History of Western Theatre: 17th Century to Now/Boulevard of the 19th
Boulevard theatre is by definition popular art, separate and below major plays of either romantic or realist movements, with no outstanding dramatist to speak of. Yet some interesting plays live on, mostly comedies, because of popular enthusiasm for the theatre in Paris throughout the 19th century. A basic element in all farce is fear, which motivates character movements (Parshall, 1981 p 358). “Farce humour derives from the way normal people behave in abnormal situations; density of characterization…is not required; more important are the pace of the action and the deftness with which it is handled” (Alexander, 1969 p 34).
Georges Feydeau
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One of the most often played comic playwright of Boulevard Theatre is Georges Feydeau (1862-1922), whose most famous farces include "L'hôtel du libre échange" (The Free Exchange Hotel, 1894) written with Maurice Desvallières (1857-1926), "Le dindon" (Sauce for the goose, more precisely The turkey 1896), and "La dame de chez Maxim" (The lady from Maxim's, 1899).
In "The Free Exchange Hotel", the hilarity of the situation into which [Feydeau] plunges the characters underscores some rather serious observations about people in general and about certain social institutions” (Esteban, 1983 p 112). The play “is more than a clever concatenation of absurdities. It reveals the author’s disabused views on marriage, friendship, and the morals of the middle classes...Frigid husbands, shrewish wives, ill-assorted spouses make of marriage...an unbearable state. Illicit love is no better- unless one is young and just learning the pleasures of the flesh, as Maxime does...Whether it is a question of money or of morals, the rule is ‘an eye for an eye’...Mathieu stutters when it rains and is reduced to silence by a storm...Like Ionesco...Feydeau treats the unbearable as comical, suggesting through humor a vision which is far from amusing” (Pronko, 1975 p 121).
In "The turkey", “Feydeau reveals...the fundamental egotism of all men, whether the thoughtless playboy (Rédillon), faithless husband (Pontagnac), or cool businessman (Soldignac). In the pathetic and sometimes touching portrait of the Pinchards, she deaf, he something of a satyr, we see what the future holds in store even for those couples who stick together...Vatelin is cruelly satirized as the typical nouveau riche bourgeois- an unimaginative mediocrity with neither taste nor style...[Mme Pinchard’s] nightmare existence is only one indication in this masterly play of the profoundly pessimistic view of life underlying Feydeau’s baroque frivolities” (Pronko, 1975, pp 130-131). A [Feydeau] technique “is the use of foils. In Le Dindon, Feydeau creates a number of foils-in-reverse, a foil employed not to brighten and set off another character but rather to tone another character down to plausibility…The mistress who insists upon adultery makes more credible the wife who threatens adultery” (Steiner, 1961 p 51). "In this play, Feydeau succeeded in amplifying to near-perfection all his qualities, fusing quite naturally aspects of the comedy of manners and the typically delirious rhythm of vaudeville” (Esteban, 1983 p 120).
In "The lady from Maxim's", a "reminiscence of Massuccio's well-known Italian novella, Feydeau combines with the more usual confusion of an uncle who mistakes the dancer for the wife of the physician, and insists that both shall accompany him to his chateau in Touraine. Here the dancer passes to another lover, and is presently supposed by a third person to be the wife of the uncle. So errors accumulate, and the laughter grows, the first act alone keeping the audience convulsed for an hour" (Chandler, 1920 pp 163-164). “Many are the innocents who suffer the 'slings and arrows' brand of 'outrageous fortune'. Perhaps the prototype is Petypon in The Lady from Maxim’s. The sedate doctor awakes one morning to find that after a night of unaccustomed revelry, he had unwittingly brought home the entertainer, 'Môme Crevette’. Petypon is horrified, realizing that he will never be able to convince his wife that the whole affair was a terrible mistake, and that his relations with 'La Môme' have been wholly honorable. Consequently, he tries his best to remedy the situation before his wife can discover it. Feydeau, however, does not let him escape so easily. Complications accumulate around the poor doctor as his every effort leads only to more involvement” (Shapiro, 1960 pp 117-118). Though mostly a peak of the boulevard type, "The lady from Maxim's" has elements of the higher comedy of manners. “Crevette and Gabrielle stand out as individuals. The latter...suggests the pathetic side of the human comedy...The outrageous behavior of Crevette at the general’s chateau...derives...from...an old tradition...to the days of Molière: the spoofing of the bourgeois who aspires to nobility, or the provincial who aspires to city-bred status, and thereby reveals his foolishness by imitating unworthy models. The dexterity with which Feydeau manipulates the several dozen characters in Act 2 is matched only by his skill in leading them through the maze of complexities which arise throughout the play” (Pronko, 1975, pp 141-143). “Feydeau found no secret, magic formula. He did use several rules of thumb which Sophocles, Shakespeare, Moliere, and other great masters used. One rule is: never let the audience feel tricked; therefore, never let it see the strings attached to the puppets; make the spectator believe in the freedom of the characters by audaciously introducing characters who must, by rights, never meet…In La Dame de chez Maxim's he was faced with perhaps the most difficult problem of this kind in all of his work, how to confront the real Mrs Petypon with Crevette whom the general believes to be the real Mrs Petypon. Feydeau solved it with two words: "Aunt!" (spoken by the real Mrs Petypon, who thinks that Crevette is the general's wife (Steiner, 1961 p 51). The ecstatic chair “permits Feydeau to dabble in psychoanalysis. While asleep, the subconscious of all characters takes over...In the case of the Petypons, for instance, they reveal unfulfilled desires, frustrations, and even deep dissatisfaction with life. Surprisingly, Gabrielle, in all appearances a prudish woman who divides her time between being a model wife, an exceptional hostess, and doing many good deeds, dreams of love and passion, as does Emile, their servant who, still not totally awake, embraces Gabrielle passionately...Petypon is...rather cowardly, much too self-interested, and too fearful of losing his uncle’s inheritance to be truthful...In the second act, Feydeau takes the opportunity to present a tableau of provincial manners. Their insatiable thirst for anything Parisian renders them utterly blind and makes them behave in a ludicrous manner which borders on the pathetic...Crevette is...seductive, disarmingly innocent, affectionate, caressing, rebellious, impulsive, ladylike, and vulgar” (Esteban, 1983 pp 149-151).
Chandler (1920) opined that Feydeau's plays are removed from the actual: "although his plots...are far from moral, they are so evidently capers of the imagination removed from the actual that they bear no ethical import" (p 163). But other critics have disagreed. “More than any other French writer of the turn of the century, Georges Feydeau typifies that period of gaiety, optimism and high living known as ‘la belle époque’” (Pronko, 1975 p 5). “The picture that emerges from his Paris of the ‘belle époque’ is one of great prosperity...[where] Feydeau gives the first glimpses of the dominant flaws of his contemporaries: vanity, selfishness, egocentricity, materialism, emotional vacuity...Whether aristocrats, bourgeois, or members of the working classes, few characters in Feydeau can be said to adhere to strict moral principles...Characters are fastidious...about appearances...Friends are forever betrayed, and betrayed without compunction...If the plays that Feydeau wrote were not so hilarious, his theater could easily be referred to as the theater of cruelty...Few are the characters who do not display it, and few are those not victimized by it” (Esteban, 1983 pp 30-70).
"The Free Exchange Hotel"
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Time: 1890s. Place: Passy, France.
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Pinglet and his wife, Angélique, receive the visit of their friend, Mathieu, for one month, a man who stutters whenever it rains. To their surprise, he arrives accompanied by four daughters, recently removed from a convent. Husband and wife are unable to lodge all these. In secret, Pinglet assigns a rendez-vous at night with Marcelle, the wife of a friend of his, Paillardin, at the Free Exchange Hotel, where Mathieu understands he is to stay. Since Angélique intends to visit her sister, Pinglet decides to eat at a restaurant. This angers her. She slaps his face and keeps the key of the main-door to the house. To escape, he places a rope against the window ledge and climbs down. At the hotel, Paillardin, as the man designated by a commercial commission, is given by the hotel manager a room rumored to be haunted. When Pinglet and Marcelle enter their room, he first feels amorous then ill, suspecting a too heavy dinner combined with champagne and a cigar as the cause. Bulot, a hotel employee liking the looks of Marcelle, lewdly pierces a hole on the wall of their room to peep inside. As he does so, Pinglet feels a stabbing pain in the back. Bulot removes his tool, and, seeing it red at the tip, assumes he hit wet brick. By chance, Mathieu enters the lobby of the same hotel along with his daughters. Boulot gives them the haunted room. When Mathieu encounters Marcelle meet on the landing, he and his daughters invade her room. Now feeling better, Pinglet re-enters the room and is surprised to find Mathieu's family. He and Marcelle pretend to be surprised at seeing each other. In his hotel room but also Paillardin's by mistake, Mathieu uses Paillardin's toilet articles and smokes his cigar, presumed to be a courtesy of the hotel management, then retires for the night. When Paillardin enters his room, he finds his possessions unaccountably shifted about. New visitors arrive in the lobby: Maxime, Paillardin's nephew, together with Pinglet's servant-girl, Victoire. In their room, Mathieu's girls fight and by mistake extinguish the candle. They find colored lamps, producing a spooky effect on the walls, and eerily chant on their beds in their white night-clothes, awakening the frightened Paillardin, who, in turn, frightens the girls. Mathieu enters to find out what is happening and is told by the girls that there is a man in their room. He looks about and finds Victoire on the landing, then, more worrisome, Maxime. He asks Boulot what this can mean, who divulges that the room is haunted. The girls yell and run off, scaring Paillardin all the more, who precede them on the way out, looking very lively. Marcelle sees her husband running down the stairs and quickly re-enters her room. In great fear, Paillardin knocks at their door, but Pinglet refuses to let him in. As a result, Paillardin forces his way inside, propulsing Pinglet down to the chimney corner, while Marcelle, to hide from her husband, puts his hat down to her neck. As Pinglet emerges in a sooty state, Paillardin takes him for a chimney-sweeper. He tries to get his hat back but Marcelle screams for help and Pinglet kicks him out. As Marcello removes her hat and sees the sooty Pinglet, she cries out: "O God, a nigger!" before recognizing her lover. Suddenly, the vice squad charges in, asking Pinglet and Marcelle separately their names, the latter declaring "Mrs Pinglet" and the former "Mr Paillardin". The next morning, Pinglet, after paying 5,000 francs in bail-money, advises Marcelle to get rid of her compromising dress, the only thing her husband managed to see of her during their escapade. He receives a letter from his sister-in-law, stating that she is worried over the fact that his wife never arrived. His face lights up on considering how she may have been kidnapped, but soon his wife returns, explaining she had a road accident when the carriage-horse ran out of control. Angélique reads her letters, one of which surprises her, stating she was arrested in a police raid at the Free Exchange Hotel in the company of Paillardin. Pinglet pretends to be angry at her and interrogates Paillardin: "Where were you last night?" he asks. "At the Free Exchange Hotel," the other answers. Angélique starts to believe she is losing her senses. Pinglet proceeds to accuse his friend of adultery with his wife. Paillardin laughs at this until he receives a letter from the police in the same vein. When Marcelle enters, Pinglet perseveres in his accusations, so that she begins to feel faint. More worrisome for both her and Pinglet, Mathieu comes in, but is pushed out of sight by Pinglet before he can divulge anything. By then the police commissioner arrives, who recognizes from last night both Paillardin and Marcelle, the latter despite her veil, though mostly remembers the dress she wore. Paillardin asks for the list of the other arrested persons and finds Mathieu on it, now called in to be interrogated. When asked who he saw at the hotel, thunder strikes and he starts to stutter as he usually does in bad weather, but seeing Maxime walk in, he points at him. When asked with whom he went to the hotel, Maxime answers "Victoire", who, when called in while wearing Marcelle's dress, is falsely recognized by the commissioner as the woman who was there. Pretending anger, Pinglet fires Victoria, while the commissioner gives Maxime Pinglet's 5,000 francs in bail-money.
