There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as
much as you please.
There is the old classical drama, wellnigh dead, and full time too: old
tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous
Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to
revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine
will never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore.
Madame Rachel can only galvanize the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient
French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the
grave; and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair
Jewess has raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein
the knavish valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart,
free-spoken serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the
Horaces or the Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the
roulement of the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for
my part, I had rather go to Madame Saqui’s or see Deburau dancing on a
rope: his lines are quite as natural and poetical.
Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the
father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows,
and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books. How that
unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his
disciples. You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so
sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is
this joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about
two thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the
tale repeated to it over and over again.
Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into
life of late years; and which is said, but I don’t believe a word of
it, to have Shakspeare for a father. If Monsieur Scribe’s plays may be
said to be so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the
drame is a grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are
added, not prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas
were. Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and
respectable guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since
“Hernani,” has contained a monster—a delightful monster, saved by one
virtue. There is Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrèce Borgia, a
maternal monster; Mary Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo,
a humpback monster; and others, that might be named, whose
monstrosities we are induced to pardon—nay, admiringly to
witness—because they are agreeably mingled with some exquisite display
of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one monster to each play, the
great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to whom murder is nothing;
common intrigue, and simple breakage of the before-mentioned
commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast, delightful
complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in England, much
less described.
When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle
Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her
greatness, and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these
charming horrors for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her
sons, in the “Tour de Nesle.” I have seen her poison a company of no
less than nine gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the
number; I have seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of
respectable relations in the first four acts; and, at the last, be
actually burned at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly,
barefooted, and in a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender
sympathies! Such tragedies are not so good as a real, downright
execution; but, in point of interest, the next thing to it: with what a
number of moral emotions do they fill the breast; with what a hatred
for vice, and yet a true pity and respect for that grain of virtue that
is to be found in us all: our bloody, daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our
warmhearted, poisonous Lucretia Borgia; above all, what a smart
appetite for a cool supper afterwards, at the Café Anglais, when the
horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce to the supper!
Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After
having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris
for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has
seen,—the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by
which one has been interested and excited,—a man may take leave to be
heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and of
the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted
himself to indulge.
Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the
spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has
recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many
pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.
Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately
obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction;
and as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not
merely Catholic pictures and quasi religious books, but a number of
Catholic plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of
the theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion
from these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole
of their lives before. In the course of a very few years we have
seen—“The Wandering Jew;” “Belshazzar’s Feast;” “Nebuchadnezzar:” and
the “Massacre of the Innocents;” “Joseph and his Brethren;” “The
Passage of the Red Sea;” and “The Deluge.”
The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a vast
quantity of religion before the foot-lights. There was his famous
tragedy of “Caligula,” which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris
critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why?
Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the
rogues. The public, he says, was much more religious, and understood
him at once.
“As for the critics,” says he, nobly, “let those who cried out against
the immorality of Antony and Marguérite de Bourgogne, reproach me for
THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA.” (This dear creature is the heroine of the
play of “Caligula.”) “It matters little to me. These people have but
seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not
seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and
candles of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!
“The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was,
beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed
the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for
four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to
the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to
it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with
its head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream,
the solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his
waking hours.”
You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint
Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like
Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don’t set
up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are
inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces,
and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward
Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with a
play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own
merits,) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission,
and was uttering five-act revelations.
All things considered, the tragedy of “Caligula” is a decent tragedy;
as decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it
to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be
remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay, of
the English school too); and if the writer take the character of a
remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable
fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy. “Caligula” is killed
at the end of the performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved;
and the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart
from the mere “vase” and “candlestick” personages, may be said to be
depicted in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the
good fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene,
when she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
STELLA (Continuant.) Voilà
Que je vois s’avancer, sans pilote et sans rames,
Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes,
Et, spectacle inouï qui me ravit encor,
Tous quatre avaient au front une auréole d’or
D’où partaient des rayons de si vive lumière
Que je fus obligée à baisser la paupière;
Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi,
Les voyageurs divins étaient auprès de moi.
Un jour de chacun d’eux et dans toute sa gloire
Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire,
Et tu l’adoreras, j’espère; en ce moment,
Ma mère, il te suffit de savoir seulement
Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie:
Un édit les avait bannis de leur patrie,
Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrités,
Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garrotés,
Sur une frêle barque échouée au rivage,
Les avaient à la mer poussés dans un orage.
Mais à peine l’esquif eut-il touché les flots
Qu’au cantique chanté par les saints matelots,
L’ouragan replia ses ailes frémissantes,
Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes,
Et qu’un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux,
Enveloppa l’esquif d’un cercle radieux!...
JUNIA.—Mais c’était un prodige.
STELLA.— Un miracle, ma mère!
Leurs fers tombèrent seuls, l’eau cessa d’être amère,
Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert
D’une manne pareille à celle du désert:
C’est ainsi que, poussés par une main céleste,
Je les vis aborder.
