French Comedy—Molière—Criticism of his Works—Scarron, Beursault,
Regnard; Comedies in the Time of the Regency; Marivaux and Destouches;
Piron and Gresset—Later Attempts—The Heroic Opera: Quinault—Operettes
and Vaudevilles—Diderot's attempted Change of the Theatre—The Weeping
Drama—Beaumarchais—Melo-Dramas—Merits and Defects of the Histrionic
Art.
The same system of rules and proprieties, which, as I have endeavoured to
show, must inevitably have a narrowing influence on Tragedy, has, in
France, been applied to Comedy much more advantageously. For this mixed
species of composition has, as already seen, an unpoetical side; and some
degree of artificial constraint, if not altogether essential to Comedy, is
certainly beneficial to it; for if it is treated with too negligent a
latitude, it runs a risk, in respect of general structure, of falling into
shapelessness, and in the representation of individual peculiarities, of
sinking into every-day common-place. In the French, as well as in the
Greek, it happens that the same syllabic measure is used in Tragedy and
Comedy, which, on a first view, may appear singular. But if the
Alexandrine did not appear to us peculiarly adapted to the free imitative
expression of pathos, on the other hand, it must be owned that a comical
effect is produced by the application of so symmetrical a measure to the
familiar turns of dialogue. Moreover, the grammatical conscientiousness of
French poetry, which is so greatly injurious in other species of the
drama, is fully suited to Comedy, where the versification is not purchased
at the expense of resemblance to the language of conversation, where it is
not intended to elevate the dialogue by sublimity and dignity above real
life, but merely to communicate to it greater ease and lightness. Hence
the opinion of the French, who hold a comedy in verse in much higher
estimation than a comedy in prose, seems to me to admit fairly of a
justification.
I endeavoured to show that the Unities of Place and Time are inconsistent
with the essence of many tragical subjects, because a comprehensive action
is frequently carried on in distant places at the same time, and because
great determinations can only be slowly prepared. This is not the case in
Comedy: here Intrigue ought to prevail, the active spirit of which quickly
hurries towards its object; and hence the unity of time may here be almost
naturally observed. The domestic and social circles in which Comedy moves
are usually assembled in one place, and, consequently, the poet is not
under the necessity of sending our imagination abroad: only it might
perhaps have been as well not to interpret the unity of place so very
strictly as not to allow the transition from one room to another, or to
different houses of the same town. The choice of the street for the scene,
a practice in which the Latin comic writers were frequently followed in
the earlier times of Modern Comedy, is quite irreconcileable with our way
of living, and the more deserving of censure, as in the case of the
ancients it was an inconvenience which arose from the construction of
their theatre.
According to French critics, and the opinion which has become prevalent
through them, Molière alone, of all their comic writers, is classical; and
all that has been done since his time is merely estimated as it
approximates more or less to this supposed pattern of an excellence which
can never be surpassed, nor even equalled. Hence we shall first proceed to
characterize this founder of the French Comedy, and then give a short
sketch of its subsequent progress.
Molière has produced works in so many departments, and of such different
value, that we are hardly able to recognize the same author in all of
them; and yet it is usual, when speaking of his peculiarities and merits,
and the advance which he gave to his art, to throw the whole of his
labours into one mass together.
Born and educated in an inferior rank of life, he enjoyed the advantage of
learning by direct experience the modes of living among the industrious
portion of the community—the so-called Bourgeois class—and of
acquiring the talent of imitating low modes of expression. At an after
period, when Louis XIV. took him into his service, he had opportunities,
though from a subordinate station, of narrowly observing the court. He was
an actor, and, it would appear, of peculiar power in overcharged and
farcical comic parts; so little was he possessed with prejudices of
personal dignity, that he renounced all the conditions by which it was
accompanied, and was ever ready to deal out, or to receive the blows which
were then so frequent on the stage. Nay, his mimetic zeal went so far,
that, actually sick, he acted and drew his last breath in representing his
Imaginary Invalid (Le Malade Imaginaire), and became, in the truest
sense, a martyr to the laughter of others. His business was to invent all
manner of pleasant entertainments for the court, and to provoke "the
greatest monarch of the world" to laughter, by way of relaxation from
his state affairs or warlike undertakings. One would think, on the
triumphant return from a glorious campaign, this might have been
accomplished with more refinement than by the representation of the
disgusting state of an imaginary invalid. But Louis XIV. was not so
fastidious; he was very well content with the buffoon whom he protected,
and even occasionally exhibited his own elevated person in the dances of
his ballets. This external position of Molière was the cause why many of
his labours had their origin as mere occasional pieces in the commands of
the court. And, accordingly, they bear the stamp of that origin. Without
travelling out of France, he had opportunities of becoming acquainted with
the lazzis of the Italian comic masks on the Italian theatre at Paris,
where improvisatory dialogues were intermixed with scenes written in
French: in the Spanish comedies he studied the ingenious complications
of intrigue: Plautus and Terence taught him the salt of the Attic wit, the
genuine tone of comic maxims, and the nicer shades of character. All this
he employed, with more or less success, in the exigency of the moment, and
also in order to deck out his drama in a sprightly and variegated dress,
made use of all manner of means, however foreign to his art: such as the
allegorical opening scenes of the opera prologues, musical intermezzos, in
which he even introduced Italian and Spanish national music, with texts in
their own language; ballets, at one time sumptuous and at another
grotesque; and even sometimes mere vaulting and capering. He knew how to
turn everything to profit: the censure passed upon his pieces, the defects
of rival actors imitated to the life by himself and his company, and even
the embarrassment in not being able to produce a theatrical entertainment
as quickly as it was required by the king,—all became for him a matter
for amusement. The pieces he borrowed from the Spanish, his pastorals and
tragi-comedies, calculated merely to please the eye, and also three or
four of his earlier comedies, which are even versified, and consequently
carefully laboured, the critics give up without more ado. But even in the
farces, with or without ballets, and intermezzos, in which the
overcharged, and frequently the self-conscious and arbitrary comic of
buffoonery prevails, Molière has exhibited an inexhaustible store of
excellent humour, scattered capital jokes with a lavish hand, and drawn
the most amusing caricatures with a bold and vigorous pencil. All this,
however, had been often done before his time; and I cannot see how, in
this department, he can stand alone, as a creative and altogether original
artist: for example, is Plautus' braggadocio soldier less meritorious in
grotesque characterization than the Bourgeois Gentilhomme? We shall
immediately examine briefly whether Molière has actually improved the
pieces which he borrowed, in whole or in part, from Plautus and Terence.
When we bear in mind that in these Latin authors we have only a faint and
faded copy of the new Attic Comedy, we shall then be enabled to judge
whether he would have been able to surpass its masters had they come down
to us. Many of his shifts and inventions, I am induced to suspect, are
borrowed; and I am convinced that we should soon discover the sources,
were we to search into the antiquities of farcical literature [Footnote:
The learned Tiranoschi (Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Lib. III. §
25) attests this in very strong language: "Molière," says he, "has made so
much use of the Italian comic writers, that were we to take from him all
that he has taken from others, the volumes of his comedies would be very
much reduced in bulk."]. Others are so obvious, and have so often been
both used and abused, that they may in some measure be considered as the
common stock of Comedy. Such is the scene in the Malade Imaginaire,
where the wife's love is put to the test by the supposed death of the
husband—an old joke, which our Hans Sachs has handled drolly enough.
[Footnote: I know not whether it has been already remarked, that the idea
on which the Mariage Forcé is founded is borrowed from Rabelais; who
makes Panurge enter upon the very same consultation as to his future
marriage, and receive from Pantagruel just such a sceptical answer as
Sganarelle does from the second philosopher.] We have an avowal of
Molière's, which plainly shows he entertained no very great scruples of
conscience on the sin of plagiarism. In the undignified relations amidst
which he lived, and in which every thing was so much calculated for
dazzling show, that his very name did not legally belong to him, we see
less reason to wonder at all this.
And even when in his farcical pieces Molière did not lean on foreign
invention, he still appropriated the comic manners of other countries, and
more particularly the buffoonery of Italy. He wished to introduce a sort
of masked character without masks, who should constantly recur with the
same name. They did not, however, succeed in becoming properly
domiciliated in France; because the flexible national character of the
French, which so nimbly imitates every varying mode of the day, is
incompatible with that odd originality of exterior to which in other
nations, where all are not modelled alike by the prevailing social tone,
humorsome and singular individuals carelessly give themselves up. As the
Sganarelles, Mascarilles, Scapins, and Crispins, must be allowed to retain
their uniform, that every thing like consistency may not be lost, they
have become completely obsolete on the stage. The French taste is,
generally speaking, little inclined to the self-conscious and arbitrary
comic, with its droll exaggerations, even because these kinds of the comic
speak more to the fancy than the understanding. We do not mean to censure
this, nor to quarrel about the respective merits of the different species.
