Augustin Filon

“ Orestes and Iphigenia have not brought with them the cries of the stern goddesses and the flame on the altar of Artemis; their passions like their speech are cadenced by a modern measure. In construction, the simplicity and regularity of the ancient models are stereotyped into a rigid etiquette by the exigencies of the court-theatre, which is but an apartment of the palace. The unities of time and place, with the Greeks mere rules of convenience, French tragedy imposes upon itself as a permanent yoke. ”

“ Among other subjects, the social position of women had an all-powerful attraction for his mind, and many of his later plays were written with the object of placing in strong relief the remarkable inequality of the sexes, both as regards freedom of action and responsibility, in modern marriage. Like all the dramatists of his time, he adhered to Scribe’s mode of play-writing—a mixture of the drame bourgeois, as initiated by Diderot, and the comedy of character and manners, long in vogue—from the days of Molière, Regnard, Destouches and Marivaux, down to the beginning of the 19th century. ”

“ Later developments of the drama bore the impress of a period of social decay, prepared to probe its own sufferings, while glad at times to take refuge in the gaiety traditional in France in her more light-hearted days, but which even then had not yet deserted either French social life or the theatre which reflected it. After a fashion which would have startled even Diderot, while recalling his efforts in the earnestness of its endeavour to arouse moral interests to which the theatre had long been a stranger, A. Dumas the younger set himself to reform society by means of the stage. ”

“ No great artist has ever more generously estimated the labours of a predecessor than Talma judged those of Le Kain; but it was Talma himself whose genius was pre-eminently fitted to reproduce the great figures of antiquity in the mimic world, which, like the world outside, both required and possessed its Caesar. He, like Rachel after him, reconciled French classical tragedy with nature; and it is upon the art of great original actors such as these that the theatrical future of this form of the drama in France depends. ”

“ For it seems hardly within the range of probability to suppose that the theatre will for many a generation to come lose the hold which it has established over the intellectual and moral sympathies of nearly the whole of the educated—to say nothing of a great part of the half-educated—population of France. This does not, of course, imply that the creative activity of French dramatic literature is certain to endure. ”

“ So long as France continues to maintain her ascendancy over other nations in matters of taste, and in much else that adorns, brightens and quickens social life, the predominant influence of the French theatre over the theatres of other nations is likewise assured. But dramatic literature is becoming international to a degree hardly dreamt of half a century ago; and the distinctive development of the French theatre cannot fail to be affected by the success or failure of the national drama in retaining and developing its own most characteristic qualities. ”

“ His comedies offer elaborate and subtle—even tender—pictures of human character in its eternal types, lively sketches of social follies and literary extravagances, and broad appeals to the ordinary sources of vulgar merriment. Light and perspicuous in construction, he is master of the delicate play of irony, the penetrating force of wit, and the expansive gaiety of frolicsome fun. ”

“ To sum up, the French, as regards the present condition of their drama, were confronted with two alternative movements. Naturalism, furthered by science and philosophy, was contending against traditions three centuries old, and seemed unable to crystallize into masterly works; while romantic drama, founded on vague and exploded theories, had become embodied in productions of real artistic beauty, which have been warmly welcomed by the general playgoer. ”

“ After beginning with farces, he produced in the earliest of his plays (from 1652) , of which more than fragments remain, comedies of intrigue which are at the same time marvellously lively pictures of manners, and then proceeded, with the École des maris (1661) , to begin a long series of masterpieces of comedy of character. Yet even these, the chief of which are altogether unrivalled in dramatic literature, do not exhaust the variety of his productions. To define the range of his art is as difficult as to express in words the essence of his genius. ”

“ The universal genius of Voltaire found it necessary to shine in all branches of literature, and in tragedy to surpass predecessors whom his own authority declared to have surpassed the efforts of the Attic muse. He succeeded in impressing the world with the belief that his innovations had imparted a fresh Voltaire.vitality to French tragedy; in truth, however, they represent no essential advance in art, but rather augmented the rhetorical tendency which paralyses true dramatic life. ”

“ The close conjunction between the history of a living dramatic literature and that of the theatre can least of all be ignored in the case of France, where the actor’s art has gone through so ample an evolution, and where the theatre has so long and continuously formed an important part of the national life. ”

“ Since the great changes set in which were consequent upon the disastrous war of 1870, French dramatic literature has reflected more than one phase of national sentiment and opinion, and has represented the aspirations, the sympathies and the philosophy of life of more than one class in the community. ”

“ The tone of the poetic literature of such an age is not necessarily unreal, because the range of its ideas is limited, and because its forms seem to exist by an immutable authority. That Racine should permanently hold the position which belongs to him in French dramatic literature is due to the fact that to him it was given to present these forms—the forms approved by his age—in what may reasonably be called perfection; and, from the point of view of workmanship, Sophocles could not have achieved more. What his plays contain is another question. ”

“ The rival influences under which classical tragedy has after a long struggle virtually become a thing of the past in French literature are also to be traced in the history of French comedy, which under the co-operation of other influences produced a wide variety of growths. ”