JUNIA.— Oh! dis vîte le reste!
STELLA.—A l’aube, trois d’entre eux quittèrent la maison:
Marthe prit le chemin qui mène à Tarascon,
Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,
Et celle qui resta.... C’ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!)
Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour,
Demanda si les monts ou les bois d’alentour
Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde,
Qui la pût séparer à tout jamais du monde.....
Aquila se souvint qu’il avait pénétré
Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignoré,
Grotte creusée aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes,
Ou l’aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abîmes.
Il offrit cet asile, et dès le lendemain
Tous deux, pour l’y guider, nous étions en chemin.
Le soir du second jour nous touchâmes sa base:
Là, tombant à genoux dans une sainte extase,
Elle pria long-temps, puis vers l’antre inconnu,
Dénouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.
Nos prières, nos cris restèrent sans réponses:
Au milieu des cailloux, des épines, des ronces,
Nous la vîmes monter, un bâton à la main,
Et ce n’est qu’arrivée au terme du chemin,
Qu’enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine....
JUNIA.—Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?
STELLA.— Madeleine.
Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore, “A bark drew near, that had nor
sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of that crew,
’twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of blazing gold;
from which such radiance glittered all around, that I was fain to look
towards the ground. And when once more I raised my frightened eyne,
before me stood the travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot
that each befell, at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon:
the time will come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now.
Suffice it, that from Syria’s land they came; an edict from their
country banished them. Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and
launched them in that vessel from the shore. They launched these
victims on the waters rude; nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for
food. As the doomed vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew
uplifts a sacred strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings; the
storm, awe-stricken, folds its quivering wings. A purer sun appears the
heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in radiance bright.
“JUNIA.—Sure, ’twas a prodigy.
“STELLA.—A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell. The
salt sea-wave grew fresh, and, twice a day, manna (like that which on
the desert lay) covered the bark and fed them on their way. Thus,
hither led, at heaven’s divine behest, I saw them land—
“JUNIA.—My daughter, tell the rest.
“STELLA.—Three of the four, our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha, took
the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one remained
(the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i’ the woods or mountains
near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear; where she might
hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin knew of such a den;
deep hidden in a mountain’s hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his
airy nest. And thither offered he the saint to guide. Next day upon the
journey forth we hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace,
unto the lonely mountain’s rugged base. Here the worn traveller,
falling on her knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing
off her sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate
retreat. No answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst
the prickles and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil;
nor ever did she pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that
savage den. Here, powerless and panting, fell she then.
“JUNIA.—What was her name, my daughter?
“STELLA. MAGDALEN.”
Here the translator must pause—having no inclination to enter “the
tabernacle,” in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur
Dumas.
Something “tabernacular” may be found in Dumas’s famous piece of “Don
Juan de Marana.” The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast
number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary and little
angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)—on earth, under the
earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite;
and the plot, as it appears from a dialogue between a good and a bad
angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a contest between
these two worthies for the possession of the soul of a member of the
family of Marana.
“Don Juan de Marana” not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by
Mozart and Molière, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but
possesses further qualities which render his character eminently
fitting for stage representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace and
Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the
slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he
overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of
no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of such a
character, has depicted his hero’s adventures and conversation with
wonderful feeling and truth.
The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and
intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas’s,
for the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second
act our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his
sister-in-law; in the third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills
him: whereupon the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in
great agonies, on the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having
entered a church for the purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is
in love, is seized by the statue of one of the ladies whom he has
previously victimized, and made to behold the ghosts of all those
unfortunate persons whose deaths he has caused.
This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a
white sheet, preceded by a wax-candle; and, having declared their names
and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:—
DON SANDOVAL loquitur.
“I am Don Sandoval d’Ojedo. I played against Don Juan my fortune, the
tomb of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress;—I lost all: I played
against him my life, and I lost it. Vengeance against the murderer!
vengeance!”—(The candle goes out.)
THE CANDLE GOES OUT, and an angel descends—a flaming sword in his
hand—and asks: “Is there no voice in favor of Don Juan?” when lo! Don
Juan’s father (like one of those ingenious toys called
“Jack-in-the-box,”) jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his
son.
When Martha the nun returns, having prepared all things for her
elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.—“I am no longer
your husband,” says he, upon coming to himself; “I am no longer Don
Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you
must die!”
This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person
than an angel, an angel in disguise—the good spirit of the house of
Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings and forfeiting
her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth,
and, if possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character,
she had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood
at one elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear,
at the other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her
pious counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don’s
attention.
In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats
her,—in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her
virtue,—and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the poor
creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company, might
have been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate angel
feels a certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies up to
heaven to ask permission to remain with him on earth.
And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers
white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of Marana
upon her knees, uttering the following address:—