Chapter 7: the Golden Ages, Part 2
French Theatre
During the reign of Francis I (1515-1547), Italian scholars and artists were invited to the French court. They brought with them the Neoclassical Ideal (Verisimilitude; the unities of time, action, and place; and the strict classification of dramatic genres). Neoclassicism was firmly established in France by 1572.
However, life in France became increasingly unsettled during the second half of the sixteenth century. There was a growing struggle between Catholics and Protestants (or Huguenots), and tens of thousands were killed in the persecutions. During these disturbances, the Neoclassical Ideal was all but forgotten.
The country began to rebuild after the Edict of Nantes. And stability in the country was finally achieved in the early seventeenth century under the influence of Cardinal Richelieu. With stability in the country, the neoclassical ideal returned to focus. During the seventeenth century, three great playwrights championed Neoclassicism. These three were Pierre Corneille, writing both comedy and tragedy; Jean Racine, writing tragedy; and Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (also known as Moliere), writing comedy.
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was born in Rouen in 1606. He was raised in the Jesuit tradition and studied law. A significant part of his life was spent as a member of parliament. During his time in parliament, and for years afterward, he was the playwright who established the Neoclassical Ideal in French theatre.
Although he is most famous as a writer of tragedy, his first eight plays were comedies. His first work is Mélite (1629), neither a farce nor a pastoral comedy. In both tragedy and comedy, he achieved success writing great plays that strictly adhered to the Neoclassical doctrines of verisimilitude and the unities.
While he is credited with establishing the Neoclassical Ideal in France, his most important work was actually misinterpreted as an attack against the Ideal. In 1636, Corneille wrote Le Cid based upon the legend of a Spanish warrior, El Cid. The story occurs over many years and in numerous locations. Corneille’s play compresses the events into five acts; a single, 24-hour period; and four locations within a single town.
Le Cid – The play begins in the evening. The hero, Roderigue, and the heroine, Chimene, are engaged to be married. Roderigue’s father, Don Diegue, is insulted by Chimene’s father, Don Gomez, when they quarrel over the king’s favor. The elder general, Don Diegue is unable to defend his honor, and so he sends his son (Roderigue) against Chimene’s father in a duel. Roderigue succeeds in killing Don Gomez, but it costs him the love of Chimene. While Chimene sues to the king for vengeance, word arrives of an invasion from a Moorish fleet. Roderique leads 500 soldiers in a surprise attack against the Moors, and he succeeds in thwarting the invasion and saving the kingdom. The king cannot act against his newest hero, but, the next morning, Chimene offers herself in marriage to whoever will challenge Roderigue to avenge the death of her father. Don Sancho volunteers and Chimene quickly accepts. The king determines that Chimene will wed whoever wins the duel. Roderigue privately informs Chimene that he will not defend himself – he would rather die with honor than live without her love. Chimene reveals her love for Roderique and orders him to defend himself. Roderique is successful, but Chimene cannot marry the man who killed her father so quickly after his death. The king grants Chimene one year to mourn for her father while Roderigue is ordered to lead the army against the Moors, until their love can be united.
While the play adhered to the unities of time, place, and action, the decision of the lovers to marry so quickly after the death of Chimene’s father was seen as a violation of decorum. In addition, the play did not seem to fit any of the recognized dramatic types; it was neither comedy nor tragedy.
Pierre Corneille was deeply hurt by the strong reactions against the play, and wrote no more plays for three years. After the pause in his work, he wrote four more plays, all of excellent worth within the Neoclassical Ideal.
Corneille died in 1684.
Jean Racine
Where Pierre Corneille’s plays involved simple characters involved in complex plot arrangements, Jean Racine took French neoclassical tragedy to its highest achievement with complex characters involved in relatively simple plot structures.