"The turkey"
editTime: 1890s. Place: Paris, France.
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Lucienne is pursued by a man, Pontagnac, who has been following her in the street and trying to seduce her. He follows her inside her house. Unfortunately for him, the house belongs to a friend of his, Vatelin, and Lucienne is his wife. Pontagnac is surprised at seeing him. "Since you are in my house," Vatelin comments, "you must have expected to see me." Lucienne coolly informs him that a man has been following her in the streets. Reluctantly, Pontagnac is forced to admit it is he, pretending to know who she was. Lucienne is surprised to learn from her husband that Pontagnac is married. "Yes," Pontagnac admits, "a little." His wife is afflicted with rheumatism, he says, preventing her to go out. While the two friends examine pictures in another room, Rédillon arrives, another would-be lover of hers, "like a man always being served a cocktail, never dining," he complains. To Pontagnac's horror, his wife is then announced. After always hearing her husband mention the Vatelins, she decided to come over. Knowing about her so-called rheumatism, the Vatelins are surprised at hearing this. Vatelin is even more surprised on learning that he himself suffers from rheumatism. Each wife swears an oath that, should they catch their husbands straying, they will accept Rédillon as their lover. As his guests leave, Vautelin next receives the unwelcome visit of Maggy, his London mistress. He refuses to come to her apartment, so that, in despair, she reads to him a letter addressed to her husband, confessing she loves her Vatelin, with his address included, and after that she intends to kill herself. He yields. Yet another person is announced: Maggy's husband, Soldignac, at which Maggy escapes in the adjoining room. Soldignac has found out his wife has a secret rendez-vous and plans to catch her with her lover and then divorce her, so that he requests Vautelin as his lawyer to prepare the necessary papers. Vatelin asks Pontagnac for a good place to meet a woman at night. He suggests the Ultimus Hotel. And so Vatelin will send the woman a telegraphed message to meet him there. Armed with these news and hoping to get her on the rebound, Pontagnac informs Lucienne of her husband's illicit rendez-vous at the Ultimus Hotel, so that she and Mrs Pontagnac reaffirm their oath. A client at the Ultimus Hotel, Armandine, advises the manager that she would like to change rooms. She receives the visit of Rédillon, a stranger to whom she left a note at the theatre. He kisses her, fervently calling her "Lucienne", but she is unavailable that night because of her rendez-vous with Soldignac. He convinces her to leave a note to Soldignac to say she is sick. Vautelin is announced to take over her room, but, as a result of an administrative error, it is another client, Pinchard, who enters instead along with his deaf wife. On his way out, Rédillon takes Pinchard's bag by mistake. As husband and wife leave their room, Pontagnac shows Lucienne her husband's den of sin. To catch the adulterous lovers, he places electric bells underneath the mattress on each side of the bed. They go to an adjacent room as Maggy enters to meet Vautelin. When Maggy modestly takes off her clothes in the next room, her husband, Soldignac, enters. He first came to the hotel for his rendez-vous with Armandine, but was told she is sick and that Vatelin is here. Vatelin is very worried as he sees Soldignac gawking at a pretty arm in the next room, not knowing that it belongs to his wife. A knock at the door reveals the presence of Rédillon, who comes back to return the wrong bag. Vatelin precipitously sends Soldignac away with Rédillon, the latter taking Maggy's bag by mistake, so that she is unable to dress. She hides as Pinchard enters with his wife. With both bells ringing at once, Lucienne angrily charges in with Pontagnac following, only to discover the Pinchard couple in bed. As a result, the two men rapidly disappear. After Pinchard leaves to prepare a cataplasm for his wife, Vatelin returns and notices a woman on the bed, admiring British phlegm. After taking laudanum meant for Mrs Pinchard, he falls asleep next to her. Pinchard returns with the cataplasm and administers it on Vatelin's stomach, who cries out in pain. "A man in bed with my wife!" Pinchard exclaims. Incensed, he tries to choke the culprit. Thinking to catch her husband in the act, Lucienne charges in a second time. "Heavens, my wife!" Vatelin cries out and flees. Pontagnac triumphs, expecting his reward. Instead, according to her oath, Lucienne intends to take Rédillon as her lover. As Pontagnac grieves over this situation, a police commissionner, having tailed Maggy to the hotel, enters along with Soldignac, discovers Pontagnac with the almost naked Maggy, followed by Mrs Pontagnac and her own commissioner. After lying with Armandine all night in his bedroom, Rédillon feels tired. She flees on hearing a woman's voice. It is Lucienne's, come to keep her oath. But he is unable to please her at the moment. He asks her for a delay of one day. "Impossible," she retorts, "my husband is coming, and, when he arrives, I want my vengeance consummated." "Your husband here!" Rédillon exclaims, jumping in fear. They hear another woman's voice, Mrs Pontagnac's, also to keep her oath. Since Rédillon is at present unavailable, Lucienne is willing to use Pontagnac for her purpose when he is announced. Mrs Pontagnac agrees to this. It is because of her that he has two charges leveled against him, for he was "caught by a man he does not know with a woman he does not know" and with divorce proceedings pending, appearing as the goose of all these goings-on. As Lucienne strips to her underclothes and encourages her friend to do the same, Vatelin enters with the police commissionner, who, looking at Pontagnac, exclaims: "You again, sir!" When Rédillon and Mrs Pontagnac enter, she pretends that Rédillon is her lover. Rédillon consoles Vatelin by saying that surely all this is merely Lucienne's plot to make him jealous. Vatelin is consoled and even more so when Lucienne forgives him.
"The lady from Maxim's"
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Time: 1890s. Place: France.
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After a wild night spent at Maxim's restaurant, Dr Mongicourt discovers his fellow surgeon, Dr Petypon, under the sofa, yet the latter's wife, Gabrielle, tells him she kissed him in bed this morning. As the doctors ponder over this mystery, they find a girl under the bed covers. Petypon has no idea who she is. She is Crevette, a dancer from the Moulin Rouge, whom Petypon brought home last night and had forgotten. They hide her as Gabrielle returns, only finding a woman's dress on the chair. Thinking it is her dressmaker's most recent invention, she goes away with it. Despite receiving a hefty sum of money, Crevette refuses to leave without her dress, so that, when Gabrielle returns, she is forced to hide. The doctors chortle silently as the pious Gabrielle describes a vision of St Catherine she has experienced, announcing that a seraphim will appear to reveal her mission. To tease her, Crevette calls out: "Gabrielle! Gabrielle!" Gabrielle is stunned on seeing a bright celestial-like figure appear, actually Crevette rising under the bed-sheets with a light reflector. "The seraphim!" exclaims the amazed Gabrielle, while the profane doctors kneel but pretend to see nothing. She is commanded to go to the obelisk at Concorde square and hear a man speak, for from his words a son will be born, whom all of France awaits: "Go, for your son, for your king, for your country," the vision announces. After the departure of her hosts, Crevette must hide again as a general enters, baron Petypon du Grêlé, Petypon's uncle, recently arrived from Africa. Nevertheless, he finds her but mistakes her for his nephew's wife. He asks her to take care of his niece, Clementine for a few days, who is to marry lieutenant Corignon, a man Crevette knows well. As Petypon's wife, she is invited to play the hostess' role at Clementine's wedding, which she accepts, to the astonishment of Petypon and Mongicourt, who have returned with Gabrielle, having accomplished her mission, whom the general takes for Mongicourt's wife. When the others leave, Petypon shows Mongicourt his new armchair, Dr Tunékunc's latest invention called the ecstatic seat, capable of anesthetizing any patient without the aid of ether, which works well on Mongicourt. Two men are announced on the subject of last night's business. A man has insulted Petypon and has challenged him to a duel. Provoked, Petypon pushes one of them on the ecstatic seat to quiet him, and learns in astonishment from the other that the dueller is Corignon, his nephew, who then enters, Petypon making himself small before him. But knowing now the insulted man as his uncle, Corignon asks to be forgiven for the misunderstanding. Gabrielle returns bearing a letter, an invitation to Clementine's wedding. She then accidently falls on the ecstatic seat. When the general re-enters, Petypon hides her by throwing a rug over her body. A street-sweeper then comes in, who was invited to dinner the previous night by a drunk Petypon, who allows him a meal in the kitchen and, in return, asks him to press a seat button as he leaves with his uncle for the wedding in Touraine. He presses the button. Thinking she has gone blind with the rug still over her face, Gabrielle screams, then, taking it off, screams again on hearing the sweeper say: "I am the sweeper you are expecting for dinner." At the castle in Touraine, the provincial guests are impressed by Crevette's Parisian manners and expressions. Mrs Vidauban, who sets the tone and imposes fashions in dress and behavior among them all, is led to believe Crevette as a model to be followed, laughing and slapping her thigh, gestures imitated by all the others. On hearing her cry out with legs astride over a chair: "He ain't my father," the women are shocked, but Petypon explains this is the latest Parisian craze, first made fashionable by the princess of Waterloo and baroness Sussemann. Vidauban agrees, crying out with legs astride over a chair: "He's not my father," gestures imitated by the others, including one whose husband would have her learn such manners to promote his career. More mischief follows when Crevette flirts with the wealthy young duke of Valmonté and invites him to sit on her thighs. Fearing to be exposed, Petypon scolds and pushes her out of sight as his real wife approaches. Nevertheless, Crevette returns and is mistaken by Gabrielle as the general's new wife. Crevette is invited to sing a song concerning a kitchen-pot, which few of the guests understand, then dances a can-can ended by lifting her skirt and showing her buttocks. The women are shocked at this, but cheerfully go off dancing a farandole. Corignon is welcomed by Clementine, much changed in her manners since being instructed by Crevette. After Clementine leaves, Corignon has second thoughts about his marriage. Instead, he and Crevette agree to go off together. After being locked inside a room by her husband, Gabrielle escapes only to find the lights out. Petypon plays the piano while hiding underneath it, confirming his wife's opinion that the castle is haunted, then, hearing what she believes to be an angel's voice, she is advised to leave at once. Petypon crosses the Corignon-Crevette couple as they are about to leave, but does not recognize her because of her old woman's disguise. Corignon gives Petypon a letter for the general, informing him of his decision not to marry his niece. When the general receives this, he is incensed, and, learning from a servant that the traitor left with Mrs Petypon, happy news to the deceived Petypon, decides to pursue them. When the general returns, too late to catch them, he cries out in frustration: "Mrs Petypon is a hussy," confusing her with Crevette in Gabrielle's presence, because of which she slaps his face. In vengeful spite, he slaps in turn Mongicourt's face in retribution of his supposed wife's insolence. Back at his house, Petypon is alarmed on learning that his wife received flowers and a note from Valmonté, who also has confused her with Crevette. Petypon pretends to be angry with his wife. He then receives a visit from Mongicourt, who expects him to fight a duel with the general for insulting Gabrielle. The general has caught up with Crevette and brings her to Petypon's house with news that as the offended husband he must fight a duel with Corignon. The general asks for Mrs Petypon as the real one arrives. In a panic at being found out, Petypon presses the button of the ecstatic seat while the general is behind it, freezing him into place, as well as Gabrielle who touches him, followed by Petypon who touches her by mistake, a servant, and another man seeking to help. When the spell is broken, Petypon hurries everyone away to face the general. At this time, Crevette also sits on the ecstatic seat and is frozen beside the general while he goes to find Petypon. The love-smitten Valmonté enters, a bouquet of flowers in his hand for Crevette. When he kisses her hand, he is frozen, too, until Petypon presses the button to free both. When the general encourages husband and wife to kiss, they do so as Gabrielle enters, joyful to find Crevette again and as the general's wife takes her away to chat. While the general and Valmonté discuss Petypon's impending duel with Corignon's two witnesses, Gabrielle bursts in, fearful of the talk of a duel. The general now thinks he has discovered Gabrielle is Petypon's mistress and Crevette his wife. In distress, Petypon sits on the ecstatic seat and accidentally presses the button again. Gabrielle angrily confronts her husband lying in a trance for passing Crevette off as his wife, slapping his face several times with the safety gloves on and announcing her intention to divorce him. When Petypon leaves, Valmonté re-enters and hears Gabrielle say as a result of his letter she thought was addressed to her instead of Crevette: "Take me. I'm yours," at which he flees. Then Gabrielle hears again the same angel's voice, and, to convince the general of its reality, approaches the bed with a drawn sword until hearing her husband cry out in fear, who explains that he lied to her only on learning that Crevette is Corignon's mistress and by such means avoid a scandal. The way is now free for the general to unite with Crevette.
