Popular Theatres of Nineteenth Century France

POPULAR THEATRES OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE This is the only book to provide an account of how popular theatre devel...

Author: John McCormick

169 downloads 932 Views 5MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

POPULAR THEATRES OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

This is the only book to provide an account of how popular theatre developed from the fairground booths of the eighteenth century to become a vehicle of mass entertainment in the following century. Whereas other studies offer their readers a traditional text-based approach to the theatres of high culture, John McCormick has taken the attitude of impartial historian to uncover the popular theatres of the boulevards, suburbs and fairgrounds. He focuses on the social and economic context in which vaudevilles, pantomimes and melodramas were performed and looks at the audiences who enjoyed them. Popular Theatres of Nineteenth-Century France combines careful scholarship with a lively approach. It presumes no prior knowledge of the subject and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of theatre, society and culture in nineteenth-century France. John McCormick has written extensively on aspects of nineteenth-century theatre. He was director of the Drama Department at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1984 to 1991, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Drama at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College. He is a practising director and puppeteer.

POPULAR THEATRES OF NINETEENTHCENTURY FRANCE

John McCormick

London and New York

First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 1993 John McCormick All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data McCormick, John Popular Theatres of Nineteenth-Century France I. Title 792.0944 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data McCormick, John Popular theatres of nineteenth-century France / John McCormick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Theater—France—History—19th century. 2. Theater and society—France. I. title. PN2634.M38 1993 792′.0944′09034–dc20 92–9964 ISBN 0-203-16811-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26328-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-08854-2 (Print Edition)

For Clodagh

CONTENTS

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction

ix x 1 Part I

1 LES THEATRES SECONDAIRES

13

2 EQUESTRIANS AND ACROBATS

28

3 AWAY FROM THE CENTRE—THE SUBURBS AND THE PROVINCES

45

4 ‘FORAINS’ AND FIT-UPS

58

5 AUDIENCES

76

6 ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

89

7 CENSORSHIP

99 Part II

8 THE VAUDEVILLE

113

9 PANTOMIME

134

10 THE FEERIE

148

11 THE EARLY MELODRAMA

157

12 THE SOCIAL MELODRAMA

180

13 POPULAR FICTION AND THE THEATRE

201

Conclusion Notes Index

224 228 244

ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Boulevard du Temple in the 1850s 2 The auditorium of the Funambles, as seen by Valentin (British Library) 3 Henri Daumier, Fifth Act at the Gaîté (Musée Carnavalet) 4 Henri Daumier, Le Spectacle est une chose bonne pour le peuple de Paris (author’s collection) 5 Valentin, The Audience at the Théâtre de Funambles (British Library) 6 Brunet, Vernet and Potier in Les Anglaises pour rire (author’s collection) 7 Pixérécourt, Le Château de Lochleven (Bibliothèque Historique) 8 P.Decourcelle, Les Deux Gosses postcard (author’s collection) 9 Characters from Bouchardy’s Le Sonneur de St Paul (Musée Carnavalet) 10 A.Dennery, Marie-Jeanne (Bibliothèque Forney) 11 Frédérick Lemaître in Act II of F. Pyat’s Le Chiffonnier de Paris (Bibliothèque Forney) 12 A.Dumas, Monte Cristo (Bibliothèque Forney)

ix

22–3 41 82 84 86 121 158 176 181 189 198 212

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank all those who have helped me in the preparation of this book. Particular gratitude is due to the library staff of the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires (Paris), the Archives Nationales (Paris), the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (Paris), the Musée Gadagne (Lyon), the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris) and to the British Library. Thanks are also due to Trinity College, Dublin, for a grant towards the travel and photographic expenses incurred.

x

INTRODUCTION

‘Popular theatre’, a much used expression in the 1950s and 1960s, and one that has found its way into a number of book titles, has of recent years become almost a non-term because of the diversity of its application. Indeed, the very validity of the concept was undermined by Emile Copfermann’s Le Théâtre populaire, pourquoi?.1 The whole ‘people’s theatre’ movement of the twentieth century, however excellent its intentions, and despite the fact that it has produced some of the best theatre of the century, carries with it a notion of cultural paternalism that is hard to shake off. At best it has the notion of democratising theatre by making the repertoire available to all citizens—but even this is fraught with ideological dangers, and the notion of providing the popular classes with access to high culture carries implicitly the sense of cultural imperialism. The notion that popular theatre means a theatre produced by the people for the people has been another ideal of the twentieth century. In France this has achieved little reality outside the amateur movement. The actors of the nineteenth century, outside the ComédieFrançaise, usually came of popular background and there was a sense that they were performing to their peers until their status began to improve towards the end of the century. The majority of authors, however, were middle class and the theatres themselves were rapidly developing from the family businesses of the Nicolets or Audinots at the beginning of the century into speculative ventures managed by a company of shareholders, ultimately creating the sort of capitalist commercialism that reformers from Antoine to Copeau would react against so 1


strongly. The nineteenth century did not have a major ‘people’s theatre’ movement, though by the 1830s the governing classes were becoming aware of the masses and there was a growing concern that the masses should have access to culture. In 1850 the phrase ‘theatre populaire’ had a very different resonance from the one it would have a hundred years later. Throughout the nineteenth century the terms ‘populaire’ and ‘du peuple’ crop up frequently and carry an assumption that the reader or audience will know what is meant. For example, a number of plays, such as Deslandes and Didier’s L’Enfant du faubourg (Palais-Royal, 1836), are classified as belonging to a subgenre, the ‘tableau populaire’. This sub-genre seems to be defined by the fact that all the characters are working class. The genre which we associate most with the popular theatre of the nineteenth century is the melodrama, with its clear-cut notions of right and wrong and its strong appeal to the less fortunate members of society, who found an echo of their own harsh lives in the sufferings of the protagonists, and encouragement in the ideal solutions that providence could provide. The eighteenth-century philosophes originally opened up the debate on the social value of theatre and the notion of a ‘people’s theatre’. One of the most important contributions to this debate was Louis Sébastien Mercier’s Du Théâtre ou nouvel essai sur lart dramatique of 1773.2 In chapter 20 he discusses the question of whether the dramatic poet should work for the people and points to the value of the arts as a civilising influence which, by addressing the soul rather than the intellect of man, can have a positive moral value. He makes quite clear that, by people, he means the masses (he uses the word ‘multitude’), and indicates that the uneducated masses should not be written off as being incapable of experiencing finer feelings. He echoes Diderot and anticipates the writer of melodramas, Guilbert de Pixérécourt, when he says that the poet has only to offer ‘a simple and touching picture and he will see hearts being stirred’, and goes on to emphasise the power of the theatre over the minds of the people. He also shows an awareness of the collective nature of the theatre audience and of its ability to judge what is presented not as private individuals but, as he says, ‘as a public man’.3 Hesees Shakespeare as a great writer because he could speak to the entire nation, not merely to the educated classes. A repeated theme is that education is not necessary for people to have discernment and he attacks the 2

INTRODUCTION

snobberies of good taste as a means of excluding the less educated classes from enjoyment of theatre. The essay also points to a broadening of the theatre public by the end of the eighteenth century, and he observes that artisans, who previously might have devoted their free time to drinking, were now going to the theatre. By theatre, he is here thinking primarily of the Comédie-Française and of the notion of a visit to the theatre as being an improving experience. This is the type of theatre from which he feels that the most numerous part of the nation should not be excluded. He then goes on to attack the boulevard entertainments with their ‘licentious plays in which vice and vulgarity triumph’.4 This was not his vision of a people’s theatre. He called rather for a much enlarged Comédie-Française, admitting not an élitist audience, but a mass one: the immense throng of the people will give a new fire to the dull actor, and a new warmth to the drame: brought to life by the great number of spectators, the actor will be all the more ready to conceive and sustain the fire that is born from general emotion.5 Despite the good intentions of a Pixérécourt in the early years of the nineteenth century or the socialist zeal of a Pyat or a Soulié in the 1840s, the boulevard theatres, even if they improved their moral tone considerably, seldom provided the ideal fare that Mercier was looking for. Even Napoleon’s eagerness to promote a national drama of civic awareness never turned the ComédieFrançaise into the mass theatre of Mercier’s dream. Mercier’s ideas did not die, but continued through the century as a sort of undercurrent, occasionally reaching the surface in slightly half-hearted and generally short-lived attempts to establish a popular opera. His most influential successor was without doubt Romain Rolland, who published his Le Théâtre du peuple in 1903. This arrived at a time when the whole notion of people’s theatre was gathering momentum, with the creation of Maurice Pottecher’s Théâtre du Peuple at Bussang, in the Vosges, in 1895 and his essay, Le Théâtre du peuple, of 1899. The Universités Populaires, established at the turn of the century, made their own contribution, especially in the area of amateur drama. Antoine’s break with the commercial theatre, when he set up the Théâtre Libre in 1887 also had an impact on the movement. Finally, the 3


melodrama actor, Firmin Gémier, provided the real impetus that led to the establishment of a Théâtre National Populaire in the 1920s (though the dream had to wait until the post-war period to be fulfilled).6 A century after Mercier, in 1872, Jules Bonassiès published Le Théâtre et le peuple. Coming so shortly after the Commune, this publication has an added interest, though its main point of reference is the revolution of 1789. Basically Bonassiès’ notion of people’s theatre is a theatre of reconciliation, and he uses the term ‘peuple’ in the sense of all classes of society rather than what he terms the ‘lower classes’ alone. He sees theatre as the supreme social art because all classes of society attend it, but then goes on to develop a thesis which we might find less acceptable today, the notion of theatre as a useful forum for the propagation of ideas, a place where the great episodes of national history could be presented. The notion of theatre as a means of promoting and developing the ideology of the state (as opposed to more general moral values) has uncomfortable totalitarian overtones (and indeed corresponds to some of Napoleon’s views). The introduction of free enterprise in theatre business in 1864 did not appeal to Bonassiès, since it implied that the state had abdicated a part of its responsibility for the theatre. At the back of his mind was an idea that the main subsidised theatres should be places of excellence, that they should become accessible to all (he proposes, for example, making available larger numbers of cheap, and good, seats to the ‘lower classes’). He hoped that by improving the quality of performances at the subsidised theatres the working-class public would be drawn away from the secondary ones. He also suggests that actors should be treated as civil servants with regular salaries and a pension. In the second part of the book he looks more carefully at theatres not designed for the élite, at what he describes as ‘municipal theatres created for the use of the less educated classes of the population of Paris and subsidised by the city of Paris’.7 Hepicks up, for example, on Emile Souvestre’s proposal of 1849 for the creation of a large popular dramatic and musical theatre and a similar proposal from Victor Hugo for the creation of four large municipal theatres. But, unlike Mercier and others, he suggests that a popular theatre should not be of enormous dimensions to hold huge masses of people, points out that the large theatres of the nineteenth century were inimical to the art of the actor, that it is 4

INTRODUCTION

not the number of spectators that matters, but their interest in and enjoyment of the show. If anything, he would advocate the setting up of a number of small theatres. He then goes on to suggest some form of decentralisation, with theatres being built not only in the various inner quartiers but also in the more outlying districts of the city. The latter theatres, which he terms ‘théâtres populaires’, would have cheap seats and, rather than running a resident company, act as receiving houses for a number of municipally subsidised troupes. He even hoped to organise the provinces on similar lines, with companies being sent out from Paris with tours of successful plays. To a limited extent his ideas would come to fruition with the establishment of popular galas in suburban theatres, when the actors of the Comédie-Française or the singers of the Opéra would come out for a single performance at popular prices. Some of his other proposals, such as the distribution of tickets through schools and night-schools, seem almost to anticipate Jean Vilar’s ideas for creating new audiences, and even his reference to theatres as ‘lay churches’ is not unlike André Malraux’s idea of the Maison de la Culture as the ‘cathedral’ of the modern age. In 1879, the architect Viollet-le-Duc submitted a detailed proposal to the municipality of Paris for the establishment of a popular opera and a popular dramatic theatre.8 His ideas were closer to those of Mercier, his ideal being theatres with 3,000 to 4,000 seats, all comfortable and none costing more than 2 francs. All these proposals, interesting as they are, and important for the creation of a state-directed (or at least state-subsidised) people’s theatre, are of relatively marginal significance for the present study. This book is more concerned with the actual practice of popular theatre in the nineteenth century than with theories or ideals. What the nineteenth century showed most clearly was the existence of a real and large popular public, born out of the development of Paris as a city with a huge population requiring diversion whenever they could afford it or find the leisure to enjoy it. A popular public had existed in the eighteenth century and frequented the fairground theatres and the early boulevard ones, but numerically it was much smaller. Before the revolution, the notion of a mass audience was more an abstract ideal related to Rousseauist fêtes or celebrations than to a regular theatre-going public. In Paris, the revolution led to a considerable democratisation 5


of the theatre, especially with the declaration of the freedom of the theatres in 1791. One of its effects was to broaden theatre audiences enormously as members of what had previously been thought of as the non-public flocked into the theatres in the 1790s. Napoleon saw the whole matter as getting out of hand. His own tastes were essentially conservative and bourgeois and he disapproved of the excesses and vulgarities of the boulevard theatres. In 1807 he finally stemmed what he perceived as the excessive licence of the theatres with a decree that recognised four official theatres and four secondary theatres (plus the popular theatre par excellence, the circus). It is with the secondary theatres that this book is to be primarily concerned. In 1807 these theatres had lower social status, their audiences were more popular in composition, and their repertoires, from which comedies and tragedies were excluded, were restricted to the specified genres of melodrama, vaudeville, pantomime and féerie, which became, as it were, the official dramatic forms of the boulevard. By 1830, with the development of the city of Paris and the relative consecration of the boulevard, audiences had become more largely middle class (and the theatres had become more comfortable). The distinctions between official and secondary theatres were also becoming blurred, though the limitation on repertoire was not abolished until 1864. The purpose of this book is to tread a path which, in part, develops that of Maurice Descotes in Le Public de théâtre et son histoire.9 For Descotes, one of the main criteria was box-office returns. A box-office success will certainly draw a wider audience than the regular public of a particular theatre. In the first half of the nineteenth century, a successful melodrama at a boulevard theatre would attract many middle- and upper-class spectators in addition to its more familiar popular audience. We can likewise assume that the successes of Offenbach, such as La Grande-Duchesse de Géroktein, with Hortense Schneider, would have brought a number of spectators of the working classes to the relatively up-market, and more expensive, Théâtre des Variétés. Those who seldom go to the theatre, whether for economic or other reasons, will not necessarily choose any particular theatre, but will go to a show that people are talking about and which they have heard to be good. The regular theatre-going public of the popular theatres in the nineteenth century is best compared with the cinema-goers of the 6

INTRODUCTION

1940s and 1950s, who went every Friday night and for whom cinema-going was an integral part of life. It is this type of audience that was the backbone of the popular theatres of the nineteenth century, an audience that was theatrically literate, even if many of its members could not read. Such an audience was as thoroughly conversant with the conventions of the theatrical fare offered to them as a modern television audience is with the conventions of a soap opera. However, a note of caution has to be sounded about the whole notion of a ‘popular’ audience. At best we can speak of audiences the preponderance of whose members belonged to the less well-off socio-economic sections of society (but even this excludes the great numbers who, in any large city of the nineteenth century, lived in a state of semi- or complete destitution). Nobody questions the existence of ‘popular’ audiences in the nineteenth century, but actual definition of such audiences remains remarkably elusive, and will be examined. The theatres of the boulevard du Temple, and above all the circus, were perceived as satisfying the theatrical needs of the popular classes. At the same time, the paradis or gods of the Comédie-Française was not vastly beyond the pocket of anyone who could afford a seat at a boulevard theatre and who had aspirations to higher culture. In the provinces, where most towns did not have more than one theatre, and where repertoires were therefore much more mixed, social distinction was far more a question of where you sat than which theatre you went to. The subject of this book is best defined in negative terms: it is not a theatre of high culture; it is not a theatre geared for the fashionable and wealthy (though many of the theatres themselves did experience a certain upward social mobility during the century); it is not, with a few exceptions, a revolutionary theatre. It is a theatre of entertainment, seldom designed to provoke serious reflection on social or political matters. It is almost always patriotic and subscribes to strong moral principles. The ethos is populist, but it seldom threatens the foundations of society. Villains may belong to the higher echelons of society, but access to these same echelons is often seen as the most appropriate reward for the virtuous. A starting point for the writing of this book was the revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848 and the Commune of 1871, but it soon became apparent that, if these dates provide convenient stopping places or points of reference, their real impact on the development 7


of the theatre, and particularly the popular theatre, was perhaps less significant than one might like to think. Sociologists have examined the rapprochement between theatre and life during and immediately following the 1789 revolution—Jean Duvignaud saw the revolutionary fêtes and the execution of Louis XVI, with their massive mise en scène, as huge acts of theatre. With the sudden increase in audience numbers in the 1790s, the changes that had been occurring slowly at the end of the ancien regime were speeded up and for the first time the theatre became what might seriously be regarded as a mass medium. Audiences were volatile, and riots could and did occur in theatres. From the Empire onwards, the authorities were uneasy about the potentially subversive nature of theatre. As a consequence of this, censorship is a major factor to take into account in any study of nineteenthcentury theatre in France. However, with the increase of literacy and the development of the popular press in the 1830s and 1840s, and with the large element of auto-censorship applied by both authors and theatre managements to avoid trouble, it was unusual for plays to be more than indirectly critical of the status quo. Populist sentiment could be tolerated in plays that allowed audiences to off-load some of their own grievances and dissatisfaction in the controlled framework of the dramatic performance, and in this way had a cathartic effect. The generally positive conclusion of most melodramas merely reinforced the status quo and seldom encouraged further questioning of the social or political system. The explosion of theatrical activity in France in the first half of the nineteenth century corresponds to a number of social developments and needs. There is no single monolithic concept of ‘popular theatre’ to which anyone was consciously subscribing. Theatres tended to have their own repertoires, their own audiences, and the theatre event on the boulevard du Temple was rather different from the theatre event at Montparnasse or Montmartre, and even more different from what might happen in a small provincial town theatre or a travelling puppet-booth. Certain patterns emerge in terms of tastes and formula-writing came into existence to satisfy these tastes, or at least to provide more of what seemed to work with audiences. Freedom from aesthetic rules or principles led to diversity, but generic restrictions placed on theatres and the need for a high turnover of plays to satisfy the requirements of the market often limited that diversity. 8

INTRODUCTION

The first part of the book is concerned with the so-called ‘popular theatres’, their audiences and various conditioning factors, especially economic ones. The second part looks more particularly at the repertoire of the ‘popular’ theatres. Vaudeville, féerie, pantomime and melodrama are re-examined, as far as possible, in the context of their period and of the expectations of their changing audiences.

9

Part I

1 LES THEATRES SECONDAIRES

Napoleon’s decree of 1807 limited the number of theatres in Paris to four official (and subsidised) theatres and four secondary ones. In practice this was a re-introduction of the monopolies system of the ancien regime, though on a rather broader basis. Napoleon did not approve of the minor theatres. Culture, in his mind, was to be used to enhance the glory of France and to contribute to the moral improvement of its population. The minor theatres, which had recently discovered the melodrama and were catering to the tastes of the less educated classes, were clearly making no contribution to this notion of culture. With difficulty Napoleon was persuaded to leave some of the minor theatres in existence on the principle that they provided a distraction for the popular classes and diverted them from serious thoughts about politics, let alone revolution. The four theatres to be spared were the Gaîté, the Ambigu-Comique, the Vaudeville and the Variétés. Their repertoires were carefully defined and limited so as to avoid competition with the official theatres. This very definition gave a legal status to the minor genres, especially the vaudeville and the melodrama, and thus affected audiences’ expectations and the way in which they perceived the different theatres. Theatres were classified under three main headings: official, secondary and ‘forain’ or ‘spectacle de curiosité’, and these classifications applied officially until 1864, becoming increasingly blurred after 1830, as existing theatres moved outside their allotted repertoire and new theatres came into being. The concern of this book is with the second and third categories, which were those frequented principally by the popular classes. Quality in 13


these theatres lay in the skill of the performers and in the mise en scène, not in any notion of high culture, and success was judged principally by the box-office. For historic reasons, these theatres had built repertoires that avoided treading on the preserves of the big theatres. Initially, the secondary theatres and the forains had been indistinguishable, and certain ambiguities persist into the nineteenth century, notably in the case of some of the smaller theatres of the boulevard du Temple. The late 1750s and 1760s show the transition of the theatrical activities of the fairs of Saint Germain, Saint Laurent and Saint Ovide to somewhat more permanent structures on the boulevard du Temple, which had become the great centre for recreation in late eighteenthcentury Paris. The first of these theatres to set up on the boulevard was probably Gaudon’s in 1759, shortly to be followed by Audinot’s Ambigu-Comique and Nicolet’s Grands Danseurs et Sauteurs, plus a number of other showmen. Initially, they were required to continue performances at the fairs as well, but the closure of the Foire Saint Germain in the 1780s led to a major shift in centres of entertainment towards the boulevard du Temple and the arcades of the Palais-Royal, which the Duc d’Orléans had recently opened up as a commercial development. Here were gathered cafés, numerous sideshows and street entertainments, equestrian displays, puppet-shows and theatres. Despite regular objections from the two Comédies and the Opéra, after the accession of Louis XVI the so-called ‘petits théâtres’ were treated leniently by the police. This tolerance sprang from the growing restiveness of Paris to royal authority and the fact that the claims of the big theatres were based on their royal patents. At the revolution the Opéra and the Théâtre Français were regarded as bastions of the ancien regime. From the late 1770s the major theatres sent a series of petitions to the authorities in an attempt to have the activities of their most serious rivals limited. These rivals were Nicolet, Audinot and the Variétés Amusantes. However, the complaints were no longer listened to. In 1772 the Opéra had tried to prevent Audinot, originally a puppet showman, from having singers and dancers or more than four musicians, but, according to Max Aghion,1 public opinion was not in favour of the Opéra and, as it was heavily in debt, it soon settled for an annual compensation of 12,000 livres. Two years later the Opéra allowed all the petits théâtres freedom to use music, provided they paid some financial compensation. By 1789 there were half a dozen theatres on the boulevard du Temple: Nicolet’s Grands Danseurs et Sauteurs, predecessor of the 14

LES THEATRES SECONDAIRES

Gaîté, Audinot’s Ambigu-Comique, Salé’s Variétés Amusantes and the Théâtres des Elève pour la Danse de l’Opéra, Astley’s Amphithéâtre Equestre, forerunner of Franconi’s Cirque Olympique (in the faubourg du Temple, not actually on the boulevard), and Valcour’s Théâtre des Délassements Comiques. The Palais-Royal included the Théâtre des Beaujolais (a puppettheatre later to be converted by Victor Louis for Mlle Montansier) on the site of today’s Théâtre du Palais-Royal, and the ombres chinoises of Séraphin.2 The decree of the National Assembly on 19 January 1791 established the freedom of the theatres: Every citizen may set up a public theatre and put on plays of every genre, provided he has first declared to the city authorities his intention of so doing.3 According to Lecomte, by this date Paris already possessed fourteen theatres. Although an enormous number of theatres sprang up over the next few years, most of them were short-lived, and it is interesting to note that when Napoleon tried to reduce their number in his decree of 1807, there were in fact only eighteen theatres in existence. The boulevard du Temple was situated close to one of the most densely populated areas of the city and satisfied the recreational needs of its inhabitants (another reason why the police tended to let well alone). The evolution of the boulevard over the next century reflects the development of the city itself. It was one of the main centres of entertainment in the city from the 1760s until its demolition to make way for the place de la République in 1862. It was given the nickname ‘boulevard du Crime’ 4 in the early nineteenth century when the melodrama, as a new dramatic genre, sweeping all before it with its murders, robberies, suicides and other sensational crimes, was filling the theatres that had sprung up. The activities of the boulevard were rapidly romanticised, notably by literary men of the 1820s and 1830s, who delighted in ‘slumming it’ and discovering that the ‘people’ too had authentic emotions. Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du paradis has also fixed in our minds a romantic image of the boulevard, with its jostling crowds and state of perpetual kermesse. It is misleading to think of the boulevard du Temple exclusively as a sort of non-stop centre of bustle and entertainment. Even as it developed, it remained a part of the city where there was much unemployment, poverty and crime, where many of those involved in entertaining could barely 15


scrape a living. Apart from the street performers of various sorts, even a small-part actor in a large theatre might find it difficult to obtain a subsistence-level wage. When the first theatres or booths were established there in the 1750s, the boulevard was a muddy and only partially paved place which had become a popular promenade at weekends. The old fortifications had been knocked down at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. (Etymologically the word ‘boulevard’ has the same origin as ‘bulwark’.) Paris had begun to spread beyond its medieval limits into the suburbs or ‘faubourgs’, and the boulevard du Temple was now a tree-lined avenue along which cafés, street and fairground entertainments (tumblers, rope-dancers, ‘paradistes’, puppet-shows), and finally some of the larger theatres from the fairs themselves, were beginning to establish themselves. At this period, although bordering on the more densely populated parts of the city, the boulevard was still only partially developed. Most of the structures were of a relatively temporary nature, and generally of timber. Even in 1800, Paris had little more than half a million inhabitants (by 1848 the figure would be over a million).5 The second half of the eighteenth century was a great period of theatre building, with architects such as Soufflot, Ledoux and Victor Louis. Théâtre buildings had become an important feature of the eighteenth-century urban landscape and an object of civic pride. Even the boulevard du Temple was affected by this notion and temporary or lightly constructed buildings began to make way for more monumental façades in the neo-classical idiom. This trend is well illustrated by two theatres, the AmbiguComique and the Gaîté. Nicolet, one of the major fairground showmen of the eighteenth century, whose theatre ultimately became the Gaîté, set up on the boulevard in 1759, though he maintained an establishment at the fairs until 1785. He moved first into a fairground-type theatre which had been erected by Antoine Fouré for a ‘spectacle mécanique’ in the manner of Servandoni. A spectacle mécanique often meant a puppet-show, but in this case probably indicated a smallish stage with scenic effects (not unlike Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon) and flat cut-out moving figures, a precursor of the panoramas and dioramas popular in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century. Nicolet reconstructed this theatre to suit his needs. A well-known Harlequin himself, he exploited the fairground genres of pantomimes and sketches with songs or vaudevilles, as well as presenting acrobatic feats and rope-dancing, 16


for which he was officially licensed. With his new theatre he began to present more dramatic material and faced frequent objections from the two Comédies (French and Italian) that he was encroaching on their charters. By 1761, despite an order that he should not present plays, he had a company of thirty actors and a repertoire of 250 short dramatic pieces, which, officiaily, he used as interludes between ropedancing, juggling and other turns. The scale and nature of his operation is also indicated by the fact that he was employing sixty dancers and twenty musicians. He had very clearly expanded beyond his original fairground operation. In 1764 he received permission to erect a new theatre on an adjacent site. This building survived until 1807, when the authorities decided it was unsafe. Nicolet’s widow had some basic repairs carried out, but the following year a completely new building was put up, with a capacity for some 1,545 spectators.6 From now until its destruction by fire in 1835, this was one of the major theatres of Paris. Its replacement was an even larger building, which lasted until 1862, when the whole operation was moved away from the boulevard du Temple to a new building on the square des Arts et Métiers.7 Jean-Baptiste Nicolet came from a family of fairground entertainers. The company he took over from his father, Guillaume, originally a fiddler then a puppet-showman, who had been at the Foire Saint Germain since the 1720s, was basically a troupe of acrobats and rope-dancers.8 The move to the boulevard when the fairs were beginning to die out proved highly lucrative, and fairground performances, generally in the afternoons, were kept going mainly to satisfy the police who, in turn, treated Nicolet and Audinot’s troupes benevolently and protected them from persecution by the major theatres. In 1772 both troupes were invited to give performances at court. This gave them a degree of official recognition and a greater measure of security against the claims of the official theatres. Nicolet’s company now took on the title of ‘Les Grands Danseurs et Sauteurs du Roi’ and also began to give more and more space in their programme to pieces of a dramatic nature, in particular to pantomimes, out of which the melodrama would evolve. Audiences flocked to his theatre because of the quality of presentation: Nicolet had acquired such amazing skill in the art of mise en scène that his cleverly devised and efficient machinery, his magnificent scenery, the good taste of his costumes, the 17


splendour of his shows, the number of actors and the quality of their performances made the Opéra look povertystricken, shabby and inept.9 In 1792 the claim to be a ‘royal’ troupe seemed inappropriate, and the theatre was re-christened the Théâtre de la Gaîté. When Nicolet retired in 1795, his entrepreneurial successor, Ribié, changed the name to the Théâtre de l’Emulation. With his departure in 1797, the title Gaîté was restored, and under this cheerful label the theatre began to pour out a stream of the darkest and most tear-jerking melodramas. The Gaîté continued to be thought of as one of the homes of the melodrama, and it was only after the move in 1862, which took it bodily away from its original public, that it lost that association and became more of an operetta theatre. The founder of the Ambigu-Comique, Nicolas Médard Audinot, a former actor of the Opéra-Comique of the Foire, and, briefly, a member of the merged troupe of the Comédie-Italienne and the Opéra-Comique in 1762, was running a successful puppet theatre at the Foire Saint Germain in 1769. As the boulevard du Temple was by now a more important centre of entertainment, Audinot moved his show there, setting up on a site adjacent to Nicolet, and, at the same time, obtaining permission to include child actors in his performances. As time went by, the child actors became older. This progression from puppets to child actors to adult performers was common in the minor theatres of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. The Théâtre des Beaujolais and that of Monsieur Comte both illustrate this attempt to circumvent regulations and establish a dramatic theatre for which they did not have a licence. Gradually Audinot’s repertoire encompassed more dramatic pieces. Most were short comedies, often of a smutty nature, with songs, and resembled the early vaudevilles. They avoided clear generic definition, but were a sort of hybrid genre, which was known as the ‘ambigu-comique’, and this term was gradually adopted as the name of the theatre itself. In 1770 Audinot had a more solid theatre erected by the architect Cellerier. This was a simple building with a neoclassical façade. The arcading at first-floor level was open, possibly a vestige of the parade space of the fairground theatres. At this period many of the booths on the boulevard had a parade, 18


where simple sketches or farces, or else comedians, provided a come-on for the show inside and a free show for those who could not afford to go in. It seems likely that Audinot’s theatre was not a very permanent structure, since, by 1786, it was in poor condition and had to be virtually rebuilt. Cellerier added wings, enlarged the auditorium and stage (which still remained remarkably small for the increasingly ambitious productions presented on it) and turned it into what the Almanach des spectacles of 1791 described as one of the largest and finest theatres in the kingdom. A feature of this theatre, and of the 1808 Gaîté, was that the boxes were limited in number and separated only by half partitions, whilst the centre part of the house at the level of the balcony and the two galleries above opened out into amphitheatres with bench seating. This type of arrangement, ensuring the largest possible audience with a good view of the stage, belongs to the popular theatres, where the central concern is what is on the stage, not who is in the auditorium. The internal decoration of the Ambigu had a slightly gothic appearance, most appropriate for a theatre whose repertoire often included pantomimes drawing on medieval history. The Ambigu pantomimes, generally devised by Audinot’s partner Arnould-Mussot, emphasised carefully choreographed stage fights and, as the melodrama developed, these became an important part of the Ambigu’s contribution to the genre. In 1827 the Ambigu burnt down. For reasons of safety, the authorities were worried about the idea of two large theatres next door to each other, and so a new site had to be found. The Ambigu moved a short distance from the boulevard du Temple to the corner of the boulevard Saint Martin and the rue de Bondy. A new and larger theatre was erected there and opened in 1828. Its capacity was nearly 2,000, as opposed to the earlier 1,250. An iron frame allowed for new methods of construction and, above all, for the creation of really large amphitheatres at the level of the third and fourth galleries. The fourth gallery amphitheatre could take 600 spectators. This development, which placed nearly a third of the audience in the cheap seats of the top gallery, had a profound impact on the balance between spectators belonging to the popular classes and the rest. Because of its new site, the Ambigu was not affected by the demolition of the boulevard du Temple and managed to maintain its public. This helped it to survive into the twentieth century. It 19


became a cinema in the 1930s, then reverted to being a ‘boulevard’ theatre in the more modern sense, and was eventually demolished to make way for an office block in 1964. The Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin did not share the fairground origins of the Gaîté and the Ambigu. It was erected in 1781 as a temporary home for the Opéra, which had been destroyed by fire, and functioned as such until 1794. The Opéra then moved into a splendid building recently constructed for Mlle Montansier by Victor Louis in the rue de Richelieu, and its previous home remained empty until 1802, when it re-opened as the Théâtre de la PorteSaint-Martin, staging ballet-pantomimes and the new fashionable genre, the melodrama. With its 1,800 seats and deep operatic stage, it was one of the largest theatres in Paris and ideally suited to the new spectacular genres. The decree of 1806 tried to turn the Ambigu into an annexe of the Porte-Saint-Martin, but the 1807 decree left the Ambigu open, having defined its repertoire clearly, and closed the Porte-Saint-Martin. In 1810 the latter re-opened for a couple of years as the Jeux Gymniques, permitted to perform a very limited repertoire of pantomimes. With the return of the Bourbons, it reopened as a secondary theatre in December 1814. Geographically the furthest west of the melodrama houses, it had a more middleclass image from the start and, in the 1830s became a second house for the Romantic drama, especially for the plays of Victor Hugo. Its troupe was often of a higher quality than the troupes of the other melodrama houses. Burnt in the Commune, it was rebuilt in 1873 and continued into the twentieth century as a home for spectacular drama. A late-arriving and short-lived theatre on the boulevard du Temple was Alexandre Dumas’ Théâtre Historique, a theatre created specifically in order to do justice to the type of historical drama that interested him, and, more particularly, to provide the ideal stage for adaptations of his novels. Dumas needed his own theatre, equipped with all the technical means required for the fifteen-tableau play. In February 1846, thanks to the protection of the royal family, he received a licence to found a theatre of his own. The licence was given in the name of Hippolyte Hostein, who would become one of the major theatre directors of Paris in the third quarter of the century. Gautier welcomed the idea of this new theatre, which would join the Porte-Saint-Martin, the Gaîté and the Ambigu in having the drame as its official genre. 20


The Théâtre Historique opened its doors to the public on 21 February 1847. According to Gautier, some 10,000 people turned up for the first night, but failed to get in. The building had a remarkably narrow façade on the street. One of its features was that it departed from the prevailing neo-classical notion of architecture which resulted in theatre façades looking like a temple, or the stock-exchange. More importantly, inside, a new, more panoramic shape, suited to the vast canvas of the dramas to be performed there, was adopted for the auditorium. Instead of a long deep auditorium, Dumas and his architects opted for a wide shallow one, bringing the audience closer to the stage and eliminating most of the side seats with a defective view of the stage. The first season of the Théâtre Historique was profitable, with takings of 707,905 francs. The second season began well, but the potential success of Monte Cristo was cut short by the 1848 revolution. Dumas’ own extravagant lifestyle, coupled with the money he wished to spend on staging, and, above all, the very serious decline in audiences at all the Paris theatres during this disturbed period, created a difficult financial situation. By the end of 1849 Hostein, his manager, felt he could not cope any more and withdrew. The Théâtre Historique closed in October 1851, and Dumas was declared bankrupt in January 1852. It then ran for a further ten years as the Théâtre Lyrique, reverting briefly to its former title before being demolished in 1863. The name reappeared for a couple of years (1874–6) on the smaller of the two theatres of the place du Châtelet and was briefly taken up by the Théâtre du Château-d’ Eau in 1891. Throughout the nineteenth century the lighter genres were catered for by a number of theatres specialising in the vaudeville. During the first three decades of the century, the Variétés (boulevard Montmartre) and the Vaudeville (rue de Chartres) could be regarded as popular theatres, carrying on the traditions of the minor genres of the eighteenth century. The origins of the Variétés go back to the Foire Saint-Laurent, 10 where a fairly substantial theatre had been built by L’Ecluse in 1777. L’Ecluse’s company also had a theatre at the Foire Saint-Germain and a timber-constructed one in the rue de Bondy. By 1780 the management had changed and the company became known as the Variétés Amusantes, moving, in 1784, into the recently vacated Théâtre pour les Elèves de Danse de l’Opéra, a buildingwith a 21

1 Boulevard du Temple in the 1850s. By this time the boulevard had lost its original fairground appearance and all the earlier temporary structures had been replaced. The two largest structures were now the Cirque and the 1835 Gaîté, but the engraving illustrates the extent to which this was a theatre street.


handsome neo-classical colonnade on the boulevard duTemple. Unable to pay the sums levied by the Opéra on the minor theatres, the management soon sold out to a pair of ambitious entrepreneurs, Gaillard and Dorfeuille, who then moved theirbusiness from the boulevard du Temple to the Palais-Royal. Aftera period in a temporary theatre, the Variétés (as it was now called)became involved in the Duc de Chartres’ plan to build a majortheatre. Initially, this should have housed the Opéra, but theproject did not come off. Instead, the architect Victor Louis built atheatre which would shortly become the Comédie-Française, butwhich opened in 1790 as the home of the Théâtre des Variétés. In1791, Gaillard and Dorfeuille welcomed the group of actors of theComédieFrançaise under Talma, who had split from the maincompany, and the building became known as the Théâtre-Français de la Rue de Richelieu. However, in 1792, the mainactors of the Variétés company transferred to the recently builttheatre on the Ile de la Cité, which opened as the Théâtre duPalais-Variétés. Slightly removed from other centres of entertainment, the Théâtre de la Cité-Variétés, as it had come to be calledin 1793, was not doing terribly well, and in 1798 the Variétéstroupe decided to join La Montansier, who had opened a theatreat the Palais-Royal in 1790 for her company from Versailles andwas presenting light comedies and vaudevilles. In 1806 the actorsof the Comédie-Française objected to the proximity, and rivalry,of the Variétés, which had to leave the Palais-Royal and move backto the Théâtre de la Cité, then into a new theatre, next to thePanoramas on the boulevard Montmartre. The new Variétés (theoldest theatre building in Paris still in use today) owed its successin the early years of the nineteenth century to the topicality of itsrepertoire and to its principle performers, notably Brunet,famous for his drag roles, who was also director of the theatrefrom 1807 until his retirement in 1829. Until the 1820s the boulevard Montmartre, like the boulevard du Temple, was a lively place of resort with its cafés, panoramas and other sideshows and street performers. However, it did not have quite the same popular character, and the clientele was more bourgeois in composition. In the 1820s the Variétés did some of the best business in Paris, but also began to attract a more fashionable public. By 1830 it had lost its popular image and had become just another theatre. Frédérick Lemaître created Dumas’ Kean there in 1836, but this was largely because he had had rows 24


with the managements of the Ambigu and the Porte-Saint-Martin. The theatre would not become really significant again until the Cogniard management (1855–69), when it presented a series of lavishly mounted end-of-year revues and, above all, the operettas of Offenbach. In the 1870s a number of Labiche plays were also staged there for the first time. The Théâtre du Vaudeville, named after the genre with which it would be most strongly associated, came into existence with the 1791 declaration of the freedom of the theatres. It opened on 12 January 1792 at the Vauxhall d’Eté, in a ballroom converted by the architect Lenoir. Its founders were the Chevalier de Piis and the composer Barré. Their aim was to revive the older type of French vaudeville (short comic plays with couplets). The repertoire of the new theatre was made up of older vaudevilles updated with new songs, and of topical and satirical pieces, including parodies. In these early years the Vaudeville went through a tumultuous period, with frequent disturbances in the auditorium. The ‘patriots’ suspected it of royalist leanings, and the aristocrats and ‘muscadins’ often went there to hear mockery of the Jacobins. It thrived on topical allusion and satire and often poked fun at those in power. Finally, in 1793, a line from Radet and Desfontaines’ apparently harmless play, La Chaste Suzanne, ‘You have denounced her, you cannot be her judges’, provoked an uproar and the play was denounced to the Convention, with the result that its authors and the directors de Piis and Barré ended up in prison, together with the actors of the Théâtre de la Nation (ComédieFrançaise). Barré, released after six weeks, rushed to prove his devotion to the revolutionary cause by staging L’Heureuse Décade, whose success was followed by an anti-religious piece, Encore un curé.11 As the Terror abated, the Vaudeville reverted to its more satirical repertoire. With the Directoire, the Vaudeville (together with the Feydeau and the Variétés-Montansier) became one of the favourite resorts of the muscadins, an indication that it was not primarily perceived as a popular theatre—on one occasion the Marseillaise was greeted with jeering whistles. By the end of the Directoire, the theatres had ceased to be places where political partisanship ran high and where disturbances broke out at the slightest word misconstrued. The Vaudeville, from 1797 onwards, attached itself to the rising tide of Napoleonic popularity and took every opportunity to celebrate his victories and successes. This undoubtedly is one of the reasons why it was one of the theatres to 25


retain its licence after the decree of 1807. An example of the lengths to which theatres would go to flatter Napoleon, especially after the return from Egypt and the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), can be found in one of the many pieces written in a hurry to celebrate the event, La Girouette de Saint-Cloud, reputedly composed, rehearsed and staged within twenty-four hours: Quoi qu’en disent certains esprits, La fuite en Egypte jadis Conserva le Sauveur des hommes; Mais un fait bien sûr en ce jour Du vieux miracle, quoi qu’on pense, C’est que l’Egypte en retour Raméne un sauveur à la France.12 (Whatever some may say, the flight to Egypt once preserved the Saviour of mankind; but one certain thing about the old miracle, whatever one’s religious beliefs may be, is that Egypt, in return has now brought back a saviour to France.) Napoleon’s first attempt to organise the theatres appeared in his decree of 8 June 1806, in which the Vaudeville and the Variétés were grouped as secondary theatres. Initially their repertoires were perceived as similar, but not the same. The Vaudeville was permitted to perform ‘little plays, with songs set to wellknown tunes, and parodies’, in other words, vaudevilles, whereas the Variétés’ repertoire was to consist of ‘little plays in the comic, low-life [poissard] or rustic style, sometimes with songs, also set to well-known tunes’. When the 1807 decree appeared, the two theatres were grouped together and the two repertoires conflated. Both repertoires descended from the eighteenth-century fairground theatres, and as such were, broadly speaking, ‘popular’. However, a part of the appeal had always been to the more upper-class elements of audiences. Parodies of operas or tragedies, for example, could never be very funny to audiences who were not in the habit of going to the Opéra or the ComédieItalienne or -Française, and plays about popular life likewise were often designed to appeal, in a condescending way, as much to the non-popular as to the popular audience. When the vaudeville-writer Désaugiers became director of the Vaudeville in 1816, and opened the doors of that theatre to the young Eugène Scribe, the Palais26


Royal area was no longer a major centre of popular entertainment. By 1830 the Vaudeville was in decline and in 1838 the building was demolished, following a fire. The theatre itself moved to a building formerly occupied by the Théâtre des Nouveautés, place de la Bourse, where it remained until 1869, after which it moved to the Chaussée d’Antin. Initially grouped together, the four secondary theatres (five, if one includes the Porte-Saint-Martin) moved apart as the century developed. By the middle of the century the Vaudeville and the Variétés had become ‘fashionable’ theatres and were virtually indistinguishable from the Gymnase or the Palais Royal. After 1862 the Gaîté periodically offered féeries lavishly mounted and partially retained popular audiences. The Porte-Saint-Martin was caught up in expensively mounted long-run productions appealing to a mixed public, and the Ambigu alone remained most firmly the theatre of the popular drame, whilst also becoming increasingly just another Paris theatre.

27

2 EQUESTRIANS AND ACROBATS

Feats of skill and dramatic performance are generally perceived as belonging to separate traditions. In popular entertainment they frequently come together, as for example with the Commedia dell’arte. In the twentieth century the Russian experimentalists, especially Meyerhold and Eisenstein, introduced circus skills into dramatic production in an attempt to broaden its scope and appeal. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries acrobatic skills and ropedancing were very popular types of entertainment. Dressage and feats of horsemanship also drew large crowds. Nicolet’s theatre demonstrated the possible progress from rope-dancing to a major dramatic theatre, and other smaller enterprises followed the same route. The first circuses offered simple equestrian displays, but some developed into full-scale dramatic enterprises with an equestrian component. The great Cirque Olympique of the boulevard du Temple, the people’s theatre par excellence of nineteenth-century Paris, began as a simple circus out of which evolved vastly elaborate dramatic and scenic spectacles. The first permanent circus amphitheatre in Paris was opened by Philip Astley on 16 October 1783.1 This involved a ring 20 metres in diameter, surrounded by two tiers of boxes and illuminated by some 2,000 lamps. Astley’s company appeared there each year for the winter season, when they were not able to perform in London. Even at this stage the entertainment went beyond merely equestrian feats and involved acrobats and other performers. Nicolet of the Grands Danseurs complained that Astley was trespassing in the area assigned to his company, and the police 28

EQUESTRIANS AND ACROBATS

reminded Astley that his licence limited him to displays of horsemanship. Astley’s response was to build a stage mounted on the backs of a number of horses and to have his acrobats perform on top of this equestrian bridge. This ingenious idea is typical of the expedients that fairground theatres had to resort to in the eighteenth century, and for much of the nineteenth century, because of the restrictive nature of theatre licensing. From 1783 Astley’s establishment in Paris was joined by an expatriate Italian, Antonio Franconi. Franconi supposedly left the Venice region following a duel in which he had killed a young nobleman. He moved to Lyon, where he became a keeper in a menagerie and attempted animal-training until he was badly bitten by a lion, after which he became a bird-trainer and travelled around France.2 He became Astley’s associate and was responsible for keeping the establishment open when Astley was in England. In 1793 he took over the building which Astley had been forced to abandon. For a time he too had to flee Paris, but returned in 1795 and re-opened the circus. During the next few years, together with his sons Henri and Laurent and their troupe of trained horses, he appeared at various theatres, most notably at the Théâtre de la Cité, where horses were integrated into the spectacular pantomimes of Cuvelier de Trie and others and where, arguably, the equestrian drama was born. In 1802 Philip Astley returned to Paris and attempted to reclaim his amphitheatre, so the Franconis leased ground in the former Couvent des Capucines, a more fashionable area than the faubourg du Temple. This lasted only until 1806, when it was demolished to make way for the rue Napoléon (rue de la Paix). The Franconis opened their new establishment, this time in the rue du Mont Thabor, on 28 December 1807. This was the first Cirque Olympique (the title possibly taken from Astley’s Olympic Pavilion, which had opened in London the previous year), though the name Cirque Franconi persisted virtually until the 1830s. It is not clear why this establishment was tolerated. It escaped classification as a secondary theatre, according to the terms of the 1807 decree, despite some of the quasi-dramatic entertainments that it provided. To the official mind it probably counted as a rather large ‘petit spectacle’. Napoleon saw it as a healthy establishment leading to the development of martial skills and horsemanship. However, from the start a dramatic intention was evident in the architecture of the building since it included a large scenic stage as well as a ring.3 In addition to its more strictly 29


equestrian exercises, the Cirque Olympique was permitted to produce both pantomimes and ‘petites pièces’. The ring itself was large enough to allow thirty-six horses to perform at the one time, and the stage was generously proportioned, being seven wings deep with a large apron. The opening pantomime, La Lanterne de Diogène, paid a fulsome compliment to Napoleon, and henceforth, for the next half century, the Cirque would devote the greater part of its efforts to the creation and development of the Napoleonic legend. With the end of the Empire the Cirque began to lose its popular following. Its location, near the fashionable Chaussée d’Antin and the Tuileries, was also a disadvantage. When Philip Astley died in 1814, his amphitheatre in the faubourg du Temple became available. This was acquired and renovated by the Franconis according to the pattern of the first Cirque Olympique, and re-opened on 8 February 1817. Although Napoleonic pieces went into abeyance, this was the great period of equestrian pantomimes, which came to be known as mimodramas. Many of these were devised by Henri Franconi, who devoted himself more to acting and writing, whilst his brother Laurent took care of the equestrian aspect of the establishment. The war in Spain gave an opportunity for more jingoistic and nationalistic military productions in the 1820s, and it was after a performance of one of these, L’Incendie de Sallins, with its obligatory pyrotechnic effects, that the Cirque burnt down in 1826. The Cirque had become very popular not only with the poorer classes, but also with the restored aristocracy. After the fire a subscription was immediately set up, with the king, Charles X, making a generous donation. Within two months over 150,000 francs was collected, most of it in very small amounts. When other theatres burnt (the Ambigu-Comique in 1827 or the Gaîté in 1835), subscriptions were set up to help those left in need as a result of the fires, but there was no overriding sense amongst the people of Paris that these theatres must be replaced. In this sense the Cirque had come to have a special significance for the people of Paris. The third, and last, Cirque Olympique was built on the boulevard du Temple itself and not on its original site. The estimated cost of construction had been 550,000 francs, but when it finally opened in March 1827, the real cost was in the region of 850,000. The new Cirque had the largest and best equipped stage on the boulevard du Temple, some 55 ‘pieds’ deep, 79 wide, and with a proscenium opening 36 ‘pieds’ across.4 During the equestrian 30


manoeuvres in the ring at the start of the show, the orchestra remained on the stage, then, for the more strictly dramatic part of the entertainment, a retractable orchestra pit was pushed out from under the stage in front of the proscenium arch. At the same time, two mechanically operated ramps appeared on either side, linking stage and ring. In place of stage boxes there were large curtained apertures, which served as entrances for processions of horses to come down into the ring. The Cirque was also equipped with stables for its horses and ramps to bring them up onto the stage. The scale of the productions was enormous, with sometimes as many as 500 or 600 extras being employed. The explosion of Napoleonic plays after 1830 was a godsend to the Cirque, but the cost of the productions remained too high. What with the cost of constructing the building and of mounting these lavish spectacles, it is hardly surprising that the management went bankrupt by 1830, after which the Cirque had to be administered by its shareholders. Finally, in 1836, Adolphe Franconi (son of Henri), who had been managing it since 1827 and who, in association with Ferdinand Laloue, had been responsible for most of the major productions, had to sell the licence to Dejean, the owner of the site on which the Cirque was built. Dejean kept Franconi and Laloue to stage productions, but took business matters into his own hands and soon a loss was turned into a profit. Dejean also managed to have his licence extended to the end of 1850, and this licence clearly stipulated that the Cirque could stage plays, including vaudevilles, in one, two, three or four acts, with or without songs, provided that equestrian manoeuvres figured in all of them, and that all stage productions were preceded or followed by exercises in the ring. In 1836 Dejean also acquired a licence to run a summer tent-circus at the carré Marigny on the Champs-Elysées. The tent was replaced by a stone building by the architect JacquesIgnace Hittorf in 1841, which became the Cirque d’Eté, the summer home of the Cirque Olympique. This circus was simply a ring, intended primarily for equestrian display, and there was no stage for féeries, pantomimes, melodramas or other dramatic performances. By 1844 Dejean, like most theatre managers at this period, was in financial difficulties and in 1847 he finally sold the Cirque on the boulevard du Temple, retaining the equestrian company for the Champs-Elysées (clearly seen as the more profitable speculation at the period). For a brief period in 1847–8 the Cirque Olympique changed its name and function, becoming the Opéra National, one 31


of the various not very successful attempts in the mid- to late nineteenth century to set up a popular opera. The ring was filled with seats, and these remained when the Cirque at the end of 1848 became the Théâtre National and subsequently, in 1852, the Théâtre Impérial, or Théâtre Impérial du Cirque. The repertoire remained very much what it had been before the brief flirtation with opera, and the horses were retained even if the ring had disappeared. The Franconi involvement with the Cirque had ceased in 1845, when Laurent and his son Victor opened their huge Hippodrome close to the Arc de Triomphe of the Etoile, with seats for 12,000 and an arena, 120 metres by 70 metres, with a stage at one end. Spectacular mise en scène was the order of the day, with recreations of Roman chariot races and an opening pantomime devised by Laloue on the theme of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The fall of Louis-Philippe was celebrated with a Bonaparte au Pont d’Arcole, and a burst of Napoleonic ardour which, in its turn, is a useful indicator of the climate that led to the coup d’état of 1852: The Hippodrome is the most republican theatre in the world. Censorship has disappeared with the monarchy. Now this huge arena has been opened up to the great epics of the republic. The police [‘sbires de la rue de Jérusalem’] won’t be coming along any more to stop performances of plays taken from the finest pages of our military history!5 In practice, the Hippodrome, like the other theatres, did very bad business in the summer of 1848. When Laurent Franconi died the following year (both he and his brother were victims of cholera), the enterprise was on the verge of bankruptcy. Shortly after this it burned down, was rebuilt, and then demolished again in 1854, when Haussmann created the Rond-Point of the Etoile. The enterprise moved to the place d’Eylau, directed by Arnault, Victor Franconi having become a groom to the emperor. The new Hippodrome was burnt down in 1869 and not replaced. In 1877, the 8,000-seat Hippodrome de l’Alma opened with luxuriously mounted pantomimes, the most famous of which was Néron, in which the Christians in the arena had to face a dozen lions (controlled by the German tamer, Julius Seeth). As the lions came up from underneath the arena on a lift, a fence 4 metres 50 high also emerged out of the ground to surround them. 32