Jean Racine was born in 1639 and was orphaned shortly thereafter. He was raised by his grandmother in religious beliefs of strict Roman Catholicism. He was schooled in Jansenism (a Reform movement in the Roman Catholic Church) where he received a classical education combined with strict religious teachings. The Greek concept of Fate was merged with the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the result was a view of a helpless humanity. He died in 1699, acclaimed by many to be the greatest French tragedian.
His early plays were actually received and produced by Moliere, and his early success provided him with good reason to break with the Church and devote his life to playwrighting.
Phaedra – Phaedra is queen, the wife of Theseus. Hippolytus is the son of Theseus by a previous wife. He is an attractive young man, and Phaedra is ashamed by her desire for Hippolytus. When word comes to the palace that Theseus has died, there are political shifts in power as Hippolytus must compete with Phaedra’s son for control. The citizens of Athens want Phaedra’s son to be their king. Phaedra confesses her love for Hippolytus, and offers him the throne of Athens if he will take her with it. Then Theseus returns home (the reports of his death were false). Word of political plotting reaches Theseus, and Hippolytus is banished before Theseus learns of his son’s innocence. Meanwhile, Phaedra takes a poison which ends her life.
Racine’s plays focus on a primary character who, under the strain of intense emotion, bares his or her soul to a confidant. The character’s emotional struggle becomes the main action of the play, which enabled Racine to work within the confines of the Neoclassical Ideal with ease.
Jean-Baptiste Poqueline
Jean-Baptiste Poqueline was born in 1622. His father was an upholsterer for the royal court, which provided Jean-Baptiste with access to excellent education and a comfortable lifestyle. Growing up in Paris, he was exposed to comic street theatre and traditional performances. At the age of twenty-one, he devoted the rest of his life to theatre as an actor, changed his name to Moliere, and joined with several of his friends to form their own theatre company.
Their attempts at running a theatrical business ended in dismal failure, repeatedly. As a result, they began a traveling troupe venture which performed in small villages throughout France. The troupe traveled for twelve years, and it was during this time that Moliere began to write plays.
After a dozen years on the road, the company made a successful return to Paris. Moliere’s plays were modeled after the comedy of intrigue developed by Corneille, but with more carefully crafted characters. Moliere, among other qualities, was a gifted observer of daily life and behaviors. His plays combined contemporary manners and characters with carefully developed plots. In general, he maintained an adherence to the Neoclassical Ideal: the five-act structure and the unities of time, action, and place.
Tartuffe – The primary character of the play is Orgon, the husband of Elmire, father of two children (Damis and Mariane), and benefactor for one Tartuffe. Orgon has opened his house and fortune to Tartuffe because he is convinced that Tartuffe is a truly righteous, pious man. The rest of Orgon’s household – his wife, children, and servant – are convinced that Tartuffe is a scoundrel and a hypocrite. Orgon is determined to stand by Tartuffe. So much so, that he disowns his son and declares that he will marry his daughter to this pious man. Comedy ensues as Elmire attempts to demonstrate Tartuffe’s hypocrisy to Orgon. Eventually, officers of the king arrive and arrest Tartuffe, thereby saving Orgon’s family and fortune.
Moliere wrote in both verse and prose. And his wit and portrayal of contemporary behaviors often caused offense in his audience members and the general public. (He was typically involved in some controversy or other.) Plus, he wrote for his own company, which enabled him to craft the parts to the actors’ strengths. He typically wrote the lead male role for himself.
In 1679, Moliere began to bleed internally as he prepared for a performance of The Imaginary Invalid. He was scheduled to play the lead role of Argan, a hypochondriac. Against the advice of his wife and friends, he gave the performance. He died later that night in his home.
Moliere was denied a Christian burial. As an actor, he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. He had no social standing. Four days later, under the authority of the king and under cover of darkness, he was given a burial in the Cemetery Saint Joseph.