Eugène Labiche
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Another high note of Boulevard comedic talent appears in Eugène Labiche (1815-1888) with "Un chapeau de paille d'Italie" (An Italian straw hat, 1851), written in collaboration with Marc-Michel (1812-1868), "Le prix Martin" (The Martin prize, 1876), in collaboration with Émile Augier (1820-1889), and “Le plus heureux des trois” (The happiest among the three, 1870), in collaboration with Edmond Gondinet (1828-1888). Labiche also wrote "Mister Perrichon's voyage" (1860) concerning the rivalry between Armand and Daniel for the hand of Perrichon's daughter, Henriette. Although Armand saves Perrichon from falling off a horse, the latter prefers Daniel, who pretended to fall down a crevice and was saved by Perrichon, because Daniel knows that Perrichon's vanity prevents him from being grateful. But after hearing Daniel boast of his plan to Armand, Perrichon's vanity turns against Daniel so that Henriette obtains the man she wants.
In "An Italian straw hat", the “wedding procession...became so infectiously a bacchic release that I soon wanted to join the merry-makers myself and become almost ritualistically one of them” (Gassner, 1954b p 404). "It is the characteristic of a mechanical combination to be generally reversible. A child is delighted when he sees the ball in a game of ninepins knocking down everything in its way and spreading havoc in all directions; he laughs louder than ever when the ball returns to its starting-point after twists and turns and waverings of every kind. In other words, the mechanism just described is laughable even when rectilinear, it is much more so on becoming circular and when every effort the player makes, by a fatal interaction of cause and effect, merely results in bringing it back to the same spot. Now, a considerable number of light comedies revolve round this idea. An Italian straw hat has been eaten up by a horse. There is only one other hat like it in the whole of Paris; it must be secured regardless of cost. This hat, which always slips away at the moment its capture seems inevitable, keeps the principal character on the run, and through him all the others who hang, so to say, on to his coat tails, like a magnet which, by a successive series of attractions, draws along in its train the grains of iron filings that hang on to each other. And when at last, after all sorts of difficulties, the goal seems in sight, it is found that the hat so ardently sought is precisely the one that has been eaten" (Bergson, 1913 pp 83-84). “The characters of An Italian Straw Hat are perfect examples of the mechanical inelasticity Bergson asserted was basic to provoking laughter. They go charging blindly and unthinkingly after the hero...A salient characteristic of Labiche’s comedy is the sense of movement it carries. The comic motifs accumulate with dizzying rapidity and even the situations themselves can contribute to the impression of movement” (West, 1986 p 1132).
“For myself, I like to think of Labiche as in some sort akin to Honoré Daumier Earnestness and accomplishment apart, he has much in common with that king of caricaturists The lusty frankness, the jovial ingenuity, the keen sense of the ridiculous, the insatiable instinct of observation, of the draughtsman are a great part of the equipment of the playwright. Augier notes that truth is everywhere in Labiche’s work, and Augier is right He is before everything a dramatist, an artist, that is, whose function is to tell a story in action and by the mouths of its personages, and whimsical and absurd as he loves to be, he is never either the one or the other at the expense of nature. Sometimes, as in Célimare le Bien-Aimé, Le Plus Heureux des Trois, and Le Prix Martin, he fights again from a humoristic point of view that triangular duel between the wife, the husband, and the lover which fills so large a place in the literature of France , and then he shows the reverse of the medal of adultery at his ease, the seducer haunted by the ghosts of old sins, the erring wife the slave of her unsuspecting lord...At his wildest, he never forgets that men and women are themselves. His dialogue is always right and appropriate, however extravagant it be. His vivid and varied knowledge of life and character supplies him with touches enough of nature and truth to make the fortune of a dozen ordinary dramatists and withal you feel as you read that he is writing, as Augier says of him, to amuse himself merely, and that he could, if he would, be solemn and didactic with all the impressiveness that a perfect acquaintance with men and things and an admirable dramatic aptitude can bestow. The fact that he is always in a good temper has done him some wrong in that it has led him to be to all appearances amusing only where he might well have posed as a severe and serious artist. But he is none the less true for having elected to be funny, and there is certainly more genuine human nature and human feeling in such drolleries as Le Chapeau de Paille d’Italie and Le Plus Heureux des Trois than in all the serious dramas of Ponsard (say) and Hugo put together” (Henley, 1921 pp 130-132).
"In all [Labiche's] work, in the weakest as well as in the best, the dominant note is gayety: they are filled full of frank, hearty, joyous laughter. In reading his plays, as in seeing them on the stage, you have rarely that quiet smile of intellectual appreciation which is called forth by Sheridan in English, and by Beaumarchais, and M Augier, and M Dumas, in French...There is rather the rush of broad and tumultuous humor than the thrust of wit and the clash of repartee...The laughter is evoked by a humorous situation, from which, with great knowledge of comic effect, and with unfailing ingenuity, the author extracts all the fun possible...None of his men are as weak as his women. Some of his peasants are drawn with great and amusing accuracy. Most of his minor characters are vigorously outlined, and well contrasted one with another; and one character, repeated with but little alteration as the central figure in perhaps two dozen plays, is drawn with a marvellous insight into the inner nature of the bourgeois of Paris. Although grotesque almost in its humor, the caricature is vital; for it is a personification of the exact facts of bourgeois life. M Perrichon and Celimare and Champbourcy (in the 'Cagnotte'), and their fellows in many another play, are not unlike Mr Matthew Arnold's 'homme sensuel moyen'; and with a master hand M Labiche lays bare the selfish foibles and petty vanity of the average sensual man...Not that there is any pandering to sensuality in M Labiche's plays: on the contrary, the ultimate moral of his work is always wholesome" (Matthews, 1881 p. 228-239).
"Eugène Labiche, like Scribe, developed the comédie vaudeville, laughing good-naturedly at the avarice, affectations, and ignorance of the bourgeoisie. He relied upon farcical situations and simple ideas sharply defined. Though his folk were caricatures, they exaggerated actual whimsies of character, his men proving more vital than his women. He employed mistakes and complications that exemplify Bergson's conception of the comic as arising when the free human spirit is cramped by that which is automatic. Thus he delighted in mechanical repetitions and inversions: an irascible captain warned by a handbell whenever his temper threatens to run away with him; a youth slapping his future father-in-law and consenting to be slapped in turn, yet, on feeling the blow, instinctively slapping back with such vigor as to set up a renewed series of slapping. In each of his pieces, Labiche was wont, also, to stress a central idea. In 'Le Misanthrope et l'Auvergnat' (1852), the hero, disgusted with the world's deceits, takes into service a peasant who will always tell him the truth, but drives the fellow off within a day, unable to face facts unadorned. In 'Le Voyage de M Perrichon' (1860), one suitor for the hand of Perrichon's daughter rests his claim to acceptance upon having saved Perrichon from peril, whereas the other, who is wiser, argues that Perrichon will avoid the man who has benefited him and prefer the one whom he has benefited. Accordingly, the rogue feigns for himself a situation of danger, from which Perrichon may rescue him. Throughout, he who accepts favors is played off with symmetrical regularity against the rival who confers them" (Chandler, 1920 pp 16-17).
"An Italian straw hat"
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Time: 1850s. Place: Paris, France.
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On Fadinard's wedding day with his bride, Helen, his horse eats part of Anais' Italian straw hat suspended from a tree. Anais' cousin Emil, an army lieutenant, rushes with her at Fadinard's house to insist he apologize to her for losing the hat. Fadinard reluctantly acquiesces, but is all the more distraught after learning that he must replace it at once, because Anais' chamber woman, Virginia, recognized the hat in his lodgings, and might reveal this compromising information to Anais' husband, Beauperthuis. On entering a milliner's shop, Fadinard is disagreeably surprised to find a shopkeeper, Clara, with whom he broke up but who is still expecting marriage from him. "You said to me: I'll go get an umbrella. I wait, and here you are 6 months later without an umbrella," she complains. Nonetheless, she agrees to get him a similar hat provided he eats out with her. "What a good idea! Just by chance I have a free night," he says in despair. Soon, Helen, Nonancourt, her father, and Bobin, her cousin, enter the milliner's shop, mistaking it for city hall, where Nonancourt discovers the prospective bridegroom kissing Clara. Caught, Fadinard tries to explain the situation by lying that Clara is his cousin who cannot come to the wedding. "She is in mourning," Fadinard explains. "In a pink dress?" Nonancourt sarcastically queries. While the family members sign what they think to be the attendance register, Clara discloses that no one owns such a hat except the baroness of Champigny. After the wedding ceremony, Fadinard is mistaken at the baroness' house for an Italian tenor invited to entertain the guests, while his own wedding group invades the baroness', mistaking her house for the restaurant where the wedding party is supposed to be held. In return for singing, Fadinard requests an Italian straw hat, but her chamber woman reveals that it was handed over as a gift to the baroness' godchild, Anais. At Anais' house, Fadinard asks her husband, Beauperthuis, for the Italian straw hat, the wedding guests following him. Thinking that they are at Fadinard's house, Nonancourt invites his daughter to "penetrate with no childish fear into the conjugal domicile", yet she trembles. To him, this behavior is "part of the program of the situation". He pronounces a solemn speech on marriage as an institution, but Fadinard is unavailable to listen, still in search of the hat. Taking him for a robber, Beauperthuis threatens him with two pistols, but Fadinard retrieves them from his pockets. "The hat or you life!" he shouts. "What is happening to me now is perhaps unique in the annals of humanity," the astounded Beauperthuis declares. But when Fadinard sees Virginia, he recognizes there is no further need to search. Knowing there is a woman (Anais) in Fadinard's house, a disgusted Nonancourt and the others remove Helen's trousseau and the wedding gifts, including to Fadinard's astonished delight the same style of Italian straw hat, by chance his uncle's wedding gift to Helen, but as he enters his house, he sees that his father-in-law had removed it from the box. Meanwhile, all the wedding guests are taken to the police station for loitering without identity papers, only Fadinard standing before Anais and Emil with an empty box. While Emil rushes out to find the missing hat, Beauperthuis arrives to look for his wife. Emil recovers the hat and throws it to Fadinard from a height, but it lands on a street lamp. At last, Anais retrieves the hat and scolds her husband for being out at such a late hour.
“The Martin prize”
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Time: 1870s. Place: Paris, France, and Chamounix and Handegg, Switzerland.
