LECTURE XXI.

French Comedy--Molière--Criticism of his Works--Scarron, Beursault,

Regnard; Comedies in the Time of the Regency; Marivaux and Destouches;

Piron and Gresset--Later Attempts--The Heroic Opera: Quinault--Operettes

and Vaudevilles--Diderot's attempted Change of the Theatre--The Weeping

Drama--Beaumarchais--Melo-Dramas--Merits and Defects of the Histrionic

Art.

The same system of rules and proprieties, which, as I have endeavoured to

show, must inevitably have a narrowing influence on Tragedy, has, in

France, been applied to Comedy much more advantageously. For this mixed

species of composition has, as already seen, an unpoetical side; and some

degree of artificial constraint, if not altogether essential to Comedy, is

certainly beneficial to it; for if it is treated with too negligent a

latitude, it runs a risk, in respect of general structure, of falling into

shapelessness, and in the representation of individual peculiarities, of

sinking into every-day common-place. In the French, as well as in the

Greek, it happens that the same syllabic measure is used in Tragedy and

Comedy, which, on a first view, may appear singular. But if the

Alexandrine did not appear to us peculiarly adapted to the free imitative

expression of pathos, on the other hand, it must be owned that a comical

effect is produced by the application of so symmetrical a measure to the

familiar turns of dialogue. Moreover, the grammatical conscientiousness of

French poetry, which is so greatly injurious in other species of the

drama, is fully suited to Comedy, where the versification is not purchased

at the expense of resemblance to the language of conversation, where it is

not intended to elevate the dialogue by sublimity and dignity above real

life, but merely to communicate to it greater ease and lightness. Hence

the opinion of the French, who hold a comedy in verse in much higher

estimation than a comedy in prose, seems to me to admit fairly of a

justification.

I endeavoured to show that the Unities of Place and Time are inconsistent

with the essence of many tragical subjects, because a comprehensive action

is frequently carried on in distant places at the same time, and because

great determinations can only be slowly prepared. This is not the case in

Comedy: here Intrigue ought to prevail, the active spirit of which quickly

hurries towards its object; and hence the unity of time may here be almost

naturally observed. The domestic and social circles in which Comedy moves

are usually assembled in one place, and, consequently, the poet is not

under the necessity of sending our imagination abroad: only it might

perhaps have been as well not to interpret the unity of place so very

strictly as not to allow the transition from one room to another, or to

different houses of the same town. The choice of the street for the scene,

a practice in which the Latin comic writers were frequently followed in

the earlier times of Modern Comedy, is quite irreconcileable with our way

of living, and the more deserving of censure, as in the case of the

ancients it was an inconvenience which arose from the construction of

their theatre.

According to French critics, and the opinion which has become prevalent

through them, Molière alone, of all their comic writers, is classical; and

all that has been done since his time is merely estimated as it

approximates more or less to this supposed pattern of an excellence which

can never be surpassed, nor even equalled. Hence we shall first proceed to

characterize this founder of the French Comedy, and then give a short

sketch of its subsequent progress.

Molière has produced works in so many departments, and of such different

value, that we are hardly able to recognize the same author in all of

them; and yet it is usual, when speaking of his peculiarities and merits,

and the advance which he gave to his art, to throw the whole of his

labours into one mass together.

Born and educated in an inferior rank of life, he enjoyed the advantage of

learning by direct experience the modes of living among the industrious

portion of the community--the so-called _Bourgeois_ class--and of

acquiring the talent of imitating low modes of expression. At an after

period, when Louis XIV. took him into his service, he had opportunities,

though from a subordinate station, of narrowly observing the court. He was

an actor, and, it would appear, of peculiar power in overcharged and

farcical comic parts; so little was he possessed with prejudices of

personal dignity, that he renounced all the conditions by which it was

accompanied, and was ever ready to deal out, or to receive the blows which

were then so frequent on the stage. Nay, his mimetic zeal went so far,

that, actually sick, he acted and drew his last breath in representing his

_Imaginary Invalid_ (_Le Malade Imaginaire_), and became, in the truest

sense, a martyr to the laughter of others. His business was to invent all

manner of pleasant entertainments for the court, and to provoke "the

greatest monarch of the world" to laughter, by way of relaxation from

his state affairs or warlike undertakings. One would think, on the

triumphant return from a glorious campaign, this might have been

accomplished with more refinement than by the representation of the

disgusting state of an imaginary invalid. But Louis XIV. was not so

fastidious; he was very well content with the buffoon whom he protected,

and even occasionally exhibited his own elevated person in the dances of

his ballets. This external position of Molière was the cause why many of

his labours had their origin as mere occasional pieces in the commands of

the court. And, accordingly, they bear the stamp of that origin. Without

travelling out of France, he had opportunities of becoming acquainted with

the _lazzis_ of the Italian comic masks on the Italian theatre at Paris,

where improvisatory dialogues were intermixed with scenes written in

French: in the Spanish comedies he studied the ingenious complications

of intrigue: Plautus and Terence taught him the salt of the Attic wit, the

genuine tone of comic maxims, and the nicer shades of character. All this

he employed, with more or less success, in the exigency of the moment, and

also in order to deck out his drama in a sprightly and variegated dress,

made use of all manner of means, however foreign to his art: such as the

allegorical opening scenes of the opera prologues, musical intermezzos, in

which he even introduced Italian and Spanish national music, with texts in

their own language; ballets, at one time sumptuous and at another

grotesque; and even sometimes mere vaulting and capering. He knew how to

turn everything to profit: the censure passed upon his pieces, the defects

of rival actors imitated to the life by himself and his company, and even

the embarrassment in not being able to produce a theatrical entertainment

as quickly as it was required by the king,--all became for him a matter

for amusement. The pieces he borrowed from the Spanish, his pastorals and

tragi-comedies, calculated merely to please the eye, and also three or

four of his earlier comedies, which are even versified, and consequently

carefully laboured, the critics give up without more ado. But even in the

farces, with or without ballets, and intermezzos, in which the

overcharged, and frequently the self-conscious and arbitrary comic of

buffoonery prevails, Molière has exhibited an inexhaustible store of

excellent humour, scattered capital jokes with a lavish hand, and drawn

the most amusing caricatures with a bold and vigorous pencil. All this,

however, had been often done before his time; and I cannot see how, in

this department, he can stand alone, as a creative and altogether original

artist: for example, is Plautus' braggadocio soldier less meritorious in

grotesque characterization than the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_? We shall

immediately examine briefly whether Molière has actually improved the

pieces which he borrowed, in whole or in part, from Plautus and Terence.

When we bear in mind that in these Latin authors we have only a faint and

faded copy of the new Attic Comedy, we shall then be enabled to judge

whether he would have been able to surpass its masters had they come down

to us. Many of his shifts and inventions, I am induced to suspect, are

borrowed; and I am convinced that we should soon discover the sources,

were we to search into the antiquities of farcical literature [Footnote:

The learned Tiranoschi (_Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, Lib. III. §

25) attests this in very strong language: "Molière," says he, "has made so

much use of the Italian comic writers, that were we to take from him all

that he has taken from others, the volumes of his comedies would be very

much reduced in bulk."]. Others are so obvious, and have so often been

both used and abused, that they may in some measure be considered as the

common stock of Comedy. Such is the scene in the _Malade Imaginaire_,

where the wife's love is put to the test by the supposed death of the

husband--an old joke, which our Hans Sachs has handled drolly enough.

[Footnote: I know not whether it has been already remarked, that the idea

on which the _Mariage Forcé_ is founded is borrowed from Rabelais; who

makes Panurge enter upon the very same consultation as to his future

marriage, and receive from Pantagruel just such a sceptical answer as

Sganarelle does from the second philosopher.] We have an avowal of

Molière's, which plainly shows he entertained no very great scruples of

conscience on the sin of plagiarism. In the undignified relations amidst

which he lived, and in which every thing was so much calculated for

dazzling show, that his very name did not legally belong to him, we see

less reason to wonder at all this.