Unfortunately, the price of real estate had increased considerably and the value of the site had tripled over fifteen years. In 1892 the Hippodrome had to be demolished, as the owner of the site refused to renew the lease. Five years later a Franco-British company acquired a site at the place de Clichy, which they opened in 1900 with an enormous pantomime-cum-circus spectacular, Vercingétorix. This splendid gesture came a little too late, and by 1907 the building had been taken over as a cinema, the Gaumont Palace. The Hippodromes were splendid for theatrical presentation of circus skills and large-scale simplified pantomimes, but were not suited to dramatic work. Up to its demolition in 1862, the Théâtre Impérial du Cirque, even without its ring, continued to be the home for some of the most spectacular melodramas and féeries, most of which involved horses. When the boulevard du Temple made way for the place de la République, new buildings were erected to house three of the theatres. The Gaîté moved to the square des Arts et Métiers, not very far from the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre. The Théâtre Lyrique (which had occupied the former Théâtre Historique of Alexandre Dumas since 1852), moved into the smaller of two new theatres by the architect Davioud on the place du Châtelet (today’s Théâtre de la Ville). The Cirque moved into the 3,600-seat Châtelet theatre which, together with the Porte-Saint-Martin, would continue to be the main home of the large-scale spectacular melodrama and féerie. The Châtelet theatre is well documented, as its architect, together with César Daly, wrote a book on the two new theatres of the place du Chatelet.6 The overall dimensions of the building were 40 metres 50 by 88 metres. The stage was 23 metres 50 wide, with scene docks at either side and a proscenium opening of 12 metres. Its depth was 22 metres, but this could be increased by taking in a covered courtyard at the back. The height from the stage floor to the grid was 22 metres 50, which allowed for the flying of enormous backdrops and pieces of scenery, and, like the older theatres, a generous understage, with a depth of 7 metres 50, was also retained for traps and scenic effects. The stage machinery in general was elaborate, even allowing for ramps for horses to emerge from under the stage. The building was equipped with a full set of stables and a stud of horses was maintained for some years. However, with a few exceptions, such as the 1863 production of Adolphe Dennery’s Marengo, horses were on the way out. In common with general practice in theatre building in 33


the later nineteenth century, the forestage was reduced to a strip 2 metres wide in front of the curtain line. Much attention was given to lighting, but the factor that provoked most interest was the suppression of the central chandelier in the auditorium, a constant problem for sightlines in nineteenth-century theatres. Instead, the auditorium had a glass ceiling with diffused light from a gasburner coming through from above. Although gas lighting would not be replaced by electricity until 1884, electricity was used for special effects, if not when the theatre was constructed, at least by the time Davioud and Daly wrote about it in the early 1870s.7 Despite moving from the boulevard, this theatre maintained its popular image well into the twentieth century. It suffered a number of difficult periods in the latter part of the century and its frequent failure to fill its 3,600 seats led to the bankruptcy of various directors. By the end of the 1870s one is also struck by its dependence upon very expensive long-run productions. Three theatres stand out in the early nineteenth century because of their constant struggles to obtain and maintain a foothold on the boulevard du Temple, as the Ambigu and the Gaîté had done before them. They are the Théâtre de Madame Saqui, the Théâtre des Funambules and the Petit Lazari (or Lazzari, or Lazary). Nodier refers to these theatres as the ‘théâtres a quatre sous’. They remained closest to their fairground origins, and were the lowest in the social hierarchy of the boulevard theatres. Even their situation, towards the east end of the boulevard, indicated their status. Madame Saqui’s theatre, officially named the Théâtre des Acrobates, and Nicholas Michel Bertrand and Fabien’s Théâtre des Funambules both came into existence at the end of the Empire.8 Madame Saqui’s own background was one of fairground entertainers and rope-dancers. Born Marguerite Lalanne, daughter of Jean-Pierre Lalanne, a rope-dancer known as Navarin le Grand, and a member of the Nicolet troupe, Madame Saqui made her debut as Bénoni, the young son of Geneviève de Brabant, in one of the Nicolet pantomimes. After breaking a leg in an accident in 1791 or 1792, Lalanne was dropped from Nicolet’s troupe and reverted to his earlier profession of quack doctor doing the fairs, most notably the fair at Tours, a great meeting point for fairground entertainers. Here he joined a travelling troupe and shortly afterwards started his own family one, taking on (according to Ginisty) a juggler, an acrobat and a ventriloquistcum-conjuror. By this stage Marguerite was an accomplished 34


rope-dancer and the factor that held the troupe together. After the death of her father in 1806 she went up to Paris to work at the Tivoli, the centre of entertainment for the fashionable at the turn of the century. Admission to the Tivoli cost 3 francs in the late 1790s. The entertainments were similar in nature to the sideshows of the boulevard du Temple, but the clientele was rather more elegant. There were firework displays, puppet-shows, ombres chinoises, conjurors, circus performances, a’cabinet de physique’ (where scientific experiments were displayed), various optical ‘experiences’ (anything ranging from a simple peepshow to miniature displays of carefully lighted views in the manner of Servandoni). In 1806 the Tivoli was doing badly and new attractions were desperately needed. The director and impressario, Dareux, introduced balloon ascents by Garnerin; firework displays re-created the destruction of Herculaneum by Vesuvius; and at considerable cost, the Forioso troupe were snatched from the Théâtre de la Nouveauté.9 Forioso’s particular achievement was the ‘danse allemande’, which he and his sister performed on two parallel ropes. He also played the violin whilst hanging upside down from a balloon. An accident to Forioso gave the necessary break to Marguerite, now married to Jean-Julien Saqui. She took Forioso’s place as a rope-dancer in a sylphide costume, and achieved instant success (within a short time fashion dictated bonnets and collars ‘à la Saqui’, and her portrait was to be found on the lids of sweet-boxes). She is reputed to have performed on a rope some 60 feet up in the air, and, at a later stage in her career, on one stretched across the Seine. Very much a star, and having once found favour with Napoleon, she went so far as to have the imperial eagle painted on her touring coach (which led to her arrest at Agen and disgrace). By 1815 the Saquis had established themselves on the boulevard du Temple, performing at the Café Bosquet, which already functioned as a sort of café-theatre, presenting amongst other things, vaudevilles with two actors. Here the Saquis had permission to present ‘displays of strength and skill’. On 12 December 1816, the Saquis received permission to transfer across the boulevard to the Café d’Apollon, originally built as a puppettheatre, and subsequently occupied by the Variétés Amusantes, the Théâtre des Associés, the Théâtre Patriotique and the Théâtre sans Prétention, until finally closed down by the decree of 1807. The Saquis’ Spectacle Acrobate or Théâtre des Acrobates, as it was 35


now called, was licensed only for acrobatic displays, a source of ongoing friction with their immediate neighbour, the Théâtre des Funambules. The Almanach des spectacles of 1817 describes the genre of the Acrobates: Rope-dancing and harlequinade-pantomimes. The actors cannot come on stage without turning a cart-wheel or a somersault. In one heroic play there, we have seen two rival princes, vieing with one another in front of their mistress, starting to leap and caper like mad things, and the one who was chosen by the princess owed this distinction only to the excellence of his somersault. Again, Madame Saqui herself remained within the letter of the law by crossing the stage on a rope and going through her ropedancing repertoire at every performance. Harlequinade-pantomimes might be attempted, but the programme usually contained speciality acts, which recalled the fairground sideshow, such as Jacques de Falaise, who would eat anything the public liked to offer him, including newspapers, handkerchiefs and lorgnettes. Madame Saqui was at the height of her fame at this period, and reputedly wealthy. She re-decorated her theatre with a certain degree of opulence, including pictures of her more famous exploits on the walls and a curtain with a mythological theme. As an exotic touch she had guards on the stage in Turkish costume. In September 1820 Jean-Julien Saqui finally obtained a licence to present the same genres as the Funambules, which legitimised staging of harlequinade-pantomimes. In 1821, Bertrand and Fabien, directors of the Funambules, managed to extend their empire and take over the Acrobates for four years. However, this union of the troupes did not last long, as the authorities intervened, objecting to the idea of sub-letting a licence, and a ministerial decision of 1 August 1823 closed the Acrobates. By dint of making use of their contacts and protectors, including the Duchesse de Berry, the Saquis managed to have their theatre reopened on a temporary basis until a merging of all the ‘spectacles d’agilité’ with the Cirque Olympique, which the latter had been angling for, should occur. This particular ploy of the Franconis failed, but over the following years they gradually drained the Funambules and the Acrobates of most of their acrobatic talent, leaving them as very 36


weak rivals indeed. Jean-Julien died in 1825. Relations between Madame Saqui and the directors of the Funambules reached a particularly low ebb with a court case she took against them over a cymbal which, she claimed, they had failed to return to her. Madame Saqui seems to have been ill-advised in her business affairs by her family, and her theatre was clearly doing less and less well by the second half of the 1820s. She tried desperately to trim her sails to the prevailing political climate and hailed the 1830 revolution by decking her theatre with tricolours and even giving a performance for the ‘wounded’. This included an improvised a propos in which, to the accompaniment of shouts of ‘Vive la charte!’, a worker and a student of the Ecole Polytechnique fraternised. The worker then received a bullet in his chest, pulled it out, kissed it and asked the student to take it to his wife and tell her he had died for his beloved fatherland. In another piece, Madame Saqui herself appeared as Liberty, brandishing flags and performing one of her livelier dances.10 The year 1831 was bad for the Acrobates and the cholera of 1832 emptied the theatres. Madame Saqui finally sold her theatre to Dorsay, who turned it into another vaudeville establishment. In 1841, largely rebuilt, it re-opened as the Théâtre des Délassements Comiques. Meanwhile, Madame Saqui, now in her late forties, returned to the itinerant life, accompanied by her adopted daughter Carolina Lapomme, known as La petite Laponne, a beautifully proportioned dwarf. In 1862, in her late seventies, she made her last appearance in Paris, at the Hippodrome. Nicholas Michel Bertrand and Jean-Jacques (known as Fabien), the creators of the Funambules, unlike the Saquis, were businessmen, not theatre people. In 1812 they obtained a site next door to the Café d’Apollon, previously occupied by a booth for performing dogs. This booth had recently been pulled down for reasons of safety. They built a new theatre and by the end of 1813 had obtained a licence permitting them to exhibit ‘displays of strength and skill’. These included rope-dancing (whence the name of their establishment), ‘sauts de trappe’ (which included diving through windows or a screen) and ‘forces d’Hercule’, of which the most spectacular was a man lying on his back, his feet supporting a table with twenty-four people on it. The opening was delayed until March 1815 because of political events. By this date the licence was modified to allow for performances of ‘harlequinadepantomimes without speech or dialogue’, which consisted of 37


simple scenarios performed by acrobats and became the main genre of the Funambules. The authorities kept a watchful eye on the smaller theatres and Bertrand and Fabien prudently stuck to their permitted genre, even after the Hundred Days, when many hoped for a less restrictive regime. Their opening production for the second restoration was Le Génie protecteur, ou la vengeance d’Arlequin, a pantomime in three acts ‘a grand spectacle’, with combats, ballets, ‘évolutions’ (military manceuvres), conflagrations and other effects, but no spoken dialogue. An example of the type of control exercised by the police occurred when an actor from the dramatic stage, Bougnol, obtained work at the Funambules as Cassandre (the old man or father in French pantomime, who had come to replace Pantalone). The prefect of police obliged him to leave this theatre, and when he sought permission to return he was refused on the grounds that only ropedancers could appear on the smaller stages.11 Another curious limitation was the prohibition on the use of any costume ‘which did not belong to pantomime’. This seems to imply that pantomime must always be limited to the same set of stock characters based on the Commedia dell’arte. The rule was not seriously observed, and pantomimes included even such contemporary characters as a baron of the Empire. However, the Saquis, neighbours and rivals, constantly reported any infringements of their licence to the authorities. There was an element of sour grapes here, as the Saquis had recently been told that they must restrict themselves to rope-dancing.12 By 1817 or 1818 both the Acrobates and the Funambules were trying hard to leave rope-dancing behind them and to develop their pantomimes. Bertrand’s enterprise was clearly the stronger, and this led him to attempt to take over the Acrobates in 1821 and ‘unite’ the troupes.13 In 1823 Bertrand and Fabien made an unsuccessful application to have melodrama included as one of their permitted genres, and thus to compete with the Gaîté and the Ambigu. Not only was this refused, but once more they were reminded that they should not perform any play with dialogue.14 In 1825, Jean-Gaspard Deburau, who had been with the Funambules since about 1816, and whose main importance to the theatre had, perhaps, lain in his ability to construct trick props for effects in pantomimes, took over the role of Pierrot which, hitherto had been played by Felix Chiarigny, who now moved over to the Acrobates. Deburau became a mainstay of the Funambules for the 38


next twenty years and drew the attention of the Romantics to this minor theatre. By 1832 he was at the head of the bills of the Funambules, but by the mid-1830s he was virtually the only Pierrot left on the boulevard du Temple. In 1835, after the Fieschi attempt on the life of the king, all theatres had to receive new authorisation to give performances. Michel Bertrand, in his application, pointed out that he had founded the Funambules and had been running the theatre for twenty-three years and requested permission to continue the type of performances he had been presenting. He described his repertoire as pantomimes with explanatory dialogue and plays with songs ‘that the workingclass could understand’.15 A part from a hint at the social usefulness of such plays, this is also an indication of a subtle attempt to obtain authorisation to stage vaudevilles (which in practice he had been doing since about 1830). He also pointed out that his theatre was providing work for eighty persons, an important consideration at a period when there was a great deal of unemployment in Paris. Bertrand did not receive a direct reply to his request, but simply a notification that each day, before midday, he should let the police have the title of the play to be performed that evening. In fact the government at this moment was far more concerned with material of a potentially subversive nature than it was with questions of genre. Bertrand thus received tacit permission to present vaudevilles, which had by now become by far the most popular dramatic form. To be on the safe side, the term he used to describe them was ‘vaudeville pantomimique’. Deburau himself was rapidly becoming the only mute actor at the Funambules, and, as the Funambules and the Acrobates under Dorsay staged more and more vaudevilles, acrobats and rope-dancers disappeared from the boulevard to work in circuses. On the street outside the mountebanks were also gradually disappearing as the remaining vacant lots were built over. The end of the 1830s saw the departure of the English clowns, who had brought to the Funambules the trick pantomimes in the manner of Grimaldi, in which properties and settings played an active role in the dramatic action. The elder Laurent, who had also played Harlequin at the Funambules, transferred to the Cirque, where he applied his skills to the exciting scenes with transformations that made all Paris rush to see Les Pilules du diable. From now on the Funambules was going downhill. Deburau himself was frequently sick (he suffered from asthma). 39


The Cirque had managed to use its influence to prevent the performances of military mimodramas—the best the Funambules could offer in this vein was a sword fight between six characters. Bertrand tried to improve matters by building up his mime troupe, taking on François and Christophe Cossard from the Luxembourg theatre and returning to the older simpler type of pantomime. In 1843 the theatre was sold to Charles Louis Billion and his wife Edme Nathalie Legry, though the Bertrand involvement still remained. The new management hoped to present both large-scale pantomimes with actors, as at the Cirque, and melodramas, as at the Ambigu, but it was soon made clear that their licence limited them to pantomimes with at most one speaking actor. In practice, the Funambules was not in a position to compete with the luxury of mise en scène of the Ambigu or the Cirque. An attempt to close down or restrict the little theatres in 1845 came as a result of the usual claims from the larger theatres that they were a source of unwelcome competition. The real situation was that all the theatres, including the lesser ones, were suffering from the effects of the general hardships of the 1840s. In 1846 the president of the Special Commission of the Theatres Royal requested the Minister of the Interior to leave the little theatres open. The tolerance previously enjoyed was, to all intents and purposes, assured. The concept of theatre licences being attached to specific dramatic genres remained theoretically until 1864, but, in reality, from now on generic distinction had broken down completely. The death of Deburau in 1846 had very little impact on the repertoire of the Funambules, which, effectively, had become simply another minor theatre. After the demolition of the building in 1862 it moved to the boulevard de Strasbourg, but its audiences did not follow it, and within a year it had closed altogether. The original Théâtre Lazari was one of the many short-lived theatres of the 1790s. In 1792, the Variétés Amusantes, situated in the former Théâtre des Elèves pour la Danse de l’Opéra, employed a popular Italian writer and actor of pantomimes, Ange Lazari. His pantomime, L’Amour puni par Vénus, ran for sixty-two consecutive performances, and this genre became the speciality of the theatre. Having made the fortune of the establishment,Lazari became its director. 16 Although the impressarii Gaillardand Dorfeuille, who had originally given the theatre its name ofVariétés Amusantes had moved their enterprise to the Palais40

2 The auditorium of the Funambules as seen by Valentin. This overall view of the audience of one of the cheapest theatres in Paris in the middle of the last century shows how the audience were arranged. The socio-economic structure is depicted. We can also notice the virtual absence of boxes in the popular theatres and the tighter packing of spectators in all parts of the house.


Royal, Lazari officially maintained the title, though the theatrewas known generally as the Petit Lazari, or Petit Laze. On 30 May1798, after a performance of a particularly lavish production of Il Convitato di pietra (Don Juan—a favourite piece in the eighteenth-century fairground repertoire), a lingering remnant of the finalpyrotechnic effect caused the theatre to burn down and Lazari,after an unsuccessful bid to re-open at the now disused Théâtrede la Porte-Saint-Martin, shot himself. In 1815 the old Lazari theatre was rebuilt on a site adjacent to the original one. There is little information about this period of its history, and Lecomte dates the second Théâtre Lazari from 1821. Certainly the title does not re-appear until that date. There is an interesting document of 1837 in the Archives Nationales17 from the brothers Maffey, requesting permission to open a ‘Gymnase maritime et pittoresque’ (presumably some form of panorama specialising in sea-scapes—the term ‘gymnase’ implies a vaguely educative function). Although one cannot depend totally on the accuracy of the information they give, the Maffeys mention travelling in France and abroad, and then returning to Paris in 1820 and setting up in a little theatre on the boulevard du Temple, which they called the Petit Lazari. This would seem to suggest that the building they moved into was already in existence. As to their repertoire: ‘Our genre was exactly the same as that of our neighbour, the former Lazari.’ The reference to ‘our neighbour’ makes clear that the new Théâtre Lazari was not on the same site as the earlier one. Further on in the document they state categorically that the genre which we have been exploiting from father to son for fifty years is simply a fantoccini show [i.e. string marionettes] and mechanical views after the fashion of Citizen Pierre [proprietor of a famous ‘spectacle mécanique’ on the boulevard]. They also describe themselves, currently, as ‘artistes mécaniciens’, a common term to cover many sorts of showmen, including puppeteers. Other references to the Maffeys are few. They claimed to have a licence in 1822 for their performances at the Petit Lazari, but by 1837 no traces of this remained.18 In the Almanach des spectacles of 1824 the Spectacle du Petit Lazari is indicated as presenting the same genre as the Funambules 42


and the Acrobates, and also giving several performances in the evening (a feature more typical of the fairground than of the fixed theatre). This seems to show that the theatre had moved beyond puppet-shows, and may be one of the reasons why Bertrand acquired it. It is clear that they put it out of business for a time. The Almanach des spectacles for 1825, announced that it would re-open as a puppet-theatre. The Petit Lazari disappears from sight for a while (it is not even listed in the 1826 Almanach des spectacles), but by 1830 it had established a troupe of live actors playing parodies, farces and melodramas. After 1830, the most useful document on the Petit Lazari is a largely anecdotal account, Les Grands Jours du Petit Lazari, par un de ses artistes.19 During this period the Petit Lazari became ‘the theatre of the popular classes par excellence’. Of all the theatres of Paris, it was the one that most closely resembled the English penny gaff. To begin with there were always at least two performances a day (three on Sundays), and the bill was made up of three or four plays, usually much curtailed. All genres were attempted, especially melodramas and pantomimes, though the ‘genre Gymnase’, or more middle-class comedy, was apparently avoided. Between 1830 and the closure and demolition of the theatre in 1862, some 2,000 plays were performed. Authors were paid a flat rate of 10 francs per act and a performer appearing in as many as twelve acts in a single day might be paid about 5 francs. The Petit Lazari was the last of the boulevard theatres to maintain its barker, who would stand outside the theatre and try to attract customers with his line of chat and an announcement of the content of the performance for audiences who could not read the poster. Madame Saqui’s and the Funambules had also been amongst the last of the boulevard theatres to maintain a barker, an important vestige of their fairground origin. The Lazari audiences were predominantly juvenile, like those of the penny gaffs. The first house in particular was noted for its young audience, described as ‘pioupious’ and nursemaids, whereas the second house was composed more of young working people, ‘titis’, and their girlfriends. New plays generally had their first performance on a Saturday. Amongst the greatest successes of the Petit Lazari (some of which achieved a run of as many as 200 performances) were Une Heure à la barrière, Le Pêcheur napolitain, Le Cocher et la chanteuse, L’Amant statue, L’Amour à la hussarde, Les Bosquets de Tivoli, L’Etat de mon père, L’Amour et l’uniforme, Basquine et 43


Rigolo, La Femme de l’ouvrier and Les Chiffonniers et les balayeurs (this last being a burlesque tragedy in verse). Running through these titles there is a clear populist slant, often echoing titles of successful plays from the larger boulevard theatres. By 1862 the Cirque had evolved into a very large spectacular theatre and the Châtelet provided it with a suitably equipped new home. The Acrobates had ceased to exist and the Funambules had already become a page of history. The Lazari, mainly noted for the small scale of its operation and really an anomaly as a sort of fairground theatre attached to a theatre building, was simply not large enough to compete, did not have a new home and quietly vanished.

44

3 AWAY FROM THE CENTRE— THE SUBURBS AND THE PROVINCES

By the 1830s the rapidly growing suburbs were beginning to overtake the quartier du Temple as areas inhabited by large numbers of the popular classes with a need for entertainment. By the latter half of the eighteenth century the villages around the city had become places for ‘citadins’ to visit at weekends, and consequently developed cafés and other forms of amusement. The outskirts of Paris generally were becoming places for recreation. By the 1780s the Champs-Elysées was fashionable for driving or promenading on Sundays. Showmen had not been slow to set up there, one of them being the unfortunate Loison, who was executed on the day of the fall of Robespierre for presenting a puppet-show about the death of Marat in which he neglected to give the ‘martyr’ an apotheosis. From 1818, the puppet-showman Guentleur, with his Polichinelle, moved his pitch up and down the Champs-Elysées. Théophile Gautier, in the mid-nineteenth century, commented on the itinerant performers on the Champs-Elysées. In the latter half of the century this fairground aspect was lost as the gardens were laid out, building increased and more permanent circuses and cafésconcerts were established there. On the edge of Paris, the boulevard d’Enfer (boulevard Montparnasse), more remote from an area of dense population than the boulevard du Temple, was a place of popular resort, as were the old customs barriers. A Vauxhall was opened there in the 1770s (this later became the Bal de la Grande Chaumière). SaintFoy mentions a master carpenter called Coffinon, who, in 1772, established a little theatre where farces, parades and plays from 45


the old Italian repertoire were performed on Sundays and holidays as a form of publicity for his business.1 Coffinon’s theatre was also used by amateur troupes. Eventually he ran into trouble with the police for admitting too many spectators. We have no indication as to the actual size of his theatre, but his licence restricted him to an audience of 600 for ‘comedies bourgeoises’. He ran into financial problems and his theatre was taken over by another alreadyexisting company from Montparnasse. In 1774 a new licence was obtained from the head of the police, Lenoir, who favoured the smaller theatres. The permitted repertoire was still that of the forains: farces, parades, new parodies and old plays ‘a I’ordinaire’ which meant, in this context, pantomimes such as those presented by Nicolet and Audinot. The existence of this theatre was precarious, as it depended on a holiday clientele and was also very much subject to seasonal variation (in winter the boulevard d’Enfer was often deserted). In 1779 this ailing establishment was bought by a provincial director, Darny, and the widow d’Auvillier, director of the ‘petits comédiens du Bois de Boulogne’, another theatre providing entertainment for Parisians out for the day. The term ‘petits comédiens’ suggests a troupe with child actors, which may well have begun as a puppet-theatre. The building, probably a booth constructed in timber, was regarded as unsafe and had to be rebuilt. It was enlarged and had new scenery made. Here, as on the boulevard du Temple, can be seen the development of the fairground booth type of theatre into a more permanent structure. There appears to have been some difficulty in obtaining a licence, since the aim of the directors of this theatre was to offer plays as well as the usual parades and pantomimes. However, the theatre did come into existence. It is mentioned by Brazier as the Théâtre Montparnasse sur le boulevard Neuf in 1794 and 1795. In 1807, together with Belleville, Montmartre and the Ranelagh, it was one of the suburban theatres authorised by Napoleon. A number of small theatres operated around Paris in the later eighteenth century. Most of them were Sunday and holiday theatres, largely restricted to the repertoire of the forains, and clearly a number of them also provided venues for amateur theatricals. The real development of suburban theatres began during the Restoration, but by this stage, whilst they might retain something of the village atmosphere, the inner suburbs had effectively become part of the rapidly expanding city, and the audiences for which they catered were predominantly local. 46

THE SUBURBS AND THE PROVINCES

Through the greater part of the nineteenth century the suburban theatres were grouped, with two, three, or even more, under the one management. The first important management was that of the Séveste family. Pierre Jacques Séveste (1773–1825) had been a dancer on the stages of the boulevard du Temple and an actor at the Vaudeville. Around 1810 he established one of the first theatrical agencies in Paris. With the Restoration he applied for a licence to exploit theatrical enterprises in the suburbs.2 On 18 June 1817 he received this licence, which also gave him the right to stage plays recently performed in Paris (in other words, a much broader licence than that held by the theatres of the boulevard du Temple and other minor or secondary theatres), and in 1819 the first theatre to be built by Séveste opened. This was the Théâtre Montparnasse in the rue de la Gaîté, a vaguely Elizabethan timberframe building of an octagonal shape, with access staircases on the outside leading to the two galleries. It could contain an audience of 348. According to Donnet,3 the stage had an average width of 6 metres 75, a depth of 7 metres 25 and a proscenium opening of 4 metres 25. Apart from the fact that gas was never installed in the building, the lighting remained rudimentary. There was one feature of note: instead of a foyer with a source of heat, the theatre had a stove in the middle of the auditorium and, if anecdotes are to be believed, members of the audience used to cluster round this and use it to heat up their dinner. Interchange between stage and audience was also a feature of performances, which were lively affairs. There was clearly a close link between the theatre and its regular audience. Séveste’s second theatre was the Théâtre de Montmartre (1822), an altogether more splendid building than the Montparnasse.4 It was described by a contemporary as an ideal theatre for a provincial town of 8–10,000 inhabitants. Supposedly built out of stones from the Château de Cramagel, from whose theatre the first scenery also came, this was a building of some architectural pretension. It had two tiers of boxes and a two-storey entrance portico and interior decoration by Martin, in which Ciceri, stage painter at the Opéra, is supposed to have had a hand. This theatre was about twice the size of Séveste’s Montparnasse. Its stage, with five sets of wings, had a depth of 29 ‘pieds’, as opposed to the 22 ‘pieds’ of Montparnasse, but extra depth could be given to the centre portion, which led back to an access door for scenery.5 After an important period as a suburban theatre in the nineteenth 47


century, it took on a new lease of life as an avant garde theatre in the twentieth century, when Charles Dullin turned it into his Atelier. Séveste’s enterprises were very successful. He had two theatres to exploit in areas that were developing rapidly, as a result of immigration from the provinces to Paris. There are many stories which are not always to the credit of Séveste, such as the fact that he made considerable use of unpaid actors in the form of stagestruck amateurs. Many of the actors were technically pupils, whose ability to learn their lines was often not of the best. He also did his best to get out of the poor tax, which was levied on the takings of all theatres. At one point he asked for a reduction of the tax for the winter months from November to 1 March. With the death of Pierre-Jacques in 1825, his widow and his sons Edmond and Jules continued the management, adding theatres at Belleville (1827) and Grenelle (1830) to their empire. Artus, in his monograph on the Théâtre de Montmartre, mentions an article which complains of the discomfort and difficulty of getting to the Séveste theatres. The establishment of the omnibus in 1828, however, was a factor which would soon have to be taken into account, since, at a cost of 25 centimes, it brought theatres within easy reach of many who would not otherwise be able to get to them. Not only did it help the Séveste theatres, it also placed the boulevard du Temple within easier reach of those living in the suburbs. One of the most attractive of the Séveste theatres, not actually built by them, was the Théâtre des Batignolles (1830). This handsome little theatre offered the first real challenge to the Séveste monopoly. Souchet, its original proprietor, had requested a patent to present rope-dancing and pantomimes. The Batignolles theatre, in a relatively smart area, was perceived as offering potential competition to Montmartre, which was doing quite well at the period but was not too far away and in a less elegant neighbourhood. The Sévestes made much of their licence, which was not due to expire until 1845, and, after a long and acrimonious struggle, Souchet was forced to close down his theatre and pay compensation to the Sévestes, who then obtained control of this ‘illegally built’ theatre, which they added to their circuit.6 The Sévestes maintained control of the suburban theatres until 1851. Their heyday was between the mid-1830s and the mid1840s (between the two recession periods of the late 1820s and the 48


late 1840s). At this period the Montmartre theatre was staging new plays as well as those previously staged at other secondary or minor theatres. By 1845 the licence was extended to allow the performance of ballets, which had previously been excluded. The year 1845 seems to have been the apogee of this theatre. Suggestions were even made that it should be subsidised and present classics as a sort of suburban Comédie-Française. Seat prices in 1845 were fairly comparable with those of other smaller popular theatres, ranging from 2 francs for seats in stage boxes to 50 centimes in the amphitheatre. During the 1848 revolution, the Théâtre Montmartre suffered, like all other managements, from suspended performances and poor audiences. For a time the building itself was used for political meetings. A curious document of the period is a letter from the Sévestes complaining about the disastrous situation of their theatres and of the unfair competition offered by the more important theatres of Paris, which had now lowered prices to the level of the suburban theatres. An interesting feature of this letter is its heading: ‘Banlieue de Paris THEATRE DU PEUPLE Direction centrale’. Whilst making all due allowances for an element of expediency in using this particular title at this moment in time, the term Théâtre du Peuple was indeed appropriate for theatres situated (with the exception of the Batignolles) in areas where the population was preponderantly working-class, artisan or petty-bourgeois, and where the principal clientele was also mainly local. The Séveste management was followed by that of Henri Larochelle, who extended the circuit very considerably by taking in more remote suburbs such as Sceaux, Courbevoie, Sèvres, SaintCloud, Bellevue, Meudon and Saint-Denis. He also took on the theatre at Grenelle, which was to remain one of the most important Larochelle stages. Another small theatre taken on by Larochelle was the Saint-Marcel (built in 1838), which he replaced with the new Théâtre des Gobelins in 1869. After the abolition of restrictions on theatre licences in 1864, he also built a slightly more up-market theatre on the left bank, the Théâtre de Cluny, which offered quite serious competition to the Odéon. One of his principles was to stage plays rejected by other managements, and one of his great successes there was the adaptation of the Erckmann-Chatrian novel, Le Juif polonais (known in England as The Bells). In 1872 Henri Larochelle gave up the management of the suburban theatres and ‘théâtres de quartier’ to take on 49


management of the Porte-Saint-Martin. It was under his management that such huge successes as Les Deux Orphelines and Le Tour du monde en 80 jours were staged. In 1877 he and his partner Ritt took on the direction of the Ambigu. The following year he retired from these theatres, but then became involved with the Gaîté and, in particular, with the production of two major Hugo pieces, Lucrèce Borgia and the Paul Meurice adaptation of Quatre-vingttreize. He died in 1884 at the relatively early age of fifty-seven.7 Henri Larochelle began his career as an actor with the Séveste troupes at Montmartre and Belleville. The 1848 revolution upset the beginnings of a promising acting career (he had just been taken into the Comédie-Française). He moved to the Porte-Saint-Martin, then became administrator of the Théâtre Montmartre at the age of twenty-four. In 1851 he bought the Théâtre Montparnasse, which was running at a loss, and by the end of the year had turned that deficit into a small profit. Shortly after taking on Montparnasse, he bought the Grenelle theatre from the Séveste management, and soon made this extremely profitable. 8 Undoubtedly, Larochelle was lucky in terms of the moment at which he took on these theatres, as he was moving into the boom period of the Second Empire. The Montmartre and Batignolles theatres did not come into Larochelle’s circuit. Their situation and relative importance meant that they soon developed independent managements When Larochelle first moved into management in 1851, he formed four troupes to service the various stages with which he was involved. The actors, with all their props and costumes, sometimes had almost daily migrations from one Larochelle establishment to another, and a special wagon was acquired for their transportation. Occasionally actors had to appear at more than one of the theatres in the course of a single evening. Montparnasse soon proved too small for Larochelle’s needs, so in 1856 he replaced it with a larger building with a seating capacity for 700. The new theatre, although still technically a suburban one (until 1861, when Montparnasse became a ‘quartier’ of Paris), had more of the comfort and refinements of the theatres of the city, including gas lighting replacing the oil lamps. However, there was no mains gas, so portable gas had to be brought to the theatre regularly. Even after Larochelle moved to the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1872, Montparnasse remained in his possession, although he had 50


relinquished the direction to Damiès and then, more importantly, to Hartmann in 1874. The ‘new’ theatre had been built on the cheap and left a certain amount to be desired. There had been an accident in a performance of Fanfan la tulipe, when a horse had fallen through the stage, and the authorities finally declared the building unsound. In 1886 Larochelle’s widow had a new and enlarged theatre built within six months, still managed by Hartmann. The site was slightly extended and a 500-seat amphitheatre was added, bringing the total seating capacity up to 1,200, a development comparable to that of the Ambigu over half a century earlier. From 1876 Montparnasse, Grenelle and the Gobelins had been grouped together to offer the same plays in repertoire. They maintained the popular diet of melodrama and féerie, carrying into the twentieth century plays that had long since dropped out of favour in the more centrally situated theatres of the capital. Performances were long, with audiences often being offered a full ten acts in an evening at a time when theatre performances in Paris were generally becoming shorter. When Gaston Baty took over the run-down Montparnasse in 1930, it was still very much a théâtre de quartier. 9 Montparnasse, Grenelle and the Gobelins were amongst the first theatres to be used by Pathé for the projection of silent films, another indication of the shift in popular entertainment from theatre to cinema at the start of the twentieth century. Strictly speaking, a théâtre de quartier, with its own local public, the Château d’Eau, in the rue de Malte (not very far from the Ambigu) had a few years of importance as a popular theatre in the 1870s and 1880s. In their notice for December 1880 on this theatre, Noel and Stoullig observed that, together with the Ambigu, it was the only theatre in Paris to be staging the drame (the play in question was a sentimental popular piece, Henri Cural’s L’Ouvrier du faubourg Antoine). This theatre originated in 1866 as the Cirque du Prince Imperial. This enterprise, run by Bastien Franconi, was intended to perpetuate the equestrian drama of the Cirque of the boulevard du Temple, which was not really happening at its replacement, the Châtelet. The venture was unsuccessful. Hostein tried, briefly, to use the 4,000-seat auditorium as a popular theatre for the drame and the féerie. In 1868 the arena was removed and the building was adapted for more dramatic 51


work. In 1869 it was taken on by the Cogniards, successful theatre managers, and re-named the Théâtre du Château d’Eau. They re-modelled it, cutting down the seating to 1,800, but failed to make it work. In 1875 the Cogniard management came to an end,10 having mounted only one really successful production. The building narrowly escaped burning during the Commune, thanks to its employees, who rolled out the barrels of oil before the order to ignite them could be carried out. In 1877 the actors of the theatre set themselves up as a company. Performing to a very local audience, they usually changed the play once a week (a success would run for two weeks). They struggled with extreme financial difficulties, but kept going, gradually building an audience and at the same time developing considerable strengths as an ensemble at a time when most theatres were losing this quality. The repertory consisted initially of well-tried old drames or melodramas, but gradually they began to present new works. Plays began to average thirty or forty performances, and in 1879 they had their first success with a patriotic drama, Hoche, by Emile Richard and Louis Launay, which ran for 101 performances. Its audiences responded well to the republican and patriotic sentiments and enjoyed the realism of the presentation (when the soldiers ate cabbage soup, the smell of this extended to the auditorium). The repertoire emphasised dramas taken from novels, such as Emile Gaboriau’s La Dégringolade, in which every attack on the Second Empire was loudly applauded. The audiences had a marked predilection for exaggerated naturalism and violent crime of a sort that prefigured the Grand Guignol. What the audiences wanted was contemporary realism. Historical drama more often occasioned mirth than emotion. In the summer months the theatre was usually given over to more or less successful attempts at popular opera. By 1885 the actors’ company found they could not continue and the Château d’Eau reverted to private management. The repertoire remained much the same, but the impetus was lost. The popular audiences diminished and it became another Paris theatre, changing its name in 1891 to the Théâtre Historique, in 1894 to the Théâtre de la République, in 1900 to Opéra Populaire, and back to Théâtre du Château d’Eau in 1901, only to become a music hall, the Alhambra, in 1903. In the provinces the theatres of all but the largest towns (Lyon and Bordeaux) had some similarities to the suburban theatres in 52


that they picked up and perpetuated what had already been performed in Paris. The composition of the provincial audience was usually more bourgeois and the theatre buildings themselves were often erected as a sort of gesture of civic pride to keep up with a neighbouring town. Strolling players had been a feature of French life since at least the seventeenth century (we have only to think of Scarron’s Roman Comique or Molière’s Illustre Théâtre), and these actors continued to provide a large part of the theatrical fare in the nineteenth century. Very few provincial towns had theatre buildings until the final years of the eighteenth century or even the early nineteenth, and the notion of a resident company belonged essentially to the post-revolutionary era. An interesting feature of the 1790s is the number of amateur groups which organised theatricals and acquired premises for this purpose. These buildings had often belonged previously to religious orders. The enthusiasm of such groups of amateurs in some cases led to the creation of a more permanent playhouse. Napoleonic legislation for the provincial theatres is based on a combination of licerice-holders and theatre-buildings. Just as the organisation of the Paris theatres had been regulated according to the decree of 1807, a similar attempt was made to organise the theatre of the provinces. The provinces were divided up into twenty-five theatrical arrondissements. Each arrondissement was under the control of a licence-holder who would be the director of the theatre in one or more towns, and who would be answerable, in the first instance, to the prefect of the departement. The notion of control by the authorities was endemic to the whole system. Provincial theatre directors also inherited something of the monopoly system of the ancien regime in that they had the right to demand a proportion of the boxoffice of any other theatrical performances happening in the town(s) covered by their licence. Only the most important towns were allowed to have more than one theatre. In the first half of the century, only two towns really managed to support a secondary theatre, Lyon and Bordeaux. These had licences similar to those of the Gaîté and the Ambigu-Comique. They were allowed to perform ‘comedies, melodramas, vaudevilles and plays from the repertoire of the secondary theatres’. These petits théâtres, the Théâtre Français at Bordeaux and the Célestins at Lyon, generally did better business than the grands théâtres, 53


which, through the Empire and Restoration, was stuck with the repertoire of the official theatres—opera, tragedy and comedy. The grands théâtres of Lyon and Bordeaux seem to have suffered from the competition of the petits théâtres, which offered a more popular repertoire. With a few exceptions, the general picture of the provincial theatre during the Empire and Restoration is not one of vast prosperity, and managements changed with amazing frequency. According to the Almanach des spectacles for 1823, the provincial theatres had mostly been losing money since 1812. This almost certainly related to the economic state of the country in the later Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic years. A complaint that crops up frequently, especially in towns with a garrison, was about the arrangement which permitted soldiers to have a six-month subscription to the local theatre at the cost of one day’s pay. Provincial troupes were divided into three categories: fixed troupes in the major towns; troupes which served the various towns of an arrondissement; and travelling troupes visiting towns which, because of their lesser importance, were not included in any arrondissement. The third category is the hardest to pin down. A large number of such troupes operated in France, but their composition changed with considerable frequency and many were of an extremely ephemeral nature. It is also difficult to establish any clear line of demarcation between these troupes and strolling players. Three months after the death of Louis XVIII in 1824, the government of Charles X re-organised the provincial theatre. Troupes were placed under three headings, resident (sédentaire), those serving several towns in an arrondissement, and travelling companies (ambulant). In the largest towns there might be more than one resident company attached to the grand théâtre. In this case one company satisfied the needs for opera (and vaudeville) and the other satisfied the needs for drama (tragedy, comedy, melodrama). At the beginning of 1825 resident troupes were to be found in Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Rouen, Le Havre, Toulouse, Montpellier, Lille, Strasbourg, Metz, Nancy, Nantes, Toulon, Brest, Perpignan, Calais, Boulogne and Versailles. A more flexible administration also made it possible for further resident troupes to be established upon the request of the local authorities. The act also indicated that the theatres should be made available rent-free and that, where possible, some local subsidy should also be found. 54


The number of arrondissements was now reduced to eighteen. The arrondissement troupes served towns which could not support a resident company. They were obliged to visit each of the theatres attributed to them at least once every six months and to give a minimum of fifteen performances. The director was obliged to indicate in advance the dates on which the troupe would be in a given town and, in the case where two towns within the arrondissement had fairs, it was necessary to indicate at least a fortnight in advance which town the company would play in, so that a travelling troupe could be brought in to the other (fair season was always a period of good business). The travelling troupes visited towns that were not part of any arrondissement, towns that were not included by directors of arrondissement troupes in their list of bookings, or ones in which the arrondissement troupe had spent six months without giving the requisite fifteen performances. Once the arrondissement troupe had given its quota of performances, it was possible for local authorities to invite a travelling troupe to play in their theatre. Broadly speaking, the travelling troupes were complementary to the arrondissement ones and often plugged gaps—in some cases an arrondissement company might disappear in the course of the year, and in certain cases two arrondissements might be grouped together for want of a company. Most of the travelling troupes worked within a clearly defined area and, in the late 1820s, an arrondissement might have one or sometimes two travelling troupes. These troupes could be regarded as the ancestors of the ‘théâtres ambulants’ that continued to exist until the 1940s. Such troupes are often hard to pin down, as they formed and re-formed from year to year. Many of them were obviously family affairs, with the director playing male leads, his wife female ones, and one or more other members of the family also involved. They usually consisted of a dozen to fifteen members, together with the director and licence-holder, a ‘maître de musique’ and a prompter. Musicians were recruited locally according to the needs of the performance, though at a pinch the maître de musique might provide a one-man orchestra with his fiddle. The importance of the prompter suggests that in a small travelling troupe this individual also acted as a sort of répétiteur, especially when the director was also the lead-actor. We hear little of scenery or costumes. Actors in these companies would be in the habit of playing in whatever stock scenery a local theatre might be able to 55


provide. Costume was of the most perfunctory and generally provided by the actors themselves. René Luguet (brother of Marie Laurent) recalled that having returned to France in 1830 after a year at sea, he found work with a travelling company (no pay, but board and lodging provided) and appeared in his wornout cabinboy’s clothes in a series of plays, regardless of the part.111 The borderline between certain ‘ambulants’ and ‘forains’ is not always clear. For example, in 1828, for a brief period, Harel and Mlle Georges put together a touring company to visit towns that no troupe had appeared in for six months. Michel Luguet (father of René), was a travelling actor and director in the early 1820s, carrying little more than his make-up box and a booth that he transported with him. By 1830 he and his wife were being engaged in the troupes of various provincial towns. After 1864 the distinction forains/ambulants becomes very hazy. The forains usually travelled with their own fit-up, but so did some of the ambulants. With the disappearance of resident stock companies and the larger town theatres becoming little more than receiving houses for touring productions of Paris successes, the forains and the ambulants really kept going what little theatrical life there was in the provinces. Little new dramatic work was generated in the provinces. Initially the censorship may have been a factor, in that theatre directors and local prefects played safe and only plays that had proved unexceptionable in Paris were performed in the provinces. Paris remained the magnet and the model. In the last quarter of the century Noel and Stoullig constantly lament the lack of new work originating on the stages of the provinces. The successes of the Paris theatre, especially the boulevard theatres, were carefully watched. The mise en scène of a popular play was sometimes printed. That of the sentimental triumph, La Grâce de Dieu, for example, was published in the Revue et gazette des théâtres in 1841. The published text of a play that had been succcessfully staged (as distinct from plays with greater literary pretensions) was usually based on the original production, with entrances, exits, positions and an increasing number of stage directions indicating to the actors how they should interpret particular roles or scenes. Most plays were also ornamented with an illustration giving an idea of one of the key moments, and, towards the end of the century, there might even be photographs from the show. These texts were printed on cheap paper in 56


collections such as the Magasin théâtral and were acting editions. Many of them had on the title page an indication that the music or the mise en scène could be procured from the conductor or the régisseur of the theatre where the play was first performed. Some plays also provided alternatives for provincial directors who might not dispose of the means to stage more spectacular scenes (this can be found as early as Pixérécourt, and as late as Decourcelle’s Les Deux Gosses). An idea of the theatrical fare offered to the inhabitants of a small provincial town in the mid-century is given by the company of Fleury-Ducommun, director with a licence for the thirteenth arrondissement in 1845. His company consisted of seventeen actors, a maître de musique, a storekeeper and a prompter. In May 1845 they arrived in Tulle and opened with Gaspardo le pêcheur (a melodrama), Manche à manche (a comedy) 99 Moutons (a vaudeville) and L’Aveugle et son bâton (a ‘bouffonnerie’). He also offered Dumas’ La Tour de Nesle and Bouchardy’s Le Sonneur de Saint-Paul. For a second season (with a slightly different troupe) he offered Les Mousquetaires, Marie-Jeanne, Le Proscrit, all very popular dramas,12 and a collection of comedies and vaudevilles. According to Renée Fage, Fleury-Ducommun’s productions were carefully directed (unlike some touring companies), but the stock scenery still in use at the theatre at Tulle (and many other provincial theatres) was in such a poor state, both ragged and oilstained, that ‘no illusion was posssible’.13 The theatre public of a provincial town was numerically more limited than that of a large Parisian theatre. Many provincial theatres were dark for large parts of the year once their arrondissement company had given its run of performances. Socially, the audience was relatively mixed. As the cheapest places were 1 franc (as opposed to 50 or 60 centimes in Paris), there is a suggestion that the less well-off (clerks etc.) went to the theatre, but the real popular classes did not. The repertoire had to be all things to all people, and so a mixture of genres was offered, out of which the drame and the vaudeville, and, later, the operetta, remained the most in demand. The advent of the railway by midcentury, making Paris more accessible, hastened the decline of the provincial theatres, and improved transport made the sending out of touring productions of Paris successes a real possibility.

57

4 ‘FORAINS’ AND FIT-UPS

A vast amount of dramatic or quasi-dramatic activity took place in the nineteenth century outside the regular theatres. This activity was generally classified by the police as ‘petits spectacles’ or ‘spectacles de curiosité’, and the concept related to what, historically, had been fairground sideshows. These ranged from the smaller theatres such as the Funambules, the Acrobates or the Petit Lazari in Paris to street entertainers and puppet-showmen. In 1825 the Almanach des spectacles listed the Acrobates (temporarily closed), the Funambules, the Petit Lazari (also closed), the Théâtre forain du Luxembourg, Séraphin’s puppet-theatre, Pierre’s ‘spectacle mécanique’, the Panorama, Diorama and Cosmorama, together with a ‘Componium ou improvisateur musical’, ‘Soirées urbanographiques’ (‘all astronomical problems are solved there’) and a human fossil. Some of these were rather expensive for the popular purse. The Diorama, which was fashionable, cost either 3 francs or 2 francs 30. Most of the ‘curiosités’, including a number that do not appear on this list, were much cheaper. Such entertainments often attracted the poorer class of spectator, who could not afford a seat in a regular theatre, and for this reason those that offered dramatic entertainment were regarded with suspicion by the authorities. In the provinces the petits spectacles sometimes provided the only theatrical fare available, especially outside the larger towns, and catered for what today would be described as the non-public. Under the loose classification of ‘petits théâtres’, ‘spectacles de curiosité’, or simply ‘forains’ were a large number of performers and showmen, all struggling to obtain licences so that they might scrape a living. During the Empire, the boulevards and the Palais-Royal 58

‘FORAINS’ AND FIT-UPS

were places of popular resort and became focal points for entertainments, including acrobats, performing animals (especially bears and dogs), puppet-shows, ‘spectacles d’optique’ (which included various types of peep-show), ‘théâtres mécaniques’ (which might comprise anything from flat mechanical figures to full puppet-shows), and so forth. Certain names stand out, such as Curtius, with his waxworks show, or Citizen Pierre with his spectacle mécanique. Curtius’ show, initially a fairground attraction, had become fixed on the boulevard du Temple in the 1770s and would, in fact, stagger on until the end of the reign of Louis-Philippe.1 Citizen Pierre’s ‘spectacle mécanique’ served for many years as a point of reference for itinerant puppeteers looking for a permit. They would often describe their shows as being ‘after the manner of Citizen Pierre’. The major entertainments of the boulevard du Temple became increasingly fixed and gradually lost their fairground quality. Even the Funambules, the Acrobates and Lazari became real, if cheap and popular, theatres. The ‘parade’, or outside show, presented on a raised area or balcony in front of a booth as a come-on for the show inside, had been inherited from the eighteenth century. A decree of 23 germinal, an XI (13 April 1803), officially abolished the parade outside theatres because it created gatherings of people in the street, and all gatherings were perceived as being potentially subversive. In practice, the parade continued throughout the Empire as one of the features of the boulevard du Temple (this is amply indicated by the iconography of the period). The more important theatres abandoned the parade, but the petits spectacles maintained it as long as they could, and its disappearance often coincided with their own, as the spaces on which they pitched their booths were swallowed up. Dromale, director of the Théâtre des Pygmées, a ‘spectacle pittoresque et mécanique’, which consisted of some marine views (a sort of miniature panorama) and a puppet-show, had been on the boulevard since the 1790s. He appealed against the decree of 23 germinal and was allowed to continue the parade, but it was reduced to two performances a day, each limited to ten minutes.2 The parade of the Théâtre des Pygmées was the most celebrated in Paris because of two comedians, Bobêche and Gallimafré, who first appeared there in 1809.3 Reputedly, their ultimate departure resulted in the ruin of Dromale. A well-known picture by Roller in the Musée Carnavalet shows Bobêche and Gallimafré performing outside the booth of Mlle Rose and Malaga (a famous rope-dancer of Spanish origin, 59


grandmother of the melodrama actress Marie Laurent). Bobêche, the quick-witted Parisian, wore a red coat, yellow breeches, blue stockings and a red wig, whilst his counterpart and stooge, Gallimafré, was a peasant from Normandy. The short sketches which they performed depended heavily on puns and became so popular that some of them were even published.4 According to Brazier,5 Bobêche’s quips and political allusions were such that the police intervened on various occasions. However, his popularity was enormous; he was frequently engaged for performances in the private houses of the great and even toured the provinces. For a time after his retirement from the boulevard he ran a ‘petit spectacle’ at Rouen. The real names of Bobêche and Gallimafré were Antoine Mandelart and Auguste Guérin.6 Their legendary importance is such that they later became the subject of a rather inaccurate and highly romanticised play by the Cogniard brothers. What these parades offered was entertainment for those who did not even have the few sous needed to go inside the booth to see the show to which they were drawing attention. On the boulevard du Temple the last parade to survive was that of the Funambules (evoked by René Clair in the film Les Enfants du paradis), though the Petit Lazari maintained a barker at the door long after the other theatres had abandoned this practice. Elsewhere in Paris there were further ‘petits spectacles’. In 1816 a ‘spectacle acrobatique’ opened on the left bank in the rue de Fleurus. This was managed by a certain Saix, known as Bobineau, and was noted for the energetic parade that was performed in front of it. Later on, this theatre became the Théâtre forain du Luxembourg or Bobino (after Saix). Generally, however, the parade was returning to the fairground whence it had sprung. With Napoleon’s limitation of the number of theatres, several establishments became cafés—the best known of these was the Café d’Apollon, which had been the Théâtre des Associés until 1807. Many of these cafés, ancestors of today’s café theatres, offered some sort of dramatic performance to accompany the refreshment. Hardly a novelty, the notion of entertainment to accompany refreshment became very important in the nineteenth century, leading ultimately to the café-concert and the music-hall, and it was also used for the Guignol theatres of Lyon. A song by the popular vaudevillist Desaugiers, ‘Cadet Buteux au boulevard du Temple’ 7 includes a specific reference to small dramatic entertainments at the Café d’Apollon: 60


L’café d’Apollon nous r’présente Des pièc’s où, pour doubler l’effet, Ce n’est qu’à deux qu’on parle et qu’on chante. Ah jarni! queu trio ça fait! (The Café d’Apollon shows us plays in which, to double the effect, one can only speak or sing in twos. Zounds, what a trio that makes!) Simond reproduces a detailed description of theatrical performances at the café or ‘caveau’ des Variétés in the Palais-Royal, in 1806.8 Two stages were set up in adjoining cellars and performances of music and of dramatic pieces alternated on them. The audiences were very mixed, but essentially popular: the company usually consists only of the lower middleclasses, workers, soldiers, servants and women with big round bonnets and flannel petticoats. The value of this description is as a contemporary document indicating the practice of café performances, even before the decree of 1807. As well as mentioning the social composition of the audience, it refers to the type of repertoire and the level of remuneration of the actors. The pieces performed were one-act vaudevilles, which allowed for a regular turnover of audience, and the spectators themselves sat at tables eating and drinking as they watched the show, The stage was about 2 feet high and just about large enough for four or five actors. The performances themselves were free, as their function was to attract custom. The principal actors earned 38 sous (1 franc 90) a day, plus a bottle of beer and a small glass of spirits. The other actors received only a glass of beer, or a cup of coffee, or a few sous a day according to their talents. After 1807 the police kept a constant eye on all the smaller ‘spectacles de curiosités’. A puppeteer by the name of Beaunoir applied for permission to set up in the Frascati salons near the Variétés-Montansier (possibly the same establishment as that described in the previous paragraph). There is no specific reference in the police files as to whether he was successful or not, but in 1814 a certain Madame Beaunoir, perhaps his widow, was looking for permission to give plays of an instructive value for children. A note on file indicates that the main concern of the police was that 61


managers of ‘spectacles de curiosité’ may try sooner or later to depart from the genre assigned to them and to encroach upon the preserve of the theatres.9 For this reason cafés offering a dramatic entertainment were regarded with suspicion. Napoleon clamped down on such establishments and the Restoration and Bourgeois Monarchy were hardly more accommodating. However, a number of cafés were provided with a stage and some musicians. On these stages appeared artistes—mostly singers and comedians, who entertained an audience which had come less to hear a performance than to drink, smoke and talk. One of the earliest of these was the Café Morel, whose artistes, like those of other similar establishments, were recruited from the ranks of street entertainers and nomads. With the development of the ChampsElysées, cafés with entertainers sprang up to cater for those who went there in the summer. The 1848 revolution led to a sense of greater freedom, and these cafés multiplied. One of the most noteworthy was the Estaminet Lyrique, where Joseph Darcier sang Le Pain: On n’arrête pas la mesure Du peuple quand il dit ‘J’ai faim!…’ Car c’est le cri de la Nature: II faut du pain.’10 (One does not stop the song of the people when it says ‘I’m hungry! …’ For that’s the cry of Nature: We must have bread.) This is sometimes said to be the start of the café-concert. At this period, and right up until 1867, pressure from the theatres ensured that café-concert artistes could not appear in any sort of costume on the stage, but always in street clothes, thus avoiding any sense of competing with the theatres. Most of the stages tried to look more like a drawing-room, with a semi-circle of beauties, known as ‘la corbeille’ (or flower-bed) sitting behind the performers (and, on occasion, ogling the audience). This drawing-room entertainment was sometimes carried outside, notably during the Second Empire, when the city of Paris, to improve the status of the Champs-Elysées, provided gardens for the cafés. At this period, instead of sitting at separate tables, the audience was generally arranged facing the stage, 62


and shelves for drinks or ices were placed on the backs of the benches. This implied an important change of focus, and was one step further towards the notion of the café-concert as a form of theatre. The next step was the construction of purpose-built edifices, like theatres, usually with an area of fixed seating, a circle of boxes or seats, and a generous promenade area behind, which was often provided with extra tables. The most luxurious of these were the Alcazar and the Eldorado, later to be joined by the exotic Chinese pavilion, Ba-ta-clan (named after an early operetta of Offenbach). The 1864 decree, which abolished monopolies for the theatres, did not immediately help the cafés-concerts. The ‘Administration des Théâtres’ was still determined to keep out any possible competition—in the provinces the cafés-concerts, like puppetshows and other minor theatres, often had to pay compensation to the licensee of the arrondissement (usually the director of the municipal theatre). The café-concert served as a nursery for the legitimate stage, and it was there that many performers learned how to handle a noisy and frequently distracted public. Café-concert artistes were regarded as the proletariat of the actingprofession. By 1867, the position of the theatres with reference to the cafés-concerts had become untenable and they had to give in. From now on the cafésconcerts could present performances in costume, change scenery, offer dance numbers, pantomimes and even short comedies. By the later 1870s Noel and Stoullig in their Annales du théâtre et de la musique would include a section listing plays performed at the main cafés-concerts (admittedly, these generally amounted to little more than a handful of vaudevilles each year, but their existence is significant). The distinction between café-concert and theatre was becoming increasingly blurred. Starting with the comic singer Thérésa, in the 1860s, the café-concert began to have its ‘stars’. The loud-voiced Theresa, with her populist Parisian songs, had a charisma similar to that of Frédérick Lemaître. The appearance and atmosphere of the café-concert at this period is splendidly evoked by the Goncourt brothers in their description of l’Eldorado in 1865: A large circular auditorium with two rows of boxes, decorated with gilt and imitation marble; dazzling chandeliers; a café inside, black with men’s hats; bonnets of women from the customs barriers (i.e. outlying popular districts); soldiers, children with caps; a few hats of prostitutes accompanied by 63


shop assistants, a few pink ribbons in the boxes; the visible breath of all these people, a smoky, dusty cloud. At one end a stage with footlights; on it I saw a comedian in a black coat. His inconsequential song was punctuated with clucking noises like a farmyard on heat and with epileptic gesticulations—an idiotic St Vitus’ dance. The audience was delirious with excitement... I don’t know, but it seems we must be getting close to a revolution. The rot of stupidity has set in with the public. Laughter has become so unhealthy that a great upheaval and the letting of blood is needed to change the air and to restore everything to health, including the comic.11 With the benefit of hindsight, the Goncourts’ comment on the state of French society seems remarkably perspicacious. It is also clear that the café-concert was now offering serious competition to the popular theatres, appealing to similar audiences and perhaps even satisfying a need which the theatres no longer satisfied to the same extent. Purists had looked down on the café-concert as destroying the musical tastes of the French nation. The noisy choruses and refrains which the audiences were encouraged to join, and the emphasis on brass and percussion in the orchestration, all horrified the more refined, however much they might please the masses. By the 1880s the more important cafés-concerts were attracting a more fashionable public, frequently in evening-dress. The larger ones, such as Alcazar or Eldorado, developed into the great musichalls of the Belle Epoque, the humbler ones of the ‘quartiers’ and suburbs remained centres of popular entertainment. One of the most important of these was the Cadran on the quai d’Auteuil, much frequented by sailors and rivermen. Here the ‘consommation’ cost 30 centimes, as opposed to 3 francs at Eldorado. On a smaller scale were the appropriately named ‘beuglants’, whose name implied the noisy singing and shouting of the clientele and artistes. In the Latin quarter there was a particularly large number of these, frequented by students, but they seldom offered any form of dramatic entertainment. The Guignol tradition of Lyon has analogies with the caféconcert. Here also performances were given in certain cafés which gradually became regular puppet-theatres, notably the Café Condamin and the Caveau de l’Argue. Right up until the end of the century some of these retained tables for refreshments. This 64


may be one of the reasons why in Lyon Guignol maintained an adult audience long after it had been relegated entirely to the innocuous round of children’s entertainments elsewhere. Until well into the second half of the nineteenth century itinerant performers could be found in Paris. These ‘spectacles forains’ had their favourite pitches, such as the Champs-Elysées and the old customs barriers, which were areas with a large and poorer population. Théophile Gautier describes one booth which he saw on the Champs-Elysées in 1844. The booth, in weatherbeaten canvas, looked as if it had seen better days. Outside it, three planks were laid across a couple of barrels to form a platform for three wretched musicians, and a child, dressed in an outsize Cupid costume, banged a cymbal and endeavoured to drum up custom for the display of acrobatic skills and feats of strength inside. In May of 1848 Gautier visited the forains, who had been encamped on the Champs-Elysées at the carré Marigny since the February revolution. He mentions the Loyal family’s circus tent, which was the largest of the attractions. He then goes on to describe another well-worn canvas booth with ‘tableaux vivants’ inside. Admission to this was 3 sous and the programme consisted of a series of biblical scenes presented by some half-starved children. These were performed on a little stage, whose curtain rose to the strains of two asthmatic clarinets. At another booth in the same encampment he witnessed puppet productions of Barbe-Bleue and Geneviève de Brabant. Just over a decade later, in the 1850s, Victor Fournel gives a graphic description of booth theatres at the Barrière du Montparnasse and on the Champs-Elysées. 12 In these booths audiences could enjoy a diet of vaudevilles, drames, spectacular melodramas and even tragedies He refers to seeing La Pie voleuse, combined with a successful tear-jerker, and Les Cosaques, pruned and shortened to a third of its length, with pathetic scenes intercalated. A semi-permanent portable theatre on the place de l’Abbaye presented La Tour de Nesle, with a cast of four. Fournel also refers to ‘tableaux vivants’ or ‘poses plastiques’, which sound remarkably similar to those witnessed by Gautier, involving, in this case, three children on a rotating disc taking up poses from various scenes from the scriptures from the murder of Cain and Abel to the Crucifixion. Panoramas and ‘spectacles d’optique’ might no longer be exactly the rage of fashionable Paris, but at the Barrière du Montparnasse there was a booth, complete with its parade with a 65


barker and three musicians, the former loudly publicising the show inside, the Guerre d’Orient, désastre de Sinope (1859)—recent history presented visually before the days of newsreel: You will see the Turkish army, and the Russian army; you will see the sea and you will see the roadstead; you will see the ships, bombardments, the hail of bullets and shells; you will see ships staggering and being swallowed up by the roaring ocean. And how much does it cost to enjoy this wonderful sight? One sou per person! These exciting events were presented with the help of a narrator, 6 inch high cardboard figures, and a few fireworks. The whole thing was on a stage lit by a couple of smoky oil-lamps, one placed on each side. No doubt, such shows could be seen in many a fairground across France. The figures themselves were probably similar to the flat metal figures used by travelling showmen through much of the century.13 Another of this collection of attractions was a ‘cabane’ in front of which a child was beating a large drum and announcing the show through a loud-hailer. This particular booth had the words TENTATION DE SAINT ANTOINE painted above it and Fournel’s description of the performance inside is among the most detailed that we have of one of the major pieces of the repertoire of the travelling puppet-theatres. Indeed, the Tentation de Saint Antoine was so popular that in some cases the term ‘tentation’ was synonymous with ‘puppet-show’ in the same way that the term ‘crêche’ could be in the south of France, or that Guignol is today. Travelling entertainers had long been a feature of French life. Some of them managed to become more established and to settle down in one place in the nineteenth century, others continued to travel and to perpetuate the nomadic life-style. The general term used for the itinerant entertainers was ‘forains’, travellers moving from town to town, and even country to country (especially in the years following the Napoleonic wars), transporting their equipment and sometimes their booth or tent with them. The term ‘forain’ is a broad one covering not only nomadic entertainers but also itinerant traders or pedlars. A false etymology associates the word ‘forain’ with fair (foire). This is hardly surprising if one considers the fact that fairs were one of the most likely places to find nomadic performers. The term actually derives from the Latin ‘foras’, denoting someone who comes from outside, and is closer 66


to the sense of the English word foreign. In many cases ‘forains’ were gypsies or of Romany origin, but in others the word denoted more a way of life than an ethnic origin. Technically, these entertainers were classified as ‘saltimbanques’, or mounte-banks. When travelling around France in the nineteenth century they had to carry a special passport or ‘livret’, which needed to be signed at each town where they halted and generally amounted to a certificate of sound moral behaviour. The ‘passport for mountebanks, tumblers, travelling musicians, singers etc.’ continued to be used into the twentieth century. In 1798 (16–23 August), laws had been drawn up for saltimbanques.14 In 1854, as the Second Empire became more firmly established, an attempt was made to control the movements of these people. The decree of 15 February 1854 required all entertainers in this category to provide a certificate of ‘good life and morals’ from the head of police of the commune in which they were domiciled. In addition, they had to carry a medal with their name and the number of the permit on it (the lending of this medal could result in the revocation of the permit). The permit itself had to be stamped four times a year, and any change of residence had to be officially notified. If a saltimbanque travelled out of his own department, the medal had to be deposited with the police and the passport had to be countersigned. Saltimbanques could only set up on specially designated sites. They were forbidden to exercise their profession before 8.00 a.m., and had to finish by 6.00 p.m., in the winter months, and by 9.00 p.m. between 1 April and 1 October. The only exceptions to this were fairdays and public holidays, and for these special permission had to be sought from the municipal authorities. Clearly, the various requirements were not always complied with, and many officials must have turned a blind eye provided that there were no complaints or disturbance of the peace. Officially, saltimbanques were not permitted to use their own children as performers if they were under sixteen and, apart from their own children, they were not allowed to be accompanied by minors (under sixteen). However, we frequently hear of the children of puppeteers becoming involved in the show—at the age of eight, Emile Pitou appeared as a little devil in his father’s puppet production of Robert le diable. The decree of 1864 made life much easier for the smaller fixed ‘petits spectacles’, especially the puppet-theatres such as the Cabotans of Amiens or the Guignol of Lyon. Article 34 of a law of 67


