th
17
Century French Theatre
Practice
Presented by:
Borana Luka
Overview:
Historical background
 Theater and theatrical companies
 The Neoclassical Ideal
 The Cid
 Corneille
 Racine
 Moliere

Historical Context

Religious controversies in the
XVI century that continued in
the XVII century

1625 – Cardinal Richelieu
( Louis XIII’s prime minister)

France the cultural center of
Europe
Cardinal Richelieu
The French stage needed
drastic reform
 Looked to Italy for
guidance
 Advocated adoption of
the proscenium stage and
perspective scenery
 The drama should adhere
to theoretical principles
articulated in Italy during
the XVI century
 These principles make up
what came to be called
the neoclassical ideal.

The Neoclassical Ideal

Only two legitimate forms
of drama:
♣ tragedy
♣ comedy
Tragedy deals with affairs of
the state
Comedy deals with love
The two should never be
mixed!

Neoclassicists: the
purpose of drama is
to teach and to
please

Opera came to France
in the second half of
the century
Theaters and theatrical companies



In addition to public theaters, plays were produced in private
residences, before the court and in the university
The public, the humanist theater of the colleges and the theater
performed at court showed extremely divergent tastes
- tragicomedy was fashionable at the court
- the public was more interested in tragedy
The early theaters in Paris were often placed in existing structures
like tennis courts:
- stages were extremely narrow
- facilities for sets and scene changes were often nonexistent
Eventually, theaters would develop systems of elaborate machines and
decors


Theater performances took
place twice a week
Theatrical representations
often encompassed several
works:
a comic prologue, a tragedy
or tragicomedy, a farce and
finally a song
Nobles sometimes sat on the side
of the stage during the
performance
The audience was always aware
of each other
Spectators were notably vocal
during performances



- The place directly in front of the stage,
without seats(the "parterre“) was reserved
for men
- It was usually a mix of social groups
- Elegant people watched the show from
the galleries
- Princes, musketeers and royal pages were
given free entry
- Before 1630, a honest woman did not go
to the theater
Unlike England, France placed no
restrictions on women performing on stage
But the career of actors of either sex was
seen as morally wrong by the Catholic
church and by the religious Janseanist
movement
Actors typically had fantastic stage names
that described typical roles or stereotypical
characters
Main requirements of a neoclassical
drama
Five acts
 Unity

- time ( 24 hours only)
- place ( same place)
- action ( only one plot)

“Poetic justice” to
triumph
The Cid
by Pierre Corneille
In 1636 the most popular
play written in France
 Did not obey all the
neoclassical rules
 The French Academy praised
its qualities but criticized the
deviations from the rules
This controversy legitimized the
neoclassical view

The Cid

Le Cid (1637) was influenced by Spanish tales of
the famous 11th century warrior known as Le Cid

This was Corneille’s first masterpiece

Conflict between the claims of society and
personal choice

In the end love must subordinate to a higher
sense of purpose
Sources of inspiration




The most important source for tragic theater was Seneca
and the precepts of Horace and Aristotle, classical
authors such as Plutarch, Suenitos, etc. and short story
collections (Italian, French and Spanish)
The Greek tragic authors (Sophocles, Euripides) would
become increasingly important by the middle of the
century
Important models for both comedy, tragedy and
tragicomedy of the century were also supplied by the
Spanish playwrights Tirso de Molina and Lope de Vega
Important theatrical models were also supplied by the
Italian stage (including the pastoral). Italy was also an
important source for theoretical discussions on theater,
especially about decorum
The most important authors of the seventeenth
century theatre in France were:



Pierre Corneille
Jean Racine
Jean Baptiste Poquelin ( Moliere)
Other playwrights: Claude Boyer, Michel Le
CLerc, Jacques Pradon, Jean de la
Chapelle, Antoine d’Aubigny de la Fosse,
Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon
Pierre Corneille






1606- 1684
Together with Racine, the
greatest classical tragic
dramatist
Educated by Jesuits, studied
law, entered the Rouen
parliament
Regarded as the founder of
French tragedy, but he
wrote comedies too
The Cornellian hero
In 1647 was admitted to the
Académie Francaise



He wrote thirty plays, choosing
a great many historical
subjects, several of which had
often been used before, such
as Sofonisba, Attila, Oedipus.
He avowed his allegiance to
the so-called classical rules,
and for a part of the time he
adhered to them.
His theory was that the
subject of a tragedy should be
remote and improbable, with
as many striking and
extraordinary situations as
were compatible with unity of
action
Melite (1629), Clitandre,
La Veuve, La Galerie du
Palais, La Suivante, La
Place Royal, and
L'Illusion Comique comedies and
tragicomedies
 Le Cid, Horace, Cinna,
Polyeucte – these four
plays are considered his
greatest achievements
as a writer and thinker
 Rodogune, Theodore
(his first failure),
Nicomede, Pulcherie,
Surena

Each play reveals the
essence of Cornelian
tragedy
 Conflict usually ends not in
death and destruction, as in
Racine's plays, but in moral
growth and an abiding
sense of duty
 The protagonists suddenly
realize that they must
acquire moral strength and
do whatever is right,
regardless of the personal
cost.