The low estimation in which the former are held may perhaps contribute the
more to the success of the comic of observation, And, in fact, the French
comic writers have here displayed a great deal of refinement and
ingenuity: in this lies the great merit of Molière, and it is certainly
very eminent. Only, we would ask, whether it is of such a description as
to justify the French critics, on account of some half a dozen of so-
called regular comedies of Molière, in holding in such infinite contempt
as they do all the rich stores of refined and characteristic delineation
which other nations possess, and in setting up Molière as the unrivalled
Genius of Comedy.
If the praise bestowed by the French on their tragic writers be, both from
national vanity and from ignorance of the mental productions of other
nations, exceedingly extravagant; so their praises of Molière are out of
all proportion with their subject. Voltaire calls him the Father of
Genuine Comedy; and this may be true enough with respect to France.
According to La Harpe, Comedy and Molière are synonymous terms; he is the
first of all moral philosophers, his works are the school of the world.
Chamfort terms him the most amiable teacher of humanity since Socrates;
and is of opinion that Julius Caesar who called Terence a half Menander,
would have called Menander a half Molière.—I doubt this.
The kind of moral which we may in general expect from Comedy I have
already shown: it is an applied doctrine of ethics, the art of life. In
this respect the higher comedies of Molière contain many admirable
observations happily expressed, which are still in the present day
applicable; others are tainted with the narrowness of his own private
opinions, or of the opinions which were prevalent in his age. In this
sense Menander was also a philosophical comic writer; and we may boldly
place the moral maxims which remain of his by the side at least of those
of Molière. But no comedy is constructed of mere apophthegms. The poet
must be a moralist, but his personages cannot always be moralizing. And
here Molière appears to me to have exceeded the bounds of propriety: he
gives us in lengthened disquisitions the pro and con of the character
exhibited by him; nay, he allows these to consist, in part, of principles
which the persons themselves defend against the attacks of others. Now
this leaves nothing to conjecture; and yet the highest refinement and
delicacy of the comic of observation consists in this, that the characters
disclose themselves unconsciously by traits which involuntarily escape
from them. To this species of comic element, the way in which Oronte
introduces his sonnet, Orgon listens to the accounts respecting Tartuffe
and his wife, and Vadius and Trissotin fall by the ears, undoubtedly
belongs; but the endless disquisitions of Alceste and Philinte as to the
manner in which we ought to behave amid the falsity and corruption of the
world do not in the slightest respect belong to it. They are serious, and
yet they cannot satisfy us as exhausting the subject; and as dialogues
which at the end leave the characters precisely at the same point as at
the beginning, they are devoid in the necessary dramatic movement. Such
argumentative disquisitions which lead to nothing are frequent in all the
most admired pieces of Molière, and nowhere more than in the
Misanthrope. Hence the action, which is also poorly invented, is found
to drag heavily; for, with the exception of a few scenes of a more
sprightly description, it consists altogether of discourses formally
introduced and supported, while the stagnation is only partially concealed
by the art employed on the details of versification and expression. In a
word, these pieces are too didactic, too expressly instructive; whereas in
Comedy the spectator should only be instructed incidentally, and, as it
were, without its appearing to have been intended.
Before we proceed to consider more particularly the productions which
properly belong to the poet himself, and are acknowledged as master-
pieces, we shall offer a few observations on his imitations of the Latin
comic writers.
The most celebrated is the Avare. The manuscripts of the Aulularia of
Plautus are unfortunately mutilated towards the end; but yet we find
enough in them to excite our admiration. From this play Molière has merely
borrowed a few scenes and jokes, for his plot is altogether different. In
Plautus it is extremely simple: his Miser has found a treasure, which he
anxiously watches and conceals. The suit of a rich bachelor for his
daughter excites a suspicion that his wealth is known. The preparations
for the wedding bring strange servants and cooks into his house; he
considers his pot of gold no longer secure, and conceals it out of doors,
which gives an opportunity to a slave of his daughter's chosen lover, sent
to glean tidings of her and her marriage, to steal it. Without doubt the
thief must afterwards have been obliged to make restitution, otherwise the
piece would end in too melancholy a manner, with the lamentations and
imprecations of the old man. The knot of the love intrigue is easily
untied: the young man, who had anticipated the rights of the marriage
state, is the nephew of the bridegroom, who willingly renounces in his
favour. All the incidents serve merely to lead the miser, by a gradually
heightening series of agitations and alarms, to display and expose his
miserable passion. Molière, on the other hand, without attaining this
object, puts a complicated machine in motion. Here we have a lover of the
daughter, who, disguised as a servant, flatters the avarice of the old
man; a prodigal son, who courts the bride of his father; intriguing
servants; an usurer; and after all a discovery at the end. The love
intrigue is spun out in a very clumsy and every-day sort of manner; and it
has the effect of making us at different times lose sight altogether of
Harpagon. Several scenes of a good comic description are merely
subordinate, and do not, in a true artistic method, arise necessarily out
of the thing itself. Molière has accumulated, as it were, all kinds of
avarice in one person; and yet the miser who buries his treasures and he
who lends on usury can hardly be the same. Harpagon starves his coach-
horses: but why has he any? This would apply better to a man who, with a
disproportionate income, strives to keep up a certain appearance of rank.
Comic characterization would soon be at an end were there really only one
universal character of the miser. The most important deviation of Molière
from Plautus is, that while the one paints merely a person who watches
over his treasure, the other makes his miser in love. The love of an old
man is in itself an object of ridicule; the anxiety of a miser is no less
so. We may easily see that when we unite with avarice, which separates a
man from others and withdraws him within himself, the sympathetic and
liberal passion of love, the union must give rise to the most harsh
contrasts. Avarice, however, is usually a very good preservative against
falling in love. Where then is the more refined characterization; and as
such a wonderful noise is made about it, where shall we here find the more
valuable moral instruction?—in Plautus or in Molière? A miser and a
superannuated lover may both be present at the representation of Harpagon,
and both return from the theatre satisfied with themselves, while the
miser says to himself, "I am at least not in love;" and the lover, "Well,
at all events I am not a miser." High Comedy represents those follies
which, however striking they may be, are reconcilable with the ordinary
course of things; whatever forms a singular exception, and is only
conceivable amid an utter perversion of ideas, belongs to the arbitrary
exaggeration of farce. Hence since (and it was undoubtedly the case long
before) the time of Molière, the enamoured and avaricious old man has been
the peculiar common-place of the Italian masked comedy and opera buffa,
to which in truth it certainly belongs. Molière has treated the main
incident, the theft of the chest of gold, with an uncommon want of skill.
At the very beginning Harpagon, in a scene borrowed from Plautus, is
fidgetty with suspicions lest a slave should have discovered his treasure.
After this he forgets it; for four whole acts there is not a word about
it, and the spectator drops, as it were, from the clouds when the servant
all at once brings in the stolen coffer; for we have no information as to
the way in which he fell upon the treasure which had been so carefully
concealed. Now this is really to begin again, not truly to work out. But
Plautus has here shown a great deal of ingenuity: the excessive anxiety of
the old man for his pot of gold, and all that he does to save it, are the
very cause of its loss. The subterraneous treasure is always invisibly
present; it is, as it were, the evil spirit which drives its keeper to
madness. In all this we have, an impressive moral of a very different
kind. In Harpagon's soliloquy, after the theft, the modern poet has
introduced the most incredible exaggerations. The calling on the pit to
discover the theft, which, when well acted, produces so great an effect,
is a trait of the old comedy of Aristophanes, and may serve to give us
some idea of its powers of entertainment.
The Amphitryon is hardly anything more than a free imitation of the
Latin original. The whole plan and order of the scenes is retained. The
waiting-woman, or wife of Sosia, is the invention of Molière. The parody
of the story of the master's marriage in that of the servant is ingenious,
and gives rise to the most amusing investigations on the part of Sosia to
find out whether, during his absence a domestic blessing may not have also
been conferred on him as well as on Amphitryon. The revolting coarseness
of the old mythological story is refined as much as it possibly could
without injury to its spirit and boldness; and in general the execution is
extremely elegant. The uncertainty of the personages respecting their own
identity and duplication is founded on a sort of comic metaphysics:
Sosia's reflections on his two egos, which have cudgelled each other,
may in reality furnish materials for thinking to our philosophers of the
present day.