And even when in his farcical pieces Molière did not lean on foreign

invention, he still appropriated the comic manners of other countries, and

more particularly the buffoonery of Italy. He wished to introduce a sort

of masked character without masks, who should constantly recur with the

same name. They did not, however, succeed in becoming properly

domiciliated in France; because the flexible national character of the

French, which so nimbly imitates every varying mode of the day, is

incompatible with that odd originality of exterior to which in other

nations, where all are not modelled alike by the prevailing social tone,

humorsome and singular individuals carelessly give themselves up. As the

Sganarelles, Mascarilles, Scapins, and Crispins, must be allowed to retain

their uniform, that every thing like consistency may not be lost, they

have become completely obsolete on the stage. The French taste is,

generally speaking, little inclined to the self-conscious and arbitrary

comic, with its droll exaggerations, even because these kinds of the comic

speak more to the fancy than the understanding. We do not mean to censure

this, nor to quarrel about the respective merits of the different species.

The low estimation in which the former are held may perhaps contribute the

more to the success of the comic of observation, And, in fact, the French

comic writers have here displayed a great deal of refinement and

ingenuity: in this lies the great merit of Molière, and it is certainly

very eminent. Only, we would ask, whether it is of such a description as

to justify the French critics, on account of some half a dozen of so-

called regular comedies of Molière, in holding in such infinite contempt

as they do all the rich stores of refined and characteristic delineation

which other nations possess, and in setting up Molière as the unrivalled

Genius of Comedy.

If the praise bestowed by the French on their tragic writers be, both from

national vanity and from ignorance of the mental productions of other

nations, exceedingly extravagant; so their praises of Molière are out of

all proportion with their subject. Voltaire calls him the Father of

Genuine Comedy; and this may be true enough with respect to France.

According to La Harpe, Comedy and Molière are synonymous terms; he is the

first of all moral philosophers, his works are the school of the world.

Chamfort terms him the most amiable teacher of humanity since Socrates;

and is of opinion that Julius Caesar who called Terence a half Menander,

would have called Menander a half Molière.--I doubt this.

The kind of moral which we may in general expect from Comedy I have

already shown: it is an applied doctrine of ethics, the art of life. In

this respect the higher comedies of Molière contain many admirable

observations happily expressed, which are still in the present day

applicable; others are tainted with the narrowness of his own private

opinions, or of the opinions which were prevalent in his age. In this

sense Menander was also a philosophical comic writer; and we may boldly

place the moral maxims which remain of his by the side at least of those

of Molière. But no comedy is constructed of mere apophthegms. The poet

must be a moralist, but his personages cannot always be moralizing. And

here Molière appears to me to have exceeded the bounds of propriety: he

gives us in lengthened disquisitions the _pro_ and _con_ of the character

exhibited by him; nay, he allows these to consist, in part, of principles

which the persons themselves defend against the attacks of others. Now

this leaves nothing to conjecture; and yet the highest refinement and

delicacy of the comic of observation consists in this, that the characters

disclose themselves unconsciously by traits which involuntarily escape

from them. To this species of comic element, the way in which Oronte

introduces his sonnet, Orgon listens to the accounts respecting Tartuffe

and his wife, and Vadius and Trissotin fall by the ears, undoubtedly

belongs; but the endless disquisitions of Alceste and Philinte as to the

manner in which we ought to behave amid the falsity and corruption of the

world do not in the slightest respect belong to it. They are serious, and

yet they cannot satisfy us as exhausting the subject; and as dialogues

which at the end leave the characters precisely at the same point as at

the beginning, they are devoid in the necessary dramatic movement. Such

argumentative disquisitions which lead to nothing are frequent in all the

most admired pieces of Molière, and nowhere more than in the

_Misanthrope_. Hence the action, which is also poorly invented, is found

to drag heavily; for, with the exception of a few scenes of a more

sprightly description, it consists altogether of discourses formally

introduced and supported, while the stagnation is only partially concealed

by the art employed on the details of versification and expression. In a

word, these pieces are too didactic, too expressly instructive; whereas in

Comedy the spectator should only be instructed incidentally, and, as it

were, without its appearing to have been intended.

Before we proceed to consider more particularly the productions which

properly belong to the poet himself, and are acknowledged as master-

pieces, we shall offer a few observations on his imitations of the Latin

comic writers.

The most celebrated is the _Avare_. The manuscripts of the _Aulularia_ of

Plautus are unfortunately mutilated towards the end; but yet we find

enough in them to excite our admiration. From this play Molière has merely

borrowed a few scenes and jokes, for his plot is altogether different. In

Plautus it is extremely simple: his Miser has found a treasure, which he

anxiously watches and conceals. The suit of a rich bachelor for his

daughter excites a suspicion that his wealth is known. The preparations

for the wedding bring strange servants and cooks into his house; he

considers his pot of gold no longer secure, and conceals it out of doors,

which gives an opportunity to a slave of his daughter's chosen lover, sent

to glean tidings of her and her marriage, to steal it. Without doubt the

thief must afterwards have been obliged to make restitution, otherwise the

piece would end in too melancholy a manner, with the lamentations and

imprecations of the old man. The knot of the love intrigue is easily

untied: the young man, who had anticipated the rights of the marriage

state, is the nephew of the bridegroom, who willingly renounces in his

favour. All the incidents serve merely to lead the miser, by a gradually

heightening series of agitations and alarms, to display and expose his

miserable passion. Molière, on the other hand, without attaining this

object, puts a complicated machine in motion. Here we have a lover of the

daughter, who, disguised as a servant, flatters the avarice of the old

man; a prodigal son, who courts the bride of his father; intriguing

servants; an usurer; and after all a discovery at the end. The love

intrigue is spun out in a very clumsy and every-day sort of manner; and it

has the effect of making us at different times lose sight altogether of

Harpagon. Several scenes of a good comic description are merely

subordinate, and do not, in a true artistic method, arise necessarily out

of the thing itself. Molière has accumulated, as it were, all kinds of

avarice in one person; and yet the miser who buries his treasures and he

who lends on usury can hardly be the same. Harpagon starves his coach-

horses: but why has he any? This would apply better to a man who, with a

disproportionate income, strives to keep up a certain appearance of rank.

Comic characterization would soon be at an end were there really only one

universal character of the miser. The most important deviation of Molière

from Plautus is, that while the one paints merely a person who watches

over his treasure, the other makes his miser in love. The love of an old

man is in itself an object of ridicule; the anxiety of a miser is no less

so. We may easily see that when we unite with avarice, which separates a

man from others and withdraws him within himself, the sympathetic and

liberal passion of love, the union must give rise to the most harsh

contrasts. Avarice, however, is usually a very good preservative against

falling in love. Where then is the more refined characterization; and as

such a wonderful noise is made about it, where shall we here find the more

valuable moral instruction?--in Plautus or in Molière? A miser and a

superannuated lover may both be present at the representation of Harpagon,

and both return from the theatre satisfied with themselves, while the

miser says to himself, "I am at least not in love;" and the lover, "Well,

at all events I am not a miser." High Comedy represents those follies

which, however striking they may be, are reconcilable with the ordinary

course of things; whatever forms a singular exception, and is only

conceivable amid an utter perversion of ideas, belongs to the arbitrary

exaggeration of farce. Hence since (and it was undoubtedly the case long

before) the time of Molière, the enamoured and avaricious old man has been

the peculiar common-place of the Italian masked comedy and _opera buffa_,

to which in truth it certainly belongs. Molière has treated the main

incident, the theft of the chest of gold, with an uncommon want of skill.

At the very beginning Harpagon, in a scene borrowed from Plautus, is

fidgetty with suspicions lest a slave should have discovered his treasure.

After this he forgets it; for four whole acts there is not a word about

it, and the spectator drops, as it were, from the clouds when the servant

all at once brings in the stolen coffer; for we have no information as to

the way in which he fell upon the treasure which had been so carefully

concealed. Now this is really to begin again, not truly to work out. But

Plautus has here shown a great deal of ingenuity: the excessive anxiety of

the old man for his pot of gold, and all that he does to save it, are the

very cause of its loss. The subterraneous treasure is always invisibly

present; it is, as it were, the evil spirit which drives its keeper to

madness. In all this we have, an impressive moral of a very different

kind. In Harpagon's soliloquy, after the theft, the modern poet has

introduced the most incredible exaggerations. The calling on the pit to

discover the theft, which, when well acted, produces so great an effect,

is a trait of the old comedy of Aristophanes, and may serve to give us

some idea of its powers of entertainment.

