontaneous creativity of the work, and a reprise of the same production launched at the Théâtre de la Huchette in February 1957 has
enjoyed an interrupted run ever since. Nicolas Bataille continued to
hold the role of M. Martin on an occasional basis until his death,
alongside two other members of the original cast, Simone Mozet
(1927– ) as Mme Martin and Odette Barrois (1925– ) as the maid.
The play was originally based on an English-language textbook
that Ionesco was using, and the inconsequentiality and repetitiveness
of the dialogue reflected that source to powerful comic effect: in
extended sequences of total nonsense, communication is presented
as banal, and logic and identity as unreliable. Stereotypes of English
middle-class couples, their maid and an officer of the fire brigade
make self-evident statements and then by word associations twist
them into meaninglessness. This represents as much a parody of the
expectations of conventional theater audiences as a serious satire
on real attitudes or behavior. The play builds up to an explosive climax of linguistic virtuosity leading to a sudden silence after which
the play appears to begin again. Thus the standard features of conventional drama—formal cohesion, dialogue, plot and characterization—are all systematically undermined.
CARETTE, LOUIS. See MARCEAU, FÉLICIEN.
CARICATURE. A comic effect, not exclusively dramatic but primarily visual, in which an individual person or character-type is mocked
by the grotesque exaggeration of one aspect of his or her physical
appearance or of one characteristic or attitude. The presentation of
stereotypical stock characters in the commedia dell’arte is largely
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CARRIÈRE, JEAN-CLAUDE
based on caricature, and many of Molière’s comic butts depend on
similar techniques, both to satirize contemporary figures of authority and to parody the pretentious portrayal of heroic characters in
serious drama. The ignorant and stuttering judge Brid’oison in Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding, 1784) and the
eponymous doctor in Jules Romains’s Knock (1923) are celebrated
examples of French dramatic caricatures. See also ARRABAL, FERNANDO; CENSORSHIP; COMÉDIE-ITALIENNE; COQUELIN,
BENOÎT CONSTANT; FARCE; LE JEU DE L’AMOUR ET DU
HASARD; LA QUERELLE DE L’ÉCOLE DES FEMMES; SOTIE;
LE TARTUFFE.
CARRIÈRE, JEAN-CLAUDE (1931– ). Writer and actor who has
made a specialty of adapting narrative texts for stage or screen. In
film he worked particularly with Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) and with
Miloš Forman (1932– ), onstage with André Barsacq, Jean-Louis
Barrault and Peter Brook. He adapted his own 1992 novella La
Controverse de Valladolid (The Valladolid Controversy) for a production by Jacques Lassalle at the Théâtre de l’Atelier in 1999. See
also PALAIS-ROYAL.
LE CARTEL. Association formed in 1927 by Gaston Baty, Charles
Dullin, Louis Jouvet and Georges Pitoëff to provide mutual aid
between their four theater companies. Strengthened by this cooperation, experimental and artistic theater was better able to withstand
commercial pressures.
CARVALHO, LÉON (1825–1897). Mauritian singer and opera director, and a major figure in the theatrical and musical world of
Paris from 1856, when he became director of the Théâtre-Lyrique.
With his wife Caroline-Marie Miolan (1827–1895) as prima donna,
he supported new French operas, notably by Charles Gounod, but
also including Georges Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles (The Pearlfishers, 1863) and Hector Berlioz’s Les Troyens (The Trojans, 1863),
as well as mounting successful productions of foreign works, including Le Nozze di Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding) by Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart (1756–1791), Oberon by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826)
and Rigoletto and La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). In
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1874 Carvalho became director of the Opéra-Comique, where he
projected a production of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, but he was
found guilty of negligence and imprisoned after a disastrous fire in
that building in 1887.
CASARÈS, MARIA (1922–1996). Actress of Spanish origin (her full
name was Maria Casarès Quiroga) whose family sought refuge in
France in 1936. A pupil of Béatrix Dussane, she acted in the first
performances of several plays by Albert Camus, then joined the
Comédie-Française in 1952 and the Théâtre national populaire
in 1954. Her major roles included Elvire in Molière’s Dom Juan,
Phèdre, Lady Macbeth and Medea and starring parts in the films Les
Enfants du Paradis (Children of the Gods, 1944) by Marcel Carné
(1909–1996) and Orphée (Orpheus, 1949) by Jean Cocteau. She
won a Molière as best actress in 1989. See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’; CUNY, ALAIN; GENET, JEAN; KOLTÈS, BERNARDMARIE; ŒUVRE, THÉÂTRE DE L’; SOBEL, BERNARD.
CATHARSIS. The metaphor by which Aristotle in his Poetics sought
to define the experience of the tragic. In its literal meaning, purification or purgation, it refers to either religious or medical practice:
drama is akin to a ritual by which a social group can come to terms
with disruptive elements, or to a medical intervention by which
harmony and balance are restored to an organism. Both interpretations are easier to understand if Aristotle’s comments are placed in
their original polemical context: Plato had argued that art should be
rejected in an ideal society because it aroused passions that distracted
the reason, and Aristotle responded that such distraction, although it
could be disruptive, was ultimately beneficial. Art, and tragic drama
in particular, by effecting the catharsis of emotions such as pity and
fear, ensured that they were proportionate and appropriate.
This theory of the tragic has been debated in almost all periods of
literary history. It underpinned the French classical conception of
tragedy, even though both Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine interpreted it in rather idiosyncratic ways. Corneille related it to a moralizing function: if we witnessed tragic characters suffering as a result
of passion (such as love or ambition), we would feel pity for their
plight and fear for ourselves, and this would encourage us to control
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CENSORSHIP
our own feelings. Racine explicated the theory in terms very typical
of 17th-century France: “Tragedy, by arousing pity and terror, purges
and moderates such emotions, in other words it removes from them
whatever is excessive, immoderate or unreasonable.”
The 20th-century view, represented particularly by Bertolt Brecht, is that this theory represents a self-indulgent view of theater: he
and his followers prefer to leave situations unresolved and spectators
dissatisfied at the end of a performance so that it is more likely to
lead to political and social action.
Catharsis may also be detected as a product of comedy, both in the
sense that the ridicule of extremes can have as its effect the correction
of folly, and in the sense that a healthy outburst of laughter—like a
“good cry”—can restore a sense of proportion to the individual and
of harmony to society.
CENSORSHIP. Religious and civic authorities have often believed
or imagined that theatrical activity can be subversive or threatening.
Comedy, like other forms of caricature, portrays authority figures
as ridiculous, while serious drama or tragedy might call into question the nature of justice. Some religious views also consider it to be
blasphemous to emulate God’s role of creation and stereotypically
regard the morality of actors with suspicion. Accordingly, there has
frequently been tension between theater companies, dramatic authors
and government officials whose role was to protect public morality
and control all forms of entertainment. In France under the ancien
régime, the Catholic church had sufficient power to ban, for example,
Molière’s Le Tartuffe from 1664 to 1669, and his Dom Juan (1665)
after only a few performances. However, these plays did explicitly
criticize both the hypocrisy and the gullibility of contemporary religious observances, and many plays were in practice tolerated despite
their implicit challenges to religious and social orthodoxy.
As the French Revolution approached, it was political rather than
religious authority that became defensive in the face of challenges
from the theater. It appears that Louis XVI’s official censors were
content to authorize performances of Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage
de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding) but that the king himself intervened
after a private reading of the play and had it banned from 1779 to
1784. This had the predictable effect of increasing the notoriety of
CÉSAIRE, AIMÉ
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the play when it was finally performed and probably made its political content seem more significant than it had originally been.
After the Revolution, the declaration of the rights of man included
a basic right to freedom of speech and opinion, but some control
over public performance was retained on the grounds that uninhibited challenges to established authority or to accepted taste could
jeopardize public order. Central censorship of theatrical repertoire
was reestablished in 1850, when the Ministry of the Interior would
supply via the prefects a list of condemned plays to each performing
company, and although censorship of publication was lifted in 1881,
that of theater performance remained in place until 1906. After 1884,
responsibility for approving or banning specific plays was devolved
to local municipal authorities. This could have the effect that local
pressure groups had a disproportionate impact: traders, for example,
did not dare to attend plays of which their more influential customers
might disapprove.
Victor Hugo’s Marion de Lorme (written in 1829) was banned
on political grounds and not performed until 1831, while his antimonarchist sentiment led to an even longer prohibition of his Le Roi
s’amuse (The King Takes His Amusement), written in 1832, banned
after one performance and not revived until 1882.
In 2006, the director of the Comédie-Française, Marcel Bozonnet (1944– ), cancelled performances of a controversial play by
Austrian dramatist Peter Handke (1942– ), Voyage au pays sonore
ou L’Art de la question (Journey to the Land of Sound, or The Art of
Questioning), in light of Handke’s political views on the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. This example of auto-censorship was criticized
both by theater colleagues and by political authorities and probably
contributed to the failure of Bozonnet to obtain reappointment. See
also ADAM, PAUL; BRIEUX, EUGÈNE; DUMAS, ALEXANDRE
FILS; LES ENFANTS SANS SOUCI; GATTI, ARMAND; GENET,
JEAN; GONCOURT, EDMOND AND JULES HUOT DE; LAYA,
JEAN-LOUIS; LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; MORALITY PLAY.
CÉSAIRE, AIMÉ (1913–2008). Most significant Francophone author
of the postcolonial period, although more associated with political
journalism and poetry than with theater. He was born in Martinique.
He adapted William Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a Brechtian
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political statement and dramatized the decolonization process in
Haiti—La Tragédie du Roi Christophe (The Tragedy of King Christopher), directed by Jean-Marie Serreau in 1964—and Congo—
Une Saison au Congo (A Season in Congo, 1966).
CHAMPMESLÉ. Stage name of Charles Chevillet (1642–1701), actor
and dramatist. Although he is remembered today only by association
with his more celebrated wife, works by him or attributed to him have
been performed more than 1,500 times at the Comédie-Française.
See also LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE.
LA CHAMPMESLÉ. Stage name of Marie Desmares (1642–1698),
actress. She married Champmeslé in January 1666. Having acted
in the provinces, the couple joined the Marais theater in 1669,
transferred to the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1670, to the Guénégaud
company in 1679 and finally to the Comédie-Française in 1680. La
Champmeslé, who created the title roles of Jean Racine’s Bérénice
(1670) and Phèdre (1677), was the most celebrated tragic actress
of her generation, singled out for praise by Nicolas Boileau and
Jean de La Fontaine. La Champmeslé’s brother Nicolas Desmares
(1645–1714) was also an actor.
CHAPELAIN, JEAN (1595–1674). Poet, critic and intellectual at
the court of Louis XIII, he was one of the founding members of the
Académie française and played a major role in the querelle du Cid.
His Lettre à Godeau sur la règle des vingt-quatre heures (1630) had
been the first explicit defense in French of the unity of time, and he
was an important promoter of the classical theory of drama: his critical
judgments, based on verisimilitude, influenced the work of François
Hédelin d’Aubignac and Nicolas Boileau, even though the latter was
scornful of Chapelain’s own creative work, particularly his epic poem
La Pucelle (The Maid, 1656). Posterity has shared this opinion.
CHARPENTIER, MARC-ANTOINE (1634–1704). Composer
mostly of church and court music who collaborated with Molière on
several of his comédies-ballets, including Le Sicilien (The Sicilian,
1670) and Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid, 1673), and
with Thomas Corneille on his machine play Circé (1675). In 1682
CHÉREAU, PATRICE
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he composed a score for a revival of Pierre Corneille’s Andromède,
originally performed in 1650 with music by Charles Coypeau
d’Assoucy (1605–1677). Charpentier’s opera Médée (1693) was
composed to a libretto by Thomas Corneille.
CHÉNIER, MARIE-JOSEPH (1764–1811). Poet and dramatist,
brother of the better-known poet André Chénier (1762–1794). MarieJoseph’s tragedies, including Charles IX ou La Saint-Barthélemy
(Charles IX, or The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1789), were
successful immediately after the French Revolution but were subsequently banned by Napoléon. Chénier was elected to the Académie
française in 1803. Charles IX was Talma’s first starring role at the
Odéon. See also PALISSOT DE MONTENOY, CHARLES.
CHÉREAU, PATRICE (1944– ). Stage director, actor and film director. He worked initially at Sartrouville and won a directors’ prize
in 1967 for his production of Die Soldaten (The Soldiers) by Jakob
Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792), but he did not attract audiences to the provincial theater so worked in Milan before returning to
the Théâtre national populaire at Villeurbanne and at the Théâtre
de la Porte Saint-Martin in 1973. Since then he has won an international reputation for controversial interpretations of, for example,
Marivaux’s La Dispute at Villeurbanne in 1976, Peer Gynt by
Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), and Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, with
Pierre Boulez (1925– ) conducting, at Beyreuth in 1976. His productions have often been based on a radical redefinition of the nature of
heroism, involving a negative reevaluation of classical heroes such
as Hamlet or Peer Gynt. His production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
won the Molière for best production in 1989. He has championed the
writing of Bernard-Marie Koltès, with productions at Nanterre of
Combat de nègre et de chiens (Conflict of the Black with the Dogs,
known also as Black Battles with Dogs, 1983) and at the Odéon of
Dans La Solitude des champs de coton (In the Solitude of Cotton
Fields, 1995); for the latter he was awarded a second Molière as best
director. As film director Chéreau achieved box office success with
La Reine Margot (1994) and more controversially with the English
film Intimacy (2000). See also DESARTHE, GÉRARD; GENET,
JEAN; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL; STREHLER, GIORGIO.
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CHORUS
CHORUS. Originally a group of actors in ancient Greek drama who
represented a particular element of society (citizens, slaves, women)
and whose reactions, presented in song, dance and gesture, steered
the audience toward a moral interpretation of the events of the play.
The constant presence of the chorus throughout a performance was
partly responsible for the unities of time and place. This established
also the convention of double enunciation: the chorus expresses
its own emotional reaction while conveying crucial information
to the audience. Although French Renaissance dramatists such as
Étienne Jodelle and Robert Garnier used choruses in imitation
of the ancients, the practice conflicted with classical insistence on
verisimilitude, so Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine used them only
sparingly: Corneille in his machine plays, Andromède (1650) and La
Toison d’or (The Golden Fleece, 1660), Racine in his religious plays,
Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). Thereafter, although choruses remained an integral part of opera, they were seldom if ever used in
French plays until the 20th century, when their use both as narrator
and as defamiliarizing device was again appreciated, particularly by
Jean Cocteau and Jean Anouilh.
CICERI, PIERRE LUC CHARLES (1782–1868). Set designer and
machinist. Having begun his career as a landscape gardener, he
succeeded his father-in-law as decorator for court theaters in 1810,
established a scenic studio in Paris in 1822, designed sets for most
Paris theater companies of that time, and trained a generation of
designers, including Édouard Desplechin. Although principally
connected with the Paris Opéra, where he designed Gioacchino
Rossini’s William Tell (1829) and Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le
Diable (Robert the Devil, 1831), his services were acquired by other
companies for work on several major productions, including Victor
Hugo’s Hernani (1830). See also TAYLOR, ISIDORE.
LE CID. Five-act verse play by Pierre Corneille, first performed as a
tragicomedy at the Marais theater in Paris in January 1637; slightly
revised and republished as a tragedy in 1648; further revised for republication in 1660. The role of Rodrigue was created by Montdory,
that of Chimène by Marguerite Béguin or Béguet (? –1670), known
as Mlle de Villiers, and that of L’Infante by Madeleine du Pouget
LE CID
• 73
(? –1683), known as Mlle Beauchâteau. One of the most successful plays of the 17th century, it prompted the company to begin the
practice of allowing wealthy patrons to sit on the stage during the
performances.
Rodrigue and Chimène are destined to marry with the consent of
their families until a bitter dispute breaks out between their fathers.
As a result, Rodrigue is duty bound to avenge an insult suffered
by his father, Don Diègue, by killing Chimène’s father, le Comte
de Gormas, in a duel. Chimène demands justice—the execution of
Rodrigue—from the king, although he and other court observers
are well aware of her continuing passion, and the young hero has
made himself indispensable to the security of the realm by leading
the army to a crushing victory over an invading force of Moors, as a
result of which the defeated rulers bestow on him the honorific title
of “Le Cid.” The king refuses to command his execution and insists
that Chimène must wait a year, while Rodrigue continues his military
exploits, before reaching a decision on their future together.
This ending is susceptible to various interpretations. In the original
version Chimène insists that it is too soon after her father’s death for
her to accept Rodrigue as a husband, even at the king’s behest, which
makes the king’s suggestion of a delayed decision more coherent
and leaves open the possibility of a happy resolution in the future.
In the revised version, Corneille removes the emphasis on time, and
Chimène’s last words are a firm refusal to accept her fate as the price
of national security, so a tragic intensity can be generated by the isolation of the heroine in a scene of militaristic rejoicing. This ambiguity (although modern opinion might consider it a strength) was one
of several criticisms leveled against the play in the querelle du Cid,
which dominated literary discussion and divided informed opinion
for the following year. With its use of a multiple set and problematic relationship with the unities of both time and action, the play
retains several features of baroque drama, although its coherence, its
concentration on internal conflict rather than external danger, and its
poetic qualities point toward the approaching classical period.
The play has seldom been absent from the repertoire of serious
French acting companies; significant interpreters of the role of Rodrigue have included Floridor, Talma, Mounet-Sully (with Sarah
Bernhardt as Chimène), Jean-Louis Barrault and Gérard Philipe.
74 •
CIXOUS, HÉLÈNE
See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’; BARON; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; MAIRET, JEAN; MARAIS, JEAN; NARRATOR.
CIXOUS, HÉLÈNE (1937– ). Feminist writer and intellectual who
sees theater as a useful tool in the feminist campaign. Born in Algeria, she moved to France in 1955 and published a series of important
theoretical essays. Influenced by Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), she
combines serious philosophical and political thought with a playful
style and with inventive development of literary forms.
Cixous’s prolific output amounts to some 40 full-length works
of fiction, essays and plays, many of which have been staged by
Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil. Her more recent works
for the theater have become increasingly concerned with ethical and
political questions in contemporary history, especially the effects
of colonialism, corruption and social injustice. Key dramatic works
include Portrait de Dora (1976), L’Histoire terrible mais inachevée
de Norodom Sihanouk, roi du Cambodge (The Terrible but Incomplete Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia, 1985), La Nuit
miraculeuse (The Miraculous Night, 1989), La Ville parjure, ou, le
réveil des Erinyes (The Perjured Town, or The Reawakening of the
Furies, 1994), Voile Noire Voile Blanche (Black Sails, White Sails,
1994) and Tambours sur la digue (The Flood Drummers, 1999) as
well as an opera libretto, Le Nom d’Œdipe (The Name of Œdipus),
with music by André Boucourechliev (1925–1997), performed at the
Avignon Festival in 1978, and an adaptation of Eumenides (1992)
by Æschylus (c525–456 BC). She is currently Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Centre d’Études Féminines at the
University of Paris-VIII.
CIZOS, ROSE-MARIE. See ROSE CHÉRI.
CLAIRON, MLLE. Stage name of Claire-Josèphe Léris (1723–1803),
who also invented for herself the grander name of Hippolyte Léris de
La Tude. Actress. Inspired by Marie-Anne Dangeville (1714–1796)
to enter the theater, she made her début before her 13th birthday at
the Comédie-Italienne in Paris and performed in several provincial
towns before appearing at the Comédie-Française in the title role
of Jean Racine’s Phèdre in 1743. Rivalry between her and Mlle
CLASSICISM
• 75
Dumesnil dominated the Paris theater in the second half of the
18th century: Mlle Clairon’s reputation was for meticulous attention to detail, and she published some theoretical works on acting
and declamation. Supported by Voltaire, she spent some time at his
home in Ferney recuperating from illness in 1765 and retired from
public performance shortly afterward, although she remained active
in campaigns to ameliorate the social reputation of her profession
and to resist opposition to it from ecclesiastical authorities. See also
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM.
CLARETIE, JULES (1840–1913). Journalist and critic, novelist,
librettist and minor dramatist who became director of the ComédieFrançaise in 1885 and was elected to the Académie française in
1888. See also ADAM, PAUL.
CLASSICISM. Literary term applied generally to forms of art in which
regularity and harmony are valued above rich or varied creativity. In
theater history, the term is associated particularly with drama that
adheres to the three unities. It is applied to the theater of Ancient
Greece and Rome, to the French 17th and 18th centuries (particularly
Pierre Corneille, Molière, Jean Racine and Nicolas Boileau), and
to certain strands of 20th-century serious drama, including the work
of Jean Giraudoux, Jean Cocteau, Henry de Montherlant, Jules
Romains, Jean Anouilh and Jean-Paul Sartre. The term “neoclassicism” is occasionally applied to 17th-century French classicism,
and to the 20th-century examples mentioned above, but is more usually reserved for a resurgence of similar priorities in the late 18th century (see JOUY, VICTOR-JOSEPH-ÉTIENNE DE; LEMERCIER,
(LOUIS-JEAN) NÉPOMUCÈNE; LESUEUR, JEAN-FRANÇOIS;
PONSARD, FRANÇOIS; RAYNOUARD, FRANÇOIS), boosted
by Napoléon’s desire to build a French empire modeled on Rome,
against which the emergence of Romanticism was a reaction. See
also ARISTOTLE; AUDIBERTI, JACQUES; BURLESQUE; CRÉBILLON, PROSPER-JOLYOT DE; DIDEROT, DENIS; HUGO,
VICTOR; MAIRET, JEAN; MELODRAMA; LA QUERELLE DU
CID; ROTROU, JEAN DE; SCALIGER, JULES-CÉSAR; SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; VAUQUELIN DE LA FRESNAYE, JEAN;
VIAU, THÉOPHILE DE.
76 •
CLAUDEL, PAUL
CLAUDEL, PAUL (1868–1955). Dominant French dramatist of the
first half of the 20th century. A committed Catholic, he was strongly
influenced by the Symbolist æsthetic of Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)
and Lugné-Poe; the latter directed the first production of L’Annonce
faite à Marie (Tidings Brought to Mary) in 1912. A career diplomat,
Claudel traveled to China in 1900, to Brazil in 1917 (with the composer Darius Milhaud as his secretary) and to America in 1918.
Claudel’s early plays, symbolist and poetic in inspiration, were
not performed for over 50 years: for example, Tête d’Or, composed
before 1890, was first directed by Jean-Louis Barrault at the Odéon
in 1959, and La Ville (The Town), composed between 1890 and 1897,
was performed by the Théâtre national populaire in 1955. Partage
de midi (Break of Noon, 1906) draws on autobiographical elements,
investigating both the guilt of adulterous love and the conflict between a religious vocation and sexual passion. A triptych of painful
dramas on historical and religious themes—L’Otage (The Hostage,
first performed in 1914, directed by Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre de
l’Œuvre), Le Pain dur (Hard Bread, 1914) and Le Père humilié (The
Humiliated Father, 1916)—was followed by the more joyfully enthusiastic Le Soulier de Satin (The Satin Slipper), composed between
1919 and 1924 but not performed until 1943, when Barrault directed
an abridged version at the Comédie-Française. Similarly, Le Livre
de Christophe Colomb (The Book of Christopher Columbus), commissioned from Claudel and Milhaud by the Austrian director Max
Reinhardt (1873–1943) in 1927, was not performed until Barrault
directed it in 1951. That work and Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (Joan of
Arc at the Stake), commissioned by Ida Rubinstein (1885–1960) and
set to music by Arthur Honegger between 1934 and 1938, combined elements of drama, oratorio, ballet and opera. All of Claudel’s
mature works explore the difficulty of representing dream worlds in
a physical medium. He was elected to the Académie française in
1946. See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’; BELL, MARIE; CUNY,
ALAIN; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; DUX, PIERRE; FEUILLÈRE,
EDWIGE; PALAIS-ROYAL; RENAUD, MADELEINE; VIEUXCOLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
COCHET, JEAN-LAURENT (1935– ). Actor, stage director and
teacher, one of the most influential figures in 20th-century French
COINCIDENCE
• 77
theater. He was a pupil of Béatrix Dussane, and his own acting pupils
included many of the most important stage and cinema actors of the
period, including Daniel Auteuil (1950– ), Nathalie Baye (1948– ), Gérard Depardieu (1948– ), Isabelle Huppert (1953– ) and Fabrice Luchini
(1951– ). A member of the Comédie-Française company from 1959
to 1963, he founded in 1967 the Compagnie Jean-Laurent Cochet at the
Théâtre Pépinière Opéra in Paris and has held regular master-classes
and drama courses there. He was awarded the Prix Ludmilla Tcherina
in 2006 in recognition of his lifetime contribution to theater.
COCTEAU, JEAN (1889–1963). Dramatist and highly influential instigator of experimental dramatic forms from the end of World War I
(see PARADE). Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (The Wedding Party on
the Eiffel Tower, 1921), with music by five members of the groupe
des Six, combined elements of music hall, pantomime and ballet with
a text that is spoken (stage directions and all) by two giant cardboard
phonographs. Cocteau’s very varied theatrical and film career thereafter included neoclassical reworkings of ancient tragedy—Orphée
(Orpheus, 1927), Œdipe-Roi (Œdipus the King, 1928), La Machine
infernale (The Infernal Machine, 1934)—historical melodramas—
Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde (The Knights of the Round Table,
1937), Bacchus (1951)—and social dramas (Les Parents terribles,
1938, Renaud et Armide, 1948). Although often impossible to classify, his works show affinities with both Surrealism and Expressionism: in the latter category, his emotional monologue La Voix
humaine (The Human Voice) achieved success onstage (1930), in a
film version (1947) by Roberto Rossellini (1906–1977), and when
set as an opera by Francis Poulenc (1959). Cocteau was elected to
the Académie française in 1955. See also AUDIENCES; BOUFFES
PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE DES; BOVY, BERTHE; BROOK, PETER; CASARÈS, MARIA; CHORUS; COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE;
DE MAX, ÉDOUARD; FEUILLÈRE, EDWIGE; GENET, JEAN;
HONEGGER, ARTHUR; MARAIS, JEAN; MILHAUD, DARIUS;
NARRATOR; ODÉON; PITOËFF, GEORGES; ROCHER, RENÉ;
SATIE, ERIK ALFRED LESLIE.
COINCIDENCE. The plots of many dramas, both serious and comic,
are based on coincidence, suggesting in comedy the frustrating
78 •
COMÉDIE-BALLET
fickleness of fortune and in tragedy the awesome hand of fate. In
Jean Racine’s Phèdre (1677) the false news that Thésée is dead
has just been proclaimed on the very day he arrives back in Trézène;
in Molière’s L’École des femmes (The School for Women, 1662)
Horace’s old friend Arnolphe is the same individual as his rival M.
de la Souche; in Marivaux’s Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (The
Game of Love and Chance, 1730) Silvia and Dorante each use the
same device to explore the true nature of the other; in Victor Hugo’s
Hernani (1830) Don Carlos and Hernani arrive at Doña Sol’s lodging within a few minutes of each other, and later Carlos meditates
on his responsibilities at the tomb of Charlemagne just as a group of
conspirators arrive in the same crypt to plot against his life; Eugène
Ionesco’s La Cantatrice chauve (The Bald Prima Donna, 1950)
is a reductio ad absurdum of the notion of coincidence; in Michel
Vinaver’s Dissident il va sans dire (Dissident, Goes Without Saying, 1978), the mother’s redundancy as a result of automation at her
workplace coincides painfully with her son’s attempts to find her
a partner through computer dating. Theorists of drama, especially
those working within the classical tradition, have expressed disquiet
at the use of coincidence on the grounds that it defies verisimilitude,
but dramatists have always known that theater audiences are seldom
in practice troubled by such rational preoccupations.
COMÉDIE-BALLET. A genre combining spoken drama with instrumental and sung music, devised largely by Molière in collaboration
with Jean-Baptiste Lully so that Louis XIV’s taste for spectacle
and dancing could be indulged despite the hostility toward opera
of the French intelligentsia and general public. Molière and Lully
created in this genre Les Fâcheux (The Bores, 1661), with machines
by the Italian designer Giacomo Torelli (1608–1678), choreography
by Pierre Beauchamps (1630–1705) and sets by Charles Le Brun
(1619–1690), Le Mariage forcé (The Forced Marriage, 1664), La
Princesse d’Élide (1664), L’Amour médecin (Love the Doctor, 1665),
Le Sicilien (The Sicilian, 1667), Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (1669),
Les Amants magnifiques (The Magnificent Lovers, 1670) and Le
Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman, 1670). Thereafter Lully obtained monopoly rights over his own music, and Molière
commissioned Marc-Antoine Charpentier to write new scores
COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE
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for Le Sicilien and Le Mariage forcé and to compose music for Le
Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid, 1673).
Following Molière’s death in 1673, his company continued to defy
Lully’s monopoly with new comédies-ballets written by Thomas
Corneille, including L’Inconnu (The Mystery Suitor, 1675) and Le
Triomphe des Dames (The Triumph of the Ladies, 1676), but the
genre was largely displaced by opera. Both genres, in which musical set pieces interrupt the plot and in which some of the dialogue is
sung, were difficult to reconcile with the classical period’s preoccupation with verisimilitude; Molière worked hard at providing a more
or less credible pretext for many of his musical scenes although at
times this is tongue-in-cheek, as when in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac
two singing barristers are introduced with the comment that their
legal activities had imparted a sing-song quality to their diction, “so
that you’ll almost believe they were singing”!
COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE. The French national theater company and
its home in Paris. The company was formed in 1680 by royal decree
following the death of François Lenoir de La Thorillière (c1626–
c1679), director of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and amounted to the
compulsory fusion of the remnants of Molière’s and La Thorillière’s
troupes with the Marais company. The first performance of the new
company at the Théâtre de Guénégaud consisted of a double bill,
Jean Racine’s Phèdre and Jean de La Chapelle’s one-act comedy
Les Carrosses d’Orléans (The Coaches from Orleans). In 1687,
the company was obliged to move from the Hôtel Guénégaud and
in April 1689 opened its own purpose-built theater in the rue des
Fossés-Saint-Germain, where it remained until 1770.
Its early repertoire included the plays of Pierre Corneille, Racine
and Molière as well as new works by Baron, Dancourt, JeanFrançois Regnard, Alain-René Le Sage and Prosper-Jolyot de
Crébillon. Whereas Marivaux preferred the acting style of the players at the Comédie-Italienne, Voltaire entrusted most of his new
plays to the Comédie-Française, including the successful Œdipe
(1718), Zaïre (1732), Sémiramis (1748), and L’Orphelin de la Chine
(The Chinese Orphan, 1755). The company’s principal actors in
the 18th century included (in order of début performance) Mlle Duclos (1670–1748), Adrienne Lecouvreur, Marie-Anne Dangeville
80 •
COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE
(1714–1796, a descendant of the actor Montfleury), Mlle Dumesnil,
Mlle Clairon, Lekain, Préville, Brizard, François-René Molé,
Mme Vestris (1743–1804), Dugazon (1746–1809), Mlle Raucourt
(1756–1815), Fleury (1750–1822), Larive, Dazincourt and LouiseFrançoise Contat.
From 1770 until 1782, the company occupied the Salle des
Machines at the Palais des Tuileries, where Beaumarchais’s Le
Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville) was first performed in
1775 and where in 1778 a triumphant performance of Voltaire’s
Irène took place a few weeks before the author’s death. In 1782,
the company moved to what is now the Odéon, a new purposebuilt theater in which for the first time the parterre contained seats,
but its establishment there was short-lived because during the
French Revolution the company was divided and after the Terror
its members were scattered. A fire at the Odéon in 1799 exacerbated the situation, but in May of that year, thanks to the efforts of
government officials Jean-François-René Mahérault (1764–1833)
and Nicolas François de Neufchâteau, the company was reestablished with the title Théâtre-Français at the Salle Richelieu, which
is still the main Paris base of the Comédie-Française. Built as an
opera house, it had been known from 1790 as the Théâtre des
Variétés amusantes and from 1791 under Talma as the Théâtre de
la République.
The company was renamed Théâtre de l’Empereur in 1804. In
1812, while in Moscow, Napoléon laid down the 101 articles of the
Moscow Decree, which established the organizational basis of the
company as a state theater company. Casts were dominated by Talma,
Mlle Mars, Mlle George and Mlle Duchesnois. After the bataille
d’Hernani, the Comédie was generally regarded as the repository of
the great works of the past, Victor Hugo himself turned to the more
popular boulevard theaters, and no subsequent dramatists created
their new works at this venue. Rachel led a renewed vogue for classical tragedy in the middle years of the century.
Significant internal reconstruction of the building took place in
1860–1864. During the Second Empire, director Arsène Houssaye
(1815–1896) enlivened productions of Molière’s comédies-ballets
by involving Jacques Offenbach as musical director and employing
ballet dancers from the Opéra, but under Édouard Thierry (1813–
COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE
• 81
1894) the repertoire overall remained conservative, dominated by
Eugène Scribe and François Ponsard. During the Franco-Prussian
War and the siege of Paris (1870–1871), the theater could not function normally, although fund-raising performances without costume
were held, and the buildings were frequently commandeered for use
as hospitals.
A period of brilliant success was launched by the appointment of
Émile Perrin as administrator in 1871. The former director of the
Paris Opéra led a company whose stars included Sarah Bernhardt,
Jeanne Samary (1857–1890), Blanche Adeline Pierson, MounetSully and the Coquelin brothers, in a repertoire dominated by Victor
Hugo and Alexandre Dumas fils. Perrin also introduced a system of
season tickets. The administration from 1885 to 1913 of Jules Claretie saw a move toward a more Realist repertoire, with new plays by
Victorien Sardou, Edmond Rostand, Jules Renard and Georges
Courteline.
A fire in 1900 and World War I disrupted the work of the theater,
but director Émile Fabre succeeded in keeping it on an even keel
with the help of dedicated actors, including Julia Bartet, Cécile
Sorel (1873–1966), Béatrix Dussane, Marie Bell, Berthe Bovy,
Albert-Lambert, Pierre Dux, André Brunot (1879–1973) and
Fernand Ledoux (1897–1993). Édouard Bourdet was an innovative administrator from 1936 to 1940, working closely with the actor Victor Boucher and with the Cartel to reevaluate the classical
repertoire and introduce new plays by contemporary French and
foreign authors. Two significant premières took place during World
War II: Henry de Montherlant’s La Reine morte (The Dead Queen),
directed by Pierre Dux in December 1942, and Paul Claudel’s Le
Soulier de satin (The Satin Slipper), directed by Jean-Louis Barrault in November 1943.
In 1946 the company acquired a second venue at the Odéon, where
it concentrated on modern classics such as plays by Georges Courteline, Rostand, Montherlant and Jean Cocteau. Maria Casarès made
her début in 1952. Barrault, appointed director in 1959, continued
this tradition with premières of Claudel’s Tête d’Or in 1959, Eugène
Ionesco’s Rhinocéros in 1960 and Samuel Beckett’s Oh! Les Beaux
Jours (Happy Days) in 1963. The Salle Richelieu was extensively
renovated in 1974–1976 and in 1994.
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From 1993 the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier was made available
to the company, and in 1996 an additional space, the Studio-Théâtre
in the Carrousel of the Louvre, was inaugurated. Internationally reputed administrators and directors in the last 20 years have included
Jean-Pierre Vincent, Antoine Vitez, Jacques Lassalle, JeanMarie Villégier and Jean-Pierre Miquel. The company’s leading
actors in the same period included (in order of début performance)
Véra Korène, Gisèle Casadesus (1914– ), Jean Meyer (1914–2003),
Louis Seigner, Jacques Charon (1920–1975), Micheline Boudet
(1926– ), Annie Ducaux (1908–1996), Jean Piat (1924– ), Robert
Hirsch (1925– ) and Jean-Paul Roussillon. Muriel Mayette (1964– )
has held the post of administrative director since August 2006.
COMÉDIE-ITALIENNE, COMÉDIENS ITALIENS. The earliest
French theater came under extensive influence from Italian commedia dell’arte companies that were employed at the French court
under Italian-born queens of France Catherine de Medici (1519–
1589) and Marie de Medici (1575–1642). Such a company, led by
Scaramouche, shared the same premises as Molière when the latter
settled in Paris in 1658, and the Italian style of improvisatory and
caricature-based comedy continued to have an influence on French
comedy, particularly that of Marivaux, through the 18th century.
Expelled from Paris in 1697 for preparing a production of a play
entitled La Fausse Prude (The False Prude), thought to be a satirical attack on the king’s mistress Mme de Maintenon (1635–1719),
the company returned in 1716 to new premises, joined forces with
the Opéra-Comique in 1762, moved to the Salle Favart in 1783 and
remained in existence until 1801.
The name Comédie-Italienne is also given to a theater building
and company in the Montparnasse district of Paris, founded in 1975
by Attilio Maggiulli (1946– ), a pupil of Giorgio Strehler and of
Jacques Lecocq, and Hélène Lestrade and presenting in authentic
commedia dell’arte style, but in French, plays by 17th- and 18thcentury Italian comic authors such as Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793).
COMÉDIE LARMOYANTE. French term meaning lachrymose or sentimental drama and referring to a genre popular in the 18th century.
By combining the serious tone of tragedy with a realistic depiction
COMEDY
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of contemporary society, it anticipated Romantic drama. It found
theoretical support in the writings of Denis Diderot and practical realization in the plays of Philippe Néricault Destouches and PierreClaude Nivelle de La Chaussée.
COMÉDIENS DU ROI. This title seems first to have been used by
Valleran Le Conte for the company he founded with Adrien Talmy
at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1599. Succeeding companies at the
same venue used the same name and became established as the most
significant performers of drama in France. In the late 1630s, as the
success of the rival company at the Marais theater grew, the Comédiens du Roi suffered costly disputes with their titular dramatist, Jean
de Rotrou, and with the leaseholders of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. After 1642, under the leadership of Bellerose and with royal patronage,
and particularly after their theater building was refurbished in 1647,
they reestablished themselves as the leading Paris company and for
the first time put on rival productions of plays previously performed
at the Marais; when Floridor joined them from that company, Pierre
Corneille also gave them the first performances of his new plays.
By 1649, their supremacy was sufficient to earn them the title of
“les grands comédiens” in common usage, to distinguish them from
“les petits comédiens” at the Marais. Their success in serious drama
continued despite caustic criticism from Molière, who accused them
of an unnatural and over-grandiloquent acting style: Jean Racine
nevertheless preferred them to Molière’s own company for the
first productions of his mature tragedies. In 1680, members of the
company were obliged by Louis XIV to combine forces with actors
from the Marais and from Molière’s company, to form the ComédieFrançaise.
COMEDY. Although the French word comédie and its derivatives
are still widely used in their original general sense of “pertaining to
theater” (as in Comédie-Française, L’Illusion comique), the distinction between comic and serious or tragic drama can be traced back to
the 16th century. Comedy is often defined by contrast with tragedy:
the latter dealing with figures of high social status in their public
relationships and portraying a catastrophic fall from greatness, while
the former deals with everyday relationships among a lower social
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class, who overcome obstacles to achieve a conventional happy ending, usually symbolized by marriage. This definition encompasses a
very wide range of tones, from hilarious and grotesque clowning to
sophisticated wit.
The most significant French comic dramatists include Étienne
Jodelle, Pierre Larivey, Pierre Corneille, Molière, Marivaux
and Beaumarchais. In both the 19th and 20th centuries, the clear
distinction between the tragic and the comic was broken down: Victor Hugo insisted that his drame fused together the sublime and the
grotesque, and Absurd Theater similarly drew on extremes of hilarity and comic inventiveness to explore fundamentally serious themes.
During those periods there were still authors who perpetuated the
French traditions of comic drama and farce, most notably Alfred de
Musset, Eugène Labiche, Georges Feydeau, Georges Courteline
and Jean Anouilh.
COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE. An Italian theatrical tradition dependent
on stock characters, schematized gestures, use of masks or visors
and improvisation. Their performances, although based on a strong
central story line (Italian canovaccio, French canevas), consisted of
separate comic routines (for which the Italian word lazzi is also used
in French), enabling the actors to incorporate local and contemporaneous references and to respond dynamically to each audience. This
tradition had a particular influence on Molière, who shared theatrical premises in Paris with an Italian company. His first plays, La
Jalousie du Barbouillé (Le Barbouillé’s Jealousy) and Le Médecin
volant (The Flying Doctor), contain explicit requests for improvised
text as well as gesture and action, and his own acting style was criticized by contemporaries for its excessive use of grimacing. See also
ACHARD, MARCEL; CARICATURE; COMÉDIE-ITALIENNE;
DOM JUAN; HARLEQUIN; LECOCQ, JACQUES; MARTINELLI,
TRISTANO; LA QUERELLE DE L’ÉCOLE DES FEMMES; REGNARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; SCARAMOUCHE.
COMMITMENT, THEATER OF. (French: Théâtre engagé). Movement promulgating the political engagement of theatrical activity,
particularly associated with the period after World War II. It was
influenced particularly by Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht and
COPPÉE, FRANÇOIS
• 85
supported in France by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Arthur
Adamov, Fernando Arrabal, Jean Vilar, Roger Planchon and the
Théâtre national populaire. See also ARISTOTLE; AYMÉ, MARCEL; VIAN, BORIS.
CONFRÉRIE DE LA PASSION. A company of actors established in
Paris in 1398 to perform mystery plays and given official status by
Charles VI in 1402. Despite rivalry from Les Enfants sans souci and
La Basoche, the company retained a monopoly on the performance
of religious drama in Paris as well as control over the theater building
at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which it leased to other acting troupes.
CONTAT, LOUISE-FRANÇOISE (1760–1813). Actress. Having
made her début as Atalide in Jean Racine’s Bajazet, she was a
member of the Comédie-Française from 1777 to 1809, performing
in both tragedy and comedy.
COPEAU, JACQUES (1879–1949). Major French stage director of
the interwar years. As a journalist (editor-in-chief of the Nouvelle
Revue française from 1905, and author of an Essai de rénovation
dramatique, 1913) he promulgated sparse directorial methods, giving
priority to acting and text, challenging both the pompous ostentation
of Comédie-Française productions and the avant-garde experiments
of Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud. In 1913 he founded and
directed the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, restoring Molière to a
central position in the repertoire and expanding the range of William Shakespeare productions but not finding strong dramatic talent
among his most admired contemporaries (André Gide, Georges Duhamel), whose aptitude was more literary than theatrical. After the
failure of his own play La Maison natale (The Birthplace, 1924), he
retired from Paris and from direct theatrical activity, but he remained
an influential figure, through the continuing work of his disciples,
including Charles Dullin, Jacques Rouché and Louis Jouvet. See
also ANTOINE, ANDRÉ; BARSACQ, ANDRÉ; BATY, GASTON;
ROMAINS, JULES; TESSIER, VALENTINE.
COPPÉE, FRANÇOIS (1842–1908). Poet and dramatist whose comedy Le Passant (The Passer-by, 1869) provided the first success for
86 •
COQUELIN, BENOÎT CONSTANT
Sarah Bernhardt. His other plays included Le Luthier de Crémone
(The Violin-maker of Cremona, 1877) and Severo Torelli (1883),
before his greatest popular successes, Les Jacobites (1885) and Pour
la Couronne (In Support of the Crown, 1895). Having worked at the
Ministry of War, he became archivist at the Comédie-Française in
1878 and was elected to the Académie française in 1884, working
actively on its dictionary. He was also involved in antisemitic politics
at the time of the Dreyfus affair (1894–1899). See also ALBERTLAMBERT; DUQUESNEL, FÉLIX-HENRI.
COQUELIN, BENOÎT CONSTANT (1841–1909). Actor, known as
Coquelin l’aîné (the elder), who appeared at the Comédie-Française
from the 1860s, notably as a comic valet in plays by Molière and
Beaumarchais. After a number of disputes with the ComédieFrançaise, he left to tour abroad in 1892, appeared alongside Sarah
Bernhardt in her productions of Molière at the Théâtre de la Renaissance from 1895, and in 1897 became director of the Théâtre de
la Porte Saint-Martin, where he gained his greatest success as the
original interpreter of the title role in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano
de Bergerac (1897). He also wrote several critical works, including
L’Art et le comédien (1880), Molière et le misanthrope (1881), L’Arnolphe de Molière (1882), Les Comédiens par un comédien (1882)
and L’Art du comédien (1894).
Coquelin’s brother Ernest (1848–1909) and his son Jean (1865–
1944) were also actors: Ernest, known as Coquelin le cadet (the
younger), moved from the Odéon to the Comédie-Française in 1868
and had a reputation for a somewhat excessive, caricatural comic
style; Jean made his début at the Comédie-Française in 1890 and
later performed at the Renaissance and at the Porte Saint-Martin. In
1891, all three performed together in a production of Molière’s Les
Fourberies de Scapin (Scapin’s Pranks) at the Comédie-Française,
Jean as Scapin, Constant as Argante and Ernest as Géronte. See also
HADING, JANE; MALLARMÉ, STÉPHANE.
CORNEILLE, PIERRE (1606–1684). The most prolific and significant dramatist of the baroque and classical periods in France,
anticipating the work of Jean Racine in tragedy and of Molière in
comedy. Trained as a lawyer, he devoted almost all his career to dra-
CORNEILLE, PIERRE
• 87
matic writing, experimenting boldly with a wide range of forms, from
social comedy through heroic drama and machine plays to intense
tragedy. An intuitive writer who often showed signs of impatience
with pedantic criticism of his plays by theorists, notably François
Hédelin d’Aubignac, he nevertheless made an important contribution to drama criticism with his three Discours sur l’art dramatique
(1660). His rivalry with the younger Racine, at times bitter, culminated in the creation of plays by both on the story of the Roman Emperor Titus and his Jewish consort Queen Berenices, produced within
a week of each other in 1670 by the rival theater companies of the
Palais-Royal (where Corneille’s play was interpreted by Molière’s
troupe) and the Hôtel de Bourgogne; it is typical of the authors that
Racine’s Bérénice is an intense and minimalist tragedy of bleak loss,
whereas Corneille’s Tite et Bérénice is a much more complex and
pompous comédie héroïque. Whereas Racine was to be an insistent
supporter of Aristotle’s model of tragedy based on the cathartic effect of pity and fear, Corneille, influenced by the Stoicism inculcated
in him by his Jesuit upbringing, explicitly suggested that admiration
should also be aroused by tragic drama.
Corneille’s early works, performed by Montdory and his troupe
at the Marais theater, were particularly characterized by variety and
experimentation: conventional comedies of manners and intrigue, including Mélite (1629), La Galerie du Palais (1632) and La Suivante
(The Lady’s Maid, 1633), and violent tragedies, including Clitandre
(1631) and Médée (1635), showing the influence of Seneca, were
followed by a most unusual fusion of contrasting genres, L’Illusion
comique (Theatrical Illusion, 1636), involving magic, conventional
social comedy, burlesque and tragedy. If that play, which seems
Shakespearean in its systematic defiance of all the aspects of unity,
harmony and concision that were to characterize French classicism,
had achieved greater success, the path of 17th-century French drama
might have been very different. In practice, although an adaptation
was produced with modest success in 1861 at the Comédie-Française
with Louis Arsène Delaunay and Edmond Got, L’Illusion comique
was not successfully revived until Louis Jouvet directed it at the
Comédie-Française in 1937. A production of an important adaptation/
translation of it by Rex Cramphorn (1941–1991) was mounted at the
Seymour Theatre Centre in Sydney, Australia, in 1978.
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CORNEILLE, PIERRE
That play was followed by the period of Corneille’s greatest success with Le Cid (1637), Horace (1640), Cinna (1641) and Polyeucte
(1642), four tragedies with very different settings and themes but a
common underlying thread derived from conflicts between personal
sentiment and public duty. Le Cid was an instant success—its popularity led to the custom of allowing members of the audience to occupy expensive seats on the stage—and box office receipts were no
doubt boosted by the literary controversy which surrounded it (see
LA QUERELLE DU CID). Horace and Cinna are Roman tragedies
exploring the relationship between politics and personal emotion,
while Polyeucte is a martyr play.
For the rest of his long career, Corneille seemed to hesitate between his desire to retain a faithful audience and his creative urge
to experiment, and of his 32 plays less than a third have remained in
the repertoire even of the Comédie-Française. Following the failure
of Pertharite in 1651, he abandoned the theater for almost a decade,
devoting himself to religious verse writing, but during that period he
revised many of his earlier plays and published them, together with
critical and theoretical texts, in a collected edition in 1660. Comparisons between the original and revised versions of some of these
plays, including Le Cid, have been used to trace the development of
French serious drama in that period from a baroque to a more purely
classical æsthetic.
Between 1659 and 1674, Corneille wrote a further nine tragedies,
including Œdipe (1659) and Suréna (1674), and a spectacular machine play, La Toison d’Or (The Golden Fleece, 1660), but after
the success of Racine’s Andromaque (1667) he was overshadowed in public esteem by his younger rival. Corneille had been
elected to the Académie française in 1647; following his death
he was succeeded by his brother Thomas Corneille, and Racine
gave a generous eulogy of the two brothers. See also ALEXANDRINE; AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’; BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS;
BÉJART, ARMANDE; BERNHARDT, SARAH; BIENSÉANCE;
BURLESQUE; CHARPENTIER, MARC-ANTOINE; CHORUS;
COMÉDIENS DU ROI; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; DU RYER,
PIERRE; FANFARON; FLORIDOR; HONNÊTETÉ; JODELET;
MAIRET, JEAN; MARAIS, JEAN; MIQUEL, JEAN-PIERRE;
MOUNET, PAUL; MULTIPLE SET; NARRATOR; ODÉON;
CORNEILLE, THOMAS
• 89
PARODY; PHILIPE, GÉRARD; QUINAULT, PHILIPPE; RACHEL; RICHELIEU, ARMAND-JEAN DU PLESSIS DE; SAINTÉVREMOND, CHARLES DE MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS
DE; SCUDÉRY, GEORGES DE; STREHLER, GIORGIO; TALMA,
FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH; TRISTAN L’HERMITE, FRANÇOIS; VILLÉGIER, JEAN-MARIE.
CORNEILLE, THOMAS (1625–1709). Brother of Pierre Corneille
and himself a top-ranking dramatist and opera librettist, although
posterity has accorded him considerably less status than Pierre. Like
the latter, he produced successful works in many genres, and his
tragedy Timocrate (1656), performed at the Marais theater in the
presence of the king, was the single most successful play in 17thcentury France. The complexity of his plots, often based on mistaken
identity or other misunderstandings, and the sentimentality of his
characterization and poetic language, appealed to his contemporaries,
who were less concerned than posterity about his lack of originality
and the artificiality of many of his situations.
After a series of early comedies, mostly based on Spanish sources
or contemporary novels, and beginning with Les Engagements
du hasard (The Commitments of Chance, 1649), the triumph of
Timocrate was followed by 14 other tragedies, most notably Stilicon
(1660), Camma (1661), Ariane (1672) and Le Comte d’Essex (1678).
In 1673, at the request of Molière’s widow, he adapted Dom Juan
(written by Molière in 1665) in a more acceptable verse edition entitled Le Festin de Pierre, performances of which were permitted and
continued until 1846; and for the same company he wrote a machine
play, Circé (1675), with music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier,
and comédies-ballets as elaborate as those of Molière, including
L’Inconnu (The Mystery Suitor, 1675) and Le Triomphe des Dames
(The Triumph of the Ladies, 1676). In collaboration with the journalist Jean Donneau de Visé, Thomas Corneille also wrote a number
of comedies, most notably La Devineresse (The Soothsayer, 1679),
machine plays and operatic libretti as well as editing, from 1681,
a satirical literary journal, Le Mercure galant (founded in 1672).
He succeeded his brother as a member of the Académie française
in 1684 and undertook in that capacity significant grammatical and
lexicographical work. See also BURLESQUE; JODELET.
90 •
COSTUME
COSTUME. The clothes worn by actors form an integral part of the
message received by the spectators. The director and designer have
discretion to impose a balance between realism and convention: costumes may reflect the period in which the action of the play is set, the
period in which it was first performed or a different period to which
the action has been transferred, or they may be purely symbolic.
Seventeenth-century French actors owned their costumes and
tended to use them indiscriminately, with at most some symbolic additions—ribbons or patches of ermine—to suggest a specific status
or location. Evocation of the ancient world was achieved by the use
of togas for male characters.
Costume provided an essential ingredient in the Realist and Naturalist theater of the 19th century, dominated by the quest for accuracy and authenticity.
Modern theater generally stresses the symbolism of costume rather
than the depiction of any precise period. There has been an increasing tendency to integrate the design of costume and sets within a
coherent visual framework and to achieve striking effects by unusual combinations of costume—for example, Ariane Mnouchkine
evoked oriental color in her costumes for a production of William
Shakespeare’s Richard II (1981). See also LES ENFANTS SANS
SOUCI; KOKKOS, YANNIS; TALMA, FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH.
COTTON, STANISLAS (1963– ). French-speaking Belgian actor and
dramatist, author of politically engaged dramas, including Bureau
national des Allogènes (National Alien Office, 2001), Le Sourire de
Sagamore (Sagamore’s Smile, 2003), Orphéon et le raton laveur
(Orphéon and the Racoon, 2004) and La Dictée (Dictation, 2009).
COURTELINE, GEORGES. Pseudonym of Georges Victor Marcel
Moinaux (1858–1929), comic dramatist in the boulevard farce and
vaudeville tradition, which he carried into the early 20th century.
His Boubouroche (1893) was first performed at André Antoine’s
Théâtre-Libre and reflected the cynical realism associated with
that company, but his reputation depends largely on witty and lighthearted social commentary, in plays like Les Gaietés de l’escadron
(The High Spirits of the Squadron, 1886) and Lidoire, tableau militaire (1891), and on satires of bureaucracy like Une Lettre chargée
CROMMELYNCK, FERNAND
• 91
(A Registered Letter, 1897). Other key works include Monsieur
Badin (1897), Le Gendarme est sans pitié (The Officer of the Law Is
Merciless, 1899), Les Balances (The Scales, 1901), La Conversion
d’Alceste (The Conversion of Alceste, 1905) and La Cruche (The
Dope, 1909).