17 July 1880 finally established the right of any fairground theatre to operate freely throughout French territory, but this did not always prevent a showman being moved on by local authorities, usually because of some objection by local shopkeepers, who had a traditional mistrust of the forains. Saltimbanques were distinguished from other forains in that their purpose was to entertain rather than to trade. The nearest equivalent in modern terms is the travelling circus. The dividing line between circus-type acts and more specifically dramatic performances was often a fine one. In the late eighteenth century most saltimbanques included such skills as rope-dancing in their repertoire and circus skills were very much to the fore in the earlier years of the boulevard du Temple. The ambivalence as to whether they were acrobats or dramatic performers remained with the Funambules and the Acrobates and was perpetuated on a much larger scale by the Cirque Olympique. As late as the 1880s the theatre of the Frères et Sœurs Lamberty performing at the fair at Orléans presented a Joan of Arc play combined with acrobatic displays. Variot mentions a performance of a piece called La Folie des grandeurs, which he witnessed at a travelling circus in 1913.15 The play was sandwiched between the first and second parts of the circus performance and, significantly, all the parts, including those of the women, were played by clowns. For a large part of the nineteenth century a dramatic component was a relatively common feature of many travelling circus programmes. This comes to light in a questionnaire circulated by the new regime in September 1848 in an attempt to formulate laws to regulate public performances. 16 The prefects of France were asked ‘Should spectacles de curiosité and, above all, circuses be forbidden to perform any work of a theatrical nature, whether musical or dramatic?’ The reactions of the various prefects are interesting. The prefect of Indre saw this as a good idea, whereas his colleague in Indre-et-Loire considered it was an attack on liberty. The prefect of Indre-et-Cher declared firmly that ‘The audience for the spectacles de curiosité is not the audience of the big theatres.’ This clear-sighted statement makes the very important point that the petits spectacles offered little real competition to the municipal theatres, since they were followed by audiences who could not afford the town theatres or never went to them in any case. This distinction between the theatre public of the municipal theatres and the non-public is a highly significant one. If the more 68


reactionary prefects argued that the local fixed troupes and even the fit-ups, would be damaged by this sort of competition, others argued precisely that legislation on this matter would affect principally the poorer classes, who would go to the circus or the petits spectacles, but would not go to the theatre. In addition, they argued, it was a good thing for these audiences to be exposed to some real theatre, as opposed to crude parades and pantomimes. This last observation indicates that pantomimes (which may well mean harlequinades of an ever more conventional nature) still continued to be performed, especially in the countryside and smaller towns. The parades were short sketches or farces with only a few characters. The term now referred more to the genre than to the notion of an outside show, as described earlier in this chapter. Instead of being a come-on for a show, it was the show itself, or at least a part of it. Dramatic activity in the provinces was relatively stagnant in the last quarter of the century, and this sometimes resulted in municipal theatres becoming available to the major troupes of forains. It is important to distinguish between a forain troupe which was, by definition, nomadic, and a travelling troupe sent out from Paris with one or several productions. The latter visited a limited number of the bigger municipal theatres which made up a circuit for a provincial tour. The forains frequently had their own alternative circuit, performing in towns or villages which had no theatre. Moreover, they were not necessarily tied to fairs, but often played in ‘ville morte’ (the term used to describe a town at a period of the year other than that of the annual fair). In these cases, once permission had been obtained to perform, they would find an appropriate venue—often, but not necessarily, the village hall (‘salle communale’) or else an inn. Those companies who had their own booth would often have to come to an agreement not only with the mayor, but also with the ‘placier’ of the town, an individual who had the right to let out pitches to forains.17 The large dismantlable theatres are a feature of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Such theatres would sometimes contain boxes and even a gallery and might have seating for as many as 800. These large booths, whether for live actors or for some of the bigger puppet-theatres, were dragged by horses, steam-traction engines or railway from one pitch to another. Firmin Gémier’s Théâtre National Ambulant of 1911 was in this tradition. Only his over-ambitious scale and missionary zeal make 69


his venture very different from the large travelling fit-ups of the late nineteenth century. The Lamberty-Lamarche-d’Hont troupe (whose origins go back to the period of Louis XV) by the 1890s moved round with three horse-drawn caravans, in which they lived, and sent their material by train, packed onto fourteen wagons. Their booth was 30 metres by 9 metres 50, with a stage of 140 square metres, underneath which the actors dressed. They usually set up at fairs and in 1906 abandoned their booth in favour of an American tent. The move away from large booths and into tent theatres characterised many of the forain troupes of the first quarter of this century. With the advent of the cinematograph, some travelling fit-ups went over to showing films in their booths. Ironically, it was the cinema that ultimately dealt the death-blow to these fit-ups, once it fell into the hands of such large companies as Gaumont who began to build cinemas. Some showmen, however, ended up as cinema owners also. The Pitou family of Rive de Giers put away their puppets in 1913 and devoted their energies to running a cinema. The Guérin theatre of Bordeaux is particularly interesting, as it is the last surviving example of the fairground puppet booths of the nineteenth century. The Guérins, like the Pitous or the Delemarres, had one of the really large transportable booths of the late nineteenth century, complete with a parade in front of it. This booth, which dated from the 1890s, survived until the 1950s, when it was replaced by a smaller one. Their present booth is rather less ambitious, consisting of a façade, which includes the box-office and a parade from which the show, the Tentation de St Antoine, is announced, with the help of some marionettes and St Anthony’s little pig, which wanders about amongst them. The theatre itself comprises a wagon forming the stage and set at right-angles to the façade, and a canvas lean-to for the auditorium (decorated with some of the wall paintings of the older theatre), which now seats about 100 on benches on the flat floor—gone is the old raked seating. In at least one case, that of the Delemarre family, the booth that had been used for puppets was adapted for live actors in the last decade of the nineteenth century. There is great similarity between the repertoire of the itinerant puppet companies and that of live actors. From the 1830s onwards, both relied heavily on adaptations of melodramas and féeries. In the last quarter of the century operetta and opéracomique also furnished a part of the repertoire. Plays were 70


generally short, and a mixed bill was the order of the day. Short comedies and sketches exploited themes that could be traced back to medieval farce and generally illustrated a moral concept: Characters in these were for the most part rudimentary, and the emphasis was on the theme or idea. Such pieces were quite different from those offered by the Variétés, the Vaudeville or the Gymnase, though the more popular vaudevilles from those theatres did find their way into the fairground repertoire. An important traditional strand was the biblical play, and, in particular plays relating to key moments of the Christian calendar, such as the Nativity or the Passion. Medieval legend and ballad or chapbook material provided another strand for those who read, or had read to them, the volumes of the ‘bibliothèque bleue’ (the nineteenth-century continuation of the chapbook, so-called because of the cheap blue paper that formed the cover). Towards the end of the century the novels of Dumas and others partly superseded the bibliothèque bleue. A major source of the forain repertoire was the successful plays of the capital, particularly the melodramas, generally reduced to fit the number of actors in the company and shortened almost beyond recognition so as to allow for a mixed bill with a number of items. What the Théâtre Lazari was doing in Paris, the forains, with even more reduced means, were doing in their booth or tent theatres or on improvised stages in small towns and villages. The troupe manager of a travelling company would often go to performances of popular plays at the local provincial theatre, observe details of the acting and mise en scène, and cobble together a text if one had not already been published. The famous and spectacular Pitou marionette production of Le Tour du monde en 80 jours, for example, was carefully based on the staging of the piece at the theatre of Saint Etienne, which it reproduced in miniature and surpassed. The larger itinerant theatres often had scenery and costumes which, if not exactly of the same quality as those of the major Parisian theatres, could frequently offer audiences visual satisfaction at least equivalent to that provided by provincial theatres. In some cases the real magic of spectacular mise en scène was provided by the travelling puppet-theatres, especially in the latter years of the century. Jean Variot mentions seeing a live version of Ambroise Thomas’ opera, Mignon, reduced to thirty minutes. The Pitou version for puppets, with costumes based on the Opéra-Comique production and some very splendid scenic effects, especially for the 71


fire scene, was played as a drama and the performance lasted some four hours. These delights were available at prices ranging from 30 to 75 centimes. A reporter gave a detailed review of a performance of Mignon at Valenciennes in 1901 and used the puppet-theatre as a stick to beat the local theatre.18 Charles Malato, writing as late as 1925,19 indicates the extent to which the fairground theatres gave a continuing lease of life to the popular drama of the nineteenth century: The old melodrama once savoured by the ever so simplistic spectators of the Ambigu and the Porte-Saint-Martin and taken up by the little theatres of Belleville and Grenelle, formed and still forms, the basis of the repertoire of these travelling establishments. We can still see the dashing d’Artagnan, with his chest thrown out beneath his musketeer’s uniform, Marguerite de Bourgogne and Buridan, Joan of Arc, majestic and proud in her tin armour, all parading on the trestles to publicise the show. In many cases plays for the forain repertoire were short. Apart from little farces and moral plays, dialogue was much curtailed and there was clearly a preference for a mixed bill of fare rather than for one long play. Reduction of longer plays was sometimes required to simplify problems of staging, and to accommodate the play to the needs of the troupe. Many troupes were family groups with a few additional actors. Variot mentions the Sirdet troupe, which he saw performing at Besançon at the beginning of the twentieth century. The troupe was run by grandfather Sirdet, and all the actors, bar three, were his children or grandchildren. In some cases plays were reduced to little more than a scenario, and an evening’s bill might well contain three or four pieces. One farce mentioned by Variot, Le Mal Marié (a play reminiscent of Molière’s Georges Dandin) which he saw the Sirdet troupe perform in 1909, formed part of a lengthy bill commencing at 8.30 and finishing at 11.30, in the course of which the audience were treated to a drama based on Cartouche, abbreviated versions of Les Deux Orphelines, La Dame aux camélias and Geneviève de Brabant and a short piece, Le Beau-frère (which deals with the theme of wifely fidelity in a lighter vein than Geneviève). In the fairground theatres plays, and adaptations of plays, pass backwards and forwards between live actors and puppets to such an extent that there is often little to distinguish between the 72


theatres as far as the material presented is concerned. All the major melodramas of the last half of the century found their way into the forain repertoire, especially the tear-jerkers such as Les Deux Orphelines and the cloak and dagger ones of Dumas, or Féval’s Le Bossu. In the last two decades, operetta and musical plays became increasingly popular. Some theatres boasted a small orchestra, though the norm was a piano and a violin or two. In 1887 Paul Mouton, a showman from a long tradition of saltimbanques, experienced a period of difficulty and had to let go his operetta troupe of seventeen. Sometimes, to avoid any payment of royalties, these troupes would modify the title slightly. Thus, we find the Legois troupe offering Les Petites Cloches de Corneville, La Petitefille d’un tambour-major (opéra-bouffe-féerique) or Les Sœurs de Daniel Stropkoff (féerie). It is likely that audiences would have seen through this transparent disguise, and knew exactly the sort of fare they were going to receive. More exclusive to the forains is a repertoire of farces and folk plays, a small sample of which was collected by Jean Variot in his Théâtre de tradition populaire. Many of these are about tricksters being tricked, in the tradition of Pathelin, or about marital problems. In some cases similarities with Molière are to be detected, though it is difficult to know whether Molière himself was a source or whether there is a common origin. Thus La Femme muette et l’homme sourd, partly evokes Le Médecin malgré lui, but also picks up a theme of medieval farce, the dumb wife cured (who then will not stop talking). The version published by Variot came from the Montpellier region, celebrated for its medical faculty. An interesting survival in this play is the use of names: Jodelet, Gros Guillaume, Briguelle (Brighella) and Gourgoul (Gaultier Garguille?), names which come down from the Commedia dell’arte and seventeenthcentury farceurs. Also deriving directly from a medieval farce tradition is the Farce de l’aiguille, whose theme is very close to that of the English Gammer Gurton’s Needle. These last productions are particularly interesting in that they belong much more to a rural tradition, and nothing remotely resembling them could be seen in the theatres of the capital. Vestiges of the Commedia repertoire also survived long after they had died out elsewhere. Variot publishes a few such pieces, including one, Le Mariage de Pantalon, in which, because the name ends in a, the character of Pulcinella has become a woman, a clear indication of a lack of any real awareness of the tradition 73


from which the play itself came. Another play, La Farce des jumeaux, on the theme of identical twins, was drawn ultimately from Plautus’ Menaechmi. This piece was seen by Panon du Hazier in a fairground booth in Alsace in 1840. The identical twins were dressed as harlequins and wore black masks. The subject was obviously widespread. Elémir Bourges remembered seeing a similar piece in Manosque a number of years later, and also commented on the use of rather ragged Italian comedy costumes. Pieces belonging to a traditional historical or legendary repertoire continued to be performed by the fit-ups until the twentieth century. Jacques Garnier lists Joan of Arc as one of the most popular subjects to be treated at fairground theatres in the second half of the nineteenth century.20 The Legois family’s 600seat gaslit booth, the Théâtre des Variétés, staged a Jeanne d’Arc au siège d’Orléans in the last years of the century with some forty performers on the stage, but apparently then abandoned the piece because so many other companies were doing it (this seems to correspond to a revival of demand for patriotic drama once the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian war had been got over). Geneviève de Brabant also had a major place in the repertoire of many companies. Of the traditional plays that had formed a part of the fairground repertoire before the start of the nineteenth century and which were popular as chapbook material, Geneviève de Brabant is one of the most widespread, especially with the string-puppet theatres. Geneviève de Brabant, falsely accused by the villain Golo of infidelity towards her husband Sifroi, sentenced to death by the latter and miraculously preserved to live in the forest with her young son Bénoni, succoured by a deer, was a popular subject both for ballads and iconography. The ongoing appeal no doubt came from the fact that the tale is an amalgam of many folk elements and combines an element of the miraculous with that of justice, finally, being done. Versions can be found in Flanders and it was a mainstay of many puppet-theatres: the Pitous, the Pajots, the Delemarres and also the Théâtre Joly of Lyon. As well as puppet performances, variants of the story could be found interpreted by live actors (the Sirdet family was doing a piece on the subject in Besançon in 1909). The fit-ups continued in France until the Second World War. The notion of this sort of theatre undoubtedly inspired Copeau in 74


the 1920s when he retired to Burgundy with ‘les Copiaus’. During the Occupation, actors who had left Paris for the ‘zone libre’ would have encountered some of these troupes and they may well have had some influence on the whole decentralisation movement which was born at this period.

75

5 AUDIENCES

The theatre event exists in a social, historical and economic context. Nineteenth-century theatre audiences have been studied by both Maurice Descotes and by Jean Duvignaud.1 Their analyses are valuable, but their thesis about the ‘embourgeoisement’ of the theatre public leads them to pass rather too quickly over the audiences that in fact thronged the more popular theatres and filled at least the cheaper seats throughout the century. A study of ninetenth-century popular audiences can at best be impressionistic, though it may indicate certain trends and tendencies. It is easy to overestimate the impact on theatre of the revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848 and the Commune of 1871. In most cases any impact was temporary: 1789 had the greatest significance, bringing new audiences into the established theatres and making the boulevard du Temple into a very lively place. The declaration of 1791 made it easier to obtain a licence to open a theatre and the new theatres helped satisfy a real thirst for entertainment that opened up in the 1790s. Napoleon introduced restrictive legislation concerning the theatres, but a process of liberalisation began slowly under the Restoration. The year 1830 and the ‘trois glorieuses’ were hailed by the people and the theatres, but apart from a burst of previously banned plays and a flurry of Napoleonic pieces, not much changed. Less sensational was the gradual increase of the middleclass element of the audience with its demands for greater comfort and for a more ‘modern’ repertoire, but this had begun well before 1830. After 1830, population shifts and the growth of new suburbs, together with improved communications and more streets within Paris and the building of suburban theatres resulted in a weakening of the ties of the boulevard du Temple with a specific local community. During the 1850s the 76

AUDIENCES

theatre industry took off as the economic climate steadily improved. The 1864 removal of restriction on theatre licences opened up a free-market economy in the theatre and ushered in a higher degree of commercialism. Theatres became valuable real-estate speculations, plays had longer runs (sometimes lasting the entire season) and a more fashionable public was catered for. Haussmann’s transformation of Paris, which created straight avenues and demolished many of the more popular quarters, changed the human geography of the city, pushing the popular classes towards the periphery. The demolition of the boulevard du Temple and the relocation of its theatres is symbolic of this development. It would be tempting to see the repertoires of the popular theatres as a barometer of the tastes of audiences and, above all, of their political awareness. Much of the theatrical fare of the 1790s reflected the tumultuous times, and the reactions of the new audiences suggest that many of them had not yet learned to distinguish between real life and what was happening on the stage. The melodrama expressed populist sentiments but its ethos right through the nineteenth century was usually conservative (one of the commonest themes was the upward social mobility of the hero or heroine, or the restoration of a previous status quo). Some have gone so far as to claim that the revolution of 1848 was caused by the theatre, though this claim has also been disputed. In real terms, it is probably more true to say that in the course of the nineteenth century the major conditioning factor on theatre was an economic one. The revolution of 1789 had been against a background of famine, the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 had backgrounds of financial crisis, poor harvests and general scarcity, and the Commune of 1871 occurred in a city demoralised by a recent and unnecessary war. For most of the century, censorship prevented the theatres from examining political or social matters in any depth, and the majority were pushed more towards distraction and entertainment than social questioning. The first half of the nineteenth century was marked by depressions and economic hardship, and the impact of these was strongest on the poorer sections of society, who also made up a sizeable proportion of the audiences of the secondary and minor theatres. The years 1816, 1818–19, 1826, 1827, 1830–31, 1836– 37 and 1847 were ones of depression and unemployment in what was a period of irregular, if relatively strong economic growth. Prices remained fairly static between 1815 and 1848, but so did 77


salaries, which, in some cases, even diminished.2 The industrial statistics for 1847 indicate an average wage of 2 francs a day for men, of 1 franc 03 for women and of 73 centimes for children. Two francs has been taken in this book as a rather notional earning figure against which to set the cost of going to the theatre for the popular classes. Many workers earned less than 2 francs. However, certain specialist trades, such as carpenters, coopers and printers could earn as much as 4 francs 50. L.R. Villermé, in his Tableau de l’état physique et moral des ouvriers employés dans les manufactures de coton, de laine et de soie of 1840, gives figures for average earnings (he excludes weavers and day labourers because they were so badly paid), quoting 2 francs for a man, 1 for a woman, 45 centimes for children between eight and twelve and 75 centimes for a sixteen-year-old. Many of the popular uprisings of the first half of the century, such as that of the ‘canuts’ (silkweavers) of Lyon in 1831, were hunger riots. Salaries as a whole were insufficient for a decent standard of living and any sickness or temporary unemployment reduced many people to absolute poverty. In 1845, Charles Dupin estimated that the minimal cost of living for a bachelor in Paris was 502 francs a year, and for a family 750 francs, but that many families were below this income level.3 Against this background it is difficult to establish a direct relationship between incomes of the working classes and theatregoing. A large proportion of the working population lived so near the poverty line that a visit to the theatre must have been almost unthinkable, particularly when the working week often extended to seventy-five hours. For the labouring classes, Sunday was the most popular day for the theatre, being the only day on which they might have something remotely approaching leisure, and the theatre, when it could be afforded, must have offered a marvellous escape from the very real hardships of everyday life. The cost of going to the theatre remained fairly stable through the century, though it began to rise, with general economic improvement after 1870. The cheap seats in the popular theatres remained between 50 centimes and 1 franc. The more expensive seats showed a sharper increase, which accentuated the difference between the bourgeois spectators and the inhabitants of the gods. The larger sizes of theatres led to a greater range of prices, but also allowed cheap seats to be kept cheap. According to the Almanach des spectacles, between 1827 and 1835, the more expensive seats 78

AUDIENCES

showed a slight increase, and there was a tendency to introduce additional categories. At the lower end of the scale, there was a general drop in prices, affecting even the Comédie-Française, where the amphitheatre seats were reduced from 1 franc 80 to 1 franc (an additional category of price for the third gallery at 1 franc 50 was introduced). The Variétés remained relatively expensive, maintaining its cheapest seats at 1 franc 25. At the Gaîté, the cheapest seats, at 90 and 60 centimes, were reduced to 75 and 50 centimes; at the Porte-Saint-Martin, seats at 1 franc 25 and 75 centimes were now 1 franc and 60 centimes. The old Ambigu of 1827 had charged 90 centimes and 60 centimes before the fire of 1827. In its new building, prices had generally increased, with the dearest category of seats moving up from 3 francs 60 to 5 francs and the amphitheatre of the third gallery increasing significantly from 60 centimes to 1 franc. The increase in the admission charge for the third gallery was compensated for by the vast new fourth-gallery amphitheatre, which cost only 50 centimes. It was into these large amphitheatres of the boulevard theatres that the popular audiences of the nineteenth century came increasingly to be packed. Their sheer size often accentuated class division and created a sense of the gods versus the rest of the house. At the boulevard theatres, the middle price range, particularly the second galleries and the parterre, fluctuated around 1 franc 50 to 2 francs, with a tendency for the parterre to be the cheaper. The notion of a separate area, the orchestra, as distinct from the parterre or pit, was gradually spreading. In 1828, a seat in the orchestra at the Comédie-Française cost 6 francs 60, whereas the parterre, just behind, cost only 2 francs 20. The Variétés maintained a distinction of 3 francs 50 and 1 franc 65, whereas the Gaîté had only a modest distinction between 1 franc 80 and 1 franc 25. The Porte-Saint-Martin, with a more bourgeois clientele, charged 2 francs 75 for the orchestra and 1 franc 65 for the parterre. Before the fire of 1827, the Ambigu did not have a separate, more expensive orchestra, but maintained simply a parterre with an amphitheatre behind, to which admission was 1 franc 25. With the rebuilding of this theatre the distinction was introduced, with the orchestra costing 2 francs, as opposed to the 1 franc 50 of the parterre.

79


By 1852 the top seat prices at the Gaîté, like the Ambigu had risen to 5 francs and, in addition, it was now possible, for an additional charge, to book all but the cheapest seats. The orchestra was now equipped with two types of seating: individual seats with arm rests (fauteuils) and benches with divisions and backs (stalles). Behind these the old parterre or pit survived. With booking had come the idea of numbered seating. All this was part of the steady embourgeoisement of the boulevard theatres. By 1875, all the better seats at the Ambigu could be booked in advance. The unreserved parterre and third and fourth galleries remained at 1 franc 50, 1 franc and 50 centimes respectively. The dearest seats were now 8 francs, but the cheap range remained static. By the 1890s the dearest seats are 10 francs (including a 2 franc booking charge) and the cheap seats have now been increased to 1 franc for the amphitheatre (the fourth gallery and the back of the third) and to 2 francs (2 francs 50 if booked) for the numbered seats occupying the first two rows of the third gallery. By now the parterre had been completely subsumed into the orchestra and the cheap seating was thus entirely in the upper parts of the house. A feature of the Cirque Olympique, and one of its claims to be considered as a major popular theatre, was the large range of cheap seats and the relatively low prices of its dearer ones. In 1825 the lower range of prices went from 2 francs 50 (the lowest of the ‘bourgeois’ prices) to 1 franc 50, 1 franc 25 and 75 centimes. Ten years later, Auguste Luchet described this as an establishment not frequented by society and therefore having very few boxes but many seats between 12 and 40 sous (60 centimes and 2 francs).4 In the 1820s, when the minor theatres were still classified as ‘spectacles de curiosité’, their prices reflected their status. The Funambules, described by the Almanach des spectacles for 1825 as ‘much in favour with the popular classes’ had a price range of 75 centimes, 60 centimes, 40 centimes, 30 centimes and 20 centimes (‘quat’sous’). The Acrobates ranged from 1 franc to 25 centimes when it re-opened. Of the suburban theatres, Montmartre charged from 2 francs to 50 centimes in 1829, and the same range applied in 1845. In the 1860s seats at Montparnasse cost between 2 francs 50 and 50 centimes, and after that theatre had been rebuilt in 1886 the prices were from 2 francs to 40 centimes on weekdays and from 2 francs 25 to 50 centimes on Sundays. In 1852 the dearest seats at the Théâtre Beaumarchais, near the Bastille, cost 2 francs, 80

AUDIENCES

but it was possible to get into the amphitheatre for 30 centimes. In 1879 the company at the Château d’Eau applied for municipal support, pointing out that they catered for ‘the great working-class family’, and that their prices were popular at 3 francs, 1 franc 50 and 1 franc, with 700 seats in the third gallery for 50 centimes. They compared their situation with that of the other théâtres de quartier and emphasised their social usefulness: The drame, the genre we present, is the genre for which the people has a particular affection. This genre, with its sound lessons and powerful emotions, charms the people most of all when it provides moral teaching and education.5 The smaller provincial theatres had a price structure comparable to some of the suburban theatres. The 600-seat theatre at Tulle, in 1850, had a simple structure of three prices. The parquet (orchestra) and first gallery cost 2 francs 50, the parterre 1 franc 25 and the second gallery 1 franc. These prices suggest that the audience were mainly middle or lower-middle class and that this theatre was less frequented by the popular classes, for whom the second gallery was comparatively expensive. Obviously, in a town the size of Tulle, there was not the same urban popular audience that could be found in Paris or its suburbs. The depiction of audiences for the popular theatres is common in the first half of the nineteenth century. Le Monde dramatique of 1835 presented a ‘Physiologie du spectateur’, which examined the audiences of the different theatres, giving a slightly caricatural sketch of each. It mentioned the popularity of the tear-jerking melodramas of the Gaîté and the Ambigu, so well portrayed by Daumier, especially in his picture of a sobbing spectator entitled Fifth Act at the Gaîté, and the perennial appeal of Napoleonic dramas at the Cirque for the workers of the faubourg du Temple and the boulevard Saint-Antoine. It commented on the shift in taste away from the ‘drame sanguinaire’ amongst the middle-class section of the audience of the Porte-Saint-Martin, where the enterprising Harel had now opened up to a more popular (and noisy) public, with a large number of seats at 50 centimes. Depictions of popular audiences (generally perceived from a middle-class viewpoint, whether ironic or directly descriptive) are relatively common during the Bourgeois Monarchy. The sheer number of such depictions indicates the importance tance of theatre for the popular classes, for people who worked hard, had 81


3 Henri Daumier, Fifth Act at the Gaîté (Musée Carnavalet). Illustrators enjoyed depicting lacrymose spectators at melodramas. This also indicates the serious involvement of the popular audience in the action on stage.

little time or opportunity for self-improvement, and for whom a visit to the theatre was a very welcome distraction. Hippolyte Auger, for example, writes: But it is particularly in the theatres catering for the labouring classes, from the Porte-Saint-Martin to the Porte-SaintAntoine [later the Théâtre Beaumarchais], that the audience has a frankness in its appearance and language that bears witness to its importance of dramatic art as a means of influence over these classes.6 He goes on to comment on the readiness of popular audiences to discuss the play and to react directly to the story and characters depicted. He also shows an interesting awareness of the nature of theatre as a collective form of entertainment: In the theatre, as we have said, the collective audience is 82

AUDIENCES

honest and upright; it tolerates crime only if it can see it punished; every individual of this multiple being must carry away in his or her heart a pious belief in providential atonement which, for a moment, can light up the domestic hearth, Without that, what would become of all these paralysed forces if they were to rise up against social injustice?7 In practice, popular audiences, though frequently turbulent, did not usually erupt into any real civic disorder. Straightforward rowdiness was not uncommon in the cheaper seats, especially in minor theatres such as the Funambules. For example, in 1828 it was felt necessary to have a police regulation forbidding sticks, arms or umbrellas to be brought into the parterre or the amphitheatres, and creating disturbance during intervals also constituted an offence. One can, at best, establish only a notional picture of the popular audiences of the nineteenth century. These varied from theatre to theatre, even from play to play, and also according to the night of the week. A success on the boulevard du Temple would bring the bourgeois public flocking from other parts of the city, and the popular audience, when they could afford it, would certainly have gone to operettas in the more bourgeois theatres. Likewise, the cheaper seats of the Comédie-Française always contained a number of people from the popular classes bent on self-improvement, or simply because they enjoyed a theatre whose sole aim was not entertainment. The nature of the popular classes also changed from year to year, as an urban proletariat came into existence after 1830, and as that proletariat began to become aware of its own identity in the latter half of the Second Empire. In the twentieth century the notion of audience surveys, such as those undertaken by the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) in the 1950s and 1960s, helped give a notion of audience composition, but no such statistics exist for the nineteenth century. This makes it difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the make-up of the theatre audience in economic or social terms. One has an approximate idea of the social divide as expressed in the distinction between the first gallery, the second gallery, the parterre and the amphitheatre or gods. However, the lines of demarcation between the petty-bourgeoisie and the working classes, as Madame Daumard has shown,8 are extremely hard to define. Moreover, the spending power of a single workman, earning 2 83

4 Daumier, Le Spectack… This Daumier cartoon of 1849 is gently condescending in its title, but indicates clearly the degree of serious attention which the popular audience, especially in the upper galleries, gave to the theatre. It also reminds us of the extent to which the fare provided by these theatres was seen as family entertainment.

AUDIENCES

francs a day in 1830 might well be higher than that of a small shopkeeper renting a premises and maintaining a family. Edmond Texier, in his Tableau de Paris of 1852, talks a little nostalgically of the queues for the old Ambigu (before the 1827 fire), the Gaîté and the Cirque, with workmen’s smocks much in evidence. In the earlier part of the century there are frequent references to the ‘paradis’, or gods, as being occupied by soldiers, apprentices, grisettes—in other words by a youngish public without responsibilities. The second galleries contained small shopkeepers and members of the lower-middle classes, which shaded into the popular classes. The same segment of society, with perhaps fewer wives and daughters, could be found in the parterre, whose benches, until the general introduction of gaslighting, were not regarded as particularly appealing because of drips of oil from the chandelier.9 The balcony and stage boxes were where the more bourgeois public would sit. After the mid-century, the traditions and behaviour of the popular audience could be observed at the suburban theatres and the théâtres de quartier. At the Théâtre de Belleville in the 1860s There was what might be called the public of the popular theatres. In the parterre there were honest and responsive shopkeepers, sentimental small investors, impressionable girls; this part of the audience represented the flower of the democracy of Belleville. But the true public was in the top gallery, also known as the ‘paradis’ in theatre slang. The poor piled into the paradis. In 1860, twelve sous was the price of a passport to this realm of bliss.10 There may have been plenty of noisy ‘titis’ in the ‘paradis’, but there is also ample evidence, throughout the century, of families frequenting the popular theatres, especially on Sunday, when they would put on their best clothes and occupy a more substantial part of the theatre than the other nights of the week. The théâtres de quartier in the latter part of the century also made a practice of offering family tickets. The local nature of the popular theatres cannot be overstressed. The boulevard theatres initially, and then the theatres further from the centre, were community theatres where audiences went regularly to see ‘their’ actors and to share in a sense of collective enjoyment. As the link between the local community and the theatres weakened, so did the notion of popular theatre.

85

5 Valentin, The Audience at the Théâtre des Funambules (British Library). The Funambules, as one of the cheaper theatres of the boulevard du Temple, had a popular and largely young audience whose unruly behaviour, especially in the upper galleries, is often commented on.

AUDIENCES

The eating-habits of audiences also come in for comment. Refreshment was an important part of the evening at the theatre. The ‘limonadier’ or the ‘marchand de coco’ and other refreshment sellers often appear in engravings. At the Cirque Olympique, in 1835, the performance began at 5.30 or 6.00 p.m., and the first part of the programme, sometimes a full melodrama, played to the more popular audience, the smarter section arriving about 8.00 p.m., after dinner, for the main play of the evening. Sustenance was needed, and apart from the usual apples, chestnuts, barley sugar or beer, audiences would often arrive equipped with sausages, hard-boiled eggs and litres of wine. It is only too easy to form an impression of popular audiences as consisting of illiterate semi-peasants. Although generally lacking formal education, most of them did have a certain sophistication and were theatrically literate to the extent that many of them went to the theatre as regularly as people went to the cinema in the 1950s and knew exactly how to decode the conventions of the theatre. Pixérécourt claimed that he was writing for people who could not read. As the century developed, literacy was spreading and in the later years audiences were coming to see in flesh and blood on the stage the characters with whom they were already familiar in popular novels which had often appeared in serial form in the ‘feuilletons’ of the newspapers. Levels of audience literacy are hard to establish, though there is clearly a ratio between literacy and theatrical fare. This is also one of the reasons for the declining significance of theatre as a mass medium in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In 1792 Condorcet had produced a report in which he called for education to make a reality of the political equality recognised by the law.11 Napoleon did much to ensure primary education, and further education for the higher socio-economic groups, but the popular classes were virtually ignored. By 1827, 57 per cent of conscripts were still unable to read or write. In 1830, attempts were made by the state to organise adult education, and a law of 1833 emphasised the importance of post-primary education. In 1835 the first popular library opened in Paris, and this period also corresponds with the development of the cheap and easily available popular press. According to a report published in 1873,12 between 1828 and 1846 the number of men able to read increased by 52 per cent. By 1847 Guizot was worried by the political implications of the spread of literacy amongst the popular classes and declared that ‘the invasion 87


of the poorer classes by education is an element which will undermine the very foundations of society’. The threat was a real one and certainly counted for more in the build-up to the 1848 revolution than did the social melodramas of the 1830s and 1840s. Far more important developments in education occurred during the Second Empire, leading ultimately to the creation of the universités populaires in 1898–1902. These had an effect on new notions of people’s theatre, but very little impact on the existing popular theatre.

88

6 ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

Popular theatre is commercial. It has a great deal to do with providing audiences with what they want, and not much to do with art. Occasionally the two are combined, as in Victorien Sardou’s attempts to write up-market melodramas for Sarah Bernhardt. In order to understand the popular theatres of the nineteenth century, it is important to examine more closely their economic workings. The best picture we can get of this aspect of the theatre comes from the year 1848. In that year the general economic situation, coupled with the February revolution, depleted theatre audiences to the point that some theatres could not continue. This posed a problem, since a theatre remaining dark for more than three days ran a risk of losing its licence. However, by June of that year the Opéra National (the former Cirque Olympique), the Beaumarchais (opened in 1835 as the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Antoine), the Théâtre Historique and the Ambigu had had to close down. Actors and theatre staff were in dire financial straits, as managements were mostly unable to pay salaries. The number of performances at some of the other theatres had also declined sharply, especially for the months of May and June. Of the suburban theatres, Montmartre was down to ten performances in May and thirteen in June, the Batignolles had three performances in May and seven in June, and Belleville had no performances in May and only three in June. The four summer months, in any case, were what was known as the dead season. A dozen theatre managements banded together in June 1848 and wrote a common appeal to the Minister of the Interior describing their situation and requesting a subsidy. 89


On 17 July, the government responded by setting aside a credit of 680,000 francs for the theatres. The major subsidised ones received roughly half of this, 170,000 francs going to the Théâtre de la Nation (as the Opéra was baptised in 1848), 105,000 to the Théâtre de la République (Comédie-Française) and 80,000 to the Opéra Comique. Of the other theatres, 35,000 was allowed to the Porte-Saint-Martin, though only 7,000 francs seem to have been released.1 The Gaîté and the Ambigu each received 25,000 francs. The Théâtre Historique and the Funambules were baled out with 27,000 and 11,000 respectively. Even the Lazari, which had put in a separate application, received 4,000 francs. The three suburban theatres still under the control of the Sévestes received a collective 10,000, and Montparnasse was allocated 15,000. The purpose of this subsidy was to help the theatres through the remaining summer months (the second half of July and the months of August and September). A year later the situation was at least as bad. The theatres were still suffering from the political upheavals of 1848. A state of siege had been declared in Paris on 20 June 1848, and this had not been lifted until 19 October. The year 1849 began badly with an epidemic of cholera, which ran from the beginning of March until the end of the summer, claiming some 16, 165 victims. By June performances had had to be suspended at the Porte-SaintMartin, the Cirque du Boulevard (now known as the Théâtre National), the Gaîté and the Beaumarchais. The total takings of the theatres of Paris from 1 October 1847 until 1 March 1848 had amounted to 5,272,085 francs, whereas for the corresponding period, a year later, this had gone down to 3,369,195 francs, a net decrease of nearly 2 million francs. Of the non-subsidised theatres, the Vaudeville, which had re-opened in the autumn, was the only one to play through almost the whole of the winter. 2 The document claims that by June the non-subsidised theatres were taking in only 100–150 francs at the box-office, whereas their daily running expenses averaged out at 1,100 to 1,500 francs. While we clearly have to take into account the fact that these figures may be appropriately increased or depressed for the needs of the argument, they are useful in that they give at least some notion of the running costs of non-subsidised theatres seating, for the most part, between 1,200 and 1,800 spectators. The theatre managers divided up the non-subsidised theatres into two categories in their request for subsidy. The first category comprised theatres with licences which were still giving performances, the 90

ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

second those which were closed or operated under particular circumstances. In this second category were included the SaintMarcel, which operated only on some days of the week, the Lazari (by implication not belonging to the main theatres of the capital), and also the Hippodrome and the Cirque des Champs-Elysées, which, being summer theatres, did far better business than the regular theatres during the better weather. The veiled threat was that about twenty theatres might have to close for the summer months, if no subsidy was forthcoming. The force of this threat is best understood when one realises that theatre licences always stipulated that a theatre might not remain dark for more than a very limited number of days in the year. The supporting documentation gives an excellent idea of the running costs and personnel of Parisian theatres in the midnineteenth century. For the purposes of this study, the three major melodrama theatres, the Lazari and the suburban theatres are of special interest. Théodore Cogniard, director of the Porte-Saint-Martin, calculated the annual running costs of that theatre at a little over 625,000 francs; the Ambigu worked out at 418,500 francs and the Gaîté at about 432,000. The Lazari managed to exist on a tenth of that amount, 43,609 francs.3 Jules Séveste’s calculations for the suburban theatres (‘théâtres du peuple’, as he hastened to call them after the February revolution) amounted to a monthly total of 8,958 francs (or about 107,496 francs per annum). This figure is conveniently broken down into two parts, one being the cost of staff salaries (actors, orchestra, stage-staff and other personnel), which amounted to 3,918 francs per month, and other expenses related to the buildings and their running costs, which came to 5,040 francs. The theatres included here are Belleville and Montmartre, which both belonged to the company and for which no rent had to be paid, and the Batignolles, for which a monthly rent of 416 francs 70 was due to the Minister of the Interior. Grenelle is also mentioned, with a fixed rent of 125 francs per month, also to be paid to the minister. Interest in relation to shareholders of the company, who owned Montmartre and SaintCloud, amounted to 558 francs per month, though Saint-Cloud is not otherwise counted in the calculations. A comparison of the personnel and salary levels also yields interesting information. If one takes the Gaîté as representing the larger theatres of the boulevard du Temple, the Lazari as the 91


smallest and Montmartre, as the most important of the suburban theatres, the first thing to be apparent is the relative size of the troupes. The Gaîté had a payroll of 22 actors (plus a prompter, who is listed with the ‘artistes’), 17 actresses, 16 dancers and singers (8 male, 8 female), and an average of 40 extras each day for crowds. The highest actors’ salaries were 500 francs a month. In addition, some actors were also paid a ‘feu’ or fee for each play in which they appeared. The highest fee was 10 francs, but a more usual amount would be between 1 and 5 francs. It was common practice for such an extra fee to figure in actors’ contracts. The lesser actors often had to exist on 50 to 100 francs a month, and the singers and dancers ranged from 41 francs to a top rate of 66 francs 50. Extras appeared for 75 centimes a day. The orchestra’s conductor, Béancourt, who both arranged and composed music for shows for 475 francs a month (a salary fairly comparable to that of the leading actors), had an assistant director and sixteen musicians under his baton, each of whom was paid 50 to 60 francs a week. The stage staff was led by the scene painter (salary 550 francs) with his three ‘pupils’. There was a stage-manager (166 francs 70 a month), whose job also involved devising mechanisms used for spectacular effects, with twelve stage-hands (paid either 90 or 75 francs a month, except the last, presumably a boy, Georges, who received only 24 francs). The rest of the production side of the theatre included a chief costumier, three seamstresses, a hairdresser, five dressers, a prop-maker with two assistants, an armour-maker (still indispensable for many of the more military or medieval plays in the repertoire), a caretaker, a cleaner, a laundress and a further individual who looked after the extras for about a franc a day (presumably his job was to drill them for entrances, exits and main movements, though he may simply have been responsible for the daily ‘recruitment’). There were four modellers in papier mâche, the head one receiving a salary of 400 francs, an indication of the importance of this work in the mid-nineteenthcentury theatre, especially for the staging of féeries. The administration was taken care of by two ‘régisseurs’, of whom the more important was Varez. In this case the role of ‘régisseur’ would seem to be somewhat akin to that of director, though the status cannot have been particularly high, since the salary was only 200 francs. The selling and checking of tickets and general front-of-house work was carried out by a team of a dozen, which includes one ‘placeur’ (25 francs a month!). As other theatres seem 92


to have been better endowed with ‘placeurs’ and ‘ouvreuses’ to show audiences to seats or admit them to boxes, one is inclined to speculate that the single placeur may well have recruited an unpaid supporting staff which subsisted on what tips they might rake up. Even in the 1950s many French theatres were staffed by barely paid usherettes who were dependent on tips for their livelihood. The Lazari, with its troupe of 13 (eight actors, five actresses) had salaries pitched between 50 and 60 francs a month (43 francs for the women), and the company was helped out by four ‘élèves’, who received 30 francs.4 The rest of the personnel was made up of a régisseur, a prompter, a chief and assistant machiniste, a chief and assistant ‘lampiste’ (who maintained the oil lamps in the auditorium and on the stage), a conductor with four musicians (two violins, viola and bass), a storekeeper, property boy, caretaker (at 100 francs a year! -but presumably lodging was a part of the deal). Front-of-house there were three ticket checkers, six ouvreuses, three ‘placeurs’ (whose role, as distinct from the ouvreuses who were meant to open up the boxes, would probably best be described by the term ‘packers’) and two box-office staff. The highest salaries were those of the régisseur, the chief machiniste and the conductor, who each received 1,000 francs a year, or about 83 francs a month. The suburban theatres of Montmartre, Belleville and the Batignolles were grouped together by their management. The acting troupe comprised 17 actors, the most important of these, Frédéric (not Lemaître), receiving a monthly salary of 75 francs and the more junior members a miserable 25 or 30. The list of actors was headed by the régisseur, Noel (salary 60 francs). The troupe also comprised ten actresses. There was an orchestra of seven, under the bâton of M.Muratef (salary 100 francs), whose leader received 60 francs, whilst the others were paid between 30 and 50. An additional allowance of 300 francs was made for musicians brought in to enlarge the orchestra when needed. Actors and musicians rotated between the three theatres. Each had its own employees, including a stage staff consisting of a machiniste (paid 90 francs at Montmartre and Belleville, but only 75 at the Batignolles) and four stagehands (25 francs a month at Montmartre and Belleville, 20 at the Batignolles). Only two prompters are listed, possibly because it was extremely rare for all three theatres to be giving performancs simultaneously. The principal costumier received a princely 90 francs a month, his 93


assistant a mere 50. Each theatre also had a wardrobe mistress, a hairdresser, a propertyman, a bill-poster and a caretaker. For Montmartre and Belleville a librarian is listed. Astruc, at Montmartre, received 100 francs for this job. The nature of his functions seems unclear, but may perhaps have extended to the copying of scripts. The total front-of-house staff for the three theatres amounted to a ticket-checker with three assistants, a boxoffice staff of nine, and a collection of thirty-two ushers and usherettes. In addition there was the cashier, who also functioned as theatre accountant and paymaster (100 francs a month), an office clerk with responsibility for checking the accounts (75 francs), and a book-keeper (30 francs). Some of the other running costs are interesting. The suburban theatres seem to have got away with authors’ royalties at a monthly amount of 10 francs per theatre, or an annual total of about 360 francs, whereas Cogniard, at the Porte-Saint-Martin, estimated that he paid, on average, about 64,000 francs a year in royalties. The Ambigu worked out royalties as amounting to about 40,000 francs, or 10 per cent of an estimated annual boxoffice of 400,000 francs. Apart from royalties, which were usually based on a proportion of the box-office, there was the obligation on the secondary theatres to pay 20 per cent of their takings to the Opéra. According to the decree of 1806 and the ruling of 1815, ‘spectacles de curiosité’ had to pay a similar amount to the secondary theatres and, in the provinces, to the director of the ‘arrondissement’, or, in towns where there was a theatre, to the director of that theatre, and this levy continued until the 1860s. In 1848 the boulevard theatres still seem to have depended more heavily on oil than on gas for their lighting. The Ambigu spent 30,000 francs a year on oil, but only half that amount on gas, and the Porte-Saint-Martin was in a roughly comparable position.5 Montmartre, although the most important of the three suburban theatres, seems to have cost least for lighting, a mere 19 francs a month, or 228 francs a year. This must, however, be set against an average of something like sixteen performances a month, so 450 francs might seem to be a more realistic working figure, had the theatre been in full use. This still seems remarkably low, but it is also an indication that the suburban theatres did not really compete with the boulevard theatres when it came to mise en scène. 94


It is quite interesting to compare the costs of a small provincial theatre with those of the larger Parisian ones. In 1850 the 600-seat theatre at Tulle had a running cost of 76 francs 50 per evening. Apart from the rent of 20 francs, this consisted of 5 francs for the single machiniste, 25 francs for the ‘lampiste’ (who must have provided his own equipment at this cost), 6 francs for the ‘garçon de théâtre’, 3 francs for the box-office, 5 francs for the hairdresser, 4 francs 50 for the ‘six portes’ (presumably the ushers), 2 francs for the firemen and 6 francs poor tax. There were four seat prices: the parquet (orchestra) and first gallery 2 francs 50, the parterre 1 franc 25 and the second gallery 1 franc (the cheap seats dearer than their equivalent in Paris, and the dearer seats much cheaper). A major charge that many theatre licensees had to face was the rent of the building to which their licence was attached. In the early part of the nineteenth century licensee and theatre owner were often synonymous for the secondary theatres and ‘petits spectacles’. In 1795 the Nicolets ceased to exploit the Gaîté and leased the right to do so, as well as the building itself. However, after Nicolet’s death his widow persisted that she was still the licence-holder, and as such received an eighth of the takings, as well as maintaining a flat in the theatre. In 1808 she was involved in litigation with her tenant, Blonde-Dufossay, behind whom was the wily Ribié,6 the original tenant, whose relations with the owners of the theatre had deteriorated badly. Madame Nicolet wished to retrieve the licence when the lease expired. The tenants argued that, in fact, she had given up being a licence-holder when she leased the theatre and ceased to exploit it directly herself. At one point Ribié threatened to take the licence and move to another theatre with it. Behind this was the fact that the 1807 decree had limited the number of available theatre licences, and the right to exploit a licence was far more valuable than the ownership of a theatre building. In the end the court found in favour of Madame Nicolet, who returned to theatre-management together with her son-in-law and successor, Bourguignon. With the death of Bourguignon in 1818, the Gaîté became another commercial management rather than a family business. As to the other theatres, the Porte-Saint-Martin, having originally been built for the Opéra, was never a family business. The Vaudeville belonged to a company of shareholders and was administered by a director nominated by them, and the Variétés 95


was simply leased and run, as a commercial theatre. Audinot ceased to exploit the Ambigu-Comique in 1795, but, after the management of Picardeaux, Corsse (the famous interpreter of Madame Angot) and Puisaye, Audinot’s son, in partnership with Sennepart, took on the theatre again in 1823, and after the death of the younger Audinot, his widow, together with Sennepart, continued to exploit the patent until 1830. The cost of rebuilding after the fire of 1827 was too great for their financial resources and when Sennepart retired in 1830, he left debts of 1,100,000 francs and a heavy mortgage on the new building, which meant, in fact, that the theatre itself now passed into the hands of businessmen or speculators.7 Despite the very difficult periods the theatres went through, especially in the 1830s and 1840s, investment in theatre buildings was seen as a worthwhile form of speculation, and during the 1830s there are complaints from theatre people about the exorbitant rents demanded by new-rich theatre owners. In the 1830s the Ambigu fell into the hands of a M.Chabrier. According to a document provided by the not terribly honest Cès-Caupenne, director at the time, the rent of the theatre was 54,000 francs. For 1839–40 it was 66,000, but by 1849 it had increased to 72,000 francs. In 1844 the director Cormon complained of a rent of 65,000 francs and a further 27,740 francs worth of free tickets which the theatre owner demanded as a part of the contract, and which he sold outside the theatre each day to the detriment of the management. The right to tickets which could subsequently be disposed of forms part of many theatre contracts in the first half of the century. Originally these had been tickets issued to authors, but the number of such tickets increased and by the 1830s it was common practice for members of the public to be accosted on the pavement and offered seats cheaper than at the box-office.8 With the majority of seats unnumbered until the second half of the century, it was difficult to establish exact records and theatre managers did, from time to time, seize the opportunity of some undeclared income by releasing a number of tickets directly to touts instead of selling them through the box-office. The sale of tickets which did not go through the box-office was a way of avoiding costs for which the theatre was liable, and which were calculated on the basis of the takings. Apart from royalties to 96


authors, hard-pressed theatre managements particularly resented the poor tax or ‘droit des pauvres’. This worked out at about 9 per cent of the gross takings recorded at the box-office, so anything which made the box-office takings appear less would diminish the amount to be paid. In 1850 the Minister of the Interior firmly informed the management of the Ambigu that they must give up any illicit trafficking in tickets or risk losing their licence. Apart from the element of fraud, the selling of tickets outside theatres constituted a nuisance and police regulations tried to curb it. For example, in 1851 a Sieur Fesq was caught distributing tickets to touts. He was found to have in his possession fourteen tickets for different parts of the house. Six parterre tickets had the theatre stamp, and others were initialled Ch. (Chabrier, the owner of the theatre). Fesq claimed that he had an agreement with the theatre by which he received a number of tickets each day at two-thirds price, and re-sold them at his own risk. The theatre claimed that it had no agreement with Fesq (described as a ‘marchand de billets et marchand de vins’, rue de Bondy 1) and that the parterre tickets had come from the organiser of the claque, who had a right to ten parterre tickets each day in lieu of a salary. On the other hand, the bulk of the tickets were ones to which Chabrier had a right as a part of the lease. In the event, Fesq was fined 5 francs and paid expenses of 6 francs 50.9 An interesting detail that comes to light from this case is the fact that Chabrier’s contract entitled him to a surprisingly large number of tickets, which he could dispose of to his own personal profit: 1 A five-seat box, facing the stage, in the first balcony (dresscircle), for each day on which there is a performance. 2 Four seats in the front row of the first balcony for each day on which there is a performance. 3 A twelve-seat stage box once a week, and on first nights, to be chosen by M.Chabrier. 4 Three orchestra stalls. 5 Twenty-four personal tickets, to be chosen by M.Chabrier. Another related issue was the sale of ‘contremarques’, the passes issued to spectators wishing to leave the theatre during the intervals. Attempts were made to check this in the 1820s, but, as Texier indicates in his Tableau de Paris of 1852, the practice continued and many an 97


innocent spectator, coming out of the theatre for a breath of air, would be besieged by touts trying to buy the pass for re-sale. In 1828, two of the ticket-checkers at the Porte-Saint-Martin received prison sentences for running their own lucrative trade in selling passes at the expense of the management.