The most unsuccessful of Molière's imitations of the ancients is that of
the Phormio in the Fourberies de Scapin. The whole plot is borrowed
from Terence, and, by the addition of a second invention, been adapted,
well or ill, or rather tortured, to a consistency with modern manners. The
poet has indeed gone very hurriedly to work with his plot, which he has
most negligently patched together. The tricks of Scapin, for the sake of
which he has spoiled the plot, occupy the foremost place: but we may well
ask whether they deserve it? The Grecian Phormio, a man who, for the sake
of feasting with young companions, lends himself to all sorts of hazardous
tricks, is an interesting and modest knave; Scapin directly the reverse.
He had no cause to boast so much of his tricks: they are so stupidly
planned that in justice they ought not to have succeeded. Even supposing
the two old men to be obtuse and brainless in the extreme, we can hardly
conceive how they could so easily fall into such a clumsy and obvious
snare as he lays for them. It is also disgustingly improbable that
Zerbinette, who as a gipsy ought to have known how to conceal knavish
tricks, should run out into the street and tell the first stranger that
she meets, who happens to be none other than Geronte himself, the deceit
practised upon him by Scapin. The farce of the sack into which Scapin
makes Geronte to crawl, then bears him off, and cudgels him as if by the
hand of strangers, is altogether a most inappropriate excrescence. Boileau
was therefore well warranted in reproaching Molière with having
shamelessly allied Terence to Taburin, (the merry-andrew of a mountebank).
In reality, Molière has here for once borrowed, not, as he frequently did,
from the Italian masks, but from the Pagliasses of the rope-dancers and
vaulters.
We must not forget that the Rogueries of Scapin is one of the latest
works of the poet. This and several others of the same period, as
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, and even his
last, the Malade Imaginaire, sufficiently prove that the maturity of his
mind as an artist did not keep pace with the progress of years, otherwise
he would have been disgusted with such loose productions. They serve,
moreover, to show that frequently he brought forth pieces with great
levity and haste, even when he had full leisure to think of posterity. If
he occasionally subjected himself to stricter rules, we owe it more to his
ambition, and his desire to be numbered among the classical writers of the
golden age, than to any internal and growing aspiration after the highest
excellence.
The high claims already mentioned, which the French critics make in behalf
of their favourite, are principally founded on the École des Femmes,
Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, and Les Femmes Savantes; pieces which are
certainly finished with great care and diligence. Now, of these, we must
expressly state in the outset, that we leave the separate beauties of
language and versification altogether to the decision of native critics.
These merits can only be subordinate requisites; and the undue stress
which is laid in France on the manner in which a piece is written and
versified has, in our opinion, been both in Tragedy and Comedy injurious
to the development of other and more essential requisites of the dramatic
art. We shall confine our exceptions to the general spirit and plan of
these comedies.
L'École des Femmes, the earliest of them, seems to me also the most
excellent; it is the one in which there is the greatest display of
vivacious humour, rapidity, and comic vigour. As to the invention: a man
arrived at an age unsuitable for wedlock, purposely educating a young girl
in ignorance and simplicity, that he may keep her faithful to himself,
while everything turns out the very reverse of his wishes, was not a new
one: a short while before Molière it had been employed by Scarron, who
borrowed it from a Spanish novel. Still, it was a lucky thought in him to
adapt this subject to the stage, and the execution of it is most masterly.
Here we have a real and very interesting plot; no creeping investigations
which do not carry forward the plot; all the matter is of one piece,
without foreign levers and accidental intermixtures, with the exception of
the catastrophe, which is brought about somewhat arbitrarily, by means of
a scene of recognition. The naïve confessions and innocent devices
of Agnes are full of sweetness; they, together with the unguarded
confidence reposed by the young lover in his unknown rival, and the
stifled rage of the old man against both, form a series of comic scenes of
the most amusing, and at the same time of the most refined description.
As an example how little the violation of certain probabilities diminishes
our pleasure, we may remark that Molière, with respect to the choice of
scene, has here indulged in very great liberties. We will not inquire how
Arnolph frequently happens to converse with Agnes in the street or in an
open place, while he keeps her at the same time so carefully locked up.
But if Horace does not know Arnolph to be the intended husband of his
mistress, and betrays everything to him, this can only be allowable from
Arnolph's passing with her by another name. Horace ought therefore to look
for Arnolph in his own house in a remote quarter, and not before the door
of his mistress, where yet he always finds him, without entertaining any
suspicion from that circumstance. Why do the French critics set such a
high value on similar probabilities in the dramatic art, when they must be
compelled to admit that their best masters have not always observed them?
Tartuffe is an exact picture of hypocritical piety held up for
universal warning; it is an excellent serious satire, but with the
exception of separate scenes it is not a comedy. It is generally admitted
that the catastrophe is bad, as it is brought about by a foreign means. It
is bad, too, because the danger which Orgon runs of being driven from his
house and thrown into prison is by no means such an embarrassment as his
blind confidence actually merited. Here the serious purpose of the work is
openly disclosed, and the eulogium of the king is a dedication by which
the poet, even in the piece itself, humbly recommends himself to the
protection of his majesty against the persecutions which he dreaded.
In the Femmes Savantes raillery has also the upper hand of mirth;
the action is insignificant and not in the least degree attractive; and
the catastrophe, after the manner of Molière, is arbitrarily brought about
by foreign means. Yet these technical imperfections might well be excused
for the sake of its satirical merit. But in this respect the composition,
from the limited nature of its views, is anything but equal throughout. We
are not to expect from the comic poet that he should always give us, along
with the exhibition of a folly, a representation also of the opposite way
of wisdom; in this way he would announce his object of instructing us with
too much of method. But two opposite follies admit of being exhibited
together in an equally ludicrous light. Molière has here ridiculed the
affectation of a false taste, and the vain-gloriousness of empty
knowledge. Proud in their own ignorance and contempt for all higher
enlightenment, these characters certainly deserve the ridicule bestowed on
them; but that which in this comedy is portrayed as the correct way of
wisdom falls nearly into the same error. All the reasonable persons of the
piece, the father and his brother, the lover and the daughter, nay, even
the ungrammatical maid, are all proud of what they are not, have not, and
know not, and even what they do not seek to be, to have, or to know.
Chyrsale's limited view of the destination of the female sex, Clitander's
opinion on the inutility of learning, and the sentiments elsewhere
advanced respecting the measure of cultivation and knowledge which is
suitable to a man of rank, were all intended to convey Molière's own
opinions himself on these subjects. We may here trace in him a certain
vein of valet-de-chambre morality, which also makes its appearance on many
other points. We can easily conceive how his education and situation
should lead him to entertain such ideas; but they are hardly such as
entitle him to read lectures on human society. That, at the end, Trissotin
should be ignominiously made to commit an act of low selfishness is
odious; for we know that a learned man then alive was satirized under this
character, and that his name was very slightly disguised. The vanity of an
author is, on the whole, a preservative against this weakness: there are
many more lucrative careers than that of authorship for selfishness
without a feeling of honour.
The Misanthrope, which, as is well known, was at first coldly received,
is still less amusing than the two preceding pieces: the action
is less rapid, or rather there is none at all; and there is a great want
of coherence between the meagre incidents which give only an apparent life
to the dramatic movement,—the quarrel with Oronte respecting the sonnet,
and its adjustment; the decision of the law-suit which is ever being
brought forward; the unmasking of Celimene through the vanity of the two
Marquisses, and the jealousy of Arsinöe. Besides all this, the general
plot is not even probable. It is framed with a view to exhibit the
thorough delineation of a character; but a character discloses itself much
more in its relations with others than immediately. How comes Alceste to
have chosen Philinte for a friend, a man whose principles were directly
the reverse of his own? How comes he also to be enamoured of a coquette,
who has nothing amiable in her character, and who entertains us merely by
her scandal? We might well say of this Celimene, without exaggeration,
that there is not one good point in her whole composition. In a character
like that of Alceste, love is not a fleeting sensual impulse, but a
serious feeling arising from a want of a sincere mental union. His dislike
of flattering falsehood and malicious scandal, which always characterise
the conversation of Celimene, breaks forth so incessantly, that, we feel,
the first moment he heard her open her lips ought to have driven him for
ever from her society. Finally, the subject is ambiguous, and that is its
greatest fault. The limits within which Alceste is in the right and beyond
which he is in the wrong, it would be no easy matter to fix, and I am
afraid the poet himself did not here see very clearly what he would be at.