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While playing bezique, Ferdinand Martin envies Agenor’s success with married women. “It’s the regret of my life,” Ferdinand says. “O adultery! Adultery, that is to say voluptuousness seasoned with crime! Do you understand crime, Agenor? Me, I understand it. Some days I feel in me the stuff of a great criminal.” Ferdinand and his wife, Loisa, welcome the newly married Bartavelle couple, Edmund and Bathilda, on their rounds of visits before the honeymoon, Agenor having warned them that when Bathilda is bored, she waves her handkerchief. Very early during the friendly visit, Bathilda waves her handkerchief, Edmund specifying that they are heading for Chamounix in the Mont-Blanc region and then to the Handegg waterfall, the latter described as a “beautiful horror”. While Ferdinand leads out the Bartavelles, Agenor tells Loisa that he now feels scruples about committing adultery with his best friend’s wife. She responds by threatening to suck poison from her ring-finger. They agree to meet at a secret place. After Agenor leaves, Ferdinand’s cousin, Hernandez, is announced, who shows her a photograph of his wife, a queen of the Cichimecas tribe in Mexico. After she leaves, Hernandez tells Ferdinand that he spent the night at a cabaret where adulteries were discussed, in particular a man signaling messages to a man’s wife by writing chalk-marks on her husband’s back, horizontal when the meeting is on, vertical when the meeting is off. Ferdinand considers the story impossible until he turns his back and Hernandez sees a horizontal line on his. Ferdinand calls his servant to brush off the mark, who informs that for several days he always has chalk marks on his back. When Agenor returns, Ferdinand observes him mark his back from the mirror and plans to be revenged by offering his wife and Agenor a trip to the Handegg waterfall. Agenor accepts provided he pay his own costs. In a chalet at Chamounix, Agenor develops intestinal troubles. Hernandez complains about Ferdinand attending to his former friend when he should prepare to kill him. “When a man is condemned,” Ferdinand assures him, “he gets whatever his fancies dictate: chicken, tobacco, brandy…” Irate, he yells for the neighbors to stop their noise when to his surprise he discovers the Bartavelles, frolicking on their honeymoon. When they leave, Hernandez proposes that Ferdinand uses the doctor’s prescription of laudanum to kill Agenor, but he prefers to do it at the waterfall. Irate, Hernandez pours a lethal dose in a cup but then hesitates to offer it to the adulterer, instead leaving the matter to God’s judgment by simply laying the cup on the table. When they leave, Agenor’s servant, Pionceux, enters with a cup of chicken broth stolen from the kitchen followed by a thirsty Agenor, who dislikes the smell of the cup left to him and takes Pionceux’ cup instead. Pionceux dislikes that one, too, and leaves with the poison. Agenor suddenly feels better, so that Loisa takes the opportunity of offering to leave her husband for his sake. But Agenor does not want to. When threatening to kill herself again produces no effect, she threatens to reveal their relation to her husband, so that Agenor requests a day’s delay to reflect on the matter. He tells Ferdinand he feels better but, thinking he may die, he sent his last will and testament to his notary to leave all his money to his friend. A conscience-stricken Ferdinand pleads with him to write to the notary and cancel the will, then, aghast, observes the empty cup. It is now Agenor’s turn to attend to his apparently sick friend until Hernandez smells broth inside the cup and Agenor confesses he only drank from that one. In a chalet at Handegg, Bathilda weeps from boredom about a Switzerland in the company of the Martins instead of her husband. Hernandez also has a romantic interest: Ferdinand’s wife, and is encouraged in his pursuit after he saves her, in her view, from being attacked by a bull, actually only a cow. She is all the more grateful to him after witnessing Agenor step in front of her husband, not her, and the latter blanch in fear. Ferdinand enters with a loose tie and in a great agitation, speaks to Hernandez of the deed being done and to both of hurrying back to Meyringen, where he forgot his wallet. But to Hernandez’ surprise and Ferdinand’s disappointment, Agenor enters. As Loisia prepares to pack, Ferdinand confesses that the wallet he left behind is empty. To Hernandez’ disgust, Agenor voices thanks about Ferdinand’s warning of being careful when he became dizzy at the suspended bridge over the falls. He offers Ferdinand a napkin ring with the word “friendship” inscribed. An irritated Ferdinand at last reveals he knows about his supposed friend’s treachery, but at a loss about what to do, he proposes to set up a Martin prize at the academy, “a prize to the author of the best thesis on the infamy of turning one’s wife away from one’s best friend,” he announces, with an annual prize worth Agenor’s fortune. He forgives his friend, but the prejudices of the world prevent him from their seeing each other ever again. On seeing Hernandez, Agenor insults him for denouncing him. An angry Hernandez challenges him to an American-style duel, where the first man who spots the other can shoot him with a rifle. Agenor accepts. On seeing Loisa, he says “never” to their going away together, but she no longer cares for him, preferring her newly found braver man, but is frightened after discovering from Hernandez that Ferdinand knows about her adultery. “He is brooding over a vengeance in the manner of the Borgias,” Hernandez says to frighten her even more and offer her his heart in America, throwing himself at her feet, where Ferdinand discovers them, takes up Hernandez’ rifle while Loisa flees and aims it at him, after which Agenor arrives and aims his own rifle at Hernandez. “Enough bloodshed!” Ferdinand cries out. “You will take away the former Mrs Martin to your pampas of the New World so that the Old World will no longer be troubled with this modern Helen.” Hernandez accepts the harsh sentence. A contrite Agenor offers again his napkin ring which Ferdinand now accepts, offering in return a snuff-box. They sit to play bezique.
"The happiest among the three"
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Time: 1870s. Place: Lorraine region, France.
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Because their house-servant, Petunia, flirts with a fireman boyfriend in the kitchen, Alphonse Marjavel wants to fire her and hire instead a couple from Alsatia, Krampach and Lisbeth. His wife, Hermance, agrees until led to believe falsely that Petunia has discovered the hiding place where she deposits the letters exchanged with her husband’s friend and her lover, Ernest Jobelin. By chance, the hollow space behind the stuffed deer mounted on the wall was also the hiding place where Ernest’s uncle exchanged letters with Melanie, Alphonse’s first wife. When Uncle Jobelin nostalgically puts his hand in the hollow space, he discovers a note stating that the driver of hackney cab number 2114 recognized the guilty couple and mistakenly thinks it is Melanie’s to him, not Hermance’s to Ernest. Hermance nervously tells Ernest that she forgot a fan inside a hackney cab they took while together. Ernest reassures her: he found her husband’s gift but left it in his overcoat at his uncle’s house. While Jobelin and Ernest offer identical bottles of rhum to Alphonse on his birthday, Jobelin’s niece, Bertha, hands over the overcoat from which the fan drops out. Uncle Jobelin recognizes it as once belonging to Melanie, but keeps silent. Alphonse does not recognize it, to the relief of Hermance and Ernest, the latter explaining it as an intended gift to his cousin, Bertha. A worse fear assails the guilty couple when Alphonse notices the deer’s head has been displaced and discovers the hollow place. But, fortunately for them, it is now empty since Hemance’s note to Ernest was removed by Jobelin. They are nevertheless as startled as Jobelin when Petunia announces that hackney cab number 2114 is downstairs to take the entire company to dinner at a restaurant. All three of the guilty parties leave by covering their faces in fear that the driver will recognize them. On their return, Alphonse, feeling unwell, opens a window, the sign agreed on by Hermance and Ernest that the latter may safely enter the house. As Hermance proposes that her husband rest in his room, Ernest’s head appears on the balcony. He is holding a gutter pipe broken off while climbing the lattice which he hides inside the living room couch. When Alphonse calls out her name, Ernest jumps inside the couch, where he spends some anxious moments with the metal pipe pressed against his side until the cuckold asks for his friend and he can safely quit his hiding place and re-enter through the door. He and Hermance dearly comfort Alphonse who begins to feel better. The next day, in the Marjavels’ garden pavilion, as Jobelin and Bertha look over the sleeping Ernest with the metal pipe still pressed against his side, she reveals her conviction that her cousin loves her. To her joy, Jobelin promises to speak on her behalf when he is startled to see Krampach enter with a note from the driver of cab number 2114. Fearing to be discovered, Jobelin grabs the note, a request for 500 francs as hush money for adultery on the part of an unnamed couple. Lacking cash, Jobelin breaks open a desk where he knows money is kept and hands over 500 francs to Krampach, who, out of greed, hands over to the driver only 25 cents. Thinking that her uncle has spoken on her behalf, Bertha reveals her love to Ernest, overjoyed at the opportunity of breaking with Hermance. But when she comes up to him in a kneeling position, they are surprised by Alphonse and pretend to look around for her supposedly missing diamond ring. After Alphonse leaves, the guilty couple receive a note from the irate driver of cab number 2114 delivered once again by Krampach, now asking for 1,000 francs in hush money. But when Ernest opens the desk, he discovers that his money is missing. To his shame, Alphonse, thinking that the matter concerns a tailor’s bill, offers to pay the 1,000 francs. But once again, Krampach keeps the money for himself. While Hermance and Ernest continue to pretend to look for the ring, Jobelin hands over the 500 francs he borrowed to Ernest, who promptly hands over half his debt to Alphonse. Tired of looking for a non-missing object, Hermance pretends to have lost it in the garden. Assailed by curiosity, Krampach asks his master to discover the name of the man who slept with Lisbeth before they married, to which he agrees in his desire to flirt with her. Interrogated by her master, she reveals that she gave herself to him after receiving a gift of two oranges without naming the man. After abandoning her, he sent her a watch, which her husband still carries. Alphonse promises her another one and reminds himself to look for oranges. When Ernest re-enters, an overjoyed Lisbeth jumps into his arms. “You have conquered Alsace, when will Lorraine be next?” Alphonse mockingly asks a distraught Ernest. More trouble arises when Krampach announces to Ernest that an unidentified man has been spotted to climb at night Marjavel’s lattice. To keep the servant from talking, Ernest locks him inside the wine cellar with permission to help himself to the bottles. He re-enters drunk but nevertheless reveals that he found a watch on the lattice work, which his master recognizes as Ernest’s, who pretends to have climbed up to Lisbeth’s window. An angry Krampach leaps at him but is held in check by Alphonse. That evening in the garden, Ernest disguises himself as the gardener to speak with Hermance, who, out of fear, wants to break off their relation. Ernest pretends to be sad but declares his willingness to marry Bertha, whom she finds too pretty for her taste. Still looking for the ring, Alphonse rudely sends the supposed gardener away. Krampach announces to his master that he intends to fight a duel with Ernest, all the more so after finding in the garden grounds a compromising letter, on which Alphonse recognizes his friend’s handwriting. Wishing to keep Ernest as a close friend and thinking the letter is meant for Lisbeth, Alphonse decides that he should interfere with his plan to marry Bertha. Krampach frowns on seeing Lisbeth eating an orange until she says that their master gave it to her. Convinced by his master that he should forgive, Krampach shows him the watch he sent his wife, somewhat too slow. Ernest promises him a new one. As Jobelin prepares to announce his nephew’s engagement, Alphonse interrupts. ”The marriage is impossible,” he declares. “He has a liaison never to be constrained, one that chains up an entire existence.” To his wife, he hands over Ernest’s letter to read aloud. Jobelin agrees that the marriage is impossible. Meanwhile, Lisbeth has discovered her husband’s ploy of keeping the money from the cab driver and reveals that the blackmailer has written a letter to Alphonse. Terrorized, Jobelin and Ernest inadvertently discover to each other that they cuckolded Alphonse with two different wives. Krampach arrives with yet another letter. It reads: “if you do not give me 3,000 francs, I will tell your wife that you were in my cab with a tart”. Jobelin and Ernest joyfully discover that they are off the hook and Alphonse caught. He begs his wife to consider that the letter is not meant for him but for Ernest. But by mistake Jobelin swallowed the letter, not the envelope as his master bid him, on which his name clearly appears and at which Hermance promises revenge, a man no longer the happiest among the three.
Georges Courteline
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Also of interest in the comic vein is Georges Courteline (1858-1929) and his harassed "Boubouroche" (1893). The play resembles Alfred de Musset's "The candlestick" (1835) in which Jacqueline is accused by her husband, André, of having a lover, Clavaroche, despite the fact that it is true, using some of the same arguments as in the Courteline play.