CRAYENCOUR, MARGUÉRITE DE. See YOURCENAR, MARGUÉRITE DE.
CRÉBILLON, PROSPER-JOLYOT DE (1674–1762). Dramatist
whose tragedies, notably Atrée et Thyeste (Atreus and Thyestes,
1707) and Rhadamiste et Zénobie (1711), dwell on the horrific.
Elected to the Académie française in 1731, he was supported by a
court faction against the more sentimental classicism of Voltaire.
CRÉSY, FERNAND. See ICRES, FERNAND.
CROIZETTE, SOPHIE (1847–1901). Actress. After making her
début in Eugène Scribe’s Le Verre d’eau (The Glass of Water) in
1870, she performed at the Comédie-Française, rivaling Sarah
Bernhardt and succeeding where the latter had failed in a revival of
Émile Augier’s L’Aventurière (The Adventuress) in 1880. She gained
some notoriety through a particularly gruesome and spectacular suicide scene in Le Sphinx (1874) by Octave Feuillet (1821–1890). She
retired in 1882 to live in the country with the banker Jacques Stern,
whom she married in 1885. Her brother-in-law, the prolific portrait
painter Carolus Duran (1837–1917), left an impressive painting of
her on horseback. See also PERRIN, ÉMILE-CÉSAR-VICTOR.
CROMMELYNCK, FERNAND (1886–1970). Belgian actor, journalist and dramatist who divided his life between Brussels and Paris.
Nous n’irons plus au bois (We Won’t Be Going Back to the Woods),
a light comedy produced at the Théâtre du Parc in 1906, Le Sculpteur
de masques, performed at the Gymnase in 1911, Les Amants puérils,
written in 1913 but only performed seven years later at the Théâtre
des Galeries in Brussels, and above all Le Cocu magnifique (The
Magnificent Cuckold, 1920), directed by Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre
de l’Œuvre, whose title seemed to acknowledge a debt to Molière,
all situate his output in the tradition of boulevard comedy, although
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CUBISM
there is a greater intensity, lyricism and craftsmanship in his works
than that label might suggest. During World War I, Crommelynck
founded the Théâtre volant in Brussels, then returned to Paris as a
journalist and dramatist, becoming closely involved in early cinema.
Le Cocu magnifique obtained an international reputation, being directed all over Europe and by Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940) in
the Soviet Union. Tripes d’or (Golden Guts) was directed in 1925 at
the Comédie des Champs-Élysées by Louis Jouvet. Although Crommelynck wrote little after 1935, he returned to the theater in the 1950s
with an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV entitled Le
Chevalier de la lune ou Sir John Falstaff (The Knight of the Moon,
or Sir John Falstaff).
CUBISM. Artistic movement that flourished between 1907 and 1925,
associated particularly with Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges
Braque (1882–1963). Neither was extensively involved in theatrical
work, but Picasso’s set designs for Parade (1917) marked a turning
point in the development of Surrealist theater.
CUNY, ALAIN (1908–1994). Actor. A pupil of Charles Dullin, he
worked in cinema before making his stage début in Jean Giono’s Le
Bout de la route (The End of the Road, 1941). Having performed in
Paul Claudel’s L’Annonce faite à Marie (Tidings Brought to Mary),
he became a Claudel specialist, appearing in L’Histoire de Tobie
et de Sara (The Story of Tobias and Sara) at the Avignon Festival
in 1947 and making a film of L’Annonce faite à Marie in 1991. He
took the role of Thésée in Jean Vilar’s Théâtre national populaire
production of Jean Racine’s Phèdre, with Maria Casarès, in 1957,
and his idiosyncratic appearance and violent acting style suited such
tragic roles. See also THÉÂTRE ANTOINE.
CUREL, FRANÇOIS DE (1854–1928). Dramatist initially championed by André Antoine at the Théâtre-Libre, with L’Envers d’une
sainte (Anything but a Saint, 1891) and Les Fossiles (The Fossils,
1892), and at the Théâtre Antoine with Le Repas du Lion (The
Lion’s Meal, 1897). Les Fossiles was also produced in 1897 at the
Comédie-Française, where L’Amour brode (Love Embroiders, 1893)
and L’Ivresse du sage (The Intoxication of the Wise, 1922) had their
DANCOURT
• 93
first productions. These plays are characterized by the exploration of a
somewhat morbid psychology. His thesis plays, exploring philosophical ideas and moral dilemmas in a Naturalist style, also included La
Nouvelle Idole (The New Idol, 1899), which tackles the moral implications of scientific progress, and Terre inhumaine (Inhuman Land,
1922). He was elected to the Académie française in 1918.
– D –
DADAISM. A nihilistic version of Surrealism, associated particularly with Tristan Tzara. Antagonistic to all forms of conventional
culture, it cultivated spontaneity and provocation, referring to its
dramatic spectacles as “manifestations” (a word that in French carries overtones of political demonstration) and deliberately cultivating
hostility rather than complicity in the audience. On 27 March 1920,
one such Dada-based theatrical spectacle took place at the Théâtre
de l’Œuvre in Paris, incorporating the first performance of Tzara’s
Première Aventure céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine (First Celestial
Adventure of Monsieur Antipyrine), a comic sketch entitled S’il vous
plaît (Please) by André Breton (1896–1966) and Philippe Soupault
(1897–1990) and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes’s Le Serin muet
(The Silent Canary). See also ALBERT-BIROT, PIERRE; APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME; LUGNÉ-POE.
DAGUERRE, LOUIS JACQUES MANDÉ (1787–1851). Noted
developer of early photography, also distinguished in his day as a
scenic artist and stage lighting specialist. His Théâtre pittoresque,
popular from 1804 into the 1820s, consisted entirely of scenic effects,
without text or actors, while the Diorama (1822–1849) produced a
spectacle based on illuminated paintings of real buildings. See also
AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE DE L’; OPÉRA.
DANCOURT. Stage name and authorial pseudonym of Florent Carton,
sieur d’Ancourt (1661–1725), dramatist and actor, seen as the successor to Molière in the comedy of manners and in farce (see also
REGNARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; LE SAGE, ALAIN-RENÉ). Having eloped with and then married the daughter Thérèse (1663–1725)
94 •
DARD, FRÉDÉRIC
of Molière’s former colleague François Lenoir de La Thorillière
(c1626–c1679), Dancourt became an actor and joined the ComédieFrançaise with his wife in 1685. He wrote over 60 plays, the most
famous including Le Notaire obligeant (The Obliging Notary, 1685),
La Désolation des joueuses (The Grief of the Gambling Women,
1687), Le Chevalier à la mode (The Fashionable Knight, 1687), La
Maison de campagne (The Country House, 1688), Les Bourgeoises
de la mode (The Fashionable Bourgeoises, 1692), Les Vendanges
de Suresnes (The Suresnes Harvests, 1695) and Les Bourgeoises
de qualité (The Bourgeoises of Quality, 1700). They combine witty
dialogue with a realistic depiction of the society of the time, poking
fun at snobbery and pretentiousness and portraying with cynicism all
levels of society, including the peasantry. He also wrote court entertainments and operatic parodies.
DARD, FRÉDÉRIC (1921–2000). Prolific popular novelist best known
for racy police thrillers published under the pseudonym San Antonio.
Several of these and other works were adapted for the stage between
1946 and 1992, notably Du Plomb pour ces demoiselles (Some Lead
for These Young Ladies) starring Robert Hossein, and Dard’s adaptations of Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) and of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894).
DAZINCOURT. Stage name of Joseph Jean-Baptiste Albouy (1744–
1809), actor. Having made his début at the Comédie-Française in
1776, he created the role of Figaro in Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage
de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding, 1784). Imprisoned during the Terror,
he participated in the reconstruction of the national theater from 1799
and was made Directeur des spectacles de la cour by Napoléon. He
retired in 1809.
DE BRIE, MLLE. Stage name of Catherine Le Clerc du Rozet (1630–
1706), actress. She was a member of Molière’s company by 1650
and remained loyal to it until his death in 1673. She was the original
interpreter of many of his most significant female roles, including
Agnès in L’École des femmes (The School for Women, 1662), Mariane in Le Tartuffe (1664), Armande in Les Femmes savantes (The
Learned Women, 1672) and Béline in Le Malade imaginaire (The
DEFAMILIARIZATION
• 95
Imaginary Invalid, 1673). Born Catherine Leclerc, she was both the
daughter and the wife of actors: her father Claude Leclerc (?–1641)
used the stage name Du Rozay, and she married Edmé Villequin
(1607–1676), whose stage name was De Brie.
DEBUREAU, JEAN-GASPARD, known as BAPTISTE (1796–
1846). The best known of a family of acrobats who joined the Théâtre
des Funambules in Paris in 1816. From 1819, Debureau established
an unrivaled reputation as a pantomime Pierrot, and despite a prosecution for murder in 1836 (in which he was found guilty of justified
homicide) his active career continued until his death—and indeed
beyond, since it is he that is immortalized by Jean-Louis Barrault
in the film Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of the Gods, 1944) by
Marcel Carné (1909–1996). He was succeeded as Pierrot at the Funambules by his son Jean-Charles Debureau (1829–1873). See also
MARCEAU, MARCEL.
DÉCOR SIMULTANÉ. See MULTIPLE SET.
DECORUM, DECORUM PERSONÆ. See BIENSÉANCE.
DEFAMILIARIZATION. Term used to describe the result of any
technique, acting style or production device that has the effect of reminding the spectators that what they are witnessing is a performance
rather than reality. The terms “alienation” and “distancing effect” and
the French word “distanciation” are used in similar ways. Theater
based on this principle is associated particularly with 20th-century
production techniques and with the theories of Bertolt Brecht, although in practice such techniques have almost always been central
to theatrical activity: the use of the chorus and of masks in Ancient
Greek theater has a defamiliarizing effect, and comic authors from
Molière to Jean Anouilh have made effective use of theatrical tricks
designed to remind the audience of the artificiality of theatrical conventions. Defamiliarization has its roots in Russian Formalist criticism of the early 20th century, when it was perceived as a function
of all art to cast new light on the everyday; in drama it is often seen
as having a double function, making the spectators reassess both their
conventional lives and the role of theater in society.
96 •
DÉJAZET, VIRGINIE
DÉJAZET, VIRGINIE (1798–1875). Actress, one of the most popular of the Restoration period, associated particularly with the works
of Eugène Scribe. She performed at the Gymnase and with Scribe
and the actor-director Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson (1790–
1859) made it the most successful rival to the royal theater companies at that time. She later transferred to the Théâtre des Variétés
and then to the Palais-Royal, where she was particularly associated
with transvestite roles. Late in her career she became a supporter of
Victorien Sardou, and bought a theater which still bears her name
in order to promote his plays.
DE LA HALLE, ADAM. See ADAM DE LA HALLE.
DELAUNAY, LOUIS ARSÈNE (1826–1903). Actor who appeared at
the Odéon in the 1840s before transferring to the Comédie-Française
in 1848, making his début as Dorante in Pierre Corneille’s Le Menteur (The Liar) and remaining there until he retired in 1887. He was
celebrated for his apparently permanent youthful good looks and for
his diction in the established comic repertoire (both classical—Corneille, Molière and Marivaux—and Romantic—Alfred de Musset
and Victor Hugo).
DELAVIGNE, CASIMIR (1793–1843). Romantic dramatist whose
works were used by Isidore Taylor to revive the fortunes of the
Comédie-Française following the bataille d’Hernani, when both
Alexandre Dumas père and Victor Hugo offered their new plays
to rival companies. Key works include Les Vêpres siciliennes (Sicilian Vespers, 1819), L’École des vieillards (The School for Old
Men, 1823), the libretto for Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable
(Robert the Devil, 1831), Louis XI (1831), Les Enfants d’Édouard
(Edward’s Children, 1833) and Don Juan d’Autriche (Don Juan of
Austria, 1835). He was elected to the Académie française in 1825,
and although his own plays had defied many of the strict classical
principles, he voted against the election of both Hugo and Alfred de
Vigny to that body.
DELAY, FLORENCE (1941– ). Dramatist, novelist and academic.
A professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, she has been
DENNERY, ADOLPHE
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an actress and a prizewinning novelist, has translated Spanish plays
into French, and has collaborated in productions by Jean Vilar and
Georges Wilson. With Jacques Roubault (1932– ) she completed
in 2005 a 30-year project to compose a series of 10 plays on Breton
versions of Arthurian legends under the title Graal théâtre. She was
elected to the Académie française in 2000.
DELPIT, ALBERT (1849–1893). Dramatist and poet whose lyrics
were widely set to music. His most important dramatic work was Le
Fils de Coralie (Coralie’s Son, 1880). See also GUITRY, LUCIEN.
DE MAX, ÉDOUARD. Stage name of Éduard-Alexandru Max (1869–
1924), Romanian-born actor. He was appointed to the Odéon staff
by Paul Porel, and his early career was supported by Sarah Bernhardt at the Théâtre de la Renaissance from 1893. He took part
along with Bernhardt in the 1909 film version of Victorien Sardou’s
La Tosca by Charles Le Bargy (1858–1936). As a very public homosexual, De Max organized public recitals of poetry by the young Jean
Cocteau and supported the early career of André Gide, who wrote
his tragedy Saül (1896) for him, although it was not performed until
1922. De Max also contributed to the inspiration for the title role in
another play about homosexuality, Le Monsieur aux chrysanthèmes
(The Gentleman with the Chrysanthemums, 1908), by Carle Lionel
Dauriac (1877–?) under the pseudonym Armory, although De Max
refused to play the part. He did, however, appear with Lugné-Poe in
Gide’s verse play Le Roi Candaule (King Candaulus) at the Théâtre
de l’Œuvre in 1901. He made his début at the Comédie-Française
in 1915 and remained there until his death, specializing in tragic
roles. See also ROCHER, RENÉ.
DENNERY, ADOLPHE (1811–1899). (He adopted the more distinguished spelling d’Ennery after 1874.) Prolific author of sentimental
novels and melodramas, including Les Deux Orphelines (The Two
Orphan Girls, 1874), and a dramatization of the popular novel Le
Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty
Days, published 1872, stage adaptation performed 1874) by Jules
Verne (1828–1905).
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DERISION, THEATER OF
DERISION, THEATER OF. See ABSURD, THEATER OF THE.
DESARTHE, GÉRARD (1945– ). Actor and stage director. His career
began at the Comédie de Bourges in 1962, and he appeared in significant productions of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal (1976) and Molière’s
Le Misanthrope (1985) directed at Strasbourg by André Engel. In
a long collaboration with the director Patrice Chéreau, Desarthe
acted in William Shakespeare’s Richard II (1970) and Hamlet
(1988—he won a Molière as best actor for this performance) and in
Peer Gynt (1981) by Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906). At the Odéon he
starred in Roger Planchon’s productions of Jean Racine’s Athalie
and Molière’s Dom Juan in 1980, and in Giorgio Strehler’s production of Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion comique (Theatrical Illusion)
in 1984. He directed François Tristan L’Hermite’s La Mariane
(first performed in 1636) at the Paris Conservatoire in 1986, Pierre
Corneille’s Le Cid in 1988, Paul Claudel’s Partage de midi (Break
of Noon) in 1998 and Alain-René Le Sage’s Turcaret in 2002. He
has also appeared in more than 50 films and television dramas. See
also LORENZACCIO.
DESCLÉE, AIMÉE (c1837–1874). Actress. She performed in the
Gymnase from 1856, then in Russia and Belgium, before returning to Paris at the invitation of Alexandre Dumas fils to star in
a comédie larmoyante, Froufrou (1869), by Henri Meilhac and
Ludovic Halévy. Dumas himself then capitalized on Desclée’s success by writing a number of plays for her, including Une Visite de
noces (A Wedding Visit, 1871), La Princesse Georges (1872) and La
Femme de Claude (Claude’s Wife, 1873).
DESGILBERTS, GUILLAUME. See MONTDORY.
DES LAURIERS. See BRUSCAMBILLE.
DESMARES, MARIE AND NICOLAS. See CHAMPMESLÉ, MLLE.
DESPLECHIN, ÉDOUARD (1802–1871). Scenic artist at the Paris
Opéra in the mid-19th century. Trained by Pierre Ciceri, he contributed in 1835 to the success of the opera La Juive (The Jewess)
DIAGHILEV, SERGE DE
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by Jacques François Halévy (1799–1862) and in 1847 to that of
Alexandre Dumas père’s La Reine Margot, before concentrating on
opera and ballet sets at the Opéra. He designed the sets for the Paris
production of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser in 1861.
DES ROCHES, CATHERINE (1542–1587). Writer, dramatist and
perhaps actress, who composed poetic dialogues and pastorales,
including Panthée (1571), Tobie (1579), Bergerie (1583), Placide et
Sévère (1581–1582) and Iris et Pasithée (1581–1582).
DESTOUCHES, ANDRÉ-CARDINAL (1672–1749). Baroque composer of religious works and operas, notably his pastorale héroïque,
Issé, performed at court (Fontainebleau and then Versailles) and for
the general public in Paris in 1697.
DESTOUCHES, PHILIPPE NÉRICAULT (1680–1754). Actor,
diplomat and dramatist whose works were successful in his lifetime
but have been forgotten by posterity. His comédies larmoyantes,
including Le Philosophe marié (The Married Philosopher, 1727), Le
Glorieux (The Glorious Man, 1732), Le Dissipateur (The Prodigal,
1735) and La Fausse Agnès (Agnès the False, 1736), are predominantly sentimental and moralistic. He was elected to the Académie
française in 1723.
DEUTSCH, MICHEL (1948– ). Contemporary dramatist and stage
director, associated from 1974 to 1983 with the Théâtre national de
Strasbourg, where he collaborated with Jean-Pierre Vincent. His
plays deal with contemporary life, combining realism with poetic
dialogue, and include Féroé, la nuit . . . (The Faroes by Night, 1989),
written for and produced by Georges Lavaudant, Le Souffleur
d’Hamlet (Hamlet’s Prompter, 1992, performed at the Festival de
Figeac in 2004), Skinner (2001, performed at the Théâtre national de
la Colline in 2002) and Desert Inn (2004, directed by the author at
the Odéon in 2005). Deutsch is also a prolific translator, particularly
of English science fiction.
DIAGHILEV, SERGE DE (1872–1929). Director of the Ballets
russes, which performed at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-lyrique in Paris
100 •
DIDEROT, DENIS
from 1909 and had a wide-ranging influence on theatrical practices.
He was opposed to Wagnerism but put forward a new conception of
total performance to which painters, musicians and scenario writers
all contributed. See also PARADE.
DIDEROT, DENIS (1713–1784). Philosopher and author, a major
figure in the Enlightenment and the most prominent of the French
Encyclopedists. His two sentimental plays, Le Fils naturel (The
Natural Son, 1757) and Le Père de famille (The Family Man, published in 1758, performed in Marseille in 1760 and in Paris in 1761),
were among his most frequently republished works in his lifetime but
were seldom performed. He accompanied them with theoretical essays on drama in which he announced the principles of a new drama,
the serious, domestic, bourgeois drama of real life, thus pointing
away from the stilted conventions of classicism: Entretiens sur Le
Fils naturel (Conversations About The Natural Son, 1757), Discours
sur la poésie dramatique (Treatise on Dramatic Poetry, 1758) and
Paradoxe sur le comédien (The Paradox of Acting, written in 1773,
published in 1830). This approach was best illustrated by Diderot’s
friend Michel-Jean Sedaine in his play Le Philosophe sans le savoir
(The Unwitting Philosopher, 1765), but in practice it had only a
limited direct impact in contemporary France, although Diderot’s
ideas strongly influenced the German dramatist Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing (1729–1781) and through him paved the way for Romantic
drama in Germany and France. Diderot wrote a further comedy, Estil bon? Est-il méchant? (Is He Good? Is He Evil?) in 1781, in which
the role of M. Hardouin appears to be partly autobiographical. See
also COMÉDIE LARMOYANTE; DRAME; MERCIER, LOUIS SÉBASTIEN; PALISSOT DE MONTENOY, CHARLES; REALISM;
SCHMITT, ERIC-EMMANUEL.
DIRECTION DE LA MUSIQUE, DE LA DANSE, DU THÉÂTRE
ET DES SPECTACLES (DMDTS). The department of the French
Ministry of Culture and Communication responsible for theatrical
activity since 1998, when it was created by the fusion of the Direction de la musique et de la danse with the Direction du théâtre et des
spectacles. The first director of this joint department was Dominique
Wallon, who had supervised the merger; he was succeeded by Sylvie
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Hubac, Jérôme Bouët, Jean de Saint Guilhem and Georges-François
Hirsch. The department’s mission is to promote creativity and to
disseminate good practice in all disciplines associated with live
spectacle, to develop education and training, to broaden access and
participation, to protect and promote the French national heritage in
this domain, and to supervise its legal and economic framework.
DIRECTOR. The term is used both for the administrator of a theater
company or festival (French directeur), and for the creative artist
who takes overall responsibility for a particular play production
(French metteur en scène). These roles have not always been distinct:
from Molière to Giorgio Strehler, the world of French drama has
been particularly influenced by individuals who have embraced both
creative and administrative functions. The most important or influential theater administrators in France have included Marie Bell, Bellerose, Eugène Bertrand, Jules Brasseur, Jules Claretie, BenoîtConstant Coquelin, Félix-Henri Duquesnel, Alexandre Duval,
Émile Fabre, Charles Favart, Paul Fort, Marguerite Jamois,
Véra Korène, Georges Lavaudant, Lélio, Charles Le Noir, Oscar
Méténier, Jean-Pierre Miquel, Montdory, Laura Pels, Émile
Perrin, Louis-Benoît Picard, Paul Porel, Réjane and Jean-Louis
Vaudoyer. Those who have had the most impact as stage directors
include Antonin Artaud, Roger Blin, Stéphane Braunschweig,
Patrice Chéreau, Jean-Laurent Cochet, Jacques Copeau, Gérard
Desarthe, Michel Deutsch, André Engel, Patrice Kerbrat, Yannis Kokkos, Jacques Lecocq, David Lescot, Lugné-Poe, Daniel
Mesguich, Georges Pitoëff, René Rocher, Jean-Paul Roussillon,
Jean-Marie Villégier and Robert Wilson, while those who have
contributed both to creative staging and to theater administration include André Antoine, Jean-Louis Barrault, André Barsacq, Gaston Baty, Gildas Bourdet, Jean-Claude Brialy, Peter Brook, Léon
Carvalho, Charles Dullin, Pierre Dux, Pierre Franck, Firmin
Gémier, Robert Hossein, Louis Jouvet, Jacques Lassalle, Jorge
Lavelli, Lemoine-Montigny, Jacques Mauclair, Ariane Mnouchkine, Jacques Offenbach, Lluis Pasqual, Roger Planchon, Jacques
Rouché, Christian Schiaretti, Jean-Marie Serreau, Bernard Sobel, Jean Vilar, Jean-Pierre Vincent, Antoine Vitez, and Georges
Wilson. See also ACTOR; ADAPTATION; AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE
102 •
DISTANCE, DISTANCING EFFECT, DISTANCIATION
DE L’; ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’; AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’;
BRECHT, BERTOLT; CENSORSHIP; COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE;
GYMNASE; MOLIÈRE; LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE; ODÉON;
OPERA; PISCATOR, ERWIN; THÉÂTRE ANTOINE; VIEUXCOLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
DISTANCE, DISTANCING EFFECT, DISTANCIATION. See
DEFAMILIARIZATION.
DOM JUAN. Five-act prose comedy by Molière, first performed by
his company at the Palais-Royal in 1665. Despite the financial success of the first run, the play was never revived in Molière’s lifetime,
which may reflect the extreme sensitivity of the subject matter,
although unlike Le Tartuffe there is no evidence that the play was
formally banned by any official censor. Molière’s play is a reworking of the story of Don Juan first dramatized as El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville, or The Stone
Guest, c1630) by Tirso de Molina (c1571 or c1584–1648) and was
also influenced by Italian commedia dell’arte versions of the same
story and by two French tragicomic plays, both entitled Le Festin de
Pierre (The Stone Banquet) and performed in 1659, one by Nicolas
Drouin, known by his stage name Dorimond (1628–1664), and the
other by Claude Deschamps, known by his stage name de Villiers
(c1600–1681).
Molière’s play combines the literary and moralistic qualities of the
Spanish and French models with the vulgar and physical comic style
of the commedia dell’arte; as a result it lacks the classical coherence
that was expected by theatrical purists by the mid-1660s. The play’s
episodes trace Dom Juan’s moral development from a calculating
seducer, who having already married and abandoned Done Elvire
attempts to capture two young peasant girls, through a stage as a
defiant free-thinker to a position of blatant hypocrisy. In the course
of his exploits he finds the statue of a Commander whom he has
earlier killed; he playfully invites the statue to dine with him, and
the play ends spectacularly when the statue drags Dom Juan down
to a flaming underworld. These serious themes and actions are set
alongside comic episodes mostly generated by Dom Juan’s cowardly
and incompetent valet, Sganarelle, the role played by Molière him-
DOUBLE ENUNCIATION
• 103
self, whose response to the dramatic ending is concern for his own
wages.
Following Molière’s death, his widow arranged for Thomas
Corneille to adapt the play in a versified and toned-down form,
omitting some of the more outrageous and blasphemous expressions;
this version was performed at the Théâtre de Guénégaud in 1677
and remained in the repertoire of the Comédie française until 1841,
when a performance of Molière’s authentic prose text was given at
the Odéon. Important modern productions of the play were directed
by Roger Planchon at the Odéon in 1980 with Gérard Desarthe
and by Jacques Lassalle at the Avignon Festival in 1993. See also
CASARÈS, MARIA; MONTHERLANT, HENRY DE; MOUNETSULLY.
DORT, BERNARD (1929–1994). Former professor of dramaturgy at
the Paris Conservatoire who succeeded Robert Abirached as French
national director of theater and spectacle in 1988. He is also admired
as a critic and theorist of drama, codirecting the journal Théâtre populaire with Roland Barthes and publishing Théâtre/Public—Théâtre
réel—Théâtre en jeu between 1953 and 1978 and La Représentation
émancipée in 1988.
DORVAL, MARIE. Stage name of Marie Delaunay (1798–1849),
actress, the illegitimate daughter of members of a touring company.
She came to fame in the Paris boulevard theater, acting with Bocage
and Frédérick Lemaître in emotional Romantic dramas, most notably Alexandre Dumas père’s Antony (1831). She became the mistress of the dramatist Alfred de Vigny, who used his influence with
Louis-Philippe to persuade the Comédie-Française to employ her in
his Chatterton (1835); her gentle pathos in the role of Kitty Bell won
over the Paris audience despite the hostility of Mlle Mars and other
regular members of the company. She ended her career at the Odéon
from 1842 to 1848. See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM.
DOUBLE ENUNCIATION. All speech in drama effectively operates
on two levels: the characters address each other, and their remarks
are conveyed to (or overheard by) an audience. This gives rise to the
need for conventions such as the soliloquy or the aside—remarks
104 •
DRAME
that are addressed to the audience when no other persons are present onstage, or on the understanding that those present cannot hear
them. Such devices present problems to those theoretical schools of
thought that insist on total verisimilitude. Double enunciation is the
source of dramatic irony, since the full meaning of any remark is
likely to be different in the minds of the onstage interlocutor and of
the spectator.
DRAME. In French as in many languages the basic word for theater,
derived from the Greek word for action. English “drama,” however,
is more properly expressed in French as “théâtre” when referring to
the activity in general and as “spectacle” when referring to a particular work or performance. The French word drame has a more
technical sense, in both the 18th and 19th centuries, to refer to a theatrical genre supported both by Denis Diderot and by the Romantic
dramatists Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset, in which elements of
tragedy and comedy are combined to produce a more authentic and
realistic representation.
DUBILLARD, ROLAND (1923– ). Actor, dramatist and stage director. He built his reputation initially on witty improvisatory dialogues,
performed on radio or stage and published under the title Diablogues
(1975). Key stage works include Naïves Hirondelles (Artless Swallows, 1961), La Maison d’os (The House of Bones, 1962), Le Jardin
aux betteraves (The Beetroot Garden), a radio play directed onstage
in 1969 by Roger Blin, and Où boivent les vaches (Where the Cows
Drink), performed by the Renaud-Barrault company in 1972. More
experimental works include the radio play Les Chiens de conserve
(Tinned Dogs, 1978, adapted also as a film scenario and for stage)
and an “opérette parlée en vers radiophonique” entitled Si Camille me
voyait (If Camille Could See Me Now, 1962). His linguistic fireworks
seem to have held the stage better than the bleaker elements of postwar experimental drama: between 2002 and 2004, no fewer than five
of his plays were being revived in Paris or elsewhere in France, and
in 2008 he won the Molière for the best living French author. See
also MIQUEL, JEAN-PIERRE.
DUBUS, PIERRE-LOUIS. See PRÉVILLE.
DUFRESNY, CHARLES
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DUCHESNOIS, MLLE. Stage name of Catherine Joséphine Raffin
(1777–1835), actress, contemporary of Mlle George, making her
début at the Comédie-Française in 1802; rivalry between them split
Paris audiences and the court until 1808. Duchesnois was less physically attractive but won supporters for her voice and spontaneous
delivery. She retired in 1829. See also BÉRÉNICE; GEOFFROY,
JULIEN-LOUIS.
DUCIS, JEAN-FRANÇOIS (1733–1816). Dramatist who adapted the
plays of William Shakespeare for performance in French. Because
he was not versed in English, he based his version on earlier literary
translations and (like English dramatists of the 17th and 18th centuries) produced plays that were more regular and classical than the
originals. Although he was condemned by partisans of Voltaire for
retaining too much brutality, and by supporters of Shakespeare for the
excessive timidity of his adaptations, his versions were widely performed between 1769 and 1851 at the Comédie-Française: Talma
achieved particular acclaim as Othello in 1792. Ducis’s versions
were frequently parodied, for example in Roméo et Paquette (1773)
by Jean-Baptiste Radet (1762–1830) and Le Roi Lu (1783, also performed at the Gaîte in 1792) by Jean-Baptiste-Denis Després (1752–
1832). Ducis had been elected to the Académie française in 1778
in succession to Voltaire. He wrote a small number of other plays,
including Amélise (1768), Œdipe chez Admèle (1778) and Phédor et
Waldamir (1801). See also LEKAIN; MOLÉ, FRANÇOIS-RENÉ.
DU CROISY. Stage name of Philibert Gassot (1626–1695), actor,
member of Molière’s company and original interpreter of the role of
Tartuffe. His father was also an actor, Jean Gassot, using the stage
name La Fortune, and his sister was Mlle Bellerose.
DUFRESNY, CHARLES (1657–1724). Sieur de La Rivière, dramatist, musician and journalist who edited the Mercure galant from
1710 to 1713 and from 1721 to 1724. He wrote almost 40 comedies,
some in collaboration with Jean-François Regnard, full of wit
and light-hearted innuendo, and often incorporating lively music,
most notably Attendez-moi sous l’orme (Wait for Me Beneath the
Elm, 1694), L’Esprit de contradiction (The Spirit of Contradiction,
106 •
DUHAMEL, GEORGES
1700), Le Double Veuvage (Twice Widowed, 1702), Le Dédit (The
Retraction, 1719), and Le Mariage fait et rompu (Marriage and
Divorce, 1721). These were mostly performed either at the Hôtel de
Bourgogne or at the Théâtre de la rue des Fossés Saint-Germain in
Paris. Although many of his plays continued to be performed at the
Comédie-Française until the end of the 18th century, his reputation
has been eclipsed almost totally by that of Marivaux, whose work he
foreshadowed in his wit and subtlety.
DUHAMEL, GEORGES (1884–1966). Humanist novelist and poet
whose prolific literary and journalistic output contains only a small
number of dramatic works: La Lumière (Light, 1911), Dans l’ombre
des statues (In the Shade of the Statues, 1912), Le Combat (1913),
Le Cafard (The Blues, 1916), L’Œuvre des athlètes (The Work of
Athletes, 1920) and Quand vous voudrez (Whenever You Like, 1921).
Although some of these were performed at the Odéon, his theater
work was interrupted by his medical involvement in World War I
and then eclipsed by his other writing. Duhamel was elected to the
Académie française in 1935 and was its general secretary between
1944 and 1946. See also COPEAU, JACQUES.
DULLIN, CHARLES (1885–1949). Influential actor, disciple of
Jacques Copeau, and mentor for many of the great names of postwar French theater, including Jean-Louis Barrault, Jean Marais,
Marcel Marceau and Jean Vilar. Having served his apprenticeship
as actor from 1905 at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, he collaborated with
Copeau in the foundation of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in
1913 and then became director of the Atelier between 1922 and
1944, leading both a professional theater company and a drama
school. He insisted on the primacy of text over directorial gimmicks. He was particularly associated with the new work of Marcel
Achard, Jules Romains and Armand Salacrou and with revivals
of baroque dramatists such as the English Ben Jonson (c1572–1637)
and the Spanish Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681). See also
ARTAUD, ANTONIN; BARSACQ, ANDRÉ; BILLETDOUX,
FRANÇOIS; BLIN, ROGER; LE CARTEL; CUNY, ALAIN; SARMENT, JEAN; SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE.
DUMAS, ALEXANDRE PÈRE, “THE ELDER”
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DUMAS, ALEXANDRE FILS, “THE YOUNGER” (1824–1895).
Son of Alexandre Dumas père, dramatist, poet and novelist. La
Dame aux Camélias (The Lady with the Camellias), adapted from
one of his own novels and performed (after initial problems with
casting and censorship) at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in 1852,
marked a significant development in the direction of social realism.
He then became the major dramatist associated with the Gymnase
under its influential director Lemoine-Montigny, with Diane de Lys
(1853), starring Rose Chéri, Le Demi-monde (1855), La Question
d’argent (The Question of Money, 1857) and Le Fils naturel (The
Natural Son, 1858). He suffered a nervous breakdown in the 1860s
but returned to the theater with a series of plays written expressly for
Aimée Desclée in the early 1870s, although their immorality shocked
critics and audiences. See also BARTET, JULIA; DUQUESNEL,
FÉLIX-HENRI; GUITRY, LUCIEN; ZOLA, ÉMILE.
DUMAS, ALEXANDRE PÈRE, “THE ELDER” (1802–1870).
Early Romantic author most remembered for his novels but also
an important dramatist in the period when the influence of William Shakespeare was first being felt. His Henri III et sa cour
(Henry III and His Court, 1828) was the most innovative play to be
performed at the Comédie-Française in the period preceding the
bataille d’Hernani, incorporating scenes of comedy and of brutal
violence in a historical pageant reminiscent of both Friedrich Schiller
(1759–1805) and Walter Scott (1771–1832). His Antony, performed
by Bocage and Marie Dorval at the Théâtre de la Porte SaintMartin in 1831, and his Tour de Nesle (1832), at the same theater
with Bocage and Mlle George, were among the greatest successes of
French Romantic drama. As the vogue for Romantic drama declined,
Dumas continued to try to find venues and sponsors for increasingly
vast and elaborate productions, including La Reine Margot (1847),
Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (The Knight of Maison-Rouge,
1847) and Monte Cristo (1848), starring Étienne Mélingue, the last
major actor in the Romantic school. See also DELAVIGNE, CASIMIR; DESPLECHIN, ÉDOUARD; DUMAS, ALEXANDRE FILS;
LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; MELODRAMA; MOUNET-SULLY;
ODÉON; PLANCHON, ROGER; SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL ; TAYLOR, ISIDORE; VARIÉTÉS, THÉÂTRE DES.
108 •
DUMESNIL, MLLE
DUMESNIL, MLLE. Stage name of Marie-Françoise Marchand (1713–1802), actress. She made her début at the ComédieFrançaise in 1737, as Clytemnestre in Jean Racine’s Iphigénie, and
achieved particular success in that and other powerful tragic female
roles, such as Agrippine and Athalie. She was a rival of Adrienne
Lecouvreur and Mlle Clairon: her own reputation was based on the
passionate intensity of her acting. She retired in 1775.
DUNCAN, ISADORA. Professional name used by Dora Angela Duncan (1878–1927), American dancer and choreographer. She worked
in Paris from 1902. See also ŒUVRE, THÉÂTRE DE L’.
DU PARC, MLLE. Stage name of Marquise Thérèse de Gorla
(c1633–1668), also known as Marquise, actress. The daughter of an
Italian opérateur, she married René Berthelot (?–1664), known as
Gros-René, a member of Molière’s touring company, in 1653. She
joined the Marais company in 1659, returned to Molière’s troupe in
1660, then was persuaded in 1667 by Jean Racine to transfer to the
Hôtel de Bourgogne, where she appeared in the opening run of his
Andromaque. Her colorful life story has been dramatized in the film
Marquise (1997) by Véra Belmont (1933– ).
DUQUESNEL, FÉLIX-HENRI (1832–1915). Critic and journalist
who at the instigation of Victor Hugo and the novelist George Sand
(1804–1876) became director of the Odéon in 1872, supporting
there the works of Alexandre Dumas fils, Georges de Porto-Riche
and François Coppée. He subsequently took over direction of the
Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin with Sarah Bernhardt as the
main box office attraction. In 1891 he returned to journalism and
became an influential critic, author and dramatist. His plays included
La Peur (Fear, 1903) and his adaptation of his novel La Maîtresse
de piano (The Piano Teacher, 1907). See also SARDOU, VICTORIEN.
DURAS, MARGUERITE. Authorial pseudonym of Marguerite Donnadieu (1914–1995), author and dramatist. From an Indochinese
background, she came to Paris in 1927 and began her literary career
as a novelist. Her works are characterized by elliptical suggestive-
DUSSANE, BÉATRIX
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ness of language and by the isolation of the characters, particularly
of passive women. Le Square (1957, revised 1965, based on her
own novel of 1955) had more impact as a radio play than onstage.
Les Viaducs de Seine-et-Oise (1959) and L’Amante anglaise (The
English Lover, novel, 1967, dramatized 1968, and first performed
by Madeleine Renaud at the Théâtre Gémier) were based on the
same gruesome story of a dismembered body being thrown from a
viaduct onto passing trains. Les Eaux et forêts (Rivers and Forests,
1965) has been characterized as a feminine equivalent of Samuel
Beckett’s En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot, 1953). La
Musica (1965) was made into a film starring Robert Hossein in
1966 and was extended as La Musica deuxième in 1985. Many of
Duras’s plays and narrative texts were adapted as films, and she
also wrote film scenarios, most notably for Hiroshima mon amour
(Hiroshima My Love), made in 1959 by Alain Resnais (1922– ).
See also BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS; FABIEN, MICHÈLE; SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE.
DU RYER, PIERRE (1605–1658). Playwright, author of some 18
tragedies, successful in his day, including Lucrèce (Lucretia, 1636),
Alcionée (1637), Saül (1639–1640) and Scévole (1644), and one successful comedy, Les Vendanges de Suresnes (The Suresnes Harvests,
1633). Publicly critical of Alexandre Hardy in 1628, he belonged
to the generation of dramatists who heralded the classical period by
fostering the introduction of greater regularity. His poetic style was
rhetorical but competent, and several of his works remained in the
repertoire of Molière’s company after its return to Paris in 1659.
Du Ryer was elected to the Académie française, defeating Pierre
Corneille, in 1646. See also MAIRET, JEAN.
DUSSANE, BÉATRIX. Stage name of Béatrix Coulond-Dussan
(1888–1969), actress. She made her début at the Comédie-Française
in 1903, specializing in soubrette roles. She took an active part in theatrical work undertaken to raise the morale of the army during World
War I, returning as a sociétaire of the Comédie from 1922 to 1941.
She was also a notable teacher and an author of books about acting
and French theater history, including Le Comédien sans paradoxe
(The Actor Minus the Paradox, 1933), and Dieux des planches (Gods
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DUVAL, ALEXANDRE
of the Boards, 1964). See also CASARÈS, MARIA; COCHET,
JEAN-LAURENT.
DUVAL, ALEXANDRE (1767–1842). Dramatist who wrote sentimental comedies in the style of Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La
Chaussée and of Louis Sébastien Mercier, including Les Héritiers
(The Inheritors, 1796) and Le Tyran domestique (The Domestic Tyrant, 1805), and a number of historical dramas, including Édouard
en Écosse (Edward in Scotland, 1802) and Guillaume le Conquérant
(William the Conqueror, 1803), which suggested comparisons between William and Napoléon. He became director of the Odéon in
1807.
DUX, PIERRE. Stage and professional name used by Alex Martin
(1908–1990), actor, stage director and theater administrator. Born
into an acting family, he entered the Comédie-Française in 1929
in the role of Figaro in Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville (The
Barber of Seville). He performed in Jean-Louis Barrault’s première
of Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de satin (The Satin Slipper) in 1943,
having made his own directorial début in 1937 with Molière’s
L’Impromptu de Versailles (The Versailles Impromptu), Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas and Henry de Montherlant’s La Reine morte (The
Dead Queen). As administrator of the Comédie-Française in 1944,
and again from 1970 to 1979, he oversaw a refurbishment of the
space, a reform of its statutes, and a review in 1971 of its relationship with the Odéon. He won the Molière for best actor in 1990. See
also ACHARD, MAURICE; ŒUVRE, THÉÂTRE DE L’; PALAISROYAL; PINGET, ROBERT.
– E –
EN ATTENDANT GODOT (WAITING FOR GODOT). Two-act
prose play by Samuel Beckett, written in 1948–1949, first directed at
the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris by Roger Blin in 1953 and regarded
as a seminal example of Absurd Theater. It was subsequently performed in English at the Arts Theatre in London in 1955, directed by
Peter Hall (1930– ), and in America, before Beckett himself directed
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a production in German at the Schiller-Theater in Berlin in 1975.
Notable later productions include that by Otomar Krejča (1921– ) at
the Avignon Festival in 1978 and a further production by Peter Hall
in London in 1997. That director defined the originality of the play,
which “turned the undramatic (waiting, doubt, perpetual uncertainty)
into tense action, was exquisitely constructed, with an almost musical
command of form and thematic material, and was very funny: it took
the cross-talk tradition of music hall and made it into poetry.”
Two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, are depicted in an empty
landscape dominated by a single tree. Although tempted to leave,
they feel obliged to remain on this spot, where they are to meet
Godot. Their desultory, often meaningless and directionless conversation is interrupted by the arrival, not of Godot but of Pozzo,
a theatrical sadist who leads his slave, Lucky, on a long lead. It is
not so much a play about waiting, whatever Godot may be taken to
represent, but a demonstration of the act of waiting; the characters
have more in common with clowns than with representational types,
the dialogue is more like the content of a nightmare than a rational
discourse.
It is in these ways that En Attendant Godot, like much French
drama of the mid-20th century, challenges both the lifestyle of the
theater-going classes and their expectations about theater itself.
Despite the play’s controversial nature it was a success on its first
run, playing to full houses until November 1954 and obtaining
positive reviews from several active theater practitioners, including
Jacques Audiberti, Jean Anouilh and Armand Salacrou as well
as the novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008). See also DURAS,
MARGUERITE; MARTIN, JEAN; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL;
SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE; WILSON, GEORGES.
LES ENFANTS SANS SOUCI. A Paris-based guild or company of
actors led by Pierre Gringore that performed farces, soties and
morality plays in public places in the medieval period; they were
authorized to perform from the reign (1388–1422) of Charles VI
until censorship limited their repertoire in the reign (1515–1547)
of François I. They were characterized by wearing the costume of
traditional court jesters and by a light-hearted approach to material, which sometimes brought them into conflict with religious authorities. This tradition was passed down to the Sotie de Paris et de
112 •
ENGEL, ANDRÉ
l’Île-de-France and led to disputes between that organization, whose
chief was known as the Prince des Sots, and the Confrérie de la
Passion until 1629, when the then leader Nicolas Guérin ceded his
limited remaining rights over the Hôtel de Bourgogne to the Confrérie.
ENGEL, ANDRÉ (1946– ). Stage director. Having made his directorial début in 1972, he has forged a successful independent career in
stage and operatic production, often situating major plays in unusual
venues, such as riding stables, disused factories or public spaces.
His most influential productions have included Lulu by the German Expressionist dramatist Frank Wedekind (1864–1918) at the
Bataclan Theater in Paris in 1983; Venise sauvée (Venice Saved) by
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) in Le Havre, at the Avignon
Festival and at Bobigny in 1986; his adaptation of the biblical book
of Job at the Théâtre national de Chaillot in 1989; Léonce et Léna
by Georg Büchner (1813–1837) at the Odéon in 2001; and William
Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Odéon in 2006, in which the king
was presented as an industrial magnate from the 1920s. Engel has
also directed operas for the Welsh National Opera, La Scala Milan,
the Opéra de Lausanne, the Opéra de Lyon and the Opéra national
de Paris and was awarded the Prix Dominique in 1993. See also DESARTHE, GÉRARD; NDIAYE, MARIE.
ESPY, L’. See JODELET.
EURIPIDES (c485–c406 BC). Ancient Greek tragedian whose
Medea, Alcestis, Hippolytos, Trojan Women and Bacchæ reveal in
general a greater degree of dark cynicism than the works of Æschylus (c525–456 BC) and Sophocles. It has been plausibly argued that
his influence, replacing to some extent that of Seneca, which had
dominated previous French tragic drama, was more decisive than
Jansenism in shaping the bleak tragic outlook of Jean Racine. See
also ADAPTATION; BAÏF, JEAN ANTOINE DE; BUCHANAN,
GEORGE; LASSALLE, JACQUES; SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL.
EXPRESSIONISM. A European artistic movement that flourished
from about 1880 until World War II. In part a reaction against late
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19th-century Realism, it was characterized by unsettling subject
matter—for example, The Scream (1893) by Edvard Munch (1863–
1944)—and by the artists’ desire not to depict reality but to express
emotion. In France, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) conveyed inner
turmoil through the swirling brush strokes of such works as The
Starry Night (1889), while Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and the Fauvists scandalized the public by their unconventional use of color.
Later Expressionist painters, such as Emil Nolde (1867–1956),
Georges Rouault (1871–1958) and Paul Klee (1879–1940), were increasingly disenchanted with bourgeois materialism, and it was this
attitude that allied them with other art forms, including literature,
drama and opera. Although Expressionism in literature is primarily
associated with Germany, whereas the French reaction against Realism is found in Symbolism, the creation and production of French
drama in the first three decades of the 20th century were significantly
influenced by the fiction of Franz Kafka (1883–1924), the operas
of Alban Berg (1885–1935) and the dramas of August Strindberg
(1849–1912) and Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946), all of which
depicted a world in which the human spirit had been distorted by industrialization, bureaucracy and mechanization. See also ANTOINE,
ANDRÉ; BATY, GASTON; COCTEAU, JEAN; ENGEL, ANDRÉ;
LUGNÉ-POE.
– F –
FABIEN, MICHÈLE (1945–1999). Belgian dramatist and translator. Plays include a dramatic monologue, Jocaste (Jocasta, 1981),
Notre Sade (Our Sade, 1985), Claire Lacombe (1989) and Sara Z
(2000). Fabien also translated and adapted works by Henrik Ibsen
(1828–1906), Marguerite Duras, Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)
and others.
FABLIAU (plural fabliaux). A verse tale, generally earthy and satirical. This popular form balanced the longer and more grandiloquent
epic poems that dominated medieval French literature. Although not
dramatic, fabliaux were designed for performance, and their use of
wit, realism and cynicism had an impact on the tone of much early
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FABRE, ÉMILE
French drama: such genres as the sotie and farce were directly influenced by them, while morality and mystery plays were designed by
clergy to counteract the fabliaux’s subversive and licentious tendencies.
FABRE, ÉMILE (1869–1955). Naturalist dramatist. The son of a
theater director, he was a supporter of André Antoine’s ThéâtreLibre, where his early play L’Argent (Silver) was performed in
1895, and himself became administrator of the Comédie-Française
from 1913 to 1936. He was responsible for the adaptation of Alfred
de Musset’s Lorenzaccio for its first production at the ComédieFrançaise in 1927. His other plays include Timon d’Athènes (1899),
Les Ventres dorés (The Golden Bowels, 1905), La Maison d’argile
(The House of Clay, 1907) and Un Grand Bourgeois (A Mighty Bourgeois, 1914).
FABRE D’EGLANTINE, PHILIPPE (1755–1794). Dramatist. After unsuccessful careers as a soldier and as a provincial actor, he
devoted himself to writing and won a prize at the Jeux Floraux de
Toulouse. He wrote tragedies, including Augusta (1787), but is
principally renowned for comedy, notably a sequel to Molière’s Le
Misanthrope entitled Le Philinte de Molière (1790), in which, following arguments put forward by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he shows
more sympathy toward the abrupt but sincere Alceste than toward the
social compromises of Philinte.
FANFARON. French name for one of the recurrent stock characters
in comedy, a braggart soldier who is in reality an inept coward but
who boasts of military and amorous exploits. Derived from Plautus’s
Miles gloriosus (c205 BC), the character entered French drama with
Jean Antoine de Baïf’s Le Brave (The Swaggerer, 1567). The most
significant avatar in classical French theater is Matamore in Pierre
Corneille’s L’Illusion comique (Theatrical Illusion, 1636).
FARCE. Comic drama usually characterized by suggestive crudity and
whimsical wit. With its origins in the fabliau, it was established as
a distinct dramatic genre in medieval times, associated with La Basoche and Les Enfants sans souci. Although plot and dialogue were
FAVART, CHARLES SIMON
• 115
often ludicrously caricatural, medieval farces did reflect recognizable social realities: henpecked husbands, domineering wives, exasperating mothers-in-law, lascivious and gluttonous monks, boastful
but cowardly soldiers, wily servants and other characters took part in
fanciful adventures, usually involving adultery and financial cheating. The dialogue was characterized by eloquence and wit, and the
play as a whole directed biting satire against current behavior and
social or political authority.
In the classical period, farce was considered a style of acting
rather than a genre, associated particularly with Gros-Guillaume,
Gaultier-Garguille, Jodelet, Tabarin and Turlupin. Literary purists despised it while praising comedies that aspired to the analysis
of serious social problems, but Molière and others were nevertheless
faithful to techniques derived from both French and Italian farce
traditions, and the word farce survives in both French and English to
refer to relatively light-hearted social comedies. Authors whose reputation has been principally or solely based on production of farces for
the popular boulevard theaters include Marcel Achard, Georges
Courteline, Georges Feydeau and Eugène Labiche. See also ARRABAL, FERNANDO; AUDIENCES; BEISSIER, FERNAND;
BERNARD, TRISTAN; BRASSEUR, JULES; BRUEYS, DAVID
AUGUSTIN DE; LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE; DANCOURT; HONNÊTETÉ; IONESCO, EUGÈNE; LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE; LA
MACHINE INFERNALE; MYSTERY PLAY; PARADE; PATHELIN, LA FARCE DE MAÎTRE PIERRE; RODENBACH, GEORGES; SALACROU, ARMAND; SARDOU, VICTORIEN; SCARAMOUCHE; SOTIE; LE TARTUFFE; VIAN, BORIS.
FARIGOULE, LOUIS. See ROMAINS, JULES.
FAVART, CHARLES SIMON (1710–1792). Dramatist, librettist
and theater director. Having worked in fairground and puppet
theater, he wrote comedies, parodies and comic operas, including
La Chercheuse d’Esprit (The Seeker After Wit, 1741), Les Amours
de Bastien et Bastienne (The Love of Bastien and Bastienne, 1753)
and L’Anglais à Bordeaux (The Englishman in Bordeaux, 1763). He
became director of the Paris Opéra-Comique in 1757 and founded
and directed the Théâtre Favart.
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FERRÉOL, MARCEL AUGUSTIN
FERRÉOL, MARCEL AUGUSTIN. See ACHARD, MARCEL.
FEUILLÈRE, EDWIGE. Stage name of Edwige Caroline Cunati
(1907–1998), actress. Trained in Dijon, she was a pensionnaire at
the Comédie-Française from 1931 to 1933 and obtained her first
major success in the film Lucrèce Borgia (1935) by Abel Gance
(1889–1981). Thereafter she performed onstage and on-screen,
specializing in the portrayal of elegant society ladies, most notably
alongside Jean Marais in Jean Cocteau’s L’Aigle à deux têtes (The
Two-headed Eagle, stage version 1946, film 1948) and alongside
Jean-Louis Barrault in Paul Claudel’s Partage de Midi (Break of
Noon, 1948). She was awarded a Molière for best actress in 1993.
See also PALAIS-ROYAL; RENAISSANCE, THÉÂTRE DE LA;
SAGAN, FRANÇOISE.
FEYDEAU, GEORGES (1862–1921). Best known author of boulevard farces. He made his début at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in
Paris with Tailleur pour dames (The Ladies’ Dressmaker, 1886) and
used his inventive wit to rejuvenate the jaded formulæ of vaudeville
in Monsieur chasse! (Monsieur Is Hunting, 1892), Le Dindon (The
Turkeycock, 1896) and La Dame de chez Maxim (The Lady from
Chez Maxim’s, 1899). Other key works include Occupe-toi d’Amélie
(You Look After Amélie, 1908) and Mais ne te promène donc pas
toute nue (Stop Wandering Around with Nothing On, 1912). See also
BEISSIER, FERNAND; PALAIS-ROYAL.
FIORILLI, TIBERIO. See SCARAMOUCHE.
FLÉCHELLES. See GAULTIER-GARGUILLE.