98

7 CENSORSHIP

As well as having to contend with economic problems for much of the century, the theatres also had to cope with pressure from the state in the form of censorship. Most of the time censorship was a sort of ongoing nuisance, which probably had a far more serious and inhibiting effect on the Comédie-Française than it did on the popular theatres. With each revolution censorship was abolished, and in each case was re-established within a few years. With one or two brief breaks and certain periods of comparative tolerance, censorship, one way or another, affected the French theatre for the greater part of the nineteenth century. During the 1790s censorship had been a relatively hit-and-miss affair which, according to a historian of the period, defended neither public order, morals nor great social principles, but limited itself to obeying the passions of the crowd and the whims of those in power.1 During this period censors objected to such things as the use of the word ‘Monsieur’ on stage, or even one character wishing another ‘bonne année’, since this evoked the pre-revolutionary calendar. Under the Empire, which legislated so firmly about the theatres and what they might or might not perform, censorship was one of the ways of maintaining strong central authority in all matters. At the same time it showed a reaction against the very considerable licence of the 1790s and placed a renewed emphasis on morality. For most of the nineteenth century censorship was ultimately controlled by the Minister for the Interior, but at certain periods, especially during the First Empire, it was also controlled by the police, and occasionally it was placed under Education or the Ministry for Fine Art. Under the Consulate, in 1800, Lucien 99


Bonaparte, Minister for the Interior, was instructed to inform all theatre directors in Paris that no play could be staged without having first received his permission.2 For most of the century this system of preventive censorship operated. Repressive censorship was resorted to less frequently, since it both showed the authorities in an unfavourable light and occasioned unnecessary losses to theatre managers. By and large, theatre-managers, who had most to lose, operated a sort of auto-censorship to avoid the risk of a production in which they had invested a considerable amount of money being taken off after it had opened. As the century progressed and runs of plays became longer, the amount of money put into the mise en scène increased correspondingly and the desire of managers to run risks became less and less. One of the results of this was that plays which raised serious questions about government or political systems, or questioned accepted morality, were more often to be found at the subsidised official theatres, notably the Odéon and the Théâtre-Français, than at the boulevard theatres, which were so much more dependent on their box-office takings. In 1804, Fouché, as Minister for the Police, had the theatres transferred to the press office, and thus placed directly under him. The imperial decree of 8 June 1806 finally gave an official existence to censorship, and this decree served as a point of reference for the rest of the century under a series of different regimes. This same decree also saw a serious attempt to stop the proliferation of theatres, limiting large provincial towns to two theatres and the rest to one. The decree of 1807, which divided theatres into different categories, obliged directors to submit the manuscripts of all works they intended to perform to the Minister of the Interior to check that they conformed to the genre for which the theatre was licensed and also to submit them to the police to be examined for other matters. Napoleon himself kept a vigilant eye on the theatre and from time to time reprimanded censors for allowing performances of Collé’s Partie de chasse d’Henri IV, which presents a Bourbon monarch in a popular light and was a rallying-point for the royalist cause, or Athalie, which deals with the overthrow of a usurper. As early as 1802, Duval’s play, Edouard en Ecosse, about the Young Pretender, had been passed by the authorities as inoffensive but, in performance, was instantly recognised as a royalist piece. Ironically, in 1819, the same play, with its theme of an exiled ruler, became an excuse for applause from the bonapartist party. In 1805, Napoleon 100

CENSORSHIP

indi cated to Fouché that the wearing of costumes of nuns, priests or magistrates on stage, particularly in plays where they might be ridiculed, should be stopped. He was also extremely sensitive to any plays dealing with recent history, but preferred to work through Fouché and the police rather than through the direct intervention of the censors. Plays with heroic or martial themes, which might stir up the patriotic (and imperial) enthusiasm of the French were also encouraged by Napoleon, and he was not averse to works which contained an element of adulation as far as he was concerned. As long as Napoleon was popular and xenophobia remained the order of the day, the boulevard theatres, which he rather despised, were generally left alone and had relatively few problems with the censors, whereas more serious plays at the Théâtre-Français were carefully watched. He objected, for example, to Raynouard’s Les Etats de Blois (1810), which contained such potentially subversive lines as: ‘The hero of yesterday is the tyrant of today.’ The theatres of the ‘new’ (annexed) German departements were also watched and such national authors as Goethe, Schiller and Kotzebue were banned because they were deemed liable to cause local disturbances. With the Restoration there was some relaxation of censorship. However, it was no longer possible to mention the name of Napoleon on the stage, let alone attempt to depict him as a dramatic character. The popular theatres trumpeted the return of the Bourbons at a time when the hardships resulting from a prolonged state of war and recent demoralisation following defeat had lowered enthusiasm for the emperor. The year 1814 is marked by a rash of plays about Henri IV. The Ambigu stood alone in that it did not produce a piece to order in April 1814, whereas the Vaudeville was regaling its customers with: II est à vous Ce trône dont le crime Vous éloigne pour le malheur de tous; De Saint-Louis, siège auguste et sublime, Ce trône exige un prince magnamime, II est à vous (bis).3 (This throne which crime has kept you from, to the misfortune of all, belongs to you. This august and sublime seat of Saint Louis, this throne belongs to you.) 101


War debts and the costs of maintaining foreign troops on French soil rapidly weakened the initial enthusiasm for Louis XVIII, and popular xenophobia soon returned (this is illustrated by the hostile reactions which the English actors met with in 1822). Most of the Napoleonic machinery for government remained in place. In 1822 the censorship was re-organised on a rather cumbersome basis which substituted for the collective report of the censors’ individual reports, which then had to be centralised and resumed by the head of the theatres office, who then submitted this to the minister. Provincial theatres were obliged to use texts which had been authorised in Paris and had been officially stamped to show that they conformed to the text deposited in the archives of the ministry. By 1822, the struggle against the monarchy was at its height and political censorship was correspondingly strict. The eighteenth-century philosophes were used as a means of attacking the throne and a point was reached at which the name of Voltaire could not be mentioned on the stage and even a reference to Rousseau’s Emile had to be cut. With the abolition of the censorship of the press, the reign of Charles X seemed to herald a new period of liberalism. According to Victor Hallays-Dabot,4 stage censorship was often more concerned with small points than with the fundamental tenor of plays. Censorship rapidly came to be resented as an attack on liberty. In the late 1820s the growing power of the Church and the law on sacrilege led once more to the almost complete disappearance of ecclesiastical costume from the stage, and thus to the implication of religious interference and censorship. In 1830, the July Revolution abolished censorship. The end-ofyear revue at the Vaudeville, Etienne Arago’s Cagotisme et liberté, mocked the recent attempts of the Church to gain political power in France and put on the stage the ridiculous figure of ProcusteDeleatur-Biffard, the censor (Biffard was derived from the verb ‘biffer’, to cross out). It included the couplet: Le sacristain reprend son insolence La crosse enfin est le sceptre en France! (The sacristan becomes insolent again; at last the crozier is the sceptre in France!) and at one point Biffard sings:

102

CENSORSHIP

La censure Seule est sûre Pour gouverner, je l’assure; La censure Sans blessure Guérit le mal Libéral. (Censorship alone is a sure means of governing. I ensure it. Censorship painlessly cures the disease of liberalism.) The first act ends with the revolution and the entry of the populace singing the Marseillaise. In the second act Bonaparte, played by a child actor, appears through a trap and one of the songs evokes seven of the Napoleons who had mushroomed on Parisian stages since July. The immediate aftermath of the revolution of 1830 resulted in a number of previously banned plays being staged, in particular plays of an anti-clerical nature, such as Monvel’s Les Victimes cloîtrées, with its lurid mix of sex and the Church. By the end of August, Guizot, the conservative Minister of the Interior, set up a commission to examine the theatres because he considered it necessary to protect ‘public decency against the greed and cynicism of the dealers in corruption’.5 There is more than a hint here that many of the theatres were less concerned with liberty than with jumping on a profitable band-wagon, and that any notion of the potential moral influence of theatre was a long way from their minds. Even before the end of 1830 the rash of Napoleon plays was giving rise to some anxiety amongst the authorities and a play about the Duc de Reichstadt (Napoleon’s son) led to proposals in January 1831 that censorship, possibly of a repressive nature, should be reintroduced. The situation was uneasy, but the authorities knew that they had no real power to impose restrictions. Indirect censorship continued to operate. Dumas’ Antony, kept off the stage of the Comédie-Française but put on at the Porte-Saint-Martin, had to be withdrawn after eighty performances because of the challenge it offered to the moral standards of the day, with its attack on social prejudice about illegitimacy and its tacit acceptance of adultery. Generally, the censors were more concerned with what might or might not be presented on the stage of the Comédie-Française than 103


at the secondary theatres—Victor Hugo’s problems with the authorities indicate this. Occasionally a boulevard melodrama would attack the monarchy in a way that could not be ignored. Pyat and Luchet, in Ango de Dieppe (1834), showed François I in a very unfavourable light, even adding cowardice as one of the faults of that particular monarch, and the authorities demanded modifications. The theatre management complied, so as to avoid having the piece stopped. Even so, only a few days later, the Fieschi attack on the king caused the definitive removal of the play from the stage. An individual actor, such as Bocage, or Frédérick Lemaître might use a play as a vehicle to taunt the authorities, and this contributed to the banning of such works as Robert Macaire or Vautrin. Many of these plays were based on a notion of class opposition, which, in itself, could be seen as potentially subversive because of the implicit assumption that virtue was always to be found with the poorer classes, and that its opposite was the apanage of the wealthy. A study of stage censorship published in 1862 observed of the reign of Louis-Philippe that ‘The workman’s smock and the gentleman’s tailcoat—this could be the motto of the majority of melodramas of this period’.6 In 1834 the Directeur des Beaux-Arts, Cavé, circularised theatre managers with a reminder that the decree of 1806 gave the government the right to ban plays and pointed out how expensive this could prove for the offending theatre. With this threat, in the absence of a regular machinery for censorship, he ‘suggested’ that all manuscripts should be submitted in advance to his office, and that any unsubmitted plays whose content might allow for the application of the 1806 decree would simply have their performances stopped. A storm of protest greeted this circular, one response to it being Lemercier’s pamphlet, Dame Censure. Attacks against the Orleanist regime were mounting. In 1831 there had been the insurrection of the silk-weavers of Lyon. One of the main causes of this revolt was the decline of the silk industry, but the accompanying attempt to return to republicanism worried the authorities. In 1832 the funeral of General Lamarque was followed by disturbances. The years 1832 and 1833 also saw more organised groups of urban workers turning to strike action to protest against low wages and long working days, and claiming, above all, the right to form associations in order to improve their condition. In April 1834 an insurrection broke out in Paris, with barricades being erected in the rue Saint-Martin, the rue Beaubourg and the rue du 104

CENSORSHIP

Temple. On 14 April came the masssacre of the rue Transnonain, when soldiers involved in demolishing a barricade received a couple of shots from a house and riposted by entering and killing all the inhabitants. Daumier immortalised this episode in a famous image, which contributed to the popular iconography of oppression. In July 1835, Louis-Philippe, reviewing troops on the boulevard du Temple, just in front of the theatres, narrowly escaped death in a hail of bullets from a house next to the Théâtre Lazari. Eighteen people were killed and over twenty injured. This was perpetrated by Fieschi, who had created for the purpose an infernal machine consisting of twenty-five guns mounted on a frame. The Fieschi attempt on the king’s life provided the much needed excuse for formal reinstatement of censorship. The laws on the press, passed in September 1835, were designed to prevent any attack on either the king or the government. A preventive censorship of theatre was now officially re-established, and all manuscripts had to be submitted for examination before permission was given for performance. For reasons of public order, the authorities had the right to stop performances or to close theatres temporarily. Thiers appointed four censors and, in addition, two officers whose duty it was to inspect the theatres and to see that the cuts or textual modifications required by the censors were carried out and that the mise en scéne of a play did not contain objectionable elements. The latter was an attempt to cope with the difference between an apparently innocent text and a subversive interpretation given by an actor or the mise en scène itself, especially in improvised business. The repertoire of plays staged between 1830 and 1835 was re-examined, and plays with conspiracies were mostly withdrawn. Increasingly, the censors became fussy about plays with contemporary or near contemporary figures presented on the stage. The 1848 revolution brought about a return to freedom, though it was still possible for the Minister of the Interior to intervene directly and ban any plays which were felt to go too far. Within two years censorship had been re-established once more on the basis of 1806, with preliminary examination of plays by a committee and supervision of the theatre by two officers who would watch not merely performances, but also rehearsals.7 The most subversive stage creation of the Restoration and Bourgeois Monarchy was Robert Macaire, a character who spawned a host of stage imitations, a famous series of engravings by Daumier, satirical broadsheets, and even gave his name to a 105


dance. Robert Macaire was repeatedly banished from the stage from 1823 until the 1880s. The character himself cannot be separated from the actor who created the role, Frédérick Lemaître. Macaire appeared in L’Auberge des Adrets, an apparently inoffensive melodrama by Antier, Lacoste and Chapponier staged at the Ambigu-Comique in 1823.8 The work had already had the mildest of brushes with the censors under its original title, Jeannette, ou les deux bandits. Some minor changes had been made and the central characters were presented as mere escaped prisoners rather than felons who had been convicted to hard labour. The play itself, as Odile Krakovitch points out,9 subscribed to the same bourgeois ethic as the melodramas of Pixérécourt, respecting God, virtue, the social hierarchy, property and the family. It conformed to all the rules, even allowing for the death of the villain at the end, killed by the friend he has betrayed (but allowed time for a final speech expressing his remorse). It was a most unlikely play to change the course of the melodrama, and the failure of its first performance should have heralded its disappearance without trace. The story of how Lemaître and Firmin, in the roles of the two bandits, Macaire and Bertrand, appeared at the second performance dressed in an assortment of garments acquired from various rag-pickers and proceeded to send up the play, improvising backchat with the audience, chasing in and out of stage boxes and making fun of the established conventions of the melodrama, is well known.10 Bewildered and delighted audiences followed the play for nearly a hundred performances, until it was banned, supposedly because the wife of the Prefect of Police was upset when Macaire produced his confession not out of his breast-pocket but out of a hole in his shoe. Restoration society still subscribed to the idealised values of the early melodrama, especially its moral ones. By mocking these values and inviting audiences to sympathise with disreputable villains, Lemaître was implicitly questioning the moral basis of that society. The subversive nature of the play was recognised, but censors, with their more literal-minded approach, found this difficult to pin down. In 1828 the ban was lifted. With the Bourgeois Monarchy, Robert Macaire re-surfaced to echo the sense of disillusionment that was felt, as people noticed how little change the revolution of 1830 had brought about. Then, in 1834, Lemaître, with two of the original authors, Lacoste and Antier, wrote a new play, Robert 106

CENSORSHIP

Macaire, which was staged at the Folies Dramatiques. This relatively plotless sequel to L’Auberge des Adrets, focused on the two main ruffians and added a third, the Baron de Wormspire, a character closely resembling some of Balzac’s parvenus with fortunes of dubious origins. The main moral of the play seems to be that villainy pays and that only the naive and foolish can disagree with this. In the older melodrama virtue often brought financial rewards. This play suggested strongly that all wealth is gained by dishonesty and trickery. It would probably be a mistake to give too much significance to Robert Macaire (even if it did worry the authorities), but it came at a time when the melodrama was looking increasingly at social matters and may well have contributed to the cliché that predominates in the popular theatres from the late 1830s that the rich man is necessarily evil and dishonest and the poor man necessarily pure and honest. After Fieschi, Robert Macaire was one of the first plays to be banned (along with L’Auberge des Adrets and La Tour de Nesle). In the period 1835–40 other plays were banned because they contained ‘scenes in the style of Robert Macaire’. Lemaître’s use of slang also worried censors. In the old melodrama of Pixérécourt and others, characters all attempted to speak correct French, and solecisms were accidental rather than deliberate. Argot was seen as belonging to the dangerous classes (‘poor’ and ‘dangerous’ were seen by the authorities as virtually synonymous), and potentially subversive if used on the stage. Krakovitch cites a play of 1836, La Libérée, ou cinq ans de surveillance, which was banned because the central character was a ‘female Robert Macaire’, who resisted authority and employed a popular vocabulary. The portrayal of Macaire as successful banker and pillar of society was still more disturbing to the authorities (especially after Daumier’s engravings), and this led to the suppression of such relatively inoffensive plays as Dumersan’s Un Voleur du grand monde (Petit Lazari, 1837). In 1840 Lemaître appeared as Balzac’s Vautrin, which the censors immediately recognised as a ‘derisive and philosophical thief...whose language and behaviour often recall the character of Robert Macaire, who had been banned from the stage by a decision of the authorities’.11 Vautrin, however, was a new type of hero, concerned with justice and the defence of the weak, and the real villains were to be found amongst those in charge of society. The play’s ambiguity was recognised and reserves were expressed. However, it was finally banned for a much simpler reason. At the first and only 107


performance, Lemaître appeared as a Mexican general in Act IV, with an outrageous wig and make-up which immediately evoked Louis-Philippe. Performances were stopped, the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre had to close down and its director, Harel, was precipitated into ruin. Until the end of the Second Empire Vautrin was regarded as a dangerous piece. When censorship of the theatre was abolished in 1848, there was a brief explosion of works that had been banned, and hostility to the fallen monarchy expressed itself by poking fun at LouisPhilippe. The Funambules regaled audiences with Pierrot-Ministre, in which Robert Macaire-Louis-Philippe and Pierrot—Bertrand— Guizot were driven out by Arlequin-le-Peuple. Between 1848 and 1850, although censorship did not officially exist, some plays that went too far were banned directly by the minister. The bourgeoisie remained in control and the need for some sort of censorship was felt. In July 1850, Baroche, Minister of the Interior, put forward a law designed to curb moral disorder in the theatre, and the system of 1806 was returned to once more. A commission was established to examine plays and to discuss them with directors or authors, and two inspectors were employed to carry out the decisions of this commission and to supervise rehearsals and performances. When Louis Napoleon came to power there was therefore a mechanism for censorship already in place. Until the mid-1860s and the ‘liberal’ Empire, censorship was strict. This benign police state was highly sensitive to anything that might imply criticism of authority. Gogol’s Government Inspector was objected to in 1853 because, although set in Russia, it depicted abuses committed by public officials. The play was finally passed with some modifications and a change of title to Les Russes peints par euxmêmes.12 Dumas’ Napoléon Bonaparte was banned in 1861, partly because of the presentation of the revolutionary period, with shouts of ‘Vive la République’ and singing of the Marseillaise, and partly because it showed the ‘glorious founder of the imperial dynasty’ in a trivial manner. King Lear was forbidden on the stage of the Cirque in 1857 because it showed ‘the degradation of royalty’, and this was considered unsuitable for a boulevard audience. French foreign policy also affected censorship and resulted in the banning in 1852 of the Ambigu’s Napoleon play, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, because it showed the English in an unfavourable light at a time when a rapprochement with England was part of government policy. Ironically, the production was 108

CENSORSHIP

probably intended as a chauvinistic celebration of the new regime. The strait-laced morality of the Second Empire, which subscribed to the family as the cornerstone of society, and objected, at least publicly, to anything that might diminish the family, such as adultery, brought about a new era of prudery. Musset’s Le Chandelier had to be removed from the stage of the ComédieFrançaise in 1852 (having been very successful at the Théâtre Historique in 1849). Already in 1851, La Dame aux camélias by Dumas fils had been refused three times by the censors, who regarded it as an immoral and shocking play. With a change of minister in 1852 it slipped by. It is said that Mademoiselle Doche, who played Marguerite, used all her persuasive powers in the right quarters. There remained an uneasy feeling that the people might get out of hand, especially with the spread of socialist ideas. So long as the popular theatres restricted themselves to wholesome entertainment they were seen as safe. Anything that allowed the ‘peuple’, in the sense of the popular classes, to assert itself was watched. Thus, in 1860, the immensely popular, and much imitated Rigolboche (Délassements Comiques) upset the censors because of a sexually explicit dance (the plebeian ‘can-can’ was not approved of on the stage). The censors’ reaction to Rigolboche indicates clearly the class overtones that the censorship of the Second Empire had: A woman who has taken upon herself the revolting nickname of Rigolboche and who performs an immodest dance, as well as having had the effrontery to publish her shameless memoirs as a sample of her depravity, this woman has elicited feelings of contempt and disgust from all rightthinking people. Robert Macaire remained firmly on the index, and this led to objections to Sardou’s La Poudre d’or, whose villain, Pougnasse, boldly practised the theories preached by Macaire, adding to this the cynicism of Chopart in Le Courrier de Lyon, ‘he jests about theft, he treats murder lightly, he frolics with blood’. Such a character, they felt, would have a dangerous influence if portrayed on a popular stage.13 In 1853 La Tour de Nesle was included in the list of plays banned both in Paris and the provinces. To the repeated requests for the freeing of this very popular piece, the reply was that, though it was a work of undoubted talent, it should be read from the point of 109


view of public morality, of the respect due to crowned heads and for the impression that it might leave in the minds of the masses.14 On 30 September 1870 the Government for National Defence decreed the abolition of theatre censorship. On 24 June 1874 it was re-introduced, this time under the office of the Minister for Education and the Fine Arts. The new censorship was a little more liberal, requiring two copies of all new plays to be submitted at least a fortnight before opening. L’Eclipse of 1 July 1874 carried a Gill cartoon which depicted a horrible old woman, M’ame Anastasie (censorship) with a huge pair of scissors under her arm and an owl on her shoulder. Most of the censorship of this period was repressive as much as preventive (the Goncourts’ La Fille Elisa, for example, was taken off after one performance), and in many cases censorship had political motivation behind it.15 In fact, censorship did not hit the popular theatres very hard, as most of them were now staging revivals of plays that had already been accepted, or adaptations of novels that seldom pretended to offer more than entertainment. The law of 1881 abolished the censorship of the press, but not that of the theatres. Even as late as 1891 there was a discussion in the Chambre des Députés in which the question of the value of theatre for moral improvement was put forward.16 The notion of what censorship was about had, however, become extremely vague. Finally, in 1905, theatre censorship was abolished for purely budgetary reasons. Censorship related to a fear of the media and of the demagogic potential of theatre. In a century which included two dictatorships and a monarchy constantly under attack from the new socialist forces, anything which might criticise or undermine the regime in power had to be repressed. The theatre and the press were perceived as dangerous forces of social change. Initially, the theatre was seen as the more dangerous, but, with the increase of literacy and the development of the popular press, the situation changed. Disturbances were less to be feared in the theatres, but, as an awareness of a class-based society grew under the Second Empire and Third Republic, the focus shifted to the moral influence of the theatre and to the unspoken need to maintain the dominant bourgeois ideology.

110

Part II

8 THE VAUDEVILLE

The repertoire of the secondary theatres comprised four main genres: vaudeville, pantomime, féerie and melodrama. The first two were part of the heritage of the eighteenth century. The féerie was a hybrid genre, an offshoot of the melodrama that satisfied the need for the fantastic and the spectacular. The melodrama, though enjoyed by all sections of society, was the genre that crystallised the desires and ambitions, conscious and unconscious, of the popular classes and provided them with imaginative satisfaction. If the popularity of a genre is to be measured by the number of plays written and performed, the vaudeville is without question the most popular genre of the nineteenth century. Literally thousands were written, though most of them had only an ephemeral existence. Licences for the secondary theatres in the nineteenth century generally specified the vaudeville as one of the genres they might perform. Where theatre programmes were long, particularly in the first half of the century, it was usual to combine one or more vaudevilles with the melodrama of the evening, but the vaudevilles, requiring less ambitious staging, changed more frequently than the main play. As melodramas began to extend themselves to three, four or even five hours and to fill the entire bill, the vaudeville was gradually squeezed out. Some theatre licences were tied to the vaudeville—such was the case of the Variétés, the Vaudeville (named after the plays that made up its repertoire), the Palais-Royal and later the Gymnase. For the theatres classified as ‘forains’ or ‘curiosités’, as the Funambules or Luxembourg (Bobino), the vaudeville often constituted a step towards legitimacy. Initially perceived as a minor genre deriving from fairground antecedents, the vaudeville evolved in various 113


ways over the course of the nineteenth century. Eugène Scribe, writing for the more middle-class Gymnase, endowed it with a form of respectability and, in many cases, blurred the distinction between comedy (which remained within the preserves of the Comédie-Française) and vaudeville. Théâtre reviewers began to take account of the vaudeville as a slight form, but not necessarily beneath their notice. A marked feature of the main vaudeville houses was the way in which they progressively became smarter and more elegant, especially during the Second Empire, changing the very value of the term ‘boulevard theatre’ from something popular to almost the exact opposite. Théophile Gautier commented on the pretensions of the vaudeville to become a more important genre. From something little more than a sketch with a few songs the vaudeville began to develop from one act to three and even to five, and, at the same time,to improve its literary quality.1 Like the melodrama, the vaudeville was often the result of collective authorship (the writers frequently using pseudonyms). It had low status and was perceived as entertainment not art. Very few nineteenth-century vaudevilles were actually written by authors coming from the popular classes. Scribe opened the way for the vaudevilles of Eugène Labiche, which were often full-length plays, retaining a few songs and built around a single idea extended over three or five acts. By the time Feydeau came to write at the end of the century, the vaudeville had lost its songs and become the fastmoving situation comedy or farce which, by now, was the hallmark of boulevard theatre. Originally a vaudeville was a song. In the little theatres of the eighteenth century it was sometimes possible to get around the restrictions imposed by the monopolies of the Comédie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne by presenting pieces consisting of pantomime action accompanied by vaudevilles. In the early years of the century these can be found in Lesage, Fuzelier and d’Orneval’s Théâtre de la foire. Later on, the term ‘comédie à vaudevilles’ begins to appear. Vaudevilles generally consisted of new words set to well-known airs, either from the operas of the day or from popular songs. It is thought that the form of the English ballad-opera may have been inspired by such productions in the Paris fairgrounds. In the eighteenth century the fairground plays with vaudevilles sometimes developed the musical side, creating the ‘comédie a ariettes’ and the opéra-comique (originally a term used at the fairs). There is no hard and fast line between 114

THE VAUDEVILLE

what should be spoken and what should be sung in a play with vaudevilles. This very fluidity could allow the musical element to take over, and when this happened in the nineteenth century the result was the operetta of Hervé or Offenbach. In the later nineteenth century there is a division between the vaudeville become light comedy or farce, on the one hand, and the vaudeville become operetta, on the other. At the same time, the humble vaudeville, a simple sketch of the sort mocked by Gautier, with uncles, nephews, girls to be married and a few couplets sung from time to time, continued in the suburban theatres and also at some of the major cafés-concerts. Vaudeville has always been ill-defined. It ranges from farce to operetta, is incontestably a form of comedy and, to confuse the issue, in modern American parlance is a term for variety. There are many parallels to be drawn with the term ‘burletta’, used in early nineteenth-century England for entertainments provided by the minor houses. At one period the burletta was distinguished from the legitimate theatre by the presence of five songs. Generic confusion in eighteenth-century France even led to the invention of a new term for such entertainments, the ‘ambigu-comique’. Having little plot structure to support it, the vaudeville depended heavily on the actor and his ability to communicate very directly with his audience. This absence of plot structure is one reason for the ephemeral quality of the vaudeville and explains why it received so little critical attention.2 The ‘comédie en vaudevilles’ prospered until the early 1750s, at which point an Italian company attracted public attention with Pergolesi’s La serva padrona. This led to a vogue for the ‘comédie en ariettes’, which had specially composed music, instead of using well-known airs. In the 1780s there was a revival of popularity for the vaudeville, not only at the Italiens (Opéra-Comique), but also in the minor houses—Nicolet’s theatre and Audinot’s AmbiguComique on the boulevard du Temple, also at the Variétés Arnusantes and at the Théâtre des Beaujolais. In 1792 Piis and Barré opened the Théâtre du Vaudeville, devoted specifically to the genre. Some of the most famous vaudevilles of the 1790s included Barré, Radet and Desfontaine’s La Chaste Suzanne (1793) and Beffroy de Reigny’s Nicodème dans la lune (1790). Gidel 3 groups the subject matter of eighteenth-century vaudevilles under several headings: parodies of operas, satirical treatment of mythological materiai, oriental themes, moral 115


allegorical pieces (usually of a pastoral nature) and more realistic ‘poissard’ pieces dealing with the life of the popular classes of Paris, simple anecdotes or narratives often based on a small news item. The action was always minimal, generally little more than a slight development of a given situation or character. Usually it followed a basic scenario of an obstacle to be overcome. The characters were, in the first instance, those of the Italian comedy, although the masks themselves evolved during the century. Rural and pastoral figures, mythological and allegorical ones were also important, and, during the Empire and Restoration, great men of the past were seen as suitable subjects for vaudevilles. Finally, often in secondary roles, there was a wide spread of popular characters belonging to the lower classes of Paris, whose colourful speech was one of the major attractions. The ‘genre poissard’ of the eighteenth century had a strong influence on the lighter genres, as its aim was principally to entertain through depicting on the stage the speech and sometimes the life of the popular classes. Although frequently using caricature, it introduced an element of realism lacking in most other theatre. The emphasis in the majority of poissard pieces was on the portrayal of characters and speech rather than plot. The term ‘poissard’ relates etymologically to ‘poix’ (pitch or tar) and, by extension, to people living in the poorest conditions in society. It came to be associated with the fish-sellers of La Halle and, in particular, with their dialect. The most famous ‘poissarde’ of the eighteenth century is, of course, Madame Angot, who originated in a series of comic dialogues in poissard dialect by the Sieur de l’Ecluse in 1755, Le Déjeuner de la Râpée, ou le discours des halles et des ports.4 In this case the daughter of La Angot is presented as a social parvenue, showing off to her former friends and using a flowery style of language peppered with a mixture of poissard terms, argot and malapropisms. Clearly, this was intended for the amusement of the more cultivated reader and it is not without an element of mockery at the expense of the lower classes. Pierre Boudin’s ‘comédie-parade’, Madame Engueule (1754), concerns a socially upwardly mobile fishwife, whose speech is as good as her name. 5 Several other poissard authors, including Vadé and Guillemin, picked up this theme of the ‘poissarde enrichie’. The most famous play, however, was Maillot’s Madame Angot, ou la poissarde parvenue, staged initially at the Théâtre de l’Emulation (Gaîté) in 1796, with the actor Labanette-Corsse in the drag role 116

THE VAUDEVILLE

of the ex-fishwife. In the early nineteenth century a number of vaudevilles, especially at the Variétés, owed their success to the drag performances of such artistes as Brunet and Potier. Madame Angot reappeared in Joseph Aude and Madame Belfort’s topical Madame Angot dans son ballon, ou le voyage aérien (1798). The most popular Madame Angot play was Aude’s ‘drame, tragédie, facétie, pantomime en trois actes, orné de tous ses agrémens’, Madame Angot au sérail de Constantinople of 1800, so successful that when it was revived in 1803 at the Ambigu-Comique, it ran for 200 consecutive performances. The notion of placing the middle-aged fishwife in the oriental setting of the harem of the Grand Turk—a convention already firmly established by such works as Mozart’s Il Seraglio or Favart’s Les Trois Sultanes—must have been inexpressibly funny, especially with Corsse once more in the title role. In Madame Angot a quasi-mythological type, rather like Robert Macaire, had been created. In the first two decades of the century she appeared in countless guises on the French stage, as well as being the heroine of several prose works and even satirical pamphlets. In 1872, the Clairville, Siraudin and Koning operetta, La Fille de Madame Angot, with music by Lecocq, consecrated the myth, though it had lost the contact with reality that had given the original character her vitality. The ‘genre poissard’ had been exceptionally popular and even fashionable in the eighteenth century. In 1777 some poissardes were called to Versailles to coach noble amateur actors in the correct pronunciation for performances in Marie-Antoinette’s little theatre at Trianon. Upper-class authors, such as the Comte de Caylus, found it amusing to record the speech of the unlettered, but the most significant poissard authors had all come from the classes they depicted: L’Ecluse, Vadé, Taconnet, Guillemin and Dorvigny. Parallel to the Commedia dell’arte figures of the Foire Saint-Germain and the Foire Saint-Laurent, they had produced a range of closely observed Parisian popular types who would be most important for the development of a more realistic strain in the theatre of the early nineteenth century. The poissard often found its way into the early nineteenth century in the form of the ‘tableau populaire’. Not all of these are strictly vaudevilles, in that not all of them include songs, but they are all shortish pieces of a comic nature in which the emphasis is on the speech or life of the popular classes, and their plots are of the simplest. They have no pretensions to become fully fledged 117


comedies. The political edge which many such pieces had had during the 1790s virtually disappeared with the end of the Directoire and the Empire. For the most part, the ‘tableau populaire’ and similar vaudevilles tended to be less subversive and more bland, the poissard element often providing little more than a picturesque touch, or a role for a good comic actor. Nicolas Brazier, author of numerous vaudevilles himself, and also of the Histoire des petits théâtres de Paris (1838), felt that with the early nineteenth century the language of the genre poissard was no longer as crude as it had been in plays written for the Foire SaintGermain; it had become lighter and wittier and no longer reflected what he called ‘the brutish inhabitants of the Porcherons and the Courtille’6 (two popular and populous districts to the north-east of Paris, close to Belleville). A.P.Moore’s study of the genre poissard includes more than a score of titles of plays in the poissard tradition staged over the first forty years of the nineteenth century.7 A feature of most of these is that, unlike the more standard vaudevilles, most of which could be performed in the same interchangeable bourgeois salon, there is a strong degree of localisation. As in the melodrama, the place where the action occurs often has a distinct role to play. This is expressed in many of the titles: Cri-cri, ou le mitron de la rue de l’Oursine, Une Matinée de la place Maubert, Une Matinée du Pont-Neuf, Les Amours du Port-auBlé, Les Dames de la Halle, Le Porteur des Halles, La Descente de la Courtille, etc. The genre poissard contributed to the more realistic depiction of the life of the working classes in the melodrama, though by and large the actual language, the ‘style poissard’, was not used very much for more serious plays. One of the few is Eustache Bastringue, a ‘drame poissard’ staged at the Théâtre de la Cité in 1800. The eighteenth-century vaudeville seldom had more than a slight and conventional story-line. With the nineteenth century increasing attention was given to plot. The chef d’oeuvre of the ‘vaudeville anecdotique’ was J.N.Bouilly and Joseph Pain’s Fanchon la vielleuse (1803), which evoked a real little savoyarde who had sung in fairs fifty years before. The play worked on the rather improbable notion that Fanchon has made a fortune by playing her hurdy-gurdy in the streets and salons of Paris, and is now set up in a smart town house, performing anonymous acts of charity and innocently enjoying the company of a young painter (in fact, a young nobleman in disguise). In addition to this she has 118

THE VAUDEVILLE

managed, with her honest earnings, to set up her family in Savoy in a château she has bought for them: Aux montagnes de la Savoie Je naquis de pauvres parens. Voilà qu’à Paris on m’envioie Car nous étions beaucoup d’enfans. Je n’apportais, hélas! en France Que mes chansons, quinze ans, ma vielle et l’espérance. (I was born of poor parents in the mountains of Savoy. There were a lot of children in the family, so I was sent to Paris. All I brought to France, alas, were my songs, my fifteen years, my hurdy-gurdy and my hopes.) The play is innocent and idealised. Its basic theme is that love knows no social distances. This is tenable if we see the play as a sort of Cinderella story, and it also corresponds to the idealised view of the world purveyed by much late eighteenth-century popular theatre. It was an enormous success, though, according to Brazier, Napoleon, busy creating a new nobility, disapproved of a play which involved marriage between the older aristocracy and the popular classes. The success was helped by regular attacks from the Abbé Geoffroy in the Journal des débats. To the more worldly, it was difficult to see Fanchon in such an idealised light and hard to believe that playing a hurdygurdy could set her up in a style befitting a wealthy courtesan. Like most popular plays it was rapidly parodied. In Servières, Henrion and Désaugiers’ one-act comedy with vaudevilles staged at the Théâtre Montansier (the future Palais-Royal), Manon la ravaudeuse, the main figure takes her name from the Abbé Prévost’s prostitute heroine. There is a strong injection of realism and Manon mends stockings in the street. In her speech she is far more of the people than Fanchon: ‘Quoi donc qu’il gnia de nouveau, ma mère?’ (This translates roughly as ‘What is the news, mother?’, but the French indicates both a grammatically incorrect structure and a regional pronunciation.) Fanchon is akin to the heroines of the melodrama, and as such corresponds to an idealised popular type, not a real person. Nearly forty years later she would re-appear in one of the most successful sentimental plays of the century, Dennery and Lemoine’s La Grâce de Dieu (1841).

119


The ‘vaudeville-farce’, or ‘folie’, as it was often called, continued the eighteenth-century tradition of parody. Désaugiers’ immensely popular Les Petites Danaïdes (1817), based on a Salieri opera, outlived its model and went on to have spectacular revivals later in the century. Marc-Antoine Désaugiers (1772–1827), the most popular chansonnier of the Empire period and director of the Théâtre du Vaudeville from 1816 to 1822 and from 1825 to 1827, had a hand in some 120 vaudevilles. He created a whole gallery of entertaining types, mostly from the lower middle classes.8 His two most famous characters are M.Dumollet and M.Vautour, prototypes for the petty-bourgeois depicted by Daumier and Labiche. With M.Vautour, Désaugiers created the archetypal landlord, who will become one of the stock characters of the nineteenth-century popular theatre, and also of the Guignol stage (under the name of M.Canezou). In M.Vautour, ou le propriétaire sous les scellés (Théâtre Montansier, 1805), Brunet played Vautour, described as a tobacconist/landlord. As landlord he tries to force a young tenant, Victorine, to marry him or face eviction for unpaid rent. He complains that he has had to come to the house too often for his rent and therefore has fallen in love with Victorine. His declaration of love is one of the moments of high comedy in the piece. He throws himself down on his knees and declares: ‘ln short, Mademoiselle, it’s a fermentation, an irritation, an explosion, a volcano that is falling at your feet.’ Another comic situation is reached when Vautour is obliged to hide in a bookcase, clutching the portrait of Victorine, and then has to reveal himself when there is a risk that the bookcase will be thrown out of the window— indeed, the threat of being thrown out of the window is also what makes Vautour relent in his demands for payment of rent. Another vehicle for Brunet was provided by Dumollet, the most important stocking merchant of Saint-Malo, the type of provincial set up to be mocked by the Parisian (an idea later to be developed by Labiche in a range of characters in La Cagnotte). In the first play, Les Trois Etages, ou l’intrigue sous l’escalier (Variétés, 1808), the central theme is one that will become almost the stock-in-trade of the vaudeville as a genre. A girl is to be married against her will to a man who is not the man she loves, but, by a trick, is finally able to marry the one she does love. M.Dumollet is the grotesque unwanted suitor. He is ultimately persuaded that Rosette, his fiancée, has already had three husbands, and that each of them has died within the month. This 120

6 Brunet, Vernet and Potier in Les Anglaises pour rire, vaudeville performed at the Théâtre des Variétés (author’s collection). Apart from depicting three of the most popular performers at the Variétés in its early years, this drag scene also indicates the fairly broad comedy that audiences enjoyed.


is enough to send him back to Saint-Malo. For a vaudeville Les Trois Etages had a remarkably complex set, more akin to one that might be used for a melodrama, but also anticipating the sets of Feydeau’s hotels, which provided numerous spaces on the stage where characters could be placed unbeknownst to other characters. Désaugiers’ play required the staircase of a threestorey house, with a further flight going down to the cellar. A year later came the sequel, Le Départ pour Saint-Malo, ou la suite des trois étages, a one-act ‘folie’ with couplets, the last of which was the famous ‘Bon voyage, cher Dumollet’. By now M.Dumollet has moved from Saint-Malo to Paris and taken up residence in the same house with the same landlord and other characters, less the young married couple, who do not appear. The element of popular speech is provided by André, who helps maintain the link between the vaudeville and the genre poissard.9 Dumollet appeared in two further plays by Désaugiers: Il arrive! il arrive! ou Dumollet dans sa famille (1810) and Le Mariage de Dumollet (1812). Désaugiers also gave life to the archetypal petty-bourgeois couple, M. and Mme Denis, who appeared in a ‘tableau conjugal’ on the stage of the Variétés in 1808. The simple action involves the Denis couple going to visit the Caquet couple (in fact the Caquets end up visiting the Denises). It is a delightful minute comedy of manners of their class, including entertainments such as loto, a domestic squabble over a broken window and a dilemma for M.Denis, who wants a cab, but does not want to send for it, since this would involve paying an hour’s hire for a fifty-minute journey. It would be impossible to examine all the vaudevilles that poured onto the stages of Paris in the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Most of the authors collaborated with one another in different combinations. Nicolas Brazier had a hand in some 215 plays. Jean-Toussaint Merle, director of the PorteSaint-Martin from 1822 to 1826 and married to Marie Dorval, wrote 120 plays, including a number of vaudevilles. Others include Michel Dieulafoy, Armand Gouffé, Joseph Pain, AndréAllison de Chazet and Michel-Nicolas Balisson, Baron de Rougemont. Many vaudevilles had only the flimsiest reason to be described as plays. They were little more than sketches which allowed three or four songs to be strung together. A news item was often 122

THE VAUDEVILLE

sufficient pretext for a vaudeville, and topical events rapidly found an echo in a ‘pièce de circonstance’. Thus, in 1815, the return of Louis XVIII was celebrated by Désaugiers’ Le Retour des lys. In the 1790s there had often been a slight political edge, but under the Empire the vaudeville, initially disapproved of by Napoleon, remained entirely within the realm of light entertainment. A related form that became increasingly popular was the revue with songs, at the end of the year. These revues usually had a mild element of parody and bore titles such as Le Calendrier vivant (1817) or Je m’en moque de l’an quarante. A small number had a stronger political slant, Arago’s Cagotisme et liberté (1830) being one of the best examples. The Variétés made a speciality out of such revues, particularly after the Cogniard brothers took over that theatre in 1855. The end-of-year revue by this date was developing into one of the major forms of spectacular theatre of the nineteenth century. A self-referential element was quite common in the pièces de circonstance written to celebrate such an event as the re-opening or re-building of a theatre. Désaugiers and Brazier, for example, wrote a prologue to be performed at the Porte-Saint-Martin when that theatre re-opened in 1814: Le Boulevard Saint-Martin, ou nous y voilà! This event occurred on 26 December 1814, during the (first) restoration of Louis XVIII, which is celebrated in a characteristically fulsome manner in a poissard song by Javotte, an oyster vendor: Le v’là donc r’venu, Ce bon roi qu’la France adore. Lorsque je l’croyons perdu, Un bonheur inattendu Nous l’a rendu. Je n’vois plus de raison D’nous chagriner encore, Et rien qu’sur son nom, J’gag’que c’ti là s’ra bon A la Bourbon A, à, à la Bourbon… (Here he is, back again, this good king whom France adores. Just as we thought we’d lost him, a piece of unexpected good fortune has brought him back. I see no reason for us to be 123


unhappy any more. From his name alone, I bet that he will be a good king ‘à la Bourbon’.) After this song, to the tune of ‘à la Papa’, Javotte is taken into the troupe of the theatre to play poissard roles. It is quite interesting to see that the stage poissard was regarded as a stock type at the time. The scene depicts the façade of the theatre, also the doors of the theatre café and restaurant with the oyster vendor’s stand outside an eating-house on one side and the house of the theatre manager, SaintAlbin, on the other. Saint-Albin sings about the generosity of the king in allowing the theatre to open with a licence for ballet, pantomime, melodrama and vaudeville. He is trying to put together a company: Gros Pierre and Pierrette, the valet Lafleur, from Brussels (who sounds remarkably like the puppet figure from Amiens)—‘a mimic, chatter…fine; gaiety, a caustic wit…that’s ideal; lazy and a drunkard…he’s just the man I want’. Saint-Albin then adds Javotte, his stupid servant Nigaudin to play the simpleton in melodramas (he compares a melodrama without a simpleton to a turkey without stuffing). He also takes on a stuttering prompter and a decrepit ‘père noble’. Scenic effects will be important, and here the Muse du Boulevard obliges with a transformation into a magnificent temple. After a series of scenes there is a grand finale including the allegorical figures of Melodrama, Pantomime and Vaudeville. With Eugène Scribe (1791–1861) the gap between vaudeville and comedy was considerably narrowed. Scribe’s own career (excluding his work as a librettist for some of the major operas of the century -La Muette de Portici, Robert le diable, La Juive and Les Huguenots) falls broadly into three periods: the years leading up to 1820, when he was writing for the Vaudeville, the 1820s when he was developing the genre for the rather better-class audiences of the Gymnase, and the period after 1830, when he began to write a number of excellent comedies for the ComédieFrançaise (Bertrand et Raton, La Camaraderie, Le Verre d’eau, Bataille de dames).10 Of the 400 or so pieces of work for the theatre which Scribe wrote or collaborated on, a very large number are vaudevilles, and he continued working in the genre until the end of his career. For this study, it is principally the early vaudevilles that are of interest in that they were designed more for what could loosely be termed a popular public. In these earlier plays the songs were still an important element of the genre, but already Scribe’s skills as a dramatic craftsman, a 124

THE VAUDEVILLE

‘charpentier’, were becoming apparent. His emphasis on the overall structure of the vaudeville, rather than its episodic nature, brought the play nearer the regular theatre, and ultimately the notion of the well-made play. In so doing, he brought to a dramatic form that had evolved organically as popular entertainment a notion of norms to be followed and rules to be obeyed. Implicit in this was a notion of writing to a formula which, no doubt, contributed to the sameness of so many mid-nineteenth-century vaudevilles. The introduction of a real structure was another factor that lessened the gap between vaudeville and comedy, allowing the vaudeville to sustain itself beyond a single idea and to extend itself from one to three or even five acts. In an early vaudeville, Les Montagnes russes, ou le temple de la mode, written in collaboration with Delestre-Poirson, Merle and Dupin for the Vaudeville (1816), Scribe subscribed to the idea of a vaudeville as a light piece with topical reference. In this case the reference was to the scenic railway, or ‘Montagnes russes’, that had recently been established at the Barrière des Thermes. The play is little more than a succession of scenes with different characters, including the allegorical one of Fashion. At the end of the piece the backcloth is pulled up to reveal a view of the scenic railway in action with little cars containing caricatures of wellknown people of the time. The craze did not last long, but there were many imitations: montagnes françaises, illyriennes, égyptiennes, suisses. This led Scribe to another piece, Le Combat des montagnes ou la folie Beaujon (Variétés, 1817). In a preface contained in the 1847 edition of his plays he observes that: ‘Parodies and topical pieces belong essentially to the realm of the vaudeville.’ The play is a vehicle for comments on Parisian life, seen through the eyes of the popular classes. An artisan (the locksmith, le Bossu) observes that the 3 franc admission charge to the gardens where the scenic railway is situated is really above his means. He also mentions going to the Ambigu to see Les Captifs d’Alger, where he was frozen cold, and to the Comédie-Française, which he got into on an author’s free ticket to see Mérope, and was far too hot. Allowing for the joke, this does reflect the problems of keeping theatres warm in winter and tolerable in summer (heat and poor ventilation were among the many reasons why business was so bad in summer). There seems also to be an implication that such a person would not go to the Comédie-Française in normal 125


circumstances, but has done so on this occasion because of a free ticket. The wars of the Empire and their aftermath had spawned a number of new theatrical types, notably the old Napoleonic soldier (the ‘grognard’) and the colonel. The latter was to prove so popular that in the 1820s one of the stock roles of the vaudeville was the stage colonel of the Gymnase. In the Combat des montagnes, Scribe created a splendid character, Calicot, the linen draper, a remote descendant of the miles gloriosus, who, though not a military man, sports the military look of the period, complete with moustache, black cravat, boots with spurs and a red carnation in his button hole: Oui, de tous ceux que je gouverne C’est l’uniforme et l’on pourrait enfin Se croire dans une caserne En entrant dans mon magasin. Mais ces fiers enfants de Bellone, Dont les moustaches nous font peur, Ont un comptoir pour champ d’honneur, Et pour arme une demi-aune. (Yes, this is the uniform of all those under my command, and you might even think you were in an army barracks on coming into my shop. But these proud sons of Bellona, whose moustaches are so frightening, have a counter for their battle-field and a half yard-stick as their weapon.) The Variétés was frequented by a number of shop-assistants, who took great offence at the character of Calicot and caused disturbances in the theatre. This became known as the Calicot war. Finally, Scribe calmed matters down by writing another vaudeville, not unlike a Molière impromptu, called Le Café des Variétés. In the café there is a discussion of the offending play and of the problem of making people laugh without giving offence, and everything concludes with the couplet: Par un bruit plus doux, Messieurs, prouvez-nous Que la paix est signée. (With a gentler sound, gentlemen, prove to us that peace has been signed.) 126

THE VAUDEVILLE

With L’Ours et le pacha (1820), Scribe created the chef d’oeuvre of the vaudeville. It remains one of his best-known plays. This ‘vaudeville-farce’ has a well-constructed plot, with echoes of Les Trois Sultanes and Madame Angot au sérail de Constantinople. Its funniest scene is one in which two characters, each dressed in a bearskin, and thinking that the other is a real bear, have to dance together, for the amusement of the sultan. A vague populist sentiment continued to inspire a number of vaudevilles through the 1820s and 1830s. This was often along the lines of: Ces gens de rien Font souvent du bien. D’autres ont du bien Et ne font rien. (These people who have nothing often do good. Others have plenty and do nothing.) This verse comes from Francis, Brazier and Dumersan’s Les Ouvriers, ou les bons enfans (Variétés, 1824). Described as a ‘comédie grivoise’ (which means a fairly broad popular comedy), the play is basically reactionary, a sort of urban equivalent of the pastoral. It could be said to celebrate the working classes, but it does so by idealising them. There is no hint of class struggle. Even the boss, a building contractor, is depicted as generous, contributing 100 francs to a collection for Pierre, the good worker, who has broken his arm. The play is set in a ‘guinguette’, or pleasure garden, at the customs barrier at Clichy (a place where the popular classes went to relax and enjoy themselves). Such settings are common in the tableau populaire and in certain melodramas, where they provide an urban counterpart to peasant festivities. Apart from the general note of benevolence and praise of the good worker, there are also other moralising sentiments in Les Ouvriers, such as comments on the stupidity of gambling. In 1834, also at the Variétés, Deslandes and Didier’s temperance vaudeville, L’Ecole des ivrognes, demonstrates how excessive drinking can affect both one’s domestic life and one’s relations with one’s employer. In this case two roofers (like Zola’s Coupeau) are led astray by a bad workman, but ultimately reform as a result of a subterfuge, whereby each is persuaded that the other has fallen off a roof in a drunken state. Michel, one of the roofers, challenges 127


their employer, who is rich because of his workers. However, M.Duperrier, the building-contractor, is portrayed as a benevolent figure, and Michel’s outburst is seen as a result of the unfortunate effects of alcohol. In spite of this, the play is pervaded with a general populist sentiment: Les riches peuv’nt en avoir plusieurs Mais l’ouvrier n’a qu’un’ parole. (The rich can have several ‘words of honour’, but the working man has only one.) Without any serious questioning of the status quo, this play is part of a growing body of dramatic works focusing on social inequalities which would become more clearly articulated in the 1840s. The Cogniard brothers, Theodore and Hippolyte, directors of various theatres, including the Folies-Dramatiques, the Vaudeville, the Variétés and the Porte-Saint-Martin, best known for their féeries, also contributed to the vaudeville. Their Bruno le fileur (Palais-Royal, 1837) is a good example of the idealisation of the working classes, but also contains more than a hint of class struggle. In this play the good workman marries the niece of his employer and inherits the factory. At this period one of the most common forms of upward social mobility was for an apprentice to marry his employer’s daughter and take over the business. In this case the cotton spinner, Bruno, has to move up into an affluent world and endeavour to learn the usages of polite society (including the imperfect subjunctive). He feels that he has failed to come up to his wife’s level, so she comes down to his, uses the ‘tu’ form, and they both abandon society to live quietly with her father, an old soldier. The play contains an implicit rejection of the values of a society, which are based on money and snobbery. Brazier, in his Chronique des petits theatres (1837), comments on the steady erosion of generic distinction and of the move after 1830 of the vaudeville in the direction of the drame, with a tendency for vaudevilles to include scenes designed to make the audience cry rather than laugh. He also comments on the declining importance, even at this stage, of the sung element and remarks that sometimes music is used for little more than to cover exits and entrances. It is certainly noticeable in the 1830s that a number of plays begin to appear with 128

THE VAUDEVILLE

the description ‘dramevaudeville’. The Cogniards’ Pauvre Jacques! (Gymnase, 1835) is a vaudeville using basic melodrama material and effects (notably pathos). Jacques, the old musician, lives in poverty in a garret, where a cruel landlord exploits him (and steals his work). Twenty years before, he had loved a woman from whom he was forcibly separated. In the kind Amélie he discovers his daughter, whose mother had died giving birth to her. Jacques was played by the actor Bouffé. The acting edition of the play gives an interesting insight into his performance. At his first entrance: Jacques comes out of his room R. He looks both distracted and thoughtful. After a few indecisive steps he suddenly rushes to the window, leans his head against the side of it, looks out at the sea and sighs. Soon he leaves the window and sits downstage L. He takes a worn little letter out of his inside pocket and reads it. Music during this entrance. Later, when Bernard, the landlord, threatens to sell his piano, his last resource: Jacques, overcome, leans on the piano…after a moment he straightens up, claps his hands to his head and his face takes on a wild expression. Brazier himself contributed to the ‘drame-vaudeville’ with Les Infidélités de Lisette (Gaîté, 1835, with F. de Villeneuve and Ch. de Livry). The general tone is closer to a drame than a mélodrame, in that the ‘Villain’ is basically not really a cruel man and the heroine does manage to live with her boyfriend for a year. There are a number of songs, which justify the term vaudeville, but the play itself stretches to a full five acts.11 Generically, there is very little difference between this and the celebrated drama La Grâce de Dieu of 1841 (a drama with songs). Brazier and Périn’s La Laitière de Montfermeil (Vaudeville, 1827), is one of the earliest examples of the extended vaudeville. It is based on a novel by the immensely popular Paul de Kock. Normally, the slightness of the vaudeville meant that novels were not as extensively used for source material as in the melodrama. With the increased emphasis on plot and the fuller development of the vaudeville, this began to change. Paul de Kock’s novel covers a few years, and the action of the play is correspondingly divided up into five ‘years’. The central theme is again a misalliance, this time 129


between a peasant, Denise, and a ‘monsieur’, Auguste. In the first act Denise refuses to allow Auguste to take liberties with her: Allons, allons, à bas les mains ou j’tape, J’avons d’l’honneur et je n’plaisantons plus; Je ne sons pas d’ces filles qu’on attrape En leux disant qu’ell’avont des appas. Quand je rirons, ça s’ra pour l’mariage; Vous n’avez l’air de ces jeun’ étourdis Qui voudriont faire l’amour au village, Mais qui r’tournont se marier à Paris. (Now, now, hands off or I’ll hit you. I have my honour, and I don’t joke about it. I’m not the sort of girl who can be caught by being told she’s pretty. If I get round to having fun, it’ll be when I’m married. You don’t look like those silly young men who make love in the village, but go back to Paris to get married.) Auguste then loses his fortune because of a swindler, Destival (a sort of Robert Macaire), and departs to earn money and become worthy of Denise, who, in his absence, works her way upwards and improves herself with study. The play is purely escapist. There is no questioning of the status quo, and the only dark shadow on the horizon is Destival, who reflects something of the growing importance of financial speculation at the period. Remarkably few authors for the popular theatre of the midnineteenth century actually came from the popular classes. One of the rare examples is Emile Souvestre. However, his origins did not prevent his writing for the Gymnase and, consequently, for a predominantly middle-class public. L’Oncle Baptiste (1842) explores questions of class. It concerns two brothers of workingclass origin, one of whom has made good and is about to marry his daughter into the aristocracy. Baptiste, the brother who has remained in his class, is a slight embarrassment when it is a question of inviting him to the wedding. Baptiste, played by Bouffé, is a good-natured individual, but rather too fond of drink. He takes offence when he discovers that his family is trying to keep him out of the way, gets drunk and nearly wrecks the marriage. In the end he feels sorry, makes amends and the piece ends happily. What the play reflects is the social mobility of the period, helped 130

THE VAUDEVILLE

by the acceleration of the industrial revolution. Social snobbery and the division of society into classes are criticised, but the play as a whole remains benevolent in tone, as befitted a vaudeville for the Gymnase. Bouffé was already a very popular actor and ensured sympathy for the role he played. However, the play would have had a different resonance at one of the théâtres de quartier. Its interest is the treatment of class difference in a relatively realistic manner in a vaudeville, as distinct from a drame. From the 1830s to the 1860s, vaudevilles continued to pour out. Most of them are innocuous pieces designed for light entertainment. The social milieu is often middle class, and even wealthy, but many plays still offered genre pictures of popular life, increasingly for middle-class audiences, who were thus able to enjoy low life from the safety of a theatre seat. Vaudeville continued to be written for the popular theatres. A play staged at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Antoine in the 1830s would have been clearly intended for a popular public at a time when this was less the case at the Vaudeville or the Variétés. Didier and Deslandes’ L’Art de ne pas payer son terme, ou avis aux propriétaires (Porte-Saint-Antoine, 1836) is a simple one-act vaudeville based around a single idea, the outwitting of a greedy landlord, appropriately named Cruchet, who is trying to put a poor widow with three young children on the street, retaining their furniture in lieu of rent. The audience of the Porte-Saint-Antoine, situated in a popular district, would have had no difficulty in relating the situation to their own lives.12 By 1842, Gautier was beginning to lament the disappearance of the vaudeville from the Vaudeville, the Variétés and the Gymnase,13 and to suggest that to find this genre it was now necessary to go to the smaller theatres such as the FoliesDramatiques, the Délassements-Comiques or even the Petit Lazari, or else to venture as far as the Théâtre Beaumarchais (the new name for the Porte-Saint-Antoine), where ‘unknown vaudevilles are still the delight of audiences that are unfamiliar to us; a dramatic New Zealand has developed in these latitudes; closer to us the vaudeville is dying; there it stutters on’. Undoubtedly, it was these little theatres and the suburban ones, with their more popular clientele, that kept the simpler type of vaudeville going, without trying to graft any sort of literary quality onto it. Authors for these theatres were also less subject to variations of fashionable taste. Noel and Stoullig continue to record performances of 131


vaudevilles at the suburban theatres and théâtres de quartier during the last quarter of the century. If many were simply revivals of older pieces, there were a number of new pieces being written for Montparnasse, the Gobelins, the Bouffes du Nord and others. These pieces ensured a sort of survival for the vaudeville in its simpler form, were presented to popular audiences, but did not represent any further evolution of the genre. The impact of Labiche on the vaudeville as a genre was very considerable. Like Scribe, he emphasised construction, the settingup of situations, and also the observation of the social mores of the bourgeoisie. His plays, many of them written in collaboration (often with Marc Michel), were hugely popular in the sense that they were good box-office. Their primary audiences were those of such theatres as the Palais-Royal, and even the Comédie-Française. But their success in the more central theatres ensured revivals at the outlying ones for a rather different public. From Un Chapeau de paille d’ltalie (1851) until the 1870s, Labiche was the entertainer par excellence of the bourgeoisie of the second Empire.14 Like Flaubert and others, he is also one of the cruellest critics of that society and its attitudes. He developed what Sarcey termed the ‘vaudeville de mouvement’, in which, instead of developing a single situation, he strung together a bewildering number of situations and coups de théâtre at enormous speed. In many cases these were accompanied by a highly choreographed physical movement, such as the celebrated wedding-party of Un Chapeau de paille, which follows the wretched bridegroom, Fadinard, wherever he goes. Labiche raised the status of vaudeville to the level of literature. In 1878–9 he published his Théâtre complet in ten volumes (in fact these contained only fifty-seven of his 173 plays), and the success of this helped his election to the Académie Française. Labiche, like Scribe, had pushed the vaudeville towards comedy of character, or else had moved it in the direction of farce, and it remained only for subsequent writers such as Georges Feydeau to omit the songs and to raise the social status of the protagonists very slightly to produce a fundamentally bourgeois entertainment to be performed as digestive theatre in elegant bonbonnières. With the disappearance of the songs, the very justification of the title ‘vaudeville’ had also vanished, and with Feydeau’s brilliant farces, the divorce from popular theatre was complete. Outside the regular theatres, a number of vaudevilles were 132

THE VAUDEVILLE

presented at the cafés-concerts, which, since 1867, had been allowed to present dramatic pieces. Most of these are little more than short scenes, described by Noel and Stoullig as ‘slight works, as devoid of pretension as they are of art’. End-of-year revues, operettas, sketches and parodies multiplied. Most of them were very slight in dramatic content, but their popularity was indisputable. By the mid-1870s the cafés-concerts were sometimes offering serious competition to the regular theatres—not, perhaps, for the quality of their work, but in terms of their ability to attract audiences. In addition, they often served as nurseries for talent for the musical stage and the lesser theatres.

133

9 PANTOMIME

The least considered dramatic genre of the nineteenth century is the pantomime. This is because of its association with the ‘spectacles de curiosité’ and the ‘théâtre forain’. In addition, despite its respectable origins in antiquity, it was an exceptionally volatile form. Throughout the eighteenth century the pantomime had been an important genre in the fairgrounds, where dramatic pieces involving the spoken word were generally forbidden. This had led to the development of an expressive acting style, where gesture, to the accompaniment of music, had to carry a maximum semiotic charge. Theorists, such as Diderot and Beaumarchais, had noted the importance of pantomime, and Beaumarchais had gone so far as to propose pantomime interludes between the acts of his plays. Rousseau’s Pygmalion (1770), described as a ‘mélodrame’, also went a long way towards giving respectability to the pantomime and led to such serious essays as the anonymous Pantomime dramatique, ou essai sur un nouveau genre de spectacle, 1 which proposes replacing the recitative in Italian opera with spoken dialogue. The author then suggests that much of the recitative element could also be abbreviated and that the music should accompany ‘a spectacle worthy to please the mind and touch the heart’. The new genre would be a ‘declaimed, recited and sung pantomime’.2 In contrast to the more theoretical and literary views of pantomime as a genre inherited from the ancients, performances in dumbshow to the accompaniment of music had been a feature of entertainment at the fairs from early in the century. When these entertainments moved to the boulevard du Temple, the pantomime and the skills that had been developed came with them. By the 1770s the Ambigu-Comique had built up a reputation for its 134

PANTOMIME

pantomimes with their carefully choreographed and spectacularly presented fights. In Arnould-Mussot’s Les Quatre Fils Aymon (1779), drawn from the legends of Charlemagne, there are scenes which anticipate the equestrian drama of the Franconis’ Cirque Olympique. In Act II, Roland and Regnaut engage in single combat on horseback, with lances, and then dismount to fight with sword and dagger. The third act depicts the attack on the castle, involving mass movements of extras and exciting pyrotechnic effects.3 Such effects continued to be found in many a historical melodrama, from Pixérécourt’s Charles le téméraire (1814) to the grand circus production of La Prise de Pékin of 1862. The boulevard satisfied the demand for excitement relating to physical action, where audiences wished to see that action, and not only hear about it. A prefatory note to Les Quatre Fils Aymon gives a humorous picture of what the pantomime audiences wanted: Some pantomimes are as sublime as eternity. They have neither a beginning nor an end, and their main action consists of a score of blasts on a whistle which make as many machines move in front of our eyes. [He is referring to the stage-manager’s whistle, used to cue the stage-hands.] The beauty and number of the scenes, the brilliance of the costumes, the countless number of incidents heaped one upon another, noisy and characterless music, an infinite number of frequently unintelligible gestures, which often express nothing, a collection of ballets more or less well introduced, it does not really matter, and that’s what people call delicious, marvellous etc. The marvellous, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘that which is extravagantly improbable’, was a key element in the popular theatre of the fairs and the boulevard du Temple. In its more scenic manifestations it was, to a considerable extent, the spectacular theatre of the opera put within the reach of ordinary people.4 In the latter part of the century, as the restrictions proved harder to enforce, words slipped into the pantomimes of the boulevard theatres, giving rise to a form known as the ‘pantomime dialoguée’, out of which the melodrama would emerge, complete with an expressive rather than a conventional style of acting.5 135


In the nineteenth century, pantomime appears under various guises. First, there is the continuation of pantomime elements in the melodrama and féerie. There is the ‘ballet-pantomime’, which flourished at the Porte-Saint-Martin at the turn of the century. A few years later, at the same theatre, now named Jeux Gymniques, for a brief period there was a theatre without dialogue. As the equestrian drama developed at the Cirque, a form known as the ‘mimodrame’ evolved. Finally there was the Théâtre des Funambules, first with Deburau and then with Paul Legrand, that continued the purer tradition of the eighteenth-century Commedia-based pantomime. Most of the actors of the first melodramas had a practical training in expressive acting by performing in pantomime. This type of acting, if conventional to modern eyes, was realistic in comparison with the general style of acting at the ComédieFrançaise, where notions of noble gesture still persisted. In the melodramas of Pixérécourt the lines spoken were strongly underscored by physical gesture, even to the extent of redundancy6 and one result of this was that the more realistic gestural language of the melodrama began to fossilise into a set of stereotypical conventions. Up to the 1840s many melodramas contained pantomime roles, where no speech is involved, and in which a character has to express himself or herself exclusively by sign language (usually helped along by commentary from other characters).7 In Coelina there is the character of Humbert, father of the heroine, who has had his tongue torn out by Truguelin. Another of Pixérécourt’s mutes is Aubry, falsely accused of murder in Le Chien de Montargis. In Bouchardy’s Lazare le pâtre (1840), the hero feigns dumbness for a large part of the action. Savages and strange beings form another category of those who have to resort to pantomimic expression to communicate—this is illustrated particularly in Pixérécourt’s Christophe Colomb and Merle and Béraud’s Frankenstein play, Le Monstre et le magicien (1826), in which the monster was played by the English actor, O. Smith. The starting point of Dennery’s Gaspard Hauser is a young man who has not been taught to speak. Blindness also offered possibilities for the actor with pantomime skills, since its convincing portrayal required a set of conventions of movement in space. We find it in Dupetit-Méré’s L’Aveugle du Tirol (1807) or Bouchardy’s Le Sonneur de Saint-Paul (1838), not to mention Dennery’s Les Deux Orphelines (1874). Apart from the use these 136

PANTOMIME

handicaps might have for the working-out of the plot, they were often exploited to produce added pathos and enhance the sense of helplessness of the victim, since, in most cases, it is the victim rather than the villain who is deprived of the usual means of communication. The fact that eighteenth-century pantomime was accompanied by music often meant that dance, in one form or another, was not very far away. Noverre had been particularly interested in the expressive powers of dance, and, by the end of the century the ‘ballet d’action’, in which the dance and accompanying pantomime tell a story, and the ‘ballet-pantomime’ had evolved. Dauberval, ‘maître des ballets’ at Bordeaux between 1785 and 1791, created a series of popular ballets with a strong story-line. These included La Fille mal gardée, Le Déserteur (based on Mercier’s play) and an adaptation of Le Mariage de Figaro, Le Page inconstant. In the early years of the nineteenth century the main secondary theatres had dancers in their troupe. For some years the Porte-Saint-Martin was particularly important and, under Aumer, who re-worked a number of Dauberval ballets, developed much of what would later become the basis for the Romantic ballet.8 Having been built as a home for opera, the Porte-Saint-Martin had one of the largest stages in Paris, which made it suitable for ballet-pantomime or ballet d’action. It is difficult to distinguish between these two terms, since they are often used to cover very similar works. Aumer’s re-working of Le Déserteur, staged in 1804, was described as a ‘ballet d’action’. The tone is that of the eighteenth-century drame, with a heavy emphasis on sentiment. The form is that of a dramatic action in pantomime, conducted to music, with a number of specific dances interspersed. A clear generic distinction of pantomime is hard to find. Many productions sound as if they are being described by Polonius. Aude’s Madame Angot au sérail de Constantinople (1800) is a generic pot-pourri in which entertainment value has little to do with aesthetic standards, Cuvelier de Trie’s Le Chat botté ou les vingtquatre heures d’Arlequin (Théâtre des Jeunes Artistes, 1802), is an ‘opéra-pantomime-féerie’ and Lefebvre’s Polichinelle avalé par la baleine (Gaîté, 1823) is a ‘folie-pantomime-feerie’, which shows that generic confusion was not limited to the revolutionary decade and early years of the Empire alone.