The _Amphitryon_ is hardly anything more than a free imitation of the

Latin original. The whole plan and order of the scenes is retained. The

waiting-woman, or wife of Sosia, is the invention of Molière. The parody

of the story of the master's marriage in that of the servant is ingenious,

and gives rise to the most amusing investigations on the part of Sosia to

find out whether, during his absence a domestic blessing may not have also

been conferred on him as well as on Amphitryon. The revolting coarseness

of the old mythological story is refined as much as it possibly could

without injury to its spirit and boldness; and in general the execution is

extremely elegant. The uncertainty of the personages respecting their own

identity and duplication is founded on a sort of comic metaphysics:

Sosia's reflections on his two _egos_, which have cudgelled each other,

may in reality furnish materials for thinking to our philosophers of the

present day.

The most unsuccessful of Molière's imitations of the ancients is that of

the _Phormio_ in the _Fourberies de Scapin_. The whole plot is borrowed

from Terence, and, by the addition of a second invention, been adapted,

well or ill, or rather tortured, to a consistency with modern manners. The

poet has indeed gone very hurriedly to work with his plot, which he has

most negligently patched together. The tricks of Scapin, for the sake of

which he has spoiled the plot, occupy the foremost place: but we may well

ask whether they deserve it? The Grecian Phormio, a man who, for the sake

of feasting with young companions, lends himself to all sorts of hazardous

tricks, is an interesting and modest knave; Scapin directly the reverse.

He had no cause to boast so much of his tricks: they are so stupidly

planned that in justice they ought not to have succeeded. Even supposing

the two old men to be obtuse and brainless in the extreme, we can hardly

conceive how they could so easily fall into such a clumsy and obvious

snare as he lays for them. It is also disgustingly improbable that

Zerbinette, who as a gipsy ought to have known how to conceal knavish

tricks, should run out into the street and tell the first stranger that

she meets, who happens to be none other than Geronte himself, the deceit

practised upon him by Scapin. The farce of the sack into which Scapin

makes Geronte to crawl, then bears him off, and cudgels him as if by the

hand of strangers, is altogether a most inappropriate excrescence. Boileau

was therefore well warranted in reproaching Molière with having

shamelessly allied Terence to Taburin, (the merry-andrew of a mountebank).

In reality, Molière has here for once borrowed, not, as he frequently did,

from the Italian masks, but from the Pagliasses of the rope-dancers and

vaulters.

We must not forget that the _Rogueries of Scapin_ is one of the latest

works of the poet. This and several others of the same period, as

_Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, _La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas_, and even his

last, the _Malade Imaginaire_, sufficiently prove that the maturity of his

mind as an artist did not keep pace with the progress of years, otherwise

he would have been disgusted with such loose productions. They serve,

moreover, to show that frequently he brought forth pieces with great

levity and haste, even when he had full leisure to think of posterity. If

he occasionally subjected himself to stricter rules, we owe it more to his

ambition, and his desire to be numbered among the classical writers of the

golden age, than to any internal and growing aspiration after the highest

excellence.

The high claims already mentioned, which the French critics make in behalf

of their favourite, are principally founded on the _École des Femmes_,

_Tartuffe_, _Le Misanthrope_, and _Les Femmes Savantes_; pieces which are

certainly finished with great care and diligence. Now, of these, we must

expressly state in the outset, that we leave the separate beauties of

language and versification altogether to the decision of native critics.

These merits can only be subordinate requisites; and the undue stress

which is laid in France on the manner in which a piece is written and

versified has, in our opinion, been both in Tragedy and Comedy injurious

to the development of other and more essential requisites of the dramatic

art. We shall confine our exceptions to the general spirit and plan of

these comedies.

_L'École des Femmes_, the earliest of them, seems to me also the most

excellent; it is the one in which there is the greatest display of

vivacious humour, rapidity, and comic vigour. As to the invention: a man

arrived at an age unsuitable for wedlock, purposely educating a young girl

in ignorance and simplicity, that he may keep her faithful to himself,

while everything turns out the very reverse of his wishes, was not a new

one: a short while before Molière it had been employed by Scarron, who

borrowed it from a Spanish novel. Still, it was a lucky thought in him to

adapt this subject to the stage, and the execution of it is most masterly.

Here we have a real and very interesting plot; no creeping investigations

which do not carry forward the plot; all the matter is of one piece,

without foreign levers and accidental intermixtures, with the exception of

the catastrophe, which is brought about somewhat arbitrarily, by means of

a scene of recognition. The _naïve_ confessions and innocent devices

of Agnes are full of sweetness; they, together with the unguarded

confidence reposed by the young lover in his unknown rival, and the

stifled rage of the old man against both, form a series of comic scenes of

the most amusing, and at the same time of the most refined description.

As an example how little the violation of certain probabilities diminishes

our pleasure, we may remark that Molière, with respect to the choice of

scene, has here indulged in very great liberties. We will not inquire how

Arnolph frequently happens to converse with Agnes in the street or in an

open place, while he keeps her at the same time so carefully locked up.

But if Horace does not know Arnolph to be the intended husband of his

mistress, and betrays everything to him, this can only be allowable from

Arnolph's passing with her by another name. Horace ought therefore to look

for Arnolph in his own house in a remote quarter, and not before the door

of his mistress, where yet he always finds him, without entertaining any

suspicion from that circumstance. Why do the French critics set such a

high value on similar probabilities in the dramatic art, when they must be

compelled to admit that their best masters have not always observed them?

_Tartuffe_ is an exact picture of hypocritical piety held up for

universal warning; it is an excellent serious satire, but with the

exception of separate scenes it is not a comedy. It is generally admitted

that the catastrophe is bad, as it is brought about by a foreign means. It

is bad, too, because the danger which Orgon runs of being driven from his

house and thrown into prison is by no means such an embarrassment as his

blind confidence actually merited. Here the serious purpose of the work is

openly disclosed, and the eulogium of the king is a dedication by which

the poet, even in the piece itself, humbly recommends himself to the

protection of his majesty against the persecutions which he dreaded.

In the _Femmes Savantes_ raillery has also the upper hand of mirth;

the action is insignificant and not in the least degree attractive; and

the catastrophe, after the manner of Molière, is arbitrarily brought about

by foreign means. Yet these technical imperfections might well be excused

for the sake of its satirical merit. But in this respect the composition,

from the limited nature of its views, is anything but equal throughout. We

are not to expect from the comic poet that he should always give us, along

with the exhibition of a folly, a representation also of the opposite way

of wisdom; in this way he would announce his object of instructing us with

too much of method. But two opposite follies admit of being exhibited

together in an equally ludicrous light. Molière has here ridiculed the

affectation of a false taste, and the vain-gloriousness of empty

knowledge. Proud in their own ignorance and contempt for all higher

enlightenment, these characters certainly deserve the ridicule bestowed on

them; but that which in this comedy is portrayed as the correct way of

wisdom falls nearly into the same error. All the reasonable persons of the

piece, the father and his brother, the lover and the daughter, nay, even

the ungrammatical maid, are all proud of what they are not, have not, and

know not, and even what they do not seek to be, to have, or to know.

Chyrsale's limited view of the destination of the female sex, Clitander's

opinion on the inutility of learning, and the sentiments elsewhere

advanced respecting the measure of cultivation and knowledge which is

suitable to a man of rank, were all intended to convey Molière's own

opinions himself on these subjects. We may here trace in him a certain

vein of valet-de-chambre morality, which also makes its appearance on many

other points. We can easily conceive how his education and situation

should lead him to entertain such ideas; but they are hardly such as

entitle him to read lectures on human society. That, at the end, Trissotin

should be ignominiously made to commit an act of low selfishness is

odious; for we know that a learned man then alive was satirized under this

character, and that his name was very slightly disguised. The vanity of an

author is, on the whole, a preservative against this weakness: there are

many more lucrative careers than that of authorship for selfishness

without a feeling of honour.