FLERS, ROBERT DE (1872–1927). Dramatist and journalist. His
reputation was based on satirical comedies written in collaboration with Gaston Armand de Caillavet (1869–1915), including Les
Travaux d’Hercule (The Labors of Hercules, 1891), Le Roi (The
King, 1908) and L’Habit vert (The Green Jacket, 1913). After Caillavet’s death he collaborated with Francis de Croisset (1877–1937)
in Les Vignes du Seigneur (The Lord’s Vines, 1923), Le Docteur
FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU, NICOLAS-LOUIS
• 117
Miracle (1926) and the operatic libretto for Ciboulette (1923) set by
Reynaldo Hahn (1875–1947).
Flers became literary editor of Le Figaro in 1921 and was Victorien Sardou’s son-in-law. Although L’Habit vert was a witty satire
against the Académie française, he was elected to that body in 1920.
See also BOUCHER, VICTOR.
FLORIDOR. Stage name of Josias de Soulas, sieur de Primefosse
(1608–1671), actor. He is known to have worked in London in 1635;
he entered the Marais company in 1637, following the premature
retirement of Montdory, and soon replaced the latter as that company’s principal box office attraction, taking over the role of Rodrigue
in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid and probably giving the first performances of the title roles of Polyeucte and Le Menteur (The Liar). His
wife, Marguerite Baloré (c1620–1690), was also a member of the
company. In 1647 he moved to the rival company, the Comédiens
du Roi at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which was led by his brother-inlaw Bellerose and where he was to create the roles of Alexandre and
Pyrrhus in Jean Racine’s early tragedies. His daughter married the
author Antoine de Montfleury in 1666.
FOOL. See BOUFFON.
FORT, PAUL (1872–1960). Poet, minor dramatist and stage director
who led the Symbolist reaction against the Naturalism of Émile
Zola and André Antoine. In 1890, he founded the Théâtre d’Art, in
which first performances were given of many Symbolist plays, notably those of Maurice Mæterlinck. See also LUGNÉ-POE; MUSIC;
ROINARD, PAUL-NAPOLÉON.
FRANCK, PIERRE (1922– ). Stage director and author who became
artistic director of the Théâtre de l’Œuvre from 1960 to 1975, of the
Théâtre de l’Atelier from 1973 to 1998 and of the Théâtre Hébertot
in 2003. He was president of the Syndicat national de metteurs en
scène (French National Union of Stage Directors) for 32 years.
FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU, NICOLAS-LOUIS (1750–
1828). Author and politician. His play Paméla, based on a dramatic
118 •
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
adaptation by Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) of the 1740 English novel
by Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) was performed in 1793 at the
Odéon, but because the play was considered hostile to the aims of
the French Revolution, the theater was closed and its author and
actors arrested.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Political upheaval in 1789 leading to the execution of Louis XVI and the foundation of the French
Republic. These events divided acting communities between those
who supported the need for reform of feudal abuses and those who
remained loyal to an aristocracy that had provided patronage. Following performances in 1793 of Nicolas François de Neufchâteau’s
Paméla, which was considered hostile to the aims of the Revolution,
the Odéon was closed and many of its actors arrested, while Talma
broke away from that company to found the Théâtre de la République. At the same time, Mlle Montansier (1730–1820), royalist director of the Palais-Royal, was arrested and her theater was renamed
the Théâtre du Péristyle du Jardin Egalité, and Jean-Louis Laya
caused controversy by seeming to challenge the ideals of the Revolution with his comedy L’Ami des Lois (Friend of the Laws, 1793).
Such epoch-making events and the individuals connected with
them have naturally been widely explored in art and literature—for
example in the novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens
(1812–1870), in the Italian opera Andrea Chénier (1896) by Umberto
Giordano (1867–1948) and in the German plays Dantons Tod (The
Death of Danton, written in 1835 but not performed until 1902) by
Georg Büchner (1813–1837) and Marat/Sade (1963) by Peter Weiss
(1916–1982)—but not extensively in French drama. Romain Rolland wrote a cycle of four plays on the subject between 1898 and
1939, and Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil mounted a dramatic reconstruction of the Revolution itself in 1970.
The centenary of the Revolution was commemorated by a performance in Reims of the Goncourt brothers’ La Patrie en danger
(The Fatherland in Danger). Its bicentenary was commemorated not
only by performances of dramatic reconstructions but also by the
inauguration of the Opéra-Bastille in Paris. See also CENSORSHIP;
CHÉNIER, MARIE-JOSEPH; COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE; GOUDE,
GARNIER, ROBERT
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JEAN-PAUL; HOSSEIN, ROBERT; LE MARIAGE DE FIGARO;
MOLÉ, FRANÇOIS-RENÉ; ROMANTICISM.
FUTURISM. An artistic and poetic movement started in Italy by
Filippo Marinetti (1876–1944) and associated with Dadaism. Futurist artists, excited by the promise of the early 20th century, celebrated
the mechanization and motion of city life and sought to abolish the
past. See also ALBERT-BIROT, PIERRE; APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME; PRAMPOLINI, ENRICO.
– G –
GAÎTÉ-LYRIQUE, THÉÂTRE DE LA. Ornate theater building in
central Paris built in 1862 for performances of opera, musicals and
ballet. Its director was Jacques Offenbach from 1873 to 1875, and
it was the venue for influential performances by Serge Diaghilev’s
Ballets russes in 1911 and 1913 as well as for the operettas of Franz
Léhar (1870–1948) and Sacha Guitry. In 2007–2010 it was redesigned and refurbished as a center for the performance of contemporary music and digital art.
GARE, CAFÉ DE LA. See CÂFÉ-THÉÂTRE.
GARNIER, ROBERT (c1544–1590). Humanist scholar, poet and
dramatist who established the forms of tragedy and tragicomedy in
the preclassical period. A lawyer by profession, he wrote tragedies
in imitation of Seneca, most notably Hippolyte (1573) and MarcAntoine (1578), tragedies on Greek models, La Troade (The Trojan
Women, 1579) and Antigone (1580), a tragicomedy, Bradamante
(1582), and a biblical tragedy, Les Juives (The Jewish Women, 1583),
generally regarded as his masterpiece. All are characterized by eloquent lyricism, as victims lament their misfortunes, the chorus explains and comments on the action, and all characters punctuate their
speeches with maxims, rhetorical devices and moral discussions, but
not without a sense of the dramatic, through which Garnier conveyed
a sense of fatality and tragic irony. See also MONTCHRESTIEN,
ANTOINE DE.
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GASSOT, NICOLE
GASSOT, NICOLE. See BELLEROSE.
GATTI, ARMAND. Pseudonym of Dante Gatti (1924– ), Italian-born
dramatist and dramaturge whose work combines intense political
engagement with experimental forms of expression and presentation,
for example in Chant public devant deux chaises électriques (Public
Rejoicing Before Two Electric Chairs), performed at the Théâtre
national populaire in 1966, which used a fragmented collage effect. The death of his anarchist father in the course of a political
demonstration no doubt consolidated his own political convictions,
but it was always through writing that he sought to achieve political
change. As a journalist with the Parisien libéré, he frequented political trouble spots around the world (China, Korea, Cuba) and was a
friend of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976) and
of revolutionary leader Che Guevara (1928–1967) as well as of Jean
Vilar. In December 1968, a production of La Passion du général
Franco (of which there had been a public rehearsed reading in Paris
in 1965) was abandoned on the instruction of the French government
following a complaint from the Spanish government: an unusual example of political censorship of theater in modern times.
Le Labyrinthe, dealing with the political problems of Northern
Ireland, was performed at the Avignon Festival in 1982. Other key
plays include Le Crapaud-buffle (The Cane Toad, 1959), Le Voyage
du grand Tchou (published 1960, performed in Marseille in 1962),
La Vie imaginaire de l’éboueur Auguste G. (The Imaginary Life of
the Street Cleaner Auguste G, 1962), V comme Vietnam (V as in Vietnam, 1967), La Cigogne (The Stork, 1971), La Tribu des Carcana en
guerre contre quoi? (The Carcan Tribe at War—Against What Exactly?, 1974), Ces Empereurs aux ombrelles trouées (These Emperors with Holes in Their Parasols, 1991), La Journée d’une infirmière
(A Nurse’s Day, 1998), Le Couteau-toast d’Évariste Galois (Évariste
Galois Drinks the King’s Health—with a Knife in His Hand, 2006),
defined as a “mathematical opera,” combining spectacle and poetry
with scientific demonstration. See also PLANCHON, ROGER.
GAULTIER-GARGUILLE. Stage name of Hugues Quéru or Guéru
(c1582–1633), major comic actor of the early 17th century. A mem-
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ber of Valleran Le Conte’s companies between 1607 and 1610, he
also used the stage name Fléchelles, probably to distinguish his work
in more serious genres from his principal reputation as a farceur.
From 1615, he was closely associated with Gros-Guillaume and
Turlupin, and this trio dominated the Paris stage until 1633. He also
had a reputation as a witty burlesque author.
GÉMIER, FIRMIN. Professional pseudonym of Firmin Tonnerre
(1869–1933), actor and stage director. He was particularly associated with the early work of Romain Rolland. In 1911 he founded
the Théâtre national ambulant, and he went on to found the first
Théâtre national populaire at the Palais de Chaillot in 1920 before
becoming director of the Odéon in 1922. In all these roles his object was to modernize theatrical activities and bring them to a wider
public. A disciple and protégé of André Antoine in his early career,
Gémier developed more stylized acting and directorial techniques
than his master, blurring the boundaries between performers and
audience. See also THÉATRE ANTOINE.
GENET, JEAN (1910–1986). Avant-garde and experimental dramatist
owing something to Antonin Artaud’s notion of the theater of cruelty and something to Absurd Theater but defying compartmentalization. His youth was marked by delinquency and his writing career
began in prison; as a criminal and a wartime deserter he depended on
the support of Jean Cocteau, who admired Genet’s literary work, to
obtain a pardon in 1949. Much of his life was devoted to travel and
political activism, and apart from the early Les Bonnes (The Servants,
1947), his plays were written over a relatively short period: Le Balcon (The Balcony, 1956), created in English by the German director
Peter Zadek (1926–2009) at the Arts Theatre in London in 1957,
then directed by Peter Brook at the Gymnase in Paris in 1960, Les
Nègres (The Negroes, 1958) and Les Paravents (Screens), dealing
with the situation in colonial Algeria. The last play was written in
1961 and performed in German in Munich and Berlin and in English
in London (directed by Peter Brook) before its first performances in
French. This took place in 1966 when the production at the Odéon by
Roger Blin and Jean-Louis Barrault, with Madeleine Renaud and
Maria Casarès in the cast, caused such political scandal that, despite
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the government’s official defense of freedom of speech, it was effectively censored by the weight of public opinion and performances
were discontinued for the sake of public order. Les Paravents was
revived at the Théâtre des Amandiers by Patrice Chéreau in 1983
and at the Avignon Festival in a production by Frédéric Fisbach
(1966– ) in 2007.
GEOFFROY, JEAN-MARIE JOSEPH (1813–1883). Actor. After a
long period in provincial theater, he settled at the Gymnase in 1844
and became its principal male lead in plays by Eugène Scribe and
Eugène Labiche. He transferred in 1862 to the Palais-Royal, where
he continued working in a similar repertoire until 1881.
GEOFFROY, JULIEN-LOUIS (1743–1814). Professor of rhetoric
and poetics who became the theater critic of the influential Journal
des Débats, 1800–1814. He supported Pierre Lafon against the ageing Talma, and Mlle George against Mlle Duchesnois, and resisted
the increasing influence on early Romantic drama of Shakespearean and German models. His articles were published posthumously
in 1819–1820 as a Cours de littérature dramatique.
GEORGE, MLLE. Stage name of Marguerite Joséphine Weimer
(1787–1867), actress, contemporary of Mlle Duchesnois, making
her début at the Comédie-Française in 1802; rivalry between them
split the Paris audiences and court until 1808, when Mlle George
suddenly left the country, apparently because of debt. She was the
more beautiful and classical of the two and excelled particularly in
the role of Iphigénie. She returned to the French stage in the 1820s
in a provincial company led by Charles-Jean Harel (1790–1846);
his appointment as manager of the Odéon in 1829 brought her back
to Paris, and her performance in the title role of Alexandre Dumas
père’s Christine (written in 1827 but first performed in 1830) was
almost as controversial as the opening run of Hernani. See also BÉRÉNICE; GEOFFROY, JULIEN-LOUIS.
GHELDERODE, MICHEL DE. Pseudonym of Adhémar-AdolpheLouis Martens (1898–1962), Belgian dramatist who wrote in French
despite his Flemish roots. He initially wrote texts for puppet theater
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and went on to compose over 60 plays between 1923 and 1939, while
he was employed as a local government official and as a journalist.
Many of them, including Fastes d’Enfer (Annals of Hell, 1929, first
performed in 1936 but coming to public notoriety in a performance
in 1949), La Balade du Grand Macabre (1934), Mademoiselle Jaïre
(1934), Marie Rouge (1934) and Hop Signor! (1936), were performed by a Flemish traveling company. La Mort du docteur Faust
(The Death of Faustus, 1928) and Christophe Colomb (Christopher
Columbus, 1929) were, however, first performed in Paris, and Ghelderode’s plays enjoyed a Parisian vogue in the early 1950s, when
they were produced by young directors, including Roger Planchon.
Ghelderode’s work is characterized by carnivalesque sensuality,
powerful visual effects and a rich poetic use of language.
GIDE, ANDRÉ (1869–1951). One of the literary giants of the French
20th century, although his involvement with theater was limited.
His early works reflect the influence of Symbolism, his novels and
journals contain a somewhat introverted and at times tortured reflection on the nature of humanity, on religion and on sexuality, and his
output as a whole is marked by its confessional tone and its constant
questioning of literary and social conventions. He won the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1947.
Gide’s dramatic texts reflect his desire to disturb and are innovative reevaluations of established dramatic characters. His early
play Saül (1896) was not performed until 1922, but Lugné-Poe
produced Le Roi Candaule (King Candaulus, 1901) at the Théâtre
de l’Œuvre, and Gide’s Œdipe (1930) was performed by Georges
Pitoëff’s company in 1932. His own dramatization (1948) of the
novel Les Caves du Vatican (The Vatican Swindle, also known as
Lafcadio’s Adventures, 1914) was performed at the Comédie-Française in 1950. See also DE MAX, ÉDOUARD; ROUSSILLON,
JEAN-PAUL; VIEUX-COLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
GIONO, JEAN (1895–1970). Writer, best known as novelist, although
he also wrote poems and plays. Supported by André Gide, and
largely self-taught, he spent most of his life in his native HauteProvence, and his work is characterized by humanist values, pacifism
and a lyrical attachment to provincial country life. Key dramatic
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works include Lanceurs de graines (Seed-casters, performed in Geneva and Paris in 1932, published in 1943) and Le Bout de la route
(The End of the Road, 1941). His short story La Femme du Boulanger
(The Baker’s Wife, 1932) was made into a film in 1938 with Raimu
by Marcel Pagnol and subsequently adapted as a stage play (1943)
by Giono himself. See also CUNY, ALAIN.
GIRARD, ANTOINE. See TABARIN.
GIRARD, PHILIPPE. See MONDOR.
GIRAUDOUX, JEAN (1882–1944). Dramatist in the classical school
of the interwar period, particularly associated with Louis Jouvet.
A dramatist of ideas, he wrote intense and linguistically sophisticated comedies incorporating serious political debates, although his
reputation has become somewhat tarnished due to an association
with rather dated preciosity. Key works include Siegfried (1928,
based on his own 1921 novel Siegfried et le Limousin), Amphitryon
38 (1929), La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (The Trojan War
Will Not Take Place, 1935), Électre (1937) and Sodome et Gomorrhe (1943). Although many of them explore a sense of fatality, and
he was a perceptive critic of Racinian tragedy, he is inclined to
challenge blind fatalism in his characters rather than conniving with
their sense of helplessness. His works, several of which are based
on myths borrowed from ancient Greece or from Germanic cultures,
explore identity and humankind’s perception of its relationship with
the universe. Giraudoux also wrote novels and worked as a diplomat
and civil servant. See also ANOUILH, JEAN; PHILIPE, GÉRARD;
TESSIER, VALENTINE.
GONCOURT, EDMOND (1822–1896) and JULES (1830–1870)
HUOT DE. Brothers whose strongly Naturalist literary work was
published under their joint names. After a number of youthful attempts at drama and vaudeville, they concentrated mainly on fiction,
social history and art criticism. Several of their plays proved controversial: Henriette Maréchal (1865) was attacked by republican sympathizers when first performed at the Comédie-Française, because
the Goncourts had received support from the French Imperial family;
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the same company then turned down a play about the French Revolution with the title Blanche de la Rochedragon, later performed as
La Patrie en danger (The Fatherland in Danger) at André Antoine’s
Théâtre-Libre in 1889 (and, by special request of the municipality,
at Reims on the centenary of the Revolution, 14 July 1889); dramatic
adaptations of their novels, La Fille Elisa (written in 1877), adapted
by Jean Ajalbert (1863–1947) for the Théâtre-Libre in 1890, and
Germinie Lacerteux (written in 1865), adapted by Edmond himself
in 1888, were also banned by state censors. However, a reprise of the
latter at the Odéon in 1891, starring Réjane, was more successful,
although the censors still prevented matinée performances. In 1893,
Edmond tried in vain to persuade Sarah Bernhardt to appear in his
adaptation of his 1882 novel La Faustin, which is about an actress.
GOT, (FRANÇOIS JULES) EDMOND (1822–1901). Actor who
made his début at the Comédie-Française in 1844 and was a prominent member of that company for over 50 years, specializing in the
comic repertoire. He appeared in a production of Pierre Corneille’s
L’Illusion comique (Theatrical Illusion), revived in 1861 for the
first time since its composition in 1636. After the siege of Paris and
the Commune (1871), he led members of the Comédie-Française
company on a fund-raising tour to London. He was also an operatic
librettist and published a two-volume journal.
GOUDE, JEAN-PAUL (1940– ). Painter and illustrator whose use of
the human body as an art object makes his work a point of intersection between art, dance and drama. Although mostly renowned for
his publicity and other films, he was responsible for the public procession on the Champs-Élysées in Paris to mark the bicentenary of
the French Revolution.
GOUNOD, CHARLES FRANÇOIS (1818–1893). French operatic
composer, conductor and church organist. His Faust (1859), as well
as an opera based on Molière’s Le Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor
in Spite of Himself, 1857) and Roméo et Juliette (1867), were all
premièred at the Paris Théâtre-Lyrique under Léon Carvalho.
GRACIEUX, JEAN. See BRUSCAMBILLE.
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GRAND-GUIGNOL, THÉÂTRE DU
GRAND-GUIGNOL, THÉÂTRE DU. Theater building and company in the Montmartre district of Paris, founded in the 1890s and
quickly establishing a reputation for horrifying melodramas under
its first directors, Oscar Méténier and Max Maurey (1868–1947).
Literally meaning “puppet-theater for grown-ups,” the name GrandGuignol and its derivative guignolade subsequently came to be used
in French to represent the genre of horror drama. After World War II,
the theater also staged detective thrillers and science fiction dramas
until it closed in 1962.
GRÉTRY, ANDRÉ (1741–1813). Prolific Belgian composer of
around 40 operas and opéras-comiques, including Isabelle et Gertrude (1766, libretto by Charles Simon Favart based on a story by
Voltaire), Le Huron (The Young Man Raised by the Huron Indians,
1768, libretto by Jean-François Marmontel [1723–1799], also based
on a story by Voltaire), Zémire et Azor (1771, a spectacular comédieballet, libretto by Marmontel, a version of Beauty and the Beast), Le
Magnifique (1773, libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine), Andromaque
(1780, based on Jean Racine) and Amphitryon (1786, libretto by
Sedaine based on Molière). His early works were judged too ornate
by Paris audiences, so (like Jean-Baptiste Lully in the previous century) he imitated the prosody of French classical acting to combine
more effectively Italianate melody with French diction.
GRÉVIN, JACQUES (1538–1570). Poet and dramatist, although
more distinguished in his own day as a medical doctor. As a convert
to Protestantism, he spent much of his life in exile. He wrote two
comedies, La Trésorière (The Paymistress, 1558) and Les Ébahis
(Dumbfounded, 1560), and a tragedy, César (Julius Cæsar, 1561), a
reworking in French of a Latin play by Marc-Antoine de Muret.
GRINGORE, PIERRE (1470–1538). Poet and dramatist. He animated
the fairground troupe known as Les Enfants sans souci, for whom
he wrote soties, most notably Le Jeu du Prince des Sots et de la Mère
Sotte (The Play of the Prince of Fools and Mother Folly, 1512),
which was a defense of Louis XII and his policies in opposition to
Pope Julius II. A romanticized version of his life story features prom-
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inently in Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831–1832),
in which he is given the name Pierre Gringoire.
GROS-GUILLAUME. Stage name of Robert Guérin (c1554–1634),
one of the most celebrated comic actors in the early 17th century.
His name first appears in legal documents as leader of a troupe of
actors in Paris in 1600. He worked with Valleran Le Conte in Paris
in 1610 and was joint leader of a troupe performing at the Hôtel de
Bourgogne in 1612. He also used the stage name La Fleur, probably
to distinguish his work in more serious genres from his principal
reputation as a farceur. From 1615, he was closely associated with
Gaultier-Garguille and Turlupin, and this trio dominated the Paris
stage until 1633.
GUÉNÉGAUD, THÉÂTRE DE. Theater building and acting company
in Paris. After Molière’s death in 1673, his colleague La Grange and
his widow Armande Béjart kept the remnants of the troupe together
and arranged for them to move to the Théâtre de Guénégaud, where
they joined forces with the Marais company. The same building was
the home of the Comédie-Française from its formation in 1680 until
1687. See also LA CHAMPMESLÉ; DOM JUAN; GUÉRIN D’ESTRICHÉ, EUSTACHE-FRANÇOIS; MONTFLEURY, ANTOINE
JACOB DE; PRADON, JACQUES.
GUÉRIN, ROBERT. See GROS-GUILLAUME.
GUÉRIN D’ESTRICHÉ, EUSTACHE-FRANÇOIS (1636–1728).
(Some sources give his name as Isaac-François.) Actor, a member
of the Parisian Marais company from about 1672. After Molière’s
death, when the Marais company joined forces with Molière’s
company at the Théâtre de Guénégaud, Guérin married Molière’s
widow, Armande Béjart.
GUÉRU, HUGUES. See GAULTIER-GARGUILLE.
GUILLOT-GORJU. Stage name of Bertrand Hardouyn de SaintJacques (1600–1648), comic actor who replaced Gaultier-Garguille
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GUITRY, LUCIEN
in the Hôtel de Bourgogne company on the latter’s death in 1633.
He was Bellerose’s brother-in-law. Although he signed a fresh fiveyear contract with Bellerose in 1642, he broke it to pursue a medical
career. See also OPÉRATEUR.
GUITRY, LUCIEN (1860–1925). Actor. Having performed in a revival of Alexandre Dumas fils’s La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady
with the Camellias) at the Gymnase in 1878, he created the title role
of Albert Delpit’s social drama Le Fils de Coralie (Coralie’s Son)
in 1880 and starred alongside Réjane in Georges de Porto-Riche’s
L’Amoureuse (The Woman in Love) at the Odéon in 1891. He was
chosen by Sarah Bernhardt to lead her company at the Théâtre
de la Renaissance in 1902. See also GUITRY, SACHA; POREL,
PAUL.
GUITRY, SACHA (1885–1957). Son of Lucien Guitry, and an even
more famous boulevard (and later film) actor than his father. He
also wrote more than 100 light comedies, including Faisons un rêve
(Let’s Dream, also adapted as Sleeping Partners 1916), Mon Père
avait raison (My Father Was Right, 1919), Désiré (1927) and Quadrille (1937), as well as some biographical stage works based on the
lives of Jean de La Fontaine, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–
1791) and others. See also BOUFFES PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE
DES; GAÎTÉ-LYRIQUE, THÉÂTRE DE LA; PALAIS-ROYAL;
RENAISSANCE, THÉÂTRE DE LA.
GYMNASE. Theater building and company in Paris, founded in 1820,
and a major center for social drama under the Realist director
Lemoine-Montigny during the Second Empire. Initially conceived
as a testing ground for young actors, it saw the first performances
of Rachel in 1837 and of Rose Chéri in 1842. Its repertoire was
dominated by the works of Eugène Scribe, Alexandre Dumas fils,
Émile Augier and Jules Sandeau (1811–1883). From 1962 to 1985,
the theater was directed by Marie Bell and continued to support both
established plays and new work by, for example, Françoise Sagan.
See also BRESSANT, JEAN-BAPTISTE PROSPER; CROMMELYNCK, FERNAND; DÉJAZET, VIRGINIE; DESCLÉE, AIMÉE;
GENET, JEAN; GEOFFROY, JEAN-MARIE JOSEPH; GUITRY,
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LUCIEN; HADING, JANE; HALÉVY, LUDOVIC; MEILHAC,
HENRI; OHNET, GEORGES; PIERSON, BLANCHE ADELINE;
POREL, PAUL; SARDOU, VICTORIEN.
– H –
HADING, JANE. Stage name of the actress Jeanne Alfrédine Tréfouret (1859–1933), who was a leading member of the Gymnase
company under Victor Koning (1842–1896), to whom she was married between 1884 and 1887. She had previously performed in both
Algiers and Cairo. She obtained a minor reputation as a singer in
operetta before going on to make her name in social dramas such as
those by Georges Ohnet and an adaptation of Sapho by the popular
Realist novelist Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897). In 1888 she toured
America with Coquelin l’aîné.
HAÏM, VICTOR (1935– ). Prolific dramatist and occasional actor,
whose stage works include La Peau d’un fruit sur un arbre pourri
(Fruitskin on a Rotten Tree, 1971), Abraham et Samuel (1973),
Comment Harponner le Requin (To Catch a Shark, 1974), La Visite
(1975), Isaac et la sage-femme (Isaac and the Midwife, 1976), La
Baignoire (The Bathtub, 1979), Accordez vos violons (Tune up your
Violins, 1981), Belle Famille (Fine Family, also translated as Family
Flesh, 1983), La Valse du hasard (Waltz of Coincidence, 1986), Le
Grand Invité (The Guest, 1988), Le Rire de David (David’s Laugh,
1989), La Femme qui frappe (The Striking Typist, 1992), Le Vampire
suce toujours deux fois (The Vampire Always Sucks Twice, 1999),
Velouté (Mellow, 2000) and Jeux de scène (Stage Combat, 2002)
for which the author won a Molière as best author in 2003. He was
also accorded the Prix de l’Académie française in the same year for
his dramatic output as a whole. Inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre and
Bertolt Brecht, he sought to use theater as a medium for debate
and social change and acknowledged also the influence of the verbal
dexterity of Jacques Audiberti.
HALÉVY, LUDOVIC (1834–1908). Prolific dramatist, librettist and
author of vaudevilles, mostly in collaboration with Henri Meilhac.
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Best remembered now as the librettists of operas by Jacques Offenbach and Georges Bizet, they achieved success in their own time
with plays, including Froufrou (1869), performed at the Gymnase,
Le Réveillon (The Ball, 1872) and La Boule (The Hot-water Bottle,
1874), both performed at the Palais-Royal. Halévy was elected to the
Académie française in 1884. See also DESCLÉE, AIMÉE.
HARDOUYN DE SAINT-JACQUES, BERTRAND. See GUILLOTGORJU.
HARDY, ALEXANDRE (c1575–c1632). Prolific playwright who furnished the staple repertoire of Paris theater in the early 17th century.
The first author to make writing plays in French a professional career,
he wrote in a variety of genres—tragedy, tragicomedy, pastorale and
comedy—all characterized by irregularity and coarseness and using
either mythological or romantic subjects. There is some evidence
that he may also have been an actor. Until 1626, he was closely but
not exclusively associated with the Comédiens du Roi, with Bellerose and with Gros-Guillaume and toured with those companies in
the provinces. From 1626, although the Comédiens du Roi favored
a younger generation of authors (Jean Mairet, Pierre Du Ryer,
Georges de Scudéry, Jean de Rotrou) and their more regular and
literary plays, Hardy’s works were still performed in Paris by the
rival company of the Prince of Orange, so the decline in his popularity was not as abrupt or as marked as has sometimes been supposed.
His resistance to the imposition of formal rules for regular tragedy
was marked by his continuing depiction of violence, his use of trivial
and nonstandard vocabulary, and his mixing of genres; he defended
these practices in his polemical preface to Le Ravissement de Proserpine (The Abduction of Persephone). His other most famous extant
plays are Didon se sacrifiant (Dido’s Suicide) and Mariamne. (It is
impossible to ascribe precise performance dates to individual plays;
Hardy’s 34 surviving plays were published between 1623 and 1628.)
See also TRISTAN L’HERMITE, FRANÇOIS.
HARLEQUIN. The most famous masked character in the commedia
dell’arte tradition, known in Italian as Arlecchino and in French as
Arlequin. The name seems to have been derived from the name of
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a devil, Hellequin, in medieval French folklore. The role was developed by Tristano Martinelli, who led the commedia troupe that
traveled in France in the early 17th century, and is characterized by
wily dishonesty, confrontation with his master and gluttony—aspects
that Molière incorporated into the depiction of several of his comic
servants, including Sganarelle and Scapin. Marivaux, who was also
influenced by Italian acting traditions, gave the name Arlequin to
some of his comic valets, for example in L’Île des esclaves (The Island of the Slaves, 1725) and Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (The
Game of Love and Chance, 1730).
The manteau d’Arlequin (“Harlequin’s cloak”) is the French term
for the proscenium arch.
HAUTEROCHE, NOËL LEBRETON DE (1617–1707). Actor and
dramatist, all but forgotten today but whose works were performed
nearly 2,500 times at the Comédie-Française. He performed at both
the Marais and the Hôtel de Bourgogne, taking parts in the premières of several plays by Jean Racine, and wrote 14 comedies.
HÉNAULT, CHARLES-JEAN-FRANÇOIS (1685–1770). Historian
and poet who wrote a small number of unsuccessful tragedies and
comedies. The most interesting is his François II, roi de France
(1747), in the preface to which he acknowledged the influence of
William Shakespeare, whom he had read in the recently published
translations by Pierre-Antoine de La Place (1707–1793). His other
works include Cornélie vestale (performed in 1713, not published
until 1769), Marius à Cirthe (Marius at Cirtha, 1715), Le Réveil
d’Epiménide (The Awakening of Epimenides, 1755), La Petite Maison (The Little House, 1769) and Le Jaloux de lui-même (The Man
Who Was Jealous of Himself, 1769). Hénault was elected to the Académie française in 1723, having won that body’s prize for eloquence
in 1707.
HERNANI. Five-act verse drama by Victor Hugo, the first example
of Romantic drama to reach a wide audience after its staging at the
Comédie-Française in 1830, directed by Isidore Taylor, designed
by Pierre Luc Charles Ciceri and starring Mlle Mars, Firmin and
Joanny. This production was seen as a test case by both defenders
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and opponents of the innovative approach to drama, and the rejection
of neoclassical regularity, that were then becoming fashionable (see
ROMANTICISM; STENDHAL; SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM).
The play was almost designed to provoke conservative elements
in the audience, with unconventional metrical features in the verse,
undignified behavior from regal characters, extravagant sets and a
systematic undermining of the unities. The resulting controversy
triggered the bataille de Hernani. See also ALEXANDRINE; COINCIDENCE; DELAVIGNE, CASIMIR; DUMAS, ALEXANDRE
PÈRE; GEORGE, MLLE; MARCEL, LÉON.
HERNANI, LA BATAILLE DE. The opening night of Victor Hugo’s
Romantic drama Hernani, on 25 February 1830 at the ComédieFrançaise, was seen as a test case by both defenders and opponents
of innovative approaches to drama. As a result, Hugo’s enemies and
rivals were loud in their condemnation and were assaulted by equally
rowdy supporters of the new movement. The resulting controversy
probably did little to change the minds or tastes of either party but
ensured the ongoing interest of the public in new drama. See also
DELAVIGNE, CASIMIR; DUMAS, ALEXANDRE PÈRE.
HERVIEU, PAUL (1857–1915). Dramatist, novelist, professional
diplomat and journalist. He shared with the Naturalist school a concern for contemporary issues such as marriage but produced more
complex and didactic works than theirs, most notably Les Tenailles
(Pincers, also translated as The Nippers, 1895), La Loi de l’Homme
(The Law of Man, 1898), which raises feminist issues, La Course du
Flambeau (Passing the Torch, 1901) and Le Dédale (The Labyrinth,
1903). He was elected to the Académie française in 1900. See also
ALBERT-LAMBERT; BARTET, JULIA; RÉJANE.
HISTRION. French term for a ham actor or mountebank. See also
BALADIN; CABOTIN.
HONEGGER, ARTHUR (1892–1955). Swiss composer, brought up
in Le Havre and largely resident in Paris. He became a member of the
groupe des Six but was largely independent of their more whimsical
and iconoclastic tendencies supported by Erik Satie and Jean Coc-
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teau. Honegger wrote a number of operas and ballet scores, as well
as incidental music for the première of Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier
de satin (The Satin Slipper, 1943), which was first conducted by the
young Pierre Boulez (1925– ). His most original dramatic work was
the semi-staged oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher (Joan of Arc at the
Stake, 1938), also to a text by Claudel.
HONNÊTETÉ. A system of social conventions, based on reason, good
taste and compromise, that dominated polite society in 17th-century
France and had a significant influence on what was considered acceptable in theater. The honnête homme was characterized by moderation, instinctive appreciation of artistic merit and wit—not, therefore,
by honesty, since a degree of dissimulation was considered essential
to oil the wheels of social intercourse and to avoid offense. Pierre
Corneille described his early comedy Mélite (1629) as “une peinture
de la conversation des honnêtes gens,” implying that he valued witty
realism over the search for ridicule that characterized earlier farce
traditions. The exploration of honnêteté in theory and practice was
a central topic in comic drama into the 18th century, reaching one
high point in Molière’s Le Misanthrope (1666) in which the honnête
Philinte opposes the excruciatingly honest and forthright Alceste.
HOSSEIN, ROBERT (1927– ). Impresario, stage and film actor and
stage director. Born in Paris of Persian and Russian parents (his
original family name is Hosseinhoff), he showed an early interest in
film before training as an actor at the École du Vieux-Colombier and
taking lead roles in new plays by Jean Genet and Jean-Paul Sartre.
He worked both in cinema and onstage with Frédéric Dard, but
success eluded him until as director of the state theater and cultural
center at Reims he opened up the stage to a wider public. In 1978
he returned to Paris to direct the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin
and quickly developed a reputation for large-scale, multimedia spectaculars, presented in huge auditoria like the Palais des Congrès or
the Palais des Sports, on such topics as the French Revolution and
the life of Christ, which are scorned by some for their demagogical
qualities but attract hundreds of thousands of spectators. Since 2002
he has been director of the Théâtre Marigny in Paris, where among
other productions he directed and starred in a revival of Sartre’s Huis
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HÔTEL DE BOURGOGNE
clos (Behind Closed Doors, also translated as In Camera, Vicious
Circle, and No Exit). See also DURAS, MARGUERITE.
HÔTEL DE BOURGOGNE. Theater building in Paris, situated on the
rue Étienne Marcel (formerly named rue Mauconseil), constructed in
1548 and the most important center for French theater prior to the
expansion of theatrical activity in the early 17th century. Although it
was principally the home of the Confrérie de la Passion, and later of
the Comédiens du Roi, short-term leases were frequently signed by
other companies, French and Italian (see VALLERAN LE CONTE).
It was also used by a troupe under the patronage of the Prince of
Orange between 1622 and 1629, a period marked by bitter disputes
between that company and the Comédiens du Roi, who occasionally
staged performances outside the doors of the theater, preventing the
public from attending their rivals’ productions inside.
In the 1630s intense rivalry developed between the Comédiens
and the troupe that performed at the Marais theater; this exacerbated
disputes between the Confrérie (who still owned the building) and the
Comédiens, who claimed that the theater space was no longer suitable or adequate for their performances. Although some alterations to
the exterior of the building were authorized in 1639, financial difficulties prevented any major improvements to the auditorium. Despite
such problems, the company remained successful and relatively stable throughout the early 17th century, employing many of the most
distinguished actors and playwrights of the day: Gros-Guillaume,
Gaultier-Garguille, Turlupin, Bellerose, Mlle Bellerose and Mlle
La Fleur, performing plays by Alexandre Hardy, Théophile de
Viau, Jean de Rotrou, Isaac Benserade and Georges de Scudéry.
Renovation and modernization of the building eventually took place
in 1647, using the recently refurbished Marais as a model. After the
formation of the Comédie-Française in 1680, the building was used
by Italian actors until 1697 and again from 1716 until 1783. See also
RUTLEDGE, JEAN-JACQUES.
HUCHETTE, THÉÂTRE DE LA. Theater in Paris in which Eugène
Ionesco’s Absurd dramas La Cantatrice chauve (The Bald Prima
Donna) and La Leçon (The Lesson) have been playing continuously since 1957. The Théâtre de la Huchette was founded in 1948
HUGO, VICTOR
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by Georges Vitaly (1917–2007) and his wife Monique Delaroche
(1921–2006), who presented new plays by experimental dramatists
such as Jacques Audiberti, Valentin Petrovich Kataiev (1897–1986)
and the Lebanese poet Georges Schéhadé (1905–1989). The theater
was directed from 1952 until 1975 by Marcel Pinard (?–1975); on his
death, the actors responsible for the Ionesco productions formed a
private limited company to ensure their independence and survival.
HUGO, VICTOR (1802–1885). Romantic poet, novelist and dramatist
whose work dominated 19th-century France. His polemical Préface
to the historical play Cromwell (1827), defending Shakespearean
principles of variety and irregularity against the strict precepts of
classicism, made him the spokesman of the Romantic movement in
French drama, although Cromwell itself was unstageable in practice,
and his next play, Marion de Lorme (written in 1829), was banned
on moral grounds and not performed until 1831. It was therefore
the performance of Hernani at the Comédie-Française in February
1830, accompanied as it was by rowdy behavior from supporters
and opponents of the new movement, that marked the true launch of
French Romantic theater.
This was followed by a sequence of controversial but mostly successful drames, Le Roi s’amuse (The King Takes His Amusement,
1832), Lucrèce Borgia (1833), Marie Tudor (1833), Angelo (1835)
and Ruy Blas (1838). This period of Hugo’s career was crowned by
his election to the Académie française in 1841, but the popular success of the Romantic style was short-lived; in 1843 Les Burgraves
was overshadowed by François Ponsard’s neoclassical tragedy
Lucrèce, and Hugo wrote no further plays for over 20 years, although
he continued to be haunted by the creative genius of Shakespeare, to
whom he devoted a long essay published in 1864. Le Théâtre en Liberté was a series of plays, sketches and dramatic speeches published
posthumously in 1886.
Hugo’s anticlassical theory of drama insisted above all on the fusion of genres that had hitherto been kept separate, the comic and
the tragic, light and shade, in Hugo’s own terms the grotesque and
the sublime. Despite classicism’s stress on verisimilitude, Hugo saw
that a rounded portrayal was in fact more realistic than the conventional restrictions of the unities.
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ICRES, FERNAND
His Republican sympathies sent Hugo into exile during the Second Empire, but after his triumphant return many of his plays were
revived—Ruy Blas with Sarah Bernhardt at the Odéon in 1872,
Marion de Lorme with Edmond Got, Louis Arsène Delaunay
and Mounet-Sully at the Comédie-Française in 1873, Hernani
in 1878 and Le Roi s’amuse in 1882. Hugo’s funeral in 1885 was
marked by a free performance of Hernani at the Comédie-Française.
See also ADAPTATION; ALEXANDRINE; AUDIENCES; BOUFFON; CENSORSHIP; CICERI, PIERRE LUC CHARLES; COINCIDENCE; DELAVIGNE, CASIMIR; DUQUESNEL, FÉLIX-HENRI;
GRINGORE, PIERRE; LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; LEMERCIER,
NÉPOMUCÈNE; MARCEL, LÉON; MARS, MLLE; OPERA; ROSTAND, EDMOND; TALMA, FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH; TAYLOR,
ISIDORE; VIGNY, ALFRED DE.
– I –
ICRES, FERNAND (1856–1888). Poet and dramatist who used the
pseudonym Fernand Crésy and is remembered now because his play
Les Bouchers (The Butchers, 1888) was the work into the production
of which André Antoine incorporated—although probably only on
the opening night—slabs of real meat in the interests of realism.
ILLUSTRE THÉÂTRE, L’. Theater company established in Paris
in 1643 by Molière with Joseph and Madeleine Béjart and others.
They opened their theater in an adapted real tennis court in the rue
des Métayers in January 1644, then moved to the rue des Barres later
that year, to a theater modeled on the recently refurbished Marais
theater building, but debt forced them to abandon their premises and
depart as a touring company in the provinces in 1645.
IMPROVISATION. The invention on the spot, properly of text, but
by extension of gesture, facial expression or other action. Techniques
of improvisation are very widely used in the training of both actors
and directors, and the advance preparation of almost all performances will involve experiments in which actors improvise delivery
and action and may suggest enhancements to a given text. However,
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the role of improvisation in performance is limited. In French theater
in particular, the widespread use of rhyming verse in serious plays,
and the slickness of timing associated with the comic tradition, make
most productions reliant on predictable and well-rehearsed effects.
The form of Western theater most closely associated with improvisation is the commedia dell’arte, in which the actors were provided
only with a scenario around which they improvised a text—enabling
them to incorporate local references—and actions. That tradition
influenced Molière, whose first plays, La Jalousie du Barbouillé (Le
Barbouillé’s Jealousy) and Le Médecin volant (The Flying Doctor),
contain explicit requests for improvised text as well as gesture and
action and whose own acting style was criticized by contemporaries
for its excessive use of grimacing.
Frédérick Lemaître, according to tradition, all but invented the
form of 19th-century melodrama when, playing the part of the
notorious bandit Robert Macaire in L’Auberge des Adrets (1823),
by Benjamin Antier, Saint-Amand and Paulyanthe (pseudonym
of Alexandre Chapponier, about whom nothing else is known), he
approached the role in a spirit of parody, to the amazement of the
authors and of his fellow-actors, but to the delight of the audience!
See also BALADIN; COMÉDIE-ITALIENNE; DUBILLARD, ROLAND.
IONESCO, EUGÈNE (1909–1994). Leading exponent of Absurd
Theater. Romanian by birth, with a French mother, he was largely
educated in France (although this process was interrupted by World
War I and by the divorce of his parents in 1925) and wrote consistently in French. He settled definitively in France in 1942 and was
naturalized after the war. His plays, often given provocative subtitles
such as anti-pièce or farce tragique, call into question many of the
assumptions of conventional playwrights and their audiences but remain intensely dramatic and spectacular, often combining wit, inventive verbal fantasy and serious allegorical implications. His humor,
with its celebration of the irrational, and the nightmarish quality of
his scenarios, often recalls Surrealism.
Key works include La Cantatrice chauve (The Bald Prima Donna),
directed in 1950 by Nicolas Bataille (1926–2008) at the Théâtre des
Noctambules, which was not a success at its first performance but
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ITALY, INFLUENCE OF
went on to become his best known and most widely performed work;
La Leçon (The Lesson, 1951), Les Chaises (Chairs, 1952), Jacques
ou La Soumission (Jacques, or Submissiveness, 1955), Rhinocéros
(1959), created by Jean-Louis Barrault at the Odéon in 1960 and
bringing Ioneso for the first time to international recognition (a German production had taken place in Düsseldorf in 1959), Le Roi se
meurt (The King Is Dying, 1962) and Macbett (1972).
Ionesco was elected to the Académie française in 1970. He was
also the author of extensive critical and theoretical works on theater,
including Notes et contre-notes (Notes and Counter-notes, 1962) and
has the unusual distinction of being the first author to be published
in his own lifetime in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade series (collected
works, 1990). See also BECKETT, SAMUEL; COINCIDENCE;
COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE; HUCHETTE, THÉÂTRE DE LA; MAUCLAIR, JACQUES; MONTPARNASSE, THÉÂTRE.
ITALY, INFLUENCE OF. See ADAM DE LA HALLE; BAÏF, JEAN
ANTOINE DE; BOUFFON; COMÉDIE-BALLET; COMÉDIEITALIENNE; COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE; DOM JUAN; FARCE;
FUTURISM; GRÉTRY, ANDRÉ; HARLEQUIN; LARIVEY,
PIERRE; LÉLIO; LULLY, JEAN-BAPTISTE; MACHINE PLAY;
MARAIS, THÉÂTRE DU; MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE
CHAMBLAIN DE; MARTINELLI, TRISTANO; MOLIÈRE,
JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN DE; OPERA; PRAMPOLINI, ENRICO; REGNARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; ROSSINI, GIOACCHINO
ANTONIO; SCARAMOUCHE; LE TARTUFFE; VALLERAN LE
CONTE.
– J –
JACOB, ZACHARIE. See MONTFLEURY.
JAMOIS, MARGUERITE (1901–1964). Actress, closely associated
with Gaston Baty and the Théâtre Montparnasse. In 1936 she
took the title role in Baty’s adaptation of Madame Bovary (1857)
by Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880); she starred in Baty’s productions
of plays by William Shakespeare and eventually became director
of the theater in 1943. In her opening season she directed herself in
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the title role of Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) and in
1945 she played Lorenzo in Baty’s production of Alfred de Musset’s
Lorenzaccio.
JARRE, JEAN-MICHEL (1948– ). Composer. He composed electroacoustic music for the Paris Opéra from 1971 and has composed the
score for several films, including Les Granges Brûlées (The Burntout Barns, 1972) by Jean Chapot (1930–1998) and Die Hamburger
Krankheit (The Hamburg Syndrome, 1979) by Peter Fleischmann
(1937– ). From 1979, Jarre’s concerts have become pseudodramatic
performances in their own right, involving music, lighting and laser
effects and gigantic projections and attracting record-breaking live
audiences (an official figure of 2.5 million for a Bastille Day concert
at La Défense in Paris in 1990). He has in this way put popular music
at the disposal of officialdom for public events such as the opening of
the 1990 Winter Olympics and the centenary of the Eiffel Tower.
JARRY, ALFRED (1873–1907). Innovative dramatist whose work
pushed to an extreme the Symbolist tendency to dehumanize character and who is seen as a forerunner of Surrealism. His absurd spectacle Ubu roi (Ubu the King)—a portrayal of the corrupting effect
of power—provoked outrage at its 1896 première at the Théâtre de
l’Œuvre, both for its social commentary and for its dramatic idiom,
substituting brutality for existing æsthetic codes. Sequels to Ubu
roi followed: Ubu enchaîné (Ubu in Chains, 1900) and Ubu sur la
butte (Ubu on the Hill, also translated as Up Ubu, 1906). Jarry also
wrote science fiction. See also SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE; VIEUXCOLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
LE JEU DE L’AMOUR ET DU HASARD (THE GAME OF LOVE
AND CHANCE). Three-act prose comedy by Marivaux, first performed on 23 November 1730 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne by the
Comédiens italiens. Monsieur Orgon wishes his daughter Silvia to
marry Dorante but indulgently respects her desire to get to know the
young man before entering into a firm commitment. Silvia accordingly changes positions with her maidservant Lisette in order to observe her suitor. Both Monsieur Orgon and his son Mario are aware
that Dorante has had the same idea; he arrives at the house in the
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JOANNY
character of a caricatural servant Bourgignon while his own valet
Arlequin pretends to be Dorante. This quadruple disguise leads to a
series of comic scenes in which the real servants relish their ability
to seduce their supposed masters and the real masters are astounded
by the sensitivity of the supposed servants. The tone changes slightly
in the final act when Silvia, having already learned the true situation,
tests Dorante by provoking him to declare his love while still believing her to be a maidservant, but all is finally revealed and the two
couples are united.
The situations and tone are typical of Marivaux’s sentimental but
light-hearted comic style, and the play was one of his most successful, with several hundred performances in the 18th century in Paris,
Fontainebleau, Brussels and elsewhere. It entered the repertoire of the
Comédie-française in 1794 and has been performed there over 1,350
times. The role of Dorante was probably created by the then-leader
of the Italian troupe, Jean-Antoine Romagnesi (1690–1742), those
of Mario and Silvia by the husband-and-wife team of Joseph Baletti
(?–1762) and Jeanne-Rose-Guyonne Benozzi (?–1758), whose stage
names those were. Arlequin was played by Thomaso-Antonio Vicentini (1682–1739). The role of Silvia has since been interpreted by
Mlle Mars and by Sarah Bernhardt. See also COINCIDENCE.
JOANNY. Stage name of Jean-Baptiste Bernard Brisse-Barre (1775–
1849), actor who under Louis-Benoît Picard helped restore the reputation of the Odéon after 1819 and later starred in early Romantic
drama, including the opening production of Hernani. He was one of
the earliest proponents of a move toward a more natural acting style,
which after the Romantic period led to Realism and Naturalism in
the theater. See also RACHEL.
JODELET. Stage name of Julien Bedeau (c1590–1660), celebrated
comic actor, distinguished in his day by very heavy make-up and by
his nasal intonation. Although records exist of his activity as early as
1603, when he was an apprentice in a company led by Montfleury’s
father Fleury Jacob, little is known about his career or movements
until he joined the Marais company in 1634. Almost immediately,
in December of the same year, he was obliged by royal decree to
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transfer to the Hôtel de Bourgogne company, but he returned to the
Marais between December 1640 and January 1642.
Jodelet created the role of the valet Cliton in Pierre Corneille’s
Le Menteur (The Liar, 1643). At the height of his power in the 1640s
he was the principal box office attraction of the Marais in farce
and played the title role in many plays written for him, including
Paul Scarron’s Jodelet ou Le Maître-valet (Jodelet, or the ServantMaster, 1643) and Jodelet duelliste (Jodelet the Dueller, 1651), as
well as Jodelet astrologue (Jodelet the Astrologer, 1646) by Antoine
Le Métel d’Ouville (1589–1655), Thomas Corneille’s Le Geôlier de
soi-même ou Jodelet prince (The Prisoner of Himself, or Jodelet the
Prince, 1655) and Brécourt’s La Feinte Mort de Jodelet (Jodelet’s
Fake Death, 1659). Jodelet joined Molière’s company at Easter
1659, soon after it became reestablished in Paris, and the two performed together in Molière’s Les Précieuses ridicules (The Pretentious Young Ladies, November 1659).
Jodelet’s brother François Bedeau (?–1663) was also a farce actor
using the stage name L’Espy; the careers of the two brothers appear
to have followed an identical pattern.
JODELLE, ÉTIENNE (1532–1573). Dramatist and poet who was
the first Frenchman to apply the principles of Renaissance humanist
thought to dramatic composition. He aimed at creating a classical
drama in contrast to the morality plays and soties that then occupied the French stage. His plays have historical rather than intrinsic
value. Cléopatre captive, a tragedy represented before the court
at Reims in 1552 with Jodelle himself in the title role, was lyric
rather than dramatic. Each act ends with a chorus that moralizes
on such subjects as the inconstancy of fortune and the judgment
of heaven on human pride. Eugène (1552), a comedy satirizing
the superior clergy, had less success than it deserved. Its preface
poured scorn on Jodelle’s predecessors in comedy, but in reality
his own methods were not so very different from theirs. Didon se
sacrifiant (Dido’s Suicide, c1560), a tragedy based on an episode
in Virgil’s Æneid, appears never to have been performed. See also
LARIVEY, PIERRE; LA TAILLE, JEAN DE; MONTCHRESTIEN, ANTOINE DE.
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JOUVET, LOUIS
JOUVET, LOUIS (1887–1951). Most significant French actor and
director of the mid-20th century. He began in the service of Jacques
Copeau, then triumphed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Jules
Romains’s Knock (1923) and Jean Giraudoux’s Siegfried (1928).
He continued to be closely associated with those two authors and
with revivals of plays by Molière, transferring to the Théâtre de
l’Athénée, which he directed from 1934 to 1951. Less austere than
Copeau, he encouraged innovative set designers, including Christian
Bérard (1902–1949) and Georges Braque (1882–1963). See also
ACHARD, MARCEL; ANOUILH, JEAN; ANTOINE, ANDRÉ;
AYMÉ, MARCEL; BATY, GASTON; LE CARTEL; CORNEILLE,
PIERRE; CROMMELYNCK, FERNAND; LA MACHINE INFERNALE; MAUCLAIR, JACQUES; SUPERVIELLE, JULES; TESSIER, VALENTINE; VIEUX-COLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
JOUY, VICTOR-JOSEPH-ÉTIENNE DE (1769–1846). Dramatist
whose tragedy Sylla (1821), performed by Talma, was the most
successful new work of the neoclassical period that preceded the
introduction of Romantic drama. He was elected to the Académie
française in 1815.
JUDIC, ANNA (1850–1911). Actress and operetta singer who starred
at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s, owing
some notoriety to her appearance in bathing dress in the vaudeville
Niniche (1878) by Maurice Hennequin (1863–1926) and Albert
Millaud (1844–1892). She went on to achieve more modest success
in other vaudevilles by the same collaborators, and in operettas by
Florimond Hervé (1825–1892), particularly his Mam’zelle Nitouche
(1883). In 1884, she transferred to the Palais-Royal, returning to the
Variétés in 1893.
– K –
KALISKY, RENÉ (1936–1981). Belgian-born dramatist and journalist of Polish-Jewish extraction whose father perished in Auschwitz.
Failing to achieve theatrical recognition in Belgium, Kalisky moved
to Corsica in 1971 before settling in Paris in 1973. His plays, which
KOKKOS, YANNIS
• 143
engage with the most pressing political agendas of the period, including communism, fascism and Zionism, include: Europa (1968),
an adaptation of a novel by Romain Gary (1914–1980); Trotsky
(1969); La Passion selon Pier Paolo Pasolini (The Passion According to P. P. Pasolini, 1977); Dave au bord de mer (David on the Sea
Shore, 1978, based on the story of the biblical King David but set
in contemporary Israel); and Falsch (False, 1983), performed at the
Théâtre de Chaillot, Paris, and turned in 1987 into a film, by JeanPierre Dardenne (1951– ) and Luc Dardenne (1954– ). Kalisky was
awarded the Prix annuel de Littérature dramatique in 1974 and a posthumous Prix Spécial from the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs
dramatiques in 1982.