Philinte, however, with his illusory justification of the way of the
world, and his phlegmatic resignation, he paints throughout as the
intelligent and amiable man. As against the elegant Celimene, Alceste is
most decidedly in the right, and only in the wrong in the inconceivable
weakness of his conduct towards her. He is in the right in his complaints
of the corruption of the social constitution; the facts, at least, which
he adduces, are disputed by nobody. He is in the wrong, however, in
delivering his sentiments with so much violence, and at an unseasonable
time; but as he cannot prevail on himself to assume the dissimulation
which is necessary to be well received in the world, he is perfectly in
the right in preferring solitude to society. Rousseau has already censured
the ambiguity of the piece, by which what is deserving of approbation
seems to be turned into ridicule. His opinion was not altogether
unprejudiced; for his own character, and his behaviour towards the world,
had a striking similarity to that of Alceste; and, moreover, he mistakes
the essence of dramatic composition, and founds his condemnation on
examples of an accidentally false direction.
So far with respect to the famed moral philosophy of Molière in his
pretended master-piece. From what has been stated, I consider myself
warranted to assert, in opposition to the prevailing opinion, that Molière
succeeded best with the coarse and homely comic, and that both his talents
and his inclination, if unforced, would have determined him altogether to
the composition of farces such as he continued to write even to the very
end of his life. He seems always to have whipped himself up as it were to
his more serious pieces in verse: we discover something of constraint in
both plot and execution. His friend Boileau probably communicated to him
his view of a correct mirth, of a grave and decorous laughter; and so
Molière determined, after the carnival of his farces, to accommodate
himself occasionally to the spare diet of the regular taste, and to unite
what in their own nature are irreconcileable, namely, dignity and
drollery. However, we find even in his prosaic pieces traces of that
didactical and satirical vein which is peculiarly alien to Comedy; for
example, in his constant attacks on physicians and lawyers, in his
disquisitions upon the true correct tone of society, &c., the intention of
which is actually to censure, to refute, to instruct, and not merely to
afford entertainment.
The classical reputation of Molière still preserves his pieces on the
stage, [Footnote: If they were not already in possession of the stage, the
indecency of a number of the scenes would cause many of them to be
rejected, as the public of the present day, though probably not less
corrupt than that of the author's times, is passionately fond of throwing
over every thing a cloak of morality. When a piece of Molière is acted,
the head theatre of Paris is generally a downright solitude, if no
particular circumstance brings the spectators together. Since these
Lectures were held, George Dandin has been hissed at Paris, to the
great grief of the watchmen of the critical Sion. This was probably not on
account of mere indecency. Whatever may be said in defence of the morality
of the piece, the privileges of the higher classes are offensively
favoured in it; and it concludes with the shameless triumph of arrogance
and depravity over plain honesty.] although in tone and manners they are
altogether obsolete. This is a danger to which the comic poet is
inevitably exposed from that side of his composition which does not rest
on a poetical foundation, but is determined by the prose of external
reality. The originals of the individual portraits of Molière have long
since disappeared. The comic poet who lays claim to immortality must, in
the delineation of character and the disposition of his plan, rest
principally on such motives as are always intelligible, being taken not
from the manners of any particular age, but drawn from human nature
itself.
In addition to Molière we have to notice but a few older or contemporary
comedians. Of Corneille, who from the imitation of Spanish comedies
acquired a name before he was known as a tragic author, only one piece
keeps possession of the stage, Le Menteur, from Lope de Vega; and
even this evinces, in our opinion, no comic talent. The poet, accustomed
to stilts, moves awkwardly in a species of the drama the first requisites
of which are ease and sweetness. Scarron, who only understood burlesque,
has displayed this talent or knack in several comedies taken from the
Spanish, of which two, Jodelle, or the Servant turned Master, and Don
Japhet of Armenia, have till within these few years been occasionally
acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. The plot
of the Jodelle, which belongs to Don Francisco de Roxas, is excellent;
the style and the additions of Scarron have not been able altogether to
disfigure it. All that is coarse, nauseous, and repugnant to taste,
belongs to the French writer of the age of Louis XIV., who in his day was
not without celebrity; for the Spanish work is throughout characterized by
a spirit of tenderness. The burlesque tone, which in many languages may be
tolerated, has been properly rejected by the French, for whenever it is
not guided by judgment and taste, it sinks to disgusting vulgarity. Don
Japhet represents in a still ruder manner the mystification of a coarse
fool. The original belongs to the kind which the Spaniards call Comedias
de Figuron: it also has undoubtedly been spoiled by Scarron, The worst of
the matter is, that his exaggerations are trifling without being amusing.
Racine hit upon a very different plan of imitation from that which was
then followed, in his Plaideurs, of which the idea is derived from
Aristophanes. The piece in this respect stands alone. The action is merely
a light piece of legerdemain; but the follies which it portrays belong to
a circle, and, with the imitations of the officers of court and advocates,
form a complete whole. Many lines are at once witty sallies and
characteristic traits; and some of the jokes have that apparently aimless
drollery, which genuine comic inspiration can alone inspire. Racine would
have become a dangerous rival of Molière, if he had continued to exercise
the talent which he has here displayed.
Some of the comedies of a younger contemporary and rival of Molière,
Boursault, have still kept possession of the stage; they are all of the
secondary description, which the French call pièces à tiroir, and
of which Molière gave the first example in Le Fâcheux. This kind,
from the accidental succession of the scenes, which are strung together on
some one common occasion, bear in so far a resemblance to the Mimes
of the ancients; they are intended also to resemble them in the accurate
imitation of individual peculiarities. These subjects are particularly
favourable for the display of the Mimic art in the more limited
signification of the word, as the same player always appears in a
different disguise, and assumes a new character. It is advisable not to
extend such pieces beyond a single act, as the want of dramatic movement,
and the uniformity of the occasion through all the different changes, are
very apt to excite impatience. But Boursault's pieces, which otherwise are
not without merit, are tediously spun out to five acts. The idea of
exhibiting Aesop, a slave-born sage, and deformed in person, in possession
of court favour, was original and happy. But in the two pieces, Aesop
in the City, and Aesop at Court, the fables which are tacked to
every important scene are drowned in diffuse morals; besides, they are
quite distinct from the dialogue, instead of being interwoven with it,
like the fable of Menenius Agrippa in Shakespeare; and modern manners do
not suit with this childish mode of instruction. In the Mercure Galant
all sorts of out-of-the-way beings bring their petitions to the writer of
a weekly paper. This thought and many of the most entertaining details
have, if I am not mistaken, been borrowed by a popular German author
without acknowledgment.
A considerable time elapsed after the death of Molière before the
appearance of Regnard, to whom in France the second place in Comedy is
usually assigned. He was a sort of adventurer who, after roaming a long
time up and down the world, fell to the trade of a dramatic writer, and
divided himself betwixt the composition of regular comedies in verse, and
the Italian theatre, which still continued to flourish under Gherardi, and
for which he sketched the French scenes. The Joueur, his first
play, is justly preferred to the others. The author was acquainted with
this passion, and a gamester's life, from his own experience: it is a
picture after nature, with features strongly drawn, but without
exaggeration; and the plot and accessory circumstances, with the exception
of a pair of caricatures which might well have been dispensed with, are
all appropriate and in character. The Distrait possesses not only
the faults of the methodical pieces of character which I have already
censured, but it is not even a peculiar character at all; the mistakes
occasioned by the unfortunate habit of being absent in thought are all
alike, and admit of no heightening: they might therefore have filled up an
after-piece, but, certainly did not merit the distinction of being spun
out into a comedy of five acts. Regnard has done little more than
dramatize a series of anecdotes which La Bruyère had assembled together
under the name of a certain character. The execution of the Légataire
Universel shows more comic talent; but from the error of the general
plan, arising out of a want of moral feeling, this talent is completely
thrown away. La Harpe declares this piece the chef-d'oeuvre of comic
pleasantry. It is, in fact, such a subject for pleasantry as would
move a stone to pity,—as enlivening as the grin of a death's head. What a
subject for mirth: a feeble old man in the very arms of death, teased by
young profligates for his property, has a false will imposed on him while
he is lying insensible, as is believed, on his death-bed! If it be true
that these scenes have always given rise to much laughter on the French
stage, it only proves the spectators to possess the same unfeeling levity
which disgusts us in the author. We have elsewhere shown that, with an
apparent indifference, a moral reserve is essential to the comic poet,
since the impressions which he would wish to produce are inevitably
destroyed whenever disgust or compassion is excited.