137


J.G.A.Cuvelier de Trie (1766–1824), author of about a hundred theatre pieces, including a number of ‘mimodrames’, or equestrian pantomimes, for the Cirque Olympique, has left a useful description of pantomime, in which he stresses the importance of visual theatre and the moral value of pantomime: Pantomime is a scene in which virtue depicted through performance becomes somehow more tangible, and vice punished inspires feelings of extreme horror in the crowd. The eloquence of pantomime lies in the gesture; its purpose is to show morality in action. Its arguments go straight to the soul and it is hard to refute them. Its purpose is to enchant the eyes as it satisfies the heart, whilst its noble rivals, in all their splendour, often speak only to the mind, which, alas, they sometimes deceive.9 With the decree of 1807, pantomime received an official existence, being one of the genres which the secondary theatres were formally allowed to perform according to the terms of their licence. When the Gaîté was rebuilt in 1808 it opened with the customary ‘pièce de circonstance’, Le Siège de la Gaîté, ou le passé, le present et le futur, an ‘inaugural, allegorical, spectacular play in one act, with pantomime, songs and dances’. The text and the mise en scène were by Hapdé (a frequent collaborator of Cuvelier), the ballets by Hullin and the scenery by Allaux. The characters of the play include the usual characters of the harlequinade, who serve to evoke some of the past successes of the theatre and three allegorical figures, La Gaîté, Melodrama and Pantomime—the three Muses of the Théâtre. There is a mock siege of the Gaîté by Melodrama and Pantomime as these new elements move in on a theatre that had formerly owed its reputation, and name, to the lighter genres. Pantomime and Melodrama themselves are portrayed as enemies until Pantomime stages a performance of the defeat of the Amazons, at which point Melodrama capitulates, exclaiming: Yes, I admit, Madame, you have reduced both my eyes and my heart! The expressiveness of your face, the truth of your gestures, your warmth, the lively and spirited acting of the characters around you, all these have contributed to such a perfect illusion that I still do not know whether I am at the feet of Ariadne or at the knees of the daughter of Silenus and the Graces. 138

PANTOMIME

Gaîté finally triumphs. The three opponents are brought together, but the theatre retains its old name. At the Gaîté and the Ambigu-Comique, pantomime was now an accepted genre, albeit a secondary one, and was no longer to be regarded as a way of circumventing the regulations, as it had been for so much of the eighteenth century. At the Cirque, where/ spectacle was more important than text, the pantomime provided a good basis for the equestrian drama. In 1798 the Franconi troupe were appearing at the Théâtre de la Cité in a revival of a Cuvelier pantomime, La Fille hussard, with additional equestrian scenes to allow for their talents. In February 1799 they appeared in another revival, Le Damoisel et la bergerette, which had been rearranged to include an equine ballet, with horses trained to dance minuets and gavottes. For a brief period the Théâtre de la Cité carried on its posters the title of ‘Pantomime Nationale’, though in practice did little to justify this.10 Another production in which the Franconis appeared, in March 1800, was Cuvelier and Hapdé’s Les Chevaux savants, ou les arabes à Marseille, simply described as a ‘spectacular play in two acts’, in which Antonio Franconi and one of his sons played the roles of Arabs and demonstrated their skill as horse-trainers. When the Franconis opened their Cirque in the rue Monthabor in 1807 they developed the dramatic aspect of their performances, reviving some of the works in which they had appeared at the Théâtre de la Cité. They opened with a fulsome compliment to Napoleon, the pantomime La Lanterne de Diogène, in which Diogenes finally finds the object of his search in the emperor himself. This piece, reminiscent of the allegorical pieces that would have delighted the court of the Sun King, probably helped the Cirque Olympique avoid strict categorisation as a secondary theatre, provided it with imperial favour and allowed it to weather the difficulties caused by the decree of 1807. The combats, which had been so important a part of the repertoire of the Ambigu-Comique in the years leading up to the Revolution, were developed at the Cirque with a major equestrian dimension (and the use of the arena in which to carry out the manoeuvres). Under the Empire the repertoire included patriotic pieces celebrating imperial victories. With the Restoration Napoleon disappeared from the programme, but the repertoire continued to present chauvinistic pieces evoking the past glories of the French. By the late 1820s Napoleon and Napoleonic references in such details as costume were beginning 139


to re-appear in performances at the Cirque. The fall of the Bourbons in 1830 led to a veritable explosion of Napoleonic pieces, celebrating virtually all of his victories, a sort of illustration in theatrical terms of the popular imagery printed at Epinal. These pieces generally consisted of disconnected episodes, often concluded with an apotheosis, and invariably included one or more equestrian combats. From the opening of the Cirque du Monthabor the Franconis also exploited pantomimes based on historical or chapbook material—Gérard de Nevers or Robert le diable. In 1812 they staged Frédégonde et Brunehaut, a ‘spectacular historical pantomime in three acts…embellished with costumes, new scenery, a tournament, games, dances, a hunt and the burning and collapse of Frédégonde’s palace’, based on a novel by Monvel. The published brochure of this story of a Merovingian Phèdre indicates the mixture of pantomime and the occasional speech when pantomime alone seemed inadequate. The intrusion of speech is itself an indication of the unstable nature of the pantomime as a genre and recalls the pantomimes with dialogue of the later eighteenth century: For a long time Frédégonde has harboured the most violent passion for Mérovée. She dares to speak of her love. The prince pretends not to understand and asks her what it is that she wants him to do. Outraged, Frédégonde addresses him with the following words: ‘Prince, there is no point in your pretending to me any more. I have failed to make you respond to my feelings…a fortunate rival has been able to find the way to your heart [this line is quoted verbatim from Racine’s Phèdre].… I realise that. but do not forget that this same rival is in the court of Frédégonde. Need I say more?’ He looks at her indignantly. In vain Frédégonde threatens, pleads, promises to abandon all hatred. Nothing can move the stout-hearted Mérovée. The aesthetic of the piece, and the language (where there is speech), is virtually identical to that of the melodrama of the first decade of the century. At a period when Shakespeare was best known to French audiences through the neo-classicised adaptations of Ducis, the Cirque promoted the notion of Shakespeare as a popular dramatist 140

PANTOMIME

with the very free adaptations of Cuvelier de Trie. Even the performance conditions, with a large standing audience in the arena, must have been not dissimilar to those of the Shakespearian theatre with its groundlings. Macbeth, ou les sorcières de la forêt, a spectacular pantomime in four acts (1817), offered a generous opportunity for the equestrian evolutions in the arena with which most of the performances of the Cirque started. Macbeth, on horseback, appeared in the midst of the opening battle. Lady Macbeth was dispensed with, thus reducing Macbeth himself to a simpler melodramatic villain.11 Female interest is provided with the invented character of Idamia, sister of Duncan and aunt to Malcolm, whom Macbeth tries to force to marry him. Idamia is the stock persecuted heroine of melodrama. Seyton becomes the assistant to Macbeth’s villainy. Banquo is reduced to an elderly tutor to Malcolm, and is murdered at the end of Act III. However, the ghost that appears at the banquet is not that of Banquo, but of Duncan who, with appropriate scenic effects, seizes the crown from Macbeth.12 The witches, as the sub-title suggests, are central to the plot. They are less ambiguous than in Shakespeare’s play and here take on a role akin to that of providence. In Act IV they save Malcolm from Macbeth by calling up a serpent, which attaches itself to Macbeth and causes him to run off. Malcolm is then presented with a magic horn. When he blows it, the scene opens and troops appear from all sides. The witches sometimes appear flying on dragons (an excuse for machines) and also lurk around acting as stage-managers for transformation scenes. They have only to make a signal, and an entire forest rises up out of the floor. In Act IV the first witch announces: ‘You think you have triumphed, Macbeth, but the reign of evil is past. Nature, in a state of horror has over thrown her own laws…look, Birnam wood is about to walk.’ The forest promptly moves in and surrounds Macbeth and his followers, as prophesied in Act I (but without any human agency).13 It is purely and simply an enchanted forest which, at the end of the play, will part again to show Macbeth’s castle being taken by assault and set on fire. Cuvelier’s Le More de Venise, ou Othello (1818) ‘a three-act pantomime with interspersed dialogues, imitated from the English tragedy’, was equally remote from its original.14 The tableau, usually associated with the end of acts in the melodrama, is an integral part of the art of pantomime, when expression is carried by the visual and musical elements. Some 141


pantomimes used a series of tableaux in a similar way to freezeframe technique in the cinema. For example, Arnould-Mussot’s brigand pantomime, La Forêt noire (revived at the AmbiguComique in 1807), contained a scene in the first act where ‘Milfort, still furious, reproaches his daughter for leaving the path of virtue. After several tableaux [i.e. poses], he seizes hold of Tommy and throws him into the arms of Dubois.’ Diderot’s theory of the tableau, inspired to a large exent by the painting of Greuze, attempts to import the semiotics of painting into the theatre and to develop a new aesthetic for the drame. While the importance of Diderot’s writing should not be discounted (most writers for the theatre would have been familiar with them), the pantomime through the eighteenth century had developed in a specific context, seeking a means of expression which was less heavily dependent on the spoken word and aiming to please less refined audiences with an immediate visual appeal. Its aesthetic was dictated more by what the theatres were permitted to perform (or could get away with) and what audiences enjoyed. With the Revolution, a new and frequently less-educated public filled the theatres and the demand for instantly assimilable entertainment became even stronger. In 1797–8, Grimod de la Reynière’s Le Censeur dramatique complained about spectacular plays: This thirst to appeal to the eyes has spread to all aspects of dramatic art. Not only has it corrupted tragedy. In comedy all the effects that pertain to pantomime have been multiplied until they have become mere childishness. The furniture of a drawing-room, and even that of the ante-room, has become a part of the conventions of theatre, and, with the excuse that they are trying to achieve truth, they have often ended up with something so feeble that, instead of intensifying the action, it cools it down.15 Significant here is the indication of the importance of realistic settings and properties in the pantomime some forty years before Montigny’s move towards ‘upholsterer’s theatre’ at the Gymnase. The writer goes on to complain about the craze for pyrotechnics at the smaller theatres, the emphasis on ‘effets d’optique’ rather than the spoken (or sung) word and the depraved taste of the public which delights only in the work of the scene-painter and the stage-carpenter. 142

PANTOMIME

As the nineteenth century progressed, pantomime was generally absorbed into either melodrama or féerie. It survived longest at the Funambules. This was less a question of aesthetic principle than of the status of that theatre, which, as far as the authorities were concerned, remained classified not as a secondary theatre, but as a ‘spectacle forain’. As such, it would probably have disappeared much earlier, when the other ‘forains’ vanished from the boulevard du Temple, had it not been for JeanGaspard Deburau. Thanks first to a book by the critic Jules Janin, published in 1832 as an indirect attack on the standards of performance of the Comédie-Française, and more recently to René Clair’s Les Enfants du paradis of 1946 (with Jean-Louis Barrault as Deburau), Deburau has become a legendary figure. He played the role of Pierrot at the Funambules under the stagename of Baptiste.16 Born in Bohemia about 1796, he came from a family of forains (rope-dancers and acrobats). Although his family had had links with the Funambules a few years earlier, the first references to Jean-Gaspard Deburau are in 1825, when he was taken on, probably to replace Felix Chiarigny, the Pierrot, who had just moved across to Madame Saqui. Tristan Rémy suggests that he may have played the valet Pierrot in Phaéton, ou les malheurs que peut occasionner la lumière mal dirigée (a ‘grand pantomime in five scenes with numberous pyrotechnic effects’) and in another pantomime La Tombe et le poignard, ou la vengeance d’un Espagnol. The Funambules pantomimes perpetuated the tradition of the eighteenth-century harlequinade. An important innovation of Deburau’s was the abandonment of the large white wool hat and ruff that had been associated with his predecessors, and the replacement of the white head-band with a black skull-cap. The character of Pierrot also evolved from the rustic simpleton into a more worldly-wise, even cruel, and urban figure, with whom the populace of the quartier du Temple could easily identify. His skills included fighting with a quarter-staff and French boxing (in which the feet are used), a form of fighting that was very popular amongst the poorer classes at the Restoration. The latter skill he used to great effect in one of his later pantomimes, Pierrot en Afrique, which Théophile Gautier reviewed in 1842.17 In this pantomime, with its topical reference to colonial expansion in North Africa, Deburau replaced his white smock and trousers with a soldier’s uniform, but, despite the addition of a ferocious 143


moustache, retained the white face. Captured by Bedouins and tied to a post to await a horrid fate, he defended himself so well with his feet that the French army had time to come and rescue him. In 1825 Bertrand had taken on two English clowns of French origin, the Laurents. These acrobats and contortionists practised the ‘comique d’accessoires’, with trick properties, which the Grimaldis had made popular on the English stage, and this led to a craze for such properties, not only in the pantomime, but also in the féerie. Trick mechanisms had been popular in the fairground theatres of the eighteenth century. The distinguishing feature of the pantomimes of the Funambules after 1825 is that these now became central to the performances, creating a fantasy world in which nothing is stable, and it was these effects that audiences came to see rather than the story that was being enacted. The English harlequinade of the eighteenth century had evolved out of the French fairground entertainments. Now, in the 1820s, the debt was repaid, as the Funambules looked towards England for ideas. In Ma Mèrel’Oie, ou arlequin et l’ œuf d’or (1829),18 a ‘spectacular pantomime-arlequinade-féerie in the English manner, with transformation scenes, disguises, metamorphoses etc.’, there are the usual changes of scene ‘à vue’, but also a number of transformable properties: Harlequin and Colombine pursued by Cassandre, hide behind a haystack, the field turns into a river and the haystack becomes a gondola in which they sail away. As Cassandre and Pierrot pursue the fugitives on a harvest wagon, Harlequin, with a wave of his wand, transforms the cart into an iron cage which imprisons their pursuers. On the top of the cage is a sign ‘Live animals’. Trick follows trick. There is the popular growing cottage, which expands and shrinks. In another scene two characters sit at a table and their legs detach themselves leaving them unable to move. The action itself consists of a chase—the pattern for a large number of pantomimes at the Funambules— with Harlequin’s magic constantly inventing new tricks to hold off their pursuers. At the end Mother Goose, alias the Good Fairy, arrives and all is sorted out. Deburau himself seems to have been very useful as an inventor and constructor of trick proper ties, and Rémy, in his study of Deburau, even goes so far as to suggest that this was the real reason why Bertrand kept him on at the theatre after the real popularity of the pantomime had waned. From an early stage, rather than employ a separate person to construct

144

PANTOMIME

properties, Bertrand added 10 francs a week to Deburau’s wages so that he could take on this task. In the earlier pantomimes of the Funambules the principal character was Harlequin. Philippe Laurent was a noted Harlequin and had a major triumph in Le Bœuf enragé. In 1828 Charles Nodier noticed Deburau and devoted part of his article in Le Pandore to him: M.Deburau enjoys as high a reputation as his comrade and he is neither actor, nor scene-painter, nor machinist. He is only Gilles [a clown], and that indicates where the superiority of his unique talent lies. He plays the simpleton and all he needs to become the rage is an enormous salary, a carriage and to be taken up by the press.19 Deburau’s salary was never enormous. At the height of his career, in the later 1830s, his salary was only 60 francs a week. However, Nodier’s article did give him a certain celebrity and attracted the attention of the Romantics, who would normally have considered this theatre beneath their notice. Nodier himself wrote a successful pantomime for Deburau, Le Songe d’or, and by 1832 Deburau was at the head of the bill, together with Philippe Laurent. That same year he appeared at a benefit performance at the Palais-Royal, but was rather poorly received. Théophile Gautier felt that this was because he was not performing to the popular and familiar audience of the Funambules: Deburau was made for an audience in jackets, smocks, shirtsleeves, and often shirtless, with bare arms and a cap on the side of the head. He was made for those who cheered him from the gods with their unlit pipes between their teeth, their fingers sticky from toffee apples, and their hands exploring their female neighbours without a care about the national guard keeping an eye on the gallery.20 By 1830, Deburau was virtually the only Pierrot left on the boulevard. The character, as developed by him, had a strongly sadistic streak. Rather than being a victim, he was nearly always the instigator of unpleasant practical jokes. In Les Epreuves these included tying two old men together by their wigs, then separating them by setting them alight, or causing a fight between a wretched female shoe-cleaner 145


and a coffee-seller. With the encroachment of vaudeville, even at the Funambules, and the elements of dialogue that crept into pantomimes, Deburau was becoming the only non-speaking actor at that theatre (according to legend there was only one pantomime in which he ever spoke, Le Marchand de salade, and here his speech was restricted to the salad-seller’s cry). Even his costume was modified to the point where the only vestige of the old Pierrot was the white face. The nature of pantomime was beginning to change with Deburau’s crueller tricks. In 1842 a new pantomime, Marchand d’habits, by Cot d’Ordan, tried to move the genre in the direction of melodrama. In this piece Pierrot kills a second-hand clothes dealer to obtain a uniform in which he may court a duchess. However, the ghost of the dealer keeps appearing and finally, as Pierrot reaches the altar with his bride, drags him down to hell. In fact Deburau was unwell and the part of Pierrot was played by Paul Legrand, the new Pierrot of the Funambules, who took over the character after the death of Deburau in 1846. Unlike Deburau, Legrand had a good voice and his performances were not restricted to dumbshow. He developed the pantomime in a new, serious, and more literary, direction. After the cruel and mostly knockabout acrobatic comedy of Deburau, he showed a sentimental, poetic and dreamy Pierrot, capable of weeping on stage.21 In 1847 the Funambules staged Champfteury’s Pierrot Marquis, which Gautier described as the new ‘realistic pantomime’. It was altogether a more literary piece than the standard Funambules fare and had no supernatural element, apart from the appearance of the fairy at the moment of the marriage, and here her function was mainly to motivate a scenic effect. Gautier felt that if the traditional fantastic element was lost, there was a vast gain in comedy of observation: This play gives the excellent mime Paul the chance to show a more studied and realistic aspect of his talent than he has been able to do up to now in the cavortings of pantomimes cast in the old mould with their incessant hail of kicks, slaps and fisticuffs. Just as, in the first part of the play, he is humble, pitiful, melancholy, starving, wheedling, sly, cajoling and hypocritical, in the second part he is, by contrast, proud, insolent, disdainful, a real Marquis de Moncade. What truth and what depth of observation there is in the will scene!22

146

PANTOMIME

The departure of Philippe Laurent for the Cirque in 1837 provided that major rival with a man who knew how to devise trick effects, and who now had an enormous budget. One result was that the féerie now absorbed all the staging techniques that had been the main attraction of the Funambules, and drew the crowds to see Les Pilules du diable and similar pieces at the Cirque. The old ‘pantomimearlequinade’ was virtually dead as far as the boulevard was concerned, though it continued to survive after a fashion in smaller suburban theatres, in provincial towns and in travelling circuses. An interesting twentieth-century vestige of it is to be found in the Tivoli gardens in Copenhagen in the famous Peacock Théâtre.

147

10 THE FEERIE

The nineteenth-century féerie is a form of the spectacular melodrama, distinguished by an emphasis on magic, the supernatural and the fantastic.1 The struggle between the powers of good and evil is usually the hallmark of the féerie, though sometimes even this takes second place to the spectacular and the scenic. Féeries and melodramas were performed in the same theatres, their historical origins were also almost identical, and both had a similar relationship to the pantomime. The féerie, like the melodrama, emerged from the fairground entertainments of the eighteenth century. Lesage’s Théâtre de la foire contains a number of pieces that could be described as féeries, such as Les Eaux de Merlin. Magic and enchantment were important components of the Commedia pieces performed at the fairs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent. With the developing interest in fairy-tales as a form of literature, from Charles Perrault to Madame d’Aulnoy, and the additional discovery of oriental story-telling with the Arabian Nights, a new dimension was added to the mythological world inherited from seventeenth-century court entertainments, the piece a machines and the opera. In the eighteenth century the fairground theatres and especiaily the Opéra-Comique satisfied, at a more popular level, the taste for the marvellous that was catered for by the Opéra. In the fairgrounds the distinction between dramatic theatre and spectacular theatre, as exemplified by the distinction between the Théâtre-Français and the Opéra, did not exist. Generic definition in the fairgrounds was extraordinarily flexible. In fact, genre did not really matter for entertainers who were mainly anxious to perform, and make a living, without getting into trouble for infringing the patents of the official theatres. It was only with the nineteenth century that the gap between melodrama and the féerie 148

THE FEERIE

widened. The melodrama increased its emphasis on the dramatic until it became indistinguishable from the legitimate drama, whilst the féerie catered for the ever-growing demand for visual stimulus. In the early years of the century, audiences had been quite happy with fairy-tales put on the stage, just as they were happy with the relatively simple melodramas of the time. In the second half of the century the féerie came to be perceived, especially by the bourgeoisie, as suitable entertainment for children, with the inevitable effect that the productions themselves became increasingly geared to the young audience. Popular audiences clearly loved the splendour of the costumes, the magnificent sets painted by all the major scene-painters, and the trick effects. By and large the dramatic content became increasingly insignificant, serving mainly as an excuse for lavish staging. Gautier, in 1839, suggested with some sarcasm, when reviewing one of the most popular féeries of the century, Les Pilules du diable, that the piece might be converted into a pantomime, aiming uniquely to satisfy the eye without the distraction of text, and in 1846, referring to a féerie at the Ambigu, L’Etoile du berger, beautifully designed by Séchan, Diéterle and Despléchin, he recommended that, for productions of this sort, the playbill should read ‘the play has been done away with, as it detracted from the scenery’. The Châtelet opened in 1862 with Dennery’s Rothomago, and many féeries were performed there until the end of the century. In practice, the genre had run its course by this date. It made its contribution to the operetta in productions such as Offenbach’s Le Voyage dans la lune (1875), described as an ‘opéra-féerie’. For a less credulous generation the element of magic, thanks to the craze for Jules Verne, was replaced by science. The féerie could be found at most of the secondary theatres, but the ones where it developed most fully were those with the bestequipped stages. The Porte-Saint-Martin had been built for opera and had a deep stage with machinery designed for spectacular (and numerous) transformation scenes (until about 1830 virtually all scene changes happened before the eyes of the audience). The Cirque Olympique had a deep scenic stage behind the arena. During the Empire and after 1830, it geared itself to large-scale celebrations of Napoleonic campaigns, as well as the more ordinary equestrian drama. Under the Empire the machinery which had hitherto been reserved for the grand stages of the Opéra and the Salle des Machines in the Palace of the Tuileries was now 149


extended to the popular stages, and the Cirque became a popular equivalent of the opera. 2 Vast sums were now spent on productions at the Cirque—in some cases as much as 100,000 francs might be lavished on one production. The Châtelet, which replaced the Cirque, was custom-built for large-scale spectacular theatre, as was the slightly smaller Gaîté of 1862 (the old Gaîté had always given an important place to the féerie). Size, however, was not everything, and the féerie (without words) was at the base of much of the repertoire of the Funambules. During the First Empire, the féerie was fashionable as well as popular. Its authors were frequently authors of melodramas, pantomimes and mimodramas. In the 1790s a number of theatres had begun to explore the realm of féerie, and in particular, the possibility of drawing on Perrault’s fairy-tales. These theatres included the Théâtre de la Cité and the Théâtre des Jeunes Artistes. In 1799, the Gaîté staged Caigniez’s version of La Forêt enchantée, ou la belle au bois dormant. Hapdé produced adaptations of Riquet a la houppe and Peau d’âne. In 1801, Cuvelier de Trie and Hapdé’s piece, Le Petit Poucet, ou l’orphelin de la forêt, had a run of 230 performances at the Jeunes Artistes (an enormous success for the period), and even had a sequel, Rosaure de Valincourt, ou les nouveaux malheurs du Petit Poucet. At this period the term ‘féerie’ was generally one of the many adjectives that could be applied to a fantastic piece and had not yet acquired a clear generic connotation. Thus, Le Petit Poucet in the published text is simply called a ‘five-act drama with songs, pantomime and dances’. The play has only the most tangential relationship to the tale of Tom Thumb. Le Petit Poucet is an orphan, who sets out in search of his mother, Rosaure, who has been kidnapped and imprisoned in his castle by the cruel magician, Barbastal, who has murdered her husband and utters dire threats to her if she will not marry him. Barbastal possesses a golden spur, which will transport him wherever he wishes. To counter-balance this, Poucet has a talisman bracelet, also invested with magic powers. The settings include the recognisable icons of peasant’s cottage and tyrant’s castle, a forest with a cave (part of the stock-in-trade of the brigand play, and indeed of Pixérécourt’s Victor, which shares the same subtitle as Cuvelier and Hapdé’s play) and a crypt, which had become the sine qua non of the gothic play. The most spectacular scenic effect came in the last act, when the dark crypt was transformed into: 150

THE FEERIE

an arena surrounded by a colonnade: upstage an amphitheatre supported by columns; in the middle of the amphitheatre stands a white marble dome on which Barbastal’s throne is placed. The lower part of this quasi-operatic set (which might be regarded as a distant forerunner of a Cecil B. de Mille film) represented a sort of Roman arena, with a post with chains in the middle, destined for Poucet, and tigers behind bars all around. At the release of the tigers a flame rose up and drove them back. Barbastal leapt into the arena with a dagger to complete the work, but was stopped by a good fairy who, like an operatic goddess, came down on a cloud. The fairy then warned the people to leave, as the building was about to collapse, and gave a prize to Poucet and his mother for filial affection. As the tigers leapt upon Barbastal, there was a flash of lightning. The ground opened and swallowed up the tigers and Barbastal, whom they were tearing apart, and the temple itself collapsed with a terrible noise and in the midst of a shower of fire. After all this, Poucet and his mother climbed onto the fairy’s cloud and flew off, whilst the ‘people’ knelt along the proscenium, silhouetted against the pyrotechnic effects. A year later Cuvelier produced Le Chat botté, ou les vingtquatre heures dArlequin, an ‘opéra-pantomime-féerie’ in four acts. This is a harlequinade whose relationship to Puss-in-Boots is almost as tenuous as that of the previous play to the well-known fairy-tale. A fairy allows Harlequin to travel the world for twentyfour hours. He goes through a series of adventures, many of which remind us that the eighteenth-century harlequinade was by no means dead. He finally returns home, where he realises that, despite some attempted infidelities on his part, real happiness is to be found in his state as a wood-cutter with his wife Colombine and his two children. The good fairy, who has organised everything, drives the moral home: talents and beauty were nothing without a pure heart, virtues were worth more than riches, and happiness was more often to be found beneath the thatch of a cottage than in palaces. After this it only remained for Harlequin and Colombine to find themselves sumptuously attired, for their children to turn into cupids 151


and for their cottage to become a magnificent palace with gardens, groves and a throne in the middle. In 1809–10 Cinderella, in one form or another, appeared at no less than eight Parisian theatres. This particular vogue was parodied by Desaugiers at the Variétés in November 1810 with La Petite Cendrillon, ou la Chatte merveilleuse, in which Brunet appeared in a convincing drag role as Cinderella. The féerie, because of the intervention of the supernatural, went a step beyond the idealisation of life. Audiences could pretend to themselves that the satisfactory outcome of a melodrama was realistic (or ought to be). With the féerie they did not need this pretence and the performance itself became entirely an occasion for escape into a world of colour and reassurance, with no nagging doubts about analogies with their own often harsh existences. The nineteenth-century féerie achieved its clearest expression in Martainville’s ‘féerie-comique’, Le Pied de mouton of 1806, which established the genre. Frequently revived and added to throughout the rest of the century, Le Pied de mouton provided a basic framework upon which most subsequent féeries were built. Audiences came to expect much use of machinery, transformations, trick properties and all the effects of magic. The machines which contributed enormously to the success of the piece were devised by Camus, who would continue to invent ingenious ways of producing trick effects for the stage of the Gaîté for the next twenty years. The plot, as might be expected, is extremely slight and is based on the notion of a pursuit (an idea which Labiche would explore so brilliantly in the vaudeville with Un Chapeau de paille d’ltalie). Leonora loves Gusman, but her tutor, Don Lopez, favours another suitor, Nigaudinos. Nigaudinos pursues Leonora through the action, but is the victim of one trick after another, brought about by Gusman’s magic talisman, the ‘pied de mouton’ (sheep’s foot). For example, when Nigaudinos puts on his hat it promptly turns into a balloon and he sails away with it. In another scene, he is stuck to a door by magic, and the door then whirls round and round on a pivot. On one occasion Nigaudinos and Lopez are outside a house, with Leonora and Gusman inside on the first floor. By an ingenious use of flying harnesses the positions are suddenly reversed. Other effects included a group of duennas turning into nubile female musicians—an effect produced in much the same way as the 152

THE FEERIE

popular transformation puppets of the period, with the upper part of the body being covered by a painted flap (with a hole for the face), which could be dropped to reveal a very different character from the waist upwards. Traps were used all over the place to bring up properties and characters—in one case a table sank through a trap to be replaced by a giant. In the third act the lovers finally escape by boat, helped by Cupid. The giant, who has been guarding them, and who has been put to sleep by ‘melodious music’, pursues them furiously along the shore, whilst the waves get higher and higher until they reach the clouds. Cupid and the lovers fly away and the giant is swallowed by the waves. This final sequence is reminiscent of mythological theatre and opera. Apotheoses were not infrequent in nineteenth-century theatre, from the Napoleonic plays of the Cirque, to Sue’s Juif errant to fairground puppet-shows of the Tentation de Saint Antoine. Le Pied de mouton set a pattern for a series of comic féeries, including Les Pilules du diable, Les Sept Châteanx du diable, La Poudre de Perlinpinpin and Les Bibelots du diable. These are all light pieces, roughly the French equivalent of the Victorian extravaganza. The féerie could also be given a slightly darker turn, as in Merle and Antony’s Le Monstre et le magicien, a spectacular ‘mélodrameféerie’ in three acts (Porte-Saint-Martin, 1826), based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This piece harks back to the gothic frissons of the 1790s, to works such as Loaisel de Tréogate’s Le Château du diable. By the 1830s this particular vein had virtually exhausted itself. The production of Le Monstre et le magicien involved the installation of new machinery devised by an Englishman called Tomkins. He introduced new systems of traps which had been developed in England, and which proved invaluable for effects in the féerie. These included the ‘English’ trap (‘vampire’ trap), which allowed the monster to pass through a wall without any apparent opening being made.3 It was used to particular effect in a scene where the monster seized a child and exited through the wall with him. The English star trap allowed a character to appear from under the stage, without having to create an opening first. Such a trap was used in Act I, when Zametti calls up a genie, who appears out of the ground in a ruined tomb surrounded by flames and to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning, disappearing a few moments later by the same routeandleaving the tomb lit by ‘a livid glow’.

153


Clever scenic effects were above all what the audiences of féeries wanted. The sense of wonder had to be stimulated. While the melodrama was pushing increasingly towards accurate imitation of real life, the féerie had to make audiences believe in what they knew to be patently untrue and divorced from real life. Audiences wanted to be deceived by tricks, and the work of the clever machinistes made sure they were. For this reason theatres regarded good machinistes as being worth their weight in gold. The Cirque Olympique staged some of the most spectacular féeries. Les Pilules du diable (1839), by Anicet Bourgeois and Laurent (Franconi), involved a dazzling array of tricks, of which the central character, Seringuinos, was generally the victim. When he wished to go to sleep, chairs collapsed under him, or turned into ladders, hoisting him aloft, beds became baths or wells, and even the walls retreated as he leant on them. Portraits stole drinks. A railway carriage exploded, scattering Seringuinos into many pieces (which were subsequently brought together—allowing for a comic scene involving an arm that had been forgotten). When Seringuinos retired to a sanatorium for a rest, immediately all the windows flew open, and at every one somebody was seen carrying out an exceptionally noisy trade. A ride in a carriage resulted in the horses driving off with the front portion, the back wheels removing themselves and the part where Seringuinos was seated turning into a well. Another house in which he seeks peace turned out to be upside down, and he ended up having to walk on his hands. The frequent scene changes also made their contribution to the hectic pace of Les Pilules and created a sense of a world in which nothing is stable. All these trick effects were basically those of the harlequinades of the fairground theatres of the eighteenth century, but carried to a much higher degree of sophistication. Scene painters and costumiers also had a field day with works such as Les Pilules, which allowed them to give the fullest possible range to their imagination. Adolphe Dennery made several important contributions to the féerie, and finally led it in the direction of the scientific drama with his adaptations of Jules Verne. His two most important féeries are Les Sept Châteaux du diable and Rothomago. The first, written with Clairville and staged at the Gaîté in 1844, is a curious blend of morality play and féerie, involving two young couples going on a pilgrimage, who face a series of temptations placed in their way 154

THE FEERIE

in the form of seven castles, each representing one of the seven deadly sins. According to Gautier: This is an ideal spectacle to delight the eyes. It is a total féerie in which metamorphoses and transformation scenes follow one another without a break. We go from surprise to surprise, from prodigy to prodigy. We see palaces, mountains and forests suddenly rise out of the ground, and whole towns swallowed up with all their inhabitants. All the characters come out of the ground, unless they enter through the walls or fall from the sky.4 Rothomago (1862) was one of the last pieces to be created at the old Cirque and it moved with the company to the new Châtelet. This too has a strong moral line, with the son of a magician being converted to goodness by the power of love. The magic talisman of Rothomago is a watch that has to be wound at a certain time or the owner will lose his magic power (which is precisely what happens). Amongst the more prolific writers of féeries were the Cogniard brothers. With Les Mille et une nuits (1843) they developed the oriental exotic element, but coupled it with the somewhat trivial dialogue of the vaudeville. The féerie was frequently a genre which did not take itself too seriously. The use of familiar language to produce a burlesque effect, can be observed in the 1845 version of La Biche au bois (in which Lola Montès made her Parisian début as a dancer). 5 The Cogniards’ successes included La Chatte blanche, in which the café-concert artiste, Theresa, brought the airy-fairy element firmly down to earth in her playing of Pierrette. La Poudre de Perlinpinpin was yet another fastmoving piece depending on tricks and magic. In 1858 the Cogniards, together with the popular vaudevilliste, Clairville, produced for the Variétés Les Bibelots du diable, a sort of résumé of the main féeries of the century. On the death of an old magician, Dr Faustus, there is an auction that includes most of the paraphernalia of the féerie: eggs from the hen that laid golden eggs, ‘le pied de mouton’, ‘la queue du diable’ (the devil’s tail, the title and talisman from another féerie), the seven-league boots, ‘les pilules du diable’ the magic pipe (which makes all who hear it dance); the golden branch (which acts as a magic wand). These are bought by the local peasantry and their use, or misuse, wreaks hilarious havoc. Wishes are granted in the most alarming way and the slightest use of a 155


talisman brings about a spectacular change of scene. In one case, developing upon a trick already exploited at the Funambules, an entire village shrinks, and so do the characters (it is not quite clear if children or puppets were used). There is even a miniature army that besieges the obnoxious local marquis, Chouvert de Vertuchoux, in his reduced château. Although by no means the last féerie to be written, Les Bibelots du diable marks the full evolution of the genre from fairy-tale to extravaganza. By the 1860s the genre was perceived as rather oldfashioned. In 1856 Siraudin and Delacour had written their slightly tongue-in-cheek satirical La Queue de la poêle, which was as much a send-up of the genre as Frédérick Lemaître’s treatment of L’Auberge des Adrets had been of the earlier melodrama.6 This did not mean that féeries ceased to be performed, especially at the more popular theatres. They tended, however, to be thought of as suitable entertainment for children and the ‘unsophisticated’ or ‘uneducated’. After 1871 there was a renewed interest in the genre which lasted until the 1890s, but, for the most part, this consisted of bigger and more spectacular revivals of the old favourites.

156

11 THE EARLY MELODRAMA

René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt is often thought of as the ‘father’ of melodrama. This is chiefly because the form itself acquired the definition which allows it to be distinguished from other genres around the turn of the nineteenth century, and Pixérécourt’s own Coelina, was first staged in 1800. The origins of the melodrama have received their share of attention from theatre historians, and, more recently, the aesthetic of melodrama has been carefully analysed.1 The melodrama, the nineteenth-century dramatic genre par excellence, represents a confluence of factors. If by melodrama we mean a drama of strong emotions and violent action, enhanced with a strong sense of the theatrical, we can find it at almost any period from Euripides to the Hollywood movie. The nineteenth-century melodrama is conditioned by a large number of social factors, notably the drift to the towns, the development of an urban proletariat and the social structures that arose out of the industrial revolution. Fundamental to the melodramatic aesthetic is the idealistic notion of a universe in which right can be seen to triumph over wrong, virtue over vice. Late eighteenth-century France saw the collapse of traditional religious values and beliefs and an attempt to satisfy man’s religious needs with substitute religions, or the belief in a Supreme Being created according a utopian human view rather than a theological one. The melodrama itself evolved out of what has been called the context of a post-sacred universe.2 The earlier melodrama is more concerned with putting over a sound moral lesson. The authors came from bourgeois rather than popular backgrounds (its major author, Pixérécourt, was an aristocrat), and morality, which emphasised the triumph of virtue over vice, was 157


7 Pixérécourt, Le Château de Lochleven. Scenery by Gué (Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris). In this Mary Queen of Scots play we see the typical Romantic picturesque scene offered by the boulevard theatres, especially in historical dramas. The strongly painted foreground, complete with groundrow, divides the stage into an acting zone and a scenic one which is framed by it. Backcloths were more lightly painted to give a sense of depth and distance.

fundamentally conservative, advocating the preservation of the status quo rather than social revolution. It has frequently been observed that the Revolutionary years themselves did not produce any great drama.3 However, their importance for the theatre was considerable if looked at from the point of view of the theatre audiences. The years following the 1791 decree of freedom of the theatres were marked by an upsurge in the number of theatres opened (albeit some of them for a fairly brief period), and this indicates the existence of a real market for dramatic and quasi-dramatic entertainment. The classical repertoire, so jealously guarded by the Comédie-Française in the eighteenth century, was seldom shown to the new audiences who thronged into these theatres and were offered a diet of light entertainment, spectacle and pantomime (with or without 158

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

dialogue). These audiences were not interested in psychological complexities, let alone in a theatre that demanded a cultural or literary background. They were anxious to be entertained during a period when everyday life was not necessarily easy and when society was undergoing changes that they could only partially understand. It has sometimes been suggested that the violence of life at the period led for a demand for ever more sensation on the stage. However, this type of theatre did not suddenly emerge with the Revolution (pantomimes and staged combats were well established before 1789). What was new was the increase in theatre audiences coming from the popular classes, and the attempt to satisfy these audiences undoubtedly conditioned and accelerated the development of existing dramatic forms. Audiences for the secondary theatres had always wished to see action rather than to hear about it through narration. It was in these theatres that the melodrama developed. The expressive acting style owed much to the pantomime, where the performer, to the accompaniment of appropriate atmospheric music, had to use gesture in lieu of the spoken word. This had led to a comparatively realistic and representational performing style having little in common with the more rhetorical conventions of gesture employed in neo-classical tragedy. What the melodrama would develop was an easily readable set of signs with a visual rather than an aural predominance. Pixérécourt’s well-known claim that he was writing for those who could not read4 has both aesthetic and sociological implications. It is almost certain that what he had in mind were audiences whose experience of theatre would have been the boulevards and fairgrounds and whose literary culture the ‘bibliothèque bleue’ or chapbook. Some contemporary views of the melodrama are of value in helping us understand how this emergent genre was perceived in the early nineteenth century. Three particularly useful texts are Armand Charlemagne’s Le Mélodrame aux boulevards5 of 1809, the Traité du mélodrame by ‘MM. A! A! A!’ of 1817, and Guerre au mélodrame by ‘le bonhomme du Marais’, alias Pixérécourt, of 1818. From about 1806 melodramas were sufficiently recognised to receive some coverage in reviews in newspapers, but were regarded as a rather inferior sort of drama. The fact that the melodrama was relegated to the repertoire of the secondary theatres also gave the genre a lower social status. In spite of this, Le Mélodrame aux boulevards comments on the attraction of 159


these plays for the upper classes, describing a lady, Hortense, going off after dinner in her coach and making a state arrival in her box: Madame aux boulevards, va, dans toute sa gloire, Voir Le Pied de mouton, ou bien La Forêt noire. (Madame, in all her glory, goes off to the boulevards to see Le Pied de mouton or La Forêt noire.) Charlemagne describes the ‘critical’ public of this period as a swarm of clerks, shop-assistants, barber’s assistants and young would-be authors. He also gives the impression that, by the early years of the Empire, the boulevard du Temple had already become more respectable than it had been in the last years of the ancien regime, when shows on the boulevard were abandoned to a following belonging to the plebs, who came there in droves on Sundays with the hope and the certainty that they would find entertainment there to satisfy both their choice and their tastes. The rest of the week the audiences were made up of shop assistants and grisettes, a few good-for-nothings and women of easy virtue. An honest man would have blushed to find himself in such company—and even more so to have to witness the crude language of the dramatic efforts that were being executed there by actors in clogs coming, like their audiences, from the dregs of the people, and who made up for their lack of education and talent by behaving with extreme licence.6 Although we must allow for a certain degree of subjectivity on the writer’s part, this description is interesting to the extent that it suggests that a public drawn in part from ‘the dregs of the people’ was firmly in existence before the Revolution and was not simply created by the Revolution itseif, that the break between the ancien regime and the Revolution may not have had as great an impact on the boulevard theatres as it had on the Comédie-Française, and that the ‘new’, ‘popular’ audience eagerly seeking sensation in the theatres had been evolving symbiotically with the boulevard theatres themselves, and was not merely a phenomenon called into being by the Revolution. Pixérécourt’s Coelina is the best-known of the early melodramas.7 However, as far as Armand Charlemagne was concerned, 160

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

the first melodrama was Cuvelier de Trie’s C’est le diable, ou la bohémienne, first staged at the Ambigu on 28 Brumaire, an VI (1798). In his examination of that play he gives us a good indication of what were felt at the time to be the essential features of the melodrama. The piece is described as a five-act drama with pantomimes, military manoeuvres, fights, songs and dances. Much emphasis was placed on the spectacular aspect. The phrase ‘à grand spectacle’, is used again and again to indicate one of the main attractions of a melodrama. Charlemagne also points out the importance of the musical element, which made this piece into ‘a true melodrama in the full and most intense sense of the term’. The subject, with a major role given over to the supernatural, exploited the contemporary vogue for the gothic: Everything that can dazzle the eyes was put together with all the marvels of magic that can throw a dark shadow across the soul and terrify the imagination. Charlemagne emphasises the importance of mood in such a play and associates it with the very Aristotelian notion of terror. Already the idea of using scenery to help create the mood is evident, especially in the fifth act, which presents a very similar décor to the one that Pixérécourt would use two years later in the last act of Coelina. The scene represents a wild and terrifying landscape, strewn with rocks. In the background there is a vertiginous bridge over a torrent. Elvira, the heroine, is on the verge of being hurled down into the abyss. In the end, it is the villain, Munster, who is hurled down, and the scene appropriately changes to hell. Apart from the influence of early Romantic landscape painting on the stage, this type of scene, which will reappear constantly in melodrama, and still appears in cinema (even if the precipitous rocks have been replaced by the top of a skyscraper). It exploits the vertical axis, the archetypal visual image of the Fall, that gives an immediate frisson of danger to the spectator. The height, coupled with the possibility that the villain will triumph, has an easily graspable metaphysical significance. The high/low axis also relates to the Manichaean dark/light one, much utilised in this play and in many a subsequent melodrama. The hell scene of the last act, for example, is followed immediately by a transformation scene to a delicious garden where we find the good and virtuous. The closeness of this piece to its pantomime origins is shown not only by whole sequences in which gesture and physical 161


action completely take over, but also in the use of a technique by which the action is frozen in a series of tableaux. In a tense scene in Act IV The sword is raised above Venceslas’ throat. After several tableaux [i.e. attitudes] expressing every shade of love and despair, Elvira, certain that her lover will perish if she does not offer herself up, begins to walk towards the altar. The first act, instead of ending with a single tableau, has a similar series when Venceslas draws his pistol and holds it to the stomach of the villain, Munster, then, ‘after several tableaux, Venceslas pulls the trigger’. What is interesting here is the clear written evidence of a practice which lingered on for a long time in the nineteenth-century melodrama, when key moments were held and movements broken up into a series of stills so as to underline their effect and imprint a strong visual image on the retina of the spectator. C’est le diable gives clear indications for the insertion of music, especially as an accompaniment to spoken passages. In the first act, Munster has a soliloquy during which there are no fewer than eleven musical interventions, each indicated by a dash: I need a comforter, a friend…—my eyelids are becoming heavy—Will sleep, which has been following me for so long, yield to my prayers today—this dark and silent room—gives me a sense of terror.—This bed, empty for such a long time, is the one where my unfortunate father…—I shudder—I’d like to run away, but an unknown power holds my feet prisoner—(he sits on the bed) My eyes are closing, in spite of myself—I cannot keep awake any longer—Almighty God, take away this gloomy vision that obsesses me…give my tired senses just a moment of rest—(he falls asleep). Apart from giving a very clear idea of how music was used in the earlier nineteenth-century melodrama, this passage is also interesting in the way in which it shows how music, originally used to accompany and make more explicit a scene in pantomime, is here being used to accompany the speech that has replaced the dumbshow. C’est le diable contains the basic character types of the melodrama, easily divided up into the good and the bad. Providence 162

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

itself is presented in the character of Sophaia, who declares as early as Act II: I have delivered innocence out of the hands of tyranny. I am satisfied, since crime has been punished and virtue is triumphant. In the final act she has to intervene far more vigorously as a dea ex machina in a situation where nothing short of divine intervention could save the heroine. A final ingredient, which would be important to the earlier melodrama, was the comic element, which here centres on Maurisso, who is the ‘niais’, or simpleton, of the piece. Not all melodramas were as thrilling as C’est le diable, and neither did they all depend on the heady mix of parricide, incest and murder which is to be found in that drama. The Journal des débats of 11 Messidor, an XII (1805), reviewing La Fausse Marquise, a piece staged at the Porte-Saint-Martin, observed that although this play was called a melodrama, it was, in fact, ‘a play that, like every other play, depends on a crime being discovered and punished at the end’. It contained neither the marvellous, magic, fights nor even tragic situations; for this reviewer the essence of melodrama was ‘the marvellous and the grand pathetic’. He then goes on to attack the extravagances of ‘this irregular and undisciplined tragedy’. This view of melodrama, if it sounds a little like eighteenth-century views of Shakespeare as a ‘barbarian’, is interesting in that it associates melodrama directly with tragedy. For all his distaste for melodrama, the writer cannot help but admit that ‘this genre, however imperfect it may be, is the genre of the boulevard today and the one that has the greatest effect on the masses’, and, he adds, the general maxim of the boulevard is to make money rather than to aim for distinction. In another review, two days later, he returns to the attack on melodrama, which he perceives as corrupting the tragic stage and aiming for spectacle and scenic effects. With a nuance of xenophobia he refers to melodrama as an English type of tragedy which the philosophes had preached about as being the only form of tragedy capable of touching the soul, and complains that all the abuses of the melodrama have taken refuge on the boulevard ‘under the protection of the people’. Here he uses the word ‘peuple’; earlier he had used the word ‘multitude’. In both cases it has a pejorative ring. The word ‘peuple’ is used not in the sense of the population 163


as a whole, but to mean the masses (to which the writer does not perceive himself as belonging). A decade later, Pixérécourt published his Guerre au mélodrame, a defence of this form of theatre, whose moral and literary values were by now frequently under attack. The word melodrama had acquired strong pejorative overtones, and was often applied to a bad tragedy which was felt to be too sensational. Napoleon had, of course, promoted a certain revival of neo-classical tragedy at the Théâtre Français. He also disapproved of the poor quality of the boulevard theatre, which he clearly felt did not contribute to the glory of the Empire. The legislation of 1806 and 1807 was largely an attempt to stem the tide of melodrama and other such ‘inferior’ forms of theatre. Pixérécourt observes that ‘for the last twenty years, the melodrama, banished, or all but banished from the big theatres, has taken refuge on the boulevards’. He sets out to show the moral value of melodrama and to suggest that it really posed no threat either to morality or to the more noble genres. He points to the moral improvement of the minor theatres since the end of the eighteenth century, when much of their repertoire consisted of what he terms licentious plays for the amusement of libertines. The essay also sounds a note strongly reminiscent of Mercier in its idea of a truly popular theatre. This should not be a theatre for what he calls ‘the enlightened part’ of the population alone. Those whose tastes, education or state have prevented from acquiring knowledge (and one cannot disagree with the fact that this class constitutes the larger part of society) are no less eager for amusement and have no less right than others to have access to it. They must be provided with something that matches their tastes, their education, their state and, above all, their financial means.8 He also points out in his defence of the melodrama that the successes of the boulevard, far from keeping audiences away from good plays at the big theatres, reflected rather the vast numerical increase in theatre audiences in the early nineteenth century. He then goes on to give some interesting figures to prove the point that in the provincial theatres the melodrama offered little competition to other more respectable forms. In the first instance, he claims that the actors performing melodrama in the provinces 164

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

were not very good, the productions were inadequately rehearsed and the mise en scène was not given the attention it received at the Gaîté or the Ambigu, thus depriving the melodrama of one of its most important attributes. He backs his argument with statistics for productions in the departements for the years 1815 and 1816. The figures he gives are as follows:

Tragedies and comedies Opéras-comiques Grand operas and ballets Vaudevilles Melodramas and pantomimes

1815 4,809 10,261 1,116 5,884 730

1816 4,236 11,009 1,023 6,129 649

There is a certain disingenuousness in these figures, though they do make an important point. The most popular genre by far is the opéracomique. However, the opéra-comique, as Pixérécourt himself readily admits, is one of the eighteenth-century forms out of which the melodrama developed. Opéra-comique and melo-drama, particularly in the early years, frequently used the same material for their plots and also have an almost identical aesthetic. Pixérécourt even offers a definition of a melodrama as ‘nothing more than a lyrical drama in which the music is executed by the orchestra instead of being sung’. One of his own earliest plays, Victor, ou l’enfant de la forêt, was originally intended to be performed as an opéra-comique, and Pixérécourt himself spent a period in the 1820s as director of the Opéra-Comique theatre, which had got itself into difficulties. Pixérécourt calculated that melodramas accounted for about onefortieth of the total number of dramatic performances staged in the provinces, and that the bulk of these, in fact, were performed in the very small number of towns permitted to have a secondary theatre. In 1817, amongst the towns with only one theatre, Rouen could stage only two melodramas out of 1,100 productions, and even his home town of Nancy could run to only 22 melodramas out of 700 plays staged. Lyon, Bordeaux and Marseille each had a secondary theatre (the Célestins, the Gaîté and the Pavillon). Lyon clearly had a public for melodrama, since the Célestins, in the first eleven months of 1817, staged 374 melodramas and pantomimes, as opposed to 635 comedies and tragedies. The Pavillon in Marseille had only been open for three months, which makes a statistical count more difficult. However, Pixérécourt’s findings are telling. Out of the 593 melodramas he counts, 165


437 were performed in the three provincial towns with secondary theatres, and the remainder throughout the rest of France, over half of them being staged at the larger municipal theatres of Rouen, Toulouse, Nancy, Metz, Lille, Dijon and Strasbourg. In his conclusion to the Guerre au mélodrame, Pixérécourt observes that ‘today it is regarded as good form to decry melodrama’. He was no doubt thinking of the mockery of A! A! and A!’s Traité du mélodrame. For A! A! and A! the influence of the melodrama had already extended beyond the boulevard, affecting the aesthetic of other genres. This point is illustrated by Casimir Delavigne’s Vêpres siciliennes (1819), which enjoyed enormous success at the Comédie-Française, and owes much to the melodrama. A! A! and A! claimed that the very actors of the Comédie-Française were trying to ‘reduce Racine and Corneille to the prevailing level of taste’ and that they were ‘throwing themselves into convulsions to melodramatise all their parts’. The sententiousness of the melodrama, and particularly the melodrama of Pixérécourt, offered an easy target for ridicule, and the section on style points to the inflated language and the overuse of the ‘sublime’. Attention is drawn to the fondness for the word ‘dissimulons’ (let us dissemble), and to the liberally bestowed maxims, specially designed to win applause (as did the ‘sentences’ of a Corneille in the seventeenth century). A! A! and A! also comment on the almost obligatory and generally simplistic philosophical element. What struck them with particular force were the various switches of mood and the mixture of genres: The property of a melodrama is to provide diverting emotions: terror, laughter, pity, these are what are called diverting emotions. Any event which brings together these three qualities belongs to the boulevards.9 Only ten years later Victor Hugo, in the preface to his play Cromwell, would plead for this same mixing of emotions on the stage of the Comédie-Française. In a section entitled ‘Des abymes’ (abysses), the importance of scenery and music as a means of creating mood and working on the imagination of the spectator is discussed. By the general term ‘abysses’ we mean all the locations that become accomplices to crime, all the circumstances militating against the sympathetic characters of the play. 166

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

They also comment on the fact that many melodramas are built around a specific décor. A quick glance at a random selection of titles indeed indicates the importance of place to many melodramas and its role as almost one of the dramatis personae. Examples include Les Mines de Pologne, Le Château de Lochleven, Les Mystères du temple. The list is endless and in many cases a subtitle performs this function, as in Le Chien de Montargis, ou la forêt de Bondy. Another framing device to which this treatise refers is the use of music to prepare audiences for entrances of characters and to condition their reaction before anything actually happens: if the whole orchestra together produce dismal and lugubrious sounds, we know that the villain is coming and the whole audience trembles. If the music is soft and melodious, the unfortunate heroine is about to appear and all hearts are moved to pity, but if the measure becomes lively and jolly, it is the simpleton.10 It was this particular use of music that persisted for longest in the melodrama. It originated in the pantomime, where it had an essential signifying function. As the century proceeded, it degenerated sometimes into a too well-worn convention, but it finally came into its own again with the silent cinema. René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt, referred to by A! A! and A! as the Rubens of melodrama, is more often named the ‘Corneille of the boulevard’, because of the sententious speeches which are liberally sprinkled through his plays. The hundreds of performances to which his more popular plays ran, at a time when success was more normally measured in tens, are an indicator that he, more than anyone else at the period, knew how to speak to his audiences. Macaire, the villain of Le Chien de Montargis, expresses his remorse thus: Yes, I did commit this crime. Horrified by myself, devoured with remorse, covered in the blood of my fellow man, I hasten towards the scaffold which calls for me and which, alone, can put an end to the terrible torment I feel. That is where uncontrolled passions can lead the man who is cowardly enough to yield without resistance to their fatal power (he falls on a seat).