KATEB, YACINE (1929–1989). Algerian poet, novelist and dramatist
whose works are published under the pseudonym Kateb Yacine. He
was a militant nationalist who nevertheless remained attached to the
French cultural and literary heritage and wrote in French until the late
1960s. Thereafter he wrote in French or in Algerian dialect French
or in Arabic. His most important French-language plays include
Le Cadavre encerclé (The Surrounded Corpse, 1955, directed by
Jean-Marie Serreau in 1964), Le Cercle des représailles (Cycles of
Retaliation, 1959), La Guerre de deux mille ans (The Two-thousand
Year War, 1970, also directed by Peter Brook at the Théâtre des
Bouffes du Nord in 1975) and Mohammed prends ta valise (Take
Your Case, Mohammed, 1971).
KERBRAT, PATRICE (1948– ). Actor and stage director. He directed Jean Racine’s Andromaque for the Comédie-Française in
1982, going on to act or direct with many Paris theater and opera
companies and becoming particularly associated with the works
of Yasmina Reza. His production of her La Traversée de l’hiver
(Winter Crossing) won a Molière in 1990. See also ROUSSILLON,
JEAN-PAUL.
KOKKOS, YANNIS (1944– ). Greek designer and stage director. Settling in France in 1963, he designed productions for Antoine Vitez
and Jacques Lassalle. From the late 1980s he moved into stage direction with La Princesse blanche, an adaptation of the lyrical verse
144 •
KOLTÈS, BERNARD-MARIE
drama Die Weisse Fürstin (The White Princess, 1898, revised 1904,
published 1909) by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) at the Théâtre
de la Ville in 1987 and productions of Jean Racine’s Iphigénie and
La Thébaïde at the Comédie-Française, then into opera direction, in
Paris, elsewhere in France (Nice, Lyon) and abroad, including a production of Tristan and Isolde for the Welsh National Opera. In 1987,
Kokkos was awarded the Syndicat de la Critique prize for his décor
for Elektra at Geneva and San Francisco, in 1988, two Molières for
stage and costume design, and in 1998, the Laurence Olivier award
for best operatic production for La Clemenza di Tito at the Welsh
National Opera and the Opéra de Bordeaux. See also VINAVER,
MICHEL.
KOLTÈS, BERNARD-MARIE (1948–1989). Dramatist whose work
has been particularly championed by Patrice Chéreau. Initially
inspired by a performance of Maria Casarès as Medea, he founded
a theater company, the Théâtre du Quai, in 1970, and wrote several
plays and radio dramas, including L’Héritage (The Inheritance,
1970), La Nuit juste avant les forêts (Night Just Before the Forests),
a dramatic monologue performed at the Avignon Festival in 1977,
Combat de nègre et de chiens (Conflict of the Black with the Dogs,
known also as Black Battles with Dogs, written in 1979, produced
by Chéreau in 1983), Retour au desert (Return to the Desert, 1988)
and Dans La Solitude des champs de coton (In the Solitude of Cotton Fields, 1986, directed posthumously by Chéreau in 1995). Unlike dramatists associated with Absurd Theater, Koltès affirms the
potential of theater to enhance human communication through tight
dramatic construction, enigmatic use of language and formal inventiveness. The journal Alternatives Théâtrales devoted an issue to
Koltès in June 1990.
KORÈNE, VÉRA. Stage name of Rébecca Véra Korestzky (1901–
1996), Russian-born French actress and singer who appeared in
several films in the 1930s and performed at the Comédie-Française
between 1931 and 1947 before setting up her own theater production
company in the 1950s. She was director of the Théâtre de la Renaissance from 1956 to 1978.
LAFON, PIERRE
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– L –
LABICHE, EUGÈNE (1815–1888). Dramatist who provided the bulk
of the comic repertoire in mid-19th-century Paris. From 1838 he supplied regular light-hearted vaudevilles and boulevard farces to the
Palais-Royal, most notably La Fille bien gardée (The Well-guarded
Girl, 1850), Le Chapeau de paille d’Italie (The Italian Straw Hat,
1851), both in collaboration with Marc Michel (1812–1868), Le Voyage de M. Perrichon (M. Perrichon’s Trip, 1860) and La Cagnotte
(The Jackpot, 1864).
LA CHAPELLE, JEAN DE (1651–1723). Dramatist, wit and translator into French of Latin poetry whose main historical distinction
is that his slight one-act comedy, Les Carrosses d’Orléans (The
Coaches from Orleans), shared the bill with Jean Racine’s Phèdre at
the opening night of the Comédie-Française in 1680. He wrote four
other plays between 1680 and 1684 and was elected to the Académie
française in 1688.
LA CHAUSSÉE, PIERRE-CLAUDE NIVELLE DE (1692–1754).
Dramatist who invented the genre of comédie larmoyante by introducing comic elements into serious plays, in defiance of classical norms. Of his 19 plays the best known is L’École des mères
(The School for Mothers, 1744). He was elected to the Académie
française in 1736, supported by Voltaire.
LA FLEUR. See GROS-GUILLAUME.
LA FLEUR, MLLE. Stage name of Jeanne Buffequin, third wife of
Gros-Guillaume and herself a distinguished actress and member
of the Comédiens du Roi at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Her father
Georges Buffequin (1585–1641) and her half-brother Denis Buffequin (1616–?) were set designers.
LAFON, PIERRE (1773–1846). Actor who was the first to challenge
the supremacy in tragedy of Talma in the early 19th century. Introduced into the Comédie-Française by François Raynouard, he
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LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE
showed verve in dashing heroic parts that contrasted with Talma’s
more classical style and heralded the approach of Romantic drama.
See also GEOFFROY, JULIEN-LOUIS.
LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE (1621–1695). Poet, best known for his Fables, published in 12 books between 1668 and 1694. His involvement
in dramatic activities at the court of Louis XIV, although limited,
brought him into collaborative contact with Molière, Jean Racine,
Jean-Baptiste Lully, Champmeslé and others in such works as the
farce-ballet Les Rieurs du Beau Richard (Fun and Games at BeauRichard, 1660), Le Florentin (1674, a satirical poem at the expense
of Lully that was dramatized in 1685) and the opera libretto L’Astrée
(1691). In his youth La Fontaine had also undertaken an adaptation
in French of Terence’s comedy The Eunuch. He was elected to the
Académie française in 1683, although he was not allowed to take his
place until the king’s preferred candidate, Nicolas Boileau, had been
elected the following year. See also GUITRY, SACHA.
LA GRANGE. Stage name of Charles Varlet (c1635–1692), actor and
perhaps the most valued colleague and confidant of Molière during
his career in Paris. He joined the latter’s company in 1659 and took
young male leads, including Horace in L’École des femmes (The
School for Women, 1662) and Valère in Le Tartuffe (1664). He also
acted as intendant to the company, keeping records of performances
and receipts. After Molière’s death it seems to have been he who
kept the remnants of the company together and arranged for them to
move to the Théâtre de Guénégaud. From there he moved to the
Comédie-Française when it was founded in 1680. He supervised
the posthumous edition of the complete works of Molière, published
in 1682.
LALANDE, FRANÇOISE (1941– ). Belgian novelist and essayist
whose dramatic works include Le Don d’Adèle, performed in Zaïre
in 1966, Le Souvenir de ces choses (The Memory of These Things,
1983) and Alma Mahler (performed in 1984, published in 1989). She
has traveled widely in Africa and South America and has worked for
Amnesty International.
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LARIVE. Stage name of Jean Mauduit (1747–1827), actor. A member
of the Comédie-Française from 1775 to 1800, he also performed in
Brussels, Caen and Toulouse.
LARIVEY, PIERRE (c1540–c1611). (Some sources date his birth to
1560, some his death to 1619.) Comic dramatist. Although Étienne
Jodelle and Jacques Grévin had written comedy in verse, Larivey
wrote in prose and was influenced more by Italian theater than by
classical models. His best-known play was Les Esprits (The Spirits,
1579), which in turn had an influence on Molière’s L’Avare (The
Miser).
LASSALLE, JACQUES (1936– ). Stage director, actor, author and
academic. His minimalist approach to theatrical production distinguishes his work from that of Roger Planchon and Antoine Vitez.
He founded the Studio-Théâtre de Vitry in 1967 and was its director
until 1982, when he moved first to the Théâtre national de Strasbourg (1983–1990) and then to the Comédie-Française, of which
he was administrative director from 1990 to 1993. His collaborations
with Yannis Kokkos included the premières of plays by Michel
Vinaver (for which he was awarded the Prix de la Meilleure Création Française in 1978) as well as works by Marivaux: Les Fausses
Confidences (False Secrets) in 1978 and L’Épreuve (The Ordeal) at
Montreal in 1980; Molière (Le Tartuffe in 1983) and Jean Racine
(Bérénice at Oslo in 1989). He directed Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin and Lear by Aribert Reimann (1936– ) for the Paris Opéra in
1982, while his production of Molière’s Dom Juan for the Avignon
Festival in 1993 transferred to the Comédie-Française before being
taken to New York in 1996 and on a world tour in 2003. Following
a controversial production at Avignon of Euripides’ Andromache in
1994, he temporarily left the theater and returned to his academic career. Lassalle’s own plays include Un Dimanche indécis dans la vie
d’Anna (An Uncertain Sunday within the Life of Anna), performed at
the Studio-Théâtre de Vitry and at the Théâtre national de Chaillot
(Salle Gémier) in 1979, and Avis de recherche (Wanted, 1982). He
was awarded the Grand Prix National du Théâtre in 1998. See also
CARRIÈRE, JEAN-CLAUDE; SCHIARETTI, CHRISTIAN.
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LA TAILLE, JEAN DE (c1533–after 1607). Humanist scholar and
dramatist who, with Étienne Jodelle and influenced by MarcAntoine de Muret, established the principles and practice of classical drama in France. His biblical tragedy, Saül le furieux (The
Madness of Saul, probably composed around 1562, published 1572)
was prefaced by an Art de la tragédie in which several of the precepts
of Aristotle, including the unities and hamartia, were expounded in
French for the first time. His other dramas, all published in 1573, are
La Famine, ou Les Gabéonites (also based on an episode in the life
of King David but classical in structure) and two prose comedies, Le
Négromant, a translation of Il Negromante (The Necromancer, 1520)
by Lodovico Ariosto (1474–1533) and Les Corrivaus (The Rivals).
LATUDE, HIPPOLYTE CLAIRON DE. See CLAIRON, MLLE.
LAVAUDANT, GEORGES (1947– ). Dramatist and director. Having
directed the Maison de la Culture in his native Grenoble, he joined
Roger Planchon as joint director of the Théâtre national populaire in 1986. He was particularly associated with compilations and
collage in a postmodernist setting: Les Cannibales (The Cannibals,
1979) combined extracts from around 50 authors. His own plays
include Terra Incognita (1992), La Dernière Nuit (The Last Night,
1996) and Bienvenue (Welcome, 1996). In 1996, he became director
of the Odéon. See also DEUTSCH, MICHEL; LORENZACCIO.
LAVELLI, JORGE (1932– ). Stage director, born in Argentina and
naturalized as French in 1977. A specialist in Surrealist theater and
in opera, he was director of the Théâtre national de la Colline in
Paris from 1987 to 1996. His reputation for extravagant spectacles in
baroque style was based on the first production in that theater of a
lost play by Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), Le Public (1988),
on his productions of the exiled Polish author Witold Gombrowicz
(1904–1969), and on his operatic work, including Dardanus by Jean
Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) at the Paris Opéra in 1980 and The
Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) at the Aix
Festival in 1989. See also ARRABAL, FERNANDO; AVIGNON,
FESTIVAL D’; MONTPARNASSE, THÉÂTRE.
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LAYA, JEAN-LOUIS (1761–1833). Poet and dramatist whose comedy L’Ami des Lois (Friend of the Laws, 1793) caused controversy
by appearing to challenge the ideals of the French Revolution. He
also wrote a tragedy, Jean Calas (1791), and two serious plays, Les
Dangers de l’opinion (The Dangers of Opinion, 1790) and Falkland
ou La Conscience (1821), to which he gave the generic title drame,
even though he remained hostile to the innovative practices of the
Romantic dramatists. He was elected to the Académie française in
1817 and was active as an official censor and as a professor.
LECOCQ, JACQUES (1921–1999). Actor and stage director who
became a specialist in mime and founded his own École internationale de mime et de théâtre in Paris in 1956. His pedagogical aim,
using elements of ballet and mime and techniques of commedia
dell’arte, was to enable the actor to reveal his or her “poetical body.”
See also COMÉDIE-ITALIENNE.
LECOUVREUR, ADRIENNE (1692–1730). Actress, the most celebrated of her generation. After a harsh childhood she gained an immediate triumph on her début at the Comédie-Française in 1717, as
Électre and as Bérénice. She rapidly became established as a society
figure, entertaining the social and intellectual élite of Paris, including
Voltaire. Baron emerged from retirement in 1720 in order to play
alongside her. The circumstances surrounding her early death are
shrouded in mystery and made her a romantic figure, about whom a
play (1849), by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé, and an opera
(1902), by the Italian Francesco Cilèa (1866–1950), were written.
See also DUMESNIL, MLLE.
LEGOUVÉ, GABRIEL-MARIE (1764–1812). Poet and dramatist who
anticipated the development of Romantic drama in La Mort d’Abel
(The Death of Abel, 1792), Épicharis et Néron (1793), in which Talma
played the part of Néron, and La Mort de Henri IV (The Death of
Henry IV, 1806). He was elected to the Académie française in 1803.
LEGOUVÉ, ERNEST (1807–1903). Son of Gabriel-Marie Legouvé,
dramatist who collaborated with Eugène Scribe in a number of plays,
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most notably Adrienne Lecouvreur (1849). Following Rachel’s success in that work, Legouvé wrote a version of the Medea story for
her, but her legal disputes with the Comédie-Française prevented
her from performing the role, and it was instead first played in Italian in 1856 by Adelaide Ristori (1822–1906). Ernest Legouvé was
elected to the Académie française in 1855. See also BROHAN,
MADELEINE.
LE GRAND, HENRI. See TURLUPIN.
LE GRAND, MARC-ANTOINE (1673–1728). Actor and dramatist,
forgotten today but whose works have been performed over 2,500
times at the Comédie-Française. Despite unprepossessing looks,
he achieved success in the role of kings in tragedy and peasants in
comedy, and he wrote lively if licentious comedies.
LEKAIN. Stage name of Henri Louis Cain (1728–1778), actor. Because he had been a member of an amateur company, he struggled
to obtain admission to the Comédie-Française, but on début (1750)
he was an instant success there in the major tragic roles of Jean
Racine and François Tristan L’Hermite. Lekain resisted sing-song
declamation and developed costume design, combining research
into authenticity with a quest for the exotic, notably in Voltaire’s
L’Orphelin de la Chine (The Chinese Orphan, 1755), in which he
played the part of Genghis Khan in a sensational Mongol costume.
Lekain, whom Voltaire considered the greatest tragedian of his time,
also played the title role of Tancrède, produced with sumptuous
decor in 1760, but refused to accept the title role in Jean-François
Ducis’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1769. It
was Lekain who was instrumental in obtaining from Count Lauragais (1733–1824) an indemnity that enabled the theater company to
discontinue the practice begun in 1637 of allowing spectators to sit
on benches on the stage.
LÉLIO. Stage name used in Paris by Luigi Riccoboni (1674–1753),
Italian actor and theorist of acting. He translated some of Molière’s
and Racine’s plays into Italian before settling in Paris as director of
the Comédie-Italienne. His Pensées sur la déclamation (Thoughts
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on Declamation, 1737) continued to influence acting diction, although he himself retired from theatrical activity in 1731. His wife
Elena Baletti (1686–1771) and their son Antoine-François Riccoboni
(1707–1772) were also actors: the latter took the name Lélio fils,
performed in Marivaux’s La Surprise de l’amour (The Surprise of
Love) in 1726, and wrote over 50 comedies in French of his own as
well as a treatise on L’Art du théâtre (The Art of Theater, 1750).
LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK. Stage name of Antoine Louis Prosper
Lemaître (1800–1876), actor best known for his melodramatic roles
and supported by Victor Hugo. After an early career in sensational
boulevard crime dramas and in variety theater, he rose to stardom in
1823 when at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu he played the part of a notorious bandit, Robert Macaire, in a three-act melodrama, L’Auberge
des Adrets, by Benjamin Antier, Saint-Amand and Paulyanthe
(pseudonym of Alexandre Chapponier, about whom nothing else
is known); he approached the role, inspired by MacHeath in The
Beggar’s Opera by John Gay (1685–1732), in a spirit of parody,
to the amazement of the authors and of his fellow-actors but to the
delight of the audience! In 1830 he joined the Odéon company under
Charles-Jean Harel (1790–1846) and played the part of Napoléon in
a historical drama by Alexandre Dumas père in 1831.
After a quarrel with Harel in 1834, Lemaître devised and performed in a sequel to L’Auberge des Adrets, entitled Robert Macaire,
at the Folies-Dramatiques, but the huge public and literary success
of this piece was short-lived as its satirical attacks on contemporary
society led to its being banned. Lemaître created the title role in Dumas père’s Kean (1836) at the Théâtre des Variétés and then joined
a new company formed by Dumas and Hugo at which was presented
the first production of Hugo’s Ruy Blas in 1838. The decline of the
Romantic drama led to a period of eclipse (see MÉNIER, PAULIN),
but he returned to prominence in the mid-1860s, although attempts
to cast him in new productions of Molière plays at the Odéon came
to nothing. See also BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH; DORVAL, MARIE;
IMPROVISATION; SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM.
LEMERCIER, (LOUIS-JEAN) NÉPOMUCÈNE (1771–1840). Poet
and playwright whose dramas (Agamemnon, 1795, Pinto, 1799)
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mostly perpetuated the stultified neoclassical tradition favored by
Napoléon but whose “Shakespearean comedy” Christophe Colomb
(Christopher Columbus, 1809) anticipated some of the innovations
later associated with Romantic drama. He was elected to the Académie française in 1810, obtaining more votes than Victor Hugo, who
eventually succeeded him.
LE MESSIER, PIERRE. See BELLEROSE.
LEMOINE-MONTIGNY. Professional pseudonym of Adolphe Lemoine (1812–1880), minor author of melodramas, actor, highly influential as director of the Gymnase, husband of Rose Chéri. He was
particularly associated with social drama, and by encouraging actors
to move more naturally he helped to shift the emphasis in French theater from the Romantic to the Realist. One of his innovations was to
insist that a realistic indoor setting should include a table, even if this
inhibited the action and declamation of more traditional-minded actors; another was to suggest that female characters should knit during
conversations. Among the plays premièred at the Gymnase under his
directorship were early Realist works by George Sand (1804–1876)
and Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) as well as Émile Augier’s Philiberte (1853) and Alexandre Dumas fils’s Diane de Lys (1853). He
resisted, however, the more dreary types of Realism represented by
Émile Zola.
LE NOIR, CHARLES (?–1637). Actor and theater director who led
the troupe that eventually established itself at the Marais theater in
1634 and became the chief rival of the Comédiens du Roi at the
Hôtel de Bourgogne. A company led by Le Noir was on tour in Bordeaux in 1618 and in Lille in 1620. He had joined a company sponsored by the Prince of Orange by 1622, rapidly achieved prominence
in it and was probably its chief by 1631. In December 1634, along
with five colleagues, including Jodelet, he was obliged by royal decree to transfer to the Comédiens du Roi, in an attempt by the king to
balance the resources of the two Paris companies.
LÉRYS, CLAIRE-JOSEPH. See CLAIRON, MLLE.
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LE SAGE, ALAIN-RENÉ (1668–1747). Novelist and comic dramatist seen as the successor to Molière in social satire (see also
DANCOURT; REGNARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS). His first theatrical
success was a one-act comedy, Crispin rival de son maître (Crispin
His Master’s Rival, 1707), which was followed by over 100 further
comedies and comic operas, including Turcaret (1709), Arlequin
baron allemand (Harlequin the German Baron, 1712), Le Monde
renversé (The World Upside Down, 1718, revived in 1758 with new
music composed by Christopher Willibald Gluck [1714–1787]), and
Les Amants jaloux (The Jealous Lovers, 1735). See also ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL.
LESCOT, DAVID (1971– ). Dramatist, actor and stage director
whose works, including Les Conspirateurs (The Conspirators,
1998), L’Association (2002), L’Instrument à pression (The Pressure
Instrument, 2003) and the award-winning Un homme en faillite (The
Bankrupt, also translated as Broke, 2006), explore contemporary
ethical and legal issues. Lescot has also composed stage music for
his own productions, and he explores unconventional combinations
of textual, musical and other elements in stage performance. He won
the Molière for new work in 2009.
LESUEUR, JEAN-FRANÇOIS (1760–1837). Neoclassical composer
of operas, including Ossian ou Les Bardes (1804), Le Triomphe
de Trajan (Trajan’s Triumph, 1807) and La Mort d’Adam (Adam’s
Death, 1809), greatly admired by Napoléon, but of historical significance only because their performances at the Paris Opéra marked a
move toward less detailed and more atmospherically striking visual
effects.
LIGHTING. For much of the history of theater, performances took
place in the open air or during daylight hours, and modern conventions by which the audience sat in darkness watching an illuminated
stage were inconceivable. During the classical period of French theater, candles were used to illuminate the whole theater: paintings of
Molière’s Palais-Royal theater reveal up to six chandeliers containing 72 candles, with additional candles or oil lamps positioned at the
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front of the stage. The principal innovation of the 18th century was
the Argand burner, invented in 1782 by the Swiss François-PierreAmi Argand (1750–1803) and introduced at the Odéon in 1784. This
gave a more intense light, capable of being altered by colored glass
for special effects. Although gas lighting was introduced at London’s
Lyceum Theatre in 1804 and the electric arc light was invented in
1809, these innovations were resisted by actors at the ComédieFrançaise, who found them uncomfortably harsh: gas lighting was
eventually introduced there in 1832, electric arc lighting at the Paris
Opéra in 1846, and full-scale incandescent electric lighting there in
1887. Other technical developments during the 19th century enabled
dimming and other special effects to be introduced.
The Swiss designer Adolphe Appia (1862–1928) was instrumental
in applying technical developments to more creative uses of lighting in the early 20th century and in insisting that these be integrated
within an overall visual interpretation of the play. This contributed
to the increase in importance of the stage director during that period, although it led to ongoing tensions between an urge toward
ever greater technological sophistication that could verge on the
gimmicky, and a desire to focus on the symbolic impact of lighting and other special effects. Among the technical innovations that
contributed to the enhancement of lighting effects through the 20th
century were the cyclorama, or sky-dome (invented in 1902), the use
of colored gels (after 1919), halogen lamps, high-intensity discharge
lamps and electronic or computerized lighting effects. It was only in
the 20th century that it was possible and commonplace to position
lights within the auditorium itself as opposed to above the stage; this
made it possible to spotlight individual actors and to highlight their
movements and also to create more easily a fully convincing threedimensional effect. By such means, without abandoning the advantages of realism, scene designers were able to reveal the essence of a
play through suggestion and stylization.
Since the 1950s, spectacular events with the title Son et Lumière
(Sound and Light) have been widely used to celebrate the history
and atmosphere of monumental buildings, castles or churches. Two
French artists, Paul Robert-Houdin, who was curator of the Château
de Chambord, and Pierre-Arnaud de Chassy-Poulay (pseudonym
of Pierre Arnaud, 1921– ), were significant in developing this art
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form. See also BATY, GASTON; DAGUERRE, LOUIS JACQUES
MANDÉ; JARRE, JEAN-MICHEL; LUGNÉ-POE; ROINARD,
PAUL-NAPOLÉON.
LORENZACCIO. Five-act prose drama by Alfred de Musset, thought
by many to be his dramatic masterpiece. Written in 1834, it was considered impossible to perform in its original form: Shakespearean in
scale, it pushes to extremes the Romantic rejection of classical unity
and coherence, involving a cast of 34 named characters and countless
groups of extras and at least 15 different locations, several of which
are intended to convey specific local color. In all this it complied
with Musset’s experimental approach to what he called “armchair
theater”—Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil.
Lorenzo de Medici (1514–1548)—a distant cousin of Lorenzo
the Magnificent (1449–1492)—is an idealistic youth who longs to
restore republican democracy to a Florence enslaved by the corrupt puppet régime of Alexandre de Medici (c1510–1537), brother
or half-brother of Catherine de Medici (1519–1589), later queen of
France. In order to bring down the Medici régime, which is supported
by an unholy alliance of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and
Pope Paul III, Lorenzo adopts the role of Alexandre’s confidant and
accomplice in depravity. Lorenzo took inspiration both from Marcus
Junius Brutus, who participated in the assassination of Julius Cæsar
from within the dictator’s intimate circle, and also from the lesserknown Lucius Junius Brutus, who pretended to be mad in order to
allay the suspicions of the monarchic house of Tarquinius, which he
sought to overthrow. Similarly, Lorenzo pretends to be Alexandre’s
ally—even coming close to enticing his own aunt Catherine into the
Duke’s trap—in order to lure him to his death, but is himself sucked
relentlessly into a cycle of debauchery and deceit from which he
cannot escape. Although he does succeed in killing the Duke, his
political naïveté is such that he does not anticipate the lethargy of the
Florentine nobility, which allows another puppet governor, Côme
(Cosimo) de Medici, to be installed in Alexandre’s place. This central story-line—already double in its exploration both of Lorenzo’s
personal motivation and of the political outcomes of his action—is
set against an elaborate evocation of the social, cultural and religious
context of 16th-century Italy: magnificent but debauched masked
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balls, scheming and manipulative cardinals who abuse the rights of
the confessional to obtain information, artists and silversmiths.
The play was not performed in Musset’s lifetime. An adaptation
by his brother Paul (1804–1880) was offered to the Odéon in 1863
but was banned for its political implications by the imperial censors, and it was not until 1896 that it was performed, when Sarah
Bernhardt took the title role for her production at the Théâtre de
la Renaissance. Marguerite Jamois also played Lorenzo in Gaston
Baty’s 1945 production at the Théâtre Montparnasse; the first
male actor to perform the role was Gérard Philipe, in Jean Vilar’s
production for the 1952 Avignon Festival; since then productions
have been mounted by Guy Retoré (1924– ) at the Théâtre de l’Est
parisien with Gérard Desarthe in 1969, Franco Zeffirelli (1923– )
at the Comédie-Française in 1976, Daniel Mesguich at the Théâtre
Gérard-Philipe in Saint-Denis in 1986, Francis Huster (1947– ) at the
Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris in 1989, Georges Lavaudant at the
Comédie-Française in 1989, and others. See also BOUCHARDY,
JOSEPH; FABRE, ÉMILE; SOLILOQUY.
LE LUCERNAIRE. The Paris base of the Centre national d’art et
d’essai, comprising two theaters, two cinemas, concert and art gallery
facilities and a lively café culture, with a mission to facilitate fruitful
collaboration between all the performing arts.
LUGNÉ-POE. Pseudonym of Aurélien-Marie Lugné (1869–1940),
innovative actor and stage director. Following Paul Fort, he was
a major figure in the Symbolist reaction against the Naturalism of
Émile Zola and André Antoine. Having at first been involved with
an amateur dramatic group, the Cercle des Escholiers, and acted
both at the Théâtre-Libre under Antoine and at the Théâtre d’Art
with Fort—where he appeared in the first performance of Maurice
Mæterlinck’s L’Intruse (The Intruder, 1891)—he directed and
starred in the first performance of the same author’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1892, then founded the Théâtre de l’Œuvre in 1893, reflecting the ideas of Impressionist painters and of Expressionist and
Symbolist authors. His version of anti-theater prioritized suggestion
over realistic expression or depiction: he developed a static, depersonalized, monotonous delivery and presentation, using gauze screens
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and dim lighting to force ideas rather than action to carry the weight
of a performance. His repertoire ranged very widely, from plays
by Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) and August Strindberg (1849–1912)
through English Jacobean dramas to exotic works and the first performance of Alfred Jarry’s grotesque play Ubu roi (Ubu the King,
1896). In 1897, despite the notoriety that that production had brought
him, he expressed public disappointment at the lack of meritorious
texts in French and began to work independently, exploring more
conventional texts, including works by William Shakespeare, Paul
Claudel and even Realist dramatists such as Romain Rolland—Les
Loups (The Wolves, 1898), Le Triomphe de la raison (The Triumph
of Reason, 1899)—and Maxim Gorky (1868–1936). Lugné-Poe was
later involved in and supportive of Dadaist experiments in theater.
See also ANCEY, GEORGES; ARTAUD, ANTONIN; BATAILLE,
HENRY; BOUFFES PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE DES; CROMMELYNCK, FERNAND; DE MAX, ÉDOUARD; GIDE, ANDRÉ;
POREL, PAUL; RENARD, JULES.
LULLY, JEAN-BAPTISTE (1632–1687). French version of his name
used by the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Lulli after his establishment as leading composer at the court of Louis XIV. During a
period in which the French public was resistant to opera, he collaborated with Molière and others in ballets de cour, comédies-ballets,
pastorales en musique and other hybrid forms. Having composed
the music for Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois
Gentleman, 1670), he devoted himself from 1673 to the invention
of French opera, often in collaboration with Philippe Quinault: key
works include Alceste (1674), Isis (1677) and Armide (1686). See
also GRÉTRY, ANDRÉ; LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE; PALAISROYAL; VILLÉGIER, JEAN-MARIE.
– M –
LA MACHINE INFERNALE (THE INFERNAL MACHINE). Fouract prose tragedy based on the myth of Œdipus, by Jean Cocteau,
first performed at the Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris in 1934, with the
author taking the part of La Voix and Louis Jouvet as the Shepherd;
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design and costumes were by Christian Bérard (1902–1949). It is a
very self-conscious reworking of the myth in response to the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), with reference
also to the theory of relativity and to the rise of Fascism in contemporary Europe. It is iconoclastic in its approach to literary form: the
first act verges on farce in its use of anachronistic references and
colloquial speech, and neither Œdipe nor Jocaste is portrayed with
dignity.
In this version, the Sphinx—who is presented as a supernatural
being no less caught up than humankind in the “infernal machine”
that constitutes the universe—tries to break the cycle of violence in
which she is involved by revealing to Œdipe in advance the answer
to the riddle he is obliged to solve, so his defeat of her is in practice
fraudulent, and his subsequent claim to the hand and throne of Jocaste comes across as a move of calculating ambition on the part of
an arrogant boor. The play makes extensive use of dramatic irony:
there are so many reminders of the relative ages of Jocaste and
Œdipe, so many parallels between the intended fate of Jocaste’s baby
and the reality of Œdipe’s present situation, that it is almost impossible to believe that they do not realize the truth of their situation; and
there are so many foreshadowings of the dénouement in which she
will hang herself with her red scarf and he will use her ostentatious
brooch to gouge his eyes out that the impression is given of farcical
coincidence rather than the fateful inevitability of tragedy. Nevertheless act four attains a poetic (almost a magical) quality, as Jocaste
the wife, hanged, reappears as Jocaste the mother to protect her son
(alongside their daughter Antigone) as he sets off disfigured toward
glory or shame—the ending of the play is deliberately ambiguous on
this point. See also BOUFFES PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE DES;
MARAIS, JEAN.
MACHINE PLAY. A spectacular form of drama in vogue during the
17th century, defying that period’s reputation for verisimilitude and
classical austerity. The Italian designer Giacomo Torelli (1608–1678)
was employed by Louis XIV to create elaborate stage machinery for
the portrayal of miraculous exploits by gods or heroes. In the public
theater the genre was particularly associated with the Théâtre du
Marais, where works by Thomas Corneille and Philippe Quinault
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established it on a literary footing. See also BAROQUE; CHARPENTIER, MARC-ANTOINE; CHORUS; CORNEILLE, PIERRE;
ODÉON; VISÉ, JEAN DONNEAU DE.
MÆTERLINCK, MAURICE POLYDOR MARIE BERNARD
(1862–1949). Belgian Symbolist dramatist. He was influenced by
puppet theater, performances of which were fashionable in Paris in
the 1880s and which contrasted with the æsthetic of the Naturalist
school. His plays, whose tragic mood is impregnated with medieval
mysticism, obtain their haunting effects by suggestion and ambiguity
rather than by psychological investigation. L’Intruse (The Intruder)
and Les Aveugles (The Blind) were performed by Lugné-Poe at Paul
Fort’s Théâtre d’Art in 1891, but the financial difficulties and overambition of that company led to its collapse, and Mæterlinck and his
supporters struggled to mount Pelléas et Mélisande at the Théâtre
des Bouffes parisiens in 1893. A more successful performance of
the same play was mounted at the Théâtre du Parc in Brussels a few
days later. Thereafter, Lugné-Poe directed a revival of L’Intruse
as well as first performances of Mæterlinck’s Intérieur (1895) and
Monna Vanna (1902) at his own Théâtre de l’Œuvre.
Other key works include Alladine et Palomides (1894), La Mort
de Tintagiles (1894), Aglavaine et Sélysette (1896), Ariane et Barbebleue (Ariadne and Bluebeard, 1902) and L’Oiseau bleu (The Blue
Bird), directed in 1908 at the Moscow Arts Theater by Constantin
Stanoslavski (1863–1938) and by Réjane at the Théâtre Réjane in
1911. Mæterlinck was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in
1911. See also ODÉON; OPERA.
MAIRET, JEAN (1604–1686). Dramatist, scholar, soldier and diplomat who wrote about a dozen plays in various genres between 1626
and 1641 but then retired from creative writing, perhaps because he
felt himself to have been defeated by Pierre Corneille in the controversy that surrounded the latter’s Le Cid. As a vigorous defender
of classical regularity, opposing François Ogier by insisting on a
strict application of the unities, Mairet deserves some credit, along
with Jean de Rotrou, François Tristan L’Hermite and Pierre Du
Ryer, for the renewal of tragedy following the period dominated
by Alexandre Hardy. Key works include La Sylvie (tragi-comédie
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pastorale, 1626), La Silvanire ou La Morte-vive, first performed in
1630, published in 1631 with a detailed preface expounding the case
for the unities, Les Galanteries du duc d’Ossonne (comedy, 1632)
and Sophonisbe (tragedy, 1634).
MALLARMÉ, STÉPHANE (1842–1898). Symbolist poet whose
poem L’Après-midi d’un faune (The Faun’s Afternoon, 1876) was
first conceived as a dramatic monologue, designed to be performed
by the young Benoît Constant Coquelin. Mallarmé also left in fragmentary form three scenes of a dramatic interpretation of the Salomé
story entitled Hérodiade.
LES MAMELLES DE TIRÉSIAS (TIRÉSIAS’S BREASTS). Surrealist drama by Guillaume Apollinaire, 1917, turned into a successful comic opera by Francis Poulenc, 1947.
MARAIS, JEAN. Stage name of Jean-Alfred Villain-Marais (1913–
1998), actor particularly associated with the films of Jean Cocteau,
with whom he began a homosexual relationship in 1937, when he
had a walk-on part in Cocteau’s adaptation of Œdipus Rex. Having
appeared in over 50 films between 1933 and 1970, he concentrated
thereafter on a stage career, which continued until he was over 80,
combining revivals of works by Cocteau (Les Parents terribles in
1977, La Machine infernale in 1986 and 1989 and several celebratory compilations) with standard classics, including Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in 1970–1971, Molière’s Le Tartuffe
in 1972–1973, William Shakespeare’s King Lear in 1977–1979
and Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid in 1985. A projected performance
of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in 1997 was abandoned because of
his illness. See also BOUFFES PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE DES;
DULLIN, CHARLES; FEUILLÈRE, EDWIGE; PALAIS-ROYAL.
MARAIS, THÉÂTRE DU. Theater building and associated theater
companies in the Marais district of Paris in the mid-17th century. The
company that achieved greatest fame there from the 1630s, largely
due to its success in productions of early plays by Pierre Corneille,
was the remnant of a troupe led by Charles Le Noir, originally
sponsored by the Prince of Orange, which had shared the stage of the
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Hôtel de Bourgogne with the Comédiens du Roi until 1629, then
moved to various temporary premises before settling in a converted
real tennis court in the rue Vieille-du-Temple in March 1634. That
property was destroyed by fire in 1644, and its reconstruction led to
big changes in the internal structure of auditoria, with a higher stage,
a longer main hall and an increased proportion of seated spectators,
both in boxes and on seats at ground level adjacent to the parterre;
this pattern became a model for both the Hôtel de Bourgogne and
L’Illustre Théâtre when they had opportunity for reconstruction.
In 1647, the transfer of Floridor from the Marais company to the
Comédiens de Roi weakened the Marais company’s ability to shine
in mainstream theater, and under the influence of Italian actors who
had been performing in Paris since 1644, it created a new vogue
for spectacular machine plays. It was eventually combined with
Molière’s company, after the latter’s death in 1673, and the joint
troupe performed at the Théâtre de Guénégaud until the formation
of the Comédie-Française in 1680.
The name Théâtre du Marais has since then been used by at least
two theatrical ventures in Paris, one dedicated to the works of Beaumarchais between 1791 and 1807 and one founded by Jacques
Mauclair in 1976. See also BÉJART, ARMANDE; BRÉCOURT,
GUILLAUME MARCOUREAU DE; LA CHAMPMESLÉ; LE CID;
CORNEILLE, THOMAS; DU PARC, MLLE; GUÉRIN D’ESTRICHÉ, EUSTACHE-FRANÇOIS; HAUTEROCHE, NOËL LEBRETON DE; JODELET; MONTDORY; ROTROU, JEAN DE.
MARCEAU, FÉLICIEN. Authorial pseudonym of Louis Carette
(1913– ), dramatist. Belgian by birth, he is also a prize-winning
novelist and essayist and was elected to the Académie française
in 1975. His plays include L’École des moroses (The Academy of
Gloom, 1953), Caterina (1954), L’Œuf (The Egg, directed by André
Barsacq at the Théâtre de l’Atelier in 1956, and performed at the
Comédie-Française in 1979), Madame Princesse (1965—Marie
Bell starred in the première), Les Secrets de la Comédie humaine
(1975), and translations from Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) and
Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793); his novels include one entitled Le
Voyage de noces de Figaro (Figaro’s Honeymoon, 1994), based on
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the characters in Beaumarchais’s plays. See also BRIALY, JEANCLAUDE.
MARCEAU, MARCEL. Professional pseudonym of Marcel Mangel
(1923–2007), mime artist and, from 1978, director of the Paris-based
École de Mimodrame. A pupil of Charles Dullin and Jean-Louis
Barrault, he took inspiration from Jean-Gaspard Debureau as well
as from Charlie Chaplin (1899–1977) in his creation in 1947 of the
tragic clown Bip, with whom he is particularly associated.
MARCEL, LÉON. Authorial pseudonym used by Paul Meurice
(1818–1905) and Auguste Vacquerie (1819–1895) who wrote successful French adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare
(Falstaff, 1842) and Greek tragedy (Antigone, 1844), performed at
the Odéon. Both were personal friends and passionate supporters of
Victor Hugo, and Meurice adapted his Les Misérables for the stage
in 1862. Vacquerie wrote a small number of plays—Tragaldabas
(1848), Les Funérailles de l’honneur (Honor’s Funeral, 1861), first
performed at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and commented
on favorably by Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)—and in May 1867
directed rehearsals of Hugo’s Hernani at the Comédie-Française.
LE MARIAGE DE FIGARO (FIGARO’S WEDDING). Five-act prose
comedy by Beaumarchais, completed by 1781 but performed at the
Odéon only in 1784 after disputes with Louis XVI and his censors.
A highly complicated and breathless comedy of intrigue, full of wit,
satire against the feudal system and judicial corruption, and parody,
Le Mariage de Figaro has been seen as a precursor of the French
Revolution, although the title character seems determined to exploit
the existing system to his own advantage rather than to undermine it
fundamentally, and it is hard to believe that he would have sought
an outcome that involved the execution of his fiancée’s beloved mistress, the Comtesse Almaviva.
Figaro and Suzanne are engaged to be married, but the Comte
Almaviva, their employer, whose marriage to Rosine had ended Le
Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville), has been troubling the
young woman with sexual advances. In company with the betrayed
Comtesse, in whom they confide, the young couple devises a series
MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE
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of intricate plots to humiliate the Comte, who in the end is exposed
and obliged to beg for pardon, which the Comtesse graciously
grants—although previous experience casts doubt on the validity of
this multiple happy ending. Several comic episodes are provided by
the young page boy Chérubin, who flirts with all the women in the
household; the central act is taken up by an absurd judicial procedure
(incidental to the plot); and early in Act V, Figaro in a fit of depression gives vent to a long monologue outlining all the inequities and
social injustices of the ancien régime.
At the first performance, the role of Figaro was created by Dazincourt, that of the stuttering and incompetent judge Brid’oison by
Préville, who had taken the role of Figaro in Le Barbier de Séville,
and that of Chérubin by Mlle Jeanne-Adélaïde-Gérardine Olivier
(1764–1787). The play was adapted as the opera Le Nozze di Figaro
(1786) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). See also MARCEAU, FÉLICIEN; TAYLOR, ISIDORE; VAUDEVILLE.
MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE (1688–
1763). Dramatist, novelist and journalist who wrote nearly 30
Italianate comedies following his first success, Arlequin poli par
l’amour (Harlequin Refined by Love, 1720). He specialized in delicate exploration of the intricacies of love, opposed not by fate, as in
the works of Jean Racine, or authority, as in those of Molière, but by
the reticence and diffidence of the lovers themselves, who are often
reluctant to admit an unfamiliar emotion, let alone abandon themselves to its consequences. In his masterpieces, including La Surprise
de l’amour (The Surprise of Love, 1722), La Double Inconstance
(The Double Inconstancy, 1723), L’Île des esclaves (The Island of
the Slaves, 1725), Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (The Game of
Love and Chance, 1730) and Les Fausses confidences (False Secrets,
1737), he uses disguise and deception to convey the confusion in the
minds of characters who are typically young, attractive and independent and who discuss their emotions in witty and stylish language so
characteristic as to be identified by the term Marivaudage.
Marivaux’s preciosity divided intellectual opinion, and it was after
two unsuccessful candidatures that he was elected to the Académie
française in 1742. His reputation has been more firmly established
during the 20th century, when all his major plays have been revived
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MARQUISE
at the Comédie-Française and many of his minor works have had
successful productions by small experimental companies. As well
as his comedies, he wrote burlesque poetry, one unsuccessful tragedy, Annibal (Hannibal, 1720), and two novels, Le Paysan parvenu
(The Upstart Peasant, 1735) and La Vie de Marianne (The Life of
Marianne, 1741). Marivaux also founded three newspapers, including Le Spectateur françois, which he edited between 1721 and 1724.
See also ANOUILH, JEAN; ASIDE; ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’;
BOURDET, GILDAS; CÂFÉ-THÉÂTRE; CHÉREAU, PATRICE;
COINCIDENCE; DELAUNAY, LOUIS ARSÈNE; DUFRESNY,
CHARLES; HARLEQUIN; LASSALLE, JACQUES; LÉLIO;
ODÉON; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL; SOLILOQUY.
MARQUISE. See DU PARC, MLLE.
MARS, MLLE. Stage name of Anne Françoise Hippolyte Boutet
(1779–1847), actress. The daughter of the actor Monvel, she is said
to have performed at the age of 12 at the Théâtre des Beaujolais
(later Palais-Royal), made her professional stage début in 1794 at
the Théâtre Feydeau, then joined the Comédie-Française in 1799.
She dominated the female repertoire for nearly 50 years, refusing
to train potential rivals and insisting on first refusal for all leading
roles, including young lovers and coquettes, until she retired in 1841.
She created the role of Doña Sol in Victor Hugo’s Hernani. See
also DORVAL, MARIE; LE JEU DE L’AMOUR ET DU HASARD;
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; VIGNY, ALFRED DE.
MARTIN, JEAN (1922–2009). Actor particularly associated with
Absurd Theater, including the first performances of Arthur
Adamov’s La Parodie (written in 1947, published and performed
in 1950) and Samuel Beckett’s En Attendant Godot (Waiting for
Godot, 1953), Fin de partie (Endgame, 1957) in both Paris and
London, and La Dernière Bande (Krupp’s Last Tape, 1970). He
also directed Roger Blin in the first French production (1961) of
The Caretaker (first London production 1959) by Harold Pinter
(1930–2008) and had a prolific and distinguished career in film and
television drama.
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MARTINELLI, TRISTANO (1557–1630). Italian actor and troupe
leader who came to Paris in the late 16th and early 17th centuries,
establishing the commedia dell’arte style there and attaining fame
for his own role as Arlecchino.
MAUCLAIR, JACQUES (1919–2001). Actor, stage director and
broadcaster. He made his début alongside Louis Jouvet in 1945 and
played in the first performances of Eugène Ionesco’s Les Victimes
du devoir (Victims of Duty, 1953), Les Chaises (Chairs) and Le Roi
se meurt (The King Is Dying, 1965) before founding his own theater
company at the Théâtre du Marais in 1976. He won the Grand Prix
National du Théâtre in 1993.
MAUDUIT, JEAN. See LARIVE.
MAURIAC, FRANÇOIS (1885–1970). Novelist who was encouraged
by Édouard Bourdet to move into the realm of drama in the late
1930s. All his best-known novels, including Thérèse Desqueyroux
(1927) and Le Nœud de Vipères (Nest of Vipers, also translated as
Vipers’ Tangle, 1932), had been published before his first play,
Asmodée, was produced in 1938. He acknowledged the influence
of Jean Racine, of whom he had written a biography in 1928, and
his plays reflect Racine’s bleak view of human nature, as well as
evoking the local atmosphere of Mauriac’s native region, the Landes
south of Bordeaux. Asmodée and Les Mal Aimés (The Poorly Loved,
1945) achieved some critical acclaim, but Passage du Malin (The
Devil Slips By, 1947) and Le Feu sur la Terre (Fire on Earth, 1950)
appeared too starkly harsh in their condemnation of unsatisfactory
characters to be successful in performance.
Mauriac was elected to the Académie française in 1933 and was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1952, “for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels
penetrated the drama of human life.”
MEILHAC, HENRI (1830–1897). Dramatist, journalist, librettist and
author of vaudevilles, mostly in collaboration with Ludovic Halévy.
Best remembered now as the librettists of operas by Jacques
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MÉLESVILLE, M
Offenbach and Georges Bizet, they achieved success in their own
time with plays including Froufrou (1869), performed at the Gymnase, Le Réveillon (The Ball, 1872) and La Boule (The Hot-water
Bottle, 1874), both performed at the Palais-Royal. Meilhac also
wrote many plays without collaboration, including Décoré (Honored,
also translated as The Cuckoo, 1889) and Ma Cousine (My Cousin,
1890), and was elected to the Académie française in 1888. See also
DESCLÉE, AIMÉE.
MÉLESVILLE, M. Pseudonym of Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier
(1787–1865), author of vaudevilles, opéras-comiques and light
comedies, including Clifford le voleur (Clifford the Thief, 1835),
some in collaboration with Eugène Scribe. He was the librettist of the
successful opera Zampa (1831) by Ferdinand Hérold (1791–1833).
MÉLINGUE, ÉTIENNE MARIN (1808–1875). Actor, the last major
performer in the Romantic tradition, largely associated with the historical melodramas of Alexandre Dumas père.
MELODRAMA. The dominant theatrical form of the early 19th century, its popularity being partly a reaction to the stultified version
of classicism, which was then supported by official and academic
circles. Characteristics of melodrama include stock characters (a
villain, a pure heroine and a comic servant), complex plots filled
with thrilling episodes, a spectacular presentation involving scene
changes, dance and music, and a highly moralistic tone and conclusion. Its roots can be found in German theater of the Sturm und Drang
movement and in the English Gothic revival, and an early hybrid
form, the pantomime dialoguée, was popular in France in the 1790s.
The main French exponents of the genre included Benjamin Antier,
Adolphe Dennery, Alexandre Dumas père, René-Charles Pixérécourt and Saint-Amand. See also AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE DE L’;
BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH; GRAND-GUIGNOL, THÉÂTRE DU;
LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; LEMOINE-MONTIGNY; MÉNIER,
PAULIN.
MÉNIER, PAULIN (1822–1899). Actor at the Gaîté Theater in Paris,
where he specialized in melodrama, most notably in his trademark
MEURICE, PAUL
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role of Choppard in Le Courrier de Lyon (The Lyons Mail, 1850) by
Paul Siraudin (1813–1883), which he revived several times. In such
roles he upstaged the ageing Frédérick Lemaître, who left the Gaîté
for the Théâtre de l’Ambigu in 1854.
MERCIER, LOUIS SÉBASTIEN (1740–1814). Political philosopher,
dramatist and theoretician of drama, influenced by Denis Diderot in
supporting the development of more Realist theater. His principles
were expounded in a Traité du Théâtre, ou Nouvel Essor sur l’Art
dramatique (Treatise on the Theater, or A Fresh Start for the Art of
Drama, 1773) and put into practice in Le Déserteur (The Deserter,
1770) and La Brouette du Vinaigrier (The Vinager-merchant’s Barrowload, 1775), plays that deal with poverty and working-class ethics from a broadly sentimental perspective. Later in his life he was
an early supporter of the incipient Romantic movement, publishing
a Satire contre Racine et Boileau (Satire against Racine and Boileau)
in 1808. Mercier was also a groundbreaking author of science fiction.
See also DUVAL, ALEXANDRE; RUTLEDGE, JEAN-JACQUES.
MESGUICH, DANIEL (1952– ). Stage director, author, actor and director since 2007 of the Paris conservatoire national d’art dramatique.
His productions of William Shakespeare’s King Lear (Avignon
Festival, 1981) and Romeo and Juliet (Théâtre de l’Athénée, 1985)
and of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle (Nice, 1988) were marked by a
neo-baroque emphasis on the illusory nature of experience. See also
LORENZACCIO; LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE.
MÉTÉNIER, OSCAR (1859–1913). Realist novelist and dramatist.
Having collaborated with Paul Alexis in Monsieur Betzy (1890), he
adapted Les Frères Zemganno (The Zemganno Brothers, 1890) from
the novel by the Goncourt brothers and Mademoiselle Fifi (1896)
from the short story by Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893). In 1897
he founded the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, which he directed until
1899.
MEURICE, PAUL. See MARCEL, LÉON.
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MEYERBEER, GIACOMO
MEYERBEER, GIACOMO. Pseudonym of Jakob Liebman Meyer
Beer (1791–1864), German Romantic composer of operas. His
librettists included the French dramatists Casimir Delavigne and
Eugène Scribe. See also CICERI, PIERRE LUC CHARLES.
MILES GLORIOSUS. See FANFARON.
MILHAUD, DARIUS (1892–1974). Composer and member of the
groupe des Six. Like the other members of that group he was enthusiastic about the influence of popular culture on serious music
and spectacle, and in this he was influenced not only by Jean Cocteau but by his experiences in South America as secretary to Paul
Claudel. His most important dramatic works include: ballets such as
Le Bœuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof Club), performed in 1920,
scenario by Cocteau, décors by the fauvist Raoul Dufy (1877–1953),
and La Création du monde (The Creation of the World, 1923), based
on African mythology and using a musical idiom influenced by jazz;
operas Christophe Colomb (Christopher Columbus, 1930, libretto
by Claudel, first performed in German, making experimental use
of film), Bolivar (1950, libretto by his wife Madeleine) and David
(1952); and incidental music for Claudel’s translations of the Oresteia (1917) and for the same author’s play Protée (Proteus, 1920).
See also VIAN, BORIS.
MIQUEL, JEAN-PIERRE (1937–2003). Stage director and academic who became artistic director of the Odéon in 1971, professor
at the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique in 1975,
its director in 1983 and administrator of the Comédie-Française
in 1993. His professional directorial début was Pierre Corneille’s
seldom performed last play Suréna in 1964, and he went on to win
the Grand Prix du Jeune Théâtre in 1965 for his production of Oreste
by Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803). Such eclectic and unusual projects
typified his interest in renewing the dramatic repertoire both by
reviving neglected classics and by supporting new talent: contemporary dramatists whose success has been furthered by his support
include Louis Calaferte, Roland Dubillard, François Billetdoux,
René de Obaldia and Robert Pinget.
MOLÉ, FRANÇOIS-RENÉ
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MIRBEAU, OCTAVE (1848–1917). Polemical journalist, art and
drama critic and social dramatist in the Naturalist tradition. Having
been associated with the Théâtre d’Application in the 1890s, he went
on to make a distinct contribution to turn-of-the-century theater, attacking political and financial milieus in Les Mauvais Bergers (The
Bad Shepherds, 1896/7) and Les Affaires sont les affaires (Business
Is Business, 1903). His satirical narrative Journal d’une femme de
chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid, 1900) was adapted for the cinema by Jean Renoir (1894–1979) in 1946 and again by Luis Buñuel
(1900–1983) in 1964.
MNOUCHKINE, ARIANE (1939– ). Stage, television and film
director, particularly associated with the Théâtre du Soleil and
other carnivalesque innovations. This theater company was a development from a student association she had founded in 1961. Its
early productions were influenced by the theories of Constantin
Stanislavski (1863–1938), and the company’s first major success
came with a production in 1967 of The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker
(1932– ). Mnouchkine took over a ruined factory, la Cartoucherie
de Vincennes, in which she mounted elaborate spectacles, including
1789 and La Ville parjure (The City of Betrayal), some of which
were later turned into films. Her production of Hélène Cixous’s
Tambours sur la Digue (The Flood Drummers) in 1999 won her
the Molière for best director. See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL
D’; COSTUME; THE FRENCH REVOLUTION; STREHLER,
GIORGIO.