The _Misanthrope_, which, as is well known, was at first coldly received,

is still less amusing than the two preceding pieces: the action

is less rapid, or rather there is none at all; and there is a great want

of coherence between the meagre incidents which give only an apparent life

to the dramatic movement,--the quarrel with Oronte respecting the sonnet,

and its adjustment; the decision of the law-suit which is ever being

brought forward; the unmasking of Celimene through the vanity of the two

Marquisses, and the jealousy of Arsinöe. Besides all this, the general

plot is not even probable. It is framed with a view to exhibit the

thorough delineation of a character; but a character discloses itself much

more in its relations with others than immediately. How comes Alceste to

have chosen Philinte for a friend, a man whose principles were directly

the reverse of his own? How comes he also to be enamoured of a coquette,

who has nothing amiable in her character, and who entertains us merely by

her scandal? We might well say of this Celimene, without exaggeration,

that there is not one good point in her whole composition. In a character

like that of Alceste, love is not a fleeting sensual impulse, but a

serious feeling arising from a want of a sincere mental union. His dislike

of flattering falsehood and malicious scandal, which always characterise

the conversation of Celimene, breaks forth so incessantly, that, we feel,

the first moment he heard her open her lips ought to have driven him for

ever from her society. Finally, the subject is ambiguous, and that is its

greatest fault. The limits within which Alceste is in the right and beyond

which he is in the wrong, it would be no easy matter to fix, and I am

afraid the poet himself did not here see very clearly what he would be at.

Philinte, however, with his illusory justification of the way of the

world, and his phlegmatic resignation, he paints throughout as the

intelligent and amiable man. As against the elegant Celimene, Alceste is

most decidedly in the right, and only in the wrong in the inconceivable

weakness of his conduct towards her. He is in the right in his complaints

of the corruption of the social constitution; the facts, at least, which

he adduces, are disputed by nobody. He is in the wrong, however, in

delivering his sentiments with so much violence, and at an unseasonable

time; but as he cannot prevail on himself to assume the dissimulation

which is necessary to be well received in the world, he is perfectly in

the right in preferring solitude to society. Rousseau has already censured

the ambiguity of the piece, by which what is deserving of approbation

seems to be turned into ridicule. His opinion was not altogether

unprejudiced; for his own character, and his behaviour towards the world,

had a striking similarity to that of Alceste; and, moreover, he mistakes

the essence of dramatic composition, and founds his condemnation on

examples of an accidentally false direction.

So far with respect to the famed moral philosophy of Molière in his

pretended master-piece. From what has been stated, I consider myself

warranted to assert, in opposition to the prevailing opinion, that Molière

succeeded best with the coarse and homely comic, and that both his talents

and his inclination, if unforced, would have determined him altogether to

the composition of farces such as he continued to write even to the very

end of his life. He seems always to have whipped himself up as it were to

his more serious pieces in verse: we discover something of constraint in

both plot and execution. His friend Boileau probably communicated to him

his view of a correct mirth, of a grave and decorous laughter; and so

Molière determined, after the carnival of his farces, to accommodate

himself occasionally to the spare diet of the regular taste, and to unite

what in their own nature are irreconcileable, namely, dignity and

drollery. However, we find even in his prosaic pieces traces of that

didactical and satirical vein which is peculiarly alien to Comedy; for

example, in his constant attacks on physicians and lawyers, in his

disquisitions upon the true correct tone of society, &c., the intention of

which is actually to censure, to refute, to instruct, and not merely to

afford entertainment.

The classical reputation of Molière still preserves his pieces on the

stage, [Footnote: If they were not already in possession of the stage, the

indecency of a number of the scenes would cause many of them to be

rejected, as the public of the present day, though probably not less

corrupt than that of the author's times, is passionately fond of throwing

over every thing a cloak of morality. When a piece of Molière is acted,

the head theatre of Paris is generally a downright solitude, if no

particular circumstance brings the spectators together. Since these

Lectures were held, _George Dandin_ has been hissed at Paris, to the

great grief of the watchmen of the critical Sion. This was probably not on

account of mere indecency. Whatever may be said in defence of the morality

of the piece, the privileges of the higher classes are offensively

favoured in it; and it concludes with the shameless triumph of arrogance

and depravity over plain honesty.] although in tone and manners they are

altogether obsolete. This is a danger to which the comic poet is

inevitably exposed from that side of his composition which does not rest

on a poetical foundation, but is determined by the prose of external

reality. The originals of the individual portraits of Molière have long

since disappeared. The comic poet who lays claim to immortality must, in

the delineation of character and the disposition of his plan, rest

principally on such motives as are always intelligible, being taken not

from the manners of any particular age, but drawn from human nature

itself.

In addition to Molière we have to notice but a few older or contemporary

comedians. Of Corneille, who from the imitation of Spanish comedies

acquired a name before he was known as a tragic author, only one piece

keeps possession of the stage, _Le Menteur_, from Lope de Vega; and

even this evinces, in our opinion, no comic talent. The poet, accustomed

to stilts, moves awkwardly in a species of the drama the first requisites

of which are ease and sweetness. Scarron, who only understood burlesque,

has displayed this talent or knack in several comedies taken from the

Spanish, of which two, _Jodelle_, or the _Servant turned Master_, and _Don

Japhet of Armenia_, have till within these few years been occasionally

acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. The plot

of the _Jodelle_, which belongs to Don Francisco de Roxas, is excellent;

the style and the additions of Scarron have not been able altogether to

disfigure it. All that is coarse, nauseous, and repugnant to taste,

belongs to the French writer of the age of Louis XIV., who in his day was

not without celebrity; for the Spanish work is throughout characterized by

a spirit of tenderness. The burlesque tone, which in many languages may be

tolerated, has been properly rejected by the French, for whenever it is

not guided by judgment and taste, it sinks to disgusting vulgarity. _Don

Japhet_ represents in a still ruder manner the mystification of a coarse

fool. The original belongs to the kind which the Spaniards call _Comedias

de Figuron_: it also has undoubtedly been spoiled by Scarron, The worst of

the matter is, that his exaggerations are trifling without being amusing.

Racine hit upon a very different plan of imitation from that which was

then followed, in his _Plaideurs_, of which the idea is derived from

Aristophanes. The piece in this respect stands alone. The action is merely

a light piece of legerdemain; but the follies which it portrays belong to

a circle, and, with the imitations of the officers of court and advocates,

form a complete whole. Many lines are at once witty sallies and

characteristic traits; and some of the jokes have that apparently aimless

drollery, which genuine comic inspiration can alone inspire. Racine would

have become a dangerous rival of Molière, if he had continued to exercise

the talent which he has here displayed.

Some of the comedies of a younger contemporary and rival of Molière,

Boursault, have still kept possession of the stage; they are all of the

secondary description, which the French call _pièces à tiroir_, and

of which Molière gave the first example in _Le Fâcheux_. This kind,

from the accidental succession of the scenes, which are strung together on

some one common occasion, bear in so far a resemblance to the _Mimes_

of the ancients; they are intended also to resemble them in the accurate

imitation of individual peculiarities. These subjects are particularly

favourable for the display of the Mimic art in the more limited

signification of the word, as the same player always appears in a

different disguise, and assumes a new character. It is advisable not to

extend such pieces beyond a single act, as the want of dramatic movement,

and the uniformity of the occasion through all the different changes, are

very apt to excite impatience. But Boursault's pieces, which otherwise are

not without merit, are tediously spun out to five acts. The idea of

exhibiting Aesop, a slave-born sage, and deformed in person, in possession

of court favour, was original and happy. But in the two pieces, _Aesop

in the City_, and _Aesop at Court_, the fables which are tacked to

every important scene are drowned in diffuse morals; besides, they are

quite distinct from the dialogue, instead of being interwoven with it,

like the fable of Menenius Agrippa in Shakespeare; and modern manners do

not suit with this childish mode of instruction. In the _Mercure Galant_

all sorts of out-of-the-way beings bring their petitions to the writer of

a weekly paper. This thought and many of the most entertaining details

have, if I am not mistaken, been borrowed by a popular German author

without acknowledgment.