167


Whilst a serious debate was still going on amongst authors for the Comédie-Française as to whether tragedy should be written in verse or prose, Pixérécourt and other boulevard writers were busy writing their plays in what was basically the idiom of ordinary people, and this is one of the reasons why some of the more inflated passages sound absurd and easily lend themselves to parody by a more sophisticated audience. Pixérécourt’s success, no doubt, also depended on the fact that he was concerned as much with the production of his plays as with their writing, and his published texts often contain highly detailed and technical descriptions as to how they should be staged. His role was much closer to that of the modern director. Long before Antoine, Stanislavski or Gordon Craig, he showed a concern for the overall effect of the production, gave detailed briefs to his costumiers and scene-painters, indicated to the stagecarpenters how the scenery should be placed and explained to the machinists how technical effects might be produced, as well as told the actors exactly how he wished them to interpret their parts.11 From 1825 to 1835 he was licensee of the Gaîté and thus able to have absolute control over the way in which his plays were staged. Pixérécourt’s sometimes pedantic attention to historical or topographical detail undoubtedly opened up the way for the Romantic notion of local colour. His Robinson Crusoë (1805) played fast and loose with Defoe’s novel, even borrowing the idea of a moving forest from Macbeth, but, more significantly, it tried to recreate life on a Caribbean island. The text had various annotations, including one which indicated that the savages were Caribs and that, consequently, their complexions should be only ‘sallow or lightly tanned’. Their dances and games, including a ‘peacepipe dance’, he derived from Père Lafiteau’s Mœurs des sauvages américains (bibliographic reference given!). The character of Vendredi (Man Friday) spoke pidgin French, though his father had mastered the language perfectly. Ten years later, with Christophe Colomb, Pixérécourt went further and concocted dialogue in Carib from a dictionary.12 In one of his last plays, Latude ou trente-cinq ans de captivité (1834), he accompanied the production of a tale of prolonged and unjust incarceration with an exhibition of the actual chains and instruments of torture from the prison inhabited by his hero. This tendency was not peculiar to Pixérécourt. Many plays of the period showed an obsession for authentic detail. For example, several of the Napoleon plays after the 1830 revolution 168

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

incorporated an actual hat or coat worn by the great man. This was also a feature of plays drawn from the news items, particularly those involving celebrated criminals. Topographical representation was not uncommon in eighteenth-century pantomime. This could range from landscapes to the street outside the theatre. In the early part of the nineteenth century the boulevard theatres had available the services of major scene-painters such as Daguerre, Gué, Allaux and even Ciceri. Scene-painting reached a very high level, with the stage picture taking on the qualities of an animated easel picture. Audiences enjoyed seeing on the stage pictorial representations of specific sites, and many scenes were inspired by albums of engravings of scenery or ruins. Paintings themselves could be translated into the three dimensions of the stage. The best known of these was Géricault’s Le Radeau de la Méduse, which became the subject of Desnoyer’s 1839 Ambigu melodrama and was reinterpreted in scenic terms by Philastre and Cambon. The sensation value of representing the ‘real’ thing on the stage and the accompanying shock of recognition develops the notion of theatre as a reflection or double of life. It implicitly bridges the gulf between the real and that which appears on a stage and in this context is one of the stepping-stones in the move towards the convincing representation of physical reality, which would culminate in late nineteenth-century naturalism. The skill in representing external physical reality has often been one of the attractions of popular art or entertainment forms. This was the purpose of the eighteenth-century peep-show, which ultimately developed on a larger scale into the nineteenth-century panoramas and dioramas. Many of the great sensation melodramas of the later nineteenth century, such as Michel Strogoff or Le Tour du monde en 80 jours owed a large part of their success to the sense of wonder which certain attempts at the representation of reality could provoke. Linked to this, however, was a notion of the educational potential for theatre. Pixérécourt’s plays often contain an implicit history or geography lesson. In England, in the midcentury, Charles Kean went so far as to publicise his scenic productions of Shakespeare for their pedagogic value. In this study there is not the space to examine the 120 or so plays written by Pixérécourt. Of the writers of melodrama, he is the one to have received most attention because of his very real importance in the evolution of the melodrama.13 Pixérécourt also 169


worked in other genres, notably the vaudeville and opéra-comique. He usually wrote alone, but did have a collaborator for a certain number of his pieces. One suspects that he maintained firm control over the material and ensured unity. It would, however, be interesting to know more about the collaboration with Anicet Bourgeois, another considerable author of melodramas. Bourgeois worked with Pixérécourt on Latude, which stretches the usual three acts of the early melodrama to a prologue and five ‘tableaux’ and, unusually for Pixérécourt, extends the action over a number of years (a precedent for this may have been the very popular Ducange melodrama, Trente Ans, ou la vie d’un joueur of 1830). If we compare Latude with the melodramas Pixérécourt was writing during the first decade of the century, the most obvious difference is that, whereas the earlier plays always contained a major expository scene in the first act, Latude begins with very little exposition. The action of the prologue, which explains how Latude came to be imprisoned in the Bastille at the whim of Madame de Pompadour, is a full act in length and precedes the main action by seven years. These prologues became very popular in the 1830s and 1840s—almost all of the plays of Bouchardy are prefaced by a prologue. In many cases there are babies in the prologue who are grown-up people for the rest of the play. In some plays, such as Dennery’s Marie-Jeanne, the mother in the prologue would be played by the same actress as the daughter in the rest of the play, though, more usually, such plays offered an actor a chance to show a range of skills by playing a character of at least two different ages. The exposition scenes of most early melodramas were relatively crude. The model was that of neo-classical dramaturgy (generally a conversation between two characters) but the method of presenting the required information was more direct, and concerned with giving the audience the necessary information. There was seldom much attention given to making the conversation sound natural. L’Homme à trois visages, ou le proscrit (1801), which put Venice and Italy in fashion as a setting for melodramas and, later, for Romantic dramas (e.g. Delavigne’s Marino Faliero or Vigny’s version of Othello, le More de Venise, not to mention Musset’s Lorenzaccio), opens with the elderly senator, Alfieri, reading an anonymous letter requesting a meeting. Immediately he has read the letter, Vivaldi, the unjustly banished hero, appears and explains that he has come back to save the state 170

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

from treason, informing him, rather enigmatically, that he is also one of the leaders of the plot to overthrow the doge. He then launches into an immensely long and complicated monologue, describing his life over the past few years, his various identities and his plans. The amount of necessary information that the audience is expected to retain is considerable, even though the monologue is prefaced with the line ‘Listen to me very carefully’, and, in playing, would almost certainly have been accompanied by a ‘feu’, or stamping of the foot, which was a much used device on the melodrama stage as a means of commanding the audience’s attention for an important line or speech (the need for this probably tells us something about the general noise level in the popular theatres, when the audience was not yet listening in rapt attention). L’Homme à trois visages, like Latude, is an example of the melodrama in which the love interest is secondary to the question of whether Vivaldi will overcome the plots of his enemy (and rival) Orsano, save Venice and have his innocence recognised (and also his secret marriage to the doge’s daughter, Rosemonde). Henriette in Latude is closer to the persecuted heroines of a different type of play, but although she suffers from extreme hardship and at one point reaches the verge of suicide, she is never directly oppressed, let alone sexually under threat. Her powerlessness springs from the simple fact that she is a ‘woman of the people’. It is ultimately thanks to her that Latude, now an old man, is released from his imprisonment. L’Homme à trois visages has a clearly defined villain, but the real villain in Latude is a system rather than an individual. The police spy, Saint-Marc, is primarily an instrument of that system. In L’Homme à trois visages, Vivaldi manages the whole plot himself, without the intervention of providence. In this the play is similar to the ‘revenge’ melodrama, which will appear later in the century with Bouchardy’s Gaspardo le pêcheur or the latter parts of Monte Cristo, where hero and justicer are blended in one. In Latude, on the other hand, providence is represented by M. de Malesherbes, described by Latude as ‘a god for me’, who in turn represents the benevolent monarch. In purely political terms, the evil aspects of the ancien régime are here presented as all emanating from Madame de Pompadour. The view of a just and equitable monarch in 1834 would, of course, reflect on LouisPhilippe and his much propagated image of himself as the ‘father’ of the country. At a period when the king was being ridiculed by 171


artists such as Daumier and under attack from various quarters, it is interesting to see the theatre endorsing the status quo. The theme of imprisonment is a frequent one in the theatre of Pixérécourt, and the prison scene itself is a part of the stock-intrade of the melodrama. Imprisonment, and the resultant helplessness of the victim, had featured largely in the eighteenthcentury novel since Pamela. It received added reinforcement with the gothic novel, especially Lewis’ The Monk (translated into French in 1797), with its dungeons and souterrains. These novels, read predominantly by the middle classes, were accompanied by illustrations which gave visual reinforcement and a whole visual vocabulary that could easily be translated to the stage. A further important visual source, which scenepainters were not slow to borrow from, was the Piranesi series of engravings of prisons. One of the most popular plays of the revolutionary period was Monvel’s Les Victimes cloîtrées, and Loaisel de Tréogate was not far behind with his more spectacular Château du diable. With Les Mines de Pologne, Pixérécourt picked up this theme, his underground prison, as always in melodrama, being a place of claustration for the innocent and the unfortunate. Pixérécourt’s melodramas are neatly constructed and in the realm of melodrama he could be seen as having as great a claim to being the creator of the well-made play as Scribe had with light comedy. It has frequently been noticed that his dramaturgy is a classical dramaturgy made readily accessible to the less educated classes. The unities are followed fairly strictly, with a Few exceptions, such as Latude, which covers thirty-five years and ranges from Versailles to the Bastille to Amsterdam and back to Paris again, or La Fille de l’exilé (1818), one of the prototypes of the journey melodrama, with a heroine who goes to seek out and rescue her unjustly exiled father from Siberia. As well as being able to handle his plots in such a way that the audience’s attention would be held, Pixérécourt had an instinctive understanding of the value of contrast. He had no great theory about the mixing of genres, but his introduction of comic figures into serious plays was something that was alien to more literary French theatre and, in the early part of the century, regarded as barbaric. The notion of purity of genre was unknown in popular theatre. Pixérécourt exploited not only the mixture of the serious and the comic, but also every possible contrast, from the Manichaean dualism of dark and light (in a physical sense), 172

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

good and evil, joyful and pathetic, playing on the value of juxtaposition and of the swift passage from one extreme to another. It was this intuitive understanding of a very basic aesthetic principle that helped him create a rhythm and maintain the attention of his audiences as much as the relatively trite, and often simple, plots of the plays themselves. Subsequent writers of melodrama generally adhere to this principle, which is one of the hallmarks of the genre. In his ‘Dernières réflexions de l’auteur sur le mélodrame’, written to accompany the publication by Charles Nodier of the Théâtre choisi,14 Pixérécourt justified his career in the theatre with the claim that when he started writing during the 1790s ‘a new theatre had to be invented’. He also vigorously dissociated himself from the Romantic movement which, in his eyes, had produced a large number of plays which he qualified as ‘bad, dangerous, unclean, and devoid of interest or truth’. This may seem strange when one looks at the obvious influence of melodrama on the Romantic theatre. Romantic drama, however, lacks the clear-cut morality of the contemporary melodrama. Hugo can touch on taboo subjects such as incest (Lucrèce Borgia) or allow a courtesan to be a heroine (Marion Delorme), Vigny’s Chatterton could feel an adulterous passion, and Musset’s theatre would have a number of problems with the censors on moral grounds. Pixérécourt’s ‘new’ theatre was being written for what he regarded as new audiences, the virtuous ‘people’, and not the corrupted élite. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find that his dramatic mentors in his search for moral and dramatic subjects were Mercier and Sedaine. The eighteenth-century drame bourgeois is always near the surface in his plays, and nowhere more so than in Coelina. Apart from being a very neat adaptation of a long and rambling novel, the play has most of the features of the drame, coupled with a slightly more sensational plot than average, a few very strong effects, and a use of scenery and effects in the last act to enhance atmosphere, and not simply to provide a background. Durafour, the benevolent father of Stephany, might have walked straight out of any eighteenth-century bourgeois play, and it is interesting to see how quickly his benevolence evaporates when he learns (and instantly believes) the news that his beloved ‘niece’ Coelina is not his niece and, additionally, is illegitimate. In fact illegitimacy, as in much eighteenth-century theatre, is coyly covered up with a secret marriage, which makes everything all right. The peasant ballet, 173


with wedding garlands, owes something to the fairground and opéra-comique tradition and provides a feature that would be de rigueur in the early melodrama. By 1830 the ballet had all but disappeared from the melodrama and found a more appropriate home in the féerie. The comic role of the miller, Michaud, allows for a popular element, to contrast with the more serious ‘middleclass’ protagonists. Michaud (played by the comic actor Raffile) has no false modesty about him: ‘I am bluff, loyal, a bit of a chatterbox, but totally frank’, and the audience knows immediately that he can be trusted. How could an audience avoid trusting a character who, in the middle of a stormy scene in a wild landscape, with a conscience-stricken and desperate villain lurk ing, can cheerfully sing: Pendant le jour, je bêche. La foudre sur ma tête Gronde sans m’effrayer; Je ris de la tempête, Et brave le danger. Franc, joyeux, charitable, Je crains peu le trépas; Ce jour n’est redoutable Que pour les scélerats. (During the day I dig. Thunder rumbles over my head without frightening me. I laugh at the storm and brave danger. Frank, jolly and charitable, I’m not afraid of death. Only the wicked fear to face death.) He is a simple man, but not a simpleton. To some extent he is doubled by Faribole, Monsieur Dufour’s servant, who also introduces an element of popular speech and is closer to the simpleton, who will figure in many, though not all, of Pixérécourt’s plays, and who is a fairly constant figure in the early melodrama, In later plays, a reading of the script does not always indicate a comic role, but in checking the actors of the melodrama theatres, it often transpires that certain roles (especially servants and assistant villains), right through the century, were played by a first or second comic. In the first wave of melodrama, two other authors stand out, L.C.Caigniez and Victor Ducange. Caigniez is often coupled with Pixérécourt, though his popularity did not last as long. His first 174

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

melodrama, Le Jugement de Salomon, was staged by Corsse at the Ambigu in 1802.15 It hinged around the ownership of a child and the struggle between its rightful, if unmarried, mother and the powerful Tamira, who had originally stolen the child in order to hold on to an inheritance at a moment when there was a risk that her husband might repudiate her. In the stolen or substituted child we find one of the most persistent themes of the melodrama, which will continue right up to Les Deux Gosses at the end of the century. This is pure romance material, complete with birthmarks, based on a well-known folk-tale type story derived from the Bible. An example of the shorthand developed by writers of melodrama is the first mention of a stolen child, promptly followed by the entrance of Tamira accompanied by a child. By a sort of false logic frequently exploited in the popular theatres, the audiences would have no doubt but that this must be the child in question. Stage directions in these early melodramas, at a time when more literary plays were still sparing with such things, indicate the link with the pantomime. Body language says much that words cannot convey. In the judgment scene, the entrance of the ‘bad’ woman and of the ‘good’ woman establishes immediately which is which: Tamira enters first, on the left, haughty and disdainful. She scarcely bows to Salomon. Leila, followed by Deborah, comes in next, on the right, modestly, with her eyes lowered, and bows deeply on the steps of the throne. The play hangs, as do so many later melodramas, on the opposition between the rich and powerful, on the one hand, and the poor and therefore helpless, on the other. As yet, there is no clearly conceived class notion, but the economically oppressed classes would automatically identify with the frustrating powerlessness of Leila. At the end of the play Leila, as frequently happens to the humble in the early melodrama, will turn out to be ‘well-born’. The exotic quality of Le Jugement de Salomon is provided by an Egyptian ballet, a view of the Jordan in the first act and a procession of laden camels. Another type of exotic that was very popular in the first fifteen or twenty years of the century was the central European: Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian or even Russian.

175

8 P.Decourcelle, Les Deux Gosses postcard (author’s collection). The tear-jerker built around children, legitimate or otherwise, separated from their parents and falling into the clutches of the criminal classes was an almost unfailing recipe for success in the popular theatres.

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

Napoleonic campaigns had awoken a consciousness of the existence of these countries in the popular imagination. Pixérécourtcashed in on it in a number of plays from Tékéli to La Fille del’exilé. Caigniez’s most important contribtion was La Forêtd’Hermanstadt (Ambigu, 1810), whose heroine, the Princess ofBulgaria, to avoid being murdered, has to spend much of the playas a servant in an inn, whilst she is impersonated by the unpleasant Olfride, who will attempt to marry her fiancé, Boleslas. Thefirst act uses the vocabulary of the gothic, with a ruined castle in aforest, the remains of stained-glass windows and an announcement by Karl, who is involved in the plot to make away with thePrincess, that The sight of these ruins disturbs me strangely. How appropriate this frightful lonely place is for the carrying-out of sinister designs. Needless to say, much of the act is accompanied by thunder and lightning. However, once a decision is made not to murder the princess, daylight returns. The lighting in La Forêt d’Hermanstadt has a strong atmospheric function. In Caigniez’s best known play, La Pie voleuse (PorteSaint-Martin, 1815), there is a striking example of lighting used in a realistic manner possibly unique at the period. In the second act, Annette, the servant girl, comes into the darkened room in the farmhouse and opens the shutters, whereupon ‘the footlights are raised and the whole stage lit’. The same scene also shows the importance of props in the popular theatres. On the sideboard is a basket of cutlery, and on the table, several piles of plates, glasses, etc. This also indicates a degree of realism and attention to details of staging that is well ahead of the official theatres. La Pie voleuse remains familiar today because of Rossini’s opera. It also provides one of the prototypes of the ‘miscarriage of justice’ melodrama, of which Le Courrier de Lyon (1850) is the outstanding example. Circumstantial evidence is entirely against the servant-girl Annette. Her position is weakened by the fact that she is trying to protect her father, a deserter, and is therefore in a false situation. There is an unpleasant magistrate (whose advances she has rejected), but no actual villain. The system demands that Annette should be hanged for the theft of a couple of spoons, and 177


the third act, after the trial, has a change of scene to the scaffold (such a scene had worked well in Le Chien de Montargis the year before). The magpie’s nest may be discovered in time, but implicit in the whole situation is the alienation of the poor and helpless from the law, and the notion that the law belongs to the propertied. A stronger social note is to be found in the plays of Victor Ducange, who started his career as a liberal journalist under the Restoration and suffered imprisonment for his political views. With the less strict regime of Charles X he returned to France from Brussels, where he had taken refuge, and turned his attentions to the popular stage. He had already written some plays, of which the most successful had been Calas (Ambigu, 1819), a reworking of the story that Voltaire had made famous. He emphasised the horrible situation of a father falsely accused of murdering his son. This was another play dependent for its effect on an error of justice, but without a last-minute reprieve. Subscribing to the melodrama format, Ducange created a villain who is unmasked at the end, but is able to leave the stage with no more than the curses of the Calas family. In Thérèse, ou l’orpheline de Genève, another successful tear-jerker, he worked again on the notion of an innocent person persecuted and accused of the most horrendous crimes. Here also the unmasking of the villain provides the crucial scene of the play. In this case it is by means of a trick which confronts him with the ‘ghost’ of his supposed victim. The heroine is finally vindicated and justice is carried out. Ducange’s reputation hangs on Trente Ans, ou la vie d’un joueur, written with Dinaux (Prosper Goubaix), which would remain popular for the rest of the century and provide a vehicle for Frédérick Lemaître, who continued to play the role of Georges de Germany until the end of his career (in the original production at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1827, Marie Dorval played opposite him). At one level this is a cautionary tale of the evils of gambling. The third act contains a scene based on folk-tale, where Georges’ son returns home, wealthy, and is murdered by his father before his identity has been revealed. With La Fille de l’exilé Pixérécourt had stretched the unity of time to a number of months and expanded the unity of place to take in a journey across the Russian empire. Ducange virtually created a new type of drama with the three episodes of Trente Ans, which occupy as many years. The three ‘époques’ into which the piece is divided are 1790, 1805 and 1820. It allowed 178

THE EARLY MELODRAMA

Frédérick to play a character at three periods of his life and opened up the way to a new treatment of time in the melodrama, virtually creating the notion of the episodic play, a format particularly suitable for the adaptation of novels. It allowed audiences to see the whole action and diminished the reliance on exposition. Trente Ans is full of the inflated theatrical language of the earlier melodrama, which lent itself so easily to parody. For example, in Act I Georges’ dying father bursts in on him: Germany: Georges: Amélie and Louise: Germany:

(to his son) Stop! (immobile) Heavens! … (at Germany’s knees) Mercy, mercy. No, the voice of God can be heard in the last words of a dying man. Listen! The destiny of a gambler is written on the gates of hell. Ungrateful son! You have already brought your father to the grave! You will be an unfaithful husband and an unnatural father; and your life will come to an end in poverty, blood and remorse. Georges: Father! … Germany: I give you my curse! (falls) All: Ah! (Amélie and Louise kneeling at Germany’s feet. All present are struck with dismay.) The literary qualities of this are almost non-existent, but, at the same time, it is an attempt to provide a high-flown style suitable for the sentiments expressed in the play. It is as much a stage language in its own way as the alexandrine verse of tragedy, and audiences were quick to adapt to its conventions and accept it as a representation of real speech. Certain vaudevilles and ‘tableaux populaires’ might derive a part of their comic effect from putting argot and the language of the common people on stage. In the early melodrama the authors aimed at a type of universal stage language in which the words often served to reinforce situations that were already being expressed through mime and gesture. With the 1830s, if some authors, such as Bouchardy, continued to used the schematised and highly presentational language of the early melodrama, there was a distinct move towards more realistic speech, with characters from the poorer classes being given something approaching argot. 179

12 THE SOCIAL MELODRAMA

By 1830, the term ‘mélodrame’ had often been abandoned in favour of the more respectable ‘drame’. In most cases this involved graduating from the earlier three acts to a five-act structure, but otherwise the resemblance to the literary ‘drame romantique’ is relatively superficial and the apparent similarities are often deceptive. The ‘drame romantique’ was still a form of high culture (whether performed at the Comédie-Française or the Porte-Saint-Martin), whereas the melodrama had a closer relationship with popular culture. As melodramas became longer they ceased to be presented in mixed bills, but filled the whole of what was often a long evening. The label ‘melodrama’ is often used very loosely. Despite a strong family resemblance between many melodramas, it was not a fixed genre but one that varied from one author to another within the same period and, more significantly, as the century progressed. The relatively simplistic moral message and the sententious language of the melodrama of the early part of the century hark back to the eighteenth-century drame in tone and cling to the notion of the theatre as a school for virtue. Most of the plots of these plays are very simple, and the majority, whilst demanding very specific scenery, do not require numerous changes of scene. Pixérécourt, for example, remains very close to the classical unities. In Charles le téméraire, he even felt the need to apologise for a change of scene within an act. He justified this a little pedantically, arguing that he needed to depict the actual spot where, historically, Charles is supposed to have perished. In the 1830s and 1840s audiences were beginning to regard the old melodrama as rather childish. This change in tastes partly reflects changes in audience composition—the ‘embourgeoisement’ 180

THE SOCIAL MELODRAMA

9 Characters from Bouchardy’s Le Sonneur de St Paul (cheaply printed sheets for popular consumption; Musée Carnavalet). Unlike the rather more elegant Martinet prints of actors in their roles, this is an example of a much cheaper type of reproduction of characters from a popular show and relates to the English ‘penny-plain, twopencecoloured’ toytheatre sheets.

of the boulevard—but also reflects the continuing process with popular entertainment, where novelty is important and where one generation’s adult entertainment becomes another generation’s children’s fare. An element of social snobbery also is only too ready to downgrade popular entertainment and to equate the lesseducated classes with children. The downgrading of Guignol in the latter part of the nineteenth century from robust popular entertainment to amusement for middle-class children’s parties illustrates the point only too well. In the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s melodramas are often marked by the sheer complexity of their plots, and the increasing number of scene changes and spectacular effects, rendered possible by the developments in stage machinery and technical possibilities. The older stereotypes also become blurred. The virtuous hero, for example, is often replaced by the avenger, and the pursuit of justice, at all costs, becomes an end in itself. The na’if 181


or simpleton usually disappears, either developing into a secondary hero, such as Pierrot in La Grâce de Dieu or else becoming a sort of comic sidekick to the villain. In some cases the villain himself (or herself) also vanishes, or becomes less sharply defined and, in some instances, society itself is cast as the villain. The heroine also evolves and does not always seem to be an innocent victim, like Coelina, who has stepped straight out of the pages of an eighteenth-century novel. For a long time the sexual purity of the heroine was essential, and many early melodramas show female virtue under threat. From 1830 sex becomes a far more important issue than it had been before. The eighteenth-century convention of the secret marriage, introduced out of respect for the proprieties, could no longer be taken seriously. Dennery’s Gaspard Hauser hinges on the covering up of illegitimacy, La Closerie des Genêts explores the situation of the unmarried mother, and the darker Chiffonnier de Paris includes attempted infanticide as a way of covering a social indiscretion. Hugo’s Marion Delorme proved unacceptable to the censors in 1829, but was staged at the Comédie-Française in 1831. In it he created the stereotype of the golden-hearted courtesan, and a precedent for Dumas fils’ Marguerite in La Dame aux camélias, twenty years later. Dumas’ Antony, with its passion and its sympathetic treatment of adultery, took the dramatic treatment of sex even further. Although staged at the Porte-Saint-Martin, this was really a Comédie-Française type of play, despite its use of many of the conventions of melodrama. By and large, the audience of the boulevards, with its relatively strict moral standards, was not ready for anything so explicit. They still preferred to see their heroines in danger, but not to see them succumb. The July Monarchy was the period when the theatre turned increasingly to social issues. Although the gothic melodrama and the historical melodrama (often very close to the Romantic drama) continued to attract audiences, the older melodrama of Pixérécourt and others had, in a sense, run its course. Paul Ginisty’s book, Le Mélodrame, for example, stops in the 1830s. Three authors who continued and developed the early melodrama were Anicet Bourgeois, Adolphe Dennery and Joseph Bouchardy. The first two were indefatigable collaborators and had a hand in virtually every famous melodrama over a period of about forty years. Bouchardy, on the other hand, generally wrote his plays alone and his name became almost a byword for a melodrama with a complicated plot and an amazing series of 182


terrifying situations, bound together by the most astounding coincidences and expressed in a semi-literate but would-be grandiloquent style. In his review of La Juive de Constantine (Porte Saint-Martin, 1846), Théophile Gautier wrote his frequently quoted lines which reflect the change that had come over the melodrama by the 1830s, the new masters of the genre he describes as powerful and complicated masters of construction, whose frameworks are more complicated than the forest of beams in the bell-tower of a cathedral—they caused us much labour in drawing up diagrams when we had to give a synopsis in our column in the newspaper.1 This very complication of plot required great skill in handling, if audiences were not to be totally lost. The result is that the better melodramatists acquired a remarkable ability to handle a large number of situations, each of which needed careful setting up. Joseph Bouchardy’s plays would not satisfy any literary criterion of excellence. Yet, for a period from the late 1830s to the early 1850s, he had his finger very accurately on the pulse of the popular imagination. He was unashamedly a purveyor of excitement and sensation. He was of artisan background himself and his voice is one of the most authentically popular amongst the writers of melodrama. His three enduring triumphs, translated into various languages and frequently revived, were Gaspardo le pêcheur (Ambigu, l857), Le Sonneur de Saint-Paul (Gaîté, 1838) and Lazare le pâtre (Ambigu, 1840).2 Bouchardy favours plays with eponymous heroes who spend most of the action working beneath the cover of a secondary identity. They are generally both men of the people and righters of wrongs. Nearly all the plays begin with a prologue in which a crime, usually a murder, is committed, and the prologue generally ends with a fatherless infant, or infants, who re-appears as the juvenile lead in the remaining acts of the play, usually set fifteen or twenty years later. The juvenile leads are never the protagonists. They are young people deprived of their rightful inheritance and victims of villains who, even if poor in the prologue, have now become rich and powerful (and also changed their identity in most cases). The hero is a leading role, a young man in the prologue and a middleaged man thereafter, who acts as a visible 183


manifestation of providence, watching over the young in peril and ultimately becomingthe avenger. Bouchardy continues the tradition of the historicalmelodrama, but the sentiments expressed are populist. Gaspardoends with a popular uprising against the lecherous Duke Visconti,who has caused Catarina, wife of the fisherman, Gaspardo, toturn a dagger on herself rather than submit to him. Lazare le pâtre,set in 1440, looks at the origins of the Medici dynasty, when theywere still close to their peasant roots. Lazare (Raphael Salviati indisguise), spends most of the play in prison, having been poisonedin the first act and rendered temporarily dumb. He owes his life tothis muteness, which he then maintains for three-quarters of theplay, finally breaking his silence to give a vital message to thewatch, and thus saving the life of his nephew Juliano, and upsetting the plans of the treacherous Judael. When he breaks silence itis a huge surprise for the audience as well as a major plot device.In Le Sonneur de Saint-Paul, John is blinded in the prologue by agunshot, remains blind for most of the play, is cured by anoperation, but uses his supposed blindness to entrap the villainLord Bedfort, governor of the Tower of London, alias WilliamSmith. The trapping of the villain is an important part ofBouchardy’s dramaturgy. In the remarkably short last act ofLazare (Bouchardy’s last acts are always very short), Lazare confronts Judael who brazenly tells him that he has no witnesses to allthe crimes committed, whereupon Lazare, with a wonderfultheatrical flourish, draws a curtain at the back of the stage toreveal the duke and court in session, having heard Judael condemn himself out of his own mouth. Less identifiable than Bouchardy, but far more prolific, was Anicet Bourgeois, whose career spanned five decades. He illustrates remarkably well the facility of the better writer of melodramas, working usually in collaboration—his co-authors included Pixérécourt, Ducange, Dumas, Paul Féval, Ponson du Terrail, Maillan, Masson, Dugué, etc. Unlike Bouchardy, who began to seem terribly old-fashioned to the audiences of the Second Empire, Bourgeois continued, producing success after success. It is sometimes hard to pick out what was the specifically Bourgeois element in any play, but a major part of his contribution was his craftsmanship. He could turn his hand to almost every type of melodrama, as well as to the féerie and the vaudeville. Amongst the plays in which he had a hand were Latude, with Pixérécourt, and the gothic melodrama, La Nonne sanglante 184


(Porte-Saint-Martin, 1835), with Maillan. La Nonne sanglante remained popular for years and ended up in the repertoire of the travelling puppet-theatres. It uses the whole vocabulary of the gothic melodrama, from catacombs to convents to burning castles, with a cast that includes a gypsy band, nuns, nobles and even Cagliostro as one of the dramatis personae, and all the accompanying effects of terror. The real power of the drama comes from a revenge perpetrated by a woman whose immense love has been turned into a terrifying hatred. A very different type of play was Marceau, ou les enfants de la République, for which Masson was Bourgeois’ collaborator. It received a first performance on 22 June 1848, but was interrupted by the revolution and did not have a second performance until two months later. This very patriotic play had been kept off the stage for some time because it presented the character of Robespierre and evoked the Revolutionary period. When revived by Castellano at the Théâtre Historique (Place du Châtelet) in 1876, it had a successful run of four months. Openly republican in its sentiments, inflamed with patriotism and full of reminders of the great days of the revolution, this drama was much applauded, despite its faults, more for its thesis than for its intrinsic merit.3 Anicet Bourgeois was equally at home with the pathos of foundlings in Les Orphelins du Pont Notre-Dame (1849), the exotic travel and excitement of Les Pirates de la savane (1858), the urban melodrama of La Fille des chiffonniers (1861), or the historical melodrama of La Bouquetière des innocents (1862) and the cloakand-dagger Le Bossu (1862). Anicet Bourgeois is in many ways a similar figure to Adolphe Dennery or d’Ennery. Dennery is easily one of the most prolific melodrama writers of the nineteenth century. His career alone spanned over fifty years. His first play, Emile ou le fih d’un pair de France, dates from 1831 and was written in collaboration with Charles Desnoyer. The majority of the 250 or so plays by Dennery were, in fact, collaborative ventures. The names of Dennery and Bourgeois come together as authors of Gaspard Hauser (Ambigu-Comique, 1838). This pathetic story of the young man, incarcerated for the first eighteen years of his existence, his life constantly under threat, so as to conceal a social indiscretion on the part of his nobly born mother, was a news item 185


about a recent scandal in Vienna. The events also provided a mystery which has never been resolved.4 Although Dennery might spend as much as a year working on a play, in this case topicality was all important. According to Le Magasin théâtral, which published it, the whole piece was written, learned and staged in nineteen days. The plot is comparatively simple and harks back to the older melodrama. However, the clear lines of demarcation between characters are blurred. Gaspard himself is the completely innocent victim, shut up in a souterrain virtually since birth, and, for much of the play unaware of the danger his life is in. In the first two acts he is not only a prisoner, but is also played in the tradition of the mute or semi-articulate savage, with a very limited vocabulary and a need to supplement his small range of words with dumbshow. By Act III he has learned to speak, but may still be regarded as a relative simpleton. In the last act he makes a heroic choice to sacrifice himself to preserve the honour of his recently rediscovered mother. The elderly count, grandfather of Gaspard, who has threatened Gaspard’s life for most of the play, finally undergoes a conversion. The young doctor, Frédéric, has the function of a liberating hero, but is not a figure of enormous dramatic interest. The spectacular key scene of the show is Act II, which presents simultaneously a part of the grounds of the château and the souterrain in which Gaspard is imprisoned. This type of double scene was a popular convention on the melodrama stage. The front wall of the souterrain was, of course, removed, so that the audience could see in, and the high point was the moment when Frédéric broke through from the garden and, symbolically, lightened the darkness in which Gaspard has spent so many years. Le Magasin théâtral chooses this episode for its front-page illustration, and by so doing fixes an almost archetypal image in a cheap printed form. La Grâce de Dieu (Dennery and Lemoine, Théâtre de la Gaîté, 1841) was one of the great tear-jerkers of the century. Although Dennery was first and foremost an entertainer, and certainly did not have the seriousness of social purpose of a Felix Pyat, the background of the play reflects the very serious poverty and hardship to be found in rural France of the 1840s. The first act is set against this background, with a threat of eviction hanging over the heads of the parents of the heroine, Marie, who are behind with their rent. Savoy, like Auvergne, was one of the regions that 186


sent seasonal workers to Paris for want of a sufficient economic structure in the region. Dennery and Lemoine based their work on Fanchon la vielleuse (the sub-title of La Grâce de Dieu is La Nouvelle Fanchon). The eighteenth-century setting, with costumes a la Pompadour, was a popular one. It provided a satisfactory level of spectacle and satisfied an implicit nostalgia for the ancien regime, however much the principles of that period might be condemned by the tenor of the play. La Grâce de Dieu has more songs than the majority of melodramas of the period and in this resembles a vaudeville more closely than the standard melodrama. What appears to have been a novelty in this production, however, was the use of one song as a sort of leitmotif: ‘La Grâce de Dieu’, the song given to Marie with her mother’s parting blessing, which will protect her in the dangerous and evil world of the big city, Paris. This song crops up at almost all the moments of crisis in the action either to provide moral support, act as a direct agent of the plot, or to supply an added dimension of pathos. The progression of scenes in La Grâce de Dieu combines two of the stock antitheses of the melodrama: town and country; poverty and wealth. Thus, Act I is set in a poor chalet. It is, of course, a conventionalised theatrical chalet, open at the back to show a picturesque view of the mountains of Savoy. This particular scenic convention dates back to the work of Daguerre around 1820. The panoramic view of the mountains surrounding the chalet is a Romantic reminder of the presence of nature, as yet uncorrupted by man. Act II removes the heroine to a neatly furnished garret in Paris. She is in the big city, but not corrupted by it. The third act introduces the splendour of the Marquise de Sivry’s salon (the set is at least five wings deep as opposed to the three-wing depth of Act II), and also is the scene in which Marie is in greatest danger. The elegant salon is a threatening trap for the helpless and unsophisticated peasant girl, who has been brought there partly as a piece of folk entertainment to be patronised and partly because the Marquise de Sivry wishes to find out if her son Arthur is really in love with Marie and to put a stop to any possible misalliance. Act IV shows Marie virtually a captive (still virtuous) in Arthur’s bachelor apartment. The setting may be more elegant, but Marie is in fact a prisoner. However, being hidden here at least keeps her from being sent by the Marquise to a real prison, La Salpêtrtère. This is a carpenter’s scene to allow for the elaborate setting of Act V to be prepared 187


behind it. Physically, it is the most restricted scene of the play, which heightens the sense of claustration, but, like many prisons, it has a window on the outside world. Marie is forbidden to look out this window, and when she does, it is to perceive the wedding procession of Arthur on its way to church, a sight which causes her to lose her mind. The fifth act brings the action back to the world of the peasantry of Savoy. The elaborate and spectacular multilevel set was specially designed to give a view of a road down through the mountains, by which Marie can make her final return to the village. Like Act I, it works on the Daguerre principle of a relatively dark foreground framing a panorama. In the foreground there is a barn with tables and benches laid out for peasant rejoicings at the return of the seasonal workers, whilst the back shows the practicable road coming down through the mountains, crossing the stage from left to right and then turning back to cross from right to left, thus maximising the amount of time for characters to arrive. In Marie Jeanne, ou la femme du peuple (1843), Dennery provided Marie Dorval with one of her greatest roles. The subject of the play explored social issues that were increasingly coming to the fore in the theatre of the 1840s. It anticipates the world of Zola’s L’Assommoir, with the problem of a seamstress whose carefully amassed savings are rapidly wasted by a drunken husband and who is obliged to leave her child at the foundling hospital because of the poverty to which she has been reduced. A child separated from its parents is a recurrent theme in the theatre of Dennery, from Gaspard Hauser to Les Deux Orphelines (1874). Francisque Sarcey, writing about an 1882 revival of Marie Jeanne, with Marie Laurent in the title role, mentions a famous episode when the young Marie Laurent wrote to Marie Dorval from Brussels for advice as to how she should play the part, and received a brief note: The part has six hundred lines. There are six hundred effects. Come and see me and I shall give you a private performance.5 According to the anecdote, Marie Laurent listened to Marie Dorval until five o’clock in the morning, and then returned to Brussels, where she appeared with great success in the role that evening. What the story brings out is Dennery’s enormous sense of theatre. These were 188


10 A.Dennery, Marie-Jeanne, with Marie Dorval in the title role. L’Illustration 22 November 1845 (Bibliothèque Forney). This play is almost feminist in its focus on the situation of a woman of the popular classes and her helplessness in the society of the midnineteenth century.

actors’ plays and the text was a score that had to be given value in performance. Indeed, one of the reasons for Dennery’s success was his careful selection of performers for his plays.6 The type of sentimental tear-jerker represented by MarieJeanne with such lines as ‘My child! Give me back my child!’ survived a long time. Dennery himself, together with Eugène Cormon, realised this when they produced Les Deux Orphelines at the Porte Saint-Martin in 1874. Sarcey, in his review, describes the play as La Grâce de Dieu brought up to date.7 The similarities between the two are striking. However, there are now two heroines, which will allow for a doubling of pathetic scenes. Both are orphans, which makes them more pathetic, though at the end of the play one will marry the young nobleman whom she loves (and because of whom she has been thrown into the prison of La Salpêtrière and 189


nearly sent off to Guyana) and the other who, in addition to her problems, is blind (but curable), discovers the mother who had abandoned her to conceal an indiscretion and who is now able to adopt her. Francisque Sarcey called the play ‘melodrama re-discovered’ and devoted considerable space in Le Temps to a detailed review of the play and of Dennery’s craft as a dramatist.8 His one objection was to the last act, which is comparatively weak, and amounts to very little more than a tying-up of loose ends once the excitement and the real perils are finished with. Starting with the arrival of the stage-coach in the first act, there are a number of effects scenes in the play, where situation is vastly enhanced by the setting. These include the second-act scene in which the poor blind Louise, in the clutches of the terrible Mère Frochard, is dressed in rags and made to sing a song and beg outside the church of Saint Sulpice in the snow. In Act III, Henriette finds herself in the prison of La Salpêtrière, and is saved from being sent to a prison colony by the repentant sinner, Marianne (ex-mistress of La Frochard’s sinister son Jacques). The highlight of this particular scene, however, is the moral decision which the nun, Sister Geneviève, who has never told a lie in her life, now has to make as to whether she will allow the deception which will permit Henriette, whom she knows to be innocent of any crime, to escape the prison, and for Marianne to take her place. Excitement reaches a peak in the following scene, where the two girls are reunited in Frochard’s attic-prison, are nearly murdered by Jacques, and then saved by the deformed Pierre, his despised brother known as ‘the abortion’, who loves Louise and rises to heroic stature at the crucial moment, killing his murderous brother, and announcing theatrically: ‘I await the law.’ With Les Bohémiens de Paris (Ambigu-Comique, 1843), Dennery, in company with Grangé, made one of the first of his forays into the underworld of Paris, a popular theme of the 1840s, after the publication of Sue’s novel Les Mystères de Paris in 1842.9 Despite a populist slant, there is not much here that evokes the social anger of the Frédérick Lemaître vehicles, Robert Macaire, Vautrin or Le Chiffonnier de Paris.10 In Dennery’s play the villain, Montorgueil, is in fact François Renaud, ‘king of the bohemians’. In the first act he defines ‘bohemians’ as a sort of alternative society running in parallel with a society which appears to subscribe to certain moral values. It is, however, a world closer to 190


that of Robert Macaire than to Henri Murger’s poeticised ‘vie de Bohème’: You bump into bohemians every day in Paris. Some are on the top rungs of the social ladder—they are called jurisconsults, ex-prefects of the Empire, or knights of the Golden Spur. They can be found at the Café Tortoni, at the races and in the wings of the Opéra. Others gravitate to the middle of the ladder—so-called refugees, spongers and visiting beggars—poor devils we meet at the Stock Exchange, the Palais Royal, or near the stove in cafés. Finally, at the bottom of the ladder, there is the very small change of the species—they sell walking sticks, safety chains, open carriage doors etc. So, my dear Monsieur Desrosiers, if you count both the large fry and the small, there are one hundred thousand bohemians in Paris. Dennery’s love of the spectacular found expression in his féeries and in the larger pieces he wrote for the Théâtre Imperial du Cirque and subsequently the Châtelet. They range from the féerie Rothomago, which opened at the old Cirque and transferred to the new theatre, to La Prise de Pékin, one of the last big equestrian productions of the Cirque, where it opened on 27 July 1861, and ran for some 300 performances, being revived again at the Châtelet in 1863 for another hundred performances, and having further revivals over the next thirty years.11 This spectacular military drama, with five acts carved up into eleven scenes, had its published text dedicated to the director of the Cirque and the Châtelet, Hostein, whose ingenious mise en scène had, in Dennery’s view, increased the success of the play tenfold. The dramatic role of the horses was reduced to the combat episodes of two scenes, neither of which involved much dialogue, the taking of the fort of Ta-Kou and of Peking itself. Apart from the music and ballets, the appeal of the piece was a result of the work of a host of scene-painters (Chéret, Cambon, Thierry, Chanet, Daran and Poisson) and of the machinist, Riotton. The action is set during the Opium War and, although the French and British were supposedly allies, the element of exploitation that led to the war is clearly alluded to by one of the common soldiers who explains what opium is:

191


It’s a sort of snuff that you smoke. The English, who cannot allow it, do without it, to the advantage of the Chinese, who sell it to them at a high price. The villains of the piece are the mandarins, who, supposedly, have deceived the emperor. At a period of considerable colonial expansion by both England and France, the play contains an interesting criticism of the exploitation of countries slipping under colonialist rule. In Act II, scene ix, as some drugged Chinese pass, Dominique, the French schoolmaster, observes to Brownley, the correspondent for The Times: It’s your trade that debases and kills these wretched people. Do you know why people gather in this house? They are going to degrade their minds and kill their bodies. They are going to intoxicate themselves with the opium sold by the East India Company…. Yes, what they sell to these people is laziness, debauchery, poverty!—tears and despair for the women, hunger for the children and death for everyone! In the sentiments expressed here there are two themes, one being a criticism of the exploitation by speculators of the poor and helpless colonial peoples (as distinct from the poorer classes at home) and the other being a note already heard in many a temperance melodrama, up to and including Zola’s L’Assommoir. The combination of the exotic setting and the shifting of the majority of the blame to the English permitted Dennery in this play to make one of his sharpest critiques of nineteenth-century capitalism. With all its scenic splendour and excitement, it is questionable how much message the play actually had for its audiences, who remembered it essentially for its exciting combats, conflagrations and, above all, the scene of the opium den, the work of Chéret which alone, reputedly, cost 40,000 francs. Jacques Moynet, scene-painter of the Ambigu and author of one of the most useful books on staging in the nineteenth century, L’Envers du théâtre, machines et décorations,12 gives a full description of the staging of this scene. Using a technique deriving from Daguerre, Chéret placed his opium smoker in a shallow and darkened setting well downstage, so that the vision could open out behind him. The great scenic innovation was the use of mirrors (an idea apparently borrowed from England, but unfamiliar in France). Framed by the foreground, there was a panorama-type scene, without wing flats, 192


occupying the entire width of the stage, showing a clear lake, with a horizon of pink hills and clusters of rich vegetation floating on the ‘water’, which consisted of pieces of mirror, slanted towards the audience, with lilies and other greenery covering the joins. The ‘water’ reflected the scenery upside down, and groups of women emerged out of it on coral boats.13 The reflection effect provided an enormous sense of space, augmented by the continuous movement of the back flats and by the lighting. In the last quarter of the century, Dennery was able to ally his talents with those of Jules Verne in a series of immensely successful productions in the realm of spectacular sensation drama. The first of these was Le Tour du monde en 80 jours, which played for an entire season at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1874–5, and was subsequently revived with great profit for the Exhibition of 1878. In 1878, Dennery and Verne followed this with Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant, in which, according to Antoine, the founder of the Théâtre Libre, theatrical action was totally replaced by spectacle and mise en scène.14 On 17 November 1880 Dennery brought Verne’s Michel Strogoff to the Châtelet. This was to be spectacle to end all spectacles. It took about a year to prepare, cost some 300,000 francs and, apparently, involved closing the theatre for a month to allow for the final preparation.15 The predominant note in the repertoire of the popular theatres in the nineteenth century was unquestionably entertainment. Before 1830 audiences suffering from economic or social oppression could identify in a general way with persecuted heroes or heroines and accept an idealised solution to problems. After 1830, in the disillusion following the revolution, coupled with the development of an urban proletariat and a more critical attitude to the entire social system, audiences were interested in plays that were closer to everyday life and that reflected their own concerns more directly. Realism rather than escapism was becoming the order of the day. Attention shifted to a notion of oppression being exercised by an unjust social system as much as by specific individuals. As early as 1822, the Ambigu had staged Antier’s La Pauvre Famille, which depicts grinding poverty and shows the vulnerability of the very poor to exploitation (especially sexual). Constantly implicit in the play is the notion that the law exists for the protection of the rich and that the poor, by virtue of their poverty, are both defenceless and prone to suspicion of crime. The play is set in the late eighteenth century. It includes the convention 193


of a young nobleman who disguises himself as a workman to gain access to the girl he loves. The social gulf is conveniently bridged with the discovery that her brother, abandoned many years before because of poverty, is now a wealthy banker. The escapist notion of moving from working-class poverty to middle-class affluence (with a title thrown in) continues to be found in many a melodrama through the century and, in a sense, works counter to the more serious statement that such plays might attempt to make. From the mid-1830s the depiction of pauperism on the stage and the emphasis on the opposition rich/poor worried the authorities without necessarily providing anything that the censors could get hold of. In 1832, Jules Janin, writing about Ducange’s Le Testament de la pauvre femme, complained: For the last six months, our theatres have existed exclusively on contrasts of rank, fortune and birth. In these dramas all the virtues are piled onto the heads of the people, all the vices are hurled by the bucketload at the nobility. The people is everywhere, the people is king!16 Hallays-Dabot, the conservative historian of theatre censorship, also wrote with disapproval of the populist repertoire of the July Monarchy: Under Louis Philippe the popular theatres propagated an unhealthy and pernicious literature against which the censorship unfortunately could not erect a strong enough barrier. This literature was based exclusively on social antagonism.17 What Hallays-Dabot had grasped, although he does not articulate it very fully, is that a play exists in a specific social context and that it only has meaning in terms of the audience who are present at a performance. He illustrates this point by citing the apparently monarchist play, Dumas’ Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, ou les girondins, which appealed to audiences more for its revolutionary scenes than for the plot to free Marie-Antoinette from prison. It was, he felt, plays like this that demonstrated the link between boulevard productions and popular sentiment. The right-wing Jules Janin saw the social melodrama as the cradle of socialism. He deplored the realism of such plays, which, 194


he felt, had more effect on popular audiences than the relatively little known Proudhon: Dramas and bad melodramas show the thing itself in flesh and blood, the thing in action, barely clad with a few rags, dying of hunger, cold, winter, injustice, horror, the prison cell and the executioner!18 The realistic portrayal of poverty and its social consequences continued to offend certain critics until at least the 1880s, by which stage it was dubbed ‘naturalism’ and associated most particularly with the dramas of the Ambigu-Comique. Such arguments were generally cloaked with aesthetic justification, but in fact betray a right-wing attitude. A mythology of the left has seen the 1848 revolution as being born in part in the plays staged in the boulevard theatres, and certainly Janin’s views might help to support this. However, Philippe Vigier contends more convincingly that this popular theatre was not so much a political as a topical one imbued with the socialist tendencies of the period, and that it was less a cause of the revolution than a reflection of the state of public opinion that led up to it.19 The most explicitly socialist dramatists of the period were Emile Souvestre (who actually had working-class origins), Frédéric Soulié and Felix Pyat. Souvestre’s Riche et pauvre (Porte-SaintMartin, 1837) was adapted from his successful novel. The social intention was obvious. In his preface20 he suggests that the play is not about the class struggle, but about one specific episode in that struggle and that the real title should have been Antoine, the name of its hero. Antoine is a poor young lawyer (poverty beneath a frock-coat). Arthur, his former fellow-student, comes from a wealthy family. Although he seduces Antoine’s fiancée Louise, who commits suicide, he is presented more as a representative of his class than as a villain. Soulié, like Balzac, draws attention to the power given by money in the society of the 1830s: Whilst understanding the necessity for social inequality, we firmly believe that at a period when wealth has become the main basis for power, and poverty the surest cause for humiliation and unhappiness, the indigent should be protected against the rich, simply because one is all-powerful and the other is powerless. 195


Bocage, creator of Dumas’ Antony, and one of the most aggressively populist actors of the boulevard, played Antoine. Between the first and second performances the censors imposed some minor changes, an indication that Bocage’s performance gave value to elements of the text whose impact had not been fully seized at the original reading. In the first act Antoine expresses his disiike of Arthur’s family: ‘hateful representatives of a class, they have made the whole class hateful to me.’ The situation of the poor is constantly rammed home. For example, at the death of Madame Guibert, godmother of Louise, we are reminded of the close physical contact the poor have with death because of their cramped living conditions. Souvestre depicts some of the results of social injustice, but he does not make any serious attempt to analyse the causes of that injustice and, consequently, his socialism remains at a sentimental level. Antoine at one point declares: ‘Ah! poverty is the worst vice of all, for it is the only one that prevents one from doing good.’ His major revolt comes in Act IV and is here as much a protest against the human condition as against a specific society: ‘I took this cruel joke that God calls life too seriously; but I’m tired of playing the dupe’s rô1e!’ When Antoine kills Arthur at the end of the play there is little sense of satisfaction. Antoine himself will go to the guillotine and nothing will be changed. With this gloomy ending the play subscribes more to the aesthetic of the drame than to that of the melodrama. No solution is offered and audiences would have spent an evening with reminders of social inequality and of the problems of the everyday lives of many of them. The absence of any intervening providence does, however, push audiences either to a sort of despairing acceptance, or else to a sort of anger which, if harnessed, could be grist to a revolutionary mill. Frédéric Soulié began his dramatic career with a series of historical dramas for the Odéon and the Comédie-Française. His socialist views decided him to spend the latter part of his career writing for the boulevard audience. In 1832 he presented them with the appropriately named L’Homme a la blouse, staged at the Porte-Saint-Martin. In 1840, a year noted for hardship amongst the poorer classes and also for major strikes, he had rather more success with L’Ouvrier at the Ambigu. The play, with its robbers, villains and virtuous working men, was designed to appeal to the Ambigu public. Its tone was less angry than Riche et pauvre, and was summed up in its final statement: ‘There are not two different 196


concepts of honour, two concepts of honesty, two concepts of virtue—what makes the honest man also makes the nobleman.’ The social context might be different, but the sentiment voiced here is one already expressed by Molière in his Dom Juan. Plays dealing with the hardships of the poorer classes were distinctly a la mode in the 1830s and 1840s and are important as a reflection of a new social concern with an increasingly urban set of references. In terms of social purpose, Felix Pyat stands out above other dramatists. His own career as journalist and, briefly, his period as a member of the 1848 Constituent Assembly bear witness to this.21 Pyat saw himself as a socialist dramatist and his plays as ‘people’s theatre’. Most of his plays are anti-monarchist. His historical drama, Ango, written with Auguste Luchet (Ambigu, 29 June 1835) became a rallying-point. The prefect, who was present at the public dress rehearsal was worried: The play contains such direct and incisive allusions that it is generally felt that performances should not proceed without some cuts. In the first act there is a court scene which one might think had been taken from the Luxembourg trial: it is a question of a huge plot! In act III, Ango attacks royalty in the person of the Portuguese ambassador, and in act IV he treats the king of France with contempt by trampling him under foot. Audiences cannot fail to apply what happens in these scenes to important people of our own period.22 The play was banned, which is hardly surprising, especially with Bocage in the lead role of a man turned into an avenger in reaction to unjust and cruel treatment received. The play also contained too many lines that could be applied to the contemporary situation: The press is a torch that burns the hand that tries to extinguish it. How quickly a throne can be established. It cannot be any more difficult to overturn it than to set it up. In the 1840s, with Les Deux Serruriers and Le Chiffonnier de Paris, Pyat moved towards a type of drama reflecting the utopian socialism of the period. In both plays the villain is no longer the aristocrat but a banker. More important is the focus on the life of the poor, the old man dying of cold and poverty in a garret in Les Deux Serruriers, or 197


11 Frédérick Lemaître in Act II of F. Pyat’s Le Chiffonnier de Paris. L’Illustration 27 May 1845 (Bibliothèque Forney). Lemaître as Jean, the rag-picker, is going through his day’s gleanings. In his portrayal of characters from the poorest sections of society, Lemaître pioneered the development of naturalism in the theatre.

the domestic life of Jean, the rag-picker of Le Chiffonnier (another great part for Frédérick Lemaître) and his ward in their attic rooms (social division in Paris often worked vertically, with the poorer classes living on the top floors of houses). Pyat focuses on the life of the poor, and often uses their condition to create pathos. He does not go as far as a Zolaesque naturalism, but avoids presenting the more degrading aspects of poverty. Behind his plays there still lurks the simplistic notion of ‘poor but honest’. Pyat’s plays subscribe to a populist ethos, present a slightly sentimental view of the working classes, but do not go so far as to create a drama of class struggle. His success with Le Chiffonnier depended on Frédérick Lemaître, who, in his long monologues, a perfect vehicle for a great actor, had an opportunity to develop a very direct relationship with the audience. It was also a very wellwritten and constructed melodrama. The home of Jean and Marie 198


involved a compartment set showing stairs, a landing and two rooms. At the end of Act I, as Jean went through the contents of his rag-picker’s hod in his own room, Marie prepared to commit suicide in hers, blocking off air and lighting the stove. At the crucial moment Marie discovered a child deposited in her room, broke the window and picked up the child. Jean then came into her room and found her nursing the unexplained baby. In his monologue in this act, Jean has an opportunity to philosophise, as he sifts through the rubbish he has collected up that day: ‘Love, honours, power, wealth—into the hod with it all…all nothing but refuse…everything comes to that, everything is contained by it, everything falls into it.’ He then goes on to pick up a paper and reads: ‘Company for the exploitation of the gold mines of Auvergne and the Peruvian railways. … Baron Hoffmann and Company. … Capital two hundred million shares at fifty francs. … Just a scrap of paper!’ Not only are we recognisably back into the world of Robert Macaire, but there is also a neat reference to Baron Hoffmann, the wealthy financier, who, although the link is not as yet clear, was a fellow rag-picker and murderer of the father of Marie in the prologue. Throughout the century there was an assumption that the terms ‘melodrama’ and ‘popular’ belonged together. Of the older boulevard theatres, only the Ambigu remained resolutely popular and a house devoted principally to the melodrama. From the 1860s, longer runs of plays began to take over from the repertoire system. There was a fondness for revivals of well-tried melodramas ten, twenty or thirty years old, an indication that the popular theatres now had their repertoire in the same way that the Comédie-Française had its repertoire. However, these revivals, coupled with longer runs, indicate a slowing-down in the production of new melodramas. After 1870, whilst revivals of older plays become increasingly important, there is a growing note of social questioning in many of the new works. The process set in motion by Les Mystères de Paris of showing the lower depths of society was gaining momentum. The success of Les Mystères de Paris opened the way to Les Pauvres de Paris, Les Bohémiens de Paris and Victor Séjour’s Les Mystères du temple (1862), and many other works that put low life and the criminal classes on the stage. In the 1870s Noel and Stoullig constantly object to the growing realism of presentation 199


and the emphasis on the sordid and the criminal in the plays of the Ambigu. They employ the term ‘naturalism’ in a purely negative sense, meaning exaggerated realism in the portrayal of poverty, suffering and crime. The Ambigu was already well practised in naturalism in this sense when Zola came to write ‘Le Naturalisme au théâtre’, and much of the external realism sometimes attributed to Antoine could have been found on the stage of the Ambigu some twenty or thirty years earlier than the founding of the Théâtre Libre in 1887.