MOLÉ, FRANÇOIS-RENÉ (1734–1802). Actor. He performed the
title role in Jean Racine’s Britannicus at the Comédie-Française
in 1754 with virtually no previous experience, then after some work
in the provinces returned more successfully to Paris and became a
sociétaire of the Comédie-Française in 1761. He played the title role
in Jean-François Ducis’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s
Hamlet in 1769, wrote a one-act prose comedy, Le Quiproquo (The
Misunderstanding), in 1781, and taught his craft at the École royale
dramatique, founded in 1786. Following the French Revolution he
was a senior member of the re-formed Théâtre français in 1799 and
retired in 1802.
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MOLIÈRE
MOLIÈRE. Name given to a series of prizes awarded annually since
1987 to French actors, directors and dramatists. In 24 categories,
individuals (including costumiers, technicians and decorators as well
as actors, authors and directors) or production teams are nominated
and a winner declared. In 2006, participation in the jury by press critics representing the Syndicat de la critique dramatique was ended by
the Association professionnelle et artistique du théâtre, representing
theater practitioners, and a panel composed of theater professionals
and former prize-winners was established. See also BILLETDOUX,
FRANÇOIS; BOURDET, GILDAS; BROOK, PETER; CASARÈS,
MARIA; CHÉREAU, PATRICE; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; DUBILLARD, ROLAND; DUX, PIERRE; FEUILLÈRE, EDWIGE; HAÏM,
VICTOR; KERBRAT, PATRICE; KOKKOS, YANNIS; LESCOT, DAVID; MNOUCHKINE, ARIANE; OBALDIA, RENÉ DE;
REZA, YASMINA; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL; SCHIARETTI,
CHRISTIAN; SCHMITT, ERIC-EMMANUEL; VINCENT, JEANPIERRE.
MOLIÈRE, JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN DE (1622–1673). Comic
dramatist, actor, director and theater manager. Following a conventional bourgeois education, he renounced a career as a craftsman at
court in order to pursue his theatrical vocation, founding L’Illustre
Théâtre with Joseph and Madeleine Béjart in 1643. Unable to
compete with the existing Paris theater companies at the Hôtel de
Bourgogne and the Marais, the company undertook a provincial
tour from 1645. They first joined a company led by Charles Dufresne
(1611–1684) with support from the duc d’Épernon (1592–1661);
Molière became leader of the troupe around 1650 and was protected
by the Prince de Conti (1629–1666) and subsequently by the Duc
d’Orléans, brother of Louis XIV, who allowed the company to return
to Paris in 1658 and take the name La Troupe de Monsieur. They
performed from 1658 to 1660 at the Théâtre du Petit-Bourbon, then
at the Palais-Royal, in which purpose-built theater spaces had been
installed by Richelieu. Molière shared the Petit-Bourbon with an
Italian acting company, and the influence of commedia dell’arte on
his own work is marked.
Although he had almost certainly written some lightweight one-act
farces during that period, including La Jalousie du Barbouillé (Le
MOLIÈRE, JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN DE
• 171
Barbouillé’s Jealousy) and Le Médecin volant (The Flying Doctor),
it was only after his establishment in Paris that Molière built up his
reputation as a dramatic author with a series of often controversial
works, most notably Les Précieuses ridicules (The Pretentious Young
Ladies, 1659), Les Fâcheux (The Bores, 1661), L’École des femmes
(The School for Women, 1662), Le Tartuffe (1664/69), Dom Juan
(1665), Le Misanthrope (1666), Amphitryon (1668), L’Avare (The
Miser, 1668), Les Fourberies de Scapin (Scapin’s Pranks, 1671)
and Les Femmes savantes (The Learned Women, 1672). From 1661,
he was also commissioned to write and organize large-scale court
festivities involving music, dance and drama and with the composer
Jean-Baptiste Lully developed the new genre of the comédieballet. These works, although devised for court performance, frequently achieved success in the public theater as well: the most notable include Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman,
1670) and Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid, 1673). See
also ADAPTATION; ALBERT-LAMBERT; ASIDE; BALLET DE
COUR; LE BARBIER DE SÉVILLE; BARON; BEAUMARCHAIS,
PIERRE-AUGUSTIN CARON DE; BÉJART, ARMANDE; BENSERADE, ISAAC; BÉRÉNICE; THE BITER BIT; BOILEAU,
NICOLAS; BOURDET, GILDAS; BOVY, BERTHE; BRÉCOURT,
GUILLAUME MARCOUREAU DE; CARICATURE; CASARÈS,
MARIA; CENSORSHIP; CHARPENTIER, MARC-ANTOINE;
CLASSICISM; COINCIDENCE; COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE; COMÉDIENS DU ROI; COPEAU, JACQUES; COQUELIN, BENOÎT
CONSTANT; CORNEILLE, PIERRE; CORNEILLE, THOMAS;
CROMMELYNCK, FERNAND; DANCOURT; DE BRIE, MLLE;
DEFAMILIARIZATION; DELAUNAY, LOUIS ARSÈNE; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; DU CROISY; DU PARC, MLLE; DU
RYER, PIERRE; DUX, PIERRE; FABRE D’EGLANTINE, PHILIPPE; GOUNOD, CHARLES FRANÇOIS; GRÉTRY, ANDRÉ;
GUÉNÉGAUD, THÉÂTRE DE; GUÉRIN D’ESTRICHÉ, EUSTACHE-FRANÇOIS; HARLEQUIN; HONNÊTETÉ; IMPROVISATION; JODELET; JOUVET, LOUIS; LA FONTAINE, JEAN
DE; LA GRANGE; LARIVEY, PIERRE; LASSALLE, JACQUES;
LÉLIO; LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; LE SAGE, ALAIN-RENÉ;
LIGHTING; MARAIS, JEAN; MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE
CHAMBLAIN DE; MONTFLEURY; MONTFLEURY, ANTOINE
172 •
MONDOR
JACOB DE; MUSSET, ALFRED DE; NARRATOR; NICOLE,
PIERRE; ODÉON; OPÉRATEUR; PARODY; PICARD, LOUISBENOÎT; PLANCHON, ROGER; PLAUTUS; LA QUERELLE
DE L’ÉCOLE DES FEMMES; QUINAULT, PHILIPPE; RACINE,
JEAN; RAIMU; REGNARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; ROTROU, JEAN
DE; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL; SATIRE; SCARAMOUCHE;
SEIGNER, LOUIS; SOLEIL, THÉÂTRE DU; SOLILOQUY; UNITIES; VISÉ, JEAN DONNEAU DE; VITEZ, ANTOINE; VOLTAIRE; WILSON, GEORGES.
MONDOR. Stage name of the opérateur Philippe Girard, brother of
Tabarin.
MONTANSIER, MLLE. See PALAIS-ROYAL.
MONTCHRESTIEN, ANTOINE DE (c1575–1621). Tragic dramatist whose works follow the literary and elegiac model of Étienne
Jodelle and Robert Garnier rather than the more melodramatic
style of Alexandre Hardy. L’Écossaise (The Queen of Scots, 1601)
recounts the events leading up to the execution of Mary, Queen of
Scots (1542–1587) and is remarkable for the period in dealing with
contemporary issues in a tragic framework. Although Mary Stuart is
herself idealized and romanticized as a Catholic martyr in this portrayal, Elizabeth is also presented sympathetically, and Mary’s death
is presented in edifying rather than dramatic terms. Montchrestien
himself was eventually killed in a Protestant insurrection against
Louis XIII. His other works treated more conventional classical
and Biblical topics, including Sophonisbe (1596), David (1601) and
Hector (1604). He also enjoyed some renown as a courtly poet and
composed a dramatic pastoral, entitled Bergerie, published in 1601,
whose text appears to be designed for a performance involving both
spoken dialogue and sung verse passages. Forced into exile following
a duel in 1604, he built a second career as a political economist and
produced no further literary work of note.
MONTDORY. Stage name of Guillaume Desgilberts (1594–1651 or
1653), actor and joint director with Charles Le Noir of the Marais
theater company in 17th-century Paris. He specialized in tragic roles.
MONTFLEURY, ANTOINE JACOB DE
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First recorded as a member of the troupe of Valleran Le Conte in
1612, he was later employed by the Prince of Orange and certainly
performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1624. By 1629 he was associated with Le Noir and with the early works of Pierre Corneille,
and by 1634 their troupe was established in its long-term home. He
created the roles of Hérode in François Tristan L’Hermite’s La
Mariane and of Rodrigue in Corneille’s Le Cid but suffered a fit
onstage in 1637 which obliged him to retire.
MONTFLEURY. Stage name, subsequently adopted as the legal
name, of Zacharie Jacob (c1600–1667), actor. He was the son of an
acting couple, Fleury Jacob (who also used the stage name Montfleury) and Colombe Venière or Venier, known as La Fontaine. He
joined the Comédiens du Roi at the Hôtel de Bourgogne around
1637, married the actress Jeanne de La Chappe (?–1683) in 1638,
and had a very distinguished career, specializing in grand tragic roles.
His pompous and grandiloquent style (already mocked in 1640 by
Cyrano de Bergerac according to Edmond Rostand’s play of that
name) was castigated by Molière as part of his attack on the Comédiens du Roi in L’Impromptu de Versailles (The Versailles Impromptu,
1664), and the actor responded with bitterness by spreading vicious
rumors at court about the precise relationship between Molière and
his young wife Armande Béjart. Montfleury created (at the age of
67, despite the nature of the part) the role of Oreste in Jean Racine’s
Andromaque, and some attributed his death to the extravagant effort
that he put into that performance. He wrote one tragedy, La Mort
d’Astrubal (The Death of Astrubal), in 1647. See also JODELET;
MONTFLEURY, ANTOINE JACOB DE; VILLENEUVE, THÉODORE FERDINAND VALLOU DE.
MONTFLEURY, ANTOINE JACOB DE (1639–1685). Comic
dramatist, son of Montfleury, son-in-law of Floridor, author of
about 20 witty and rather licentious comedies. He was Molière’s
most significant rival in comedy throughout the 1660s. Most of his
plays were first performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, but after the
death of Molière, some were performed at the Théâtre de Guénégaud. Several of his plays, including Le Mari sans femme (The Wifeless Husband, 1663), L’École des jaloux (The School for Jealousy,
174 •
MONTHERLANT, HENRY DE
1664), L’École des filles (The School for Maids, 1666), La Femme
juge et partie (The Woman Who Judges Her Own Lawsuit, 1669) and
Le Comédien poète (The Actor-poet, 1674), remained in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française until well into the 18th century. His
work was influenced by Spanish theater more than that of most of his
contemporaries, and he anticipated the work of Molière in his innovative use of musical scenes. See also LA QUERELLE DE L’ÉCOLE
DES FEMMES.
MONTHERLANT, HENRY DE (1895–1972). Dramatist. Although a
highly literary writer who began his career as a novelist, he attached
importance to performance. In the tradition of Jean Racine both in
his classicism of form and in his pessimism of outlook, he dramatized the inevitability of human disappointment. His early novelistic
writing was profoundly influenced by his experience of World War
I. Only after 1940 did he turn increasingly to theater. Key works
include L’Exil (Exile), written in 1914 but not published until 1929,
Pasiphaé (1936), La Reine morte (The Dead Queen, 1942), Le Maître de Santiago (The Master of Santiago, 1947), Port-Royal (1954)
and Don Juan (1956). His Notes sur mon théâtre were published in
1950. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960 but lived
reclusively until, beset by blindness and feeling that his mental
capacity was declining, he committed suicide. See also COMÉDIEFRANÇAISE; DUX, PIERRE; ODÉON; TRAGEDY.
MONTIGNY. See LEMOINE-MONTIGNY.
MONTPARNASSE, THÉÂTRE. Theater building and company in
Paris, now known as the Théâtre Montparnasse Gaston-Baty because of its association from 1930 to 1942 with the director Gaston
Baty. It was originally established in 1819, built on its present site
in 1848 and rebuilt in 1886. Directed in 1887–1888 by André Antoine, it rose to preeminence under Baty with Marguerite Jamois.
Notable premières staged here have included Fernando Arrabal’s
L’Architecte et l’Empereur d’Assyrie in 1967 and Eugène Ionesco’s
Jeux de massacre (The Killing Game) in 1970, both directed by
Jorge Lavelli, and plays by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, including Le
LE MOULIN ROUGE
• 175
Libertin in 1996 and Oscar et la dame rose (Oscar and the Lady in
Pink) in 2007. See also LORENZACCIO.
MONVEL. Stage name of Jacques-Marie Boutet (1745–1812), actor
who joined the Comédie-Française in 1772 and taught at the Paris
Conservatoire. He directed a French acting company in Stockholm
from 1781 to 1786, then with Talma founded the Théâtre de la
République. He also wrote a number of plays, including L’Amant
bourru (The Grumpy Lover, 1777), Les Amours de Bayard (Bayard
in Love, 1786) and Les Victimes cloîtrées (The Cloistered Victims,
1791). He was the father of Mlle Mars.
MONVEL, HIPPOLYTE. See MARS, MLLE.
MORALITY PLAY. Dramatic text of an overtly moralizing nature
composed in the medieval period by clergy to counteract the licentious effect of the fabliaux. In France, morality plays were particularly associated with La Basoche. They were originally recited
narratives but were soon dramatized by the introduction of dialogue
and the allegorical use of individualized characters to represent passions, vices or virtues. Some were abstract allegories depicting the
trials of the Christian soul, others were dramatizations of biblical
parables or episodes. By the 16th century they had become increasingly secular and comic; censorship of the more licentious elements
was introduced under François I, and the introduction of more formal
dramatic genres during the humanist Renaissance led to the demise of
the form. See also MYSTERY PLAY.
MOREAU, JEANNE (1928– ). Actress, best known for her film career after 1957, although she had appeared onstage at the ComédieFrançaise, the Théâtre national populaire and Paris boulevard
theaters from 1948 to 1952. See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’;
WILSON, GEORGES.
LE MOULIN ROUGE. Theater building in Paris, renowned for risqué
dance spectaculars. Opened in 1889, it achieved an instant succès de
scandale, immortalized in the posters of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
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MOUNET, PAUL
(1864–1901), involving dance shows featuring “La Goulue” (Louise
Weber, 1866–1929) as well as plays by Colette (1873–1954) and
her husband Willy (1859–1931). A group known as the “quadrille
réaliste” specialized in the cancan. From 1907 to 1939, shows were
dominated by the singer Mistinguett (Jeanne Bourgeois, 1875–1956).
From a visit by the future King Edward VII in 1890 to the present
day, the shows have frequently been patronized by members of the
British royal family. The world represented by this theater has been
the inspiration for several films, notably Moulin Rouge (1952) by
John Huston (1906–1987), French Cancan (1955) by Jean Renoir
(1894–1979), Cancan (1960) by Walter Lang (1896–1972) and Moulin Rouge (2001) by Baz Luhrmann (1962– ).
MOUNET, PAUL. Stage name of Jean-Paul Sully (1847–1922), actor.
Younger brother of the more famous Mounet-Sully and himself distinguished as a sociétaire of the Comédie-Française and teacher at
the Paris Conservatoire, giving his début at the Odéon in the title role
of Pierre Corneille’s Horace in 1880 and starring in an adaptation
of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in 1887. He
transferred to the Comédie-Française in 1889, taking over from his
brother as Oreste in Jean Racine’s Andromaque, with Julia Bartet,
in 1901. See also TESSIER, VALENTINE.
MOUNET-SULLY. Stage name of Jean Sully Mounet (1841–1916),
tragic actor, the main star alongside Sarah Bernhardt at the
Comédie-Française in the last third of the 19th century. After training at the Paris Conservatoire from 1863, he joined suburban companies before being invited to play in a revival of Jean-François
Ducis’s version of King Lear at the Odéon in 1867, then in Jean
Racine’s Andromaque at the Comédie-Française in 1872. His most
celebrated roles were Œdipus in an 1881 performance at Orange of
Sophocles’ Œdipus Rex adapted by Jules Lacroix (1809–1887) and
Hamlet in an 1886 revival of the adaptation by Alexandre Dumas
père and Paul Meurice (1818–1905). Mounet-Sully wrote a number
of plays, including La Vieillesse de Don Juan (Don Juan’s Old Age,
1906); his memoirs were published posthumously under the title Souvenirs d’un tragédien (Memories of a Tragic Actor, 1917). See also
PERRIN, ÉMILE-CÉSAR-VICTOR.
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MULTIPLE SET (French: décor simultané). A convention used in
medieval and early classical theater to enable a number of settings
to be portrayed simultaneously onstage. A single stage design could
thus depict in successive scenes or acts a street, any of the buildings
adjacent to it, a prison and a harbor, for example. Once the location
of the scene had been established the whole playing area of the stage
could be assumed to represent that place; this enabled the action to
proceed without physical distractions. The last significant play to
depend on this convention was Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid (1637),
where it is necessary to depict the private apartments of Chimène
and of the Infante, the king’s state room and a street. Thereafter the
insistence of classical theorists on strict adherence to unity of place
displaced this practice.
MURET, MARC-ANTOINE DE (1526–1585). A teacher in Bordeaux and Paris who wrote the earliest known original tragedy on
a nonbiblical theme to be composed in France, his Latin play Julius
Cæsar (1545). The essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) acted
in plays by Muret and by George Buchanan when at school in Bordeaux. See also GRÉVIN, JACQUES; LA TAILLE, JEAN DE.
MUSIC. Only the most austere forms of drama are without some musical accompaniment, and French theater has often been unusually inventive in its exploration of ways to incorporate musical effects with
text and spectacle. Dramatists from Molière through Beaumarchais
and Jean Cocteau to Hélène Cixous have been actively involved in
the creation of operatic libretti or stage works involving significant
musical elements, and in the post–World War II period almost all
the most distinguished French stage directors and designers have
contributed to operatic productions.
From its inception in the fabliau and the works of Adam de la
Halle, drama was associated with song and dance. Renaissance
scholars like Jean Antoine de Baïf believed that in combining music
and poetry in drama they were being faithful to Ancient Greek models. The ballet de cour, a baroque genre combining music, dance
and text to produce spectacular pseudo-dramatic effects, flourished
in France with direct support from successive monarchs from the
1570s until Jean-Baptiste Lully finally formed the Académie royale
178 •
MUSIC
de musique in 1673 and devoted himself to the invention of French
opera. Within that period, he and Molière had also invented the genre
of the comédie-ballet, combining spoken drama with instrumental
and sung music, so that Louis XIV’s taste for spectacle and dancing
could be indulged despite the hostility toward opera of the French
intelligentsia and general public, and after Molière’s death, similar
works continued to be created, in the public theater as well as at
court, by Thomas Corneille, Philippe Quinault, Jean Donneau de
Visé and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
During the same period, a significant number of actors were competent to sing or to play instruments onstage as part of a performance,
and most companies also had at their disposal a few instrumentalists,
mainly viols. There is documentary evidence that two professional
musicians were employed in a Paris theater by September 1609; the
actor-playwright Claude Deschamps de Villiers (1601–1681), as
well as Molière’s colleagues Madeleine and Armande Béjart and
La Grange, were all able to sing and accompany themselves in role.
Jodelet appears (from Quinault’s 1655 play La Comédie sans comédie) to have been competent to accompany himself on the theorbo
while singing onstage. Molière himself was occasionally required to
sing, but usually only for comic effect.
In the 18th century, Charles Dufresny and Alain-René Le Sage
were particularly renowned for the incorporation of song and dance
within comic dramatic structures, as Beaumarchais would be later.
André Grétry and Christopher Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) composed operas and opéras-comiques, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
despite his predominantly negative attitude toward theater, took a
particular interest in opera. More light-hearted forms of theater associated with the fairground and vaudeville incorporated popular
music within all performances.
Interactions between theater and opera were even closer in the 19th
century, when Gioacchino Rossini, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Jacques
Offenbach, Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet (1842–1912) were
all intimately connected with the theatrical life of Paris, composing scores for the libretti or spoken stage works of Eugène Scribe,
Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) and many others. During the Second
Empire, Comédie-Française director Arsène Houssaye (1815–1896)
enlivened productions of Molière’s comédies-ballets by involving
MUSSET, ALFRED DE
• 179
Offenbach as musical director and employing ballet dancers from the
Opéra. The influence of Richard Wagner and his imitators, and the
Symbolists’ interest in synæsthesia, led Paul Fort, Paul-Napoléon
Roinard and others to extravagant experiments combining music
with other elements of spectacle, which in turn paved the way for
further innovations led by Erik Satie, Serge Diaghilev, Jean Cocteau and the composers of the groupe des Six (see PARADE). Paul
Claudel’s and Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (Joan of
Arc at the Stake, 1938) also combined elements of drama, oratorio,
ballet and opera in a strikingly original format.
Contemporary fusions of music and drama have involved the
creative work of Hélène Cixous, Jean-Michel Jarre, David Lescot
and others and have often figured at such innovative events as the
Avignon Festival. See also LE BARBIER DE SÉVILLE; BARTET,
JULIA; BAUSCH, PINA; BERLIOZ, LOUIS HECTOR; CARVALHO, LÉON; DELPIT, ALBERT; DESTOUCHES, ANDRÉCARDINAL; GAÎTÉ-LYRIQUE, THÉÂTRE DE LA; GOUNOD,
CHARLES FRANÇOIS; HADING, JANE; JUDIC, ANNA; KORÈNE, VÉRA; LESUEUR, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; MELODRAMA;
MILHAUD, DARIUS; MONTFLEURY, ANTOINE JACOB DE;
LE MOULIN ROUGE; OBALDIA, RENÉ DE; ODÉON; OPÉRACOMIQUE; PINGET, ROBERT; PORTE SAINT-MARTIN, THÉÂTRE DE LA; POULENC, FRANCIS; RACINE, JEAN; SARDOU,
VICTORIEN; SCARAMOUCHE; SCHNEIDER, HORTENSE; TAGLIONI, MARIE; TROUBADOUR; VIAN, BORIS.
MUSSET, ALFRED DE (1810–1857). Romantic poet and dramatist.
After the failure of his first play, La Nuit vénitienne (A Venetian
Night), at the Odéon in 1830, he renounced theater, but he continued
writing dialogues and dramatic texts under the heading Un Spectacle
dans un fauteuil, or “armchair theater.” Thus liberated from practical considerations he gave free rein to a wide-ranging imagination
in the construction of complicated plots using a variety of settings
and tones in the style of the Romantic drame. The French actress
Louise Rosalie Allan-Despréaux (1810–1856) achieved success with
a performance in St-Petersburg of a Russian translation of one of
Musset’s plays, Un Caprice, and eventually persuaded him to allow it to be performed, with equal success, in Paris in 1847. It was
180 •
MYSTERY PLAY
followed by André del Sarto (written in 1833, acted in 1848), Il ne
faut jurer de rien (Promise Nothing, written in 1836, acted in 1848)
and Les Caprices de Marianne (Marianne and Her Moods, written
in 1833, acted in 1851); Fantasio (written in 1834) and On ne badine
pas avec l’amour (Don’t Fool with Love, written in 1834) were not
performed until after Musset’s death, in 1866 and 1861, respectively.
These plays combine a playful tone with a bleak and often proverbially moralistic ending, often dwelling on the inevitable cost of love
and providing at times grotesque contrasts between witty fantasy, a
fascination with the sordid and an aspiration toward emotional purity.
Thought by many to be Musset’s dramatic masterpiece, Lorenzaccio (written in 1834) takes all of these tendencies to their extreme
limits and was considered unperformable in its original form: an
adaptation by the poet’s brother Paul (1804–1880) was offered
to the Odéon in 1863, but the play was not performed until 1896,
when Sarah Bernhardt took the title role for her production at the
Théâtre de la Renaissance.
Musset was elected to the Académie française in 1852. Despite
his adherence to the principles and poetic tone of the Romantic movement, he supported the revival of classical tragedies starring Rachel
in the late 1830s, and he wrote a witty poem, Une Soirée perdue
(Waste of an Evening), in 1840 defending the “harmonious simplicity”
and “good sense” of Molière, which he preferred to the “tortuous intrigues” of contemporary drama. See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’;
DELAUNAY, LOUIS ARSÈNE; FABRE, ÉMILE; JAMOIS, MARGUERITE; PHILIPE, GÉRARD; ROSE CHÉRI; ROUSSILLON,
JEAN-PAUL; SARMENT, JEAN ; SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM;
SOLILOQUY; VIGNY, ALFRED DE; VINCENT, JEAN-PIERRE.
MYSTERY PLAY. A dramatic representation of an episode from
the Bible or from the lives of the saints. Alongside morality plays,
farces and soties, these dominated theatrical activity in the medieval
period. Static representations set up for religious festivals gave rise
to the acting of episodes within the context of a liturgy and then to
performances of more elaborate dramatizations outside the church or
elsewhere. In Paris the Confrérie de la Passion gained monopoly
rights over this genre. Although serious and moralistic in purpose,
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mystery plays in France as elsewhere often incorporated scenes of
vulgarity, wit and satire; the most elaborate of them could extend
over several days and used a multiple set to portray several key
locations in the Judæo-Christian story—Heaven and Hell as well as
Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. One mystery play, Les Actes
des Apôtres (The Acts of the Apostles), apparently lasting 40 days
and requiring 300 actors to cover its 500 roles, was performed at
Bourges in 1536 and at Paris in 1542; the Mystère du Vieux Testament (Mystery of the Old Testament) was performed in several places
between 1530 and 1560, including a performance at Draguignan in
1557; and the Mystère de la Passion (Passion Play) was performed
at Valenciennes in 1547.
– N –
NARRATOR. One of the functions of the chorus in Greek tragedy
was to provide the audience with necessary background information
about the characters and situation at the start of a play and to inform
the spectators about events that happen offstage during the action.
This narratorial role is sometimes retained, usually by a single figure,
referred to as the prologue or chorus, in later dramatic traditions.
Most dramatists, however, prefer to devise an alternative expository
technique to make the transmission of information to the spectators
more natural: for example, the meeting of long-lost friends, as at the
opening of Jean Racine’s Andromaque, or a critical event or development that must be reported to the protagonist by his or her advisers, as in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid or Molière’s Les Fourberies de
Scapin (Scapin’s Pranks). A number of 20th-century French dramatists, including Jean Cocteau and Jean Anouilh, made widespread
use of narrator figures, usually as a distancing device to encourage
the audience to reflect on the action.
NATURALISM. Distinguished from other forms of Realism by its
emphasis on scientific analysis of the causes of behavior and social
attitudes, this movement was particularly associated with Émile
Zola, the Goncourt brothers and Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893)
in narrative fiction and with André Antoine in theater. Its adherents
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NDIAYE, MARIE
believed that character was largely formed by physical environment—individuals were the product of their race, milieu and
moment. Though physical details of setting had been significant
in both Romantic and Realist drama, this emphasis in Naturalist
theater led to ever greater objectivity, determinism and pessimism
in the analysis of the human situation. One of the most extreme
manifestations of Naturalist theater was a production in 1887 at
the Théâtre des Nations of an adaptation by William Busnach
(1832–1907) of Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris),
in which the district around Les Halles was reconstructed in meticulous detail, with real animals and vegetables. The more idealistic and spiritual approach to theater associated with Symbolism
developed partly as a reaction against Naturalism. See also ADAPTATION; ALEXIS, PAUL; BECQUE, HENRY; COSTUME;
CUREL, FRANÇOIS DE; FABRE, ÉMILE; FORT, PAUL; HERVIEU, PAUL; JOANNY; LUGNÉ-POE; MÆTERLINCK, MAURICE POLYDOR MARIE BERNARD; MIRBEAU, OCTAVE;
RÉJANE; RENARD, JULES; SCRIBE, EUGÈNE; THÉÂTRE
ANTOINE.
NDIAYE, MARIE (1967– ). Novelist and dramatist born in France of
a French mother and a Senegalese father. Having published her first
novel, Quant Au Riche Avenir (As for the Rich Future, 1985) at the
age of 18, she won the Prix Femina with Rosie Carpe in 2001. Her
first play, Hilda, originally a radio drama, was produced by Pascal
Roigneau (1966– ) for the Festival de Monbouan in 2000–2001, then
performed at the Théâtre de l’Atelier in 2002. Papa doit manger
(Papa Has to Eat) was directed by André Engel at the ComédieFrançaise in 2003 and was followed by Rien d’humain (Nothing
Human, 2004) and Les Serpents (The Snakes, performed in Geneva
in 2005). Her works derive humor from the exploration of cruelty and
anxiety, combining the familiar with the fantastic in a way that has
been compared to the work of Franz Kafka (1883–1924); she herself
refers to her world as one of “exaggerated realism.” Tensions within
family settings provide a recurrent theme.
NEOCLASSICISM. See CLASSICISM.
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NEUFCHÂTEAU, NICOLAS-LOUIS FRANÇOIS DE. See FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU, NICOLAS-LOUIS.
NICOLE, PIERRE (1625–1695). Influential Jansenist teacher and
thinker. Jean Racine must have been in contact with him as a
teacher at Port-Royal. He influenced Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) in
his polemical attack on Jesuit orthodoxy, the Lettres provinciales
(Provincial Letters, 1656), and published his own Logique in 1662,
as well as 18 Lettres sur l’Hérésie imaginaire ou Les Visionnaires
(Letters on the Imaginary Heresy, or The Visionnairies, 1664/66), a
scathing attack on theatrical activity as “poisonous to public morality,” to which Racine responded with two vitriolic letters. Nicole was
thus in direct opposition to both Racine and Molière at the height of
their power and their royal support.
NOBEL PRIZE. A series of international prizes for outstanding
achievement in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and
(since 1969) economics, established by the will of Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833–1896), a Swedish inventor, and awarded since
1901. The literature prize has never been awarded to a Frenchman
whose literary reputation is based mainly on drama, but Maurice
Mæterlinck received it in 1911, Samuel Beckett in 1969, and it
was awarded to Romain Rolland, André Gide, François Mauriac
and Albert Camus. Jean-Paul Sartre, awarded the prize in 1964,
refused to attend a public ceremony.
LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE. Term coined by those hostile to it for a
body of literary theory influenced by structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis and feminism and opposed to conventional academic
criticism, which was characterized by respect for tradition, authorial
intention and in some cases literary biography. Both sides focused
mostly on narrative fiction, but a theatrical perspective became central in the 10 years from 1956, when a series of tendentious works
on Jean Racine—Roland Barthes (1915–1980), Sur Racine (On
Racine, structuralist), Lucien Goldmann (1913–1970), Le Dieu caché (The Hidden God, Marxist) and Charles Mauron (1899–1966),
L’Inconscient dans l’Œuvre et la vie de Racine (The Unconscious
184 •
NOVARINA, VALÈRE
in the Life and Work of Jean Racine, psychoanalytic)—caused disproportionately violent reactions. The ensuing controversy prompted
experimental productions of several Racine plays, particularly Phèdre, Bérénice (productions by Antoine Vitez, Daniel Mesguich and
Roger Planchon) and Britannicus (productions by Vitez and Gildas
Bourdet). One outcome of this controversy has been an increased
focus among both directors and academics on the semiology of
theater, a field in which Anne Ubersfeld (1921– ) (Lire le Théâtre,
1978) and Patrice Pavis (1947– ) (L’Analyse des spectacles, 1996)
have been particularly influential.
NOVARINA, VALÈRE (1947– ). Playwright, photographer and artist. Supported by Roger Blin, he wrote L’Atelier Volant (The Flying
Workshop), directed in 1974 by Jean-Pierre Sarrazac (1946– ), then
Falstafe, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts
1 and 2, produced in Marseilles in 1976. Many of his subsequent
works were directed by Novarina himself at the Avignon Festival:
Le Drame de la vie (The Drama of Life, 1986), Vous qui habitez le
temps (You Who Dwell in Time, 1989), La Chair de l’homme (The
Flesh of Man, 1995) and L’Origine rouge (Red Origins, 2000). Other
key works include Je suis (I Am), first performed at the Théâtre de
la Bastille in 1991, and L’Espace furieux (The Frenzied Space), first
performed in January 2006 at the Comédie-Française. As a graphic
artist, Novarina was influenced by the Art brut of Jean Dubuffet
(1901–1985) and explored the potential of combining performance
with the creation and exhibition of artworks: for example, in June
1980, he organized an event in Bordeaux entitled Le Théâtre est vide.
Entre Adam . . . (Empty Stage. Enter Adam . . .) for violin, actress
and painter, in the course of which he produced 1,008 drawings between midday and dusk.
– O –
OBALDIA, RENÉ DE (1918– ). Prolific French dramatist and radio
dramatist associated in the 1950s with Absurd Theater but developing a richly independent thread of wit thereafter. Having won literary
prizes for narrative fiction in the 1950s, he began a successful career
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as a dramatist when Jean Vilar directed his “oneiric drama” Génousie (Jenusia) in 1960 at the Théâtre national populaire. That play
was awarded the Prix de la Critique Dramatique. Other key works include Sept Impromptus à loisir (Seven Leisurely Impromptus, 1958),
Du Vent dans les branches de sassafras (Wind in the Branches of the
Sassafras Trees, 1965), Le Défunt (The Dear Departed, 1971), Monsieur Klebs et Rozalie (1975, for which he won the Molière d’honneur and Molière du meilleur auteur in 1993), Les Bons Bourgeois
(1980), radio plays, including Le Damné (The Damned, awarded the
Prix Italia in 1962), Urbi et Orbi (1967), Grasse matinée (Long Lie,
1981), and one musical, Les Innocentines (1994). He was elected to
the Académie française in 1999. See also BARSACQ, ANDRÉ;
MIQUEL, JEAN-PIERRE.
ODÉON. Theater building in Paris. Purpose built in 1780–1782, it was
the first Paris theater building to provide seats in the parterre. Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding, 1784) was
first performed there, as was Marie-Joseph Chénier’s controversial
Charles IX (1789). Following performances in 1793 of Nicolas
François de Neufchâteau’s Paméla, which was considered hostile
to the aims of the French Revolution, the theater was closed and its
actors arrested, but it reopened in 1794 and took the name Odéon in
1796. The building was destroyed by fire in March 1799 and rebuilt
as the Théâtre de l’Impératrice in 1806. It was directed by LouisBenoît Picard until 1807 and again from 1815 to 1821, and by Alexandre Duval from 1807 to 1813; under Claude Bernard after 1823,
the company placed increased emphasis on musical theater, including operas by Gioacchino Rossini. From 1829, Charles-Jean Harel
(1790–1846), with casts led by his mistress Mlle George, provided
the creative energy for a revival in the company’s fortunes, cashing
in on the controversy provided by the new Romantic movement.
A further resurgence in fortune took place in the 1850s with comedies by François Ponsard, and dramatizations of novels by George
Sand (1804–1876). Later in the century the Odéon developed a reputation for extravagant spectacular productions, such as the 1872 revival of Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas starring Sarah Bernhardt, and new
plays including Les Erinnyes (The Furies, 1873) by the Parnassian
poet Charles Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818–1894) and La Jeunesse
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de Louis XIV (The Youth of Louis XIV, 1873) by Alexandre Dumas
père. The last decades of the 19th century saw considerable refurbishment and modernization under the directorship of Paul Porel,
the climax of the career of Réjane and a triumphant première, starring Julia Bartet, of L’Arlésienne (The Girl from Arles, 1873), by
Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897), best remembered now for Georges
Bizet’s incidental music. André Antoine was director for 17 days
in 1896, introducing Firmin Gémier to the company. Returning as
director in 1906, Antoine was responsible for a major refurbishment
of the building, for extending its educational vocation and for the
cultivation of new repertoire and of modern production techniques.
His productions of William Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar in 1906
and of Pierre Corneille’s machine play Psyché in 1914, although
successful artistically, were ruinous in financial terms, and Antoine
resigned in 1914.
Following further rebuilding during the 1930s, the theater became
a second home for the Comédie-Française in 1946, concentrating
on modern classics such as plays by Georges Courteline, Edmond
Rostand, Henry de Montherlant and Jean Cocteau. Jean-Louis
Barrault, appointed director in 1959, continued this tradition with
premières of Paul Claudel’s Tête d’Or in 1959, Eugène Ionesco’s
Rhinocéros in 1960 and Samuel Beckett’s Oh! Les Beaux Jours
(Happy Days) in 1963. Barrault’s experimental and liberal impulses
caused greater scandal in 1966 when Roger Blin directed Jean Genet’s politically provocative Les Paravents and again in 1968 when
Barrault allowed the theater to be occupied by students as a forum for
the expression of anti-establishment views, as a result of which Barrault was dismissed and the building had to be closed for repairs for
several months. A studio theater, the Petit-Odéon, had been opened
in 1967 for more intimate and experimental modern works, including
a double bill of plays—Le Silence (1964) and Le Mensonge (The Lie,
1966)—by Nathalie Sarraute (1900–1999).
Having been called the Odéon-Théâtre de France since 1959, the
building and company became the Théâtre national de l’Odéon in
1971, increasingly opened its doors to visiting companies from the
French provinces and from abroad, and in 1983 became the home
of the Théâtre de l’Europe, explicitly designed to encourage international cooperation in direction and theatrical exploration, under
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Giorgio Strehler. Seasons were devoted to European drama using
surtitles, including an Irish season, an Eastern European season and a
Hispanic season, while notable new productions of French plays have
included Marivaux’s L’Île des esclaves (The Island of the Slaves),
directed by Strehler, and Genet’s Le Balcon (The Balcony), directed
by Lluis Pasqual, a Spanish stage director who was administrator
of the Théâtre de l’Europe from 1990 to 1996. He was succeeded
in 1996 by Georges Lavaudant, who has reestablished the Odéon
as a permanent repertory company, producing both standard classics of the world stage and contemporary French drama. Olivier
Py (1965– ) became director in 2007, and since then programs
have included compilations of texts by Molière and by Maurice
Mæterlinck, adaptations of the 1851 novel Moby Dick by Hermann
Melville (1819–1891) and of the Oresteia by Æschylus (c525–456
BC), as well as standard plays by Molière and Heinrich von Kleist
(1777–1811). See also ALBERT-LAMBERT; ALEXIS, PAUL;
BILLETDOUX, FRANÇOIS; BOCAGE; CALAFERTE, LOUIS;
CHÉREAU, PATRICE; COQUELIN, BENOÎT CONSTANT; DELAUNAY, LOUIS ARSÈNE; DE MAX, ÉDOUARD; DESARTHE,
GÉRARD; DEUTSCH, MICHEL; DOM JUAN; DORVAL, MARIE;
DUHAMEL, GEORGES; DUQUESNEL, FÉLIX-HENRI; DUX,
PIERRE; ENGEL, ANDRÉ; GONCOURT, EDMOND AND
JULES HUOT DE; GUITRY, LUCIEN; JOANNY; LEMAÎTRE,
FRÉDÉRICK; LIGHTING; LORENZACCIO; MARCEL, LÉON;
MIQUEL, JEAN-PIERRE; MOUNET, PAUL; MOUNET-SULLY;
MUSSET, ALFRED DE; PINGET, ROBERT; ROCHER, RENÉ;
SEIGNER, LOUIS; SOULIÉ, FRÉDÉRIC; TALMA, FRANÇOISJOSEPH; VINAVER, MICHEL.
ŒUVRE, THÉÂTRE DE L’. Theater building and company in Paris
founded in 1892 by Lugné-Poe and directed by him until 1929.
It introduced many young and innovative dramatists to the Paris
stage, including Marcel Achard, Maurice Mæterlinck, Alfred
Jarry—notably the first performance of Ubu roi (Ubu the King) in
1896—Tristan Bernard, André Gide, Paul Claudel—notably the
first performance of L’Annonce faite à Marie (Tidings Brought to
Mary) in 1912—Jean Sarment, Henry Bataille, Romain Rolland,
Armand Salacrou, Fernand Crommelynck and Jean Anouilh,
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and staged the first French performances of significant foreign plays,
including works by Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), August Strindberg
(1849–1912) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). Significant actors who
have performed here include Maria Casarès, Édouard De Max,
Isadora Duncan, Pierre Dux and Pierre Fresnay (1897–1975).
See also ARTAUD, ANTONIN; DADAISM; FRANCK, PIERRE;
TZARA, TRISTAN; WILSON, GEORGES.
OFFENBACH, JACQUES (1819–1880). Composer (French, although born in Germany) whose light operettas dominated the Paris
stage during the Second Empire. Satirical gibes against the court of
Napoléon III were thinly disguised as parodic treatments of classical Greek themes in Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld,
1858) and La Belle Hélène (Beautiful Helen of Troy, 1864). His first
work, Oyayaïe (1854), had been inspired by a parody of Italian opera
entitled Gargouillada by Florimond Rongé or Ronger (1825–1892)
under the pen name Hervé. The entrepreneurial Offenbach then acquired his own Paris theater, Les Bouffes parisiens, and exploited
the Exhibition of 1855 to attract packed audiences to it for his Les
Deux Aveugles (Two Blind Men), an unseemly squabble between
two blind beggars, Patachon and Giraffier, who were to become
iconic figures. Thereafter, moving to new premises but retaining the
name of his theater, he sustained a remarkable output as composer,
theater manager and stage director. In addition to the operettas, he
wrote incidental music for Victorien Sardou’s La Haine (Hatred,
1874) and other plays, but his first attempts at more substantial
comic operas—Barkouf (1860) for the Paris Opéra-Comique and
Rheinnixen (1864) for Vienna—were unsuccessful, and his ambition
to write a successful serious opera was achieved only posthumously
with his last work Les Contes de Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann),
completed by Ernest Guiraud (1837–1892) and performed at the
Opéra-Comique in 1881. See also BIZET, GEORGES; BRASSEUR,
JULES; GAÎTÉ-LYRIQUE, THÉÂTRE DE LA; HALÉVY, LUDOVIC; MEILHAC, HENRI; SCHNEIDER, HORTENSE; VARIÉTÉS, THÉÂTRE DES.
OGIER, FRANÇOIS (after 1595–1670). Theorist of the theater, cleric
and controversialist with a reputation as a wit. He defended a number
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of contentious authors in the early 17th century. His Préface (1628)
to the tragicomedy Tyr et Sidon (originally published in 1608) by
Jean de Schelandre (1584 or 1585–1635) was a defense of the play’s
irregularity at a time when critics were increasingly insisting on the
application of classical rules to serious drama. See also ACADÉMIE
FRANÇAISE; MAIRET, JEAN.
OHNET, GEORGES (1848–1918). Journalist and popular novelist,
several of whose works were successfully adapted for staging: Serge
Panine (1882), Le Maître de forges (The Forge Master, 1883) and
La Comtesse Sarah (1887) were all produced at the Gymnase under
Victor Koning (1842–1894), whose wife Jane Hading starred in
these social dramas.
OPERA, OPÉRA, OPERETTA. Forms of dramatic entertainment
dominated by music and the theater buildings in which they are
performed. In opera, by normal convention, the entire dramatic text
is set to music, whereas in opéra-comique there may be passages of
spoken dialogue as well, and in operetta either convention may apply
but the general mood is lighter and the musical setting typically less
sophisticated. When opera first became fashionable in 17th-century
Italy it was resisted by French taste on the grounds that verisimilitude was called into question, and hybrid forms such as ballet de
cour and comédie-ballet were preferred, but Jean-Baptiste Lully
gained monopoly rights for the establishment of French opera by
1673, and the genre has vied with nonmusical drama for public favor
since then.
The relationship has not always been one of rivalry: many authors, including Alain-René Le Sage, Michel-Jean Sedaine, JeanJacques Rousseau, Casimir Delavigne, Eugène Scribe, Henri
Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt and Boris
Vian, wrote operatic libretti as well as plays; several French plays,
such as Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville) and Le Mariage de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding), Victor Hugo’s
Le Roi s’amuse (The King Takes His Amusement), Jean Cocteau’s
La Voix humaine (The Human Voice), Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les
Mamelles de Tirésias (Tiresias’s Breasts) and Georges Bernanos’s
Dialogues des Carmélites, have become better known worldwide
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OPERA, OPÉRA, OPERETTA
in operatic adaptation; and many modern stage directors, including Stéphane Braunschweig, Jean-Claude Brialy, Peter Brook,
André Engel, Patrice Kerbrat, Yannis Kokkos, Jacques Lassalle,
Jorge Lavelli, Bernard Sobel, Giorgio Strehler, Jean-Marie Villégier, Georges Wilson and Robert Wilson, have built international
reputations for the production of operas as well as of plays.
Lully collaborated largely with Philippe Quinault and was succeeded in operatic composition by Marc-Antoine Charpentier,
André Campra (1660–1744), André-Cardinal Destouches, André
Grétry and Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764). In the 18th century,
burlesque parodies of opera were almost as ubiquitous as serious
compositions in the genre, but by the end of that century it was firmly
established as a respected dramatic form, dominated in the rococo
and Romantic periods by the compositions of Gioacchino Rossini, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod and
Georges Bizet. Léon Carvalho supported many productions of their
works at the Théâtre-Lyrique and Opéra-Comique; he and Jacques
Offenbach dominated light operatic composition and production in
Paris during the Second Empire. Eugène Bertrand, as director of
the Paris Opéra from 1892 till 1900, mounted the first successful
Paris productions of operas by Richard Wagner, as well as the first
performances of Thaïs (1894) by Jules Massenet (1842–1912) and a
new production of Samson et Dalila (1892) by Camille Saint-Saëns
(1835–1921).
At the turn of the century, opera was directly influenced by literary trends with the Realist opera Louise (1900) by Gustave Charpentier (1860–1956) and the Symbolist opera Pelléas et Mélisande
(1902) by Claude Debussy (1862–1918), directly based on Maurice
Mæterlinck’s play. Most significant French composers of the 20th
century have contributed to operatic or other stage music, notably
Francis Poulenc, other members of the groupe des Six and Olivier
Messiaen (1908–1992).
Lully’s early operas were performed at the Palais-Royal. Since then
more than 20 Paris venues have been used for operatic performances.
The Salle Louvois, built in 1792 and inaugurated as an opera house
in 1794, saw the first performances of The Magic Flute by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and of La Vestale by Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851). Following the assassination of the Duc de Berry
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on the steps of this building in 1820, the Paris-based opera company
moved to the Salle Peletier, where a new purpose-built opera theater
was designed, using gas lighting for the first time in France, in which
Pierre Ciceri and Louis Daguerre collaborated in spectacular productions. Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil,
1831), under the Opéra’s new manager, Louis Véron (1798–1867),
with text by Scribe and Delavigne, design by Ciceri and a memorable
expressive dance contribution by Marie Taglioni, provided a model
that was followed by Daniel François Auber (1782–1871), Ferdinand
Hérold (1791–1833), Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer (1785–1852)
and Jacques François Halévy (1799–1862). The latter’s La Juive (The
Jewess, 1835) was another outstanding success, involving five huge
and intricate sets, horses and crowd scenes.
The Salle Peletier was destroyed by fire in 1873, but a new opera building had already been commissioned by Napoléon III and
begun in 1861, although it was not completed until 1875: designed
by Charles Garnier (1825–1898), it was on a massive scale for the
period and set the pattern for opera house design across Europe.
Garnier’s building was designated a national monument in 1923
and underwent significant renovations after 1993. In 1862, the
Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique was inaugurated for operatic performances. Between 1984 and 1989 a new opera house was designed and
built on the Place de la Bastille; its inaugural event, on 13 July 1989,
commemorated the bicentenary of the French Revolution and was
directed by Robert Wilson. The Opéra national de Paris now performs in both the Salle Garnier and the Opéra-Bastille. See also ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’; BOUFFES PARISIENS, LE THÉÂTRE
DES; DESPLECHIN, ÉDOUARD; FLERS, ROBERT DE; GOT,
EDMOND; HADING, JANE; HONEGGER, ARTHUR; JARRE,
JEAN-MICHEL; JUDIC, ANNA; LECOUVREUR, ADRIENNE;
LESUEUR, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; MÉLESVILLE, M.; ODÉON,
THÉÂTRE DE L’; PERRIN, ÉMILE-CÉSAR-VICTOR; PICARD,
LOUIS-BENOÎT; PORTE SAINT-MARTIN, THÉÂTRE DE LA;
RENAISSANCE, THÉÂTRE DE LA; ROUCHÉ, JACQUES;
SACRÉ, VICTOR; SAINT-ÉVREMOND, CHARLES DE MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS DE; SCHNEIDER, HORTENSE;
VARIÉTÉS, THÉÂTRE DES; VILLENEUVE, THÉODORE FERDINAND VALLOU DE; VOLTAIRE.
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OPÉRA-COMIQUE. Term used to apply to a drama in which spoken
dialogue is interspersed with musical set pieces.
The Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique in Paris is on a site previously occupied by two theater buildings, both destroyed by fire: the
Comédie-Italienne performed in the 1780s in the Salle Favart, rebuilt
in 1840 as the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique and again between 1894
and 1898. The Opéra-Comique was declared a Théâtre national in
2005 and underwent total refurbishment with the aim of establishing
musical theater as a genre with a wide public aware of its historical
significance. See also CARVALHO, LÉON; FAVART, CHARLES
SIMON; OFFENBACH, JACQUES; OPERA; PERRIN, ÉMILECÉSAR-VICTOR; PRÉVILLE; VILLÉGIER, JEAN-MARIE.
OPÉRATEUR. Individual performer, common in the 17th century,
who attracted crowds in public places by farcical clowning, and then
sought to sell quack medicines. The best known in Paris were two
brothers, Tabarin and Mondor. In the 20 or so years up to 1623,
they acquired enough wealth to buy a substantial property near Sens,
to which they retired. Christophe Contugi, known as l’Orviétan de
Rome, was an Italian of Romanian origin (naturalized French in
1646) who practiced the same art and was notorious enough to figure
in a number of plays, including a lampoon of Molière, Elomire hypocondre (Elomire the Hypochondriac, 1669), by Le Boulanger de Chalussay, in which it is claimed that Molière was directly influenced
by the opérateur in his acting style. Mlle Du Parc began her acting
career as a performer for her opérateur father, and both GuillotGorju and Bruscambille may have had a similar apprenticeship.
An unnamed opérateur is given a comic singing role in Molière’s
comédie-ballet L’Amour médecin (Love the Doctor, 1665).
– P –
PAGNOL, MARCEL (1895–1974). Playwright, filmmaker, novelist
and historian. Born and brought up near Marseille, he remained loyal
to this Provençal background throughout his working life, and his
theatrical success was derived from conveying a sense of the Provençal community to Paris audiences in the “Marseille trilogy,” Marius
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(1929), Fanny (1931) and César (made as a film in 1936, adapted
for the stage in 1946). The first part of his writing career was dominated by theater and film: Les Marchands de Gloire (Merchants of
Glory), written in collaboration with Paul Nivoix (1894–1958), was
first performed in 1924, Jazz in 1926, Topaze at the Théâtre des
Variétés in Paris in 1928 and Marius, with Raimu in the role of
César, at the Théâtre de Paris in 1929, before Marius was made into
a film by Alexander Korda (1893–1956) in 1931, followed in 1932
by film versions of Topaze by Louis Gasnier (1875–1963) and Fanny
by Marc Allégret (1900–1973). Between 1934 and 1952 Pagnol directed films of his own, including two further versions of Topaze, La
Femme du Boulanger (The Baker’s Wife, based on a story by Jean
Giono), César and Manon des Sources (Manon of the Springs). In
1946 he was elected to the Académie française, and the following
year he translated William Shakespeare’s Hamlet into French. He
returned briefly to the theater with Judas, performed at the Théâtre
de Paris in 1955, and Fabien, performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes
parisiens in 1956, but neither was successful and he turned his attention thereafter to fiction, autobiography and historical writing.
PAILLERON, ÉDOUARD (1834–1899). Dramatist and journalist,
forgotten today, but whose works have been performed more than
2,000 times at the Comédie-Française, and who was elected to the
Académie française in 1882.
PALAIS-ROYAL. Originally a purpose-built theater in the private
palace of Cardinal Richelieu, inaugurated as the Palais-Cardinal in
1641. After Richelieu’s death it became the Palais-Royal and was
shared in the 1660s by Molière’s company and a troupe of Italian
players. When Molière died, that building was taken over by JeanBaptiste Lully to house the Opéra, which remained there until
1763. A new theater, named the Théâtre des Beaujolais, was built on
the same site in the 1780s and operated at first as a puppet theater,
then was bought by Marguerite Brunet (1730–1820), who under her
professional pseudonym, Mlle Montansier, coordinated all the spectacular and festive entertainments for Louis XVI’s court. Mlle Mars
is said to have performed in this theater at the age of 12. After the
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French Revolution, Mlle Montansier was arrested and the theater
was renamed the Théâtre du Péristyle du Jardin Egalité.
In the 19th century the theater’s fortunes were revived by Eugène
Labiche and Virginie Déjazet in vaudevilles and light comedies
and later by Hortense Schneider in operettas. Victorien Sardou
launched his career there in 1859, and Georges Feydeau’s Monsieur
chasse! (Monsieur Is Hunting) was premièred there in 1892. Under
the direction of Gustave Quinson (1863–1943) the theater again saw
a series of triumphs with light-hearted works by Tristan Bernard,
Maurice Hennequin (1863–1926) and others, with performers including Mistinguett (Jeanne Bourgeois, 1875–1956) and Raimu.
During the 1950s it saw performances by Jean-Louis Barrault and
Madeleine Renaud of Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de satin (The Satin
Slipper) and other works. Since then it has reestablished its reputation as a center for performance of boulevard comedies, including
reprises of plays by Michel Achard, Feydeau and Sacha Guitry,
with actors including Daniel Auteuil (1950– ), Jean-Claude Brialy,
Jean-Claude Carrière, Pierre Dux, Edwige Feuillère and Jean
Marais. See also BÉRÉNICE; BRASSEUR, JULES; CORNEILLE,
PIERRE; DOM JUAN; GEOFFROY, JEAN-MARIE JOSEPH;
HALÉVY, LUDOVIC; JUDIC, ANNA: LIGHTING; MEILHAC,
HENRI; PATHELIN, LA FARCE DE MAÎTRE PIERRE.