A considerable time elapsed after the death of Molière before the

appearance of Regnard, to whom in France the second place in Comedy is

usually assigned. He was a sort of adventurer who, after roaming a long

time up and down the world, fell to the trade of a dramatic writer, and

divided himself betwixt the composition of regular comedies in verse, and

the Italian theatre, which still continued to flourish under Gherardi, and

for which he sketched the French scenes. The _Joueur_, his first

play, is justly preferred to the others. The author was acquainted with

this passion, and a gamester's life, from his own experience: it is a

picture after nature, with features strongly drawn, but without

exaggeration; and the plot and accessory circumstances, with the exception

of a pair of caricatures which might well have been dispensed with, are

all appropriate and in character. The _Distrait_ possesses not only

the faults of the methodical pieces of character which I have already

censured, but it is not even a peculiar character at all; the mistakes

occasioned by the unfortunate habit of being absent in thought are all

alike, and admit of no heightening: they might therefore have filled up an

after-piece, but, certainly did not merit the distinction of being spun

out into a comedy of five acts. Regnard has done little more than

dramatize a series of anecdotes which La Bruyère had assembled together

under the name of a certain character. The execution of the _Légataire

Universel_ shows more comic talent; but from the error of the general

plan, arising out of a want of moral feeling, this talent is completely

thrown away. La Harpe declares this piece the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of comic

pleasantry. It is, in fact, such a subject for pleasantry as would

move a stone to pity,--as enlivening as the grin of a death's head. What a

subject for mirth: a feeble old man in the very arms of death, teased by

young profligates for his property, has a false will imposed on him while

he is lying insensible, as is believed, on his death-bed! If it be true

that these scenes have always given rise to much laughter on the French

stage, it only proves the spectators to possess the same unfeeling levity

which disgusts us in the author. We have elsewhere shown that, with an

apparent indifference, a moral reserve is essential to the comic poet,

since the impressions which he would wish to produce are inevitably

destroyed whenever disgust or compassion is excited.

Legrand the actor, a contemporary of Regnard, was one of the first comic

poets who gained celebrity for after-pieces in verse, a species of

composition in which the French have since produced a number of elegant

trifles. He has not, however, risen to any thing like the same height of

posthumous fame as Regnard: La Harpe dismisses him with very little

ceremony. Yet we should be disposed to rank him very high as an artist,

even if he had composed nothing else than the _King of Lubberland_

(_Le Roi de Cocagne_), a sprightly farce in the marvellous style,

overflowing with what is very rare in France, a native fanciful wit,

animated by the most lively mirth, which although carried the length of

the most frolicsome giddiness, sports on and round all subjects with the

utmost harmlessness. We might call it an elegant and ingenious piece of

madness; an example of the manner in which the play of Aristophanes, or

rather that of Eupolis, [Footnote: See page 167.] who had also dramatised

the tale _of Lubberland_, might be brought on our stage without

exciting disgust, and without personal satire. And yet Legrand was,

certainly, unacquainted with the Old Comedy, and his own genius (we

scruple not to use the expression) led him to the invention. The execution

is as careful as in a regular comedy; but to this title in the French

opinion it can have no pretensions, because of the wonderful world which

it represents, of several of the decorations, and of the music here and

there introduced. The French critics show themselves in general

indifferent, or rather unjust towards every suggestion of genuine fancy.

Before they can feel respect for a work it must present a certain

appearance of labour and effort. Among a giddy and light-minded people,

they have appropriated to themselves the post of honour of pedantry: they

confound the levity of jocularity, which is quite compatible with

profundity in art, with the levity of shallowness, which (as a natural

gift or natural defect,) is so frequent among their countrymen.

The eighteenth century produced in France a number of comic writers of the

second and third rank, but no distinguished genius capable of advancing

the art a step farther; in consequence of which the belief in Molière's

unapproachable excellence has become still more firmly riveted. As we have

not space at present to go through all these separate productions, we

shall premise a few observations on the general spirit of French Comedy

before entering on the consideration of the writers whom we have not yet

mentioned.

The want of easy progress, and over-lengthy disquisitions in stationary

dialogue, have characterized more or less every writer since the time of

Molière, on whose regular pieces also the conventional rules applicable to

Tragedy have had an indisputable influence. French Comedy in verse has its

tirades as well as Tragedy. Besides, there was another circumstance, the

introduction of a certain degree of stiff etiquette. The Comedy of other

nations has generally, from motives which we can be at no loss in

understanding, descended into the circle of the lower classes: but the

French Comedy is usually confined to the upper ranks of society. Here,

then, we trace the influence of the court as the central point of the

whole national vanity. Those spectators who in reality had no access to

the great world, were flattered by being surrounded on the stage with

marquises and chevaliers, and while the poet satirized the fashionable

follies, they endeavoured to snatch something of that privileged tone

which was so much the object of envy. Society rubs off the salient angles

of character; its only amusement consists in the pursuit of the

ridiculous, and on the other hand it trains us in the faculty of being

upon our guard against the observations of others. The natural, cordial,

and jovial comic of the inferior classes is thrown aside, and instead of

it another description (the fruit of polished society, and bearing in its

insipidity the stamp of so purposeless a way of living) is adopted. The

object of these comedies is no longer life but society, that perpetual

negotiation between conflicting vanities which never ends in a sincere

treaty of peace: the embroidered dress, the hat under the arm, and the

sword by the side, essentially belong to them, and the whole of their

characterization is limited to painting the folly of the men and the

coquetry of the women. The insipid uniformity of these pictures was

unfortunately too often seasoned by the corruption of moral principles

which, more especially after the age of Louis XIV., it became, under the

Regency of Louis XV., the fashion openly to avow. In this period the

favourite of the women, the _homme à bonnes fortunes_, who in the

tone of satiety boasts of the multitude of his conquests too easily won,

was not a character invented by the comic writers, but a portrait

accurately taken from real life, as is proved by the numerous memoirs of

the last century, even down to those of a Besenval. We are disgusted with

the unveiled sensuality of the love intrigues of the Greek Comedy: but the

Greeks would have found much more disgusting the love intrigues of the

French Comedy, entered into with married women, merely from giddy vanity.

Limits have been fixed by nature herself to sensual excess; but when

vanity assumes the part of a sensuality already deadened and enervated, it

gives birth to the most hollow corruption. And even if, in the constant

ridicule of marriage by the petit-maîtres, and in their moral scepticism

especially with regard to female virtue, it was the intention of the poets

to ridicule a prevailing depravity, the picture is not on that account the

less immoral. The great or fashionable world, which in point of numbers is

the little world, and yet considers itself alone of importance, can hardly

be improved by it; and for the other classes the example is but too

seductive, from the brilliancy with which the characters are surrounded.

But in so far as Comedy is concerned, this deadening corruption is by no

means invariably entertaining; and in many pieces, in which fools of

quality give the tone, for example in the _Chevalier à la mode de

Dancourt_, the picture of complete moral dissoluteness which, although

true, is nevertheless both unpoetical and unnatural, is productive not

merely of _ennui_, but of the most decided repugnance and disgust.

From the number of writers to whom this charge chiefly applies, we must in

justice except Destouches and Marivaux, fruitful or at least diligent

comic writers, the former in verse and the latter in prose. They acquired

considerable distinction among their contemporaries in the first half of

the eighteenth century, but on the stage few of their works survived

either of them. Destouches was a moderate, tame, and well-meaning author,

who applied himself with all his powers to the composition of regular

comedies, which were always drawn out to the length of five acts, and in

which there is nothing laughable, with the exception of the vivacity

displayed in virtue of their situation, by Lisette and her lover Frontin,

or Pasquin. He was in no danger, from any excess of frolicsome petulance,

of falling from the dignified tone of the supposed high comic into the

familiarity of farce, which the French hold in such contempt. With

moderate talents, without humour, and almost without vivacity, neither

ingenious in invention, nor possessed of a deep insight into the human

mind and human affairs, he has in some of his productions, _Le Glorieux_,

_Le Philosophe Marié_, and especially _L'Indécis_, shewn with great credit

to himself what true and unpretending diligence is by itself capable of

effecting. Other pieces, for instance, _L'Ingrat_ and _L'Homme Singulier_,

are complete failures, and enable us to see that a poet who considers

_Tartuffe_ and _The Misanthrope_ as the highest objects of imitation, (and

with Destouches this was evidently the case,) has only another step to

take to lose sight of the comic art altogether. These two works of Molière

have not been friendly beacons to his followers, but false lights to their

ruin. Whenever a comic poet in his preface worships _The Misanthrope_ as a

model, I can immediately foretell the result of his labours. He will

sacrifice every thing like the gladsome inspiration of fun and all truly

poetical amusement, for the dull and formal seriousness of prosaic life,

and for prosaical applications stamped with the respectable name of

morals.