Legrand the actor, a contemporary of Regnard, was one of the first comic
poets who gained celebrity for after-pieces in verse, a species of
composition in which the French have since produced a number of elegant
trifles. He has not, however, risen to any thing like the same height of
posthumous fame as Regnard: La Harpe dismisses him with very little
ceremony. Yet we should be disposed to rank him very high as an artist,
even if he had composed nothing else than the King of Lubberland
(Le Roi de Cocagne), a sprightly farce in the marvellous style,
overflowing with what is very rare in France, a native fanciful wit,
animated by the most lively mirth, which although carried the length of
the most frolicsome giddiness, sports on and round all subjects with the
utmost harmlessness. We might call it an elegant and ingenious piece of
madness; an example of the manner in which the play of Aristophanes, or
rather that of Eupolis, [Footnote: See page 167.] who had also dramatised
the tale of Lubberland, might be brought on our stage without
exciting disgust, and without personal satire. And yet Legrand was,
certainly, unacquainted with the Old Comedy, and his own genius (we
scruple not to use the expression) led him to the invention. The execution
is as careful as in a regular comedy; but to this title in the French
opinion it can have no pretensions, because of the wonderful world which
it represents, of several of the decorations, and of the music here and
there introduced. The French critics show themselves in general
indifferent, or rather unjust towards every suggestion of genuine fancy.
Before they can feel respect for a work it must present a certain
appearance of labour and effort. Among a giddy and light-minded people,
they have appropriated to themselves the post of honour of pedantry: they
confound the levity of jocularity, which is quite compatible with
profundity in art, with the levity of shallowness, which (as a natural
gift or natural defect,) is so frequent among their countrymen.
The eighteenth century produced in France a number of comic writers of the
second and third rank, but no distinguished genius capable of advancing
the art a step farther; in consequence of which the belief in Molière's
unapproachable excellence has become still more firmly riveted. As we have
not space at present to go through all these separate productions, we
shall premise a few observations on the general spirit of French Comedy
before entering on the consideration of the writers whom we have not yet
mentioned.
The want of easy progress, and over-lengthy disquisitions in stationary
dialogue, have characterized more or less every writer since the time of
Molière, on whose regular pieces also the conventional rules applicable to
Tragedy have had an indisputable influence. French Comedy in verse has its
tirades as well as Tragedy. Besides, there was another circumstance, the
introduction of a certain degree of stiff etiquette. The Comedy of other
nations has generally, from motives which we can be at no loss in
understanding, descended into the circle of the lower classes: but the
French Comedy is usually confined to the upper ranks of society. Here,
then, we trace the influence of the court as the central point of the
whole national vanity. Those spectators who in reality had no access to
the great world, were flattered by being surrounded on the stage with
marquises and chevaliers, and while the poet satirized the fashionable
follies, they endeavoured to snatch something of that privileged tone
which was so much the object of envy. Society rubs off the salient angles
of character; its only amusement consists in the pursuit of the
ridiculous, and on the other hand it trains us in the faculty of being
upon our guard against the observations of others. The natural, cordial,
and jovial comic of the inferior classes is thrown aside, and instead of
it another description (the fruit of polished society, and bearing in its
insipidity the stamp of so purposeless a way of living) is adopted. The
object of these comedies is no longer life but society, that perpetual
negotiation between conflicting vanities which never ends in a sincere
treaty of peace: the embroidered dress, the hat under the arm, and the
sword by the side, essentially belong to them, and the whole of their
characterization is limited to painting the folly of the men and the
coquetry of the women. The insipid uniformity of these pictures was
unfortunately too often seasoned by the corruption of moral principles
which, more especially after the age of Louis XIV., it became, under the
Regency of Louis XV., the fashion openly to avow. In this period the
favourite of the women, the homme à bonnes fortunes, who in the
tone of satiety boasts of the multitude of his conquests too easily won,
was not a character invented by the comic writers, but a portrait
accurately taken from real life, as is proved by the numerous memoirs of
the last century, even down to those of a Besenval. We are disgusted with
the unveiled sensuality of the love intrigues of the Greek Comedy: but the
Greeks would have found much more disgusting the love intrigues of the
French Comedy, entered into with married women, merely from giddy vanity.
Limits have been fixed by nature herself to sensual excess; but when
vanity assumes the part of a sensuality already deadened and enervated, it
gives birth to the most hollow corruption. And even if, in the constant
ridicule of marriage by the petit-maîtres, and in their moral scepticism
especially with regard to female virtue, it was the intention of the poets
to ridicule a prevailing depravity, the picture is not on that account the
less immoral. The great or fashionable world, which in point of numbers is
the little world, and yet considers itself alone of importance, can hardly
be improved by it; and for the other classes the example is but too
seductive, from the brilliancy with which the characters are surrounded.
But in so far as Comedy is concerned, this deadening corruption is by no
means invariably entertaining; and in many pieces, in which fools of
quality give the tone, for example in the Chevalier à la mode de
Dancourt, the picture of complete moral dissoluteness which, although
true, is nevertheless both unpoetical and unnatural, is productive not
merely of ennui, but of the most decided repugnance and disgust.
From the number of writers to whom this charge chiefly applies, we must in
justice except Destouches and Marivaux, fruitful or at least diligent
comic writers, the former in verse and the latter in prose. They acquired
considerable distinction among their contemporaries in the first half of
the eighteenth century, but on the stage few of their works survived
either of them. Destouches was a moderate, tame, and well-meaning author,
who applied himself with all his powers to the composition of regular
comedies, which were always drawn out to the length of five acts, and in
which there is nothing laughable, with the exception of the vivacity
displayed in virtue of their situation, by Lisette and her lover Frontin,
or Pasquin. He was in no danger, from any excess of frolicsome petulance,
of falling from the dignified tone of the supposed high comic into the
familiarity of farce, which the French hold in such contempt. With
moderate talents, without humour, and almost without vivacity, neither
ingenious in invention, nor possessed of a deep insight into the human
mind and human affairs, he has in some of his productions, Le Glorieux,
Le Philosophe Marié, and especially L'Indécis, shewn with great credit
to himself what true and unpretending diligence is by itself capable of
effecting. Other pieces, for instance, L'Ingrat and L'Homme Singulier,
are complete failures, and enable us to see that a poet who considers
Tartuffe and The Misanthrope as the highest objects of imitation, (and
with Destouches this was evidently the case,) has only another step to
take to lose sight of the comic art altogether. These two works of Molière
have not been friendly beacons to his followers, but false lights to their
ruin. Whenever a comic poet in his preface worships The Misanthrope as a
model, I can immediately foretell the result of his labours. He will
sacrifice every thing like the gladsome inspiration of fun and all truly
poetical amusement, for the dull and formal seriousness of prosaic life,
and for prosaical applications stamped with the respectable name of
morals.
That Marivaux is a mannerist is so universally acknowledged in France,
that the peculiar term of marivaudage has been invented for his
mannerism. But this is at least his own, and at first sight by no means
unpleasing. Delicacy of mind cannot be denied to Marivaux, only it is
coupled with a certain littleness. We have stated it to be the most
refined species of the comic of observation, when a peculiarity or
property shows itself most conspicuously at the very time its possessor
has the least suspicion of it, or is most studious to conceal it. Marivaux
has applied this to the passions; and naïveté in the involuntary
disclosure of emotions certainly belongs to the domain of Comedy. But then
this naïveté is prepared by him with too much art, appears too
solicitous for our applause, and, we may almost say, seems too well
pleased with it himself. It is like children in the game of hide and seek,
they cannot stay quiet in their corner, but keep popping out their heads,
if they are not immediately discovered; nay, sometimes, which is still
worse, it is like the squinting over a fan held up from affected modesty.