PALAPRAT, JEAN DE. See BRUEYS, DAVID AUGUSTIN DE;
PATHELIN, LA FARCE DE MAÎTRE PIERRE.
PALISSOT DE MONTENOY, CHARLES (1730–1814). Author and
philosopher who occasionally used dramatic form to mock the ideas
of his contemporaries, notably Denis Diderot and the Encyclopedists. Having established his reputation with the controversial Comédie des philosophes (The Philosophers, 1760), he went on to write
Les Nouveaux Ménechmes (The Twins, 1762), L’Homme dangereux
(The Dangerous Man, 1770), and Les Courtisanes, ou, L’Écueil des
mœurs (The Courtesans, or The Moral Reef, 1775), the subtitle of
which is sometimes printed as L’École des mœurs (The School of
Morality). Le Triomphe de Sophocle (Sophocles’ Triumph, 1778)
was dedicated to Voltaire. La Critique de la tragédie de Charles IX
(1790) was a parody of Marie-Joseph Chénier’s Charles IX (1789).
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Palissot de Montenoy also wrote one tragedy, Zarès, in 1751 and in
1764 translated The Dunciad by Alexander Pope (1688–1744) into
French prose.
PARADE. 1. A type of short, bawdy one-act prose farce, originating
in fairground entertainment, that gained popularity in 18th-century
France in private salons or as an ancillary attraction in or close to
public theaters. Although widely dismissed by theater historians as
crude, repetitive and insignificant, these parades reflect an ironic reverence toward comedic tradition and proved influential throughout
Europe well into the 20th century. The genre was particularly associated with Thomas-Simon Guellette (1683–1766), but many others,
including Beaumarchais, were responsible for its dissemination and
popularity. See also LE BARBIER DE SÉVILLE.
2. Ballet whose performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, by
the Ballets russes, 18 May 1917, created a scandal. Scenario by Jean
Cocteau, music by Erik Satie, décor by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973),
choreography by Léonide Massine (1896–1979).
LE PARADIS. The standard French word for paradise was applied in
the 19th century to the upper gallery in a theater, typically containing cheap seats occupied by lower social classes—hence the more
pejorative synonym le poulailler, or chicken-run. The term is less
current in modern French but lives on in the title of the film Les
Enfants du Paradis (Children of the Gods, 1944) by Marcel Carné
(1909–1996).
PARODY. The mockery through caricature of literary conventions,
particularly of overblown poetic style. French comic drama has often
in self-referential ways combined the satire of social behavior with
parody of theatrical forms: thus Molière’s Arnolphe is at once a satire
of a foolish and misogynistic male and a parody of the hero of a tragedy in the style of Pierre Corneille. See also ADAMOV, ARTHUR;
APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME; BEAUMARCHAIS, PIERREAUGUSTIN CARON DE; BERNARD, TRISTAN; BURLESQUE;
CÂFÉ-THÉÂTRE; LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE; DANCOURT;
DUCIS, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; FAVART, CHARLES SIMON; IMPROVISATION; LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; LE MARIAGE DE
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PASQUAL, LLUIS
FIGARO; OFFENBACH, JACQUES; OPERA; PALISSOT DE
MONTENOY, CHARLES; SAINT-ÉVREMOND, CHARLES DE
MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS DE; UNITIES.
PASQUAL, LLUIS (1951– ). Spanish stage director and theater administrator who was in charge of the Odéon in Paris from 1990 to
1996. See also STREHLER, GIORGIO.
PATHELIN, LA FARCE DE MAÎTRE PIERRE. An anonymous
15th-century farce that held the stage for almost 100 years and had
an influence on Rabelais as well as laying the foundations for the
French comic drama tradition. Although clearly based on an earlier
fabliau tradition, it is considered the first extant example of French
literary comedy, achieving mastery of formal concision and witty
verse construction. It combines satire against exploitative and corrupt systems of justice, against the protective practices of trade guilds
and (in passing) against contemporary medicine, with an earthy realism in its presentation of a rural community, and vigorous verbal
dexterity, including a famous scene in which the central character
confuses an opponent by speaking in a series of different dialects and
languages. As early as 1469, the words pateliner and patelinage, to
refer to unscrupulous trickery, are attested in French writing, suggesting that the play was written in the middle of the century and attained
celebrity value very quickly. The plot is based on multiple deceit and
is the prototype of the biter bit comic construction.
The original publication of the text in 1486 was followed by an
edition illustrated with engravings in 1489 and at least five other editions by the end of the century. David Augustin de Brueys and Jean
de Palaprat (1650–1721) adapted it in a more classical style in 1706.
Modern productions have included those at the Comédie-Française
in 1941, with Berthe Bovy and Jacques Charon (1920–1975), at the
Théâtre de Lutèce in 1962, at the Palais-Royal in 1963 and at Gennevilliers in 1966.
PELS, LAURA. Theater director, educationalist and entrepreneur.
Born in Bordeaux, she studied in London and New York as well as
Paris before launching the Laura Pels Foundation in 1992, dedicated
to obtaining funding and awarding grants to a range of theatrical
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activities. New York’s Roundabout Theater Company inaugurated
the Laura Pels Theater in 1994. Pels became artistic director of the
Théâtre de l’Atelier in 1999.
PERRIN, ÉMILE-CÉSAR-VICTOR (1814–1885). General administrator of the Comédie-Française from 1871 until his death. He had
previously directed the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique and the ThéâtreLyrique and his tenure, although conservative and criticized by some
for attracting the public by means of spectacle and costume rather
than literary merit, was successful. It was he who introduced to the
Comédie Sarah Bernhardt, Sophie Croizette and Jean MounetSully.
PHÈDRE. Five-act verse tragedy by Jean Racine, first performed
in 1677 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. Exemplifying all the
characteristics of the classical æsthetic in their purest form, it is now
generally considered Racine’s masterpiece. In his version of the story
of Hippolytos and Phèdre, Racine focuses less on the relationship
between Hippolytos and Aphrodite—where Phèdre is merely the
instrument by which Aphrodite brings about the destruction of the
misogynistic and arrogant prince of Athens—than on the feelings
of Phèdre herself, gripped as she feels herself to be by a helpless
infatuation with her stepson, inflicted on her spitefully by Vénus,
who has vowed to curse all the descendants of the sun god, Phèdre’s
grandfather Apollon.
Thésée, King of Athens, departing on a journey, has left his wife
Phèdre, former princess of Crete, at Trézène in the care of his son
Hippolyte. Feelings of lust, which she has long harbored toward the
latter, and which she has controlled only by feigning enmity and having him exiled, reemerge, and—with well-meaning but misplaced encouragement from her nurse and confident Œnone—she approaches
Hippolyte and blurts out the nature of her desire for him. He rejects
her with disdain: the idea of relations with his father’s wife fills
him with horror, he has a reputation for chastity and the pursuit of
manly virtue, and is in any case in love with someone else, the Greek
princess Aricie, daughter of Pallas whom Thésée’s father Égée had
overcome in seizing the throne of Athens. In the face of Hippolyte’s
scorn, Phèdre begs him to kill her, clutching his own sword to
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attempt suicide, but is hustled off by Œnone. Thésée, reports of
whose death had been reaching Trézène, now returns unexpectedly,
and Phèdre is filled with shame over her feelings and actions. To save
her mistress from public humiliation and certain death, Œnone suggests and implements a scheme to convince Thésée that Hippolyte
had attempted to rape Phèdre—his sword, which they still have in
their possession, supports this accusation. Thésée believes Œnone
and calls down on Hippolyte a curse that his tutelary god Neptune
has promised to grant him. On overhearing Thésée’s frenzied anger,
Phèdre does make one further effort to tell him the truth but is reduced to even greater depths of despair on learning of Hippolyte’s
feelings for Aricie. Hippolyte, on his way into exile, but planning to
seek allies against his now tyrannous father, is killed when his horses
stampede, frightened by a sea monster. By this time, Phèdre in shame
has taken poison but lives long enough to confess to Thésée both her
lust for her stepson and her acquiescence in Œnone’s slander. The
king is left alone to lament the death of his innocent son.
In his defense of the play, Racine insisted on its moral message,
since Phèdre is punished severely for mere desire, despite her courageous attempts to resist all active responses to her temptation.
Nevertheless, he adapted the received story in ways that effectively
attenuate the guilt of the heroine: in Racine’s version, she sincerely
believes her husband to be dead, she relies on Œnone to deliver
the false accusation against Hippolyte and she does take steps to
clear her stepson’s name, although tragically she is too late to save
him, because of Thésée’s haste in cursing his son on the strength of
Œnone’s calumny. Above all, she feels herself to be in the grip of
an uncontrollable passion, inflicted on her as part of a campaign by
the vindictive goddess Vénus against all descendents of the sun god
Apollon, Phèdre’s grandfather. Her initial urge to commit suicide is
resisted by her nurse, who uses emotional blackmail to force her to
admit the cause of her distress.
The role of Phèdre was created by La Champmeslé and has been
notably interpreted by Mlle Clairon, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt (a
recording of whose voice in the role has survived), Marie Bell and
Maria Casarès. Although the first performances of the play were
marred by personal and political intriguing based on rivalry between
the acting companies of Paris, and it was not immediately hailed as
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a masterpiece, it rapidly gained esteem and was chosen for the opening performance at the newly formed Comédie-Française in 1680.
Since then it has generally been regarded as the pinnacle of French
classical theater, and for many as the culminating example of classical tragedy.
English-language adaptations of the play include Phædra Britannica (1975) by Tony Harrison (1937– ) as well as translations
by Ted Hughes (1930–1988), performed by Diana Rigg (1938– ) in
1998 and by Helen Mirren (1945– ) in London’s National Theatre
in 2009, and by Timberlake Wertenbaker (1944– ), performed at the
Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Ontario, Canada) in 2009. See also
ALEXANDRINE; BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS; BATY, GASTON;
BOILEAU, NICOLAS; COINCIDENCE; CUNY, ALAIN; LA
CHAPELLE, JEAN DE; LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE; PRADON,
JACQUES.
PHILIPE, GÉRARD. Professional name used by Gérard Philip (1922–
1959), actor. Until his early death from liver cancer, he was the most
celebrated stage and film actor of his generation, participating in the
first performances of Jean Giraudoux’s Sodome et Gomorrhe (1943)
and Albert Camus’s Caligula (1945), both at the Théâtre Hébertot in
Paris. Joining the Théâtre national populaire under Jean Vilar he
had a major success as Rodrigue in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid at the
1951 Avignon Festival where he also directed his own production of
Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio the following year.
PICARD, LOUIS-BENOÎT (1769–1828). Dramatist, charged by
Napoléon with directing the reconstituted Odéon company as the
Théâtre de l’Impératrice in 1805, and who dominated its work for
the following quarter-century. He acquired the nickname “the little
Molière” because of the range of his activities as manager, actor
and playwright. He became director of the Paris Opéra in 1807, but
returned to the Odéon at the urgent request of the actors, from 1815
to 1821. His plays, including the most popular La Petite Ville (The
Small Town, 1801), philosophical dramas such as Les Marionnettes
(The Puppets, 1806) and Les Ricochets (The Rebound, 1807), and the
widely imitated Les Deux Philibert (Philiberts I and II, 1816), were
closely linked to the fluctuating social situation of the period, but are
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forgotten today. He was elected to the Académie française in 1807.
See also JOANNY.
PIERSON, BLANCHE ADELINE (1842–1919). Actress born in La
Réunion and brought to Paris in childhood by her father, also an actor. Her career was supported by Victorien Sardou. She appeared
in provincial tours, then at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu, the Théâtre
du Vaudeville and the Gymnase, before joining the ComédieFrançaise in 1884.
PINGET, ROBERT (1919–1997). Author, painter and musician.
Works for stage or radio constitute about half of his prolific output;
many of his plays are adaptations of his own narrative texts. Key
works include Lettre morte (Dead Letter), directed by Jean Vilar
in 1959, Architruc (King Architruc, 1961, revived at the ComédieFrançaise by Pierre Dux in 1971), L’Hypothèse (The Hypothesis,
1961, revived at the Odéon by Jean-Louis Barrault in 1966), Inquisitoire (The Inquisitory, Prix de la Critique 1962), Abel et Bela
(1971) and Un Testament bizarre (A Bizarre Will, 1986). His work
was featured prominently at the Avignon Festival in 1987, and he
was awarded the Grand Prix National des Lettres in 1990. See also
MIQUEL, JEAN-PIERRE; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL.
PISCATOR, ERWIN (1893–1966). Theoretician of the theater of
commitment. A collaborator with Bertolt Brecht, he had considerable influence on Brechtian producers and directors in France after
1949. See also BAUHAUS.
PITOËFF, GEORGES (1884–1939). Actor and stage director particularly celebrated for the promotion of Symbolist drama and for
the discovery of new plays, including French premières of works by
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953),
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) and Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) and
the first performance of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée at the Théâtre des
Arts in 1926. He performed with his wife Ludmilla (1895–1951)
and their son Sacha (1920–1990). See also ANOUILH, JEAN;
ARTAUD, ANTONIN; LE CARTEL; GIDE, ANDRÉ; VIEUXCOLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
PLANCHON, ROGER
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PIXÉRÉCOURT, RENÉ-CHARLES GUILBERT DE (1773–1844).
Prolific author of melodrama. He succeeded in combining the 18thcentury tastes for Gothic horror, exotic fantasy and sentimentality
and in incorporating scenes of comedy in plays such as Rosa ou
L’Ermitage du Torrent (1800) and Cœlina ou L’Enfant du mystère
(Cœlina, or The Child of Mystery, also translated as A Tale of Mystery, 1800). Other key works include adaptations of novels such
as Le Château de Lochleven (The Castle of Lochleven, 1822) and
obsessively documented historical plays such as Charles le téméraire
(Charles the Bold, 1814) and Christophe Colomb (Christopher Columbus, 1815). In his mixing of genres and the attention paid to historical detail he foreshadowed the innovations of Romantic theater.
His taste for mechanical innovation led him into highly ambitious
projects such as a realistic river scene in Tékéli (1803), a flood in La
Fille de l’exilé (The Exile’s Daughter, 1819) and the evocation of an
eruption of Vesuvius in La Tête de mort (The Death’s Head, 1827).
See also AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE DE L’; BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH.
PLANCHON, ROGER (1931–2009). Actor and stage director
particularly associated with the decentralization of theater in the
period 1947–1968. Influenced by Arthur Adamov and Armand
Gatti, then by Bertolt Brecht and Jean Vilar, he was responsible
for vigorous and colorful productions of repertoire from the theater
of commitment and for politicized interpretations of the classics.
He directed the Théâtre de la Cité at Villeurbanne, near Lyon,
which became the Théâtre national populaire after 1973. As well
as plays by Brecht and Adamov, he directed Michel Vinaver’s
Aujourd’hui ou Les Coréens (Today, or The Koreans, 1956), William Shakespeare’s Henry IV (1957), Molière’s George Dandin and
Le Tartuffe (the latter at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin), and
his own adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père’s Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers, 1958). His own plays include La
Remise (1962—the literal and obvious translation of the title is The
Shed, although the published text of the play includes reference to
eight other dictionary definitions, figurative or literal), Le Cochon
noir (The Black Pig, 1973), Gilles de Rais (1976) and Alice par
d’obscurs chemins (Alice Through Devious Ways, 1983), all directed
by Planchon at Villeurbanne. See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’;
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PLAUTUS
BÉRÉNICE; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; DOM JUAN; GHELDERODE, MICHEL DE; LASSALLE, JACQUES; LAVAUDANT,
GEORGES; LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE; STREHLER, GIORGIO;
VIEUX-COLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU.
PLAUTUS (c254–184 BC). Latin comic dramatist whose full name
was Titus Maccius Plautus and most of whose works were adaptations of Greek originals. He is considered more whimsical and playful than Terence; both Latin dramatists influenced the development
of comedy in the French Renaissance and classical periods. Jean
Antoine de Baïf’s Le Brave (The Swaggerer, 1567) was an adaptation of Plautus’s Miles gloriosus, the title part of which became
a recurrent stock character (see FANFARON). Jean de Rotrou
adapted plays by Plautus in his Les Ménechmes (1630, based on the
Menæchmi) and Les Sosies (Sosia and His Twin, 1636, based on
Amphitryon). A French translation of the complete extant works of
Plautus by l’abbé Michel de Marolles (1600–1681) was published in
1658, and Molière followed this source in his L’Avare (1668, based
on the Aulularia) and Amphitryon (1668, based on Plautus’s play of
the same name).
PONSARD, FRANÇOIS (1814–1867). Dramatist. His Lucrèce (Lucretia, 1843) was a rather subdued historical drama, but its supporters hailed it as a return to moderation after the excessive striving for
special effects that characterized Romantic theater, and its restraint
heralded the æsthetic of the well-made play and the school of common sense that dominated the middle years of the 19th century. His
best-known work is Charlotte Corday (1850), but in the early 1850s
he became bogged down in neoclassical tragedies composed at the
behest of the Comédie-Française until he switched to writing comedies for the Odéon. He was elected to the Académie française in
1855. See also HUGO, VICTOR.
POREL, PAUL (1843–1917). Theater director. He began his career
as an actor and became director of the Odéon in 1884. He appointed
Réjane, Lucien Guitry and Édouard De Max, supervised the modernization and refurbishment of the theater, and inaugurated a series
of matinée performances with lectures for school children. In 1892 he
POULENC, FRANCIS
• 203
left to try to establish an independent company at the Eden Theater,
but despite the support of Réjane and Lugné-Poe, who starred there
in Sapho, by Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897), the project foundered,
and Porel became director, with Albert Carré (1852–1938), of the
Théâtre du Vaudeville in 1893 and of the Gymnase from 1894. See
also ALEXIS, PAUL; SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM.
PORTE SAINT-MARTIN, THÉÂTRE DE LA. Theater building and
company in Paris, founded as an opera house in 1781, particularly
reputed in the late 19th century for large-scale theatrical spectaculars.
Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac created new records
by playing continuously there from 1897 to 1899. Since the 1960s
it has been more particularly associated with rock musicals and
spectacular shows, although Patrice Chéreau, Antoine Vitez and
Roger Planchon have mounted productions of classical plays there.
See also BOCAGE; BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH; COQUELIN, BENOÎT CONSTANT; DUMAS PÈRE, ALEXANDRE; DUQUESNEL,
FÉLIX-HENRI; HOSSEIN, ROBERT; MARCEL, LÉON; SARDOU, VICTORIEN.
PORTO-RICHE, GEORGES DE (1849–1930). Dramatist whose
work was championed by André Antoine at the Théâtre-Libre. His
works, to which he gave the overall title Théâtre d’Amour, explore
the selfishness of obsessive love, transposing to a modern bourgeois
environment the intensity of passion portrayed by Jean Racine. Key
examples include Amoureuse (In Love, 1891), Le Passé (The Past,
1897), Le Vieil Homme (The Old Man, 1911) and Le Marchand
d’Estampes (The Print-dealer, 1917). De Porto-Riche was elected to
the Académie française in 1923. See also DUQUESNEL, FÉLIXHENRI; GUITRY, LUCIEN.
POULENC, FRANCIS (1899–1963). Composer, member of the
groupe des Six. His most important stage works include the ballet Les Biches (1924) and operatic settings of Les Mamelles de
Tirésias (Tiresias’s Breasts, play 1917, opera 1947) by Guillaume
Apollinaire, Dialogues des Carmélites (play 1949, opera 1957) by
Georges Bernanos and La Voix humaine (The Human Voice, play
1930, opera 1959) by Jean Cocteau.
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PRADON, JACQUES (1644–1698). Minor dramatist who would
probably be forgotten if he had not been commissioned to write
a version of the Phædra story for the Théâtre de Guénégaud in
1677, specifically to rival Jean Racine’s Phèdre. Pradon’s rather
melodramatic version barely survived in the repertoire after its initial run. He wrote a further nine plays, including Pirame et Thisbé
(1673), Tamerlan (1676) and Régulus (1688, revived by Baron at the
Comédie-Française in 1722). See also BOILEAU, NICOLAS.
PRAMPOLINI, ENRICO (1894–1956). Italian painter and theater
designer who became involved in Futurist theatrical experiments in
Paris in the 1920s, notably an attempt to replace actors with polydynamic and polyexpressive stage mechanisms. He exhibited a model
of his Mechanical Theater at the Exposition internationale des arts
décoratifs in Paris in 1925, and in 1927 he directed at the Théâtre de
la Madeleine a series of productions under the title Teatro delle Pantomima Futurista (Theater of the Pantomime of the Future), in which
all distinctions between set, live actors and puppets were blurred to
produce an abstract effect.
PRÉVILLE. Stage name of Pierre-Louis Dubus (1721–1799), actor.
Having performed in Rouen, he was invited to perform at the OpéraComique in Paris in 1743, then spent time as a theater administrator
in Lyon before making his début at the Comédie-Française in 1753,
in Jean-François Regnard’s Le Légataire universel (Sole Legatee).
He continued to specialize in comic roles, including that of Figaro in
Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville, 1775)
and Brid’oison in the same author’s Le Mariage de Figaro (Figaro’s
Wedding, 1784). Having retired in 1786, he returned to the stage in
1791 and again in 1794–1795.
– Q –
LA QUERELLE DE L’ÉCOLE DES FEMMES. The controversy that
followed the first performances of Molière’s comedy L’École des
femmes (The School for Women, 1662), triggered by the jealousy of
his professional rivals at the Hôtel de Bourgogne and spun out by
LA QUERELLE DU CID
• 205
both sides because of the benefit it brought to the box office. Most
of the documents in this dispute were themselves dramatic: one-act
prose plays in which characters discussed theatrical experiences and
tastes. The witty innuendo and the caricature of male-dominated
exploitative marital relationships in Molière’s play gave rise to accusations of obscenity and impiety, and criticisms were directed against
Molière’s own exaggerated acting style, but most of the complaints
were nitpicking claims that the play did not conform to the strictest
application of verisimilitude: the public square that provides the
setting is curiously empty of passers-by, for example, or the young
heroine Agnès could not have wielded a stone big enough for her
suitor to be plausibly frightened by it. A final claim that the comic
butt, Arnolphe, is not consistently mocked like the stock characters
of commedia dell’arte, but has a moment of generosity when he
gives financial assistance to the son of an old friend, gave rise to
Molière’s assertion that his characters are deliberately more rounded
and human than conventional caricatures—even though in practice
Arnolphe wins very little sympathy despite his unhappiness during
the play’s dénouement.
Molière responded to these and other pedantic criticisms in two
short plays, La Critique de L’École des femmes (The School for
Women Criticized, June 1663) and L’Impromptu de Versailles (The
Versailles Impromptu, performed at court in October 1663 and in
the public theater in November) in which he also mocked the pompous acting style of the Comédiens du Roi. The chief contributions
of his rivals were Jean Donneau de Visé’s Zélinde ou La Véritable Critique de L’École des femmes (Zélinde, or The School for
Women Truly Criticized, August 1663); Le Portrait du Peintre ou La
Contre-critique de L’École des femmes (Portrait of the Painter, or
Criticisms of the School for Women Criticized) by Edme Boursault
(1638–1701); and Antoine de Montfleury’s L’Impromptu de l’Hôtel
de Condé (performed privately in December 1663 and subsequently
on the public stage at the Hôtel de Bourgogne).
LA QUERELLE DU CID. The controversy that followed the first
performances of Pierre Corneille’s tragicomedy Le Cid (1637).
The author was widely accused (by jealous rivals) of plagiarism and
incompetence, and there was some concern about the morality of the
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play’s ending, but the controversy focused principally on the extent
to which the play complied with the emerging principles of classicism, particularly the unities of place, time and action. Cardinal
Richelieu and the recently founded Académie française became
involved in the controversy, which did force Corneille to pay more
heed to these principles in his subsequent works, particularly Horace
(1640) and Cinna (1641), and thereby paved the way for the work of
Jean Racine. See also ARISTOTLE; CHAPELAIN, JEAN; MAIRET, JEAN; SCUDÉRY, GEORGES DE; TRAGEDY.
QUÉRU, HUGUES. See GAULTIER-GARGUILLE.
QUINAULT, PHILIPPE (1635–1688). Dramatist and librettist as
well as poet in the galant tradition. His early comedy Les Rivales
(The Rivals, 1653) was presented to the acting company at the Hôtel
de Bourgogne as the work of Quinault’s protector François Tristan L’Hermite, a subterfuge that was successful in establishing the
young author who wrote several more comedies, tragicomedies and
tragedies. They are characterized by tender sentimentality, which
appealed to the public but was treated with condescension by critics like Nicolas Boileau and Saint-Évremond. It was in part this
characteristic that led to his involvement in musical works, first
the machine play Psyché (1671), in which Pierre Corneille and
Molière also collaborated, and then over a dozen operas, ballets and
pastorales in collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Lully. Quinault’s
most important plays were the tragedies Amalasonte (1657) and
Bellérophon (1670); tragicomedies Le Feint Alcibiade (The Fake
Alcibiades, 1658) and Astrate (1664); and comedies La Comédie
sans comédie (1655) and La Mère coquette (The Flirtatious Mother,
performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1665; there may have been
private or provincial performances earlier). The last was identified
by Voltaire, who tried to rehabilitate Quinault, as the first comedy
to poke fun at the minor nobility in Louis XIV’s court. Quinault was
elected to the Académie française in 1670. See also VILLÉGIER,
JEAN-MARIE.
QUOIREZ, FRANÇOISE. See SAGAN, FRANÇOISE.
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– R –
RACHEL. Stage name of Elisa or Élisabeth Rachel Félix (1821–1858),
actress who breathed new life into classical tragedy. Born in
Switzerland, she came to Paris in 1830, sang in cafés and entered
the Gymnase company—associated at that time with rather oldfashioned domestic comedies and with the work of Eugène Scribe—
in 1837. In 1838 she was encouraged to star in a series of revivals
of French classical tragedies, including Pierre Corneille’s Horace
and Cinna, and Jean Racine’s Andromaque, Bérénice, Mithridate
and Phèdre. The powerful but short-lived Romantic movement
was already running out of steam, and its decline was hastened by
Rachel’s popularity in the classical repertoire. Even though she
had received significant professional support from Alfred de Musset, she never performed in Romantic dramas. With Joanny as her
leading man until his death in 1849 she helped restore the fortunes
of the Comédie-Française, despite frequent quarrels, unreasonable
demands and departures on foreign tours. Her interpretations of
Phèdre (1845) and Athalie (1847) were considered epoch-making.
Her brother Raphaël Félix (1825–1872) was her impresario. See also
LEGOUVÉ, ERNEST.
RACINE, JEAN (1639–1699). Dramatist, the most significant author
of tragedies in the classical tradition. Orphaned as an infant, he was
brought up by relatives under the influence of the austere Jansenist
strand in contemporary Christianity. The bleakly pessimistic view of
human nature portrayed in his plays has been associated with that upbringing, even though at a conscious level he was rejecting Jansenist
influence by his involvement in court life and theater. His education
at the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal gave him a grounding in Greek
as well as Latin literature, and the influence of Euripides, alongside
that of Seneca, which dominated previous French tragic drama, may
help to explain the element of cruelty and cynicism about human
nature in much of Racine’s output. His mastery of classical form and
his genius for exploiting the poetic and dramatic effectiveness of the
Alexandrine verse to its maximum gave him an unrivalled reputation as a tragic poet in France, although these very qualities present
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a considerable challenge to anyone seeking to re-create the impact of
his works in a different cultural or linguistic context.
His earliest works, La Thébaïde (Thebes and Her Sons, 1664) and
Alexandre le Grand (Alexander the Great, 1665), were conventional
tragedies, the first bleakly fatalistic, the latter more heroic. His dissatisfaction with the acting style of Molière and his company, to whom
he first entrusted his texts, led Racine, apparently secretly, to allow
the company of the Comédiens du Roi at the Hôtel de Bourgogne
to mount a rival production; this led to bitterness between the two
authors and heightened the hostility between the acting companies.
With Andromaque (1667), Racine reached a new level of poetic and
dramatic originality and a new depth in his analysis of the power of
human passion, and in the following 10 years he was to produce six
further masterpieces, almost any of which would on its own have
secured his reputation as a world-class tragedian.
Although they all share a tight classical construction based on
absolute fidelity to the doctrine of the unities, and a depiction of humanity helpless in the grip of destructive passions and evil instincts,
there is nevertheless more variation between these plays than is
often alleged. Britannicus (1669) and Bérénice (1670) constituted a
direct challenge to the ageing Pierre Corneille in the field of Roman
tragedy. Bajazet (1672) explored the politics of the harem and the
poetry of oriental exoticism. Mithridate (1673) returned to a Roman
context in which the themes of love and politics are inextricably intertwined. Iphigénie (1674) found a startling new dénouement to the
Greek story about Agamemnon and his daughter at Aulis, enabling
the Greek fleet to set sail for Troy without reliance either on the sacrificial death of an innocent victim (which would be contrary to the
17th-century doctrine of bienséance) or on the intervention of a deus
ex machina (which would be contrary to the equally binding 17thcentury doctrine of verisimilitude). The climax of this sequence
was Phèdre (1677), now generally considered Racine’s masterpiece,
although at the time its success was undermined by personal and political intriguing. During this period Racine had also written his one
comedy, the legal satire Les Plaideurs (The Litigants, 1668), based
on The Wasps by Aristophanes (c448–c388 BC).
Following the relative failure of Phèdre, Racine retired from
theater for a mixture of professional and personal reasons. He was
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appointed royal historiographer alongside Nicolas Boileau, which
although a loss to literature was seen as a significant promotion; he
married and was at least partially reconciled with his former teachers
at Port-Royal. He returned to theatrical activity only at the request
of the king’s mistress Mme de Maintenon (1635–1719), who asked
him to compose biblical tragedies for the edification of pupils at her
college of Saint-Cyr. The resulting plays, Esther (1689) and Athalie
(1691) do stress the working out of divine providence, but like his
earlier tragedies they remain powerful poetic explorations of passion
and violence. They use a chorus to comment on the action, whose
text was set to music by Jean-Baptiste Moreau (1656–1733).
Racine was elected to the Académie française in 1672. In addition
to his plays and court poetry, he had written a number of religious
poems, several essays in defense of theater (see NICOLE, PIERRE)
and a history of Port-Royal. See also ANOUILH, JEAN; ANTOINE,
ANDRÉ; ARISTOTLE; BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS; BATY, GASTON; BÉJART, ARMANDE; BELL, MARIE; BERNHARDT, SARAH; BOURDET, GILDAS; BRÉCOURT, GUILLAUME MARCOUREAU DE; CATHARSIS; LA CHAMPMESLÉ; CLAIRON,
MLLE; COINCIDENCE; COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE; CONTAT,
LOUISE-FRANÇOISE; CUNY, ALAIN; DESARTHE, GÉRARD;
DUMESNIL, MLLE; DU PARC, MLLE; FLORIDOR; GRÉTRY,
ANDRÉ; HAUTEROCHE, NOËL LEBRETON DE; KERBRAT,
PATRICE; KOKKOS, YANNIS; LA CHAPELLE, JEAN DE;
LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE; LASSALLE, JACQUES; LEKAIN;
LÉLIO; MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE;
MAURIAC, FRANÇOIS; MOLÉ, FRANÇOIS-RENÉ; MONTFLEURY; MONTHERLANT, HENRY DE; MOUNET, PAUL;
MOUNET-SULLY; NARRATOR; LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE;
PORTO-RICHE, GEORGES DE; PRADON, JACQUES; LA QUERELLE DU CID; RACHEL; SAINT-ÉVREMOND, CHARLES DE
MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS DE; SOLILOQUY; VISÉ, JEAN
DONNEAU DE.
RAIMU. Stage name of Jules Auguste César Muraire (1883–1946),
actor onstage and on-screen, particularly associated with the work
of Marcel Pagnol. In 1944 he also played the title roles at the
Comédie-Française in Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The
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RAYNOUARD, FRANÇOIS
Bourgeois Gentleman) and Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary
Invalid). See also GIONO, JEAN; PALAIS-ROYAL; RENAISSANCE, THÉÂTRE DE LA.
RAYNOUARD, FRANÇOIS (1761–1836). Dramatist. His Les Templiers (The Knights Templar, 1805) was the most successful neoclassical play of the turgid decade in which it was produced. See also
LAFON, PIERRE.
REALISM. A widely used critical term, applied to painting and narrative literature as well as to drama, to focus on the ability of art to
reproduce and imitate physical reality. Debates on the relationship
between natural representation and convention took place in almost
every period, but it was in the latter half of the 19th century that
Realist drama dominated French theater, in contrast to the forms of
idealism represented by Romantic and Symbolist drama. Realism in
the theater is characterized by sets and staging techniques that draw
attention to the details of everyday life, by the use of contemporary
as opposed to historical or mythological subjects, by meticulous
attention to documentary accuracy and—particularly in the branch
of Realism that became known as Naturalism—by the scientific
exploration of human behavior and motivation (as though the human
character was a specimen being investigated by a student of natural
history). While these characteristics gave Realist drama a strong
rigor and an engagement with contemporary society, they tended to
lead to a concentration on the sordid and the banal. See also ADAPTATION; ALBERT-BIROT, PIERRE; AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE
DE L’; ANTOINE, ANDRÉ; AUGIER, ÉMILE; BALLANDE,
HILARION; BATAILLE, HENRY; BECQUE, HENRY; BRIEUX,
EUGÈNE; COSTUME; DIDEROT, DENIS; EXPRESSIONISM;
GYMNASE; HADING, JANE; ICRES, FERNAND; JOANNY;
LEMOINE-MONTIGNY; LUGNÉ-POE; MERCIER, LOUIS SÉBASTIEN; MÉTÉNIER, OSCAR; NDIAYE, MARIE; ROSTAND,
EDMOND; SCRIBE, EUGÈNE; ZOLA, ÉMILE.
REGNARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS (1655–1709). Comic dramatist seen
as the successor to Molière in the comedy of intrigue. His young
adulthood was spent in adventurous travel, then from 1688 to 1696
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he wrote lively works in the commedia dell’arte manner, many in
collaboration with Charles Dufresny, for the Italian acting company
based in Paris. Thereafter he sought more literary status with serious
satirical comedies in verse performed at the Comédie-Française. Of
his prolific output, only Le Joueur (The Gamester, 1696), Le Distrait
(The Absent-minded One, 1697), Les Folies amoureuses (The Follies of Love, 1704) and his masterpiece Le Légataire universel (Sole
Legatee, 1708) have come close to standing the test of time. See
also DANCOURT; LE SAGE, ALAIN-RENÉ; PRÉVILLE; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL.
RÉJANE. Stage name of Gabrielle-Charlotte Réju (1856–1920), actress. Appointed by Paul Porel to the Odéon, she gained a personal
triumph in the stage adaptation of the Goncourt brothers’ Germinie
Lacerteux (written in 1865, adapted for the stage by Edmond Goncourt in 1888, performed then but revived with greater success by
Réjane in 1891) and in other Naturalist plays by Henry Becque,
Paul Hervieu and Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906). She transferred along
with Porel to the Eden Theater in 1892. She gained an international
reputation following an American tour in 1895. From 1906 to 1918
she directed the Théâtre Réjane, giving the French première of Maurice Mæterlinck’s L’Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird) there in 1911. See
also GUITRY, LUCIEN; SARDOU, VICTORIEN; VARIÉTÉS,
THÉÂTRE DES.
RENAISSANCE, THÉÂTRE DE LA. Theater building and company
in Paris, most significant for its connection with Sarah Bernhardt,
who directed it from 1893 and mounted there her production of
Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio (written in 1834 but never before staged). The theater was built in 1872 on land destroyed by
the Paris Commune and opened in 1873 under Hippolyte Hostein
(1814–1879), specializing in operetta productions directed by Victor
Koning (1842–1896). Under Fernand Samuel (professional pseudonym of Adolphe Louveau, ?–1914) it returned to stage plays and saw
the successful first performances of Henry Becque’s La Parisienne
(1885) and of Georges Feydeau’s Tailleur pour dames (The Ladies’
Dressmaker, 1886) before Sarah Bernhardt assumed control. Lucien Guitry was director from 1902 to 1909 and introduced his son
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RENARD, JULES
Sacha to the stage; other notable actors to appear there have included
Raimu, Arletty (Léonie Bathiat, 1898–1992), Edwige Feuillère and
Georges Wilson. See also COQUELIN, BENOÎT CONSTANT; DE
MAX, ÉDOUARD; KORÈNE, VÉRA; ZOLA, ÉMILE.
RENARD, JULES (1864–1910). Naturalist novelist and dramatist.
His works, performed at the Cercle des Escholiers in Paris (see
LUGNÉ-POE), included Le Plaisir de rompre (The Joy of Splitting
Up, 1897), Le Pain de ménage (The Household Bread, 1898), his
adaptation (1900) of his narrative text Poil de Carotte (Carrottop, 1894) and Monsieur Vernet (1903) and are characterized by
cruel and bitter humor. See also ANTOINE, ANDRÉ; COMÉDIEFRANÇAISE; ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL; THÉÂTRE ANTOINE.
RENAUD, MADELEINE (1900–1994). Actress, wife and professional partner of Jean-Louis Barrault. Having entered the ComédieFrançaise in 1921 and established her reputation in ingénue roles,
she showed greater versatility as a film actress from the mid-1930s.
She met Barrault in 1936 in connection with the filming of Hélène
by Jean-Benoît Lévy (1888–1959), they were married in 1940, and in
1943 she performed in his production of Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier
de satin (The Satin Slipper). In 1946 the two founded the Compagnie
Renaud-Barrault at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris. She created the
role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Oh! Les Beaux Jours (Happy
Days), directed by Roger Blin, in 1963, and was also associated with
premières of works by Marguerite Duras and Jean Genet. See also
BILLETDOUX, FRANÇOIS; DUBILLARD, ROLAND; PALAISROYAL; WILSON, GEORGES.
REZA, YASMINA (1959– ). Dramatist, actress, novelist and political
journalist, the daughter of Soviet exiled parents, born and educated
in Paris. Having won Molière prizes for Conversations après un
enterrement (Conversations After a Burial) in 1987 and for Art in
1994, both directed by Patrice Kerbrat, she built an international
reputation for pessimistic but witty plays on contemporary themes,
including L’Homme du hasard (The Unexpected Man, 1995), Trois
Versions de la vie (Life x 3, 2000, with almost simultaneous productions at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris, and in Vienna, Athens and
ROCHER, RENÉ
• 213
London) and Le Dieu du carnage (God of Carnage), performed in
Zürich in 2006 before being directed in 2008 by the author at the
Théâtre Antoine, with Isabelle Huppert (1953– ). Reza’s plays, including Art and Le Dieu du carnage, achieved success in Great Britain and America in translations by Christopher Hampton (1946– ).
See also ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’.
RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, GEORGES (1884–1974). The only significant dramatist of the Dada movement. Influenced by Guillaume
Apollinaire, he explored the dramatic impact of the random and anticipated Antonin Artaud’s notion of the theater of cruelty. His works
include L’Empereur de Chine (The Emperor of China, 1916)—written
before the term “Dada” had been coined, but the first dramatic text to
be published under an explicitly “Dada” label—and Faust (1931), and
he was involved in the “Dada spectacle” of 27 March 1920.
RICCOBONI, LUIGI AND ANTOINE-FRANÇOIS. See LÉLIO.
RICHELIEU, ARMAND-JEAN DU PLESSIS DE (1585–1642).
French cardinal and politician who became Louis XIII’s prime
minister in 1624. As part of his policy of centralizing power and
consolidating the monarchy, he supported artistic creativity at court,
including theater. Under his influence the king established the Académie française, and he himself became involved in the querelle du
Cid. In his bid to retain control over court entertainment, he commissioned theatrical works to be written by a committee of dramatists,
Pierre Corneille, François Le Métel de Boisrobert (1592–1662),
Guillaume Colletet (1598–1659), Claude de L’Estoile (1602–1652)
and Jean de Rotrou. A purpose-built theater in his private palace
was to flourish after his death as the Palais-Royal, occupied in the
1660s by Molière’s troupe and housing the Opéra after Molière’s
death.
ROCHER, RENÉ (1892–1970). Actor and stage director. He acted
in André Antoine’s 1917 film Le Coupable (The Guilty Man) and
was a member of the Comédie-Française from 1916 to 1923. Rocher also worked at the Théâtre Antoine, the Théâtre du VieuxColombier, the Odéon and the Comédie Caumartin. It was he who
introduced Jean Cocteau to the circle of Édouard De Max.
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RODENBACH, GEORGES (1855–1898). French-speaking Belgian
Symbolist poet, novelist and dramatist whose one-act verse play Le
Voile (The Veil) was performed at the Comédie-Française in 1894.
He also wrote a one-act prose farce La Petite Veuve (The Little
Widow, 1884).
ROINARD, PAUL-NAPOLÉON (1856–1930). Symbolist poet of
pacifist and anarchist tendencies. Paul Fort’s production of his Cantique des Cantiques (The Song of Songs) at the Théâtre d’Art in December 1891 was a remarkable experiment in synæsthesia, involving
vaporized odors as well as Roinard’s text, music (by Mme Flamen
de Mabrély) and lighting effects. Roinard also worked as an art critic
and was the dedicatee of one of Guillaume Apollinaire’s Alcools.
ROLLAND, ROMAIN (1866–1944). Author who undertook a small
number of experiments in theater before building his reputation as
novelist, critic and historian. He took a pacifist stance during World
War I, and he visited the Soviet Union in 1935. Most of his plays
form part of an attempt to create a dramatic representation of the
French Revolution: he sought to renew tragedy by exploring the
relationship between individuals, ideas and the forces of history on
an epic scale. Some of these plays, including Les Loups (The Wolves,
1898) and Le Triomphe de la raison (The Triumph of Reason, 1899),
were performed at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. After a gap of more
than 20 years, Rolland returned to complete the cycle with Le Jeu
de l’Amour et de la mort (The Game of Life and Death, 1925) and
Robespierre (1939). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature
in 1915. See also GÉMIER, FIRMIN; LUGNÉ-POE.
ROMAINS, JULES. Authorial pseudonym of Louis Henri Jean Farigoule (1885–1972), dramatist. He was a colleague of Jacques Copeau at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, and his work combined
social commentary with witty comedy in a classical form to produce
satirical fables. L’Armée dans la ville (The Army in Town) was
produced by André Antoine in 1911. His most lasting triumph was
with Louis Jouvet in Knock, ou Le Triomphe de la médecine (Knock,
or The Triumph of Medicine), 1923; that and M. Le Trouhadec saisi
par la débauche (M. Le Trouhadec in the Grip of Debauchery, also
ROMANTICISM
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1923) influenced Jean Anouilh’s style of witty comédie de mœurs as
well as the satirical side of Absurd Theater. Donogoo was directed
by Jouvet at the Théâtre Pigalle in 1930. See also CARICATURE;
DULLIN, CHARLES.
ROMANTICISM. Term applied to a literary, artistic and political
movement which dominated Western Europe from the late 18th to
the mid-19th century. It prioritized emotion and nature over reason
and culture, and pushed for political reform. The movement took off
in 18th-century England and Germany, partly under the influence of
French authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and François-René
de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), and was given renewed impetus
by the French Revolution, but in artistic spheres it was resisted
in France itself, which had been at war with those countries for 20
years, was reluctant to concede its position as leader of European
taste, and had a stronger residual attachment to the classical tradition which had ensured that cultural supremacy since the mid-17th
century. Nevertheless under the influence of German literature, of
the novels of Walter Scott (1771–1832) and of performances of plays
by William Shakespeare, the neoclassical stranglehold on drama
was gradually loosened, first in theory (see STENDHAL) and then
in practice (see DUMAS PÈRE, ALEXANDRE; HUGO, VICTOR;
MUSSET, ALFRED DE; VIGNY, ALFRED DE).
Romantic drama, like the melodrama that in part inspired it, was
characterized by spectacular theatricality, disregard for the unities,
evocation of local color and atmosphere, and the cultivation of the
picturesque. As early as 1806, the director Jean-François Boursault
(1752–1842) of a theater named Variétés Étrangères, devoted to
translations of non-regular plays by the likes of Friedrich Schiller
(1759–1805), Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) and Carlo
Goldoni (1707–1793), attempted to change the tastes of the Paris
public, and similar features are anticipated in the work of Népomucène Lemercier and René-Charles Pixérécourt, but it was not
until 1827 that performances of Shakespeare revealed, to audiences
and to a new generation of dramatists, the potential of his approach
to the dramatic: variety prioritized over focus, emotional outburst
over control, atmosphere over symbolism. Following the bataille
d’Hernani in 1830, the Romantic ideal dominated the French stage
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for some 20 years, although its decline was almost as abrupt as its
rise, as various forms of Realism and Naturalism rose to prominence. See also ACTOR; ADAPTATION; ALBERT-LAMBERT;
ALEXANDRINE; ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’; BATAILLE,
HENRY; BERLIOZ, LOUIS HECTOR; BERNHARDT, SARAH;
BOCAGE; BOUFFON; COMÉDIE LARMOYANTE; DELAUNAY,
LOUIS ARSÈNE; DELAVIGNE, CASIMIR; DIDEROT, DENIS; DORVAL, MARIE; DRAME; GEOFFROY, JULIEN-LOUIS;
HERNANI; JOANNY; JOUY, VICTOR-JOSEPH-ÉTIENNE DE;
LAFON, PIERRE; LAYA, JEAN-LOUIS; LEGOUVÉ, GABRIELMARIE; LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; LEMOINE-MONTIGNY;
LORENZACCIO; MÉLINGUE, ÉTIENNE MARIN; MERCIER,
LOUIS SÉBASTIEN; MEYERBEER, GIACOMO; ODÉON; OPERA; PONSARD, FRANÇOIS; RACHEL; ROSTAND, EDMOND;
SARMENT, JEAN; SCRIBE, EUGÈNE; SOLILOQUY; SOULIÉ,
FRÉDÉRIC; TAGLIONI, MARIE; TAYLOR, ISIDORE (BARON);
TRAGEDY; VOLTAIRE.
ROSE CHÉRI. Stage name of Rose-Marie Cizos (1824–1861), actress. Having been brought up within a family of traveling actors,
she joined Lemoine-Montigny’s Gymnase company in 1842, they
were married in 1847 and she became the company’s leading actress,
starring in plays by Eugène Scribe and Alfred de Musset and most
notably in Alexandre Dumas fils’s Diane de Lys (1853), which was
dedicated to her. See also AUGIER, ÉMILE; GEOFFROY, JEANMARIE JOSEPH.
ROSENSTOCK, SAMUEL. See TZARA, TRISTAN.
ROSSINI, GIOACCHINO ANTONIO (1792–1868). Italian composer of operas, including Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816), adapted
from Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville,
1775). His last works, including William Tell (1829), were first performed in Paris, where he lived from 1829 until his death. See also
CICERI, PIERRE LUC CHARLES; ODÉON.
ROSTAND, EDMOND (1868–1918). Dramatist. Although writing
at a time when the theater was dominated by Realism, he produced
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lyrical poetic works reminiscent of the Romanticism of Victor
Hugo: Les Romanesques (The Romantics, also translated as The
Fantasticks, 1894), Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), L’Aiglon (The Eaglet, 1900) and Chantecler (The Rooster, 1910). He was elected to
the Académie française in 1901. See also BERNHARDT, SARAH;
COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE; COQUELIN, BENOÎT CONSTANT;
MARAIS, JEAN; MONTFLEURY; ODÉON; PORTE SAINTMARTIN, THÉÂTRE DE LA.
ROTROU, JEAN DE (1609–1650). Dramatist and poet. His early
plays followed Spanish models in defiance of the tendency
becoming prevalent at the time to imitate classical theater.
L’Hypocondriaque (The Hypochondriac), a tragicomedy performed around 1628, published in 1631, and La Bague de l’oubli
(The Ring of Forgetfulness), an adaptation of a comedy by Lope
Félix de Vega Carpio (1562–1635), performed around 1628–1629
and published in 1635, established him as the titular dramatist of
the Comédiens du Roi at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, although in
1636, as the fame of the rival Marais company rose, he sought to
renegotiate the terms of his agreement. He did not ignore classical
models altogether: Les Ménechmes (comedy, performed in 1630
and published in 1636) and Hercule mourant (The Death of Hercules, tragedy, published in 1634) are adaptations, respectively, of
plays by Plautus and Seneca.
Supported by both the Queen and Cardinal Richelieu, Rotrou
was able to command record prices for the sale of his dramatic
texts to publishers. His comedy La Sœur (The Sister, performed
around 1645 and published in 1647) anticipated Molière’s Le
Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman, 1670) in its
use of nonsense language for comic effect and was performed by
Molière’s own company in 1662. His mature masterpieces are
considered to include the tragedies Le Véritable Saint Genest (The
Genuine Saint Genêt, performed in 1646 and published in 1648),
Venceslas (performed in 1647 and published in 1648) and Cosroès
(1649). Overall, his output is characterized by variety and experimentation, by a strong sense of the theatrical and by competent
control of dramatic versification. See also HARDY, ALEXANDRE; MAIRET, JEAN.
218 •
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ROUCHÉ, JACQUES (1862–1957). Stage director. He founded the
Théâtre des Arts in 1909 and was director of the Paris Opéra, 1915–
1944. He wrote an important theoretical publication, L’Art théâtral
moderne, 1910, which influenced the innovative Swiss stage director
Adolphe Appia (1862–1928) and Jacques Copeau.
ROUSSEAU, JEAN-JACQUES (1712–1778). Swiss Enlightenment
thinker whose musical skills gave him a particular interest in opera
but whose engagement with theatrical activity was otherwise predominantly negative. Having composed a successful opera, Le Devin
du village (The Village Soothsayer), in 1752, and an unsuccessful
comedy, Narcisse ou L’Amant de lui-même (Narcissus, or The Man
Who Loved Himself), performed at the Comédie-Française in 1752,
he denounced theater as “one of the most corrupting expressions of
contemporary civilization” in his Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles (Letter to d’Alembert, on Theater) of 1757. Tragedy, he argued,
encourages self-indulgent emotionalism, while comedy mocks sincerity and virtue. This attitude caused a split both with Voltaire, who
was enthusiastic about theater, and with the French Encyclopedists,
who rejected Rousseau’s preference for a natural, primitive lifestyle
over cultural progress. Thereafter, Rousseau’s life was devoted to
the exploration of this philosophy in fictional and autobiographical
writings, most notably La Nouvelle Héloïse (The New Heloise, 1761),
Émile ou L’Éducation (1762) and Les Confessions (written between
1765 and 1770 but not published until after the author’s death). See
also FABRE D’EGLANTINE, PHILIPPE; ROMANTICISM.
ROUSSILLON, JEAN-PAUL (1931–2009). Actor and stage director
who joined the Comédie-Française in 1952, performing romantic
leads and valets in the classical repertoire of Molière, Marivaux
and Musset as well as in modern plays, including Jules Renard’s
Poil de Carotte (Carrot-top) and the première of André Gide’s Les
Caves du Vatican (The Vatican Swindle, also known as Lafcadio’s
Adventures). His directorial debut in 1962 was a production of JeanFrançois Regnard’s Le Retour imprévu (The Unexpected Return),
and he presented other unfamiliar works from the classical period,
including Alain-René Le Sage’s Crispin rival de son maître (Crispin
his Master’s Rival) and Molière’s L Étourdi (The Dimwit) and Le
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• 219
Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself). In 1978 he was
directed by Roger Blin in the role of Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s
En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), and he has also worked
with Robert Pinget, Patrice Chéreau, Patrice Kerbrat and Gildas
Bourdet. He won a Molière as best actor in 2002.
RUTLEDGE, JEAN-JACQUES. French pseudonym used by James
Rutledge (1743–1794), Irish intellectual, journalist and revolutionary
thinker who supported the extremist Jacques-René Hébert (1757–
1794) and was executed with him. He wrote a tragedy, Thamar
(1769) and at least two comedies, Le Bureau d’esprit (The Wit Office, published in 1770, known to have been performed at the Théâtre
du Temple in Paris in 1777) and Le Train de Paris ou Les Bourgeois
du temps (The Paris Train, or Today’s Bourgeois, published in 1777,
performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1779). A third comedy,
Les Comédiens ou Le Foyer (Actors, or The Foyer, 1777) may be by
him but is generally ascribed to Louis Sébastien Mercier; Rutledge
may also have written the tragedy Philicles, ou La Vertu d’Idoménée
(Philicles, or Idomeneus’s Virtue, 1788).
– S –
SACRÉ, VICTOR. Machinist at the Cirque Olympique theater in Paris
in the 1830s and then at the Paris Opéra in the 1850s. His elaborate inventions—including a shipwreck in the ballet Le Corsaire
(1856) by Adolphe Adam (1803–1856) and a spectacular grotto in
Marco-Spada (1858) by Daniel François Auber (1782–1871)—were
sometimes deemed to distract from the work of other creators and
performers.
SAGAN, FRANÇOISE. Authorial pseudonym of Françoise Quoirez
(1935–2004), writer who adopted the nom de plume at the insistence
of her family of bourgeois industrialists, who feared association
with her provocative and shocking writings. Best known for over 30
novels, she also wrote a small number of plays, including Château
en Suède (Castle in Sweden), written with the help of André Barsacq and produced at the Théâtre de l’Atelier in 1960, Les Violons
220 •
SAINT-AMAND
parfois (Violins Sometimes, 1961), La Robe mauve de Valentine
(Valentine’s Purple Dress, 1963), Le Cheval évanoui (The Vanishing Horse, 1966), Il fait beau jour et nuit (Nice Weather, Day and
Night, 1978), L’Excès contraire (The Opposite Extreme, 1987), and
Que L’Amour (Only Love, 1988). A translation by her of Sweet Bird
of Youth (1959) by the American dramatist Tennessee Williams
(1911–1983), whom she had met in 1957, was performed at the Théâtre de l’Atelier in 1971, with Edwige Feuillère and Bernard Fresson
(1931–2002). Sagan also wrote a biography of Sarah Bernhardt in
1987. Her works, like her life, are characterized by carefree defiance
of convention and by her dangerous relishing of speed and excess.