That Marivaux is a mannerist is so universally acknowledged in France,

that the peculiar term of _marivaudage_ has been invented for his

mannerism. But this is at least his own, and at first sight by no means

unpleasing. Delicacy of mind cannot be denied to Marivaux, only it is

coupled with a certain littleness. We have stated it to be the most

refined species of the comic of observation, when a peculiarity or

property shows itself most conspicuously at the very time its possessor

has the least suspicion of it, or is most studious to conceal it. Marivaux

has applied this to the passions; and _naïveté_ in the involuntary

disclosure of emotions certainly belongs to the domain of Comedy. But then

this _naïveté_ is prepared by him with too much art, appears too

solicitous for our applause, and, we may almost say, seems too well

pleased with it himself. It is like children in the game of hide and seek,

they cannot stay quiet in their corner, but keep popping out their heads,

if they are not immediately discovered; nay, sometimes, which is still

worse, it is like the squinting over a fan held up from affected modesty.

In Marivaux we always see his aim from the very beginning, and all our

attention is directed to discovering the way by which he is to lead us to

it. This would be a skilful mode of composing, if it did not degenerate

into the insignificant and the superficial. Petty inclinations are

strengthened by petty motives, exposed to petty probations, and brought by

petty steps nearer and nearer to a petty conclusion. The whole generally

turns on a declaration of love, and all sorts of clandestine means are

tried to elicit it, or every kind of slight allusion is hazarded to hasten

it. Marivaux has neither painted characters, nor contrived intrigues. The

whole plot generally turns on an unpronounced word, which is always at the

tongue's end, and which is frequently kept back in a pretty arbitrary

manner. He is so uniform in the motives that he employs, that when we have

read one of his pieces with a tolerable degree of attention we know all of

them. However, we must still rank him above the herd of stiff imitators;

something is to be learned even from him, for he possessed a peculiar

though a very limited view of the essence of Comedy.

Two other single works are named as master-pieces in the regular Comedy in

verse, belonging to two writers who here perhaps have taken more pains,

but in other departments have given a freer scope to their natural talent:

the _Métromanie_ of Piron and the _Méchant_ of Gresset. The _Métromanie_

is not written without humorous inspiration. In the young man possessed

with a passion for poetry, Piron intended in some measure to paint

himself; but as we always go tenderly to work in the ridicule of

ourselves, together with the amiable weakness in question, he endows his

hero with talents, magnanimity, and a good heart. But this tender reserve

is not peculiarly favourable for comic strength. As to the _Méchant_, it

is one of those gloomy comedies which might be rapturously hailed by a

Timon as serving to confirm his aversion to human society, but which, on

social and cheerful minds, can only give rise to the most painful

impression. Why paint a dark and odious disposition which, devoid of all

human sympathy, feeds its vanity in a cold contempt and derision of

everything, and solely occupies itself in aimless detraction? Why exhibit

such a moral deformity, which could hardly be tolerated even in Tragedy,

for the mere purpose of producing domestic discontent and petty

embarrassments?

Yet, according to the decision of the French critics, these three

comedies, the _Glorieux_, the _Métromanie_, and the _Méchant_, are all

that the eighteenth century can oppose to Molière. We should be disposed

to rank the _Le Vieux Bachelier_ of Collin d'Harleville much higher; but

for judging this true picture of manners there is no scale afforded in the

works of Molière, and it can only be compared with those of Terence. We

have here the utmost refinement and accuracy of characterization, most

felicitously combined with an able plot, which keeps on the stretch and

rivets our attention, while a certain mildness of sentiment is diffused

over the whole.

I purpose now to make a few observations on the secondary species of the

_Opera_, _Operettes_, and _Vaudevilles_, and shall conclude with a view of

the present condition of the French stage with reference to the histrionic

art.

In the serious, heroic, or rather the ideal _opera_, if we may so

express ourselves, we can only mention one poet of the age of Louis XIV.,

Quinault--who is now little read, but yet deserving of high praise. As a

tragic poet, in the early period of his career, he was satirized by

Boileau; but he was afterwards highly successful in another species, the

musical drama. Mazarin had introduced into France a taste for the Italian

opera; Louis was also desirous of rivalling or surpassing foreign

countries in the external magnificence of the drama, in decoration,

machinery, music, and dancing; these were all to be employed in the

celebration of the court festivals; and accordingly Molière was employed

to write gay, and Quinault serious operas, to the music of Lulli. I am not

sufficiently versed in the earlier literature of the Italian opera to be

able to speak with accuracy, but I suspect that here also Quinault

laboured more after Spanish than Italian models; and more particularly,

that he derived from the Fiestas of Calderon the general form of his

operas, and their frequently allegorical preludes which are often to be

found in them. It is true, poetical ornament is much more sparingly dealt

out, as the whole is necessarily shortened for the sake of the music, and

the very nature of the French language and versification is incompatible

with the splendid magnificence, the luxurious fulness, displayed by

Calderon. But the operas of Quinault are, in their easy progress, truly

fanciful; and the serious opera cannot, in my opinion, be stripped of the

charm of the marvellous without becoming at length wearisome. So far

Quinault appears to me to have taken a much better road towards the true

vocation of particular departments of art, than that on which Metastasio

travelled long after him. The latter has admirably provided for the wants

of a melodious music expressive solely of feeling; but where does he

furnish the least food for the imagination? On the other hand, I am not so

sure that Quinault is justly entitled to praise for sacrificing, in

compliance with the taste of his countrymen, everything like comic

intermixture. He has been censured for an occasional play on language in

the expression of feeling. But is it just to exact the severity of the

tragical cothurnus in light works of this description? Why should not

Poetry also be allowed her arabesque? No person can be more an enemy to

mannerism than I am; but to censure it aright, we ought first to

understand the degree of nature and truth which we have a right to expect

from each species, and what is alone compatible with it. The verses of

Quinault have no other _naïveté_ and simplicity than those of the

madrigal; and though they occasionally fall into the luscious, at other

times they express a languishing tenderness with gracefulness and a soft

melody. The opera ought to resemble the enchanted gardens of Armida, of

which Quinault says,

_Dans ces lieux enchantés la volupté préside._

We ought only to be awaked out of the voluptuous dreams of feeling to

enjoy the magical illusions of fancy. When once we have come to imagine,

instead of real men, beings whose only language is song, it is but a very

short step to represent to ourselves creatures whose only occupation is

love; that feeling which hovers between the sensible and intellectual

world; and the first invention becomes natural again by means of the

second.

Quinault has had no successors. How far below his, both in point of

invention and of execution, are the French operas of the present day! The

heroic and tragic have been required in a department where they cannot

produce their proper effect. Instead of handling with fanciful freedom

mythological materials or subjects taken from chivalrous or pastoral

romances, they have after the manner of Tragedy chained themselves down to

history, and by means of their heavy seriousness, and the pedantry of

their rules, they have so managed matters, that Dulness with leaden

sceptre presides over the opera. The deficiencies of their music, the

unfitness of the French language for composition in a style anything

higher than that of the most simple national melodies, the unaccented and

arbitrary nature of their recitative, the bawling bravura of the singers,

must be left to the animadversions of musical critics.