Jean Racine




1639-1699
Attended the Jansenist school
at Port-Royal
His fusion of the Greek idea of
fate with the Jansenist belief in
human helplessness later
produced unique tragedies of
the struggle of the will against
the passions
Studied philosophy in Paris
Moliere produced
Racine's first plays, La
Thebiade (1664) and
Alexandre le Grand
(1665)
 Confirmed in his
theatrical vocation by
the reception accorded
these plays, Racine
broke with the
Jansenists and devoted
himself entirely to his
art

Andromaque (1667) - occasioned a great rivalry
between him and Corneille
 Bajazet, Mithridate, Iphigénie, Phèdre,
Esther, Athalie
Corneille's characters are moral giants endowed
with indomitable will. Racine's are intensely
human.
La Bruyère: Corneille painted human beings as
they ought to be; Racine painted them as they
are.





In 1672 he was elected to
the Académie Française
Under increasing attack
from other playwrights
Retired from theatrical
activity and married in
1677
His last two plays,
Esther and Athalie
were on biblical themes,
written for performance
by students at a school
for the sacred and secular
education of young
women
Moliere ( Jean Baptiste Poquelin)





1622- 1673
Went to a Jesuit school
Studied law
In 1643 joined the Illustre
Theatre
Composed 12 of the most
durable and penetratingly
satirical full-length
comedies of all time
As a comic dramatist he ranks with such other
distinctive masters of the genre as Aristophanes,
Plautus, and George Bernard Shaw.
 Also the leading French comic actor, stage
director, and dramatic theoretician of the 17th
century
 Molière affirmed the potency of comedy as a
serious, flexible art form
 The king's brother became Molière's patron

He is credited with giving the French
“Comedy of manners” and
 “Comedy of character”
their modern form

The Precious Maidens
Ridiculed (1659),
established him as the
most popular comic
playwright of the day
 Molière advanced from
being a gifted adapter of
Italian-derived sketches
and a showman who put
on extravaganzas to a
writer whose best plays
had the lasting impact of
tragedies
 He made many enemies the clergy mistakenly
believed that certain of
his plays were attacks on
the church. Other
playwrights resented his
continual experiments
with comic forms




Strongest influence the Italian
commedia dell'arte troupes
He applied the alexandrine , to a
relaxed dialogue that imitated
conversational speech
He created a gallery of incisive
portraits: Tartuffe the religious
hypocrite, and Orgon, his dupe;
Jourdain the social climber; Don
Juan the rebel and libertine;
cuckolds such as Arnolphe, Dandin,
and Amphitryon; Alceste the stony
idealist; Harpagon the miser;
Philaminte the pretentiously
cultured lady; and many more.
The Death
He finally collapsed on Feb. 17, 1673, after the
fourth performance of The Imaginary Invalid,
and died at home that evening. On the night of
February 21, he was interred in Saint Joseph's
Cemetery.
 Church leaders refused to officiate or to grant
his body a formal burial.
 Seven years later the king united Molière's
company with one of its competitors; since that
time the French national theater, the Comédie
Francaise, has been known as the House of
Molière.

Plays by Moliere
Short plays ( one or two acts):
 The Jealous Husband
 The Flying Doctor
 Sganarelle
 The Rehearsal at Versailles
 The Forced Marriage
The longer plays (in three or five acts):
 The School for Husbands
 The School for Wives
 Tartuffe
 Don Juan
 The Misanthrope
 The Doctor in Spite of Himself Amphitryon, The Miser,
George Dandin, The Bourgeois Gentleman, Scapin, The
Learned Ladies, and The Imaginary Invalid
Thank you for your attention!
Any questions?
Bibliography




Oscar G. Brockett, Robert J. Ball, The Essential Theatre,
p. 136-145
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc57.html
http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Theatre/Racine/ra
cine.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_literature_of_the_17
th_century#Theater