200

13 POPULAR FICTION AND THE THEATRE

Nineteenth-century theatre, and more particularly the melodrama, draws for its sources on everything from ballad to epic poetry and from medieval romance to the contemporary novel. From the late eighteenth century onwards the chapbook offered a ready supply of dramatisable material with universally known stories such as Les Quatre Fils Aymon or Geneviève de Brabant, as well as a great deal of romanticised medieval history and accounts of the doings of great criminals. These cheaply printed collections of legends and fairytales produced on inferior paper and sold by pedlars at fairs were often read aloud and in this way perpetuated the popular and oral tradition. From the eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, this was the literature of the poor and a source of imaginative escapism which would find its fullest expression in the féerie. By the mid-nineteenth century the development of the cheap press and of the accompanying feuilleton, which allowed for novels to be published cheaply in serial form opened up another important avenue. Until the late 1830s the cost of an octavo novel was about 7 francs 50 a volume. Circulating libraries had an important function until about 1840. The subscription was 3 or 4 francs a month and the hire of a volume was between 10 and 20 centimes.1 By 1838 the newspaper editor Emile de Girardin could anticipate the time when a novel by Victor Hugo would cost about 3 francs, rather than 15. In the later 1830s the price of books began to drop. At the same time the cheap press, starting with Le Siècle and La Presse in 1836, began to open out new possibilities. Newspapers were becoming more widely available, no longer restricted to subscribers, cafés or 201


circulating libraries. A little before 1836 some periodicals had begun to publish novels in several parts, but it was in 1836 that the true serial novel began to appear, providing relatively easy access to narrative fiction for all who could read or be read to. As long as novels appeared in volume form, the reading public was relatively limited and stage adaptation was a form of vulgarisation. With serial publication in the ‘feuilletons’ of newspapers the situation changed considerably. It was no longer a question of transposing to a new medium potentially interesting and exciting material for consumption by a public that might not otherwise have access to it. It had become a question of putting on the stage characters already familiar to the majority of the audiences, characters with whom they had lived, and whose adventures they had followed over the course of a year or more. From Rodolphe to Rocambole, audiences could now see incarnate on the stage figures who had taken on a sort of mythological significance, who had replaced the older archetypes of the chapbooks. Theatres often competed to produce their own version of a popular novel. Thus, in the 1820s Scott’s Kenilworth could be seen adapted for at least half a dozen different theatres, and one of the most widely read novels of this period, the Vicomte d’Arlincourt’s Le Solitaire (1821) provided the source for over a dozen stage versions, including an operatic one. In this chapter the primary concern is with the relationship between theatre and the novel. The eighteenth-century novel was written by middle-class authors with a middle-class reader in mind. The dramatic possibilities of some novels immediately struck playwrights. Richardson was a major influence in France, and his Pamela was directly adapted for the theatre and proved a source of inspiration for other plays and novels. Pamela provided an important strand of the melodrama: virtue oppressed. Even before the development of the melodrama, we find this in Beaumarchais’ Eugénie, La Harpe’s Mélanie, Monvel’s Les Victimes cloîtrées or the Marquis de Sade’s Oxtiern. The gothic novel had its influence on the ‘roman noir’. M.G.Lewis’s The Monk and Mrs Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho were both translated and rapidly adapted for the theatre—the latter formed the basis for Pixérécourt’s Le Château des Appenins. Lewis, first translated in 1797, inspired scores of melodramas, of which ultimately the most important would be La Nonne sanglante of 1835, taken from an episode of The Monk. 202

POPULAR FICTION AND THE THEATRE

It would be a mistake to see the traffic of adaptation as always going in one direction. The theatre itself provided much source material for the popular novel and after 1830 it was not at all uncommon for a successful melodrama to end up as cheap fiction. Olivier-Martin, in his study of the popular novel in France, describes the structure of the popular novel as being built around the victim, the saviour and the seducer, a structure common to a very large number of melodramas, and the action as being based on the conflict between feelings and social conventions. Like the melodrama, the popular novel was populist in that it attempted to speak to the people about the people, but, with very few exceptions, it was not produced by the people. It is important to distinguish between what might be classified as the popular novel and novels that were popular, though the dividing line is frequently blurred. One of the features of the popular novel is its contemporary setting—in the 1830s and 1840s there is a corresponding focus in the melodrama on contemporary life. The lives and problems of a class of society that had not received serious literary consideration before the nineteenth century began to attract attention. This kind of novel satisfied many escapist fantasies, particulary those of the most helpless members of society and those generally excluded from power or otherwise marginalised. The earlier popular novel also, as OlivierMartin points out, was strongly coloured by socialism. The victims are usually workmen, unmarried mothers, poor girls forced into prostitution or peasants. The persecutors are the dandy, the landlord, the employer and the usurer. The aesthetic is remarkably similar to that of the melodrama, in that there is often a solution at the end, when, unlike real life, justice is restored and there is a sense that Paradise has been achieved on earth (upward social mobility is often a reward). In many cases the popular novel was the only means of education of the poorer classes and its very popularity undoubtedly contributed to the increase of literacy. The popular novel was sometimes referred to in a derogatory manner as the ‘roman de la portière’ (i.e. escapist fiction). This term links the genre with an increasing female readership corresponding to the progressive access of women to literacy in the nineteenth century. Authors themselves began to target this particular public to a greater and greater extent. For the adaptor/dramatists, the structure of the novel, with a series of episodes or situations, all or as many as possible of which 203


had to be crammed into the stage action, made for a type of dramaturgy more akin to Shakespeare’s chronicle plays, or even Brecht’s epic theatre, than to the French classical drama dominated by the rules of the unities. For the earlier writers of melodramas it was a question of compressing three to six volumes into a relatively coherent dramatic action. This involved considerable selection and cutting. Pixérécourt was able to simplify and select in such a way as to produce a dramatic action which did not depart too far from neoclassical dramaturgy. This was particularly noticeable in Coelina, where the lengthy novel of Ducray-Duminil is reduced to a simple and single action, heavily dependent on exposition, and where the main concession to spectacular theatre is a change of scene for each act, with a particularly sensational final one. In many ways the novel Coelina is still in the tradition of Pamela, with a great deal of inner action, or at least anguish, which Pixérécourt was able to reduce to bare essentials. Cammaille Saint-Aubin and Ribié, in their first attempt at adapting The Monk for the stage in 1798, experienced all the difficulties of later adaptors of the novel. The complex and rambling structure of Lewis’ book was turned into a five-act ‘comedy’ with songs, dances and pantomime. One sensational effect was strung onto another, but the overall plot was barely comprehensible. In 1803 they produced a simpler version, reduced to three acts. The complicated bandit episode was left out, but the ending, which had been a ‘happy’ one, was now spectacular and horrible—it concluded with Satan carrying away the monk Ambrosio by his hair and then dropping him into what the stagedirections describe as Milton’s hell. This image is remarkably like an illustration in the first French edition of the novel and may well have derived from that. Many illustrations, depicting key moments of the action of novels, present images of a highly theatrical nature that invite realisation on the stage. As early as 1765 a gothic frisson could be felt in Baculard d’Arnaud’s Comte de Comminges, staged at the ComédieFrançaise. One act is set in the crypt of a Trappist monastery and the effect is heightened by various apparitions and the tolling of a funeral bell. However, the full impact of the gothic was not felt until the 1790s, and then principally on the boulevard stages, as they rushed to adapt fiction for the theatre and attempted to translate descriptive passages into visual terms. The emphasis was 204


on spectacle and exciting narrative. Psychological analysis took second place, and was generally simplified to a sort of shorthand. The pantomime tradition demanded clear-cut situations and expressive gesture. The latter was needed for the strong emotions portrayed in the gothic novel (the passages chosen were generally those with the strongest emotions, most vivid action and least degree of introspection or self-analysis). The strongly visual tradition of the boulevard theatres meant that the physical elements of the setting frequently had an active dramatic role. The older neutral and basically decorative function of scenery was no longer adequate. It now became a major signifier, giving important information about the characters or action, and providing the atmosphere of the piece. From the titles alone, audiences had a strong hint of what was in store for them— Le Château du diable, Victor, ou l’enfant de la forêt, La Forêt d’Hermandstadt, or, later, Le Tremblement de terre de la Martinique or even Les Mystères de Paris. In the earlier plays the rural environment predominates, with the romantic notion of Nature. From the 1830s, the urban environment becomes more important, and dark and sordid streets take the place of forests and wild mountain landscapes. Paris and its underworld becomes a major protagonist in much late nineteenth-century melodrama. The importance of the description of physical environment from Balzac onwards had its impact on the adaptation of novels for the stage. Audiences needed to see what they had read about, and this in turn had a major effect on scene design. From the start, the boulevard theatre had aimed at a greater degree of physical realism than the Comédie-Française. Adaptations of popular novels from the 1840s onwards demonstrated this tendency, which would reach its climax in the stage versions of Zola in the 1870s and early 1880s. Gautier, the great advocate of ocular theatre, when he saw Les Mystères de Paris, was overwhelmed by ‘the most frightful veracity’ of that production in its portrayal of poverty and the life of the criminal classes and suggested that the attempt to reproduce reality had gone beyond the conventions of art: The Morels’ garret is depicted with a realism of detail that goes too far. Such sights do not belong to art; they afflict the eyes more than they touch the soul.2

205


There is no doubt that descriptive passages from novels drew the theatre ever more in the direction of reproducing reality on the stage and that the distinction between real life and its simulation became blurred. A process had been started that could, ultimately, find its satisfactory outlet only in the cinema. In terms of the size of readership, two novelists of the 1840s stand out because of the extent to which they were able to take hold of the popular imagination through the feuilleton. These were Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas. Both boosted the circulation of the newspapers in which they were published, and both had their main novels adapted for the theatre. Eugène Sue (1804–57) is today remembered for two novels, Les Mystères de Paris and Le Juif errant. His family background was medical and in 1829 he inherited a private income of 80,000 francs a year. Within a decade he had spent his inheritance living as a dandy and had written a small number of novels, including Atar-Gull, partly based on his own travels (and adapted as a melodrama for the Ambigu-Comique in 1832 by Anicet Bourgeois and Masson) and Mathilde, a society novel, adapted by Felix Pyat for the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1842. Théophile Gautier’s comment on this play was that ‘the whole of Paris will want to see Mathilde, which, having had two hundred thousand readers, will have two hundred thousand spectators’.3 In 1841, partly thanks to the influence of Pyat, Sue became a convert to socialism. His socialism found a new expression in the populist novel and an exploration of the lower depths of Paris society. He exchanged his frock-coat for a workman’s smock, a cap and a pair of heavy shoes and frequented the poorer quarters of Paris and the, customs’ barriers. Sue’s socialism may have been only skin deep, and was certainly emotional rather than intellectual. However, with Les Mystères de Paris (1842), which appeared in 147 episodes and earned him 26,600 francs, he became the most popular and the best-paid author in France.4 Les Mystères plunged the reader into a highly coloured presentation of the world of the sub-proletariat where the link between crime and prostitution, on the one hand, and degrading poverty, on the other, could be grasped instantly. He allowed his readers an exciting exploration of the jungle of the cities, and thus opened up a whole new area for literary and dramatic exploitation. In a sense, what he did was to adapt familiar romantic material to contemporary life. Once the novel had been staged in 1844, Paris became the most popular setting for 206


such social melodramas as Dennery’s Les Bohémiens de Paris and Marie-Jeanne. Karl Marx was very suspicious about the ethos of Les Mystères de Paris and opened up the debate as to what extent it may be regarded as a socialist novel at all.5 Rodolphe, he suggests, is by no means such an idealist as the popular imagination would like to think. He enjoys apparently unlimited wealth, and spends much of the novel using this to allow him to wander incognito through the lower depths as a sort of Haroun El Raschid, in search of his lost daughter and pursuing a private vengeance. He is a man who tries to take over the role of providence and under the guise of idealism, pursues a personal quest. Marx goes so far as to charge him with hypocrisy. There is no doubt, however, that the role of Rodolphe is one which has a powerful attraction for those to whom absence of material wealth of any sort is related to their own lack of selfesteem and general sense of frustration. In the early melodrama the popular imagination had been satisfied with an abstract providence that intervened when everything seemed blackest, and restored an ideal world in which virtue would triumph over vice. In Sue’s melodramatic novel, a single individual has taken on the role of providence. In one sense this is a development of the watchful father figures of Bouchardy’s melodramas—Lazare the shepherd or Gaspardo the fisherman (who are almost contemporaneous). However, the difference is the economic means at Rodolphe’s disposal. It has often been observed (and this is well illustrated by Balzac’s novels) that the Bourgeois Monarchy, with its motto of ‘enrich yourselves’, eagerly followed by a small proportion of the population, emphasised the gulf between rich and poor and focused more powerfully than ever on the relationship between money and power. When Les Mystères de Paris reached the stage of the PorteSaint-Martin in February 1844, it was not simply a more or less well-known novel that had been adapted. It was an eagerly awaited event. Théophile Gautier devoted an important column to it,6 in which he pointed out that the whole of France had followed the adventures of Rodolphe with baited breath for more than a year, and had come to know Le Chourineur (a slang word for a murderer), La Chouette (the name of a horrible old woman, literally the ‘screech owl’), the Maître-d’Ecole (the ‘schoolmaster’, the sinister spider-like villain of the novel), and could not wait to see on the stage these characters, who now had a quasi 207


mythological value. The authorities were clearly unhappy about the idea of performance of the work, and for a time it was feared that it might suffer the same fate as Vautrin, all the more so since this production also starred Frédérick Lemaître (the Maîtred’Ecole). With some cuts and a general toning down the work was allowed by the censors. Even so, there was anxiety that, if the play did not suffer from preventive censorship, it might still be banned after the first performance. According to Gautier, ordinary seats sold at the inflated price of 50 francs for this first performance because of the fear that it might be the only one. In practice, the play owed far more to the popularity of the novel than to its own virtues as a melodrama. In the reduction of eight volumes to five acts Rodolphe was reduced to little more than a father seeking his lost daughter, Le Chourineur lost his toughness and became simply one of the virtuous, whilst the Maître-d’Ecole became a relatively commonplace villain of melodrama. A knowledge of the novel helped the audience through a plot which was not always of the clearest, and which often relied upon this familiarity—‘Although nothing is explained, we understand everything’.7 Much attention was given to the staging, so as to make the environment in which the characters exist live up to the expectations of the readers/ audience. With Le Juif errant (1844–7), Sue picked up the popular nineteenth-century theme of the wandering Jew and wound it into a complicated plot of a lost inheritance and evil schemes by the Jesuits to capture it. For all its anti-clericalism and emphasis on money as the mainspring of society, this rather curious novel is moving away from the social novel properly speaking. It was adapted for the Ambigu in 1849. The play is badly constructed and at times barely comprehensible for anyone unfamiliar with the novel. Some of the Rennepont family, whose immense fortune is being pursued by the Jesuits, in the person of Rodin (who himseif has one eye on the papacy), appear so briefly and incidentally that it is clear that they are in the play only because readers of the novel would expect them to be. For example, the two innocent daughters of the general, Blanche and Rose, appear as fairly standard melodrama heroines (perhaps anticipating Dennery’s two orphans) and occupy the early part of the play—they then vanish from the action, only to be rescued briefly from a shipwreck at the end of Act II, to re-appear in a short-lived family reunion in Act III, after which they are imprisoned in a convent by Rodin and, in the last 208


act, we hear that they have been poisoned there. They make a final appearance in the apotheosis of the Jew, who has watched over his descendants, intervened as providence at moments of crisis and who at last may cease his wandering and enter heaven thanks to the deaths of these two innocent victims, who accompany him there. This final apotheosis, in terms of staging, was more what might have been expected from a Napoleonic piece at the Cirque Olympique. The Jew himself is such an episodic character that his name did not appear on the poster (the part was usually played by a utility). The prologue, starting on the Bering Straits, and then moving to a vision of the Aurora Borealis with what look like illustrations of the adventures of each of the five groups of the Rennepont family, suggests a production approaching the féerie. The success of the show undoubtedly lay in the scenery of the seventeen tableaux—two of these comprising the prologue and three the epilogue or last judgment (a quasi-theological ending for a piece all about money). Adrienne de Cardoville (one of the Rennepont heirs) is given most of the second act but, though her opulence is demonstrated, there is little real action and audiences are mainly made aware of the hostility between herself and her aunt and of Rodin’s plot to have her shut away as insane. There is more focus on Rodin and on the poorer characters, Dagobert, his wife Françoise, their son Agricol and the hunchbacked La Mayeux. The social note is struck by La Mayeux, who shows how difficult it is for a working girl to make a living and keep up her health and strength ‘for the fifteen hours of work that bring in fifteen sous [i.e. 75 centimes] a day’. We are reminded in very matter-of-fact terms by Jacques and Céphise that prostitution is the one thing a poor girl can turn to. In a scene, which may well have given the idea to Brisebarre and Nus a few years later in Les Pauvres de Paris, La Mayeux and her sister attempt to commit suicide by asphyxiation. Rodin gave the actor Chilly the opportunity for one of his greatest roles as the manipulative villain, who, when foiled at the level of physical violence, can switch to an even more diabolical plan to make the potential heirs destroy themselves. This is probably one of the first instances of a new type of villain. Unfortunately, the play does not allow us to see how this psychological villainy will really work. His final encounter with the Jew, who lets him know that his plans have been foiled, is followed by his death, cursing and in horrible convulsions—in the 209


final vision he is seen being driven into hell by the exterminating angel. Alexandre Dumas’ novels have stood the test of time rather better than those of Eugène Sue. This may be because they are less directly concerned with the social issues of their period and cater more for evasion into the historical past. Olivier-Martin excludes the historical novel from his definition of the popular novel because of its primary interest in the past rather than the contemporary. Before his popularity as a novelist blossomed in the 1840s, Dumas was already a major dramatist, having written the first historical Romantic drama for the Comédie-Française, Henri III et sa cour, staged in 1829, and one of the first major social dramas of contemporary life, Antony (1831), not to mention the classic melodrama, La Tour de Nesle (1832), or Kean staged at the Variétés in 1836. In the decade 1845–55, Dumas poured out a torrent of novels, often with the help of collaborators, such as the historian Auguste Maquet, who helped him with the necessary documentation and subsequently assisted him in the conversion of his novels into plays. The most important and best-known today are Les Trois Mousquetaires and its sequels (1845–7) and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1844–5). Feuilleton publication was an ideal outlet for Dumas’ prolific output. Very quickly he realised the value of adapting his novels for the stage. Sue had shown that there was a ready and avid public for the putting on stage of familiar characters. Les Mousquetaires (based on Vingt Ans après) was staged at the Ambigu-Comique in October 1845. The first performance began at 6.30 p.m. and ended after 1.00 a.m. Gautier described the piece as a dramatised chronicle,8 a drama in twelve chapters. The notion of an episodic structure rather than a dramatic one made for something which was clearly not a ‘wellmade play’. Gautier himself compared it to the Shakespearian history play. He was struck by the concentration of the audience on a play which did not draw on the unities to provide a degree of focus, but did depend on a good yarn. No doubt, the long series of Napoleonic plays that the Cirque had been turning out since 1830 had also created an audience hungry for plays notionally related to historical events, where the sequence of the events and the exciting or sensational moments were far more important than the overall dramatic structure. Les Mousquetaires has a relationship to the revenge melodrama, as practised by Bouchardy and others, though 210


in this case, unusually, the avenger is the villain as well (Milady’s son, determined to avenge the death of his mother). Thus, the revenge theme is not related to a notion of reestablishing popular principles of justice. In Les Mousquetaires, there is no serious love interest at all. Gautier suggests that a part of the appeal lay precisely in the notion of friendship and in the idea of strength being increased by banding together and collaborating. The sentiment of the play is monarchist, and Cromwell is presented as a scheming villain. This is popular drama in terms of audience appeal, but it is also fundamentally escapist and in no way related to the real concerns of the 1840s. In 1847 Dumas opened the Théâtre Historique, a theatre where his own works could be performed. The opening performance, an adaptation of his serial novel, La Reine Margot, lasted no less than nine hours, and one suspects that the elaborate scene changes, as well as the intrinsic length of the play, contributed to this. It was followed by an adaptation of Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge. The novel itself, although it had appeared in serial form, was less wellknown to audiences. Dumas and Maquet’s skill as dramatic craftsmen meant that here the dramaturgical weaknesses that had beset the adaptations of Sue’s two great novels were not apparent. The play reads well and Gautier’s criticism makes quite clear that it worked as a piece of theatre. They had, in fact, created a new genre which was quite distinct from other attempts to force a novel onto the stage willy-nilly or else to turn a novel into a play by simply extracting one or two of the strands and eliminating all the rest.9 The first two parts of Monte Cristo reached the stage in early February 1848, only a couple of weeks before the revolution. This was one of the most ambitious projects ever to be attempted on the French stage, a double production requiring two long evenings for its presentation. Gautier compared it with the medieval mystery plays, not only because of its length, but because of its scope. He also commented on the spectators who sat through these two successive evenings, often in the same seats, and on the way in which they seemed to come to know one another.10 Monte Cristo, which follows amazingly closely a famous case from the police archives, is much nearer to the world of Eugène Sue and the Mystères de Paris. It is, however, given a slight historical perspective and the audience are not confronted with the immediately contemporary. Edmond Dantès, like Prince 211

12 A.Dumas, Monte Cristo. Last scene of Part I, Mélingue shown as Dantès. L’Illustration 12 February 1848 (Bibliothèque Forney). Part of the interest of this scene is the divided stage showing three distinct acting zones: Dantès’ cell, the Abbé Faria’s cell, the battlements of the Château d’If and a scenic view beyond. The functional nature of the setting in melodrama is clearly indicated here.


Rodolphe, is a figure who, with the fortune he has acquired on the island of Monte Cristo, becomes virtually omnipotent. On several occasions he isprepared to describe himself as ‘la Providence’. He has becomethe self-appointed angel of retribution. Rodolphe’s private acts ofjustice are generally disguised in a vaguely socialist garb of doinggood for society. Dantès’ are blatantly revenge. In both cases theappeal to a popular audience would be similar. Gautier put downthe success of both to the element of idealised wish-fulfilment andsuggests that Monte Cristo would have been infinitely less sympathetic if he had simply handed over his persecutors to the law.The first two parts of the stage version of Monte Cristo areconcerned more with the early story of Dantès and with thereward of the virtuous Morel family. The final two parts, staged atthe Ambigu-Comique in April and May 1851 respectively, Le Comte de Morcerf and Villefort, are concerned with the workingout of the vengeance of Dantès. The former villains are allrespected members of the society of the Restoration and JulyMonarchy, and it is in this that the main populist appeal of theplays lay. The Théâtre Historique’s team of scene-painters, Séchan, Diéterle and Despléchin, excelled themselves for the first two parts of Monte Cristo. Gautier describes their contribution in considerable detail. One of the sets that caught his attention was Caderousse’s inn in the second part. This was another milestone in the depiction of the life of the poor with extreme realism on the stage. He comments on the relevance of the settings and the absence of unnecessary picturesque elements. The full dramatic role of the setting was appreciated by the audience, who applaudtfd it correspondingly. The visual was underscored by sound-effects of the storm outside, and the lighting was such that the footlights and the proscenium arch were dark, creating what to Gautier was a perfect illusion. The notion of a darkened auditorium is implicit in his comment and suggests that the effect attained by Dumas must have been similar to that which Wagner strove to achieve at Bayreuth in the 1870s. It is also another indication of the way in which the boulevard theatres were prepared to darken the auditorium to enhance scenic effect at a time when it was unusual to do so in the official theatres. La Jeunesse des mousquetaires (1849), drawn mainly from Les Trois Mousquetaires places emphasis on heroism, flamboyance and even comedy to a greater extent than its sequel (which reached 213


the stage first). Gautier points out Dumas’ ability to replace description by direct action and suggests that the dialogue could almost be removed, so expressive is the visual part of the performance. In many cases Dumas’ action proceeds with such speed that the dialogue is reduced to little more than the odd halfsentence thrown out by an actor who, by the next scene, may have travelled from Paris to the coast or from France to England. There is no doubt that Sue and Dumas led the way for authors to adapt, or be involved in the adaptation of, their own novels. Other novelists of the 1840s were already taking this path. The most important of these is Frédéric Soulié, whom Gautier was convinced was a novelist more than a dramatist. His most successful work for the stage, and his final play, La Closerie des genêts (1846), was an adaptation of two successful novels he had published in serial form, La Lionne and La Comtesse de Monrion. The play ran for over 300 performances and was one of the greatest theatrical triumphs of the reign of Louis-Philippe. It was one of the works that accelerated the shift away from a notion of repertoire and towards the long-run production. Unlike Les Mystères de Paris or Monte Cristo, Soulié’s novels are more social novels and would, one suspects, have appealed primarily to a middle-class readership. Translated into the theatre, the social concerns of La Closerie des genêts became more evident, and its success was no doubt as a social melodrama focusing on the position of an unmarried mother in a prejudiced society, as well as giving a good portrait of the strands that went to make up postNapoleonic France. In purely theatrical terms, a sinister villainess and a picturesque former Vendéen were types that helped draw enormous audiences to the Ambigu. The popularity of the roman feuilleton continued right through the Second Empire and beyond, and adaptations of popular novels poured onto the stage.11 Dumas père continued to produce plays and adaptations of his novels through the Second Empire. In 1860 he adapted La Dame de Montsoreau, modifying its ending to allow Bussy to escape being murdered and marry the lady of Montsoreau, now a widow. From historical melodrama he swung back to the Paris underworld for Les Mohicans de Paris. The ‘Redskins’ of the title are the colourful thieves of Les Mystères de Paris or Dennery’s Bohémiens de Paris. The novel had appeared in 1854–5, and the adaptation was first staged at the Gaîté in August 1864, when it proved to be a major event of the theatrical season. 214


The hypersensitive censors of the Second Empire tried to have the play banned a few days before it was due to open, and Dumas was obliged to write to ask the emperor to intervene directly.12 It is difficult to see what alarmed the censors, unless it is the character of Sarranti, who, when the action commences in 1820, has been involved in some ill-defined bonapartist plot. The villain of the piece, M.Gérard, is persuaded by his housekeeper and concubine, Mme. Orsola, to murder his young nephew and niece to obtain their fortunes. The rest of the action takes place a few years later, in 1827, and Gérard is now living as an eminently respectable bourgeois. The underlying sentiment expressed here is hardly a new one, but may also have been felt to be offensive to a paternalist regime which officially idealised the family as the microcosm of society. In addition, the plot has elements reminiscent of Sue, notably Salvator, the Rodolphe of the play, who has abandoned his social status, mixes with the criminal underworld and acts as a sort of amateur detective and righter of wrongs. The righter of wrongs is one of the most important figures to be found in popular fiction of the Second Empire. Sometimes this is a sort of superman like Rodolphe, sometimes more of a modern Robin Hood, a good-natured bandit whose aim is to see justice carried out and who always sides with the underdog. The most popular novelist of the Second Empire using the feuilleton, Ponson du Terrail, added such a character to popular mythology with Rocambole. 13 Rocambole (whose incredible and improbable adventures gave rise to the adjective ‘rocambolesque’) appeared in a string of novels built around the character. A sort of gentlemanburglar, an ancestor of Arsène Lupin,14 he was first created for Les Drames de Paris, published in volume form between 1857 and 1863, and as a feuilleton for La Patrie between 1857 and 1862. Ponson, as no-one before him, understood the art of the serial form of publication in its own right, and, in particular of the cliffhanger and the famous phrase ‘to be continued in our next…’. Not only did he write his novels without any particular overall plan or end in view, he was also capable of writing four novels at a time for four different newspapers. According to legend, he laid out little figures, which he removed whenever they died or left the action. His literary gifts were slight, but his story-telling ones very considerable. The progress of the action was dictated largely in response to the reaction of his readers and, as Olivier-Martin 215


oberves, his hero was created out of a real collaboration between the writer and his public. After Les Drames de Paris, Rocambole re-appeared in Le Dernier Mot de Rocambole, Les Mystères de Londres, La Resurrection de Rocambole, Rocambole en prison, La Corde du pendu (1870). In one novel, Les Chevaliers de la lune, Ponson killed off his hero, but then had to revive him in response to public pressure and the editors of La Patrie. Ponson subscribes to most of the clichés of the melodrama. The novels are full of drawing-room villains rubbing shoulders with members of the popular classes (who have all the virtues). Rocambole himself has been described as a mixture of the Byronic superman and the gamin, purified by a period spent doing hard labour. Baccarat is the Magdalene of the Romantic age, evolving from a prostitute to a respectable lady involved in acts of charity (having acquired a fortune and a title on the way), which makes her a female counterpart to Rocambole. To the extent that the Second Empire was a police state requiring bread and circuses, Ponson was the ideal purveyor of the latter. In his novels there is nothing to upset the status quo. He lays down consistently a crude line of morality with simplistic values and preaches respect for the authorities and the established order. He would not raise dangerous issues as did Zola. The real social conflicts of the period were not to be found in the 401 volumes published by Ponson. Rocambole inevitably reached the stage. The public were anxious to see their hero embodied, which they were able to do at the Ambigu-Comique in 1864, and again in 1867. Some of the episodes, reduced to a drama in five acts and eight tableaux, with a picturesque mise en scene, produced a relatively run-of-the mill melodrama. What gave Rocambole his appeal in the feuilleton clearly was absent when transferred to the stage, though his more general influence on endof-the century theatre should not be underestimated. The novels were a good example of work drawing on the melodrama for inspiration, and, in turn, helping broaden the repertoire of the melodrama with the notion of the gentleman-criminal operating his own system of social justice with a sort of tacit licence to do so (rather like a court fool). In feuilleton form Rocambole had reached millions of readers. The newspaper had taken over completely from the theatre as the mass medium, and it was no longer a question of reaching a wider public by adapting a novel for the stage.

216


Crime and its discovery had an unending fascination for audiences from the Second Empire onwards. There was an everincreasing market for fiction based on trials. This stemmed from the publication of court proceedings in works such as A. Fouquier’s Causes célèbres (1861). During the later 1860s there were several celebrated trials, which became more exciting to the public than mere fiction. Emile Gaboriau, almost as popular as Ponson du Terrail, developed the detective story, and this too fed into the theatre, even if Gaboriau himself is not associated with any major melodramas. An adaptation of L’Honneur du nom was put on at the Théâtre Beaumarchais in 1869 and in 1880 one of his novels reached the stage of the Château-d’Eau adapted by Desnard under the title La Dégringolade. The action of the latter covers the entire period of the Second Empire, from 2 December 1851 to 4 September 1870, and concerns the career of an adventurer and murderer, who commits suicide at the end, just as he is about to be unmasked. The audience enjoyed this piece and took every occasion to underline with their applause any attacks on the Second Empire.15 One of the most successful feuilleton novels to be adapted was Paul Féval’s Le Bossu, a cloak-and-dagger story very much in the style of the historical Dumas. The novel was published in Le Siècle in 1857 and a five-act, twelve-tableau adaptation by Féval and Anicet Bourgeois was staged at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1862. The play is not much more than the old mix of lost heiresses and concealed identities set in a vaguely historical period of the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the Regency. It was destined to have a long career, not least as a part of the staple repertoire of many a travelling puppet-theatre. The puppet versions, which continued to be played until well into the twentieth century, especially in the north of France and Flanders, emphasise the cloak-and-dagger aspect of the book, especially the famous Nevers pass, which the great swordsman, Lagardère, learns from the Duc de Nevers himself just before the latter is murdered. In the stage version there was much more emphasis on the question of money, the second part of the action being set when Law ’s bank was operating and financial speculation was rife. There is even a somewhat Macaire-like banker figure, Gonzague, launching fraudulent schemes to catch the unwary. Féval created another semi-mythical hero in the person of Lagardère, the ‘petit parisien’, man of the people (perhaps of 217


impoverished nobility), who becomes the adoptive father and protector of the little Blanche de Nevers. Even his language is in the best stilted melodrama tradition—‘God is my witness that I now have only one thought—to give back to the mother the sacred deposit entrusted to me by the father’.16 This was a role for the much-idolised Mélingue, able here to play the double part of the romantic, swashbuckling Lagardère and the hunchback which he disguises himself as. A further element in the success of the piece was the creation of two comic roles, Passepoil and Cocardasse, who appealed very directly to audiences and ended up by becoming stock puppets of the Toone theatre of Brussels. In addition to the popular ‘feuilletonnistes’ some of the major novelists of the Second Empire and Third Republic, notably Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and Jules Verne, made their contribution to the repertoire of the popular theatres through adaptations of their work. Les Misérables was first published in 1862. It was adapted for the theatre by Charles Hugo and Paul Meurice, but the French censors would not allow it to be performed and so the first staging was in Brussels at the Théâtre des Galeries-Saint-Hubert. Larochelle finally put it on at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1878. The two-part drama was reduced to a single five-hour evening. To do this it was necessary to omit the love-scene between Cosette and Marius and the play ended not with the death of Jean Valjean, but with his escape from Javert by scaling the convent wall. Again, this was less of a play than a series of twelve scenes carved out of the book. Although it ran for only sixty-five performances, it was, according to Noel and Stoullig, a popular play in the strongest sense of the word, but appealing because of the social thesis it develops, the characters it puts on the stage, none of whom is repellent despite the social background from which they are derived, and above all the variety of scenes and episodes.17 Parallels with Les Mystères de Paris suggest themselves, but Jean Valjean is closer to real life than the highly coloured individuals created by Sue. Hugo’s social purpose was also far stronger and his political views too well known for the work to be acceptable to the French authorities. After his exile during the Empire, Hugo himself returned triumphantly to France in 1870. Notre-Dame de Paris was 218


staged in 1879, and in 1880 Quatre-vingt treize, again in an adaptation by Paul Meurice, provided an exciting spectacle at the Gaîté. As in other adaptations of novels which attempted to keep the rhythm of the novel rather than to compress it into a classical five-act form, Quatre-vingt treize was divided into twelve scenes. Noel and Stoullig were clearly glad to escape from the prevailing trend of excessive naturalism in staging. They used the piece to attack both naturalist drama and the generally low standard of the theatre.18 The production had magnificent sets by Chéret, Robecchi, Rubé and Chaperon, and a strong cast, with Paulin Ménier as Sergent Radoub and Marie Laurent as La Flécharde. At a time when the old féerie, though retaining its popularity, at least with younger audiences, seemed to be becoming increasingly empty of content, the novels of Jules Verne provided a new outlet for the interest in the marvellous. A wide-reading public developed an interest in science-fantasy, or science-fiction, and this rapidly spread to the theatre. The spectacular theatre was waiting for new sources of inspiration and was delighted to find in the exploration drama an alternative to the increasingly popular strand of life in the lower depths. A mixture of adventure and science is the basis of Verne’s work, and social considerations rarely intrude. With Dennery, Verne adapted Le Tour du monde en 80 jours for the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1874. It opened on 11 November and ran for 415 performances to packed houses. In 1876 the Porte-Saint-Martin production had a further run of 180 performances at the Châtelet. By the end of the century it had chalked up over 1,500 performances. The play was performed at many provincial theatres, where it became a stock element of the repertoire, and was the pièce de résistance of the Pitou travelling puppet-theatre. In December 1878, Verne and Dennery presented another spectacular, Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant. This was a less satisfactory play, attempting to trade on the success of Le Tour du monde. Antoine was not alone in his view of this as ‘the triumph of the féerie at the expense of the play’ and complained that mise en scène and visual spectacle had been substituted for dramatic action.19 Offenbach had not been slow to see the possibilities of science. His opéra-férie, Le Voyage dans la lune (Gaîté, 1875), re-worked the clichés of the féerie to modern scientific and, in this case, astronomical ideas. This delightful piece of whimsy, with Zulma 219


Bouffar as Prince Caprice, was broken up into twenty-three tableaux. The philosophical notion of a visit to the moon was hardly a new one in the theatre. One has only to think of such traditional Italianate pieces as Arlequin, empereur de la lune in the eighteenth century, not to mention a popular Guignol piece of the mid-nineteenth century, Le Voyage dans la lune. Previously, such pieces had either a philosophical bias or else had been sheer fantasy. What was new was the scientific approach. One scene, for example, depicted with considerable accuracy the interior of the dome of the Observatory of Paris with all its scientific instruments. A play based on a Jules Verne novel had become an eagerly awaited event. Michel Strogoff, immensely popular with the young, was one of the greatest successes of publication of the nineteenth century. By the time it reached the stage, it had run through fifty printings. The production of this work on the stage of the Châtelet had been announced for months before Dennery’s adaptation opened in November 1880 (it would run until the following November, totalling 386 performances). The play was given a star-studded production, with Marie Laurent as Maria Strogoff, Marais, from the Odéon (who had just played another Russian role in Les Danicheff), as Michel Strogoff, and Dailly, from the Ambigu, as Blount. This casting is itself an indication of the diminishing number of theatres with fixed troupes and of the tendency at the Châtelet to assemble a company for a show. Michel Strogoff was one of the best examples of the sensation drama, which had come into being with the developmeat of more sophisticated stage-machinery in the second half of the century. This type of drama was built around one or more very spectacular scenes or ‘clous’. For Noel and Stoullig it was a strange piece which, following the prevailing fashion, is neither a drame nor a féerie, but a huge vehicle for spectacle depending mainly on the designers and directors.20 Cashing in on the journey formula that had proved so successful in Le Tour du monde, this was a geography lesson about Russia, magnificently illustrated by the main scene-painters of Paris. The novel was divided up into seventeen tableaux. The full resources of the enormous stage of the Châtelet were needed to take the huge cast—for the ballet of the Fête Tartare of the ninth scene, there were 220


the main dancers, a corps de ballet of fifty, another fifty non-dancing extras and a cortege of 250. Some 1,200 costumes were also used. The second scene showing Moscow illuminated involved a ballet, which included a corps de ballet of 100 and a great deal of military music. The final scene, the Franco-Russian Alliance, was in the best tradition of the Cirque, involving a ‘Grand Military and Allegorical Tableau’ with the French and Russian armies, choirs, military bands, some hundreds of people on the stage and forty horses. The most memorable visual part was a sequence of scenes played against a magnificent moving panorama, showing a journey down the Angara, the river of naphta and the burning city. Moving panoramas had been used much earlier in the century, but this was one of the most spectacular uses of the technique ever made. Further effects were provided by the Maison Ruggieri, which specialised in pyrotechnics, and the Maison Molténi, which had been perfecting magic-lantern projection in theatres in the 1860s and 1870s. Whilst the Châtelet, the Gaîté (when not devoted to opera buffa) and frequently the Porte-Saint-Martin were giving much time to the féerie and sensation dramas in which they could exploit to the full the resources of their stages, the Ambigu was becoming more markedly the theatre of naturalist melodrama. Finally, with William Busnach’s adaptations of L’Assommoir (1879) and Nana (1881), popular theatre audiences became familiar with Zola.21 Unusually, the Ambigu-Comique was dark for nearly a fortnight at the beginning of January 1879 to allow for work on the mise en scène of L’Assommoir, which opened on 18 January and ran for a year. There is a tendency to decry the adaptations of Zola’s novels for the stage, and to dismiss them as ‘mere’ melodrama. This springs partly from a desire to see naturalism arriving with the Théâtre Libre in 1887, partly from Zola’s own comparative lack of success when he tried to write directly for the theatre and partly from the fact that these adaptations were not seen by the theatre or its public as presenting an obviously new departure. Zola was a successful and popular novelist, and L’Assommoir had appeared as a feuilleton in Le Bien public. Most of what might be regarded as the hallmarks of naturalism in the theatre, though more clearly defined by Zola himself in Le Naturalisme au théâtre, were already present in productions at the Ambigu by the time L’Assommoir came to be staged. Zola himself was delighted and Antoine later observed that L’Assommoir was a

221


success which chalks up an undoubted point for the naturalist school. The extraordinary truth to life of the mise en scène and the admirable interpretation of the part of Coupeau by Gil Naza are drawing the crowds.22 L’Assommoir also subscribed to the mode for cutting up novels into a series of tableaux. Its realism of presentation was part of a response to audience expectations for illusion in the theatre. The play was less sensational than the Mystères de Paris simply because the focus of the novel was different. It remained conventional in so far as it was designed for audiences who found the narrative aspect of drama important. Entertainment, not thesis, was behind the productions of the Ambigu. The actors had a style which was that of the boulevards, not of the Comédie-Française, a style which still placed much emphasis on showing rather than being. The sheer size of the Ambigu made for a slightly larger style of acting than what was required in the small theatres used by the Théâtre Libre. Over thirty years earlier, Théophile Gautier had made the point that smaller theatres make for a more intimate style of acting: Small theatres, let me assure you, are the best. Small theatres are kinder to the actors and allow audiences to see the actresses, facial expressions and all the minute and delicate work that is part of the actor’s art, but which is lost if seen from too great a distance. Small theatres relieve the characters from having to shout to be heard and allow audiences to appreciate the most fleeting nuances of diction, which is very important in a literary theatre, where each word has its value and where the loss of a single half-line is to be regretted.23 Ironically, it was probably the size of the Ambigu that ultimately militated more than anything else against the development of a truly naturalist acting style to match the mise en scène. Nana did not enjoy anything like the success of L’Assommoir. It ran for just over two months. The novel had been much whittled down, and considerably expurgated, no doubt to satisfy the censors: The Nana of the Ambigu is a fundamentally moral Nana, a poor girl who does not realise the harm she is doing and 222


who, I assure you, is in no way responsible for the stupidity of the men who ruin themselves for her.24 Nana’s rival, Rose-Mignon, was cut out, as was her friend Satin. A sensational fire scene was included, but then cut after the first night. The play was overlong and, as a reaction to first-night audiences and the censors, various other cuts were also made. The opening scene in the theatre foyer had included Mlle. Massin (Nana) getting undressed and dressed onstage. The audience had not responded to this piece of titillation and no objection was made when the censors demanded that it should be removed. The part of Bordenave was also taken out. Since all the focus of the audience was directed to Nana, the Muffat side of the plot became less important and Countess Sabine ceased to be necessary. With these and other cuts the playing time was reduced to about four hours. This is a useful illustration of theatre practice at the time. It is also a reminder of the importance of the public as judges and, in the case of the popular theatres, of the need to give them what they want. The most successful scene seems to have been Nana’s looking in a mirror and discovering that she has smallpox. Noel and Stoullig compare her agony to the delirium tremens scene of L’Assommoir. They felt that the play was no more than a series of ‘more or less naturalistic scenes divided up into small slices’. Their view of naturalism in the theatre is in general dismissive.25 In terms of the direction in which theatre was moving, their comment is significant.

223

CONCLUSION

Having accepted the fact that the main subject of this book has been theatre occurring outside the official theatres, a theatre completely removed from notions of fashion or social event (or what would later be termed ‘digestive theatre’), a theatre which did not subscribe to any notion of artistic high culture and which could embrace almost any form of dramatic or quasi-dramatic entertainment, it becomes apparent just how loose the terminology ‘popular theatre’ really is. Like ‘theatre of the absurd’, it is a convenient label under which many things can be grouped but which, on closer examination, are not that similar. A Deburau pantomime, for example, does not bear a very close resemblance to a drama by Félix Pyat or to a travelling puppet-production of Le Tour du monde en 80 jours. It is also questionable whether these would have played to the same audiences, even if the term ‘popular’ is used to cover all of them. Apart from the notion of specific theatres often having their own audiences of aficionados, the balance between the different social classes within an auditorium varied from theatre to theatre, from night to night, as well as changing over the years. Blanket references to such phenomena as the ‘embourgeoisement’ of the boulevard are accepted only too readily because they are convenient, but fail to take into account the way in which some theatres moved up-market more rapidly than others and how shifts in population meant that popular audiences might be found in the suburbs rather than the centre, but had not necessarily died out. In the provinces the travelling theatres often reached the non-public. But this ‘non-public’, in the sense of people who did not or could not go to the theatre, also included members of the bourgeoisie. In the booths at the end of the century there 224

CONCLUSION

were usually three prices. The dearest seats had some pretension to comfort, or at least a little padding, and were meant to attract a middle-class clientele. The real significance of popular theatre in the nineteenth century was the scale on which it operated as it provided entertainment for the new and growing urban working classes. Mostly it was undemanding and had no social or aesthetic pretensions to high culture. Despite its frequently populist sentiments, its ethos was for the most part bourgeois or pettybourgeois and seldom subversive in any serious way. Its moral values reflected the codes to which the petty-bourgeoisie aspired. To some extent theatres were ‘popular’ because this was how their audiences perceived them. Until about 1830 the inhabitants of the Temple and the rue St Denis certainly thought of the Ambigu or the Gaîté as their theatre, which the bourgeoisie would sometimes visit. This notion persisted for the rest of the century with the Ambigu, but was lost by the Gaîté in 1862. The audiences at the suburban theatres and the local theatres such as the Château d’Eau or the Bouffes du Nord also continued to look on their theatres as belonging to them and not being simply Parisian theatres. The various forms of popular theatre in the nineteenth century existed at a given period in a given set of historical, economic and social circumstances. As a piece of social history, the phenomenon of popular theatre in the nineteenth century is fascinating, but its interest is historical and, with all its variables, it cannot, strictly speaking, offer a model in either organisational, aesthetic or sociological terms for the theatre of today. For the twentieth century, the melodrama has remained the most attractive dramatic genre, since its strong theatrical values make it easier to take out of its social context than the vaudeville or the féerie. Nineteenth-century melodramas are revived from time to time, generally paced up, parodied and given pastiche music, and audiences have hissed the villain, not because they are deeply involved in the issues or the situation, but because it is fun to do so. The popular audiences have long ceased going to such entertainments. The revival of a melodrama today has a framing that is either cultural, antiquarian or simply kitsch. Certain directors, such as Planchon, with his own version of Les Trois Mousquetaires, have attempted to re-create the values of nineteenth-century popular theatre. This sort of production, 225


successful as it was, has a one-off value when mixed in with a repertoire including Adamov, Brecht, Shakespeare, Molière and others. The nineteenth-century popular theatres developed out of the marginalised theatres of the eighteenth century and came to satisfy the entertainment needs of a rapidly changing society. By the beginning of the twentieth century the shorter working week created greater possibilities of leisure activities for the working classes, but within a short time it was the cinema that satisfied the need for escapism and spectacle. It provided a higher level of technical competence than the theatre could and, as film theatres became more numerous, it also offered locally based entertainment. The suburban theatres died out in the first decades of the twentieth century, became cinemas or even avant-garde ‘art’ theatres (this happened to the Batignolles, Montmartre and Montparnasse). The touring fit-ups continued to reach out to the non-public, to the towns and villages where even cinemas were relatively thin on the ground. The last of these disappeared in the 1950s with the spread of television. In practice, theatre ceased to be one of the mass media once it was overtaken by the popular press. Cinema and television only added impetus to a historical process that was already well under way. Today, the television soap opera, detective serial or situation comedy satisfy most of the needs that the nineteenth-century theatres satisfied. It is not for nothing that realism is the predominant mode on television. What television caters for less well is the sense of the marvellous, but this has perhaps more to do with the size of the screen and the fact that the viewer has a degree of control and can switch channel. The marvels of science are now presented, demystified and without the veil of fiction that Jules Verne needed to provide, and television news, complete with pictures of bodies of victims, brings the ‘fait divers’ into every living-room daily. Television is the ‘public service’ in a way that the nineteenth-century theatre was not, and that Vilar’s TNP could not really be. Television reaches well down the socioeconomic scale to the type of family for whom, in the mid-nineteenth century, even the cheap seats at the Gaîté or Ambigu represented a serious inroad into the daily subsistence budget; it reaches the nonpublic and also those with a low level of literacy. The popular theatres of nineteenth-century France were a phenomenon born of a particular moment in the development of 226

CONCLUSION

society, which brought together the right conditions for the flowering of a form of live entertainment frequented by the popular classes, expressing an ethos that was sympathetic to them (and sometimes reflected their condition). For those who were not excluded by poverty, these theatres offered an escape from the generally hard conditions of the struggle to survive in an urban environment at a certain stage of the industrial revolution in a country in which frequently recurring economic depression was a fact of life. We need to view the popular theatres of nineteenth-century France in this context, without attempting to idealise them in any way. Actors were trying to earn a living, as precarious then as it is today, and these theatres, unlike the subsidised houses, were governed by market forces. Licensees and managers were only too aware of this. Few of them made their fortunes, even if the buildings in which they operated were increasingly regarded as good investments for those engaged in speculation as bourgeois capitalism developed. The nineteenth-century theatre had its crises. What it did not suffer from was the calling into question of the very nature of theatre or the need to justify its existence. It is a commonplace of literary criticism to see the nineteenth century as a period when quantity rather than literary quality was important in the theatres. For most of these theatres literature and literary criticism were irrelevant. If we look at the matter from another perspective, what we have is a period of remarkable diversity, with outstanding achievements in theatre technology and stage design, a period which developed the concept of the director or metteur en scène. Pixérécourt is arguably the first metteur en scène in the modern sense, if by this term we mean a single creative mind responsible for the overall staging of a show. Above all, however, this is one of the greatest periods in the history of the theatre for the interaction between the public and the theatre event.

227

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1 2 3 4 5 6

Paris, Maspero, 1969. Amsterdam, 1773 (Geneva, Slatkine reprints, 1970). ibid., p. 203. ibid., p. 212. ibid.,pp. 214–15. See David Bradby and John McCormick, People’s Theatre, London, Croom Helm, 1978, and Totowa N.J., Rowman & Littlefield, 1978. 7 Le Théâtre et le peuple, Paris, 1872, p. 141. 8 See Report of the Municipal Council of Paris, no. 108, 1879. 9 Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1964.

1 LES THEATRES SECONDAIRES 1 Le Théâtre à Paris au dix-huitième siècle, Paris, Librairie de France (undated). 2 A useful checklist of the dates of the opening of the various theatres is contained in vol. I of L. Henry Lecomte, Histoire des théâtres de Paris, Paris, Daragon, 1905–12 (Geneva, Slatkine reprints, 1973). 3 Quoted by Maurice Albert, Les Théâtres des boulevards, Paris, 1902 (Geneva, Slatkine reprints, 1969), p. 67. 4 Pierre Gascar uses the term as the title of his well-illustrated Le Boulevard du crime, Paris, Hachette/Massin, 1980. 5 A, Jardin and A.J.Tudesq in Nouvelle Histoire de la France contemporaine vol. 7 (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1973), p. 201, give census figures showing the relatively rapid increase of the population of Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1801 the number of in—habitants was 547,000 and by 1846 this had risen to 1,054,000 (or 1,227,000, if the ‘petite banlieue’ or immediate suburbs were to be included). 6 According to the Almanach des spectacles for 1829, there were only 1,254 seats. The lack of numbered seating makes it difficult to assess exact numbers. These may have been affected by modification of the

228

NOTES

7 8 9 10 11 12

internal arrangement (for example, closing off seating areas that had no view of the stage). At the time of the 1827 Ambigu fire, the Gaîté was thought of as a building able to contain the best part of 2,000 people. The building is still in existence, though it no longer functions as a theatre. See Maurice Albert, Les Théâtres de la foire, Paris, 1900 (reprint New York, Burt Franklin, 1970). ibid., pp. 288–9. For a study of the Variétés, consult Joseph Long, Théâtre des Variétés, Cambridge, Chadwyck-Healey, 1980. There is an interesting parallel to be drawn between plays of this period and the agit-prop pieces of the post-1917 period in the Soviet Union. See E. Jauffret, Le Théâtre révolutionnaire, Paris, 1869, pp. 426–8.

2 EQUESTRIANS AND ACROBATS 1 For a study of the Cirque Franconi and subsequent Cirque Olympique, see A.H.Saxon, Enter Foot and Horse (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1968). 2 Details of Antonio Franconi’s early career are given by Henri Thétard in La Merveilleuse Histoire du cirque (Paris, Julliard, 1978). Franconi travelled in Spain and in 1773 he persuaded the Duc de Duras to help him set up a bull-fighting establishment in Roues. In 1786 he established a circus in Lyon in the Brotteau district, first a wooden building, then a stone one. He had to close this in 1792, and it was destroyed in the bombardment the following year. His claim for damages was recognised by the Convention, but he never received any compensation. 3 Saxon, op. cit. mentions that the first stage to be added to a ring was by Dibdin and Hughes when they opened the Royal Circus and Philharmonic Academy (later to become the Surrey Théâtre) in 1782. Philip Astley added a stage to his London establishment in 1784, and it was an important feature of his 1804 (third) amphitheatre, which also had the interesting feature of a mobile proscenium opening. 4 According to the Bourla plan kept at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (mentioned by Saxon, op. cit.) 5 Unattributed extract from a review, quoted by Thétard, op. cit., p. 142. 6 Les Théâtres de la Place du Châtelet, Paris, Ducher, 1865. Also to be consulted is Alphonse Gosset, Traité de la construction des théâtres, Paris, Baudry, 1886. 7 ‘We shall not enter into a detailed description of the electric lanterns, which are not exactly the same as all such pieces of equipment, nor shall we look at the lenses or the transparent screens designed to concentrate or to attenuate, or to give colour to the electric lights. Such details would be far too specialised for a work of this nature.’ (Daly and Davioud, Les Théâtres de la Place du Châtelet, p. 32). We can only regret their unwillingness to enter into such details.

229


8 For histories of these two theatres consult Paul Ginisty Mémoires d’une danseuse de corde—Madame Saqui 1786–1866, Paris, Fasquelle, 1907, and Tristan Rémy, Jean-Gaspard Deburau, Paris, L’Arche, 1954. 9 Not to be confused with the Théâtre des Nouveautés, place de la Bourse 1827–32, which would later house the Théâtre du Vaudeville from 1840 until 1869. 10 Both of these accounts are to be found in Ginisty, op. cit. p. 167. 11 This example is given by Rémy, op. cit. The source is a document in the Archives Nationales, F21 1154. 12 According to Rémy, op. cit., relations were basically good between the Acrobates and the Funambules, but Madame Saqui’s brother-in-law, Pierre, constantly tried to stir up trouble and frequently reported the Funambules to the authorities. After the death of Jean-Julien in 1825, Pierre’s ‘advice’ helped lead to the bankruptcy of Madame Saqui. 13 Rémy, op. cit., p. 47, bases a calculation on the relative importance of the Funambules and the Acrobates on claims made for compensation for lost business when the theatres were obliged to close for ten days in 1820, following the assassination of the Duc de Berry. Bertrand claimed 200 francs a day to cover rent and actors’ salaries. The Acrobates claimed only three-quarters of this amount. 14 Archives Nationales F21 1154. 15 See Rémy, op. cit., p. 130. 16 See M.Carlson, Le Théâtre de la révolution française, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, p. 137. 17 F21 119. 18 Another document indicates that, back in France in the 1830s, they received permission in 1832 to pay one-tenth, instead of one-fifth of their takings as poor tax (probably another indication of the small scale of their enterprise, whatever it actually was at that time). These documents are in a file on the Petit Lazari in the Archives Nationales, F21 1036. 19 Paris, F. Henry, 1871. In fact the author is A.Marquet, best known as an actor at the Folies Dramatiques.

3 AWAY FROM THE CENTRE—THE SUBURBS AND THE PROVINCES 1 Essais historiques sur Paris. Quoted by André Warnod in ‘L’Ancien Théâtre Montparnasse’, Masques, cahiers d’art dramatique, no. 20 (Paris, 1930), p. 7. 2 According to Warnod, op. cit. p. 13, he was favourably looked upon by the new régime, having been a loyal defender of the king at the age of nineteen. With the entry of the Allies into Paris in 1814 he had shown such zeal for the Bourbon cause that he had been decorated with the Order of the Lily. Above all, being the grandson of a gravedigger, he had been able to help locate the bodies of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette for reburial.

230

NOTES

3 L’Architectonographie des théâtres de Paris, Paris, Impr. de P. Didot l’Ainé, 1827. 4 See Maurice Artus, ‘Le Théâtre de Montmartre’, Bulletin de la Société du Vieux Montmartre, Paris, 1904. 5 Until the 1830s measurements tended to be given in ‘pieds’ or feet, rather than metres. At 0.324 metres, a ‘pied’ is marginally longer than an English foot, which measures only 0.305 metres. 6 Consult Artus, op. cit., also Archives Nationales F21 1165, ‘Théâtres de Banlieue—Montmartre + Batignolles’. 7 This information is mainly based on Paul Larochelle, Trois Hommes de théâtre 1782–1930, Paris, 1930. This history of the Larochelle dynasty contains a great deal of useful documentation, including extracts from Henri Larochelle’s ‘livre de bord’ at Montparnasse for 1851–2. 8 According to Warnod, op. cit., p. 19, the Grenelle theatre brought in 10,000 francs in its first year under the new management. Montparnasse had ben running at a loss of 333 francs 44 for the year 1850–1. Larochelle managed to abolish this deficit within his first year of operation. It is worth noting that the capacity box-office for the theatre at this period was approximately 300 francs a night. 9 In its history Montparnasse housed Antoine’s Théâtre Libre for its season from November 1887 until June 1888, and was used by Paul Fort’s Théâtre d’Art. 10 Originally the theatre had been taken on for Léon Cogniard, son of Hippolyte, but he died in 1870 and his father took over the theatre again. 11 See Felix Galipeaux, Les Luguet, Paris, Felix Alcan, 1929, Ch. 11. This chapter contains the beginning of Luguet’s memoirs which he unfortunately never finished. 12 The bill also included La Comtesse d’Altimbourg, Les Mystères de Paris and Jeanne d’Arc à Rouen, 13 See Un Demi-siècle de théâtre à Tulle 1800–1850, Paris, Alphonse Picard, 1907, Ch. vii.

4 ‘FORAINS’ AND FIT-UPS 1 Curtius was of German origin. He established his sideshow of waxworks on the boulevard du Temple towards the end of the eighteenth century. He was a relative of Madame Tussaud, whom he trained in the art of modelling in wax. On 12 July, 1789 busts of the Duc d’Orléans and Necker were taken from Curtius’ show to be paraded through the streets. Curtius himself was involved in the attack on the Bastille. There is a bust of himself, in wax and fabric, at the Musée Carnavalet. Curtius’ show continued well into the nineteenth century, but it became a bit of a joke to see the same wax effigies constantly re-dressed to represent historical and contemporary figures. 2 See Paul Ginisty, Le Théâtre de la rue, Paris, Albert Morancé, 1925, p. 41. Dromale’s booth was the ancestor of the Petit Lazari. In 1815 Dromale applied to the new regime for permission to add to his show ‘some harlequinade-pantomime scenes to enliven the performances’.

231


3 4

5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

He was unsuccessful in this attempt to extend his repertoire, as he had been earlier in the same year when he had applied for a licence to perform vaudevilles with two characters. (Document of 27 September 1815, Archives Nationales, F21 1159.) The second Théâtre Lazari was probably built on the site occupied by this booth. Collection choisie de canevas, scènes et parades nouvelles, jouées en plein vent par les sieurs Bobêche, Galimafré, Gringalet, Faribole et autres farceurs célèbres de la capitale. See Pierre Gascar, Le Boulevard du Crime, Paris, Hachette/Massin, 1980, pp. 29–36. Chronique des petits théâtres, Paris, 1883 (original edition 1837), vol. I pp. 310–11. A painting by Roller in the Musée Carnavalet indicates the existence of these paradistes in or around 1820. Bobêche died in poverty before 1830 and Galimafré went on to become a stage-hand at the Gaîté and later at the Opéra-Comique, ending up as a locksmith in Montmartre. The full text of this can be found in Désaugiers, Chansons completes, Paris, A.Delahaye, 1858. ‘Lettres de Paris’ 1806–7 (author not indicated), vol. I, p. 128. Dossier Beaunoir, Archives Nationales F21 1159. Quoted by François Caradec and Alain Weill, Le Café-Concert, Paris, Hachette, 1980, p. 11. ibid. p. 42. Ce qu’on voit dans les rues de Paris, Paris, 1855. 2nd edition 1867 (which is referred to here); see Chapter 3, ‘L’Art dramatique en plein vent’. Some such figures can be seen in the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires. They are similar to the more elaborate sets of Theatrum Mundi figures (which could run to several hundred for one set), such as are to be found in the puppet collection of the Munich Civic Museum. Articles 472 and 479 of the penal code of 28 Pluviose, an VIII (17 February 1800) also refer to them. See Jean Variot, Théâtre de tradition populaire, Marseille, Robert Laffont, 1942. In a note on this play, which bears some resemblance to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme with its theme of the snobbish enriched shopkeeper, he describes the performance, commenting particularly on the clowns’ performances of the female roles: ‘Their expressions in playing the roles of the girls and the maid used the broadest of comedy. The maid, to indicate her scorn, blew her nose on her fingers. The shower of blows administered to the marquis was choreographed as only clowns (even second-rate ones) know how’ (p. 402). Variot was a great-grandson of the Baron Panon du Hazier (1792–1851), who, between 1835 and 1848 collected a great deal of material relating to travelling theatres in Alsace. Du Hazier’s interest in the oral traditions of theatre led him to attend many performances and to note down scenes and scenarios. Variot’s work is based partly on this, partly on notes made by Elémir Bourges between 1887 and 1898 and partly on his own work between 1909 and 1914. In order to cope

232

NOTES

16 17

18

19 20

with the oral tradition (since very few of the plays had printed or written texts), Variot learned shorthand. This is contained in a dossier on ‘Spectacles de curiosités’ at the Archives Nationales F21 955. The Pitou company is remarkably well documented. A number of notebooks at the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires date from the period 1874 until the end of the century. A particularly touching document is the account by the young Emile Pitou of the months following the death of his father in 1881, when the company nearly disappeared (MS 53. 54. B 83). In July of 1881 he failed to come to an agreement with the ‘placier’ at Oullins, probably because the rent was above his means. Shortly after this Pitou pawned all items of value, including his gold watch. Journal d’Annonces, 27 June 1901. ‘We must admit that we were literally overwhelmed to see such beautiful costumes, so carefully copied from those of the Opéra-Comique. A thorough understanding of the positioning of the scenery and close observation of the ground plans for the various scenes. In the first act, Mignon getting out of her carriole, trembling beneath the stick of the terrible Jarno; then the balcony scene between Philine and Laerte; the entrance of Lothario and, finally, the lunch between Wilhem Mester and Laerte. All this is observed and executed with a skill that calls for the highest praise for M.Pitou and his helpers. In the act in Philine’s boudoir, the entrance of Frédéric through the window and the pane of glass broken at that moment, indicate a real knowledge of staging and a remarkable attention to detail, things that are neglected only too often in the big theatres. But the sensation of the play was, without doubt, the fire scene. As Lothario perpetrates his arson, fire breaks out on the stage—first there is thick smoke followed by a glow, and then a burst of flame comes up through a trap in the floor. Soon parts of the roof begin to fall and, under the influence of the heat, the conservatory shatters. Sparks falling from above indicate that the roof timbers are burning and then suddenly, the roof and a part of the wall collapse with a great crash. All this is done with such striking realism that we can only regret that the only too inadequate resources of our town theatre do not allow things to be done so well there.’ Les Forains, Paris, Malato G. Doin, 1925. See Forains d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, Orléans, Dandy, 1968. Ch. 16 is concerned with ‘Les théâtres dramatiques et lyriques’. In this chapter he lists a large number of troupes, many of them still active well into the twentieth century.

5 AUDIENCES 1 Maurice Descotes, Le Public de théâtre et son histoire, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1964. Jean Duvignaud, Sociologie du théâtre, essai sur les ombres collectives, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1965.