French Staging
The Italian scholars and artists who came to the French court brought with them the Italian use of wing and groove set decoration. Their theaters were rectangular, proscenium theaters. Their settings were painting on large canvases (called flats). In order to move from one scene to another quickly, the flats were set in grooves dug into the stage floor. The flats could be set, one behind the other, and a scene change could be affected quickly by pulling the front flat out of the way to reveal the back flat (or by sliding a front flat into view of the audience, hiding the back flat).
The French theatre artists mechanized this entire process. They cut slots in the stage floors (parallel to the footlights) and installed carts on rails in the sub-flooring. To the carts (chariots), they attached long poles which extended up through the stage floor and supported a flat for a given scene. Thus, an entire stage setting (made up of multiple flats) could be moved into or out of view by the work of one man operating a winch in the sub-floor. The wing-and-groove system of the Italian theaters was mechanized by the French into the chariot-and-pole system.
Romanticism
The eighteenth century saw the fading of the Neoclassical Ideal. While the French playwrights had written great dramas which adhered to the Neoclassical Ideal, the plays of the English playwrights (Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and others) were appealing to the audiences of Europe equally well without following the Neoclassical form. The age of Neoclassicism gave way to Romanticism.
Romanticism, as a formal movement and philosophy, began in Germany. The Neoclassical philosophy had been based upon the premise of human beings as rational creatures, able to govern themselves through logic and reasoning. The Romantic philosophy focused more on the spiritual and emotional lives of human beings, and on a pursuit of truth which could not be rationally obtained.
The Neoclassical world looked to the mathematician and the physicist for the answers to the universal questions. The Romantic world looked to the philosopher and the artist as their guides. Romanticism sought utopia.
The Romantic playwrights quickly rejected the Neoclassical limitations on time, action, and place. They rejected the strict categories of dramatic genres. They rejected the idea that plays must present a focused moral and rational worldview. They stressed the emotions and the imagination.
The standard-bearer of the Romantic movement was William Shakespeare because his plays so easily fit the philosophy they were attempting to disseminate. His plays were translated into German and received popular responses.
As for the Romantic playwrights, few of their plays were actually performed and those which were produced received poor responses from the German public. An example of a play from this philosophical movement is The 24th of February by Zacharias Werner. The play is a collection of separate events, all the result of a curse and all occurring on the twenty-fourth of February.
As the Romantic philosophers dispersed throughout Europe, their message and their ideology began to fragment and lose its impetus.
While the Romantic philosophy found little support as a formal movement, their ideas and their rejection of classical/neoclassical doctrines are found more naturally expressed in melodrama.
Melodrama
The characteristics of melodrama can be found in drama throughout the history of theatre; the term itself did not come into use until after 1800. The form, as a designated genre of drama, was popularized by Guilbert de Pixérécourt. It served as a precursor to the formal Romantic movement in France.
Melodrama took its name from the fact that most performances had some type of musical accompaniment to help drive the emotional impact of the play. It followed the basic structure of tragedy, without the tragic elements. Instead of tragic seriousness, melodrama utilized suspense and happy endings.
Typically, melodrama contained stock characters: (1) a handsome hero or heroine, (2) a villain, (3) an innocent victim, (4) a comic companion or servant of the hero, and (5) an accomplice of the villain. Melodrama followed the basic Neoclassical structure of five acts. Each act ended with a strong climax, and the play ended happily for the hero/heroine.
Melodrama presented the Romantic notion of utopia in its standard inclusion of poetic justice. The righteous hero/heroine, though troubled by dangerous obstacles throughout the play, always succeeded in the end. The treacherous villain, no matter how powerful or intelligent, always met defeat in the end; either the hero/heroine beat him down or some natural event (such as an earthquake) brought him into final judgment.
The plot structures and characters of melodrama were simple and straightforward. What made melodrama so popular with the audiences was the use of incredible spectacle and special effects. Nearly every melodrama has some sort of natural disaster: a storm, an earthquake, or a raging flood.