See also BELL, MARIE; GYMNASE.
SAINT-AMAND. Authorial pseudonym of Jean-Amand Lacoste
(1797–1885), author of melodramas, most notably L’Auberge des
Adrets (1823), which catapulted Frédérick Lemaître to fame in the
role of Robert Macaire. See also ANTIER, BENJAMIN.
SAINT-ÉVREMOND, CHARLES DE MARGUETEL DE SAINTDENIS DE (c1610–1703). (Some sources give his date of birth as
1605 or 1613.) Critic and moral theorist who exemplified support
for the classical and rationalist view of theater, insisting on the supremacy of verisimilitude and ridiculing any exploration of fantastic
or artificial effects, particularly in the field of opera. From 1661 he
lived in exile in England, and he is buried in Westminster Abbey in
London. He wrote as a cultivated amateur on a wide range of political, social and cultural topics. He preferred Pierre Corneille to Jean
Racine in style and moral tone. He wrote a number of dramatic
works, although it is unclear whether any of them were performed:
La Comédie des Académistes (The Academicians) was published in
1650; La Femme poussée à bout, an adaptation ascribed to him of
The Provoked Wife (1697) by Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), was
published in London in 1700; Les Opéra, a parodic comedy, was
published in his collected works; Sir Politick Would-be, described as
a “French comedy in the English style” was published in London in
1705 and in 1714. All of these are characterized by ironic wit, a sense
of the ludicrous and a tendency to undermine pomposity and artificiality in cultural contexts. See also QUINAULT, PHILIPPE.
SARDOU, VICTORIEN
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SALACROU, ARMAND (1899–1989). Experimental dramatist, particularly associated with the actor and director Charles Dullin. His
work is difficult to categorize, combining existentialist philosophical
interest and some cruelty with a boulevard tone verging on black humor. Key works include Patchouli (1930), Un Homme comme les autres (A Man Like Anybody Else, 1936), a farce, Histoire de rire (Just
for Fun, 1939), L’Archipel Lenoir (1947) and a psychodrama, Sens
interdit (No Entry, 1953). See also LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE; EN
ATTENDANT GODOT; ŒUVRE, THÉÂTRE DE L’.
SARDOU, VICTORIEN (1831–1908). Dramatist whose work dominated the Paris stage in the 1860s, thanks initially to the support of
the actress Virginie Déjazet, who presented his Premières Armes de
Figaro (Figaro’s First Weapons) as the opening production of her
new theater in 1859. Thereafter his new works were performed at all
the main theater companies in Paris, the Gymnase, the Théâtre du
Vaudeville and the Comédie-Française, where he achieved success
in several genres: Les Pattes de mouche (Spidery, also translated as A
Scrap of Paper, 1860), farce; Nos Intimes (Our Close Friends, 1861),
social comedy; La Famille Benoîton (1865) and Nos Bons Villageois
(The Good People of Our Village, 1867), satire; Patrie (Fatherland,
1869), performed at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, and
Madame Sans-Gêne (1893), starring Réjane at the Vaudeville, historical dramas; and Dora (1877), comedy of political intrigue. More
violent reactions were triggered by a series of controversial political
plays, Daniel Rochat, performed at the Comédie-Française in 1880,
Divorçons (Let’s Get a Divorce), a farcical treatment of the topical
theme of divorce, performed at the Palais-Royal in the same year,
and Thermidor, performed at the Comédie-Française in 1891 but
almost immediately banned for its questioning of the excesses of the
Terror.
The final period of Sardou’s career was dominated by his association with Sarah Bernhardt, for whom he wrote the title roles
of Fédora (1882), Théodora, produced in 1884 to great acclaim in
spectacular style by Félix-Henri Duquesnel with incidental music
by Jules Massenet (1842–1912), La Tosca (1887), which was turned
into a successful opera in 1900 by the Italian composer Giacomo
Puccini (1858–1924), and La Sorcière (The Sorceress, 1903). Sardou
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SARMENT, JEAN
was elected to the Académie française in 1877. See also ALBERTLAMBERT; BARTET, JULIA; DE MAX, ÉDOUARD; FLERS,
ROBERT DE; OFFENBACH, JACQUES; PIERSON, BLANCHE
ADELINE; ZOLA, ÉMILE.
SARMENT, JEAN. Stage name and authorial pseudonym of Jean Bellemère (1897–1976). Actor and dramatist, fashionable in the 1920s,
whose romantic comedies reflect the influence of William Shakespeare and Alfred de Musset in their poetic charm and their exploration of melancholy self-analysis. Key works include La Couronne
de carton (The Cardboard Crown, 1920), Le Mariage d’Hamlet
(Hamlet’s Wedding, 1922) and Léopold le Bien-Aimé (Léopold the
Beloved, 1927—a revival of this play was directed by Sarment himself at the Comédie-Française in 1942). Sarment also wrote a tribute
to Charles Dullin in 1950 and a romanticized autobiography, Cavalcadour (published in 1977), in which he looked back on his own
theatrical activities. See also ŒUVRE, THÉÂTRE DE L’.
SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL (1905–1980). Possibly the single most influential intellectual and artistic figure in France in the mid-20th century. His philosophy of existentialism had widespread influence, and
his plays demonstrate existentialist angoisse and malaise, whereby
actions undertaken out of habit or loyalty to a preexisting ideal are
exposed as meaningless, as in Les Mouches (The Flies, 1943). This
points the way toward Absurd Theater, as does Huis clos (Behind
Closed Doors, also translated as In Camera, Vicious Circle, and No
Exit, performed at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1944). A
strong proponent of the theater of commitment in the postwar period,
with plays such as Morts sans sepulture (Dead Men Without a Grave,
also translated as Men Without Shadows and The Victims, 1946) and
Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands, also translated as Crime Passionnel
and The Red Gloves, 1948), Sartre was dramaturgically influenced by
Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) in studies of identity and theatricality,
including Le Diable et le bon Dieu (The Devil and the Good Lord,
also translated as Lucifer and the Lord, 1951), Kean (his adaptation
of a work by Alexandre Dumas père, 1953) and Les Séquestrés
d’Altona (The Condemned of Altona, also translated as Loser Wins,
1959). In 1965, his adaptation of Euripides’ Trojan Women as an an-
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• 223
tiwar oratorio, with reference to Vietnam and Algeria, was performed
by the Théâtre national populaire. Sartre was awarded the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1964 but refused to attend a public ceremony.
See also BEAUVOIR, SIMONE DE; BRIALY, JEAN-CLAUDE;
CLASSICISM; HAÏM, VICTOR; HOSSEIN, ROBERT; THÉÂTRE
ANTOINE; UNITIES; WILSON, GEORGES.
SATIE, ERIK ALFRED LESLIE (1866–1925). French composer
whose witty and innovative approach to creativity and performance,
particularly in ballets such as Parade (1917), and in other works on
which he collaborated with Jean Cocteau, had considerable influence on stage works performed in Paris. See also HONEGGER,
ARTHUR; SIX, GROUPE DES.
SATIRE. Type of comic writing, not exclusively dramatic, in which
social customs are mocked by caricature, burlesque uses of language, sarcasm or other means. Drama has had a satirical intention
since its origins in the fabliau, the sotie and medieval farce, and
comic dramatists in almost every period have sought to defend controversial or offensive material by suggesting that it underlines the
need for social change and thereby serves a useful or educational purpose. Molière explicitly insisted that comedy provided a corrective
tendency within society, and Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro
contains a vigorous assault on the corruption and exploitation of the
ancien régime. Even the most apparently serious dramatists, such as
Étienne Jodelle and Jean Racine, have included a satirical element
in some of their works, notably targeting legal abuse and the corrupt
exploitation of knowledge or power. Satire against the medical profession has been a particularly rich vein in French comedy from La
Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin through Molière and several of his
contemporaries to Jules Romains. Political satire, often suppressed
through censorship, has reemerged in 20th-century drama, both
within serious plays espousing the theater of commitment and in the
café-théâtre tradition, although it is unclear whether social abuses
have ever been seriously threatened in practice by stage works. See
also ADAM DE LA HALLE; AYMÉ, MARCEL; BERNARD,
TRISTAN; BOILEAU, NICOLAS; BOURDET, ÉDOUARD;
CALAFERTE, LOUIS; COMÉDIE-ITALIENNE; COURTELINE,
224 •
SCALIGER, JULES-CÉSAR
GEORGES; FLERS, ROBERT DE; LEMAÎTRE, FRÉDÉRICK; LE
SAGE, ALAIN-RENÉ; MIRBEAU, OCTAVE; MYSTERY PLAY;
OFFENBACH, JACQUES; REGNARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; SARDOU, VICTORIEN; VAUDEVILLE; VIAN, BORIS; VOLTAIRE.
SCALIGER, JULES-CÉSAR (1484–1558). Gallicized name of
Giulio Cesare Scaligero, Renaissance scholar whose Poetices libri
septem (Poetics, Books 1–7), based on Aristotle and published in
1561, provided influential early support for the importance of the
unities in classical dramatic form. His theoretical support of Aristotle was not uncritical, and in practice his preference for the tragic
style of Seneca influenced the development of French tragedy until
the middle of the 17th century.
SCARAMOUCHE. French version of Scaramuccio, stage name of
the Italian farce actor Tiberio Fiorilli (1608–1694), brought to Paris
by the Queen Mother in 1644 if not before, and a strong influence
on the young Molière. He was skilled as a mime, an acrobat and a
musician, playing the guitar, which was a permanent feature of his
costume. His stage name continued to be used in Italian theater in
Paris after his death.
SCARRON, PAUL (1610–1660). Poet, novelist and dramatist, most
associated with burlesque verse. His novel Le Roman comique
(Comic Novel, 1651–1657) gives a detailed account of the life of
a wandering troupe of actors, and his own plays include Jodelet
ou Le Maître-valet (Jodelet, or the Servant-master, 1643), Jodelet
souffleté (Jodelet Slapped in the Face, 1646), Don Japhet d’Arménie
(1652) and L’Écolier de Salamanque ou Les Généreux Ennemis (The
Scholar of Salamanca, or The Generous Enemies, 1654). His widow
later became Mme de Maintenon (1635–1719) and married Louis
XIV.
SCHIARETTI, CHRISTIAN (1955– ). French stage director, pupil
of Antoine Vitez and Jacques Lassalle, director of the Comédie
de Reims from 1991 to 2001, president of the Syndicat national des
entreprises artistiques et culturelles from 1994 to 1996, and currently
director of the Théâtre national populaire at Villeurbanne, where
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• 225
notable productions have included William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in 2006, for which he won a Molière in 2009.
SCHMITT, ERIC-EMMANUEL (1960– ). Playwright, novelist
and intellectual. Le Visiteur (The Visitor, 1993), featuring Sigmund
Freud in Vienna in 1938, won Molières for best play, best actor
and “révélation théâtrale” in 1994 and has been performed in over
30 countries. Other dramatic texts include Variations énigmatiques
(Théâtre Marigny, 1996), Le Libertin (Théâtre Montparnasse,
1996, a dramatization of an episode in the life of Denis Diderot),
Frédérick ou Le Boulevard du crime (Théâtre Marigny, 1998), Milarepa, a monologue exploring Buddhism performed at the Avignon
Festival in 1997 and in Paris in 1999, and La Tectonique des sentiments (Tectonics of Feeling, Brussels, 2005), and Schmitt has translated the libretti for some Mozart operas. In 2001 he was awarded
the Grand Prix du Théâtre de l’Académie française.
SCHNEIDER, HORTENSE (1833–1920). Actress and singer who
starred at the Palais-Royal in Paris before specializing in the operettas of Jacques Offenbach at the Théâtre des Variétés.
SCRIBE, EUGÈNE (1791–1861). Prolific author of some 300 comedies, vaudevilles, operas and dramas. His cultivation of an ethic
based on good sense sought to balance the idealistic excesses of
Romanticism, and his craftsmanlike concern to produce what he
called “well-made plays” (des pièces bien faites) provided a structure that would be imitated by most of the Realist and Naturalist
dramas of the rest of the 19th century. His early career was devoted
to vaudeville with works like Une Nuit de la Garde nationale (A
Night in the Life of the National Guard, 1814), but after he was invited to write for the Comédie-Française in the 1830s he developed
a more mature and solid literary style in Bertrand et Raton (1833),
L’Ambitieux (1834), Les Indépendants (1837) and Le Verre d’eau
(The Glass of Water, 1840). He also wrote scenarii for ballet, including La Somnambule (The Sleepwalker, 1827), with music by Ferdinand Hérold (1791–1833), and Manon Lescaut (1830) by Jacques
François Halévy (1799–1862); and opera libretti for Daniel François
Auber (1782–1871) and Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose Robert
226 •
SCUDÉRY, GEORGES DE
le Diable (Robert the Devil, 1831) was one of the most notable
successes of early Romantic opera in French. See also AUGIER,
ÉMILE; BRESSANT, JEAN-BAPTISTE PROSPER; BROHAN,
MADELEINE; CROIZETTE, SOPHIE; DÉJAZET, VIRGINIE;
GEOFFROY, JEAN-MARIE JOSEPH; GYMNASE; LECOUVREUR, ADRIENNE; LEGOUVÉ, ERNEST; MÉLESVILLE, M.;
RACHEL; ROSE CHÉRI; ZOLA, ÉMILE.
SCUDÉRY, GEORGES DE (1601–1667). Dramatist and novelist,
brother of the celebrated précieuse novelist Madeleine de Scudéry
(1607–1701). Having abandoned a military career in 1631 to devote
himself to literature, he came to prominence as one of the chief
exponents of the case against Pierre Corneille in the querelle du
Cid. His own first play, the tragicomedy Ligdamon et Lidias ou La
Ressemblance, was performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1630
and published in 1631; thereafter he wrote some 18 further plays in
several genres, including Le Trompeur puni (The Deceiver Punished,
1633); La Comédie des Comédiens (The Actors, 1634), a prose comedy incorporating a verse tragicomedy as a play-within-the-play; the
tragedy Didon (Dido), published in 1637; and his most successful
work, the romanesque tragicomedy Ibrahim ou L’Illustre Bassa
(performed in 1641 or 1642 and published in 1643). De Scudéry
was elected to the Académie française in 1650. See also HARDY,
ALEXANDRE.
SEDAINE, MICHEL-JEAN (1719–1797). Dramatist and librettist,
recognized as the founder of opéra-comique, who wrote texts for
François Philidor (1726–1795), Pierre Alexandre Monsigny (1729–
1817) and above all André Grétry: Rose et Colas (1764, score by
Monsigny), Aucassin et Nicolette (1779, by Grétry) and Richard
Cœur de Lion (Richard the Lionheart, 1784, by Grétry). Sedaine also
put into practice the theoretical ideas of his friend Denis Diderot in
developing the genre of the drame: Le Philosophe sans le savoir (The
Unwitting Philosopher) was performed at the Comédie-Française in
1765. He wrote a further entertaining comedy, La Gageure imprévue
(The Unforeseen Wager), in 1768. He was elected to the Académie
française in 1786. See also BRIZARD.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
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SEIGNER, LOUIS (1903–1991). Actor, a member of the ComédieFrançaise company from 1939 until 1991, particularly associated
with the title role of Molière’s Le Bourgois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman), which he performed over 1,500 times. Initially
engaged by Firmin Gémier at the Odéon in 1923, he was also a
pioneer of radio drama.
SENECA, LUCIUS ANNÆUS (3 BC–65 AD). Roman philosopher
and writer, particularly influential on 16th- and 17th-century French
tragedy. His own plays, including Phædra, Medea and Thyestes,
are violent depictions of horrific episodes from classical mythology
and reflect the Stoic philosophy of which Seneca was an exponent.
As tutor to the young Emperor Nero, Seneca is mentioned in Jean
Racine’s tragedy Britannicus. See also CORNEILLE, PIERRE;
EURIPIDES; GARNIER, ROBERT; ROTROU, JEAN DE; SCALIGER, JULES-CÉSAR.
SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE (1915–1973). Stage and theater director, pupil of Charles Dullin, who in 1949 formed his own theater
company, which mounted the first performances in France since
1930 of plays by Bertolt Brecht as well as works by Franz Kafka
(1883–1924), Boris Vian and Alfred Jarry. A political activist, he
was determined to make theater an instrument of political reform
and to bring culture to an ever wider public. It was in his Théâtre de
Babylone that Roger Blin mounted the first performance of Samuel
Beckett’s En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) in 1953, and he
was a persistent supporter of new talent, including Michel Vinaver
and Marguerite Duras, also directing plays by Third World dramatists such as Yacine Kateb’s Le Cadavre encerclé (The Surrounded
Corpse, 1958) and Aimé Césaire’s La Tragédie du roi Christophe
(1964). A theater has been named in his honor near the Porte de
Vanves in the Parisian suburbs.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (1564–1616). The works of Shakespeare were virtually unknown in France until the early 19th century,
when performances of them were instrumental in triggering the advent of Romantic drama. Some plays, including Richard III, Othello,
228 •
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Cæsar and Antony and Cleopatra, as well
as less obvious choices such as Cymbeline and The Merry Wives of
Windsor, were translated by Pierre-Antoine de La Place (1707–1793)
in 1745–1746, their publication being accompanied by an enthusiastic essay; these volumes sold well, but there is no evidence that
the translations were performed, or influenced performance of the
contemporary repertoire, although Charles-Jean-François Hénault
published a Shakespearean François II, roi de France in 1747. Visits to Paris in 1751 and 1763 by the English actor-manager David
Garrick (1717–1779) aroused widespread interest, and he befriended
Mlle Clairon, although again there was no immediate impact on repertoire or performance style. Translations or adaptations by JeanFrançois Ducis presented Shakespeare in a bowdlerized and supposedly civilized version—his Hamlet, with François-René Molé in the
title role after Lekain had refused it, was in 1769 the first play by
Shakespeare to be performed on the stage of the Comédie-Française
and was followed by versions of Romeo and Juliet (1772), King Lear
(1783), Macbeth (1784), King John (1791) and Othello (1792).
Voltaire, who had been patronizing about Shakespeare’s ideas, and
dismissive of his barbaric language and form, was infuriated by the
appearance of the first volume of new translations by Pierre Le Tourneur (1737–1788) in 1776. These further stimulated French appreciation of the robust, nonclassical dramatist, and Voltaire responded by
dispatching an abusive Lettre à l’Académie, but the tide was already
turning in favor of Shakespeare, although anti-English feeling after
the Napoleonic wars delayed and undermined subsequent attempts
to impose the genuine article on Parisian audiences. Le Tourneur’s
translations were revised in 1821 by François Guizot (1787–1874)
and by Prosper Brugière de Barante (1782–1866), and Stendhal,
among others, defended Shakespeare’s dramatic system and mocked
classicism in his essay Racine et Shakespeare (1823–1825).
The real turning point for the fortunes of Shakespeare on the Parisian stage came with performances arranged by Émile Laurent at the
Odéon, and given by actors from a number of London, Dublin and
provincial English companies, in autumn 1827. The series featured
Charles Kemble (1775–1854), one of the most famous names of the
current English stage, with Harriet Smithson (1800–1854), in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Othello; in the following spring they were
SIX, GROUPE DES
• 229
joined by William Macready (1793–1873) in Macbeth as well as
Edmund Kean (1787–1833) in Richard III, The Merchant of Venice
and King Lear. The French actors most immediately influenced by
the enthusiastic violence of the English style of Shakespearean acting included Bocage, Frédérick Lemaître, Marie Dorval and Mlle
Mars; the authors who adopted his approach to dramatic structure
and language included most notably Alfred de Vigny, Alexandre
Dumas père, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset and Léon Marcel.
The vogue for Shakespeare was renewed in the 1880s, with the productions of Sarah Bernhardt and those directed by Paul Porel at the
Odéon starring Paul Mounet and Mounet-Sully.
In the early years of the 20th century, significant productions were
mounted by Lugné-Poe and André Antoine, by Jacques Copeau at
the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier and by Gaston Baty with Marguerite Jamois, before a strong resurgence of interest in Shakespeare
was a significant contributor to the renewal of French theater after
World War II. When Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud
founded their own company at the Théâtre Marigny in 1946, their
first production was André Gide’s adaptation of Hamlet. This was
followed by groundbreaking productions from Peter Brook, Roger
Planchon, Giorgio Strehler, Daniel Mesguich, Patrice Chéreau,
Bernard Sobel, Stéphane Braunschweig, André Engel, Christian Schiaretti and others, including performances at the Avignon
Festival and by the Théâtre du Soleil. Such productions included
new translations by Jules Supervielle, Marcel Pagnol, Fernand
Crommelynck and Valère Novarina, as well as Aimé Césaire’s
postcolonial adaptation of The Tempest. See also BERLIOZ, LOUIS
HECTOR; BOUCHARDY, JOSEPH; BRIZARD; CORNEILLE,
PIERRE; DESARTHE, GÉRARD; GEOFFROY, JULIEN-LOUIS;
HERNANI; LEMERCIER, NÉPOMUCÈNE; LORENZACCIO;
MARAIS, JEAN; SARMENT, JEAN; SOLILOQUY; SOULIÉ,
FRÉDÉRIC; TALMA, FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH; TAYLOR, ISIDORE;
UNITIES.
SIX, GROUPE DES. Six composers who worked, more often independently than together, under the influence of Erik Satie and Jean
Cocteau. Dramatic works to which several or all of them contributed
included Parade and Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (The Wedding
230 •
SOBEL, BERNARD
Party on the Eiffel Tower, 1921). Of the six, Francis Poulenc and
Darius Milhaud made significant contributions to opera, Georges
Auric to film music, and Arthur Honegger to stage music. The
others were Louis Durey (1888–1979) and Germaine Tailleferre
(1892–1983).
SOBEL, BERNARD. Professional pseudonym used by Bernard Rothstein (1936– ), stage director who trained in Berlin with Bertolt Brecht, then participated in Jean Vilar’s production of Brecht’s Arturo
Ui at the Théatre national populaire and the Avignon Festival in
1960. As director from 1963 to 2006 of the Centre dramatique national in Gennevilliers, a company explicitly organized on Brechtian
collaborative principles, Sobel broadened the standard repertoire to
embrace little-known English Elizabethan drama and works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) and Aleksandr Ostrovsky (1823–
1886). In 1993 he adapted William Shakespeare’s King Lear under
the title of Threepenny Lear and cast Maria Casarès in the title role.
Sobel has also worked extensively in opera and television (using the
name Bernard Rothstein) and is editor of the journal Théâtre/Public,
founded in 1974. See also BRAUNSCHWEIG, STÉPHANE.
SOLEIL, THÉÂTRE DU. Theater company established on collectivist principles by Ariane Mnouchkine in 1964, which moved to the
Cartoucherie de Vincennes in 1970. It sought to combine uninhibited
carnivalesque theater, often influenced by oriental as well as popular (circus or music hall) styles, with a serious political and social
agenda. Les Clowns, 1969, performed at the Théâtre de la Commune
d’Aubervilliers and at the Avignon Festival, and 1789, a play about
the French Revolution performed in 1970, sought to use a festival
atmosphere to convey leftist political messages to a broader public
than was reached by conventional theater. The company also encouraged the reevaluation of the classics, with innovative interpretations
of plays by William Shakespeare and a film, Molière (1976), which
presented the classical dramatist as a utopian idealist with an irregular lifestyle.
SOLILOQUY. A dramatic convention whereby characters who are
alone onstage speak their thoughts out loud, so that the audience is
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• 231
enabled to eavesdrop on their dilemmas, motivation and decisions.
The practice was frowned on by 17th-century theorists such as François Hédelin d’Aubignac and Nicolas Boileau in the name of verisimilitude, and the use of the confidant in classical theater developed
to enable characters more plausibly to articulate their thought processes out loud. Nevertheless soliloquy survived quite commonly both
in tragedy and in comedy—Pierre Corneille, Molière, Racine,
Marivaux and Beaumarchais had little if any hesitation in using the
device, and such resistance as there was vanished with the Romantic
dramatists, who followed the example of William Shakespeare in
conveying many of the characters’ most intimate thought processes
in this way. The second half of Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio,
for example, is dominated by a series of soliloquies akin to those of
Hamlet.
SOPHOCLES (c496–406 BC). Greek dramatist whose tragedies
exerted considerable influence on French Renaissance and classical
playwrights, partly because his work was treated as exemplary in
Aristotle’s Poetics. His tragedies, particularly Œdipus Rex, Electra
and The Women of Trachis, were widely translated and imitated in
16th- and 17th-century France. See also BAÏF, JEAN ANTOINE
DE; EURIPIDES; MOUNET-SULLY; VITEZ, ANTOINE.
SOTIE. Medieval dramatic form combining features of the morality
play and the farce, particularly associated with Pierre Gringore
and Les Enfants sans souci. It was often licentious in nature and involved personalized satire against church or political dignitaries but
was tolerated until the reign of François I and was sometimes used
to manipulate public opinion or promote official policy. Examples
included La Sotie du Vieux-monde (The Old World), a wide-ranging
political and social satire, La Sotie du Nouveau Monde (The New
World, 1508), an anti-papal satire, and Le Jeu du Prince des Sots
(The Prince of Fools, 1511), in which the title character represents
the king, Louis XII, surrounded by carnivalesque caricatures of the
nobility and the clergy. See also FABLIAU; JODELLE, ÉTIENNE;
MYSTERY PLAY.
SOULAS, JOSIAS DE. See FLORIDOR.
232 •
SOULIÉ, FRÉDÉRIC
SOULIÉ, FRÉDÉRIC (1800–1847). Minor Romantic dramatist and
novelist whose works included Clothilde (1832), Diane de Chivry
(1839), La Closerie des genêts (The Broom Farm, 1846) and an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet performed at
the Odéon in 1828.
STENDHAL. Pseudonym used by the author and critic Henri Beyle
(1783–1842). His essay Racine et Shakespeare (1823–1825) was an
important document in the reevaluation of classical principles that
led to the advent of Romantic theater. See also ARTAUD, ANTONIN; UNITIES.
STOCK CHARACTERS. Persons depicted in drama, particularly
comedy, whose nature is defined and dominated by a single characteristic: the miser, the fanfaron, the glutton, the insipid young
lover, and many others. They constituted the cast of the commedia
dell’arte and entered comic traditions derived from it. See also
CARICATURE; MELODRAMA; PLAUTUS; LA QUERELLE DE
L’ÉCOLE DES FEMMES.
STREHLER, GIORGIO (1921–1997). Director of the Théâtre de
l’Europe, a company established at the Odéon in 1983. An Italian actor, he had previously worked in Switzerland (directing the première of
Albert Camus’s Caligula in 1945) and Milan, directing plays by William Shakespeare and operas as well as the contemporary and classical repertoire. Following his successful productions of plays by Carlo
Goldoni (1707–1793) with the Comédie-Française, he was invited by
minister of culture Jack Lang to direct the Théâtre de l’Europe, where
his opening production was Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion comique
(Theatrical Illusion) in 1984. He was also a member of the Italian Senate and of the European Parliament representing the independent left.
Strehler’s conception of theater had widespread influence on
the succeeding generation of stage directors, including Ariane
Mnouchkine, Patrice Chéreau, Lluis Pasqual and Roger Planchon. See also COMÉDIE-ITALIENNE; DESARTHE, GÉRARD.
SUPERVIELLE, JULES (1884–1960). Poet, writer and occasional
dramatist. Born in Uruguay to French parents who died in the year
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of his birth, he was brought up there by his uncle. Although married
to a Uruguayan, he lived from 1912 in Paris, and his poetry, strongly
influenced by Parnassianism and Symbolism, was written in French.
His own plays, including La Belle au bois (The Beauty in the Woods,
1931), Bolivar (1936), Robinson (1948) and Shéhérazade (1949), as
well as his translations of Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) and of
William Shakespeare, were supported by Jean Vilar, Louis Jouvet
and other major figures. See also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’.
SURREALISM. An artistic and literary movement that developed out
of Symbolism to dominate Western European creativity from the
1920s until the 1950s. Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) had used the
term “surnaturalisme” to emphasize the Symbolists’ concern for spiritual rather than physical realities, and the psychoanalytical theories
of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), together with the social dislocation
of World War I, led to an even greater focus in art and literature
on dream landscapes and on disillusionment with both social and
artistic conventions. The experimental theater of Alfred Jarry and
the shocking nonsense of Dadaism set the stage for the emergence
of Surrealism. The term “surrealist” was first applied to Guillaume
Apollinaire’s drama Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Tiresias’s Breasts,
1917), directed by Pierre Albert-Birot, to whom it is dedicated; and
the aims of the movement were articulated by the poet André Breton
(1896–1966) in the early 1920s.
The painters most firmly associated with Surrealism include
the German Max Ernst (1891–1976), the Spaniard Salvador Dali
(1904–1989), the Belgian René Magritte (1898–1967) and the French
artists André Masson (1896–1967) and Yves Tanguy (1900–1955).
In French theater, the label can most readily be applied to the work of
Roger Vitrac, who together with Antonin Artaud and Robert Aron
(1898–1975) founded the Théâtre Alfred Jarry in 1926 and dedicated
it to experimental programs. Surrealism more broadly influenced the
creativity of a wide range of other playwrights, including Arthur
Adamov, Jean Cocteau and the pioneers of Absurd Theater. It
also had a major impact on cinema, most notably in the work of Luis
Buñuel (1900–1983). See also BAUHAUS; BECKETT, SAMUEL;
CUBISM; IONESCO, EUGÈNE; LAVELLI, JORGE; TARDIEU,
JEAN; TZARA, TRISTAN.
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SYMBOLISM
SYMBOLISM. A literary and artistic movement anticipated by Charles
Baudelaire (1821–1867), championed by Stéphane Mallarmé and
theorized by Jean Moréas (1856–1910), in reaction against 19thcentury Realism and Naturalism. It emphasized imagination over
observation, the universal over the particular, idealism over cynicism, impressionist subjectivity over photographic accuracy, synæsthetic fusion of sense experiences over stylistic purity. In theater, it
was championed by Maurice Mæterlinck as dramatist and by Paul
Fort, Lugné-Poe and Georges Pitoëff as directors. Its acting styles
are associated with dehumanizing techniques: characters appear as
puppets motivated by overwhelming forces rather than by psychological impulses. See also ADAM, PAUL; ALBERT-BIROT, PIERRE;
ARTAUD, ANTONIN; BATAILLE, HENRY; CLAUDEL, PAUL;
EXPRESSIONISM; GIDE, ANDRÉ; JARRY, ALFRED; OPERA;
RODENBACH, GEORGES; ROINARD, PAUL-NAPOLÉON; SUPERVIELLE, JULES; SURREALISM; WAGNER, RICHARD.
– T –
TABARIN. Stage name of the author, farce actor and opérateur
Antoine Girard (1584–c1633). Other sources give the alternative
stage name Jean Solomon. He was first mentioned in a legal document of 1602, by which he entered into a two-year association with
a Milanese actor Formicha Provai, to dance and act in France and
elsewhere. He then performed with his brother Mondor in Paris and
elsewhere on a portable stage, developing a reputation for hilarious
comic sequences of dubious taste. His own stage texts include Les
Deux Pourceaux (The Two Pigs, c1626) and Le Voyage aux Indes
(Journey to the Indies, c1626).
TAGLIONI, MARIE (1804–1884). Ballet dancer whose début at the
Paris Opéra in 1827 signaled the arrival of Romanticism on the
musical stage. She enchanted audiences with her graceful expressiveness.
TALMA, FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH (1763–1826). Dominant serious actor in the First Empire and Restoration periods. Having trained as a
LE TARTUFFE
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dentist in England, he was aware of the Shakespearean theatrical
tradition. Returning to France he became a member of the Odéon
company and achieved success there in Marie-Joseph Chénier’s
Charles IX (1789). Following the French Revolution he founded the
Théâtre de la République, and when the Comédie-Française moved
to its current home at the Salle Richelieu in 1799, he starred at the
opening performance as Rodrigue in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid. He
encouraged greater period authenticity in costume design. Having
been introduced to the young Victor Hugo in 1826, and having apparently encouraged the latter in his innovative approach to theater,
he died before any of the dramatist’s plays had been completed.
See also BÉRÉNICE; DUCIS, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; GEOFFROY,
JULIEN-LOUIS; JOUY, VICTOR-JOSEPH-ÉTIENNE DE; LAFON, PIERRE; LEGOUVÉ, GABRIEL-MARIE; MONVEL; TAYLOR, ISIDORE.
TALMY, ADRIEN. See VALLERAN LE CONTE.
TARDIEU, JEAN (1903–1995). Poet, essayist and dramatist. He
published poems and translations of German poetry from 1937 and
worked in radio from 1944. His dramatic career began with the publication in 1946, and performance in 1949, of an experimental text entitled Qui est là? (Who’s There?), which reflected the current tendencies of Absurd Theater. He went on to publish four further volumes
of short plays and what he termed “poèmes à jouer” (performance
poems), including Un Mot pour un autre (A Word for Another, 1951),
Les Amants du métro (The Underground Lovers, 1952), described as
a “ballet comique sans danse et sans musique,” Théâtre de chambre
(Chamber Theater, 1955) and Conversation-sinfonietta (1962). His
works explore social alienation and existential themes, combine Surrealist techniques with sparkling dialogue, and call into question
many assumptions about literary form and language. Tardieu was the
recipient of many literary prizes for his drama, poetry and radio work,
including the Grand Prix de Théâtre de la Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques in 1979, and the Prix Voltaire in 1991.
LE TARTUFFE. Five-act verse comedy by Molière, first performed
in a lost three-act version at Versailles in 1664, banned as a result of
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LE TARTUFFE
clergy disapproval, and finally performed and published in 1669. The
title character is a scheming villain out to abuse the hold he obtains
over the bourgeois Parisian householder Orgon, and the church’s
opposition seems to have been based on the idea that the portrayal
of the hypocritical Tartuffe showed real clergymen or household
confessors in a bad light; but the more serious message of the play
is not that religion can be used for evil ends by criminals, but that
religion can turn apparently sane and loving people into selfish and
stubborn idiots.
Orgon has become infatuated by the ostentatiously religious
Tartuffe—excessively puritanical in his preaching but absurdly selfindulgent in his own lifestyle—and is alienated from his family as a
result, although his second wife Elmire, his daughter by a previous
marriage Mariane and even his strong-willed and sharp-tongued
servant Dorine, remain admirably loyal in seeking to protect him
from the consequences of his obsession. Tartuffe first seeks to obtain
the hand of Mariane in marriage, but in the second half of the play
he attempts to seduce Elmire and obtains by coercion and deceit
legal rights over Orgon’s house and assets. He also tricks Orgon
into entrusting him with some incriminating papers that Orgon has
in his possession. As a result, when Orgon is finally convinced of
Tartuffe’s hypocrisy and disloyalty, he is in law powerless to evict
Tartuffe from his house, and it is only through the implausible personal intervention of Louis XIV that Tartuffe himself is arrested and
order is restored.
The play is typical of Molière’s output in combining elements of
social satire with an Italianate plot structure—a well-to-do family
whose stability is threatened by an intruder—and crude if witty situations from farce—Orgon is obliged to hide in an undignified position
under a table to witness Tartuffe’s attempted seduction of Elmire.
The structure is classical, with a widely praised exposition, adherence to the unities of time and place and a dénouement in which the
king has the status of deus ex machina. Although the principal comic
target is Orgon, whose wits are addled by sincere but misguided religious allegiance, Tartuffe is a satirical caricature combining aspects
of several Christian trends of the time: the austere Puritanism of
Jansenism, the social manipulation of such enclosed religious societies as the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement (which led the moves to
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have the play banned), and the casuistry and moral sophistication for
which the term “jesuitical” has retained an opprobrious flavor.
In the first performances, Molière played the part of Orgon, his
wife Armande Béjart that of Elmire, and Du Croisy that of Tartuffe. Madeleine Béjart was Dorine and Louis Béjart (1630–1678)
played Orgon’s ridiculous mother Mme Pernelle.
Significant modern productions have included those by Roger
Planchon at Villeurbanne in 1962, by Jean Meyer (1914–2003) in
Lyon with Jean Marais in 1972, by Antoine Vitez at Ivry in 1978,
and by Jacques Lassalle with Gérard Depardieu (1948– ) at the
Théâtre national de Strasbourg in 1983 (a production made into a
film by Depardieu himself the following year). See also THE BITER
BIT; BOVY, BERTHE; CENSORSHIP; DE BRIE, MLLE; LA
GRANGE.
TAYLOR, ISIDORE (BARON) (1789–1879). Theater administrator
who revived the fortunes of the Comédie-Française between 1823
and 1838. He had been a military man but was also distinguished
in archaeology and in theater design and a popular author, and he
saw that increasing popular support was the key to breathing new
life into a stultified institution. His first production, of the tragedy
Léonidas (1825) by Michel Pichat (1790–1828), with set designs by
Pierre Ciceri, reflected the influence of recent productions in Paris
of plays by William Shakespeare and proved an ideal compromise
between the classical requirements of traditionalists and the appeal to
local color, sentiment and contemporary relevance sought by a wider
audience. Taylor also managed successful productions of Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro (Figaro’s Wedding) and of plays in
the new Romantic style by Alexandre Dumas père (Henri III et sa
cour, 1828). He brought Talma and Victor Hugo together, although
the actor had died before the completion of Hugo’s first plays, and
Taylor himself directed the first performances of Hugo’s Hernani.
See also DELAVIGNE, CASIMIR.
TERENCE (190–159 BC). Latin comic dramatist, considered more
serious and less playful than Plautus; both influenced comedy in the
French Renaissance and classical periods. See also LA FONTAINE,
JEAN DE.
238 •
TESSIER, VALENTINE
TESSIER, VALENTINE (1892–1981). Actress. Her parents were
Russian although her father was of French origin; brought up in
Paris, she showed an early talent for verse recitation, was introduced
to the theater by Paul Mounet, and although she did not obtain
formal training, was employed by Jacques Copeau at the Théâtre
du Vieux-Colombier. After 1928, alongside Louis Jouvet at the
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, she gave first performances of several
plays by Jean Giraudoux. Although she always preferred the stage
to the screen, Tessier performed the title role in the 1933 film version of Madame Bovary by Jean Renoir (1894–1979), and in 1971
emerged from retirement to take the lead in Églantine by JeanClaude Brialy.
LE THÉÂTRE ALFRED JARRY. See VITRAC, ROGER.
THÉÂTRE ANTOINE. Parisian theater building on the boulevard de
Strasbourg. A theater called Les Menus Plaisirs, built on the site in
1866, was taken over by André Antoine and renamed the ThéâtreLibre. Here, Antoine championed polemical authors marginalized in
mainstream theater, such as Paul Alexis, Eugène Brieux, Georges
Courteline, François de Curel, Jules Renard, and foreign dramatists, including Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), August Strindberg
(1849–1912), Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) and Lev Nikolaïevitch Tolstoy (1828–1910), the world première of whose play The
Power of Darkness, which had been banned in Russia, was mounted
by Antoine in 1888. Following financial difficulties in 1896, the
theater reopened in 1897 as the Théâtre Antoine, remaining true to
his innovative Naturalist æsthetic. In 1906 Antoine was succeeded
as director by Firmin Gémier. Jean-Paul Sartre entrusted the then
director Simone Berriau (1896–1984) with the first productions of
Morts sans sepulture (Dead Men Without a Grave, also translated
as Men Without Shadows and The Victims, 1946) with Alain Cuny,
La Putain respectueuse (The Respectful Prostitute, 1946), Les Mains
sales (Dirty Hands, also translated as Crime Passionnel and The Red
Gloves, 1948) and most of his subsequent plays. Following the death
of Berriau after 41 years as its director, the theater was renamed the
Théâtre-Antoine-Simone-Berriau. See also ACHARD, MAURICE;
REZA, YASMINA; ROCHER, RENÉ.
TISON, PASCALE
• 239
LE THÉÂTRE D’ART. See FORT, PAUL.
THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS. Name given to the Comédie-Française at
certain limited periods in history.
LE THÉÂTRE-LIBRE. See THÉÂTRE ANTOINE.
THÉÂTRE NATIONAL AMBULANT. Founded by Firmin Gémier
in 1911 as an attempt to imitate popular theater traditions he had witnessed in Vienna, Berlin and Brussels. Traveling in steam caravans,
the company mounted spectacles involving circus acts and was successful in the provinces but failed in a fixed location in Paris.
THÉÂTRE NATIONAL POPULAIRE. A theater company of this
name was first founded by Firmin Gémier at the Palais de Chaillot
in Paris in 1920 and received a subsidy from Aristide Briand (1862–
1932) with the aim of making serious theater experiences accessible
to a wide audience. The company remained at Chaillot until 1945.
Following the success of Jean Vilar at the Avignon Festival from
1947, a permanent Paris home was sought for his adventurous programming and production values, and in 1951 after some hesitation
Vilar and his company accepted an invitation to settle at Chaillot,
where they at once resurrected Gémier’s name of Théâtre national
populaire. Vilar was succeeded in 1963 by Georges Wilson, who
established a second venue, the Salle Gémier, concentrating on contemporary authors. In 1972, Antoine Vitez took responsibility for
the Théâtre de Chaillot, while the Théâtre national populaire moved
to Villeurbanne, near Lyon, under the direction of Roger Planchon,
Patrice Chéreau and Robert Gilbert. Jean-Pierre Vincent became
a director in 1975, Georges Lavaudant in 1986; Planchon retired in
1996, and since 2002 its director has been Christian Schiaretti. See
also CASARÈS, MARIA; CLAUDEL, PAUL; COMMITMENT,
THEATER OF; CUNY, ALAIN; GATTI, ARMAND; MOREAU,
JEANNE; OBALDIA, RENÉ DE; PHILIPE, GÉRARD; SARTRE,
JEAN-PAUL; SOBEL, BERNARD; VIAN, BORIS.
TISON, PASCALE (1961– ). French-speaking Belgian author, actress,
journalist and dramatist whose plays include La Rapporteuse (The
240 •
TRAGEDY
Telltale, 1989), winner in the author’s own production of the Prix
Promotion Théâtre, La Chute des âmes (The Fall of Souls, 1994),
winner in the author’s own production of the Prix Charles Plisnier,
Le Bruit des rêves (The Sound of Dreams, 1997), La Crapaude (The
Toad, 2000) and La Mélancolie du libraire (The Melancholy Bookseller, 2001).
TRAGEDY. Although widely used in French (une tragédie) as in
English to denote a sad event, particularly with connotations of unexpected injustice or innocent suffering, the term properly refers to
a genre of drama exploring human responsibility for misfortune arising out of a conflict between an individual, traditionally of exalted
status, and forces beyond his or her control, presented in such a way
as to generate catharsis by arousing pity and fear in the spectators.
Although the ending is not necessarily just, it should not be outrageously unjust and it is intended to give rise to edifying reflections
on the theme of justice and the nature of the moral universe. The form
had its roots in classical antiquity with the Greek verse tragedies of
Æschylus (c525–456 BC), Sophocles and Euripides, which were
analyzed by Aristotle and imitated in Latin by Seneca.
In the French Renaissance, rules for tragedy were developed that
came to be treated as more binding and inflexible than the theories
of Aristotle. A five-act structure, alexandrine verse couplets, and
strict adherence to the unities and to the concepts of verisimilitude
and bienséance were increasingly insisted on by academic theoreticians, among the most influential of whom were Jules-César
Scaliger, Lodovico Castelvetro (1505–1571), Jean de La Taille,
Hippolyte Jules Pilet de La Mesnardière (1610–1663), François
Hédelin d’Aubignac and Nicolas Boileau. Early exponents of
the genre included in the 16th century George Buchanan, MarcAntoine Muret, Étienne Jodelle, Jean de La Taille, Jacques
Grévin, Robert Garnier and Antoine de Montchrestien; in the
baroque period, Alexandre Hardy, Théophile de Viau, François
Tristan L’Hermite, Georges de Scudéry, Jean Mairet, Pierre Du
Ryer and Pierre Corneille; and as the classical rules became ever
more firmly established after the querelle du Cid, Jean de Rotrou,
Isaac Benserade, Thomas Corneille, Philippe Quinault and Jean
Racine. The last named brought total mastery to the genre with his
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series of masterpieces from Andromaque (1667) through Bérénice
to Phèdre. In that period the actors most closely associated with
tragedy included Montdory, Montfleury, Mlle Bellerose, Floridor,
Madeleine and Armande Béjart, La Champmeslé and Baron.
After the death of Racine, the tragic genre lost its sense of direction
and apart from the bleak Senecan works of Prosper-Jolyot de Crébillon and some brave but not entirely successful efforts by Voltaire,
the next century saw little but static and formulaic imitations by
authors whose names are all but forgotten: Charles-Jean-François
Hénault, Charles Palissot de Montenoy, Jean-Jacques Rutledge,
Philippe Fabre D’Eglantine, Jean-Louis Laya, Marie-Joseph
Chénier, Victor-Joseph-Étienne de Jouy. Many actors, most notably Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mlle Dumesnil, Brizard, Lekain,
Louise-Françoise Contat and Pierre Lafon, kept alive the tradition of classical tragic acting but were more successful in reprises of
works by Corneille and Racine than in any new plays produced in the
serious idiom by their contemporaries.
Much the same was to apply to the 19th century; Talma and Rachel
continued to enjoy success and command audiences in the classical
repertoire, but new writing was dominated by the Romantic drame
and by Realist dramas focusing on everyday life, with only a few new
tragedies by François Ponsard and Léon Marcel before the advent
of Symbolism reopened the dramatic exploration of the ineffable in
ways that shared much of the emotional effect of tragedy. MounetSully, Julia Bartet, Albert-Lambert and above all Sarah Bernhardt
retained some classical tragedies in their wide and varied repertoire.
The 20th century was a period of reevaluation of the tragic as well
as of the heroic, and many subjects from classical tragedy were reworked in new form, sometimes gaining in intensity by combination
with more comic, indeed grotesque, elements. Dramatists most centrally involved in the continuation of the tradition or in creative interaction with it included Romain Rolland, Jean Giraudoux, Henry
de Montherlant, Jean Cocteau, Jean Anouilh, Aimé Césaire,
François Billetdoux and Fernando Arrabal. See also BRECHT,
BERTOLT; BURLESQUE; CENSORSHIP; COINCIDENCE; COMÉDIE LARMOYANTE; CUNY, ALAIN; DE MAX, ÉDOUARD;
NARRATOR; PARODY; ROUSSEAU, JEAN-JACQUES; SOLILOQUY; TAYLOR, ISIDORE.
242 •
TREMBLAY, MICHEL
TREMBLAY, MICHEL (1942– ). French-Canadian author and prolific dramatist, having composed over 30 original plays or adaptations
and several film scenarios. His works use isolated or unorthodox
characters to explore issues of identity and marginality and include
Les Belles-Sœurs (Sisters-in-Law, 1968, performed successfully both
in Quebec and in France), A toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou (Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, 1972), La Maison suspendue (The Hanging
House, also translated as House Among the Stars, 1990), and Encore
une fois si vous le permettez (Once More If You Don’t Mind, translated as For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, 1998).
TRISTAN L’HERMITE, FRANÇOIS (1601–1655). Dramatist. His
early tragedies, La Mariane (1636) and Panthée (1637), while
similar to the melodramas of Alexandre Hardy in tone, were more
regular in structure. His next two plays, La Folie du sage (The Wise
Man’s Folly, c1643, published in 1645, Tristan’s only tragicomedy)
and La Mort de Sénèque (The Death of Seneca, 1644), both attempt
to integrate philosophical discussions into drama but are rather disjointed as a result. Like Pierre Corneille in the same period, Tristan
endeavored to comply with the unities but seems to have found them
a straitjacket rather than an aid to focus, and his strength was as an
effective poet, particularly in scenes of lamentation, rather than as
a dramatist. Other works include La Mort de Crispe (The Death of
Crispus, 1645), La Mort du Grand Osman (The Death of the Great
Osman, 1647) and his only comedy, Le Parasite (1653). He was
elected to the Académie française in 1649. See also DESARTHE,
GÉRARD; LEKAIN; MAIRET, JEAN; MONTDORY; QUINAULT,
PHILIPPE; VILLÉGIER, JEAN-MARIE.
TROUBADOUR, TROUVÈRE. Poets and singers of the Middle Ages
who can be considered prototypes of dramatic art because of their
emphasis on live performance. Troubadours traveled around southern
France using the langue d’oc, whereas trouvères used the northern
dialect of langue d’oïl. See also ADAM DE LA HALLE.
TURLUPIN. Stage name of Henri Legrand (1587–1637), major comic
actor of the early 17th century. He also used the stage name Belleville, probably to distinguish his work in more serious genres from
TZARA, TRISTAN
• 243
his principal reputation as a farceur. From 1615, when he entered
the Hôtel de Bourgogne, he was closely associated with GaultierGarguille and Gros-Guillaume, and this trio dominated the Paris
stage until 1633. His characteristic portrayal of wily and cheeky valet
roles gave rise to the modern French expression turlupiner, to tease
or torment, and the associated noun turlupinade.
TZARA, TRISTAN. Authorial pseudonym adopted from 1915 by
Samuel (Sami) Rosenstock (1896–1963), Romanian-born poet and
essayist who founded the Dada movement in 1917 and became its
leader. His play La Première Aventure céleste de M. Antipyrine
(First Celestial Adventure of Monsieur Antipyrine), whose title
character took his name from a remedy against headaches, was the
centerpiece of a Dada-based spectacle presented at the Théâtre
de l’Œuvre in Paris on 27 March 1920, with set and costumes by
Francis Picabia (1879–1953) and performers including the poets
Philippe Soupault (1897–1990) and Paul Éluard (1895–1952). The
organizers referred to the evening as a “manifestation,” a word that
in French carries overtones of political demonstration. Tzara’s text
is more a Surrealist prose-poem divided between eight voices than
a dialogue between characters. The same applies to Le Cœur à gaz
(The Gas Heart), first performed in June 1921 with Tzara, Soupault,
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes and Louis Aragon (1897–1983) in
the cast: almost the only coherent parts of the text are those that
discuss its tedious quality. A later performance of this play at the
Théâtre Michel on 6 July 1923 was the occasion of violent fighting
involving André Breton (1896–1966), Aragon and Éluard. In 1924,
Tzara published the Sept Manifestes Dada (Seven Dada Manifestos), a retrospective manifesto drawing on writings or lectures first
presented over the previous eight years. By this date, however,
theater audiences were polarized: those who attended plays by authors associated with Dada were converts. Hence Tzara’s next play
Mouchoir de Nuages (A Handkerchief of Clouds, 1924) invited collusion rather than rejection by the audience and in that sense cannot
strictly be defined as Dada.
In later years, Tzara was involved in political activity, being an
active member of the Communist party and of the French Resistance
during World War II. See also ALBERT-BIROT, PIERRE.
244 •
UNITIES
– U –
UNITIES. A central feature of the classical model of drama, particularly tragedy. Normally three unities are identified: time, place and
action, although in 17th-century French drama, unity of tone was also
considered crucial. Aristotle observed in his Poetics that in the plays
he considered most effective, the events portrayed were normally
confined to “one revolution of the sun” and that the plot should be
simple. From these observations, Renaissance theoreticians, notably Jules-César Scaliger and Lodovico Castelvetro (1505–1571),
extrapolated a complex system of rules, which came to be applied
rigorously to all serious drama, entered France initially through
the work of Jean de La Taille and were more firmly established
as normative by Jean Mairet and the Académie française. Theoretical writers, including Hippolyte Jules Pilet de La Mesnardière
(1610–1663), François Hédelin d’Aubignac and Nicolas Boileau,
insisted on the application of strict rules of unity: 24 hours, a single
set representing a single location, and a noncomplex intrigue with no
subplots and no loose ends left unresolved at the end of the drama. It
was usually argued in the name of verisimilitude that the spectators
depended on the observation of these rules for their understanding of
the play: if they were only in the theater for two hours, they could
not accept that days or weeks had passed or that long journeys had
been undertaken.
This pattern for the presentation of an intense dramatic conflict
within a claustrophobic atmosphere was most perfectly and effectively followed by Jean Racine in tragedy and found a comic
counterpart in Molière, whose repetitions of the phrase “dès ce soir”
(“this very evening”) provided a parodic echo of the evocation in
tragedy of a moment of doom. Pierre Corneille devoted an essay to
the subject in 1660 but in practice found the unities something of a
straitjacket and sought means to bend the rules, stretching his time
limit to 30 hours and depicting through a multiple set several locations within a single city. His L’Illusion comique (Theatrical Illusion,
1636) implicitly provides a wry commentary on the notion of unity,
since at one level it complies exactly with them—the events unfold in
real time from the arrival of Pridament at the magician’s grotto—but
on another level they demonstrate how readily the spectator is con-
VALLERAN LE CONTE
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vinced by the portrayal of events that leap about in place and time
and switch abruptly from the grotesque to the tragic.
The classical model held sway until the end of the 18th century,
when under the influence of William Shakespeare, German drama
and Stendhal, Romantic dramatists systematically rejected the unities.
Their argument was that far from aiding verisimilitude, it was highly
implausible and artificial to cram the sequence of decisions and events
on which a substantial drama depended into a brief period of time.
Many modern dramatists, most strikingly Jean-Paul Sartre in his Huis
clos (Behind Closed Doors, also translated as In Camera, Vicious Circle
and No Exit), have realized the dramatic advantages of adherence to
confined space and limited time, but few have considered themselves
bound to slavish adherence to a particular system. See also BÉRÉNICE;
CHORUS; LE CID; HERNANI; HUGO, VICTOR; LA QUERELLE
DU CID; LE TARTUFFE; TRISTAN L’HERMITE, FRANÇOIS.