233


2 See Jean Charles Asselain, Histoire économique de la France du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, vol. 1, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1984; L. Chevalier, La Formation de la population parisienne, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1950. 3 V.A.Blanqui in Les Classes ouvrières en 1848 gives the budget of a cotton-spinner in the Lille region. This worker, with a wife and four children, earned 2 francs a day (12 francs a week) and his wife obtained a further 10–15 centimes a day from lace-making. The weekly expenditure of 12 francs 75 was accounted for as follows: 24 kg of bread @ 22 centimes a half kilogramme—5 francs 40 scraps of meat three times a week—0 francs 75 butter, molasses or fruit—1 franc 30 potatoes and haricot beans—1 franc half a ‘pinte’ of milk a day—0 francs 35 (a ‘pinte’ was a measure almost equivalent to an English quart) rent (cellar 3 metres below ground level)—1 franc 50 coal—1 franc 35 soap and heat—1 franc 10 This meagre level of subsistence was helped out by a fortnightly allocation of 3 kg of bread and some clothes, but, in spite of what might be termed full employment, this family lived in abject poverty. Quoted by H. See, Histoire économique de la France, Paris, Armand Colin, 1951, p. 182. 4 ‘Théâtres—Cirque Olympique’ in Nouveau Tableau de Paris, vol. 4, Paris, 1835. 5 Quoted by E. Noel and E. Stoullig, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, vol. for 1879, Paris, 1880, p. 520. 6 Physiologie du théâtre, Paris, Firmin Didot, 1839, vol. 3: ‘les spectateurs avant, pendant et après la representation aux différents théâtres de Paris’, p. 267. 7 ibid. pp. 279–80. 8 Les Bourgeois de Paris au XIXe siècle, Paris, Flammarion, 1970. 9 In the official theatres, the parterre was generally reserved for men. In the popular theatres the sexes were mixed. The 1875 booking plan for the Ambigu indicates specifically that ladies can be admitted to all seats. 10 Maurice Hamel, ‘Le dernier théâtre romantique disparaât’, Lectures pour tous, January 1933. This was written at the time of the demolition of the Théâtre de Belleville. 11 See Benigno Cacéres, Histoire de l’éducation populaire, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1964, p. 16. 12 Pierre-Emile Levasseur, Rapport sur l’instruction primaire et l’instruction secondaire, Paris, Impr. de A.Chaix, 1876.

6 ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS 1 See Ch. XVI, ‘Subvention extraordinaire aux théâtres de Paris et de la banlieue’, Decret du 17 juillet 1848. Archives Nationales F21 1042.

234

NOTES

2 This document, Archives Nationales F21 1042, includes a comparative table of takings for the month of May 1849. The best business was done by the Vaudeville, with 30,824 francs, but the Variétés and the Gymnase hobbled through with half that amount, and the Ambigu with slightly less. The Gaîté closed down after 6 June, its highest taking being 660 francs 70 for a house that, in more normal times, could easily clear 2,000 francs. The Funambules kept going, but with takings that went as low as 41 francs 10. 3 This was reduced to 37,289 francs through extra income derived from letting apartments and rooms in the building, through contracting out sales of refreshments in the auditorium (600 francs), and from fines levied on the actors and employees (300 francs). All theatres operated a system of fines, which were generally levied on actors for such matters as unpunctuality at rehearsal or missing performances. 4 An undated newspaper cutting at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris gives some further interesting details on conditions of employment at the Lazari. It reproduces a contract of 1856 between the director Frédéric Huet and an actor, Alexandre Blacher. Against a salary of 43 francs 35 a month, Blacher had to accept all parts without distinction of ‘emploi’ (generally actors were taken on to play certain stock roles), and to perform in melodrama, comedy, opera, vaudeville, pantomime, féerie, etc. He was also expected to learn parts at a rate of fifty lines a day, with a fine of two francs for each day’s delay. 5 Cogniard’s calculations are based on an average of seven years’ costs. Oil lighting he costed at 28, 131 francs 10, and gas at 17,245 francs 20. 6 Ribié had taken over the theatre in 1795 when Nicolet retired. He remained there barely two years, but returned as an associate of Blonde-Dufossay. A large amount of correspondence on this matter, including long statements by the litigants, printed for the use of the Conseil d’Etat, is included amongst the papers of the Gaîté held in the Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS. NAF 3049. 7 See correspondence on the Ambigu and its director, Tournemine, Archives Nationales F21 1134. 8 See F. Soulié, ‘Les théâtres de Paris’ in Nouveau tableau de Paris au XIXe siècle, vol. 6, Paris, 1835, p. 46. 9 For correspondence on this matter, see Archives Nationales F21 1134.

7 CENSORSHIP 1 Henri Welschinger, Le Théâtre de la revolution, Paris, Charavay, 1880, p. 138. 2 See Henri Welschinger, La Censure sous le premier empire, Paris, Charavay Frères, 1882, Ch. 5, ‘Les théâtres’. Welschinger’s main source here is the correspondence of Napoleon, vol. VI. 3 Théaulon and Dartois, Les Clefs de Paris, ou le dessert d’Henri IV. 4 Histoire de la censure théâtrale en France, Paris, Dentu, 1862. 5 ibid, p. 290.

235


6 ibid.,p. 319. 7 One of the most useful works on the censorship under the Second Empire is the anonymous La Censure sous Napoléon III, Paris, Savine, 1892. 8 René Clair re-creates a sequence from this in Les Enfants du paradis. 9 ‘Robert Macaire ou la grande peur des censeurs’, Europe, November—December, 1987, pp. 49–60. 10 See, for example, Robert Baldick’s The Life and Times of Frédérick Lemaître, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1959. 11 Quoted from censor’s report by Krakovitch (note 9), p. 57. 12 La Censure sous Napoléon III, pp. 41–3. 13 ibid., pp. 219–20. 14 ibid., p. 81. 15 See L. Gabriel-Robinet, La Censure, Paris, Hachette, 1965. 16 ‘We should like theatre to be brought back to a finer and more manly ideal, we should like it to become a school’, quoted in ibid., p. 116.

8 THE VAUDEVILLE 1 As early as 1837, Gautier, reviewing a five-act vaudeville at the Variétés, writes: ‘The well-made vaudeville, the vaudeville with aspirations to be a comedy, is the most intolerable mixture one can imagine. Now all vaudevilles are “well-made”. Having learned their lesson from the unending jokes of newspaper columnists, makers of vaudevilles do not allow themselves to be carried away so much by their natural facility; American uncles and their rascally nephews have disappeared completely; nobody ever sings the verse: From your final dwelling, up there in the skies, How happy you must be, colonel. Nobody dares put a colonel on the stage of the Gymnase…. Nowadays, the vaudeville is sober, stiff and restrained; it is afraid of being stupid or absurd; it attempts to motivate the entrances and exits of the characters; it devotes much attention to the versification of its couplets, and succeeds so well that it manages to be nothing more than a failed comedy, the worst thing in the world! In the smallest playlet performed at the Vaudeville or the Gymnase one can discern the intention to reach the stage of the Comédie-Française.’ Histoire de l’art dramatique en France depuis, vingt-cinq ans, Paris, Hetzel, 1958–9, vol. I, pp. 59–60. 2 Henri Gidel’s Le Vaudeville, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1986, is the first detailed study of the vaudeville as a genre. There have been detailed studies of individual writers of vaudevilles, Scribe, Labiche and Feydeau, but the vaudeville itself is nearly always studied simply as a sort of sub-heading of comedy. 3 ibid., pp. 24–5. 4 L’Ecluse (c. 1711–92) was an actor and also a dentist (Voltaire was one of his clients). On the proceeds of his dentistry he built the first Théâtre des Variétés at the Foire Saint-Laurent in 1777. However, this ruined him financially and he ended up as an actor again.

236

NOTES

5 According to A.P.Moore in The Genre Poissard and the French Stage of the Eighteenth Century, New York, Columbia University, 1935, there is only one recorded performance of this piece, at the private theatre of the dancer, La Guimard, at Pantin, in 1772. 6 Les Petits Théâtres, vol. I, pp. 279–80. Cited by Moore, ibid., p. 357. 7 ibid., pp. 357–9. 8 Gidel, op. cit., points out the direct line of descent from such plays as Dorvigny’s Janot, ou les battus payent l’amende, ‘proverbe— comédie—parade or what you will’, 1779. 9 An example of André’s speech: ‘Je l’esparons ben qu’all’ sera maman avant un an, et comme not’ bonne maîtresse est un tantinet delicate, j’espérons ben aussi que c’est not’ fille Geneviève qui sera la nourrice du poupon…avec ça que v’la qu’elle retourne demain dans son endroit avec c’ti là de M. et Mad. Bobinard, les marchands de soie, nos voisins, et qu’elle sèvrera l’un tout juste au moment où c’que la p’tite mére nous donnera l’autre. Jarni! ça f’ra encore un fier jour c’ti la.’ This may be translated roughly, losing the colour of the language: ‘I hope she’Il be a mother before the year’s out, and, as our mistress is a little delicate, I hope too that our daughter Geneviève will be the baby’s nurse…and that she’ll come back home tomorrow with the baby belonging to M. and Mme. Bobinard, the silk merchants, who are our neighbours, and that she’ll wean their baby just when the other mother gives us hers. Gracious, that will be a proud day for us.’ 10 For a study of Scribe see N.C.Arvin, Eugène Scribe and the French Theater, 1815–1860, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1924. 11 A note at the end indicates that provincial directors may reduce it to three acts, by omitting the second and third acts and modifying one scene. 12 The play contains a concierge, Madame Girot, who seems almost the ancestor of lonesco’s concierges. When told by Cruchet that her business is to clean up the mess on the footpath each day, she bursts out: ‘Ça me regarde, ça me regarde! Est-ce que j’peux t’être toujours derrière les talons des locataires pour guetter qu’est-ce-qui salit le trottoir, les escaliers, les…j’aurais l’air d’une inquisiteuse d’Espagne…. Je balie tous les matins, v’là tout ce que je peux faire pour l’entretien de la maison et la satisfaction du préfet de police.’ (That’s my business, that’s my business! I can’t always be running along behind my tenants watching to see who dirties the footpath, the stairs, the… l’d look like a Spanish inquisitress… I sweep up every morning, and that’s all I can do for the cleanliness of the house and the satisfaction of the prefect of police.) 13 See entry for 20 December 1842, Histoire de l’art dramatique, vol. II, p. 313. 14 Various studies of Labiche have been written. These include Philippe Soupault, Eugène Labiche, Paris, Mercure de France, 1964, and L.C. Pronko, Eugène Labiche and Georges Feydeau, London, Macmillan, 1982.

237


9 PANTOMIME 1 Florence and Paris, chez Joubert fils aîné, 1779. 2 The author suggests that Metastasio’s Demophon is a piece that might be adapted in this way and describes a possible pantomime opening to the third act (in fact this description is remarkably similar in principle to the notion of the expressive tableau that Diderot had advocated in the Entretiens sur le fils naturet). 3 According to the brochure for this pantomime ‘during the attack torches and hoops covered in tar are brought in and thrown flaming at the castle, which catches fire from time to time’. 4 For a study of the ‘marvellous’ see especially Marian Hannah Winter, The Théâtre of Marvels, New York, Benjamin Blom, 1964. 5 See E.C. Van Bellen, Les Origines du mélodrame, Utrecht, Kemink and Zoon, 1927. Van Bellen’s main thesis is that the melodrama developed out of the pantomime, via the ‘pantomime dialoguée’. 6 W.D. Howarth has studied this in his essay ‘Word and image in Pixérécourt’s melodramas: the dramaturgy of the strip cartoon’, in David Bradby, Louis James and Bernard Sharratt (eds), Performance and Politics in Popular Drama, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980. 7 This aspect of the melodrama is stressed particularly by Peter Brooks in The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1976. 8 Ivor Guest in The Romantic Ballet in Paris, London, Pitman, 1966, stresses the importance of the Porte-Saint-Martin for the evolution of the Romantic ballet. In his appendix D, he lists dance activites at theatres other than the Opéra between 1820 and 1847. The list for the Porte-Saint-Martin is by far the longest, and includes a regular stream of ballets, ballet-pantomimes and melodramas with an important dance element. 9 Note written by Cuvelier on the title page of his own copy of Valtier le cruel, ou la geôlière de Mergentheim. Quoted by M.H.Winter, The Théâtre of Marvels, p. 86. 10 See Henry Lecomte, Histoire des théâtres de Paris, vol. 9 ‘Le Théâtre de la Cité, 1792–1807’, Paris, Daragon, 1910, p. 188. 11 In a note Cuvelier indicates that one reason for leaving out Lady Macbeth was because, in the Ducis adaptation, Raucourt had given such a masterly interpretation of the sleep-walking scene. Curiously enough, he borrows this particular scene in another of his works, La Main de fer, ou l’epouse criminelle. 12 The scene of the ghost of Banquo is utilised by Cuvelier in Valtier le cruel, in which the conscience of the villain, through his reaction to a ghost which is not visible to anyone else, is strongly displayed through pantomime action. 13 Pixérécourt, in Robinson Crusoë, uses the idea of military strategy that we find in Shakespeare. 14 One interesting feature of the production was the creation of a character called Mallorno, an assistant villain to lago. The role was one of Frédérick Lemaître’s earliest stage appearances.

238

NOTES

15 Le Censeur dramatique ou journal des principaux théâtres de Paris et des départements, 1797–8, pp. 173–7. 16 Tristan Rémy in his Jean-Gaspard Deburau, Paris, L’Arche, 1954, suggests that Deburau may have been given the name of Baptiste out of a deliberate attempt on the part of Bertrand of the Funambules to create some confusion with the name of the celebrated rope-dancer and mime artiste, Jean-Baptiste Lalanne, the father of Madame Saqui. 17 Histoire de l”art dramatique en France, vol. II, pp. 266–9. 18 The scenario is reproduced by Jules Janin in Deburau—histoire du théâtre à quatre sous. The 1881 edition is reproduced by the Editions d’aujourd’hui, Paris, 1981, pp. 131ff. 19 Le Pandore, 19 July 1828. Quoted by Rémy, op. cit. p. 83. 20 ibid., p. 109. 21 The Pierrot of Jean-Louis Barrault in Les Enfants du paradis often seems to owe more to Legrand than to Deburau. 22 Histoire de l’art dramatique en France, vol. V, p. 151.

10 THE FEERIE 1 The fullest study of the féerie is Paul Ginisty, La Féerie, reprinted by the Editions d’aujourd’hui, Plan de la Tour (Var), 1982. M.H.Winter, The Théâtre of Marvels, is also valuable. 2 See Hassan El Nouty, Théâtre et pré-cinema, Paris, Nizet, 1978, p. 49. 3 This was done by means of flexible strips of steel which would give under pressure to allow passage and then spring back into place. M.J.Moynet in L’Envers du théâtre, Paris, 1873, Ch. IV, gives a good description of the workings of the various traps. Moynet’s work is now more readily available in a facsimile reprint of 1990 by the Société de Musicologie de Languedoc, Béziers. 4 Histoire de l’art dramatique, vol. III, p. 253. 5 Dion Boucicault’s extravaganza, Babil et Bijou (Covent Garden, 1872), was partly based on La Biche au bois. 6 As a result of a performance at the Célestins in Lyon, La Queue de la poêle entered the puppet repertoire of the Théâtre Joly. Gaston Baty published their text in Le Théâtre Joly, Paris, 1937, and staged it with his Marionnettes a la Française in 1944.

11 THE EARLY MELODRAMA 1 More recent studies include Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1976 and Jean-Marie Thomasseau, Le Mélodrame, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1984. 2 Brooks, op. cit. p. 43. The first hundred pages of Brooks’ book, whose sub-title is Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess, provide one of the best studies of the aesthetic of French melodrama.

239


3 See Jean Duvignaud, Sociologie du théâtre, essai sur les ombres collectives, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1965, especially part IV, Ch. 3 ‘Théâtre sans révolution, révolution sans théâtre’. 4 W.D.Howarth takes this statement as his starting-point in his interestingly titled essay ‘Word and image in Pixérécourt’s melodramas: the dramaturgy of the strip cartoon’ in David Bradby, Louis James and Bernard Sharratt (eds) Performance and Politics in Popular Drama, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980. 5 This is signed with the pseudonym Placide le vieux. It is described as a ‘Facétie littéraire, historique et dramatique par Placide le vieux, habitant de Gonesse, de l’Athénée du même endroit, et des sociétés littéraires de Saint-Denis et d’Argenteuil’ and consists of a poem accompanied by lengthy explanatory notes. 6 Traité du mélodrame, Paris, 1817, p. 36. 7 Adapted by Thomas Holcroft in 1802 under the title A Tale of Mystery this was the first play in English to be described as a melodrama. 8 Guerre au mélodrame, p. 12. 9 Traité du mélodrame, op cit., pp. 66–7. 10 ibid., p. 55. 11 See letter from the composer Alexandre Piccini, accompanying the text of Robinson Crusoë in vol. II of the Théâtre choisi of Pixérécourt, p. 171. 12 See Paul Ginisty, Le Mélodrame, re-issued 1982 in Editions d’aujourd’hui, pp. 92–5. Sometimes Carib is mixed with French, in scenes with Europeans, but there are also scenes between Caribs. According to Ginisty these scenes were intended to produce a comic effect. For all their ‘authenticity’, the effect may therefore have been more like the macaronic Latin or ‘Turkish’ used by Molière, or the nonsense language of Lesage’s fairground piece, Arlequin, roi de Serendip. 13 The most important study of Pixérécourt is W.G. Hartog’s Guilbert de Pixérécourt, sa vie, son mélodrame, sa technique et son influence, Paris and Bruges, 1913. P. Ginisty, in Le Mélodrame, op. cit., devotes four chapters to Pixérécourt (pp. 40–120). 14 vol. IV, pp. 493–9. 15 According to Ginisty, Corsse made 300,000 francs out of the play. Its author received a modest 900 francs.

12 THE SOCIAL MELODRAMA 1 Quoted by Paul Ginisty in Le Mélodrame, Paris, Editions d’aujourd’hui, 1982, p. 160. 2 For a brief study of Bouchardy, see John McCormick, ‘Joseph Bouchardy, a melodramatist and his public’ in David Bradby, Louis James and Bernard Sharratt (eds) Performance and Politics in Popular Drama, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980. 3 E. Noel and E. Stoullig, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, vol. for 1876, Paris, 1877, p. 605. 4 In the twentieth century the theme of Kaspar Hauser has been taken up by Peter Handke and by the film-maker Werner Herzog.

240

NOTES

5 Quarante ans de théâtre, Bibliothèque des Annales Politiques et Littéraires, Paris, 1901, vol. 4, p. 332. 6 Jean-Marie Thomasseau, Le Melodrame, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, p. 77. 7 Quarante ans de théâtre, vol. 4, pp. 336ff. 8 ibid., pp. 336–56. 9 Les Bohémiens de Paris provided Dion Boucicault with the basic plot for his After Dark (1868). He transposed the action to London and added an exciting scene of the rescue of a character tied to the rails of the underground railway (a scenic idea stolen from Augustin Daly’s Under the Gaslight). Mutual borrowings and adaptations of successful plays in the English (or American) and French theatres were fairly common from the 1840s onwards. Dennery himself was responsible for the French adaptation of Boucicault’s The Colleen Bawn, staged as Le Lac de Glenaston in 1861. 10 In 1842 Lemaître appeared in a costume melodrama by Joseph Bouchardy at the Porte Saint-Martin called Paris le bohémien. This was a swashbuckling vehicle for Lemaître. It exploits the currently popular notion of ‘bohémien’ and, without apparently calling contemporary society into question, posits the idea of an alternative society. One of the great contributions of the 1840s seems to have been the idea of masks or disguises in modern society. 11 See A.H.Saxon, Enter Foot and Horse, pp. 214–15. This play probably had a special appeal for Dennery, who was himself an avid collector of objects from the Far East. At his death he left an extensive collection of these objects to the nation, and the Dennery museum is still in existence today. 12 Paris, 1873. A full description of the staging of the opium scene from La Prise de Pékin is given, pp. 234ff. 13 Saxon, op. cit., refers to tableaux of nymphs emerging from the ‘corollas’ of the flowers. This seems more likely than ‘coral’, but the word used by Moynet is ‘coraux’, not ‘corolles’. 14 Le Théâtre, Les Editions de France, 1932, p. 90. 15 See Saxon, op. cit. pp. 217–19. 16 Quoted by Philippe Vigier, ‘Le Mélodrame social dans les années 1840’, Europe, November-December 1987, nos. 703, p. 73. 17 Histoire de la censure dramatique en France, Paris, Dentu, 1862, p. 319. The ‘unhealthy literature’ included the following plays: Le Comte de Charollais, L’Ouvrier, Le Riche et le pauvre, Les Deux Serruriers, Vautrin, Les Mystères de Paris, Diogène, Le Facteur, Le Chiffonnier de Paris. 18 Vigier, op. cit., p. 72. The quotation is from Janin’s Histoire de la littérature dramaiique, vol II, p. 205. 19 Vigier, ibid. His conclusion is similar to that of D. Evans in Le Drame moderne à l’époque romantique 1827–1850, Paris, Editions de la vie universitaire, 1923, impr. de D. Evans. 20 Quoted, together with a review in the Revue des théâtres, vol. II, 1837. 21 See Lowell L. Blaisdell, ‘Félix Pyat, the people’s playwright’, Theatre Research International, new series, vol. III, no. 3, May, 1978, pp. 176–87. Pyat’s seriousness of purpose is indicated by a thirty-page

241


manuscript on the subject of popular theatre in the Descaves collection of the International Instituut voor Social Geschiednis, Amsterdam. 22 Letter to the Minister of the Interior, 28 June 1835. Archives Nationales F21 1134.

13 POPULAR FICTION AND THE THEATRE 1 See Yves Olivier-Martin, Histoire du roman populaire en France de 1840 à 1900, Paris, Albin Michel, 1980, p. 29. 2 Histoire de l’art dramatique en France, vol. III. p. 165. 3 ibid., vol. II, p. 279. 4 See Pierre-Emmanuel Main, introduction to vol. I of the Editions Hallier edition of Les Mystères de Paris, Paris, 1977. 5 His comments are reproduced as an appendix to vol. I of the Hallier edition of Les Mystères de Paris. 6 Gautier, op. cit., vol. III, pp. 161–5. 7 ibid., p. 163. 8 ibid., vol. IV, p. 135. 9 ‘Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, without mentioning the scenery and costumes, which are both picturesque and accurate, is a marvel of mise en scène; it never drags or loses pace; there is not a single one of those moments of embarrassment one often feels at a badly timed entrance or scenes which go on for too long; it is clean, lively, fast moving; everything advances, or rather rushes forward, without hesitation, without the sightest hitch. If that is not genius, it is at least talent, and a talent of an exceptional nature. We do not have so much genius around nowadays that we can afford to scorn talent’ (Gautier, op. cit., vol. V, p. 137). 10 A similar effect has been observed among the audiences of some of the two, or even three-part productions of the 1970s and 1980s in the British theatre. 11 See René Polette, ‘Mélodrame et roman-feuilleton sous le second empire’, Europe (special number on Le Mélodrame), 1987, pp. 82–9. 12 This letter is included by Dumas in vol. 24 of the Théâtre Complet, Paris, Michel Levy, 1874. In the letter he points out that he had never had a play stopped by the censors during the Restoration or the eighteen years of the reign of Louis Philippe, but that the Second Empire had seen fit to ban for seven years La Tour de Nesle, which had already had 800 performances, and for six years both Angèle, which had had 300 performances, and Antony, which had had 150. The Second Empire had also banned Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, Catilina and Urbain Grandier for political reasons. 13 The name derives from a type of leek. 14 See Yves Olivier-Martin, op. cit. pp. 101–14. 15 Noel and Stoullig, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique for 1881 give an analysis of this piece in the section devoted to the Château-d’ Eau.

242

NOTES

16 Act III, scene 1, tableau 7. 17 Noel and Stoullig, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, Paris, 1879, p. 385. 18 ibid., vol. for 1881, p. 299. 19 Le Théâtre, Paris, Les Editions de France, 1932, p. 90. 20 Noel and Stoullig, op. cit., vol. for 1880, p. 537. They devote several pages to a detailed description of the production. 21 Pot Bouille was adapted for the Ambigu in 1883, Le Ventre de Paris for the Théâtre de Paris in 1887 and Germinal for the Châtelet in 1889. 22 Le Théâtre, p. 108. 23 Review of Scribe’s Le Mariage d’argent at the Comédie-Française, 1847. Gautier, op. cit., vol. V, p. 49. 24 Noel and Stoullig, op cit., vol. for 1881, p. 363. 25 In their review of Busnach’s unsuccessful play, La Marchande des saisons, staged at the Ambigu in 1882, they hoped that the failure of the play would be a lesson to dramatists such as Busnach to look for the elements of drama somewhere other than in the muck.

243

INDEX

(All theatres, larger cafés-concerts and circuses, are grouped under the heading ‘Theatres’. Indications such as ‘de’, ‘de la’, etc. have been omitted.) Adamov, Arthur 226 Aghion, Max 14 Allaux 138, 169 Almanach des spectacles 19, 36, 43, 54, 58, 78, 80 L’Amant statue 44 L’Amour à la hussarde 44 L’Amour et l’uniforme 44 L’Amour puni par Vénus 40 Les Amours du Port-au-Blé 118 Amphithéâtre Equestre 15 Anastasie, M’ame 142 Ango de Dieppe 104, 197 Annales du théâtre et de la musique 63 Antier, Benjamin 106, 193 Antoine, André 1, 3, 168, 193, 200, 219, 221 Antony 103, 182, 210 Antony (see Béraud) Apollon, Café d’ 35, 37, 60–1 Arabian Nights 148 Arago, Etienne 102, 123 Archives Nationales 42 Argue, Caveau de l’ 65 Arlequin, empereur de la lune 220 Arlincourt, Vicomte d’ 202

Arnaud, Baculard d’ 204 Arnault 32 Arnould-Mussot 19, 135, 142 L’Art de ne pas payer son terme ou avis aux propriétaires 131 Artus 48 L’Assommoir 188, 192, 221–3 Astley, Philip 15, 28–30 Astruc 94 Atar-Gull 206 Athalie 129 L’Auberge des Adrets 106–7, 156 Aude, Joseph 117, 137 Audinot, Nicolas Médard 1, 14–15, 17–19, 46, 96, 115 Audinot, son 96 Auger, Hippolyte 82 Aulnoy, Madame d’ 148 Aumer 137 Auvillier, widow d’ 46 L’Aveugle du Tirol 136 L’Aveugle et son bâton 57 Balisson, Michel-Nicolas, Baron de Rougemont 122 Balzac, Honoré de 107, 195, 205, 207 Baptiste (see Deburau) Barbe-Bieue 65 Baroche, Pierre-Jules 108 Barrault, Jean-Louis 143 Barré 25, 115 Basquine et Rigolo 44 Bataille de dames 124

244

INDEX

Baty, Gaston 51 Béancourt 92 Le Beau-frère 72 Beaumarchais, P.A.Caron de 134, 202 Beaunoir 61 Beaunoir, Madame 61 Belfort, Madame 117 The Bells, 49 Béraud, Antony 136, 153 Bernhardt, Sarah 89 Berry, Duchesse de 36 Bertrand et Raton 124 Bertrand, Nicholas Michel 34, 36–40, 144–5 Les Bibelots du Diable 153, 155–6 La Biche au bois 155 Le Bien Public 221 Billion, Charles Louis 40 Blonde-Dufossay 95 Bobèche 59–60 Bobineau (see Saix) Bocage 104, 196, 197 Les Bohémiens de Paris 190, 199, 207, 214 Bonaparte (see Napoleon) Bonaparte au Pont d’Arcole 32 Bonaparte, Lucien 99 Bonassiès, Jules 4 Bosquet, Café 35 Les Bosquets de Tivoli 44 Le Bossu 73, 185, 217 Bouchardy, Joseph 57, 136, 170–1, 179, 182–4, 207, 210 Boudin, Pierre 116 Le Bœuf enragé 145 Bouffé 129–30 Bougnol 38 Bouilly, J. N. 118 Le Boulevard Saint-Martin, ou Nous y voilà 123 La Bouquetière des innocents 185 Bourgeois, Anicet 154, 170, 182, 184–5, 206, 217 Bourges, Elémir 74 Bourguignon 95 Brazier, Nicolas 46, 60, 118–19, 122–3, 127–9 Brecht, Bertolt 204, 226

Brisebarre, Edouard 209 Brunet 24, 117, 120, 152 Bruno le fileur 128 Busnach, William 221 C’est le diable, ou la Bohémienne 162–3 Cabotens 68 Le Café des Variétés 126 La Cagnotte 120 Cagotisme et liberté 102, 123 Caigniez L. C. 150, 174, 177 Calas 178 Le Calendrier vivant 123 La Camaraderie 124 Cambon 169, 191 Camus 152 Les Captifs d’Alger 125 Carné, Marcel 15 Cartouche 72 Castellano 185 Les Causes célèbres 217 Cavé 104 Caylus, Comte de 117 Cellerier, Jacques 18 Le Censeur dramatique 142 Cès-Caupenne 96 Chabrier 96–7 Champfleury 146 Le Chandelier 109 Chanet 191 Un Chapeau de Paille d’ltalie 132, 152 Chaperon 219 Chapponier 106 Charlemagne, Armand 159–61 Charles le Téméraire 135, 180 Charles X 30, 54, 102, 178 Chartres, Duc de 32 La Chaste Suzanne 25, 115 Le Chat botté, ou les vingt-quatre heures d’Arlequin 137, 151 Le Château de Lochleven 158, 167 Le Château des Appenins 202 Le Château du Diable 153, 172, 205 La Chatte blanche 155 Chazet, André, Allison de 122 Chéret 191–2, 219

245

POPULAR THEATRES OF

Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, ou les girondins 194, 211 Les Chevaliers de la lune 216 Les Chevaux savants, ou les arabes à Marseille 139 Chiarigny, Felix 38, 143 Le Chien de Montargis, ou La Forêt de Bondy 136, 167, 177 Le Chiffonnier de Paris 182, 190, 197–8 Les Chiffonniers et les balayeurs 44 Chilly 209 Christophe Colomb 136, 168 Chronique des petits théâtres 128 Ciceri 47, 169 Clair, René 60, 143 Clairville 117, 154–5 La Closerie des genêts 182, 214 Le Cocher et la chanteuse 44 Coelina 136, 157, 160–1, 173, 204 Coffinon 45 Cogniard 25, 51–2, 60, 123, 128, 155 Cogniard, Hippolyte 128 Cogniard, Théodore 91, 94, 128 Collé, Charles 100 Le Combat des montagnes, ou la folie beaujon 125–6 ‘Componium, ou improvisateur musical’ 58 Comte 18 Le Comte de Comminges 204 Le Comte de Monte-Cristo 210 Le Comte de Morcerf 213 La Comtesse de Monrion 214 Condamin, Café 65 Condorcet 87 Il Convitato di pietra 42 Copeau, Jacques 1, 75 Copfermann, Emile 1 ‘Les Copiaus’ 75 La Corde du pendu 216 Cormon, Eugène 96, 189 Corneille, Pierre 166–7 Corsse (see Labanette-Corsse) Les Cosaques 65 Cosmorama 58 Cossard, Christophe 40 Cossard, François 40

Cot d’Ordan 146 Le Courrier de Lyon 10, 177 Craig, Gordon 168 Cri-cri, ou le mitron de la rue de l’Oursine 118 Cromwell 166 Cural, Henri 51 Curtius 59 Cuvelier de Trie, J.G. A. 29, 137–41, 150–1, 160 Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé 169, 187–8, 192 Dailly 220 Daly, César 33–4 La Dame aux camélias 72, 109, 182 Dame Censure 104 La Dame de Montsoreau 214 Les Dames de la Halle 118 Damiès 50 Le Damoisel et la bergerette 139 Les Danicheff 220 Daran 191 Darcier, Joseph 62 Dareux 35 Darny 46 Dauberval 137 Daumard, A. 83 Daumier, Honoré 81, 105–7, 120, 172 Davioud 33 Deburau, Jean-Gaspard 38–40, 136, 143–6, 224 Decourcelle, P. 57 Defoe 168 La Dégringolade 52, 117 Dejean, Louis 31 Le Déjeuner de la Râpée, ou le Discours des halles et des ports 116 Delacour 156 Delavigne, Casimir 166, 170 Delemarre 70, 74 Delestre-Poirson 125 Dennery, Adolphe 33, 119, 136, 149, 154, 170, 182, 185–93, 207–8, 214, 219–20 Le Départ pour Saint-Malo, ou la suite des trois étages 122

246

INDEX

Le Dernier Mot de Rocambole 215 Dernières réflexions de l’auteur sur le mélodrame 173 Désaugiers, Marc-Antoine 26, 60, 119–20, 122–3, 152 La Descente de la Courtille 118 Descotes, Maurice 6, 76 Le Déserteur 137 Desfontaines 25, 115 Deslandes 2, 127, 131 Desnard 217 Desnoyer, Charles 169, 185 Despléchin 149, 213 Les Deux Gosses 54, 175 Les Deux Orphelines 50, 72–3, 136, 188–9 Les Deux Serruriers 197–8 Diderot, Denis 2, 134, 142 Didier 2, 127, 131 Diéterie 127, 143 Dieulafoy, Michel 122 Dinaux 178 Diorama 58 Doche, Mademoiselle 109 Dom juan 197 Don Juan 42 Donnet, Alexis 47 Dorfeuille 24, 42 Dorsay 37, 39 Dorval, Marie 122, 178, 188 Dorvigny, 117 Les Drames de Paris 215 Dromale 59 Ducange, Victor 170, 174, 178, 184,194 Ducis, Jean-François 140 Ducray-Duminil, François-Guillaume 204 Dugué 184 Dullin, Charles 48 Dumas, Alexandre (fils) 109, 182 Dumas, Alexandre (père) 20–1, 33, 57, 71, 73, 103, 108, 182, 184, 194, 196,206,210–11, 213–14, 217 Dumersan 107, 127 Dupetit-Méré 136 Dupin, Charles 78, 125 Duval 100

Duvignaud, Jean 8, 76 Les Eaux de Merlin 148 L’Edipse 110 L’Ecluse 21, 116–17 L’Ecole des ivrognes 127 Edouard en Ecosse 100 Eidophusikon 16 Eisenstein, Sergei 28 Emile 102 Emile, ou le fils d’un pair de France 185 Encore un Curé 25 L’Enfant du faubourg 2 Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant 193–219 Les Enfants du Paradis 15, 60, 143 D’Ennery (see Dennery) L’Envers du théâtre, machines et decorations 192 Les Epreuvres 145 Erckmann-Chatrian 49 Estaminet Lyrique 62 L’Etat de mon père 44 Les Etats de Blois 101 L’Etoile de berger 149 Eugénie 202 Eustache Bastringue 118 Fabien 34, 36–8 Fage, Renée 57 Falaise, Jacques de 36 Fanchon la vielleuse 118, 187 Fanfan la Tulipe 51 La Farce de l’aiguille 73 La Farce des jumeaux 74 La Fausse marquise 163 Favart, Charles Simon 117 La Femme de l’Ouvrier 44 La Femme muette et l’homme sourd 73 Fesq 97 Féval, Paul 73, 184, 217 Feydeau, Georges 114, 122, 132 Fieschi 39, 104–5, 107 La Fille de l’exile 172, 72, 177–8 La Fille de Madame Angot 117 La Fille des chiffonniers 185 La Fille Elisa 110

247

POPULAR THEATRES OF

La Fille hussard 139 La Fille mal gardée 137 Firmin 106 Flaubert 132 Fleury-Ducommun 57 Foire Saint-Germain 14, 17, 18, 23, 117–18, 148 Foire Saint-Laurent 14, 23, 117, 148 Foire Saint-Ovide 14 La Folie des grandeurs 68 La Forêt d’Hermandstadt 177, 205 La Forêt enchantée, ou la belle au bois dormant 150 La Forêt noire 142, 160 Forioso 35 Fouché 100–1 Fouquier, A. 216 Fouré, Antoine 16 Fournel, Victor 65–6 Francis 127 François I 104 Franconi 15, 30, 32, 36, 135, 139–40 Franconi, Adolphe 31 Franconi, Antonio 29, 139 Franconi, Bastien 51 Franconi, Henri 29–31 Franconi, Laurent 29–32, 154 Franconi, Victor 32 Frankenstein 136, 153 Frascati 61 Frédégonde et Brunehaut 140 Frédéric 93 Fuzelier 114 Gaboriau, Emile 52, 217 Gaillard 24, 42 Gallimafré 59–60 Gammer Gurton’s Needle 73 Garnerin 35 Garnier, Jacques 74 Gaspard Hauser 136, 182, 185, 188 Gaspardo le pêcheur 57, 171, 183–4 Gaudon 14 Gaumont 70 Gaumont Palace 33

Gautier, Théophile 20–1, 45, 65, 114–15, 145–6, 149, 154, 183, 205–8, 210–11, 213–14, 222 Gémier, Firmin 3, 70 Geneviève de Brabant 34, 65, 72, 74, 201 Le Génie protecteur, ou la vengeance d’Arlequin 38 Geoffroy, Abbé 119 Georges Dandin 72 Georges, Mademoiselle 56 Gérard de Nevers 140 Géricault, Théodore 169 Gidel, Henri 115 Gill 110 Ginisty, Paul 34, 182 Girardin, Emile de 201 La Girouette de Saint-Cloud 26 Goethe, Wolfgang 101 Gogol 108 Goncourt, Edmond and Jules de 63–4, 110 Goubaix, Prosper (see Dinaux) Gouffé, Armand 122 Government Inspector 108 La Grace de Dieu 56, 119, 129, 182, 186–7, 189 Grande-Chaumière, Bal de la 45 La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein 6 Les Grands Jours du Petit-Lazzari 43 Grangé 190 Greuze, Jean-Baptiste 142 Grimaldi 39, 144 Grimod de la Reynière 142 Gué 158, 169 Guentleur 45 Guérin, Auguste 60 Guérin (Bordeaux) 70 Guerre au mélodrame 159, 164, 166 Guerre d’Orient, désastre de Sinope 66 Guignol 60, 64–6, 68, 182 Guilbert de Pixérécourt, René Charles 2, 3, 57, 87, 106–7, 135–6, 150, 157, 159–61, 164–75, 178, 180, 182, 184–5, 202,204, 227 Guillemin 116–7 Guizot, François 87, 103

248

INDEX

Hallays-Dabot, Victor 102, 194 Hapdé 138–9, 150 Harel 56, 81, 108 La Harpe 202 Hartmann 51 Haussmann, Eugène-Georges 32, 77 Hazier, Panon du 74 Henri III et sa cour 210 Henri IV 101 Henrion 119 Hervé, Florimond 115 Une Heure à la barrière 44 L’Heureuse Decade 25 Histoire des petits théâtres de Paris 118 Hittorf, Jacques Ignace 31 Hoche 52 L’Homme à la blouse 196 L’Homme à trois visages, ou le proscrit 170–1 L’Honneur du nom 217 Hostein, Hippolyte 20–1, 51, 191 Hugo, Charles 218 Hugo, Victor 4, 20, 50, 166, 173, 182,201,218 Les Huguenots 124 Hullin 138 Il arrive! il arrive! ou Dumollet dans sa famille 122 Il Seraglio 117 L’Illustre Théâtre 53 L’Incendie de Sallins 30 Les Infidélités de Lisette 129 Janin, Jules 143, 194–5 Je m’en moque de l’an quarante 123 Jeanne d’Arc au siège d’Orléans 74 Jeannette, ou les deux bandits 106 Lewis, Matthew Gregory 172, 202,204 La Libérée, ou cinq ans de surveillance 107 La Lionne 214 Livry, Charles de 129 Loaisel de Tréogate 153, 172 Loison 45

Lorenzaccio 170 Louis Napoléon (Napoleon III) 108 Louis XIV 16 Louis XV 70 Louis XVI 14 Louis XVIII 54, 102, 123 Louis, Victor 15–16, 20, 24 Louis-Philippe 32, 59, 104–5, 108, 171, 194,214 Loutherbourg, Philip de 16 Loyal 65 Luchet, Auguste 80, 104, 197 Lucrèce Borgia 50, 173 Luguet, Michel 56 Luguet, René 56 Ma Mère l’Oie, ou arlequin et l’œuf d’or 144 Macbeth 168 Macbeth, ou les sorcières de la forêt 141 Madame Angot au sérail de Constantinople 117, 126, 137 Madame Angot dans son ballon, ou le voyage aérien 117 Madame Angot, ou la poissarde parvenue 116 Madame Engueule 116 Maffey 42 Le Magasin théâtral 57, 186 Maillan, M. 84–5 Maillot 116 Le Mal marié 72 Malaga 60 Malato, Charles 72 Malraux, André 5 Manche à manche 57 Mandelart, Antoine 60 Manon la ravaudeuse 119 Maquet, Auguste 210–11 Marais 220 Marat Jean-Paul 45 Marceau, ou les enfants de la République 185 Marchand d’habits 146 Le Marchand de salade 146 Marengo 33 Le Mariage de Dumollet 122

249

POPULAR THEATRES OF

Le Mariage de Figaro 137 Le Mariage de Pantalon 74 Marie Jeanne, ou la femme du peuple 57, 170, 188–9, 207 Marie-Antoinette 117 Marino Faliero 170 Marion Delorme 173, 182 Martainville, Alphonse 152 Marx, Karl 207 Massin, Mademoiselle 223 Masson, Michel 184–5, 206 Mathilde 206 Une Matinée de la Place Maubert 118 Une Matinée du Pont-Neuf 118 Le Médecin malgré lui 73 Melanie 202 Mélingue 218 Le Mélodrame aux boulevards 159 Le Mélodrame 182 Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène 108 Ménier, Paulin 219 Mercier, Louis Sébastien 2–5, 137, 164, 173 Merle, Jean-Toussaint 122, 125, 136, 153 Mérope 125 Messieurs A! A! A! 159, 166–7 Meurice, Paul 50, 218 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 28 Michel Strogoff 169, 193, 220 Michel, Marc 132 Mignon 72 Les Mille et une nuits 155 Mille, Cecil B. de 151 Les Mines de Pologne 167, 172 Les Misérables 218 Mœurs des sauvages américains 168 Les Mohicans de Paris 214 Moltère, J. B. P. 53, 72–3, 126, 197, 226 Moluéni, Maison 221 Le Monde Dramatique 81 The Monk 172, 202, 204 Monsieur Vautour, ou le propriétaire sous les scellés 120 Le Monstre et le magicien 136, 153 Les Montagnes russes, ou le temple de la mode 125

Montansier, Mademoiselle 15, 20, 24 Monte Cristo 21, 171, 211, 213– 14 Montès, Lola 155 Montigny 142 Monvel, Jacques-Marie 103, 140, 172, 202 Moore, A. P. 118 Le More de Venise, ou Othello 141 Le More de Venise 170 Morel, Café 62 Les Mousquetaires 57, 210–11 Mouton, Paul 73 Moynet, Jacques 192 Mozart, W. A. 117 La Muette de Portici 124 Muratef 93 Murger, Henri 191 Musée Carnavalet 59 Musset, Alfred de 109, 170, 173 Les Mystères de Londres 216 Les Mystères de Paris 190, 199, 205–7, 214, 218, 222 Les Mystères du Temple 167, 199 Mysteries of Udolpho 202 Nana 221–2 Napoleon 3, 4, 6, 13, 15, 26, 29–30, 35, 46, 60, 62, 76, 87, 100–1, 103, 108, 119, 123, 139, 164, 168 Napoléon Bonaparte 108 Le Naturalisme au théâtre 200, 221 Navarin le Grand 34 Naze, Gil 221 Néron 32 Nicodème dans la lune 115 Nicolet, Guillaume 17 Nicolet, Jean-Baptiste 1, 14–17, 28, 34, 46, 95, 115 Nicolet, widow 17, 95 Nodier, Charles 34, 145, 173 Noel Edouard 51, 56, 63, 131–2, 199, 218–20, 223 Noel (régisseur) 93 La Nonne sanglante 185, 202 Notre-Dame de Paris 218 Noverre 137 Nus, Eugène 209

250

INDEX

Offenbach, Jacques 6, 25, 63, 115, 149,219 Olivier-Martin, Yves 203, 210, 215 L’Oncle Baptiste 130 Orléans, Duc d’ 14 d’Orneval 114 Les Orphelins du Pont Notre-Dame 185 Othello 170 Ours et le pacha 126 L’Ouvrier du faubourg Antoine 51 L’Ouvrier 196 Les Ouvriers, ou les bons enfans 127 Oxtiern 202 Le Page inconstant 137 Pain, Joseph 118, 122 Le Pain 62 Pajot 74 Pamela 172, 202, 204 Le Pandore 145 Panorama 24, 58 Le Pantomime dramatique, ou essai sur un nouveau genre de spectacle 134 Une Partie de chasse d’Henri IV 100 Pathé 51 La Patrie 215–16 La Pauvre Famille 193 Pauvre Jacques! 128 Les Pauvres de Paris 199, 209 Peau d’Ane 150 Le Pêcheur napolitain 44 Pergolesi 115 Périn 129 Perrault, Charles 148, 150 Le Petit Poucet, ou l’orphelin de la forêt 150 La Petite Cendrillon, ou la chatte merveilleuse 152 La Petite-fille d’un tambour-major 73 Les Petites Cloches de Corneville 73 Les Petites Danaïdes 120 Phaéton, ou les malheurs que peut occasionner la lumière mal dirigée 143 Philastre 169 Picardeaux 96

La Pie voleuse 65, 177 Le Pied de mouton 152–3, 160 Pierre citizen 42, 58–9 Pierrot en Afrique 143 Pierrot Marquis 146 Pierrot-Ministre 108 Piis, Chevalier de 25, 115 Les Pilules du Diable 39, 147, 149, 153–4 Piranesi 172 Les Pirates de la savane 185 Pitou 67, 70–2, 74, 219 Pitou, Emile 67 Pixérécourt (see Guilbert de Pixérécourt) Planchon, Roger 225 Plautus 74 Poisson 191 Polichinelle 45 Polichinelle avalé per la baleine 137 Ponson du Terrail 184, 215–17 Le Porteur des Halles 118 Potier 117 Pottecher, Maurice 3 La Poudre d’or 109 La Poudre de Perlinpinpin 153, 155 La Presse 201 Prévost, Abbé 119 La Prise de Pékin 135, 191 Le Proscrit 57 Proudhon, Joseph 195 Le Public de théâtre et son histoire 6 Puisaye 96 Pyat, Félix 3, 104, 186, 195, 197–8, 206, 224 Pygmalion 134 Les Quatre Fils Aymon 135, 201 Quatre-vingt-treize 50, 218–19 La Queue de la Poêle 156 Racine, Jean 166 Radcliffe, Anne 202 Le Radeau de la Méduse 169 Radet 25, 115 Raynouard, François 101 Reichstadt, Duc de 103 Reigny, Beffroi de 115 La Reine Margot 211

251

POPULAR THEATRES OF

Rémy, Tristan 143–4 La Resurrection de Rocambole 216 Le Retour des Lys 123 Revue et Gazette des Théâtres 56 Ribié 18, 95, 204 Richard, Emile 52 Richardson, Samuel 202 Riche et pauvre 195–6 Rigolboche 109 Riotton 191 Riquet a la houppe 150 Ritt 50 Robecchi 219 Robert le Diable 67, 124, 140 Robert Macaire 104–7, 109, 190–1 Robespierre 45, 185 Robinson Crusoë 168 Rocambole en prison 216 Rolland, Romain 3 Roller, Jean 59 Le Roman comique 53 Rosaure de Valincourt, ou les nouveanx malheurs du Petit Poucet 150 Rose, Mademoiselle 60 Rossini, Gioacchino 177 Rothomego 149, 154–5, 191 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 102, 134 Rubé 219 Rubens 167 Ruggieri, Maison 221 Les Russes peints par eux-mêmes 108 Sade, Marquis de 202 Saint-Aubin, Cammaille 204 Saint-Foy 45 Saix 60 Salé 15 Salieri 120 Saqui 35–8 Saqui, Jean-Julien 35–7 Saqui, Madame 34–7, 43, 143 Sarcey, Francisque 132, 188–90 Sardou, Victorien 89, 109 Scarron, Paul 53 Schiller, Friedrich 101 Schneider, Hortense 6 Scott, Sir Walter 202

Scribe, Eugène 26, 114, 124–6, 132, 172 Séchan, Charles 149, 213 Sedaine, Michel Jean 173 Seeth, Julius 32 Séjour, Victor 199 Sennepart 96 Les Sept châteaux du Diable 153–4 La Serva Padrona 115 Servandoni, Jean-Jérôme 16, 35 Servières 119 Séveste 47–50, 90 Séveste, Edmond 48 Séveste, Jules 48, 91 Séveste, Pierre Jacques 47–8 Shakespeare, William 2, 140–1, 163, 169, 226 Shelley, Mary 153 Le Siècle 20l, 217 Le Siège de la Gaîté, ou le passé, le present et le futur 138 Simond, Charles 61 Siraudin, Paul 117, 156 Sirdet 72, 75 Smith, O. 136 Soirées urbanographiques 58 Le Solitaire 202 Le Songe d’or 145 Le Sonneur de Saint-Paul 57, 136, 183–4 Souchet 48 Soufflot, Jacques-Germain 16 Soulié, Frédéric 3, 195–6, 214 Les Sœurs de Daniel Stropkoff 73 Souvestre, Emile 4, 130, 195–6 Stanislavski 168 Stoullig, Edmond 51, 56, 63, 131–2, 199, 218–20, 223 Sue, Eugène 153, 190, 206–8, 210–11, 214–15, 218 Tableau de l’état physique et moral des ouvriers emplayés dans les manufactures de coton, de laine et de soie 78 Tableau de Paris 85, 97 Taconnet 117 Talma, François-Joseph 24 Tékéli 177

252

INDEX

Le Temps 190 La Tentation de St Antoine 66, 70, 153 Le Testament de la pauvre femme 194 Texier, Edmond 85, 97 Théâtre de la Foire 114, 148 Théâtre de Tradition Populaire 73 Le Théâtre du peuple 3 Le Théâtre et le peuple 4 Du Théâtre, ou nouvel essai sur l’art dramatique 2 Le Théâtre populaire, pourquoi? 1 Theatres: Acrobates (also Théâtre de Madame Saqui) 36–9, 43–4, 58–9, 80 Alcazar 63–4 Alhambra 52 (see also Théâtre du Château d’Eau) Ambigu-Comique 13–16, 18–21, 25, 27, 34, 38, 40, 50–1, 53, 72, 79–81, 85, 89, 90–1, 94, 96–7, 106–8, 115, 117, 125, 134, 139, 142, 149, 161, 165, 169, 175, 177–8, 183, 190, 192–3, 195–7, 199–200,206,208,210, 213–14, 216, 220–2, 225–6 Associés 35, 60 Atelier 48 Ba-ta-clen 63 Batignolles 48–50, 89, 91, 93, 226 Beaujolais 15, 18, 115 Beaumarchais 80, 82, 89–90, 131, 217 Belleville 46, 48, 50, 72, 85, 89, 91, 93–4 Bobino (see Luxembourg) Bouffes du Nord 131, 225 Cadran 64 Célestins (Lyon) 53, 165 Château d’Eau 21, 51–2, 80, 217, 225 Châtelet (see also Cirque Olympique) 33, 44, 51, 149–50, 155, 191, 193, 219–221

Cirque (see Cirque Olympique) Cirque d’Eté 31 Cirque des Champs-Elysées 91 Cirque du Monthabor (see also Cirque Olympique) 180 Cirque Franconi (see Cirque Olympique) Cirque Olympique 15, 28–33, 39–40, 44, 68, 80–1, 83, 85, 87, 89–90, 108, 135–6, 138–40, 147–50, 153–5, 191, 209–10 Cirque, Théâtre Imperial du (see Cirque Olympique) Cirque du Prince Imperial 51 Cité 24, 29, 118, 139, 150 Cluny 49 Comédie-Française 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 17, 24–6, 49–0, 79, 90, 99–101, 103, 109, 114, 124–5, 132, 148, 158, 160, 164, 166, 168, 180, 182, 196, 199, 202, 205, 210, 222 Comédie-Italienne 14, 17–18, 26, 114 Délassements Comiques 15, 37, 109, 131 Eldorado 63–4 Elèves pour la dense de l’Opéra 15, 24, 40 Emulation (see Gaîté) Feydeau 25 Folies Dramatiques 107, 128, 135 Français (see Comédie-Française) Français (Bordeaux) 53 Funambules 34, 36–40, 43–4, 58–60, 68, 80, 83, 90, 108, 113, 136, 143–6, 150, 156 Gaîté 13, 15–16, 18–21, 27, 30, 33–4, 38, 53, 79, 81, 85, 90–2, 116–17, 129, 137–9, 150, 152, 154, 165, 168, 183, 186,214,218,219,221, 225–6 Gaîté (Bordeaux) 165 Galeries-Saint-Hubert (Brussels) 218

253

POPULAR THEATRES OF

Gobelins 49, 51, 131 Grand (Bordeaux) 54 Grand (Lyon) 53–4 Grand Guignol 52 Les Grands Danseurs et Sauteurs du Roi (see also Théâtre de la Gaîté) 14–15, 17, 28 Grenelle 48–51, 72, 91 Gymnase 27, 71, 113–14, 124, 126,128, 130–1, 142 Hippodrome 32, 37, 91 Hippodrome de l’Alma 32–3 Historique 20–1, 33, 52, 89–90, 109, 185, 213 Imperial (see Cirque Olympique) Italiens (see Opéra-Comique) Jeunes Artistes 137, 150 Jeux Gymniques (see Porte-Saint-Martin) Joly (Lyon) 74 Lazari (see Petit-Lazari) Libre 3, 193, 200, 221–2 Luxembourg 40, 58, 60, 113 Lyrique 21, 33 Montansier (see Palais-Royal) Montmartre 46–50, 80, 89, 91, 93–4, 226 Montparnasse 47, 50–1, 80, 90, 131, 226 Montparnasse sur le boulevard Neuf 46 Nation (see Opéra and Comédie-Française) National (see Cirque Olympique) National Ambulant (Gémier) 70 National Populaire (TNP) 3, 83, 226 Nouveauté 35 Nouveautés 27 Odékm 49, 100, 196, 220 Olympic Pavilion 25 Opéra 5, 14, 18, 20, 24, 26, 90, 94–5, 148, 150, 191 Opéra-Comique 18, 72, 90, 115, 148, 165

Opéra National (see Cirque Olympique) Opéra Populaire (see Château d’Eau) Palais-Royal 2, 15, 27, 113, 119–20, 128, 132, 145 Palais-Variétés (see Variétés and Cité) Pantomime Nationale (see Théâtre de la Cité) Patriotique 35 Pavillon (Marseille) 165 Peacock (Copenhagen) 147 Petit Lazari (see Lazari, Lazzari, Lazary) 34, 40, 42–4, 58–9, 71, 90–1, 93, 105, 107, 131 Petits comédiens du Bois de Boulogne 46 Peuple (Bussang) 3 Porte-Saint-Antoine (see Beaumarchais) Porte-Saint-Martin 20–1, 25, 27, 33, 42, 50, 72, 79, 81–2, 90–1, 94–5, 98, 103, 108, 122–3, 128, 136–7, 149, 153, 163, 177–8, 180, 182–3, 185, 189, 193, 195–6, 206–7, 217–19, 221 Pygmées 59 Ranelagh 46 République (see Comédie-Français and Château d’Eau) Saint-Cloud 91 Saint-Marcel 49, 91 Salle des Machines (Tuileries) 150 Sans Prétention 35 Séraphin (ombres chinoises) 15, 58 Toone (Brussels) 218 Trianon (Versailles) 117 Tulle 57, 81, 95 Variétés 6, 13, 21, 24–7, 61, 71, 79, 95, 113, 117, 120, 122–3, 125, 127–8, 131, 152, 155, 210 Variétés (Legois) 74

254

INDEX

Variétés Amusements 14, 15, 21, 35, 40, 42 Vaudeville 6, 13, 21, 24–7, 47, 71, 90, 95, 101–2, 113, 115, 120, 124, 126, 128–9, 131 Ville 33 Thérésa 63, 155 Thérèse, ou l’orpheline de Genève 178 Thierry 191 Thiers, Adolphe 105 Thomas, Ambroise 72 Tivoli 35, 147 La Tombe et le poignard, ou la vengeance d’un Espagnol 143 Tomkins 153 Tortoni, Café 191 La Tour de Nesle 57, 65, 107, 109, 210 Le Tour du monde en 80 jours 50, 71, 169, 193, 219–20, 224 Traité du mélodrame 159, 166 Le Tremblement de terre de la Martinique 205 Trente ans, ou la vie d’un joueur 170, 178–9 Les Trois Etages, ou l’intrigue sous l’escalier 120, 122 Les Trois Mousquetaires 210, 213, 225 Les Trois Sultanes 117, 126

Varez 92 Variétés, Café (Caveau) des 61 Variot, Jean 68, 71–4 Vautrin 104, 108, 190, 208 Vauxhall 45 Vauxhall d’Eté 25 Les Vêpres siciliennes 166 Vercingétorix 33 Verne, Jules 149, 154, 193, 218–20,226 Le Verre d’eau 124 Les Victimes cloîtrées 103, 172, 202 Victor, ou l’enfant de la forêt 50, 165, 205 Vigier, Philippe 195 Vigny, Alfred de 170, 173 Vilar, Jean 5, 226 Villefort 213 Villeneuve, F. de 129 Villermé, L.R. 78 Vingt ans après 210 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel 5 Un Voleur du grand monde 107 Voltaire 102, 178 Le Voyage dans la lune 149, 219 Le Voyage dans la lune (Guignol) 220

Vadé 116–17 Valcour 15

Zola, Emile 127, 188, 192, 200, 205, 216, 218, 221

Wagner, Richard 213

255

Popular Theatres of Nineteenth Century France

The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth-Century France

The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth-Century France

The Saint-Napoleon: Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France

Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Thought

Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography

Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France: Workers, Women, Peasants

Abandoned children: foundlings and child welfare in nineteenth-century France

Playing at Monarchy: Sport as Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century France

Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century England (Historical Connections)

Queer Lives: Men's Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France

Queer Lives: Men's Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France

Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France

The Nineteenth Century Sonnet

The Nineteenth Century

Indian Fok Theatres (Theatres of the World)

Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan

Battles of nineteenth century. Volume 4

Nineteenth century home architecture of Iowa City

Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century

Battles of nineteenth century. Volume 6

Battles of nineteenth century. Volume 5

Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan

The industrial arts of the nineteenth century

Central Works of Philosophy: The Nineteenth Century

Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century

The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century

The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music

Physics in the nineteenth century

Thaddeus Stevens: nineteenth-century egalitarian

Popular Theatres of Nineteenth Century France

The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth-Century France

The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth-Century France

The Saint-Napoleon: Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France

Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Thought

Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography

Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France: Workers, Women, Peasants

Abandoned children: foundlings and child welfare in nineteenth-century France

Playing at Monarchy: Sport as Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century France

Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century England (Historical Connections)

Queer Lives: Men's Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France

Queer Lives: Men's Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France

Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France

The Nineteenth Century Sonnet

The Nineteenth Century

Indian Fok Theatres (Theatres of the World)

Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan

Battles of nineteenth century. Volume 4

Nineteenth century home architecture of Iowa City

Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century

Battles of nineteenth century. Volume 6

Battles of nineteenth century. Volume 5

Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan

The industrial arts of the nineteenth century

Central Works of Philosophy: The Nineteenth Century

Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century

The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century

The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music

Physics in the nineteenth century

Thaddeus Stevens: nineteenth-century egalitarian

Recommend Documents