In Marivaux we always see his aim from the very beginning, and all our
attention is directed to discovering the way by which he is to lead us to
it. This would be a skilful mode of composing, if it did not degenerate
into the insignificant and the superficial. Petty inclinations are
strengthened by petty motives, exposed to petty probations, and brought by
petty steps nearer and nearer to a petty conclusion. The whole generally
turns on a declaration of love, and all sorts of clandestine means are
tried to elicit it, or every kind of slight allusion is hazarded to hasten
it. Marivaux has neither painted characters, nor contrived intrigues. The
whole plot generally turns on an unpronounced word, which is always at the
tongue's end, and which is frequently kept back in a pretty arbitrary
manner. He is so uniform in the motives that he employs, that when we have
read one of his pieces with a tolerable degree of attention we know all of
them. However, we must still rank him above the herd of stiff imitators;
something is to be learned even from him, for he possessed a peculiar
though a very limited view of the essence of Comedy.
Two other single works are named as master-pieces in the regular Comedy in
verse, belonging to two writers who here perhaps have taken more pains,
but in other departments have given a freer scope to their natural talent:
the Métromanie of Piron and the Méchant of Gresset. The Métromanie
is not written without humorous inspiration. In the young man possessed
with a passion for poetry, Piron intended in some measure to paint
himself; but as we always go tenderly to work in the ridicule of
ourselves, together with the amiable weakness in question, he endows his
hero with talents, magnanimity, and a good heart. But this tender reserve
is not peculiarly favourable for comic strength. As to the Méchant, it
is one of those gloomy comedies which might be rapturously hailed by a
Timon as serving to confirm his aversion to human society, but which, on
social and cheerful minds, can only give rise to the most painful
impression. Why paint a dark and odious disposition which, devoid of all
human sympathy, feeds its vanity in a cold contempt and derision of
everything, and solely occupies itself in aimless detraction? Why exhibit
such a moral deformity, which could hardly be tolerated even in Tragedy,
for the mere purpose of producing domestic discontent and petty
embarrassments?
Yet, according to the decision of the French critics, these three
comedies, the Glorieux, the Métromanie, and the Méchant, are all
that the eighteenth century can oppose to Molière. We should be disposed
to rank the Le Vieux Bachelier of Collin d'Harleville much higher; but
for judging this true picture of manners there is no scale afforded in the
works of Molière, and it can only be compared with those of Terence. We
have here the utmost refinement and accuracy of characterization, most
felicitously combined with an able plot, which keeps on the stretch and
rivets our attention, while a certain mildness of sentiment is diffused
over the whole.
I purpose now to make a few observations on the secondary species of the
Opera, Operettes, and Vaudevilles, and shall conclude with a view of
the present condition of the French stage with reference to the histrionic
art.
In the serious, heroic, or rather the ideal opera, if we may so
express ourselves, we can only mention one poet of the age of Louis XIV.,
Quinault—who is now little read, but yet deserving of high praise. As a
tragic poet, in the early period of his career, he was satirized by
Boileau; but he was afterwards highly successful in another species, the
musical drama. Mazarin had introduced into France a taste for the Italian
opera; Louis was also desirous of rivalling or surpassing foreign
countries in the external magnificence of the drama, in decoration,
machinery, music, and dancing; these were all to be employed in the
celebration of the court festivals; and accordingly Molière was employed
to write gay, and Quinault serious operas, to the music of Lulli. I am not
sufficiently versed in the earlier literature of the Italian opera to be
able to speak with accuracy, but I suspect that here also Quinault
laboured more after Spanish than Italian models; and more particularly,
that he derived from the Fiestas of Calderon the general form of his
operas, and their frequently allegorical preludes which are often to be
found in them. It is true, poetical ornament is much more sparingly dealt
out, as the whole is necessarily shortened for the sake of the music, and
the very nature of the French language and versification is incompatible
with the splendid magnificence, the luxurious fulness, displayed by
Calderon. But the operas of Quinault are, in their easy progress, truly
fanciful; and the serious opera cannot, in my opinion, be stripped of the
charm of the marvellous without becoming at length wearisome. So far
Quinault appears to me to have taken a much better road towards the true
vocation of particular departments of art, than that on which Metastasio
travelled long after him. The latter has admirably provided for the wants
of a melodious music expressive solely of feeling; but where does he
furnish the least food for the imagination? On the other hand, I am not so
sure that Quinault is justly entitled to praise for sacrificing, in
compliance with the taste of his countrymen, everything like comic
intermixture. He has been censured for an occasional play on language in
the expression of feeling. But is it just to exact the severity of the
tragical cothurnus in light works of this description? Why should not
Poetry also be allowed her arabesque? No person can be more an enemy to
mannerism than I am; but to censure it aright, we ought first to
understand the degree of nature and truth which we have a right to expect
from each species, and what is alone compatible with it. The verses of
Quinault have no other naïveté and simplicity than those of the
madrigal; and though they occasionally fall into the luscious, at other
times they express a languishing tenderness with gracefulness and a soft
melody. The opera ought to resemble the enchanted gardens of Armida, of
which Quinault says,
Dans ces lieux enchantés la volupté préside.
We ought only to be awaked out of the voluptuous dreams of feeling to
enjoy the magical illusions of fancy. When once we have come to imagine,
instead of real men, beings whose only language is song, it is but a very
short step to represent to ourselves creatures whose only occupation is
love; that feeling which hovers between the sensible and intellectual
world; and the first invention becomes natural again by means of the
second.
Quinault has had no successors. How far below his, both in point of
invention and of execution, are the French operas of the present day! The
heroic and tragic have been required in a department where they cannot
produce their proper effect. Instead of handling with fanciful freedom
mythological materials or subjects taken from chivalrous or pastoral
romances, they have after the manner of Tragedy chained themselves down to
history, and by means of their heavy seriousness, and the pedantry of
their rules, they have so managed matters, that Dulness with leaden
sceptre presides over the opera. The deficiencies of their music, the
unfitness of the French language for composition in a style anything
higher than that of the most simple national melodies, the unaccented and
arbitrary nature of their recitative, the bawling bravura of the singers,
must be left to the animadversions of musical critics.
With pretensions far lower, the Comic Opera or Operette approaches
much more nearly to perfection. With respect to the composition, it may
and indeed ought to assume only a national tone. The transition from song
to speech, without any musical accompaniment or heightening, which was
censured by Rousseau as an unsuitable mixture of two distinct modes of
composition, may be displeasing to the ear; but it has unquestionably
produced an advantageous effect on the structure of the pieces. In the
recitatives, which generally are not half understood, and seldom listened
to with any degree of attention, a plot which is even moderately
complicated cannot be developed with due clearness. Hence in the Italian
opera buffa, the action is altogether neglected; and along with its
grotesque caricatures, it is distinguished for uniform situations, which
admit not of dramatic progress. But the comic opera of the French,
although from the space occupied by the music it is unsusceptible of any
very perfect dramatic development, is still calculated to produce a
considerable stage effect, and speaks pleasingly to the imagination. The
poets have not here been prevented by the constraint of rules from
following out their theatrical views. Hence these fleeting productions are
in no wise deficient in the rapidity, life, and amusement, which are
frequently wanting in the more correct dramatic works of the French. The
distinguished favour which the operettes of a Favart, a Sedaine and
later poets, of whom some are still alive, always meet with in Germany,
(where foreign literature has long lost its commanding influence, and
where the national taste has pronounced so strongly against French
Tragedy,) is by no means to be placed to the account of the music; it is
in reality owing to their poetical merit. To cite only one example out of
many, I do not hesitate to declare the whole series of scenes in Raoul
Sire de Créquy, where the children of the drunken turnkey set the
prisoner at liberty, a master-piece of theatrical painting. How much were
it to be wished that the Tragedy of the French, and even their Comedy in
court-dress, had but a little of this truth of circumstance, this vivid
presence, and power of arresting the attention. In several operettes,
for instance in a Richard Coeur de Lion and a Nina, the traces of the
romantic spirit are not to be mistaken.
The vaudeville is but a variation of the comic opera. The essential
difference is that it dispenses with composition, by which the comic opera
forms a musical whole, as the songs are set to well-known popular airs.
The incessant skipping from the song to the dialogue, often after a few
scrapes of the violin and a few words, with the accumulation of airs
mostly common, but frequently also in a style altogether different from
the poetry, drives an ear accustomed to Italian music to despair. If we
can once make up our minds to bear with this, we shall not unfrequently be
richly recompensed in comic drollery; even in the choice of a melody, and
the allusion to the common and well-known words, there is often a display
of wit. In earlier times writers of higher pretensions, a Le Sage and a
Piron have laboured in the department of the vaudeville, and even for
marionettes. The wits who now dedicate themselves to this species are
little known out of Paris, but this gives them no great concern. It not
unfrequently happens that several of them join together, that the fruit of
their common talents may be sooner brought to light. The parody of new
theatrical pieces, the anecdotes of the day, which form the common talk
among all the idlers of the capital, must furnish them with subjects in
working up which little delay can be brooked. These vaudevilles are like
the gnats that buzz about in a summer evening; they often sting, but they
fly merrily about so long as the sun of opportunity shines upon them. A
piece like the Despair of Jocrisse, which, after a lapse of years, may
be still occasionally brought out, passes justly among the ephemeral
productions for a classical work that has gained the crown of immortality.