"As a creator of character, his most successful attempt was made in Boubouroche...the essence of its fun the ease with which a jealous lover is made to overlook his lady's infidelity by her plausible indignation at being suspected" (Chandler, 1920 p 163).
“Courteline and Feydeau both satirize the institutions of marriage, the army, and the courts, and both reveal a basic truth in character and situation presented comically. But Courteline keeps truth much closer to the surface, so that it is always apparent, even when the situation is exaggerated. Treating only simple situations (all his plays but two are in a single act), Courteline never allows plot to overwhelm character, or structural violence to outstrip the picture of reality. Eschewing the metaphysical overtones suggested by Feydeau, Courteline is, like other naturalist dramatists, fundamentally a writer of social plays. He shows us the ordinary citizen, the witless recruit, the naïve lover or husband, and the unimaginative civil servant as victims of the law, the military, heartless women, or sadistic civil servants. Although his disabused optic seems to allow for no comforting solution to the dilemma of most of his victims, Courteline views them with an indulgence that contrasts with Feydeau’s more objective and cruel view...Simplicity, realism and social awareness give him an air of seriousness which contrasts with Feydeau’s apparent frivolity” (Prinko, 1975 p 65).
"Boubouroche"
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Time: 1890s. Place: France.
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Boubouroche learns from a neighbor that his girl-friend, Adèle, for whom he has been paying the apartment she is living in as well as a monthly allowance, has been cheating on him for eight years, but he refuses to believe it. In the apartment, her lover, André, complains of always having to hide inside a chest whenever Boubouroche comes over. He must do so again as Boubouroche confronts her with the neighbor's story, all the more plausible in that he saw from the street two shadows against the window-pane. Adèle denies she has a lover other than Boubouroche and dares him to search the apartment. He hesitates and begins to back down. "He's there," Adèle announces defiantly, pointing towards the chest and cellar. When Boubouroche's lamp is accidentely extinguished, André is discovered next to his lighted candle in the darkness. Knowing the game is up, he gives Boubouroche his card, at his disposal should the misled man insist on a duel. Before leaving, he insists that Boubouroche swear he will not harm Adele. Boubouroche swears. "Who is this man?" Boubouroche asks her. "How do I know!" Adele exclaims. Despite his promise, as soon as André leaves, he starts to strangle her, then, weakening, desists from his wavering purpose. She eventually reveals that the man's presence is a "family secret" and because Boubouroche evidently lacks confidence in her, they now must part company. Weakening all the more, Boubouroche steadies himself to pardon her. "You need not pardon a fault I did not commit," she affirms stoutly, blaming him for his lack of confidence in her. "The worm is on the fruit: throw it away," she recommends. Miserably, Boubouroche begs her to stay. She finally relents. He then heads towards the neighbor's apartment to browbeat him for spreading lies against her.
Alexandre Bisson
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Alexandre Bisson (1848-1912) succeeded in his Boulevard endeavors with two Feydeau-like farces: "Feu Toupinel" (The late Toupinel, 1890) and "La famille Pont-Biquet" (The Pont-Biquet family, 1892).
"The conventional character of such farces is only too evident. The fun lies in their remoteness from life, their absurd improbability. Parallelism in incidents, inversions of series, retaliations in kind, traps which being sprung catch the springer- such are the resources of Bisson" (Chandler, 1920 p 159). It may be argued that although the plots seem remote from life, the interpersonal relations, especially the adulteries, are close to life.
"The late Toupinel"
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Time: 1890s. Place: Paris, France.
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Tired of seeing the sad picture of his wife’s late husband, Toupinel, on the wall of his bedroom, Sebastian Duperron commands his manservant, Frank, to hang it up in the living room. His wife for the last six months, Valentine, accepts the change while insisting that Sebastian follow her to church for a commemorative mass on the anniversary of his death two years ago. Their upstairs neighbor, Hercules Valaury, also possesses Toupinel’s portrait, a smiling portrait of his friend and secret lover of his wife, Angela, when she was still unmarried but known in Toulouse as Mrs Toupinel when Toupinel was cheating on Valentine during his business trips. Toupinel’s notary and Hercules’ friend, worried that the owner of the building chose to rent an apartment upstairs to Hercules and Toupinel’s mistress, arrives with news about Valentine’s properties, which he first wants to communicate to Sebastian, because it concerns compromising items, including a villa and expensive furniture, the deceased bought for Angela in Toulouse. However, Sebastian, tired of always hearing talk about Toupinel, refuses to listen and greets instead Captain Matthew, Toupinel’s so-called friend but also Angela’s second lover at the time, a person he knew under the name of Mrs Toupinel, with the pet name of Little Quail. When Sebastian hears this, he thinks Mrs Toupinel refers to his wife, not Angela, and so worries that he might become her second cuckold. Meanwhile, the notary is forced to disclose Toupinel’s gifts to his mistress, but without disclosing who she is. Valentine is shocked and promises herself that no such matter will ever occur again. Now suspicious of her present husband, she rifles the pockets of his coat and finds a bill for a diamond necklace which she presumes is meant for a current mistress of his, in fact one of Toupinel’s unpaid purchases sent to Sebastian who refused to pay. By chance, Angela glances from out her window at Captain Matthew walking in the street on his way to lunch with Sebastian, the captain being her old lover she now wishes to avoid. Sebastian, considering the captain as his wife’s old lover and wishing to avoid him meeting her, hurries him along throughout the meal so that he becomes sick to his stomach. Hercules comes downstairs to talk with Sebastian about their musical program at his apartment scheduled later that afternoon and is surprised to discover that Sebastian and the captain know each other. The captain is also surprised that Sebastian and Hercules know each other. When Sebastian asks how, the captain answers that Hercules was Mrs Toupinel’s lover, meaning Angela when Sebastian thinks he means his wife. Confusing apartments, a worker installs Toupinel’s smiling portrait after it had been restored on the wall of Sebastian’s apartment instead of Hercules’. When Valentine returns, Sebastian shoves a cataplasm on the face of the ailing captain, whom she would not know in any case. Still irate, she sees a second portrait of Toupinel and decides to destroy it with a pair of pliers. However, Hercules arrives in time to direct the worker upstairs with it and meets her in a shaken state and carrying a dangerous pair of pliers. He suggests that they should practice at the piano for the musical program, which Sebastian, in a jealous frenzy, prevents. At last, Captain Matthew finds Angela, but she hushes him up, pointing to the presence of her husband, whom the captain believes is Sebastian, not Hercules. Upstairs a while later, Sebastian confronts Hercules, assuring him that he knows all about Little Quail. “But what difference can it make to you?” Hercules wonders. “And if I kill you, my dear, sir?” Sebastian counters, to Hercules’ astonishment. In turn, Captain Matthew is astonished to hear an irate Sebastian proposing that he seduce Angela, whom the captain considers as Sebastian’s wife, and even more astonished when, unconscious that they are married to each other, he sees Angela and Hercules confer as if they were lovers. At last, Sebastian confronts his wife with rumors of her love for Hercules and Captain Matthew, which she denies. Meanwhile, Hercules hangs up Toupinel’s smiling portrait on his living room wall while his servant, Frank, hangs up Toupinel’s sad portrait which he took with him after his previous employ with Sebastian, the two next to each other. Valentine complains to Angela about her husband, especially his buying a diamond necklace to his mistress, when she sees the two Toupinel portraits, which Angela acknowledges as her dead husband. In turn, Valentine divulges that she, too, is Toupinel’s widow. “What? He was married?” Angela retorts. “But, in that case, he cheated on me?” Valentine now understands how Angela was passed off in Toulouse as Toupinel’s wife when she was only his mistress. A second surprise assails her on seeing Angela deck herself with a diamond necklace, a gift, she presumes, on the part of Sebastian, whose face she slaps as soon as he enters. “In front of his wife!” Captain Matthew exclaims. No, Sebastian explains: his wife is Valentine, not Angela. Confusions are resolved and Hercules orders Frank to take down both pictures.
"The Pont-Biquet family"
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Time: 1890s. Place: Paris, France.
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An expert in phrenology, Joseph La Reynette, assistant and son-in-law to the investigating judge, Adalbert Pont-Biquet, feels his head with adept fingers, an operation which reveals an amorous disposition, which the latter denies. Adalbert has no ongoing work to do unless police officers arrest a robber they have been looking for, a man who has terrorized the entire city, including Adalbert’s wife, Ursula, who says she dreams of him at night. Adalbert scolds his assistant for his phrenologic interpretation but yet admits a neurologic curiosity of his: every Saturday night when he enters his wife’s room with a novel in hand to make love, he becomes deaf for three hours. Undeterred, Joe reveals to Jack, set to marry in a short while his wife’s sister, Gabrielle, that Ursula, despite her strict demeanors, also displays an amorous disposition according to his analyses. To prove his hypothesis, he has sent her for a month a stranger’s love-letters she has answered back while keeping his inside the confines of her breasts. Her last letter revealed a specific time whereby he may gaze at her as she looks out from her window. Tomorrow, he will send her another letter stating that he requests her to walk on a specific street, handkerchief in hand. Joe and Jack chortle as they witness Ursula look out the window at the stated time, throw out a rose to her imagined lover in the dark, and blow him a kiss. But Jack stops laughing after receiving a disturbing letter from an old flame of his likely to cause trouble: Carmen, an acrobat from a cabaret music-hall. He begs his friend to see Carmen at her hotel to threaten her with the law unless she desists from pursuing him. Having often business to conduct with a colleague at the same hotel, Joe reluctantly accepts. A short time later, Adalbert receives the visit of Carmen’s husband, Dagobert, also a cabaret performer, with the particular ability to remain under-water for 5 ½ minutes, who is aware that his wife is an adulteress and so wants to divorce her by nabbing her in the very act. The magistrate informs him that he must communicate with the police commissioner and offers to lead the cuckold to him. A worried Jack stays up all night for Joe’s return, but he never shows up. In the morning, as Ursula directs her step toward Joe’s bedroom to look for him, Jack intercepts her, pretending to have seen Joe depart the house early. All the more alarmed when Joe’s wife, Mathilda, shows up, he messes up the bed and objects in the room to create the impression that his friend spent the night there. However, Mathilda spots him in time and thinks that for some unknown reason he is fixing up the room as Joe returns. He explains that he has just woken up after talking nearly all night with his friend at the English Hotel, a suspicious story in Ursula’s mind, all the more so when Joe angrily confronts Jack as to why he lied by pretending to see him leave early that morning when he needs no such excuse. Ursula tells Mathilda that she disbelieves her husband’s story. Alone together, Joe explains to Jack that Carmen sobbed then broke most of the furniture in the hotel room until the police commissioner showed up along with her husband. Aghast, Jack exclaims that he never knew she was married. Unwilling to be caught in a compromising situation, Joe fled to the next room and locked it while the other two men followed Carmen in the next room. His tale is interrupted by Adalbert’s arrival on his way to the train station, along with his wife, carrying a handkerchief for a possible meeting with her imaginary lover, and the hotel bellboy, arriving to deliver a bill for the broken furniture. When Mathilda asks for an explanation of her husband’s bill, he fails to find one. Adalbert intervenes to say that Carmen’s husband has arrived, who explains that the man caught in the hotel was a peasant, Blaise Bouzu, who follows in, bewildered by these events. Pitying the peasant but also worrying about what he could reveal, Joe is reminded that his father-in-law prepares to go off on a hunting trip and so he will take his place at the tribunal and disculpate the accused. Blaise complains that he lost the opportunity to sell his cow, a matter Joe takes in hand by convincing Jack to pay him 400 francs for it. Another complication arises when Ursula discovers a letter sent by Carmen whereby Jack is forced to admit that he knew her before knowing her daughter. When Ursula exhibits doubts about this version of his story and walks up to her husband to show him the letter, Joe and Jack exclaim: “Robert!” so that she backs away. At the court-house, Joe is surprised to find his colleague, Tuppence, preparing a fancy meal for a guest, but now forced to clear it away. Set to free Blaise, Joe informs Jack that he must pay 1,800 francs for the broken furniture. He nevertheless receives 200 francs in return from Blaise when he gives him back the cow. The investigation into the hotel matter is interrupted when the judge learns that Cornillard has been arrested and laughs along with Joe when they discover that his surname is “Robert”. He proceeds to cast doubt on Dagobert’s version but when Blaise mentions that he knows the true version from the bellboy, the biased magistrate forces him away and threatens to arrest Dabobert until Adalbert unexpectedly shows up after learning of Cornillard’s arrest. To solve the conundrum, Adalbert decides to find Dagobert’s wife at her hotel. When Ursula arrives, she is surprised by Tuppence’s declaration of love, considering himself as the recipient of her thrown rose and kiss from out her window. Then she reflects that this man must have told Joe about Robert and informs Joe that she knows who Robert is, an insignificant man in her view. To fight back, the judge commands her to show the letters she wrote to Robert and informs her that Robert is no other than Cornillard. She begs him to save her from the scandal, to which he agrees provided she creates no further obstacle to Jack’s marriage with Gabrielle. Adalbert returns with news that Carmen denies having any relation with Blaise and so dismisses the case against the peasant. Yet another difficulty arises when Mathilda shows up threatening divorce proceedings over her husband’s adultery after speaking with the hotel bellboy. But Adalbert has become deaf after his experience with Carmen and learns nothing of her accusation, which Ursula dismisses.