These special effects demanded new technologies for staging. As a result, melodrama pushed beyond the traditional boundaries and began to open the door of exploration and experimentation for theatre artists. The chariot-and-pole system had already simplified quick set changes. The number of settings available to a playwright or director was based on the limitations of imagination and budget. In addition, theater technicians began to develop additional stage effects to create storms, earthquakes, or floods. In one play, treadmills were stretched across the stage floor (parallel to the footlights) and a horse race was actually run within the context of the play.
Melodrama reached its peak during the nineteenth century, in Europe and America. The characteristics of Melodrama existed prior to the nineteenth century (remember the spectacles of Roman theater). And the characteristics continue to influence productions today. Consider the action-adventures of our contemporary theater, television, and film industries.
Realism
In 1839, a scientific breakthrough occurred which literally changed the way human beings looked at their world. Two men, working separately, developed the process we now know as photography. Louis Daguerre developed the process in France. William Price Fox Talbot developed the process in England.
“The camera never lies” – so the axiom goes. It records the image it is presented, literally and objectively. And it was the objectivity of the camera which had a tremendous impact on theatre production. The influence of photographic objectivity became the impetus for a movement toward realism in theatre art.
Realism, as a formal art movement, began in France in 1853. In contrast to what the Romantics were attempting, Realism sought to portray the world as it really was, with the objectivity of a doctor attempting to diagnose and cure.
To the Realist, art must truthfully and carefully portray the real world. Where the Romantic artist dealt with historical and mythical stories and legends, the Realistic artist was encouraged to deal only with the contemporary world.
Where human beings have always sought truth in their world, the Realist believed that truth could only be found through direct observation of the world around him or her. The Romanticist believed that truth was an invisible reality behind the physical world; the Realist believed that truth was found only in the physical world.
The Romantic artist believed in the power of emotion and the imagination. The Realistic artist believed in the power of observation and objectivity.
Henrik Ibsen
On the one hand, Henrik Ibsen was the champion of Norwegian national theatre. On the other hand, he was a champion of Realism in Playwrighting.
He was born in 1828, and raised in Skien, a small town in Norway with a population of about 3,000. He lived his life in an ordinary fashion, attending both public and Latin school. At a young age, he was sent to a small shipping village, Grimstad, where he was apprenticed to the apothecary for several years to learn a trade.
In 1850, he made his way to Christiana where he spent most of his time enjoying the various theatrical entertainments available. He wrote poetry and drama, and eventually made his way to Bergen where he worked as the theater’s director for five years. The national theatre of Norway invited him back to Christiana in 1857 to serve as its director.
In many ways, Henrik Ibsen epitomizes the Realistic period. He published his first play in 1850. He wrote within the Romantic framework from 1850 to 1870. Two such works are Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt (1867). He wrote in the Realistic mode from 1870 to 1883. His realistic works include A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), and An Enemy of the People (1882). And then he worked in a non-realistic format from 1884 to 1899.
A Doll’s House – Nora is the young wife of Helmer, and they have two children. Helmer works at a bank, and he has recently been promoted to a supervisory position. After years of struggle, it appears the couple is getting closer to their dreams of a comfortable life. Unfortunately, Helmer was seriously ill several years earlier, and Nora took out a loan from the bank; she has never told her husband about the loan. The man at the bank who helped her with the loan now faces termination from his new supervisor, Helmer. The man approaches Nora to keep his position; Nora forged her father’s signature on the loan papers years ago, and the man will turn the papers over to the proper authorities if he is terminated. Nora eventually confesses to her husband, while her friend tries to persuade the man to show mercy. Helmer is furious with his ignorant wife, furious that her actions have placed him in such peril in his own career. The man turns over the incriminating evidence, and Helmer quickly destroys it. Helmer is satisfied with himself, but Nora realizes that she is nothing more to her husband than a pretty possession. She leaves her husband and children to go into the world and find herself.
Ibsen’s plays had a tremendous impact on his audiences. He expressed a reality which the society did not wish to confront. He was both praised and resented for his honest, realistic portrayal of society.