We must, however, see it acted by Brunet, whose face is almost a mask, and
who is nearly as inexhaustible in the part of the simpleton as Puncinello
is in his.
From a consideration of the sportive secondary species, formed out of a
mixture of the comic with the affecting, in which authors and spectators
give themselves up without reserve to their natural inclinations, it
appears to me evident, that as comic wit with the Italians consists in
grotesque mimicry or buffoonery, and with the English in humour, with the
French it consists in good-natured gaiety. Among the lower orders
especially this property is everywhere visible, where it has not been
supplanted by the artifice of corruption.
With respect to the present condition of Dramatic Art in France, every
thing depends on the endeavours to introduce the theatrical liberties of
other countries, or mixed species of the drama. The hope of producing any
thing truly new in the two species which are alone admitted to be regular,
of excelling the works already produced, of filling up the old frames with
richer pictures, becomes more and more distant every day. A new work
seldom obtains a decided approbation; and, even at best, this approbation
only lasts till it has been found out that the work is only a new
preparation of their old classical productions.
We have passed over several things relating to these endeavours, that we
may deliver together all the observations which we have to make on the
subject. The attacks hitherto made against the French forms of art, first
by De la Motte, and afterwards by Diderot and Mercier, have been like
voices in the wilderness. It could not be otherwise, as the principles on
which these writers proceeded were in reality destructive, not merely of
the conventional forms, but of all poetical forms whatever, and as none of
them showed themselves capable of suitably supporting their doctrine by
their own example, even when they were in the right they contrived,
nevertheless, by a false application, to be in the wrong.
The most remarkable among them is Diderot, whom Lessing calls the best
critic of the French. In opposition to this opinion I should be disposed
to affirm that he was no critic at all. I will not lay any stress on his
mistaking the object of poetry and the fine arts, which he considered to
be merely moral: a man may be a critic without being a theorist. But a man
cannot be a critic without being thoroughly acquainted with the
conditions, means, and styles of an art; and here the nature of Diderot's
studies and acquirements renders his critical capabilities extremely
questionable. This ingenious sophist deals out his blows with such
boisterous haste in the province of criticism, that the half of them are
thrown away. The true and the false, the old and the new, the essential
and the unimportant, are so mixed up together, that the highest praise we
can bestow upon him is, that he is worthy of the labour of disentangling
them. What he wished to accomplish had either been accomplished, though
not in France, or did not deserve to be accomplished, or was altogether
impracticable. His attack on the formality and holiday primness of the
dramatic probabilities, of the excessive symmetry of the French
versification, declamation, and mode of acting, was just; but, at the same
time, he objected to all theatrical elevation, and refused to allow to the
characters anything like a perfect mode of communicating what was passing
within them. He nowhere assigns the reason why he held versification as
not suitable, or prose as more suitable, to familiar tragedy; this has
been extended by others, and among the rest, unfortunately, by Lessing, to
every species of the drama; but the ground for it evidently rests on
nothing but the mistaken principles of illusion and nature, to which we
have more than once adverted. [Footnote: I have stated and refuted them in
a treatise On the Relation of the Fine Arts to Nature in the fifth
number of the periodical work Prometheus, published by Leo von
Seckendorf.] And if he gives an undue preference to the sentimental drama
and the familiar tragedy, species valuable in themselves, and susceptible
of a truly poetic treatment; was not this on account of the application?
The main thing, according to him, is not character and situations, but
ranks of life and family relations, that spectators in similar ranks and
relations may lay the example to heart. But this would put an end to
everything like true enjoyment in art. Diderot recommended that the
composition should have this direction, with the very view which, in the
case of a historical tragedy founded on the events of their own times, met
with the disapprobation of the Athenians, and subjected its author
Phrynichus to their displeasure [Footnote: See page 72.]. The view of a
fire by night may, from the wonderful effect produced by the combination
of flames and darkness, fill the unconcerned spectator with delight; but
when our neighbour's house is burning,—jam oreximus ardet Ucalegon—we
shall hardly be disposed to see the affair in such a picturesque light.
It is clear that Diderot was induced to take in his sail as he made way
with his own dramatic attempts. He displayed the greatest boldness in an
offensive publication of his youth, in which he wished to overturn the
entire dramatic system of the French; he was less daring in the dialogues
which accompany the Fils Naturel, and he showed the greatest moderation
in the treatise appended to the Père de Famille. He carried his
hostility a great deal too far with respect to the forms and the objects
of the dramatic art. But in other respects he has not gone far enough: in
his view of the Unities of Place and Time, and the mixture of seriousness
and mirth, he has shown himself infected with the prejudices of his
nation.
The two pieces above mentioned, which obtained an unmerited reputation on
their first appearance, have long since received their due appreciation.
On the Fils Naturel Lessing has pronounced a severe sentence, without,
however, censuring the scandalous plagiarism from Goldoni. But the Père
de Famille he calls an excellent piece, but has forgotten, however, to
assign any grounds for his opinion. Its defective plot and want of
connexion have been well exposed by La Harpe. The execution of both pieces
exhibits the utmost mannerism: the characters, which are anything but
natural, become from their frigid prating about virtue in the most
hypocritical style, and the tears which they are perpetually shedding,
altogether intolerable. We Germans may justly say, Hinc illae lacrymae!
hence the unnecessary tears with which our stage has ever since been
overflowed. The custom which has grown up of giving long and
circumstantial directions respecting the action, and which we owe also to
Diderot, has been of the greatest detriment to dramatic eloquence. In this
way the poet gives, as it were, an order on the player, instead of paying
out of his own purse. [Footnote: I remember to have read the following
direction in a German drama, which is not worse than many others:—"He
flashes lightning at him with his eyes (Er blitzt ihn mit den Augen
an) and goes off."] All good dramatists have uniformly had the action
in some degree present to their minds; but if the actor requires
instruction on the subject, he will hardly possess the talent of following
it up with the suitable gestures. The speeches should be so framed that an
intelligent actor could hardly fail to give them the proper action.
It will he admitted, that long before Diderot there were serious family
pictures, affecting dramas, and familial tragedies, much better than any
which he was capable of executing. Voltaire, who could never rightly
succeed in Comedy, gave in his Enfant Prodigue and Nanine a mixture of
comic scenes and affecting situations, the latter of which are deserving
of high praise. The affecting drama had been before attempted in France by
La Chaussée. All this was in verse: and why not? Of the familiar tragedy
(with the very same moral direction for which Diderot contended) several
examples have been produced on the English stage: and one of them,
Beverley, or the Gamester, is translated into French. The period of
sentimentality was of some use to the affecting or sentimental drama; but
the familiar tragedy was never very successful in France, where they were
too much attached to brilliancy and pomp. The Melanie of La Harpe (to
whom the stage of the present day owes Philoctete, the most faithful
imitation of a Grecian piece) abounds with those painful impressions which
form the rock this species may be said to split upon. The piece may
perhaps be well adapted to enlighten the conscience of a father who has
determined to force his daughter to enter a cloister; but to other
spectators it can only be painful.
Notwithstanding the opposition which Diderot experienced, he was however
the founder of a sort of school of which the most distinguished names are
Beaumarchais and Mercier. The former wrote only two pieces in the spirit
of his predecessor—Eugenie, and La Mère Coupable; and they display
the very same faults. His acquaintance with Spain and the Spanish theatre
led him to bring something new on the stage in the way of the piece of
intrigue, a species which had long been neglected. These works were more
distinguished by witty sallies than by humour of character; but their
greatest attraction consisted in the allusions to his own career as
an author. The plot of the Barber of Seville is rather trite; the
Marriage of Figaro is planned with much more art, but the manners
which it portrays are loose; and it is also censurable in a poetical point
of view, on account of the number of foreign excrescences with which it is
loaded. In both French characters are exhibited under the disguise of a
Spanish costume, which, however, is very ill observed [Footnote: The
numerous sins of Beaumarchais against the Spanish manners and observances,
are pointed out by De la Huerta in the introduction to his Teatro
Español.]. The extraordinary applause which these pieces met with
would lead to the conclusion, that the French public do not hold the
comedy of intrigue in such low estimation as it is by the critics:
but the means by which Beaumarchais pleased were certainly, in part it
least, foreign to art.