Alfred Capus
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Alfred Capus (1857-1922) claims some degree of fame with "Petites folles" (Little fools, 1897). He also wrote "Brignol and his daughter" (1894), which concerns a father and daughter as partners in crime, cheating friends and acquaintances. "Although 'Brignol et sa fille' excited little comment when first produced, it revealed Capus' peculiar talents,— his easy optimism, adroitness in dramatic composition, and ability to convey character in very few words...Lemaître has called Capus a realist in a classic manner, meaning thereby that his art presents life with tranquillity, avoiding the ugliness and violence of naturalism on the one hand, and the undue emphasis of propagandism on the other" (Chandler, 1920 pp 123-130). He also wrote "The adversary" (1902) in which a woman is driven to adultery through her husband's lack of ambition, and "Mister Piégois" (1905) about the owner of a casino rejected by high society because of the nature of his source of income. The overall impression is that, as Mrs Bréneuil tells Le Hautois in "The two schools" (1902), "everything can be arranged". "'Woman,' says the heroine's mother, "should never seek to know whether she is deceived. We are too superior in general to our husbands to trouble ourselves with such details. And the men do not merit our attaching such importance to their faults. Let them deceive us if it gives them pleasure. As for us, we should remain, not only in doubt, but in disdainful ignorance.' Indeed, why all the fuss?
In "Little fools", "two frivolous wives who, out of mischief, would deceive their husbands, stop short only when the jealousy of one arouses sympathy, and when the other is likely to lose his life in a duel. But the husbands have not been impeccable. In a whisper one admits to the other that, although he never seeks temptation, yet he never avoids it. He and his wife are a good couple, separated only by marriage" (Chandler, 1920 p 125).
Like many British critics of the early 19th century, Spence (1910) was offended at French playwrights' portrayal of marriage relations. The "tendency of the stage, broadly speaking, is to preach a kind of conventional morality somewhat below the standard considered admissible by serious people; one may go further, and say that plays have been produced, particularly French plays, such as the clever works of M Capus, in which the accepted ideas of the sanctity of marriage are treated with contempt" (pp 160-161). "Capus is known as the dramatist of the French bourgeoisie, and that may be restricted to the bourgeois of Paris. As you become familiar with his plays, by repeated reading, you find that the first conviction of those gradually forming in your mind is: this man is no moralist. He takes humanity as he finds it, attempting no judgment for either motive or action. He shows a great indulgence for those who have slipped and fallen by the wayside, but who are trying to raise themselves and struggle forward again. His realism has no bitterness, no hardness about it. When the act of a human being has been explained by an innate tendency, by an overpowering temptation, by a brain storm, Capus considers enough said; he does not arraign his victim before a tribunal of conventional usage or a skimp morality which is tradition in many cases. The general conclusion to be deduced from the author's work is that man is innately selfish, and that in the struggle for existence success is the most powerful argument in self-defence. Capus studies man's selfishness under various forms: in his private family, in his relations to a previous life, in his business relations. Self-absorption is a weakness that is dear to so many that the subject finds an interested and indulgent audience in every case. The author shows that this failing always brings with it a consequent, although this truth does not always take the form of a tangible moral lesson. This is another assertion of the detachment of Capus. He is blandly indifferent to moral values" (Ogden, 1920 p 7), at least the moral values some critics find important, such as those underlying adultery or promiscuity.
"Little fools"
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Time: 1890s. Place: Paris, France.
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Adolph and his mother-in-law, Eudoxia, quarrel because instead of defending her when she was bumped by a man in a picture gallery, he stood gaping at a nude painting. He, on his part, is distraught at her choice of dinner guests when obscenities are commonly heard. Eudoxia retorts that she wants to amuse herself after having undergone a sad marriage for many years. Miffed at this comment, her husband, August, declares that he considers himself quite gay. “With others, not with me,” she accuses. “You have not made me laugh since our wedding night.” She welcomes her nephew, Edgard, who informs her that he caught his mistress late last night with two men at her house. He suspects that one of them at least is a friend of his because he shook his hand in the dark before leaving. The other man managed to pull down his hat over his face before he could be recognized. To help raise the standard of her dinner parties, Edgard promises to bring over the baron of Encolure, at which she is pleased until discovering that the baron is the very man who insulted her at the picture gallery. Nevertheless, she keeps him as a dinner guest, encouraging her nephew to settle the matter one way or the other. She next welcomes her stock broker, Edmund, who informs Edgard that he is courting Adolph’s wife, Lucy. At the same time, Eudoxia’s other daughter, Estelle, is also courted by a would-be adulterer, Albert. Adolph is so fearful of the temptations surrounding Lucy at her mother’s dinner parties that he decides to move to an apartment above her own. An enraged Eudoxia counters this by writing a letter to the owner of the building to annul any such intent, a move approved by Lucy who proposes to deliver it. Their talk is interrupted by Estelle, worried because her husband, Leverquin, discovered she and Albert suspiciously eating together at a pastry house. Eudoxia considers her daughter’s complaints about their husbands of small importance, at the worst a subject of divorce. “Divorce is the only thing the least bit poetical an honest woman may do nowadays,” she asserts. Although to her surprise Leverquin blandly dismisses the incident, Estelle, in mortal fright, announces to an angry Albert that she wishes to end their relation. Still worried over his wife’s fidelity, Adolph asks her to follow him to Spain where he has business interests. Lucy refuses and has only seven words to say to a delighted Edmund: “Tomorrow at three o’clock at your place.” Despite overhearing these words, Adolph tells Leverquin he has no intention of interfering but rather will request a divorce if she commits adultery. Meanwhile, Edgard has arranged for a meeting between the baron’s two witnesses and himself along with another man so that formal excuses may be expressed on Adolph’s part for insulting the baron. However, to his horror, Edgard discovers that the two witnesses were the two men present at his mistress’ house. In ill humor, he refuses to offer the expected apology on Adolph’s part so that a duel must now ensue at three o’clock on the following day. When an astonished Adolph learns of these proceedings, he nevertheless accepts the challenge. “At three o’clock,” Adolph informs Lucy. “How romanesque, how exciting!” Lucy is repulsed and instead cancels her adulterous rendez-vous. When Adolph returns with only a mild wound on his arm, Lucy informs him she did not go to Edmund’s house. Unimpressed, he calls her a depraved coquette and wishes to continue divorce proceedings until learning that she arranged matters so that their servant, Louisette, will leave their employ to marry Edmund.
Théodore Barrière
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Théodore Barrière (1823-1877) and Victor Bernard (1829-1890) teamed up to heap confusions over confusions concerning marriage plans instigated by two men in "Les demoiselles de Montfermeil" (The young ladies of Montfermeil, 1877).
Barrière "composed abundantly during the 'sixties and 'seventies, and for the most part in collaboration, his chief aids being Decourcelle and Thiboust. Yet, as early as 1849, he had dramatized with Henry Murger the latter's Vie de Bohème. More distinctive, however, were Les Filles de Marbre (1853), Les Faux Bonshommes (1856), and Les Jocrisses de L'Amour (1865), dramas in which Barrière berated folly and vice. For this purpose he invented [in Les Parisiens (1854)] a raisonneur whose name- Desgenais- was adopted thereafter as a term for such characters generally. This type, as we have seen, was admired, borrowed, and developed by the younger Dumas. Sardou, also, was affected by Barrière, with whom he joined hands in fashioning Les Gens Nerveux (1859)" (Chandler, 1920 p 20).
"The young ladies of Montfermeil"
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Time: 1870s. Place: Dieppe and Monreau, France.
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At the Blue Rocks hotel in Dieppe, Trémolin, a notary, informs the manager that he will leave the next day as Oscar Rifolet, a retired businessman, arrives for a 1-night stay, intent on speaking to his nephew, Hector de Carvallon, who abandoned his daughter, Cecilia, after the banns were published and who intends to build a house in front of Oscar’s villa, blocking the superb view he enjoys at Saint-Cloud. Oscar is all the more distressed after the manager informs him that Hector is accompanied by Josépha, a singer from the Folies Bergères. Hector asks his cousin, Gustave, an engineer, whether he has seen Josépha. He has not, but tells his cousin about an incident reminiscent of a scene in “The milkmaid of Montfermeil” (1827), a novel by Paul de Kock. While waltzing with Gustave in a garden, Cecilia had a misstep and fell into his arms as a branch took hold of her dress. Gustave became so perturbed by the sight that he left her instantly. For a different reason, Hector also left Cecilia suddenly and crossed by chance on the way out Gustave’s mistress, Mrs Montavert, a widowed baroness rumored to favor a second lover and obtain his money. When Hector notices a diary lying on the floor, Gustave becomes certain that it belongs to a girl, and so reads it aloud, in which a woman requests a man to marry off his daughter, a task so far unachieved. Gustave hides the diary as Jenny enters to look around for it and then pretends to look for it with her as their hands touch and her hair flows down on his face. Tired of this mode of flirting, Hector removes the diary from Gustave’s pocket and, pretending to have found it by chance, hands it over to her. She thanks the men and goes out to swim in the sea. Gustave follows her as Hector spots a Josépha angry at having lost money at the racetrack. But yet she wants 10,000 francs to gamble some more in Monaco. Hector is unable to, because his supply of family money depends on his marrying the abandoned Cecilia. Uncle Rifolet confronts Josépha, who pretends to be an American and, in exchange for favors, asks him for 20,000 francs. Startled, Oscar refuses, so that she reveals herself as Josépha. Meanwhile, at the beach, Jenny is saved from drowning, with Hector taking the credit from an admiring crowd, although the true savior was Gustave, who suddenly left town, fleeing again at the sight of a disrobed woman. A recuperating Jenny complains of her father’s failure to find a husband for her. In exchange for his marrying Mrs Montavert, she proposes to marry the man who saved her from drowning, for which he feels forced to accept. Trémolin overhears Josépha reiterating to Hector her intention to head for Monaco. Instead, Hector leaves for Saint-Cloud. Intending to marry his daughter off to Hector, Trémolin hands over 8,000 francs to Josépha so that she can go to Monaco. She accepts the money after signing a letter dismissing Hector from her life. When Hector returns with his uncle, Trémolin hands the letter over to Hector. Oscar is overjoyed and, after learning that Trémolin is a notary, invites him to prepare the marriage contract between Hector and Cecilia. An abashed Trémolin now must try to break up yet another among Hector’s amourous relations. At Saint-Cloud, Cecilia has second thoughts about her marriage to Hector. Having read “The milkmaid of Montfermeil”, she feels she belongs to Gustave instead. On his part, Trémolin has second thoughts about breaking up the marriage until he discovers that with his help, Oscar intends to cheat his son-in-law from his promised money by manipulating the marriage contract. In addition, Trémolin makes disparaging remarks to Hector about his intended, but these fail to influence him. Trémolin’s luck appears to improve when Cecilia, unable to reveal her intention to her father except by letter, confides in Trémolin regarding the waltz and her fall. Trémolin misinterprets the event as being graver than it was, so that when Oscar reads her letter, he laughs it off. Although Trémolin tried to prevent Jenny from knowing about the intended wedding, she found his letter of invitation and comes over, with all the more reason that, by chance, Cecilia is a friend of hers. Desperate to annul the contract and prevent his daughter from knowing the name of the fiancé, Trémolin rattles off insulting remarks and insinuations about Oscar and Hector to the extent that both rush forward to strangle him but are prevented by the guests. A battered but happy Trémolin is happy at this event until Jenny informs him that her savior is not Hector but Gustave. At a hotel in Montereau, Gustave is preparing to work on the construction site of a bridge when a bankrupt Josépha shows up. To her surprise, he informs her that Hector is married. She maintains hope that their relation may yet continue in the form of adultery with the added advantage of possessing the family money. Then a bruised Cecilia shows up determined to compromise herself and thereby escape from the marriage bond proposed by her father and marry Gustave instead. An equally determined Trémolin also shows up to capture Gustave for his own daughter and happy on learning from Cecilia that she no longer wants Gustave after having seen portraits of his past lovers in his hotel room. Instead, she wants to marry a shocked Trémolin, or at least reveal that she has compromised herself. Having read the message she left for him, her father soon follows, convinced that she is compromised and so willing that Trémolin marry her. A still angry Hector soon follows to confront Trémolin as Josépha emerges to explain the matter of the 8,000 francs. A contrite Hector wants her back, with all the more reason since the family handed over to him 200,000 francs on the day before the signing of the marriage contract. Pretending to have work for him in constructing a house for his daughter, Trémolin invites Gustave over for lunch, but is dismayed when Gustave informs him that he loves a woman. Trémolin's grief turns to joy when he discovers that the woman is no other than Jenny. However, the joy is mitigated after receiving a letter from Mrs Montavert, stating that their relation is ended if he marries off his daughter to the treacherous Gustave. “I’ll settle for being a grandfather,” Trémolin concludes.