With pretensions far lower, the _Comic Opera_ or _Operette_ approaches

much more nearly to perfection. With respect to the composition, it may

and indeed ought to assume only a national tone. The transition from song

to speech, without any musical accompaniment or heightening, which was

censured by Rousseau as an unsuitable mixture of two distinct modes of

composition, may be displeasing to the ear; but it has unquestionably

produced an advantageous effect on the structure of the pieces. In the

recitatives, which generally are not half understood, and seldom listened

to with any degree of attention, a plot which is even moderately

complicated cannot be developed with due clearness. Hence in the Italian

_opera buffa_, the action is altogether neglected; and along with its

grotesque caricatures, it is distinguished for uniform situations, which

admit not of dramatic progress. But the comic opera of the French,

although from the space occupied by the music it is unsusceptible of any

very perfect dramatic development, is still calculated to produce a

considerable stage effect, and speaks pleasingly to the imagination. The

poets have not here been prevented by the constraint of rules from

following out their theatrical views. Hence these fleeting productions are

in no wise deficient in the rapidity, life, and amusement, which are

frequently wanting in the more correct dramatic works of the French. The

distinguished favour which the _operettes_ of a Favart, a Sedaine and

later poets, of whom some are still alive, always meet with in Germany,

(where foreign literature has long lost its commanding influence, and

where the national taste has pronounced so strongly against French

Tragedy,) is by no means to be placed to the account of the music; it is

in reality owing to their poetical merit. To cite only one example out of

many, I do not hesitate to declare the whole series of scenes in _Raoul

Sire de Créquy_, where the children of the drunken turnkey set the

prisoner at liberty, a master-piece of theatrical painting. How much were

it to be wished that the Tragedy of the French, and even their Comedy in

court-dress, had but a little of this truth of circumstance, this vivid

presence, and power of arresting the attention. In several _operettes_,

for instance in a _Richard Coeur de Lion_ and a _Nina_, the traces of the

romantic spirit are not to be mistaken.

The _vaudeville_ is but a variation of the comic opera. The essential

difference is that it dispenses with composition, by which the comic opera

forms a musical whole, as the songs are set to well-known popular airs.

The incessant skipping from the song to the dialogue, often after a few

scrapes of the violin and a few words, with the accumulation of airs

mostly common, but frequently also in a style altogether different from

the poetry, drives an ear accustomed to Italian music to despair. If we

can once make up our minds to bear with this, we shall not unfrequently be

richly recompensed in comic drollery; even in the choice of a melody, and

the allusion to the common and well-known words, there is often a display

of wit. In earlier times writers of higher pretensions, a Le Sage and a

Piron have laboured in the department of the _vaudeville_, and even for

_marionettes_. The wits who now dedicate themselves to this species are

little known out of Paris, but this gives them no great concern. It not

unfrequently happens that several of them join together, that the fruit of

their common talents may be sooner brought to light. The parody of new

theatrical pieces, the anecdotes of the day, which form the common talk

among all the idlers of the capital, must furnish them with subjects in

working up which little delay can be brooked. These _vaudevilles_ are like

the gnats that buzz about in a summer evening; they often sting, but they

fly merrily about so long as the sun of opportunity shines upon them. A

piece like the _Despair of Jocrisse_, which, after a lapse of years, may

be still occasionally brought out, passes justly among the ephemeral

productions for a classical work that has gained the crown of immortality.

We must, however, see it acted by Brunet, whose face is almost a mask, and

who is nearly as inexhaustible in the part of the simpleton as Puncinello

is in his.

From a consideration of the sportive secondary species, formed out of a

mixture of the comic with the affecting, in which authors and spectators

give themselves up without reserve to their natural inclinations, it

appears to me evident, that as comic wit with the Italians consists in

grotesque mimicry or buffoonery, and with the English in humour, with the

French it consists in good-natured gaiety. Among the lower orders

especially this property is everywhere visible, where it has not been

supplanted by the artifice of corruption.

With respect to the present condition of Dramatic Art in France, every

thing depends on the endeavours to introduce the theatrical liberties of

other countries, or mixed species of the drama. The hope of producing any

thing truly new in the two species which are alone admitted to be regular,

of excelling the works already produced, of filling up the old frames with

richer pictures, becomes more and more distant every day. A new work

seldom obtains a decided approbation; and, even at best, this approbation

only lasts till it has been found out that the work is only a new

preparation of their old classical productions.

We have passed over several things relating to these endeavours, that we

may deliver together all the observations which we have to make on the

subject. The attacks hitherto made against the French forms of art, first

by De la Motte, and afterwards by Diderot and Mercier, have been like

voices in the wilderness. It could not be otherwise, as the principles on

which these writers proceeded were in reality destructive, not merely of

the conventional forms, but of all poetical forms whatever, and as none of

them showed themselves capable of suitably supporting their doctrine by

their own example, even when they were in the right they contrived,

nevertheless, by a false application, to be in the wrong.

The most remarkable among them is Diderot, whom Lessing calls the best

critic of the French. In opposition to this opinion I should be disposed

to affirm that he was no critic at all. I will not lay any stress on his

mistaking the object of poetry and the fine arts, which he considered to

be merely moral: a man may be a critic without being a theorist. But a man

cannot be a critic without being thoroughly acquainted with the

conditions, means, and styles of an art; and here the nature of Diderot's

studies and acquirements renders his critical capabilities extremely

questionable. This ingenious sophist deals out his blows with such

boisterous haste in the province of criticism, that the half of them are

thrown away. The true and the false, the old and the new, the essential

and the unimportant, are so mixed up together, that the highest praise we

can bestow upon him is, that he is worthy of the labour of disentangling

them. What he wished to accomplish had either been accomplished, though

not in France, or did not deserve to be accomplished, or was altogether

impracticable. His attack on the formality and holiday primness of the

dramatic probabilities, of the excessive symmetry of the French

versification, declamation, and mode of acting, was just; but, at the same

time, he objected to all theatrical elevation, and refused to allow to the

characters anything like a perfect mode of communicating what was passing

within them. He nowhere assigns the reason why he held versification as

not suitable, or prose as more suitable, to familiar tragedy; this has

been extended by others, and among the rest, unfortunately, by Lessing, to

every species of the drama; but the ground for it evidently rests on

nothing but the mistaken principles of illusion and nature, to which we

have more than once adverted. [Footnote: I have stated and refuted them in

a treatise _On the Relation of the Fine Arts to Nature_ in the fifth

number of the periodical work _Prometheus_, published by Leo von

Seckendorf.] And if he gives an undue preference to the sentimental drama

and the familiar tragedy, species valuable in themselves, and susceptible

of a truly poetic treatment; was not this on account of the application?

The main thing, according to him, is not character and situations, but

ranks of life and family relations, that spectators in similar ranks and

relations may lay the example to heart. But this would put an end to

everything like true enjoyment in art. Diderot recommended that the

composition should have this direction, with the very view which, in the

case of a historical tragedy founded on the events of their own times, met

with the disapprobation of the Athenians, and subjected its author

Phrynichus to their displeasure [Footnote: See page 72.]. The view of a

fire by night may, from the wonderful effect produced by the combination

of flames and darkness, fill the unconcerned spectator with delight; but

when our neighbour's house is burning,--_jam oreximus ardet Ucalegon_--we

shall hardly be disposed to see the affair in such a picturesque light.

It is clear that Diderot was induced to take in his sail as he made way

with his own dramatic attempts. He displayed the greatest boldness in an

offensive publication of his youth, in which he wished to overturn the

entire dramatic system of the French; he was less daring in the dialogues

which accompany the _Fils Naturel_, and he showed the greatest moderation

in the treatise appended to the _Père de Famille_. He carried his

hostility a great deal too far with respect to the forms and the objects

of the dramatic art. But in other respects he has not gone far enough: in

his view of the Unities of Place and Time, and the mixture of seriousness

and mirth, he has shown himself infected with the prejudices of his

nation.

The two pieces above mentioned, which obtained an unmerited reputation on

their first appearance, have long since received their due appreciation.