The attempt of Ducis to make his countrymen acquainted with Shakspeare by
modelling a few of his tragedies according to the French rules, cannot be
accounted an enlargement of their theatre. We perceive here and there
indeed the "torn members of the poet"—disjecta membra poetae; but
the whole is so constrained, disfigured, and, from the simple fulness of
the original, tortured and twisted into such miserable intricacy, that
even when the language is retained word for word, it ceases to convey its
genuine meaning. The crowd which these tragedies attracted, especially
from their affording an unusual room to the inimitable Talma for the
display of his art, must be looked upon as no slight symptom of the
people's dissatisfaction with their old works, and the want of others more
powerfully agitating.
As the Parisian theatres are at present tied down to certain kinds, and as
poetry has here a point of contact with the police, the numerous mixed and
new attempts are for the most part banished to the subordinate theatres.
Of these new attempts the Melo-dramas constitute a principal part.
A statistical writer of the theatre informs us, that for a number of years
back the new productions in Tragedy and regular Comedy have been fewest,
and that the melo-dramas have in number exceeded all the others put
together. They do not mean by melo-drama, as we do, a drama in which the
pauses are filled up by monologue with instrumental music, but where
actions in any wise wonderful, adventurous, or even sensuous, are
exhibited in emphatic prose with suitable decorations and dresses.
Advantage might be taken of this prevailing inclination to furnish a
better description of entertainment: since most of the melo-dramas are
unfortunately rude even to insipidity, and resemble abortive attempts at
the romantic.
In the sphere of dramatic literature the labours of a Le Mercier are
undoubtedly deserving of the critic's attention. This able man endeavours
to break through the prescribed limits in every possible way, and is so
passionately fond of his art that nothing can deter him from it; although
almost every new attempt which he makes converts the pit into a regular
field of battle. [Footnote: Since these Lectures were held, such a tumult
arose in the theatre at Paris on the representation of his Christopher
Columbus, that several of the champions of Boileau came off with
bruised heads and broken shins. They were in the right to fight like
desperadoes; for if this piece had succeeded, it would have been all over
with the consecrated Unities and good taste in the separation of the
heroic and the low. The first act takes place in the house of Columbus,
the second at the court of Isabella, the third and last on shipboard near
the New World. The object of the poet was to show that the man in whom any
grand idea originates is everywhere opposed and thwarted by the limited
and common-place views of other men; but that the strength of his
enthusiasm enables him to overcome all obstacles. In his own house, and
among his acquaintances, Columbus is considered as insane; at court he
obtains with difficulty a lukewarm support; in his own vessel a mutiny is
on the point of breaking out, when the wished-for land is discovered, and
the piece ends with the exclamation of "Land, land!" All this is conceived
and planned very skilfully; but in the execution, however, there are
numerous defects. In another piece not yet acted nor printed, called La
Journée des Dupes, which I heard the author read, he has painted with
historical truth, both in regard to circumstances and the spirit of the
age, a well-known but unsuccessful court-cabal against Cardinal Richelieu.
It is a political comedy, in which the rag-gatherer and the king express
themselves in language suitable to their stations. The poet has, with the
greatest ingenuity, shown the manner in which trivial causes assist or
impede the execution of a great political design, the dissimulation
practised by political personages towards others, and even towards
themselves, and the different tones which they assume according to
circumstances; in a word, he has exhibited the whole inward aspect of the
game of politics.]
From all this we may infer, that the inclinations of the French public,
when they forget the duties they have imbibed from Boileau's Art of
Poetry, are not quite so hostile to the dramatic liberties of other
nations as might be supposed, and that the old and narrow system is
chiefly upheld by a superstitious attachment to traditional opinions.
The histrionic art, particularly in high comedy and tragedy, has been long
carried in France to great perfection. In external dignity, quickness,
correctness of memory, and in a wonderful degree of propriety and elegance
in the delivery of verse, the best French actors are hardly to be
surpassed. Their efforts to please are incredible: every moment they pass
on the stage is a valuable opportunity, of which they must avail
themselves. The extremely fastidious taste of a Paris pit, and the
wholesome severity of the journalists, excite in them a spirit of
incessant emulation; and the circumstance of acting a number of classical
works, which for generations have been in the possession of the stage,
contributes also greatly to their excellence in their art. As the
spectators have these works nearly by heart, their whole attention may be
directed to the acting, and every faulty syllable meets in this way with
immediate detection and reprobation.
In high comedy the social refinement of the nation affords great
advantages to their actors. But with respect to tragical composition, the
art of the actor should also accommodate itself to the spirit of the
poetry. I am inclined to doubt, however, whether this is the case with the
French actors, and whether the authors of the tragedies, especially those
of the age of Louis XIV. would altogether recognise themselves in the mode
in which these compositions are at present represented.
The tragic imitation and recitation of the French oscillate between two
opposite extremes, the first of which is occasioned by the prevailing tone
of the piece, while the second seems rather to be at variance with it,—
between measured formality and extravagant boisterousness. The first might
formerly preponderate, but the balance is now on the other side.
Let us hear Voltaire's description of the manner in which, in the time of
Louis XIV., Augustus delivered his discourse to Cinna and Maximus.
Augustus entered with the step of a braggadocio, his head covered with a
four-cornered peruque, which hung down to his girdle; the peruque was
stuck full of laurel leaves, and above this he wore a large hat with a
double row of red feathers. He seated himself on a huge fauteuil, two
steps high, Cinna and Maximus on two low chairs; and the pompous
declamation fully corresponded to the ostentatious manner in which he made
his appearance. As at that time, and even long afterwards, tragedies were
acted in a court-dress of the newest fashion, with large cravats, swords,
and hats, no other movements were practicable but such as were allowable
in an antechamber, or, at most, a slight waving of the hand; and it was
even considered a bold theatrical attempt, when, in the last scene of
Polyeucte, Severus entered with his hat on his head for the purpose
of accusing Felix of treachery, and the latter listened to him with his
hat under his arm.
However, there were even early examples of an extravagance of an opposite
description. In the Mariamne of Mairet, an older poet than Corneille,
the player who acted Herod, roared himself to death. This may, indeed, be
called "out-heroding Herod!" When Voltaire was instructing an actress in
some tragic part, she said to him, "Were I to play in this manner, sir,
they would say the devil was in me."—"Very right," answered Voltaire, "an
actress ought to have the devil in her." This expression proves, at least,
no very keen sense for that dignity and sweetness which in an ideal
composition, such as the French Tragedy pretends to be, ought never to be
lost sight of, even in the wildest whirlwind of passion.
I found occasionally, even in the action of the very best players of the
present day, sudden leaps from the measured solemnity in recitation and
gesticulation which the general tone of the composition required, to a
boisterousness of passion absolutely convulsive, without any due
preparation or softening by intervening gradations. They are led to this
by a sort of obscure feeling, that the conventional forms of poetry
generally impede the movements of nature; when the poet any where leaves
them at liberty, they then indemnify themselves for the former constraint,
and load, as it were, this rare moment of abandonment with the whole
amount of life and animation which had been kept back, and which ought to
have been equally diffused over the whole. Hence their convulsive and
obstreperous violence. In bravura they take care not to be deficient; but
they frequently lose sight of the true spirit of the composition. In
general, (with the single exception of the great Talma,) they consider
their parts as a sort of mosaic work of brilliant passages, and they
rather endeavour to make the most of each separate passage, independently
of the rest, than to go back to the invisible central point of the
character, and to consider every expression of it as an emanation from
that point. They are always afraid of underdoing their parts; and hence
they are worse qualified for reserved action, for eloquent silence, where,
under an appearance of outward tranquillity, the most hidden emotions of
the mind are betrayed. However, this is a part which is seldom imposed on
them by their poets; and if the cause of such excessive violence in the
expression of passion is not to be found in the works themselves, they at
all events occasion the actor to lay greater stress on superficial
brilliancy than on a profound knowledge of character [Footnote: See a
treatise of M. Von Humboldt the elder, in Goethe's Propyläen, on
the French acting, equally distinguished for a refined and solid spirit of
observation.].