Alexandre Dumas the Younger
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"La dame aux camélias" (The lady of the camellias, 1852) by Alexandre Dumas the Younger (1824-1895) is one of the finest melodramas. The "striking first play of the little-known novelist, had, for its heroine, a prostitute. Strangely enough, no cry of protest was raised by the morally scrupulous, perhaps because they saw in it another of the 'rehabilitation' dramas familiar to the romantic stage" (Weinberg, 1940 p 301).
Puritan-minded critics have disliked the entire conception of "The lady of the camellias" in that "the thesis is immoral, because we are asked to sympathize with an erring woman by reason of the unrelated fact that she happens to be afflicted with tuberculosis. In the famous 'big scene' between the heroine and the elder Duval, the old man is absolutely right; yet the sympathy of every spectator is immorally seduced against him, as if his justified position were preposterous and cruel" (Hamilton, 1920 p 72). "I do not place much faith in the 'danger' of love-stories teaching how to sin, according to Ovid, 'peccare docentes', but I do believe that the false education men receive, in the direction of the sexual sentiment, is pandered to by stories such as this of the consumptive courtesan and her ignoble lover" (Lewes, 1896 p 242). “It seems to me self-evident a proposition that a play like Camille, which is specifically the justification of the harlot, is immeasurably more dangerous to the morals of the young person than a play like The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1892), which preaches unrelentingly the sermon that the wages of sin is death. Yet Camille is passed by as a matter of course, while The Second Mrs Tanqueray causes a shudder every time that it is presented. The nub of the matter lies in the fact that The Second Mrs Tanqueray boldly uncovers evil so that no one can help seeing that it is evil, while a play like Camille cunningly conceals evil and even tries to make it seem good. Camille is deceptive. It glosses vice with the sugar-coating of sentimentality. It deliberately focuses all the sympathy on Marguerite Gautier. The sin for which she suffers is adroitly hidden from view, while the suffering itself is dragged into the foreground, a spectacle for the tearful contemplation of the emotionally susceptible. A paradox indeed, when those weep for a Marguerite Gautier in a play, who in life would be too overwhelmed with horror and aversion to extend the helping hand that might save a human Marguerite Gautier actually wrht weeping over. Thus, Camille gently erasing evil with soft insinuation and mild depreciation, makes truth false even to the elect, who declare such a beautiful play harmless, if not positively edifying and ennobling” (Strang, 1903 vol 2 pp 223-225).
"The assumption in this play is that Camille's vicious way of living has been caused by enforcing circumstances, not by depravity; that she is made to recognize that her continued liaison with a youth who is a member of a reputable family will cause trouble to that family and to him; that she becomes persuaded her lover will, by and by, grow weary of her society, and that they can have no enduring happiness together, and that she thereupon makes a fruitless sacrifice of herself,- deserting her paramour for his presumable benefit, and dying miserably, of consumption accelerated by sorrow. The substance of the impairment is a declaration that the Erring Sister, however much she may have deviated into vice, can remain capable of 'love' and can exemplify the sublimity of renunciation" (Winter, 1913 vol 1 p 500).
“Through the Duvals we get a glimpse of the life of a prosperous bourgeois family of the provinces. Armand comes into Marguerite’s salon, talking about his dead mother...Dumas’ heroes from the country...express their innocence by speaking, at the most unsuitable moment, of their mothers...In contrast to those noble stage courtesans of earlier days, the lady of the camellias does not indulge in the rhetoric of pathos. She does not accuse society or her fellow beings...She is tortured by the emptiness, and the lack of human feeling which she finds in her world...It is Armand’s heart, not his name, which she wants” (Lamm, 1952 pp 20-21). This critic criticized one aspect of Marguerite’s character in that “it is difficult to understand how or why the diffident, melancholy Marguerite came to adopt this way of life and why she has to lead such a hectic and extravagant existence”. One can counter that life’s bitter experience has tamed some of her courtesan manner without affecting old habits of extravagance. This draws more pity to her plight than if she were hardened in the toils of prostitution.
Henry James considered that the play "remains in its combination of freshness and form, of the feeling of the springtime of life and the sense of the conditions of the theatre, a singular, an astonishing production. The author has had no time to part with his illusions, but has had full opportunity to master the most difficult of the arts. Consecrated as he was to this mastery he never afterwards showed greater adroitness than he had then done in keeping his knowledge and his naivete from spoiling each other. The play has been blown about the world at a fearful rate, but it has never lost its happy juvenility, a charm that nothing can vulgarize. It is all champagne and tears—fresh perversity, fresh credulity, fresh passion, fresh pain" (1949 edition, pp 262-263).
“On almost every count, the play diverged from the accepted theatrical formulas of the day….Prudence, one of Duma’s most vivid creations, is an aged courtesan who has passed the point where she can survive by her trade. In order to live, she attaches herself to Marguerite, procuring for her friend and basking in the reflected glory of Marguerite’s salon. Her fate is a harsh and cruel reminder of the inevitably cruel end which awaits such women. In contrast with Prudence for whom age is a curse, Saint-Gaudens has learned to enjoy the privileges that come with age...Marguerite is a living character, capable of great love, tired of her hollow existence, ready for the security of the love of a single man…and her love for Armand is selfless and genuinely noble” (Griffin, 1986 pp 500-504).
“The writing and re-writing of the farewell letter to Armand, the more restrained passages of the dialogue with the elder Duval, and, again, the more subdued passages of the conflict of agonizing passions in the fourth act- these were fine enough, but one almost forgot their excellence in the supreme pathos of the scene of reconciliation. We can remember no more deeply touching moment at the theatre than that at which Marguerite rises from the sofa just before her death and tries to walk a few steps with a pitiful little attempt to be strong and at ease, like a child that hopes it can go alone. At the wistful fingering of Nichette's bridal veil, at the repetition by heart of the letter from Armand's father, and at the gesture with which Marguerite runs to Armand, crying: ‘Oh! It’s not you. It’s impossible that God should be so good,’ Mme Bernhardt again reached almost the highest point of achievement” (Montague, 1900, pp 169-170).
From the political viewpoint, "it is the bourgeois who demands the abdication of man's most legitimate and vital urge- for the sake of the good reputation without which he would lose face and his highest values. Love must fall a victim to respectability...Old M Duval is his full rights when he persuades Marguerite to give up her lover. He can afford to be the perfectly understanding, fair-minded that he is, because his argument is irresistible; the desire has to be stifled so that a righteous and unquestioned social system can be upheld. Who could possibly revolt against so sensible a demand except one who is blinded by a misguided passion? Love's freedom turned into 'free love' which, just because it is so irresponsible, must give way to the austere responsibilities to which the bourgeoisie [owes| its conquest of power" (Seidlin, 1954 pp 127-128).
"In technique, the dramas of Dumas were marked by their stress upon will even more than by their stress upon observation. Herein he resembled Corneille. He preferred to develop a thesis with close-knit logic, and to choose his subjects, not for the sake of some single person or scene, but rather for their confirmation of an idea to be impressed upon his audience" (Chandler, 1920 pp 13-14).
"The lady of the camellias"
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Time: 1850s. Place: Paris, France.
Text at https://archive.org/details/camille00duma https://archive.org/details/camilleplayinfiv00duma
Marguerite Gautier has been leading a restless life of worldly activities and incurred heavy debts. Her revenues derive in part from a duke's benevolence, whose daughter died and whom she resembled as a child. She obtains only half of the sum she might have received because, though considering her his daughter, he is only half pleased with her life style as a famous courtesan, receiving money, jewels, and camellias from a series of men. One year ago, Marguerite lay in bed for three months and a man anonymously asked about her every day. In the company of her friends, Marguerite starts to dance but suddenly stops, being easily tired. After being silent through a long conversation among the company, Armand Duval is the only one worried about her condition. He admits being the anonymous man. She does not encourage his love, specifying she is unworthy and speaking of herself as "a woman nervous, ill, sad, or of a type of gaiety sadder than grief". She proposes instead that they remain friends, but this is insufficient for him. Soon she accepts him as a lover and plans to rent a summer house outside of Paris to live with him, but for this idyll to be possible, she must pay her many debts and has recourse to one of her lovers, the count of Giray, who accepts to pay them. When Armand sees the count enter her house, he refuses to condone such behavior, so that she renounces to receive any money from the count. Instead she sells her coach and horses, cashmere linen, and diamonds to live with Armand at Auteuil. Aware of her debts, he intends to sacrifice money received on his mother's death, his only source of income. Informed of this, Armand's father begs Marguerite to release her hold on his son. In addition to ruining his son, she will ruin his daughter's marriage prospect to a man born in a conservative family who would never accept even a former courtesan as a family member. Marguerite first rejects but then accepts his proposal, returning to her hectic life. She pretends to tire of Armand, who, unaware of his father's visit and her sacrifice, challenges one of her lovers, Varville, to a duel, from which the latter emerges with a slight wound. Recognizing the nobility of Marguerite's character, the father informs his son of their agreement, but it is too late: she dies of consumption.
Victorien Sardou
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"La Tosca" (1887) by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) also figures as a remarkable melodrama.