“ Before, however, either tragedy or comedy in France entered into the period of their history when genius was to illuminate both of them with creations of undying merit, and before the theatre had associated itself enduringly with the artistic and literary divisions of court and French tragedy and comedy in the 17th century before Corneille.society and the people at large, the country had passed through a new phase of the national life. ”

“ Ibsen was not understood by the French public at large, though his influence could be clearly traced on thoughtful men like Paul Hervieu and François de Curel.
The authors of the Théâtre Libre were sadly wanting in tact and patience. They went at once to extremes, and, while trying to free themselves from an obsolete form of drama, fell into a state of anarchy. If a too elaborate plot is a fault, no plot at all is an absurdity. ”

“ The art of acting is not altogether dependent upon the measure of contemporary literary productivity, even in France, where the connexion between dramatic literature and the stage has perhaps been more continuously intimate than in many other countries. Talma and Mlle Mars flourished in one of the most barren ages of the French literary drama ”

“ Moreover, the French theatre has long been, and is more than ever likely to continue, an affair of the state as well as of the nation; and the judicious policy of not leaving the chief theatres at the mercy of shifting fashion and the base demands of idleness and sensuality will remain the surest guarantee for the maintenance of a high standard both in principle and in practice. ”

“ Antoine Montfleury (1640–1685) , Baron and Dancourt, who were actors like Molière, likewise wrote comedies. But if the mantle of Molière can be said to have fallen upon any of his contemporaries or successors, this honour must be ascribed to J. F. Regnard, who imitated the great master in both themes and characters, [45] while the skilfulness of his plots, and his gaiety of the treatment even of subjects tempting into the by-path of sentimental comedy, [46] entitle him to be regarded as a comic poet of original genius. ”

“ Of modern romantic drama in France it must suffice to say that it derives some of its characteristics from the general movement of romanticism which in various ways and at various points of time transformed nearly every modern European literature, others from the rhetorical tendency which The romantic school.is a French national feature. ”

“ Henry Becque succeeded in embodying the new theories in two plays, which at first met with very indifferent success, but were revived at a later period, and finally obtained permanent recognition in the French theatre—even with the acquiescence of the most learned critics, when they discovered, or fancied they discovered, that Becque’s comedies agreed, in the main, with Molière’s conception of dramatic art. In Les Corbeaux and La Parisienne the plot is very simple; the episodes are incidents taken from ordinary life. ”

“ The examens which he printed of all his plays up to 1660 show how much self-criticism (though it may not always be as in this case conscious) contributes to the true fertility of genius.
In comedy also Corneille begins the first great original epoch of French dramatic literature; for it was to him that Molière owed the inspiration of the tone and style which he made those of the higher forms of French comedy. ”

“ Molière.of these—though not of all—are to be found in the works of the most versatile, the most sure-footed, and, in some respects, the most consummate master of the comic drama whom the world has known—Molière. What Molière found in existence was a comedy of intrigue, derived from Spanish or Italian examples, and the elements of a comedy of character, in French and more especially in Italian farce and ballet-pantomime. Corneille’s Menteur had pointed the way to a fuller combination of character with intrigue, and in this direction Molière’s genius exercised the height of its creative powers. ”

“ No extraneous character is introduced to discuss moral and social theories, or to acquaint us with the psychology of the real dramatis personae, or to suggest humorous observations about the progress of the dramatic action. ”

“ The chief home of the regular drama, however, demanded efforts of another kind. At the Théâtre Français, or Comédie Française, whose history as that of a single company of actors had begun in 1680, the party-strife of the times made itself audible; and the most prominent tragic poet of the The stage.Revolution, M. J. de Chénier, a disciple of Voltaire in dramatic poetry as well as in political philosophy, wrote for the national stage the historical drama—with a political moral [60] —in which in the memorable year 1789 the actor Talma achieved his first complete triumph. ”

“ When the troubles and terrors of the great civil and religious wars of the 16th century were over at last, they were found to have produced a reaction towards culture and refinement which spread from certain spheres of society whose influence was for a time prevailing. ”

“ At the same time a more serious and far-reaching criticism was levelled at the very principles on which the conception of human life was then dependent. A new philosophy, based on scientific research, had been gradually gaining ground and penetrating the French mind. ”

“ By the middle of the 16th century not only had theatrical representations, now quite emancipated from clerical control, here and there already become matters of speculation and business, but the acting profession was beginning to organize itself as such; strolling companies of actors had become a more or less frequent experience ”

“ J. Grévin copied Italian intrigue, characters and manners; [11] O. de Turnèbe (d. 1581) borrowed the title of one Italian play [12] and perhaps parts of the plots of others; the Florentine F. d’Amboise (d. 1558) produced versions of two Italian comedies; [13] and the foremost French comic poet of the century, P. de Larivey, likewise an Italian born (of the name of Pietro Giunto) , openly professed to imitate the poets of his native country. His plays are more or less literal translations of L. Dolce, [14] Secchi [15] and other Italian dramatists ”