– V –
VACQUERIE, AUGUSTE. See MARCEL, LÉON.
VALLERAN LE CONTE. Influential actor and theater manager at
the end of the 16th century who dominated theatrical activity in Paris
between 1606 and 1612. Precise dates cannot be established and
his name is also given as Valleran-Lecomte. In 1599, in association
with an actor named Adrien Talmy, he formed a company that took
the title Les Comédiens du Roi and tried to settle in the Hôtel de
Bourgogne in Paris. Valleran was particularly associated with the
repertoire of Alexandre Hardy. Although he worked with the most
successful actors of the period, including Bellerose, Bruscambille,
Gaultier-Garguille, Gros-Guillaume and Montdory, he was unable to sustain his theater companies financially, was often in debt
and was obliged to work in provincial theater. His association with
the work of Italian troupes then active in Paris was important for the
future development of French acting in an Italianate style throughout
the early 17th century. Recently discovered documents prove that he
was still active in Paris in 1615, disproving sources that suggested he
might have died abroad in 1613.
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VARIÉTÉS, THÉÂTRE DES
VARIÉTÉS, THÉÂTRE DES. Theater building in Paris, founded in
1807, and the venue in 1836 of Frédéric Lemaître’s triumph in Alexandre Dumas père’s Kean. In the same theater many of Jacques
Offenbach’s operas, including La Belle Hélène (Beautiful Helen
of Troy, 1864), were first performed, with Hortense Schneider.
Virginie Déjazet, Anna Judic and Réjane also performed here.
See also BERTRAND, EUGÈNE; BRASSEUR, JULES; PAGNOL,
MARCEL.
VARLET, CHARLES. See LA GRANGE.
VAUDEVILLE. A word originally applied to a satirical song, hence
associated in the 18th century with musical comedy and in the 19th
with boulevard theater and with light comic drama more generally.
Dramatic vaudeville typically consists of a complex and fast-moving
plot, full of comic misunderstandings, above a simple and moralistic
substructure, written in a burlesque tone. Where music is used, it
is often unoriginal, providing new words for preexisting popular
or traditional songs. Masters of the French vaudeville included
Eugène Scribe, Eugène Labiche, Ludovic Halévy, Henri Meilhac,
Georges Feydeau and Georges Courteline. See also ANOUILH,
JEAN; ATELIER, THÉÂTRE DE L’; BRIALY, JEAN-CLAUDE;
GONCOURT, EDMOND AND JULES HUOT DE; JUDIC, ANNA;
MÉLESVILLE, M.; PALAIS-ROYAL; VILLENEUVE, THÉODORE FERDINAND VALLOU DE.
The word vaudeville is also retained for a satirical song in which
several different characters sing a stanza each, sharing a common
refrain; an example ends Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro
(Figaro’s Wedding, 1784).
VAUDOYER, JEAN-LOUIS (1883–1963). Novelist, poet and
art critic who became administrative director of the ComédieFrançaise during the German occupation of Paris (1941–1944). After three unsuccessful candidacies he was elected to the Académie
française in 1950.
VAUQUELIN DE LA FRESNAYE, JEAN (c1535–c1607). Poet,
critic and author of an Art poétique (written in the 1570s but pub-
VIAN, BORIS
• 247
lished only in 1605), which encapsulated the understanding in the
pre-classical period of Aristotelian dramatic theory.
VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT. See DEFAMILIARIZATION.
VERISIMILITUDE (French: vraisemblance). The lynchpin of classical dramatic theory, insisting that everything that occurs onstage
should be plausible and in conformity with reason. François Hédelin
d’Aubignac made verisimilitude the essence of drama, and his strictures were echoed by Jean Racine (“il n’y a que le vraisemblable
qui touche dans la tragédie”: “only the true-to-life is touching in
tragedy”) and Nicolas Boileau (“Le vrai peut quelquefois n’être
pas vraisemblable”: “what is true is not necessarily plausible”—so if
an event portrayed in drama contravened this requirement, it could
not be excused with reference to historical accuracy). In practice,
audiences have always been ready to accept dramatic conventions,
such as asides and soliloquies, more easily than the strictest defenders of the principle of verisimilitude have allowed, and genres
like opera, the comédie-ballet and the machine play depend entirely on the acceptance of such implausible conventions. See also
BIENSÉANCE; CHAPELAIN, JEAN; CHORUS; COINCIDENCE;
DOUBLE ENUNCIATION; HUGO, VICTOR; LA QUERELLE DE
L’ÉCOLE DES FEMMES; SAINT-ÉVREMOND, CHARLES DE
MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS DE; UNITIES.
VIAN, BORIS (1920–1959). Author, reputed as novelist, singer and
songwriter. He can be seen as characterizing the 1950s with his
disconcerting mixture of anger, commitment and anarchy. One or
two of his plays were performed during his lifetime and generally
provoked scandal, like L’Équarissage pour tous (All to the Knacker’s
Yard, a play about the D-Day landings, written in 1946 and performed in 1950). Others were rejected for performance, including the
anticlerical Le Dernier des métiers (The Last Profession, 1950), and
most were published and performed posthumously. His antiwar play
Le Goûter des généraux (The Generals’ Tea Party) was written in
1951, published in 1959, performed in a German translation in 1964,
but not performed in French until 1965. Les Bâtisseurs d’empire
(The Empire Builders), written in 1957, performed at Jean Vilar’s
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VIAU, THÉOPHILE DE
Théâtre national populaire and published in 1959, was nominally a
study of colonialism but has been adapted in performance to explore
many kinds of totalitarian exploitation. These texts, which combine
farce with violent satire, attacking conventional theater audiences
as well as social institutions, seem more at home in a subversive caféthéâtre culture than in mainline theater houses. Vian also translated
plays by August Strindberg (1849–1912) into French and wrote an
opera libretto, Fiesta (1958), set to music by Darius Milhaud. See
also SERREAU, JEAN-MARIE.
VIAU, THÉOPHILE DE (1590–1626). Baroque poet and dramatist
with a reputation for licentiousness and free-thinking and for resolute
resistance to the constraints imposed by theorists of classicism. His
reputation was accordingly eclipsed during the 17th century but reestablished by 19th-century poets. His drama Les Amours tragiques
de Pyrame et Thisbé (The Tragic Love Story of Pyramus and Thisbe),
performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1617 or 1621, was one of
the first plays in French to be accorded a level of literary respectability. A further tragedy, Pasiphaé, was ascribed to him but was
published posthumously in 1626 and appears never to have been
performed.
VIEUX-COLOMBIER, THÉÂTRE DU. Theater building and company in Paris, established in 1913 by Jacques Copeau with Charles
Dullin and Louis Jouvet. Copeau’s aim was to promulgate sparse
directorial methods, giving priority to acting and text and challenging both the pompous ostentation of Comédie-Française productions and the avant-garde experiments of Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud. Early productions included translations of William
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and of the Jacobean domestic tragedy
A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607) by Thomas Heywood (c1572–
c1650), and the first performances of Paul Claudel’s L’Échange
(The Exchange, written in 1893, performed in 1914) and of André
Gide’s Saül (written in 1896, performed in 1922). After Copeau’s
retirement from the theater in 1924, the venue was used as a cinema
and by occasional visiting companies, including that of Georges Pitoëff. Later highlights included the first performances of Jean-Paul
Sartre’s Huis clos (Behind Closed Doors, also translated as In Cam-
VILLÉGIER, JEAN-MARIE
• 249
era, Vicious Circle, and No Exit, 1944), a production (1944) by Jean
Vilar of Murder in the Cathedral (1935) by Thomas Stearns Eliot
(1888–1965), a controversial lecture given by Artaud in 1947, and
Roger Planchon’s production of Arthur Adamov’s Paolo Paoli
(1957), but no director or company became permanently established
at the theater. Following a 20-year period of closure, the building was
placed at the disposition of the Comédie-Française company in 1993
and is used for more intimate productions than the main theater at
the Salle Richelieu allows. See also ADAM DE LA HALLE; HOSSEIN, ROBERT; ROCHER, RENÉ; ROMAINS, JULES; TESSIER,
VALENTINE.
VIGNY, ALFRED DE (1797–1863). Romantic poet and dramatist
whose plays share with those of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset
the evocation of a typically Romantic atmosphere and hero, although
they are generally more regular in structure. His adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello as Le More de Venise (1829), starring
Mlle Mars and Joanny, replaced Hugo’s Marion de Lorme when
the latter was banned on political grounds. Other key plays include
La Maréchale d’Ancre (1831) and Chatterton (1835). Vigny was
elected to the Académie française in 1845. See also DELAVIGNE,
CASIMIR; DORVAL, MARIE.
VILAR, JEAN (1912–1971). Author, actor and stage director (his
favored term was “régisseur,” or stage manager, but he wielded
more authority for the business and artistic sides of his enterprises
than this would normally suggest). He was particularly associated
with the Avignon Festival and the Théâtre national populaire,
and was director of the latter at the Théâtre de Chaillot from 1951 to
1963. See also COMMITMENT, THEATER OF; CUNY, ALAIN;
DELAY, FLORENCE; DULLIN, CHARLES; GATTI, ARMAND;
LORENZACCIO; OBALDIA, RENÉ DE; PHILIPE, GÉRARD;
PINGET, ROBERT; PLANCHON, ROGER; SOBEL, BERNARD;
SUPERVIELLE, JULES; VIAN, BORIS; VIEUX-COLOMBIER,
THÉÂTRE DU; WILSON, GEORGES.
VILLÉGIER, JEAN-MARIE (1937– ). Stage director and dramaturge, particularly associated with a revival of interest in baroque
250 •
VILLENEUVE, THÉODORE FERDINAND VALLOU DE
theater and with the production of less well-known plays by Pierre
Corneille and his contemporaries. Having directed a historic revival
of François Tristan L’Hermite’s La Mort de Sénèque (The Death of
Seneca) at the Comédie-Française in 1984, he designed and directed
a groundbreaking production of the opera Atys by Jean-Baptiste
Lully and Philippe Quinault (chosen in part because it was Louis
XIV’s favorite lyric tragedy) at the Paris Opéra-Comique in 1987,
which contributed to the restoration of opera as a dynamic and innovative genre following centuries of pedantic and stylized production techniques. Villégier’s productions prioritize the suggestive and
poetic effects of the drama over archeological correctness.
VILLENEUVE, THÉODORE FERDINAND VALLOU DE (1799–
1858). Prolific author of boulevard vaudevilles, including Le Premier Prix, ou Les Deux Artistes (First Prize, or The Two Artists,
1822), La Dette d’honneur (The Debt of Honor, 1826), Le Bateau de
blanchisseuses (The Laundrywomen’s Boat, 1832), La Fille de Dominique (Dominique’s Daughter, 1833), Voltaire en vacances (Voltaire
on Holiday, 1836), Mademoiselle Dangeville (1838)—a comedy
about the 18th-century actress Marie-Anne Dangeville (1714–1796),
a descendant of Montfleury—Yelva, ou L’Orpheline russe (Yelva,
or The Russian Orphan, 1840), and La Femme à trois maris (The
Woman with Three Husbands, 1854). Villeneuve also wrote more
serious drames including Ourika, ou La Négresse (Ourika, or The
Negress, 1824) and La Jeunesse de Marie Stuart (The Early Years of
Mary Queen of Scots, 1829), and his libretto, Deux Vieilles Gardes
(Two Old Guardswomen), was set as an operetta buffa by Léo Delibes (1836–1891).
VILLEURBANNE. See THÉÂTRE NATIONAL POPULAIRE.
VINAVER, MICHEL. Authorial pseudonym used by Michel Grinberg
(1927– ), dramatist. Vinaver was his mother’s family name; he also
used the synonym Guy Nevers. His parents were of Russian extraction, but he was born and brought up in Paris. He obtained university
degrees from New York (1947) and Paris (1951) before working in
industry for the Gillette company in France and Italy from 1953 to
1986, when he accepted a post as Professeur associé at the Institut
VINCENT, JEAN-PIERRE
• 251
d’études théâtrales in Paris. His literary career had begun as a novelist in the 1950s, when he was supported and encouraged by Albert
Camus. Vinaver wrote three plays between 1956 and 1959, then
concentrated on his business career and his family until 1967. Several
of his plays reflect his experience in commerce and industry.
Vinaver’s most important theatrical works include: Aujourd’hui
ou Les Coréens (Today, or The Koreans), produced by Roger Planchon in 1956 at Lyon, and by Jean-Marie Serreau in 1957 at Paris;
Iphigénie Hôtel, written in 1959, published in 1960, produced by
Antoine Vitez at the Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris, in 1977; Dissident, il va sans dire (Dissident, Goes Without Saying), and Nina,
c’est autre chose (Nina, That’s Another Story), produced as a double
bill by Jacques Lassalle, designed by Yannis Kokkos, at the Théâtre
de l’Est Parisien in 1978; Les Travaux et les jours (Works and Days,
1979); L’Émission de television (The Television Program), produced
by Jacques Lassalle with the Comédie-Française at the Odéon in
1990; and Le 11 Septembre 2001, produced at the Avignon Festival
in 2004.
All of these plays are characterized by a discontinuous structure
and by dialogue which is often suggestive, even cryptic, as characters talk at cross purposes; in publication the texts are presented
without punctuation or stage directions, which imposes on actors
the responsibility for working out and conveying who is being addressed and in what tone. This makes for a very realistic depiction of
the intimacy of modern life and work, but paradoxically acts at the
same time as an effective distancing technique, so that the audience
is frequently disconcerted by ambivalent emotional responses. As
with much modern French drama there is a tension in Vinaver’s work
between comic and serious elements, and his political commitment
is conveyed by concrete images rather than by explicit moralizing.
Vinaver also published a volume of Écrits sur le théâtre (Writings on
the Theater) in 1988.
VINCENT, JEAN-PIERRE (1942– ). Stage director, director of the
Théâtre national populaire from 1975, and associated with Antoine
Vitez as an administrator at the Comédie-Française from 1983. He
has been particularly successful in productions of the light comedies
of Beaumarchais and Alfred de Musset, emphasizing their playful
252 •
VISÉ, JEAN DONNEAU DE
incongruity. He won a Molière for best director in 1987. See also
DEUTSCH, MICHEL.
VISÉ, JEAN DONNEAU DE (1638–1710). Journalist, critic and
dramatist. In his Nouvelles nouvelles (News and New Stories, 1663),
Nouvelles galantes, comiques et tragiques (Tales Romantic, Comic
and Tragic, 1669) and as editor of Le Mercure galant from 1672, he
pronounced judgment on matters of current taste, including theater.
He was mostly critical of Molière and downright hostile to Nicolas
Boileau and Jean Racine. He achieved popular success with his
own musical machine plays, written in collaboration with Thomas
Corneille, La Devineresse (The Soothsayer, 1679) and Les Dames
vengées (The Avenged Women, 1695). See also LA QUERELLE DE
L’ÉCOLE DES FEMMES.
VITEZ, ANTOINE (1930–1990). Stage director and academic, particularly associated with experimental productions in the post–1968
period. These were often highly controversial, especially when he
chose classical texts such as those by Molière. He was secretary to
Louis Aragon (1897–1983) from 1960 to 1962, collaborating with
him in translations of plays by Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). His
directorial début was Sophocles’ Electre at Caen in 1966. From 1968
to 1981, he was a professor at the Paris Conservatoire and director of
a theater company and workshop at Ivry before becoming director of
Théâtre de Chaillot (1972–1974 and 1981–1988), then from 1988 administrator of the Comédie-Française. His productions were always
focused on the needs of the actors, sacrificing naturalness for the
sake of expressivity. He insisted that theater should simultaneously
aim at intellectual rigor and at a wide public: “un théâtre élitaire pour
tous” (“quality theater available to all”). He published a number of
academic studies including La Tragédie, c’est l’histoire des larmes
(Tragedy is the History of Tears, 1976) and L’Essai de solitude (On
Solitude, 1981). See also AUDIENCES; AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’;
BEN JELLOUN, TAHAR; BÉRÉNICE; BRAUNSCHWEIG, STÉPHANE; KOKKOS, YANNIS; LASSALLE, JACQUES; LA NOUVELLE CRITIQUE; PORTE SAINT-MARTIN, THÉÂTRE DE LA;
SCHIARETTI, CHRISTIAN; TARTUFFE; THÉÂTRE NATIONAL
POPULAIRE; VINAVER, MICHEL; VINCENT, JEAN-PIERRE.
VOLTAIRE
• 253
VITRAC, ROGER (1899–1952). Surrealist dramatist. With Antonin Artaud and Robert Aron (1898–1975), he founded the Théâtre
Alfred Jarry in 1926, and dedicated it to experimental programs, including his own Victor, ou Les Enfants au pouvoir (Victor, or Power
to the Children, 1928), an assault on bourgeois family values in the
tradition established by Alfred Jarry. See also AMBIGU, THÉÂTRE DE L’.
VOLTAIRE. Authorial pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet (1694–
1778), the most famous wit, thinker and writer of the 18th-century
French Enlightenment. His literary career began and ended with
plays (Œdipe, 1718, and Irène, 1778), and he was a passionate supporter of theater as a civilizing influence on society, but he did not
have a significant practical or theoretical impact on the development
of drama. His collected works include stories, philosophical tracts,
history and science as well as poems and plays, and the works on
which his fame chiefly rests, Candide (1759) and the Lettres philosophiques (1734), are non-dramatic, although the latter contains his
assessment of William Shakespeare—a genius but lacking in taste
and ignorant of dramatic form—and a translation of some speeches
from Hamlet.
As this opinion implies, Voltaire’s approach to theater was essentially conservative and classical, despite the iconoclasm and defiance
of tradition that characterizes his thought in general. He attacked superstition and blind obedience in religion and politics, yet remained
loyal to the formulæ of classical tragedy in his dramatic writing,
which received support from the most significant actors of the day,
Mlle Clairon and Lekain, praise from the theater-going public and
frequent condemnation from political and religious authorities. Voltaire’s most striking innovation was the use of exotic locations, with
tragedies set in Jerusalem, Mecca, Peru and China; in these and other
plays he cultivated spectacular effects in production and costume. In
comparison with the caustic wit of his narrative and satirical works,
his plays are predominantly sentimental. Despite his opposition to the
pre-Romantic philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his continued suspicion of the æsthetic of Shakespearean theater, Voltaire was
thus ironically instrumental in heralding some of the innovations that
were to characterize Romantic drama.
254 •
VRAISEMBLANCE
Most of his tragedies were written in the 1730s and some of
them are derived from Shakespearean subjects following a stay in
England (1726–1729): Brutus (1730), Zaïre (1732)—his first major
public success—La Mort de César (The Death of Cæsar, 1735),
L’Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son, 1736), Mahomet (1741)—in
which the founder of Islam is presented as an imposter, and which
was banned after its successful initial run—and Mérope (1743).
Many of these were performed by noble amateurs at the château in
Cirey of his benefactress Mme du Châtelet (1706–1749). During a
brief period of official employment at the French court, in which
he was appointed to the Académie française in 1746, he composed
operatic libretti, but his work was looked on with less favor than
the gloomier tragedies of Prosper-Jolyot de Crébillon, with whom
subsequently he entered into systematic rivalry. Socrate (1759) is
an unconventional play mixing tragedy and comedy, full of satire
against organized religion. Tancrède, a chivalric tragedy with a
new verse form, produced with sumptuous decor in 1760, proved
to be Voltaire’s last dramatic triumph in this period. During his
exile at Ferney near the Swiss border (1760–1778), his plays were
still being performed in Paris, and he continued to mount amateur
performances of new works, such as Les Guèbres ou La Tolérance
(1769) in which the significance of his philosophical message frequently outweighs dramatic considerations. He made a triumphant
appearance at the Comédie-Française for a performance of Irène a
few weeks before his death.
Voltaire’s comedies and operas are scarcely remembered, but one
peculiarity is his comedy La Prude (1740), an adaptation of The
Plain Dealer (1677) by the English Restoration playwright William Wycherley (c1640–1716), itself an adaptation of Molière’s
Le Misanthrope (1666). See also BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS;
BRIZARD; DUCIS, JEAN-FRANÇOIS; GRÉTRY, ANDRÉ; LA
CHAUSSÉE, PIERRE-CLAUDE NIVELLE DE; LECOUVREUR,
ADRIENNE; PALISSOT DE MONTENOY, CHARLES; QUINAULT, PHILIPPE; VILLENEUVE, THÉODORE FERDINAND
VALLOU DE.
VRAISEMBLANCE. See VERISIMILITUDE.
WILSON, GEORGES
• 255
– W –
WAGNER, RICHARD (1813–1883). German operatic composer,
librettist and theorist. His influence was slow to be felt in France, but
he had a marked effect on the æsthetic thought of Charles Baudelaire
(1821–1867) and in consequence on the Symbolist movement. He
visited Paris in 1839–1842 in a vain attempt to promote performances of Rienzi. A performance of the overture to Tannhäuser in
Paris in 1850 was attacked by the influential Belgian musicologist
and composer François Joseph Fétis (1784–1871), but championed
by Baudelaire. Wagner himself returned to Paris in 1860, rented
the Théâtre italien for a concert of his work, and finally, after the
intervention of Louis Napoléon and the Austrian ambassadress, la
princesse von Metternich, managed a production of Tannhäuser at
the Opéra in 1861. Although it appears to have been artistically successful, the production was controversial and it was closed after three
performances by an alliance of musical conservatives, those who
preferred the lighter music of Daniel François Auber (1782–1871),
nationalist forces and members of the influential Jockey Club who
objected to the fact that the main balletic element, in Act I, was over
before their customary time of arrival for a performance!
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 undermined further attempts,
led by the conductor Jules Pasdeloup (1819–1887), to persuade the
French public of the value of Wagner’s music, and despite successful productions of Lohengrin in Brussels in 1878 and of the first act
of the same work in Paris in 1879, and a further abortive attempt to
present it in Paris in 1887, it was not until 1891 that a production
of any Wagner opera had a successful run in a Paris theater. That
production of Lohengrin was followed at the Opéra, under its director Eugène Bertrand, by Die Walküre (1893), Tannhäuser (1895)
and The Mastersingers (1897), all conducted by Charles Lamoureux
(1834–1899). See also CARVALHO, LÉON; CHÉREAU, PATRICE; DESPLECHIN, ÉDOUARD; DIAGHILEV, SERGE DE;
LASSALLE, JACQUES; MESGUICH, DANIEL.
WILSON, GEORGES (1921–2010). Actor, theater director and
administrator. He joined the Théâtre national populaire at the
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WILSON, ROBERT
Théâtre de Chaillot in 1952, succeeding Jean Vilar as its director
from 1963 to 1972, appearing notably in productions of Molière’s
L’École des femmes (The School for Women) and Samuel Beckett’s
En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) and directing Jean-Paul
Sartre’s Huis clos (Behind Closed Doors, also translated as In
Camera, Vicious Circle, and No Exit) and the opera Falstaff by
Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). After 1972, Wilson worked as actor
and director at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, and has also appeared in at
least 50 films including Dialogue des Carmélites (1960) by Philippe
Agostini (1910–2001) with Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Louis Barrault
and Madeleine Renaud, Tintin et le mystère de la toison d’or (Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece, 1961) by Jean-Jacques
Vierne (1921– ), Marquise (1997) by Véra Belmont (1931– ) and
Les Destinées sentimentales (1997) by Olivier Assayas (1955– ). See
also AVIGNON, FESTIVAL D’; DELAY, FLORENCE; RENAISSANCE, THÉÂTRE DE LA.
WILSON, ROBERT (1941– ). American stage director particularly
associated with the Nancy Festival, and later with the Paris Festival
d’automne. Having been speechless until the age of 17, he discovered
himself and his theatrical vocation through dance, and his productions always prioritized movement over other aspects of text and
production. His silent opera Deafman Glance was premièred in Paris
in 1971, and he achieved an international triumph at the Avignon
Festival in 1976 with his production of the minimalist composition
Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass (1937– ). Robert Wilson’s
international career has since included opera productions at the Paris
Opéra and Opéra-Bastille and an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou
in Paris.
WOUTERS, LILIANE (1930– ). Belgian poet, author and dramatist,
of Flemish origin but writing in French. Her plays include Oscarine
et les tournesols (Oscarine and the Sunflowers, 1964), La Porte (The
Door, 1967), Vies et morts de Mademoiselle Shakespeare (Lives and
Deaths of Miss Shakespeare, 1979), La salle des profs (The Staff
Room, 1983), L’Équateur (1986), Charlotte ou La Nuit mexicaine
(Charlotte, or The Mexican Night, 1989) and Le Jour du Narval (Day
of the Narwhal, 1991).
ZOLA, ÉMILE
• 257
– Y –
YACINE, KATEB (1929–1989). See KATEB, YACINE.
YOURCENAR, MARGUÉRITE DE. Authorial pseudonym of the
novelist and dramatist Marguérite de Crayencour (1903–1987). She
was the first female member of the Académie française, to which
she was elected in 1980. Dramatic works formed a small part of her
output and were often literary reflections on themes of identity. They
include adaptations of narrative works, such as Rendre à César (Give
Unto Cæsar, 1961), based on her own novel Denier du rêve (Penny
in a Dream, translated as A Coin in Nine Hands, 1943, revised 1959),
and La Petite Sirène (The Little Mermaid, 1942), a dramatization of
the story by Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), and imaginative
reworkings of classical myths: Le Mystère d’Alceste (The Mystery of
Alcestis, 1942), Électre ou La Chute des masques (Elektra, or Dropping the Mask, 1944) and Qui n’a pas son minotaure? (Who Has Not
His Minotaur?, 1944, revised 1957).
– Z –
ZOLA, ÉMILE (1840–1902). Naturalist novelist. His Thérèse Raquin
(1867) was adapted by him for the stage in 1873 and performed at
the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris, but was hissed by audiences
and condemned by critics. After the equal failure of Les Héritiers
Rabourdin (The Rabourdin Inheritance) at the Théâtre de Cluny the
following year, Zola turned from dramatist to critic, and in Le Bien
Public (The Public Good) he lambasted all rival authors—particularly
Eugène Scribe, Victorien Sardou and Alexandre Dumas fils—as
trivial, inane and unscientific. Zola’s later novels, L’Assommoir
(1877, dramatized 1879), Nana (1880, dramatized 1881) and PotBouille (1882, dramatized 1883) were adapted by William Busnach
(1832–1907) for the Théâtre de l’Ambigu, and achieved greater
success in performance. See also ANTOINE, ANDRÉ; BECQUE,
HENRY; FORT, PAUL; LEMOINE-MONTIGNY; LUGNÉ-POE.
Bibliography
CONTENTS
Introduction
Bibliographies, Anthologies and General Surveys
General Studies—Historical
General Studies—Thematic
Dictionaries of Terms
Bibliographies (General)
Bibliographies (Early Modern)
Bibliographies (20th and 21st Centuries)
Actors
Theories of Acting
Semiology of Theater
Tragedy
Comedy
Other Generic Studies
Music Theater
Paris Theater Houses
Medieval Theater
General
Religious Plays
Farces
Other
Renaissance Theater
General
Staging and Physical Conditions
Literary
Theater of the Ancien Régime (c1600–1789)
Baroque and Preclassical Theater (c1600–1660)
Classical Theater (c1660–1700)
Eighteenth-Century Theater
259
260
264
264
265
265
265
265
266
266
267
267
268
268
269
269
270
270
270
271
271
272
272
272
273
273
274
276
278
282
260 •
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Theater from 1789 to 1914
Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Theater
Romantic Theater
Realist and Naturalist Theater
Symbolist Theater
Other Theater from 1870 to 1914
Theater in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Theater 1914–1945
Postwar Theater
The Theater of the Absurd
Theater 1945–1968
Theater since 1968
French-Language Drama from Outside France
Europe
Canada
Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean
Websites
Historical
Literary Analysis
Theater Spaces and Performance
Bibliographical and Archival
Contemporary Activity in France
286
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301
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304
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304
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305
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INTRODUCTION
In making a selection from the almost endless supply of books and articles
relevant to the study of French theater history, priority has been given to works
written in English and published within the last 25 years. Works in French are
included where they give indispensable insights or where a distinctively French
perspective is thought to be valuable; earlier works are included where they
remain authoritative, provide a particularly useful oversight or are of interest
specifically as historical documents in their own right. Scholarly accounts of
single authors are included, but not studies whose focus is on biography rather
than on literary or theatrical analysis.
The arrangement is concentric: thus within each chronological section works
pertaining to the whole period precede those pertaining to only one part of it,
which precede those dealing with a single author. Those whose primary focus
is on performance history or the practicalities of theater have been separated
from those with a more literary perspective. None of these compartments is
watertight, and occasionally works whose classification is problematic have
been included more than once.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• 261
The most outstanding scholars currently working on all aspects of French
drama are Alain Viala and Christian Biet: without exception their works listed
here, and more recent works that will undoubtedly continue to be published
by them, combine academic rigor with an intelligent and creative response to
the experience of theater. English-speaking students of French drama remain
indebted to Bill Howarth, whose studies of Molière, Beaumarchais and the
Romantic dramatists have not been superseded, while contemporary theater is
expertly followed and analyzed by David Bradby.
For French speakers, the most authoritative and approachable general history
of French theater is Alain Viala’s Le Théâtre en France: Des origines à nos
jours. Those who are not French speakers would be better advised to approach
their study period by period, with Peter Arnott’s Introduction to the French
Theatre, Bill Howarth’s Sublime and Grotesque: A Study of French Romantic
Drama, Harold Hobson’s French Theatre since 1830, Jacques Guicharnaud’s
Modern French Theatre from Giraudoux to Genet, John Fletcher’s Forces in
Modern French Drama and Wallace Fowlie’s Dionysus in Paris: A Guide
to Contemporary French Theater covering among them the most significant
highlights.
Frederick Brown’s Theatre and Revolution: The Culture of the French Stage
highlights the ever-present relationship between theatrical activity and politics,
while Patrice Pavis’s Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analysis
reminds readers that the French have often been at the forefront of semiology
and the abstract analysis of theatrical experience, and Marvin Carlson’s Places
of Performance: The Semiotics of Theater Architecture brings out the relationship between performance venues and the creation and experience of drama,
always a close one, and particularly crucial in the development of French
theater. The theoretical writings of Antonin Artaud, Eugène Ionesco, Michel
Vinaver and Anne Ubersfeld, among many others, will introduce readers to
the close relationship between theory and practice that has always existed in
French theater history and has become ever more central to an understanding
of its development in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The authoritative works by Alan Hindley and Charles Mazouer on (respectively) European and French theater of the medieval period have been updated
but not superseded by more recent studies, while Charles Mazouer, and before
him Enea Balmas and Jean Jacquot, have been the foremost French scholars
dealing with theater in the Renaissance.
As French theater exploded into international significance in the 1630s, so
its bibliography expands exponentially as regards studies of that period. Henry
Carrington Lancaster’s nine-volume History of French Dramatic Literature in
the Seventeenth Century remains the most complete printed reference source
for facts about plays and first performances, although modern scholars may
262 •
BIBLIOGRAPHY
more conveniently obtain much of the information it contains from the website
of the Calendrier électronique des spectacles sous l’ancien régime, César, at
http://www.cesar.org.uk/cesar2/. A detailed survey of all aspects of theatrical
activity in the ancien régime period, based on contemporary sources, has been
compiled by a team of scholars under W. D. Howarth in French Theatre in the
Neo-classical Era, 1550–1789 as part of Cambridge University Press’s Theatre
in Europe: A Documentary History.
More digestible introductions to French theater in the classical period are
provided by Georges Mongrédien’s La Vie quotidienne des comédiens au
temps de Molière (translated as Daily Life in the French Theatre at the Time
of Molière) and by several of the most authoritative studies of individual
playwrights: W. D. Howarth’s Molière: A Playwright and His Audience,
Odette de Mourgues’s Racine, or The Triumph of Relevance and Richard Parish’s Racine: The Limits of Tragedy. Alongside those two studies of Racine’s
overall output, David Maskell’s Racine: A Theatrical Reading is notable for
its insightful reminders that it is on the stage that Racine’s poetry comes most
fully and dramatically to life. French-speaking students of Pierre Corneille will
find excellent overviews in Christian Biet’s Moi, Pierre Corneille and Alain
Niderst’s Pierre Corneille, whereas English speakers may be better advised
to consult a series of separate studies: David Clarke’s Pierre Corneille: Poetics and Political Drama Under Louis XIII for the mainstream early tragedies,
Jonathan Mallinson’s The Comedies of Pierre Corneille: Experiments in the
Comic for the comedies, and the works listed by Milorad Margitic for a closer
scholarly focus on individual plays and themes. Andrew Calder’s Molière:
The Theory and Practice of Comedy gives insight into the author’s thought,
Bernadette Rey-Flaud’s Molière et la farce brings out the relationship between
the dramatist and his Italian models, while Gerry McCarthy’s The Theatres of
Molière surveys the breadth of his creativity.
The meticulous documentary work undertaken by Wilma DeierkaufHolsboer on the history of the Paris stage in the baroque and classical periods
has been complemented by more analytical and interpretative studies by several
generations of English-speaking scholars, notably Tom Lawrenson, Donald
Roy and John Golder in the 1960s and 1970s and Alan Howe more recently:
their individual works on the stages and staging are listed below and all shed
light on how dramatists overcame physical restrictions to create inventive
masterpieces.
One of the most engaging ways of understanding French theatrical activity
in the classical period is to read the words of a contemporary practitioner, and
Samuel Chappuzeau’s Le Théâtre français (1674) contains a wealth of inside
information to complement the more tendentious accounts given by Corneille
and Molière of their interactions with the acting profession. Although those
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• 263
authors and Racine undoubtedly dominated the theatrical scene, it should not be
forgotten that rich veins of activity went on across the whole period, and Roger
Guichemerre’s La comédie avant Molière 1640–1660, as well as studies by
Guy Spielmann, Jan Clarke and others of the informal theaters and fairground
performances of the period between 1670 and 1730, will enable students to
plug the gaps between the high peaks and enhance their overall picture of the
life of the theater.
Finally, Philip Tomlinson’s edited volume, under the title French Classical
Theatre Today: Teaching, Research, Performance, brings together the recent
work and ideas of most leading academics working on classical French drama
in British universities.
Eighteenth-century theater has been less exhaustively studied and is probably due for a critical reevaluation: recent interest shown in Marivaux by stage
directors in France and elsewhere has not been matched by a full-scale academic study, and the best insights into his plays may be obtained by study of
critical editions of individual works. There have been recent suggestions that a
tendency to pigeonhole Voltaire’s drama as stale and derivative is unfair, and
the studies by Russell Goulbourne may mark the beginning of a resurgence of
interest in his work for theater. The standard overviews of Beaumarchais by
W. D. Howarth in English and Jacques Scherer in French continue to provide
a sound introduction.
For overviews of the many-faceted worlds of French theater since the Revolution, Harold Hobson’s Anglo-Saxon perspective may usefully be balanced by
French presentations in Patrick Berthier’s Le Théâtre au XIXe siècle or in the
more recent Impossibles Théâtres: XIXe-XXe siècles edited by Bernadette Bost,
Jean-François Louette and Bertrand Vibert.
W. D. Howarth’s overview of the Romantic period may be complemented
by individual studies of Anne Ubersfeld on Victor Hugo and Bernard Masson
on Alfred de Musset. The individual titles listed for Realist, Naturalist and
Symbolist theater again provide overviews that can be enriched by the study of
detailed critical editions of individual plays, while Bettina Knapp’s The Reign
of the Theatrical Director: French Theatre 1887–1924 reminds us always to
contextualize the study of modern French theater within the world of the stage,
and the works on Alfred Jarry by Henri Béhar and Jill Fell set the scene for the
experimental explosions of the 20th century.
The literary overviews of French theater since World War I listed above can
usefully be combined with Jean-Jacques Roubine’s Théâtre et mise en scène
(1880–1980) for an approach that stresses the significance of staging. The
first half of the century is well covered by Bettina Knapp’s French Theatre,
1918–1939, Dorothy Knowles’s French Drama of the Inter-war Years and
other works listed by the same scholars. Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the
264 •
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Absurd remains seminal and may be supplemented by the individual studies by
Richard Coe of Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Jean Genet. Authoritative
overviews in English exist on the works of Albert Camus (Edward Freeman),
Jean Anouilh (Hugh McIntyre), Jean-Paul Sartre (Dorothy McCall) and Michel
Vinaver (David Bradby), while Anne Ubersfeld has provided a close study of
Bernard-Marie Koltès. Other postwar and contemporary French theater has
been studied by David Bradby, whose Modern French Drama gives scholarly
and meticulous coverage of the period since 1968 (editions exist in both English and French covering slightly different periods between 1940 and 2000).
For all printed French sources, as well as for contextualizing the experience of French theater in the true sense, a visit to Paris is a pleasurable
necessity. As well as the main sites of the Bibliothèque nationale, the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal houses many of the most important theatrical collections
and archives, and both the Paris Opéra and the Comédie-Française house
increasingly user-friendly and well-catalogued archives for researchers and
enthusiasts.
Using Internet resources even for serious academic research is increasingly indispensable and respectable, and there is probably already an infinite
number of ways to find access to material on the Internet relating to French
theater. Almost all significant authors, actors (alive and in many cases dead),
theater buildings and companies have dedicated websites; academics and others increasingly make the fruits of their scholarly labors public, and keyword
searches will open thousands of links, which may be informative, interesting
and respectable. The tiny selection offered at the end of the bibliography
contains starting points that have proved reliable and valuable in the domains
indicated; all were active and up-to-date in August 2009.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, ANTHOLOGIES AND GENERAL SURVEYS
General Studies—Historical
Brown, Frederick. Theatre and Revolution: The Culture of the French Stage.
New York: Viking PR, 1980.
Corvin, Michel. Dictionnaire encyclopédique du théâtre. Paris: Bordas, 1991;
nouvelle édition, 1996.
Hemmings, F. W. J. Theatre and State in France, 1760–1905. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Hubert, Marie-Claude. Le Théâtre. Paris: Colin, 1988.
Jomaron, Jacqueline de, ed. Le Théâtre en France. 2 vols. (Vol. 1: Du Moyen
Âge à 1789. Vol. 2: De la Révolution à nos jours.) Paris: Colin, 1988.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• 265
Pavis, Patrice. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analysis. Translated by Christine Shantz. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. (An
English translation of an earlier edition of the following item.)
———. Dictionnaire du théâtre (édition revue et corrigée). Paris: Colin, 2005.
Viala, Alain, Jean-Pierre Bordier, et al., eds. Le Théâtre en France: Des Origines à nos jours. Paris: Presses universitaires de France (Collection premier
cycle), 1997.
Wickham, Glynne. A History of the Theatre. London: Phaidon, 1992.
General Studies—Thematic
Freeman, E., et al., eds. Myth and Its Making in the French Theatre: Studies presented to W. D. Howarth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988.
Larthomas, Pierre. Le Langage dramatique, sa nature, ses procédés. Paris:
Colin, 1972.
Verdier, Anne, et al., eds. Art et usages du costume de scène. Beaulieu, France:
Lampsaque, 2007.
Zatlin, Phyllis. Cross-cultural Approaches to Theatre: The Spanish-French
Connection. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1994.
Dictionaries of Terms
Band-Kuzmany, Karin R. M. Glossary of the Theatre, in English, French,
Italian and German. Amsterdam: Elsevier (Glossaria interpretum, no. 15),
1969.
Rae, Kenneth, and Richard Southern, eds. An International Vocabulary of
Technical Theatre Terms in Eight Languages: American, Dutch, English,
French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish. London: Reinhardt, 1959.
Bibliographies (General)
Kempton, R. French Literature: An Annotated Guide to Selected Bibliographies. New York: Modern Language Association of America (Selected
Bibliographies in Language and Literature, no. 2), 1981.
Bibliographies (Early Modern)
Dawson, R. L. “Theatre and Research in the Arsenal: The Rondel Inventaire.”
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 260, 1989, 465–512.
266 •
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Joannidès, A. La Comédie-Française de 1680 à 1900: Dictionnaire général des
pièces et des auteurs. Paris: Plon, 1901. Reprinted New York: Burt Franklin,
1971.
Lepage, Franck. Répertoire du théâtre de la Révolution française: comprenant
une introduction, un répertoire des œuvres héroïco-patriotiques écrites pendant la période, des œuvres écrites après la période, et des ouvrages écrits
sur la période. Paris: Fédération française des maisons de jeunes et de la
culture, 1988.
Parfaict, F., and C. and G. d’Abguerbe. Dictionnaire des théâtres de Paris. 7
vols. Paris: Lambert, 1756.
Tissier, André. Les Spectacles à Paris pendant la Révolution: Répertoire analytique, chronologique et bibliographique. Vol. 1: De la réunion des Etats
généraux à la chute de la royauté, 1789–1792. Geneva: Droz (Histoire des
idées et critique littéraire, no. 305), 1992.
———. Les Spectacles à Paris pendant la révolution: Répertoire analytique,
chronologique et bibliographique. Vol. 2: De la proclamation de la république à la fin de la convention nationale, 21 septembre 1792–26 octobre 1795.
Geneva: Droz (Histoire des idées et critique littéraire, no. 400), 2002.
Vuillermoz, Marc, ed. Dictionnaire analytique des œuvres théâtrales françaises du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Champion (Dictionnaires et Références, no. 3),
1998.
Bibliographies (20th and 21st Centuries)
Confortès, Claude. Répertoire du théâtre contemporain de langue française.
Paris: Nathan, 2000.
Guérin, Jean-Yves, ed. Dictionnaire des pièces de théâtre françaises du XXe
siècle. Paris: Champion (Dictionnaires et Références, no. 13), 2005.
Hainaux, René, et al. Les Arts du spectacle: Ouvrages en langue française
concernant théâtre, musique, danse, mime, marionnettes, variétés, cirque,
radio, télévision, cinéma, publiés dans le monde entre 1960 et 1985. (The
text is given in French and in English.) Brussels: Labor, 1989.
Thibaudat, Jean-Pierre. Théâtre français contemporain. Paris: Ministère des
affaires étrangères: Association pour la diffusion de la pensée française,
2000.
Actors
Lyonnet, H. Dictionnaire des comédiens français. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie de
l’art du théâtre/Geneva: Bibliothèque de la Revue universelle internationale
illustrée, 1904. Reprinted Geneva: Slatkine, 1969.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• 267
Theories of Acting
Cole, Toby, and Helen Krich Chinoy, eds. Actors on Acting: The Theories,
Techniques, and Practices of the World’s Great Actors, Told in Their Own
Words. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1949.
Dort, Bernard. Théâtre/Public—Théâtre réel—Théâtre en jeu. 3 vols. Paris:
Seuil, 1953–1978. Reprinted 1979.
Feral, Josette. Mise en scène et jeu de l’acteur: Entretiens. (Tome 1: L’Espace
du texte. Tome 2: Le Corps en scène. Tome 3: Voix de femmes.) Paris : Jeu/
Lansman, 1997–2006.
Gros de Gasquet, Julia. En disant l’alexandrin: L’Acteur tragique et son art,
XVIIe-XXe siècle. Paris: Champion, 2006.
Mamczarz, Irène. Le Masque et l’âme: De L’Improvisation à la création
théâtrale. Paris: Klincksieck/Société internationale d’histoire comparée du
théâtre, de l’opéra et du ballet (Collection Théâtre européen, opéra, ballet,
no. 8), 1999.
Parent, Michel. Création théâtrale et création architecturale. London: Athlone, 1971.
Roach, J. E. The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. Newark:
Delaware University Press, 1985.
Rolland, Romain. Le Théâtre du peuple. Edited by Chantal Meyer-Plantureux.
Brussels: Complexe (Le Théâtre en question), 2003.
Roubine, Jean-Jacques. Introduction aux grandes théories du théâtre. Paris:
Dunod, 1990.
Sarrazac, Jean-Pierre. Jeux de rêve et autres détours. Belval, France: Circé
(Penser le théâtre), 2004.
Vilar, Jean. Le Théâtre, service public. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.
Semiology of Theater
Artaud, Antonin. Le Théâtre et son double, printed with related documentation
in Œuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.
Autant-Mathieu, Marie-Christine. Écrire pour le théâtre. Les Enjeux de l’écriture dramatique. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1995.
Barthes, Roland. Écrits sur le théâtre: Textes réunis et présentés par Jean-Loup
Rivière. Paris: Seuil (Points. Essais, no. 492), 2002.
Carlson, M. Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theater Architecture.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Gefen, Alexandre. La Mimèsis: Introduction, choix de textes, commentaires,
vade-mecum et bibliographie. Paris: Flammarion (Series GF Corpus: lettres,
no. 3061), 2003.
268 •
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gould, Evlyn. Virtual Theater: From Diderot to Mallarmé. Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Ionesco, Eugène. Notes et contre-notes. Paris: Gallimard, 1962.
Macé-Barbier, Nathalie. Lire le drame. Paris: Dunod (Lettres SUP), 1999.
Ryngaert, Jean-Pierre. Introduction à l’analyse du théâtre. Paris: Dunod (Collection Lettres supérieures), 1999.
Scheer, Edward, ed. Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge,
2004.
Schumacher, Claude. Artaud on Theatre. London: Methuen, 1989.
Smadja, Isabelle. La Folie au théâtre: Regards de dramaturges sur une mutation. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2004.
Szondi, Peter. Theorie des modernen Dramas. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1956.
Translated into French by P. Pavis as Théorie du drame moderne. Lausanne:
L’Âge d’homme, 1981. Translated into English by M. Hays as Theory of
Modern Drama. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987.
Ubersfeld, Anne. Lire le théâtre. Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978.
———. L’École du spectateur. Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1981.
Tragedy
Biet, Christian. La Tragédie. Paris: Colin (Cursus: Lettres), 1997.
Clément, Bruno. La Tragédie classique. Paris: Seuil (Mémo. Lettres-français,
no. 110), 1999.
Couprie, Alain. Lire la tragédie. Paris: Dunod, 1998. Reprinted Paris: Colin
(Collection Lettres supérieures), 2005.
Forestier, Georges. Passions tragiques et règles classiques: Essai sur la tragédie française. Paris: Presses universitaires de France (Perspectives littéraires), 2003.
Louvat, Bénédicte. La Poétique de la tragédie classique. Paris: Sedes (Campus: Lettres), 1997.
Lyons, John D. Kingdom of Disorder: The Theory of Tragedy in Classical
France. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press (Purdue Studies in
Romance Literatures, no. 18), 1999.
Ribard, Dinah, and Alain Viala, eds. Le Tragique: Anthologie et lecture accompagnée. Paris: Gallimard (Bibliothèque Gallimard, no. 96), 2002.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Un Théâtre de situations. Paris: Gallimard (Idées), 1973.
Comedy
Connon, Derek, and George Evans, eds. Essays on French Comic Drama from
the 1640s to the 1780s. Bern: Lang (French Studies of the 18th and 19th
Centuries, no. 7), 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• 269
Corvin, Michel. Lire la comédie. Paris: Dunod, 1994.
Gilot, Michel, and Jean Serroy. La Comédie à l’âge classique. Paris: Belin
(Belin sup. lettres), 1997.
Goldzink, Jean. Comique et comédie au siècle des Lumières. Paris: L’Harmattan (Collection Critiques littéraires), 2000.
Guichemerre, Roger. La Comédie classique en France: De Jodelle à
Beaumarchais. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1978.
Sternberg, Véronique. La Poétique de la comédie. Paris: Sedes (Campus. Lettres), 1999.
Other Generic Studies
Baron, Philippe, ed. Le Drame: Du XVIe Siècle à nos jours. Dijon: Editions
universitaires (Écritures), 2004.
Biet, Christian, et al., eds. Théâtre de la cruauté et récits sanglants en France
(XVIe-XVIIe siècle). Paris: Laffont (Bouquins), 2006.
Emelina, Jean. Comédie et tragédie. Nice: Publications de la Faculté des lettres,
arts et sciences humaines (Collection Traverses, no. 1), 1998.
Hand, Richard J., and Michael Wilson. Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of
Horror. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002.
Music Theater
Bonnassies, J. La Musique à la Comédie-Française. Paris: Baur, 1874.
Boon Cuillé, Tili. Narrative Interludes: Musical Tableaux in 18th-century
French Texts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Brown, Bruce Alan. Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
Cessac, Catherine, ed. Molière et la musique: Des États du Languedoc à la
cour du Roi-Soleil. Montpellier: Presses du Languedoc (Musique et patrimoine en Languedoc-Roussillon), 2004.
Christout, M.-F. Le Ballet de cour au XVIIe siècle. Geneva: Minkoff, 1987.
Coeyman, B. “Theatres for Opera and Ballet during the Reigns of Louis XIV
and Louis XV.” Early Music, 18, 1990, 22–37.
Delmas, C. “Corneille et l’opéra italien.” In La France et l’Italie au temps
de Mazarin, Colloque du CMR 17. Grenoble: Presses universitaires, 1986,
391–398.
Du Crest, S. Des Fêtes à Versailles. Les Divertissements de Louis XIV. Paris:
Aux Amateurs des Livres, 1990.
Everist, Mark. Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-century
Paris. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2005.
270 •
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Girdlestone, C. La Tragédie en musique (1673–1750) considérée comme genre
littéraire. Geneva: Droz, 1972.
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Hedgcock, F. A. A Cosmopolitan Actor: David Garrick and his French
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Fairground and Informal Theater
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Voltaire
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THEATER FROM 1789 TO 1914
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Staging and Physical Conditions
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Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Theater
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Carlson, Marvin. The Theatre of the French Revolution. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
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Romantic Theater
Beus, Yifen Tsau. Towards a Paradoxical Theatre: Schlegelian Irony in German and French Romantic Drama, 1797–1843. Bern: Lang (The Age of
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Daniels, Barry V. Revolution in the Theatre: French Romantic Theories of
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Howarth, W. D. Sublime and Grotesque: A Study of French Romantic Drama.
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Suzuki, Shoichiro. Stendhal et le théâtre. Moncalieri, Italy: Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerche sui “Viaggio in Italia” (Bibliothèque Stendhal: Études, no.
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Hugo
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Balzac
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Musset
Didier, Jean-Jacques. L’esprit: Stylistique du mot d’esprit dans le théâtre de
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Masson, Bernard. Théâtre et langage: Essai sur le dialogue dans les comédies de Musset. Paris: Minard (Lettres modernes, Langues et styles,
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Realist and Naturalist Theater
Arvin, Neil Cole. Eugéne Scribe and the French Theatre, 1815–1860. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924. Republished New York: B.
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Symbolist Theater
Cabral, Maria de Jesus. Mallarmé hors frontières: Des Défis de l’Œuvre au
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Maeterlinck
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Other Theater from 1870 to 1914
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Staging and Physical Conditions
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Jarry
Beaumont, Keith. Alfred Jarry: A Critical and Biographical Study.
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THEATER IN THE 20th AND 21st CENTURIES
Bishop, Tom. Pirandello and the French Theater. New York: New York
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WEBSITES
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http://www.theatrehistory.com
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http://www.crht.org/ (academic activities at the University of Paris; in
French)
http://clicnet.swarthmore.edu/litterature/sujets/theatre.html (wide-ranging
links)
http://www.toutmoliere.net (widespread general reference on 17th century in
France)
http://www.site-moliere.com
http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Theatre/DF_theatre.shtml
http://www.grandguignol.com
Theater Spaces and Performance
http://www.comedie-francaise.fr/dev/index.php
http://17emesiecle.free.fr/Theatre.php
http://www.artslynx.org/theatre/
http://www.ville-tourcoing.fr/patrimoine/theatre/default.htm (specific to a theater in Tourcoing but shedding interesting light on French provincial theater
history)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Bibliographical and Archival
http://gallica.bnf.fr (access to texts in French of many out-of-copyright plays)
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/french/marandet/
http://www.theatredatabase.com/index.html
http://www.theatrales.uqam.ca
http://www.theatrales.uqam.ca/3h.html (section devoted to French Canada)
http://www.SIBMAS.org/idpac
Contemporary Activity in France
http://www.theatre-contemporain.net
http://www.theatreonline.com
About the Author
Edward Forman is a senior lecturer in French in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol, UK, where he has taught
French literature since 1978. Having studied French and German at
New College, Oxford, he completed his doctoral thesis on music on
the nonoperatic French stage in the period of Molière, and his specialist interest has always been the interface between music and theater,
particularly in instances where dramatists and their collaborators
have sought to experiment creatively with combinations of text, space
and music. His early mentors, Merlin Thomas and Jacques Scherer,
instilled in him the need to combine academic rigor with a sensitive
awareness of practical performance considerations in the study of
drama; indeed, he collaborated with Merlin Thomas as musical director for a number of his French-language productions (Le Cid and Le
Mariage de Figaro) and continued involvement with such performances at Bristol, acting in L’Illusion comique and providing music
for that and other productions.
He was for several years (1992–1999) the honorary secretary of the
British Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies, and as president of the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French
Literature (NASSCFL) he organized a joint conference of the two societies in Bristol in July 1998, on the theme of orthodoxy and subversion;
many of the best papers delivered on that occasion are published in the
journal Seventeenth-Century French Studies, volume 21. His own contribution was a lecture-recital on parodic uses of music and text in the
later part of the century, including the first known performances outside
France and the first known performances since the seventeenth century
of works that he had edited from manuscript or early printed sources.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Apart from stage music, he is interested in researching classical
tragedy, with several publications on Racine; other aspects of 17thcentury comedy, with studies and editions of works by Molière’s contemporaries, including Montfleury; and other areas where his combined
expertise on literature and music can come together fruitfully, including
the compositions of Messiaen, Tournemire, Arthur Honegger and Reynaldo Hahn, and the writings of Anthony Burgess.