"La Tosca" "opens in Rome, in the year 1800, in the church of St. Andrea. The young painter, Mario Cavaradossi, is only half Italian, his mother being French. He is a pupil of David and inclined toward Jacobinism. He is working at a fresco in the church. Suddenly a man appears coming from one of the chapels of the church. He is a political refugee, one of the defenders of the Parthenopean republic… At the period when the play opens (June, 1800), the troops and the police were occupying Rome after the fall of the Parthenopean republic. It was the eve of the battle of Marengo. The time was an ugly one, the court a corrupt one. The Naples government was noted for the refined cruelty of its agents. Emma Lyon, become Lady Hamilton, controlled the queen absolutely. To wear the hair cut short in the fashion of the French republic was punished by death. Torture was common. Mammone, a bloodthirsty gentleman who loved human heads as articles of ornament, was a person in authority. It was a bloody time” (Hart, 1913 pp 221-223).
"La Tosca" is "a fresh twist...to the Measure for Measure (1604) story...This play, unlike Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna, propounds no problem as to woman's duty to aid others at the expense of her honor. The situations are devised simply for dramatic effect...In reviewing the work of Sardou, one is impressed by his skill, wit, imagination, superabundance of energy, and versatility. Equally at home in the past or the present, an archeologist and a student of modern manners, he composed fifty-seven pieces ranging from farce to operetta and extravaganza, from satirical comedy to historical tragedy and spectacular melodrama. If he lacked the moral earnestness of a Dumas, fits or the sobriety of an Augier, he carried the qualities of a Scribe to their highest power, and combined with them some of the more solid virtues of the best of his contemporaries. He could be pathetic, tragic, and humorous. He could provoke laughter by his comedy of character, or set leaping the blood by his representation of passions in deadly conflict. Above all, he possessed acute theatrical sense, being ever conscious of the audience as a crowd to be moved and entertained" (Chandler, 1920 pp 28-33).
"La Tosca"
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Time: 1800s. Place: Rome, Italy.
Text at http://www.toscasprism.com/
Inside a church, Mario paints a picture of Marquis Attavanti's wife as Mary Magdalene when surprised by the arrival of Cesare, Attavanti's brother-in-law, recently escaped from prison for his liberal opinions, who hides as Floria Tosca, Mario's lover, enters, expressing jealousy of the model in the portrait, to the extent of asking him to change the color of her eyes. At the Fernese palace where Floria is to sing, Baron Scarpia, head agent of the police force and responsible for recapturing Cesare, attempting to find out what she knows about his whereabouts, shows her a fan found in the church, belonging to Attavanti's wife. Although she knows nothing, Scarpia notes her jealousy and thinks he may use her to trap Cesare. She confronts Mario with another fit of jealousy. "The first bold one robs me of him and I am so cowardly that I love him still, and I feel that, though I detest him, I'll always love him," she says. Floria discovers that Cesare is hiding in Mario's house They are surprised by the arrival of Scarpia and Attavanti. When shown the fan, Mario explains its presence by saying Marquise Attavanti is serving as the model for his picture, but Scarpia arrests him in any case to interrogate him as to Cesare's whereabouts. Although police agents torture Mario in the room adjacent to the one where Scarpia and Floria are, he reveals nothing. However, Floria is unable to bear the strain of the procedure and reveals the secret hiding place, but before the agents get to him, Cesare commits suicide. Scarpia arrests Mario for harboring an escaped prisoner and he is condemned to be shot. Yet Scarpia offers Floria one way out to save her lover. He will order a fake execution provided she agrees to sleep with him. Floria pretends to acquiesce, then finds a knife and stabs her tormentor to death. She visits Mario in his prison cell to inform him of the fake execution, but after he is led out to the firing squad, she discovers too late that the executioners used real bullets. After police agents discover Scarpia's murder, she jumps from the prison turret down to her death.
Henry Becque
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One of the principal dramatic comedies of the period is "La Parisienne" (The Parisian woman, 1885) by Henry Becque (1837-1899). Becque also wrote "The prodigal son" (1868) about a father unable to get his son to return back home away from Paris until he encounters his son's mistress. He next wrote "Michael Pauper" (1870) in which Helen has a choice between casting her lot with Michael Pauper, an industrious young man willing to marry her, or the count of Rivailles, a profilgate with no intention of marrying her. On her wedding night, she admits to Michael her attachment to his rival and rushes off to him, only to repent. Stronger fare than these, "The crows" (1882) concerns a widow with three daughters and a son assailed by her husband's business associate, her notary, and the architect in charge of building on her property, all after her inheritance. Although considered to be an author of the boulevard type, Becque is at the borderline between the boulevard and the realist school of dramatic art.
In "The Parisian woman", "Paris and its cynical view of the relations of the sexes is embodied in this diabolically adroit and disconcerting comedy...Clotilde du Mesnil and Lafont are quarrelling over a letter when the curtain rises. He adjures her to resist temptation. 'Resist, Clotilde; that is the only honourable course, and the only course worthy of you.' She must remain dignified, honourable, the pride of her husband. Suddenly, in the midst of this ignoble squabble, she cries: 'Look out, here is my husband" 'Up to this moment the audience fancies that it has been witnessing a marital row. The shock is tremendous when the truth is learned...Throughout, these lovers quarrel like married folk. The social balance is upset, domestic virtues topsy-turvied" (Huneker, 1905 pp 176-178). The play “shows the lover as much installed in the family as the husband, and the woman who cares nothing for her lover but merely deems it the natural thing to have one, to take a second when tired of the first, to relapse to the first when tired of the second. Becque’s plays have a cynical humor which crops up unexpectedly and is painful instead of diverting” (Wright, 1925 p 786). “One fine ironic element that most critics note takes place in the play’s first scene when the audience witnesses a domestic quarrel [and] learns of the man’s suspicions that the letter will document her infidelity to him. The scene ends with Clotilde warning [that] her husband has arrived home” (Conlon, 1986 p 172). The play "is Becque at his artistic best. The play avoids all surplusage, its rigorous form comporting with its anti-romantic spirit. The grim humor of the situation proceeds from the heroine's character. Pious and methodical, Clotilde nevertheless engages in an intrigue, but she insists that 'it would be terrible for a man to have a mistress lacking in religion'. A capital scene at the start presents her in a quarrel with a jealous man whom we suppose to be her husband, until she interjects a warning that the latter is approaching. From the succeeding action, we infer that a husband's despotism is less to be feared than a lover's, and that a wife will tend to order her free love as she would her regular household. Clotilde, having turned for the moment from her Lafont to a stupid sportsman, wearies of him, and yearns for her former ménage à trois. Even her husband prefers Lafont, who is fairly honorable in dishonor, and who, when she is thinking to yield to a rival, warns her to resist, because that is the only conduct worthy of her" (Chandler, 1920 pp 63-64). The play is "a merciless anatomy of a conscienceless woman. Clotilde is a perfect wife. In order to advance her husband’s interests she dismisses one lover and turns to another. The same practicality finally makes her return to her first lover, because a 'ménage à trois' for her must be a settled and respectable affair! The bitter irony of such a slice of life is a more effective exposure of baseness than any number of moralizing denunciations, and the playwright’s objectivity possesses the sharpness of a scalpel. Clotilde is perfectly unconscious of her vileness; she even complains that her lover does not care enough for her husband, although actually the two men are on excellent terms with each other. She declares herself a 'downright conservative' and a believer in 'sound principles'. Upbraiding her lover she says in perfect innocence: 'You are a freethinker. I believe you would even get along with a mistress who had no religion'” (Gassner, 1954a pp 401-402). “Without a real crisis and resolution, with hardly any exposition, and without inserting a single bout of wit or a single prurient line, Becque managed to write one of the most brilliant- and amoral- comedies of all time” (Gassner, 1954b p 118).
"The unity of place is maintained and the movement is both swift and nimble. Here the dramatist's whole art is concentrated upon the ironic self-revelation of a single character. Clotilde is the woman who is respectably adulterous, sentimentally vicious. She amuses herself with her lovers and is concerned to better her husband's position. She is utterly unaware of her own corruption and makes speech after speech that is memorable for its incisive moral irony" (Lewisohn, 1915 p 43). The relation between Clotilde and Lafont “consists in the spectacle of two people carrying on irregular relations with precisely the same set of feelings and prejudices which would be operative were their relations regular...Lafont is exigent, querulous, jealous, and tiresome. He is even prudish. He forbids Clotilde to visit in a household of somewhat doubtful reputation...And Clotilde, with all her irregularity of conduct, is entirely conventional in her ideas. She declares herself a conservative in politics, because she inclines to the party of social 'order'. She is indignant at the thought that her lover might leave her for another mistress who is 'without religious principles'" (Walkley, 1908 p 284-285). Likewise, Lamm (1952) viewed Clotilde as a conventional woman lacking any sense of conscience whatsoever and Du Mesnil as a “complaisant ass” content as long as there is peace in the house. Such goings on led Mann (1935) to conclude that "there could not well be a more amoral play than 'The Parisian woman', though there are many plays that are more immoral" (p 126).
"Dispassionate in attitude, even indifferent, Becque regards in the dry light of reason situations that others had portrayed in rosy tints. He renders small souls to perfection. His realm is the world of the commonplace, the drab, the sombre. Although he may use a plot that the conventional dramatist might not have disdained, he subordinates it to the painting of manners and character. He conceals the art with which he develops his expositions and denouements, concentrating yet softening his transitions, and reducing mechanics to their lowest terms. Molière is his master, though he knows none of that master's gaiety. If in comedy he is neither hilarious nor sentimental, in serious drama he is neither pathetic nor tragic. He keeps an even middle course. Setting life before you, he withdraws, refraining from didacticism as well as from heroics, compelling attention by his veracity, but fatiguing it, too, by his lack of 'esprit' (wit) and charm. It was Becque who in practice pointed the way to stage naturalism, achieving far more for that cause than did Zola" (Chandler, 1920 p 64).
"The Parisian woman"
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Time: 1880s. Place: Paris.
Text at http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027527286 https://archive.org/details/vultureswomanpa00becqgoog https://archive.org/details/vultureswomanofp00becq
Clotilde has had an elegant, comfortable life with her husband, Du Mesnil, not into the habit of looking closely at what she does. Her lover, Lafont, suspecting she has a second lover, demands to know the contents of a letter he saw her hide in a drawer and what she did all afternoon. Instead, she shows the letter to her husband. It concerns visits to Mrs Simpson, a woman of the world of bad repute, whom both he and her lover consider deplorable for her to know. On learning that Du Mesnil is scolded by his uncle for having failed to gain an important social position and that by his means he may obtain one in the government, she proposes to help him by contacting her women friends, including Mrs Simpson. He responds by saying that if all else fails they should try that. When left alone with Lafont, she complains that his troublesomeness started January 15, a date she has particular reasons to remember. As to where she went, at one point she says her milliner, at another her tailor, because of which he is tormented all over again. Days later, Lafont returns to harass her further, still complaining about Mrs Simpson's bad reputation. "Too bad for the men who gave it to her!" she cries out. "When a man sees part of a woman's shirt, that woman is sacred to him, sacred." Du Mesnil enters in a terrible mood, having been told he will not obtain the position he sought. She immediately writes to Mrs Simpson, expecting her husband to get further ahead with her help than with his ineffective uncle's, which is what occurs. Despite swearing never to come back, Lafont does so, certain now that Clotilde has a lover, a man named Mercier. He hesitantly breaks off their relation. Clotilde receives Mrs Simpson's son, with whom she has had amorous relations since January 15. But now the man wishes to leave Paris and she is beginning to be bored with his idle talk of hunting guns, despite shedding a few tears at this announcement. When he asks why, she answers: "Does one know? There is a little of everything in a woman's tears." As soon as Simpson leaves, Lafont returns again and their amorous relation is renewed. She announces, to Lafont's approval, that she will no longer see Mrs Simpson. When her husband arrives, they explain to him that Lafont's absence was due to an unhappy love affair. "Confidence is the only system that works with us," she declares to Lafont. Du Mesnil agrees.