On the _Fils Naturel_ Lessing has pronounced a severe sentence, without,

however, censuring the scandalous plagiarism from Goldoni. But the _Père

de Famille_ he calls an excellent piece, but has forgotten, however, to

assign any grounds for his opinion. Its defective plot and want of

connexion have been well exposed by La Harpe. The execution of both pieces

exhibits the utmost mannerism: the characters, which are anything but

natural, become from their frigid prating about virtue in the most

hypocritical style, and the tears which they are perpetually shedding,

altogether intolerable. We Germans may justly say, _Hinc illae lacrymae!_

hence the unnecessary tears with which our stage has ever since been

overflowed. The custom which has grown up of giving long and

circumstantial directions respecting the action, and which we owe also to

Diderot, has been of the greatest detriment to dramatic eloquence. In this

way the poet gives, as it were, an order on the player, instead of paying

out of his own purse. [Footnote: I remember to have read the following

direction in a German drama, which is not worse than many others:--"He

flashes lightning at him with his eyes (_Er blitzt ihn mit den Augen

an_) and goes off."] All good dramatists have uniformly had the action

in some degree present to their minds; but if the actor requires

instruction on the subject, he will hardly possess the talent of following

it up with the suitable gestures. The speeches should be so framed that an

intelligent actor could hardly fail to give them the proper action.

It will he admitted, that long before Diderot there were serious family

pictures, affecting dramas, and familial tragedies, much better than any

which he was capable of executing. Voltaire, who could never rightly

succeed in Comedy, gave in his _Enfant Prodigue_ and _Nanine_ a mixture of

comic scenes and affecting situations, the latter of which are deserving

of high praise. The affecting drama had been before attempted in France by

La Chaussée. All this was in verse: and why not? Of the familiar tragedy

(with the very same moral direction for which Diderot contended) several

examples have been produced on the English stage: and one of them,

_Beverley, or the Gamester_, is translated into French. The period of

sentimentality was of some use to the affecting or sentimental drama; but

the familiar tragedy was never very successful in France, where they were

too much attached to brilliancy and pomp. The _Melanie_ of La Harpe (to

whom the stage of the present day owes _Philoctete_, the most faithful

imitation of a Grecian piece) abounds with those painful impressions which

form the rock this species may be said to split upon. The piece may

perhaps be well adapted to enlighten the conscience of a father who has

determined to force his daughter to enter a cloister; but to other

spectators it can only be painful.

Notwithstanding the opposition which Diderot experienced, he was however

the founder of a sort of school of which the most distinguished names are

Beaumarchais and Mercier. The former wrote only two pieces in the spirit

of his predecessor--_Eugenie_, and _La Mère Coupable_; and they display

the very same faults. His acquaintance with Spain and the Spanish theatre

led him to bring something new on the stage in the way of the piece of

intrigue, a species which had long been neglected. These works were more

distinguished by witty sallies than by humour of character; but their

greatest attraction consisted in the allusions to his own career as

an author. The plot of the _Barber of Seville_ is rather trite; the

_Marriage of Figaro_ is planned with much more art, but the manners

which it portrays are loose; and it is also censurable in a poetical point

of view, on account of the number of foreign excrescences with which it is

loaded. In both French characters are exhibited under the disguise of a

Spanish costume, which, however, is very ill observed [Footnote: The

numerous sins of Beaumarchais against the Spanish manners and observances,

are pointed out by De la Huerta in the introduction to his _Teatro

Español_.]. The extraordinary applause which these pieces met with

would lead to the conclusion, that the French public do not hold the

comedy of _intrigue_ in such low estimation as it is by the critics:

but the means by which Beaumarchais pleased were certainly, in part it

least, foreign to art.

The attempt of Ducis to make his countrymen acquainted with Shakspeare by

modelling a few of his tragedies according to the French rules, cannot be

accounted an enlargement of their theatre. We perceive here and there

indeed the "torn members of the poet"--_disjecta membra poetae_; but

the whole is so constrained, disfigured, and, from the simple fulness of

the original, tortured and twisted into such miserable intricacy, that

even when the language is retained word for word, it ceases to convey its

genuine meaning. The crowd which these tragedies attracted, especially

from their affording an unusual room to the inimitable Talma for the

display of his art, must be looked upon as no slight symptom of the

people's dissatisfaction with their old works, and the want of others more

powerfully agitating.

As the Parisian theatres are at present tied down to certain kinds, and as

poetry has here a point of contact with the police, the numerous mixed and

new attempts are for the most part banished to the subordinate theatres.

Of these new attempts the _Melo-dramas_ constitute a principal part.

A statistical writer of the theatre informs us, that for a number of years

back the new productions in Tragedy and regular Comedy have been fewest,

and that the melo-dramas have in number exceeded all the others put

together. They do not mean by melo-drama, as we do, a drama in which the

pauses are filled up by monologue with instrumental music, but where

actions in any wise wonderful, adventurous, or even sensuous, are

exhibited in emphatic prose with suitable decorations and dresses.

Advantage might be taken of this prevailing inclination to furnish a

better description of entertainment: since most of the melo-dramas are

unfortunately rude even to insipidity, and resemble abortive attempts at

the romantic.

In the sphere of dramatic literature the labours of a Le Mercier are

undoubtedly deserving of the critic's attention. This able man endeavours

to break through the prescribed limits in every possible way, and is so

passionately fond of his art that nothing can deter him from it; although

almost every new attempt which he makes converts the pit into a regular

field of battle. [Footnote: Since these Lectures were held, such a tumult

arose in the theatre at Paris on the representation of his _Christopher

Columbus_, that several of the champions of Boileau came off with

bruised heads and broken shins. They were in the right to fight like

desperadoes; for if this piece had succeeded, it would have been all over

with the consecrated Unities and good taste in the separation of the

heroic and the low. The first act takes place in the house of Columbus,

the second at the court of Isabella, the third and last on shipboard near

the New World. The object of the poet was to show that the man in whom any

grand idea originates is everywhere opposed and thwarted by the limited

and common-place views of other men; but that the strength of his

enthusiasm enables him to overcome all obstacles. In his own house, and

among his acquaintances, Columbus is considered as insane; at court he

obtains with difficulty a lukewarm support; in his own vessel a mutiny is

on the point of breaking out, when the wished-for land is discovered, and

the piece ends with the exclamation of "Land, land!" All this is conceived

and planned very skilfully; but in the execution, however, there are

numerous defects. In another piece not yet acted nor printed, called _La

Journée des Dupes_, which I heard the author read, he has painted with

historical truth, both in regard to circumstances and the spirit of the

age, a well-known but unsuccessful court-cabal against Cardinal Richelieu.

It is a political comedy, in which the rag-gatherer and the king express

themselves in language suitable to their stations. The poet has, with the

greatest ingenuity, shown the manner in which trivial causes assist or

impede the execution of a great political design, the dissimulation

practised by political personages towards others, and even towards

themselves, and the different tones which they assume according to

circumstances; in a word, he has exhibited the whole inward aspect of the

game of politics.]

From all this we may infer, that the inclinations of the French public,

when they forget the duties they have imbibed from Boileau's _Art of

Poetry_, are not quite so hostile to the dramatic liberties of other

nations as might be supposed, and that the old and narrow system is

chiefly upheld by a superstitious attachment to traditional opinions.

The histrionic art, particularly in high comedy and tragedy, has been long

carried in France to great perfection. In external dignity, quickness,

correctness of memory, and in a wonderful degree of propriety and elegance

in the delivery of verse, the best French actors are hardly to be

surpassed. Their efforts to please are incredible: every moment they pass

on the stage is a valuable opportunity, of which they must avail

themselves. The extremely fastidious taste of a Paris pit, and the

wholesome severity of the journalists, excite in them a spirit of

incessant emulation; and the circumstance of acting a number of classical

works, which for generations have been in the possession of the stage,

contributes also greatly to their excellence in their art. As the

spectators have these works nearly by heart, their whole attention may be

directed to the acting, and every faulty syllable meets in this way with

immediate detection and reprobation.

In high comedy the social refinement of the nation affords great

advantages to their actors. But with respect to tragical composition, the

art of the actor should also accommodate itself to the spirit of the

poetry. I am inclined to doubt, however, whether this is the case with the

French actors, and whether the authors of the tragedies, especially those

of the age of Louis XIV. would altogether recognise themselves in the mode

in which these compositions are at present represented.

The tragic imitation and recitation of the French oscillate between two

opposite extremes, the first of which is occasioned by the prevailing tone

of the piece, while the second seems rather to be at variance with it,--

between measured formality and extravagant boisterousness. The first might

formerly preponderate, but the balance is now on the other side.

Let us hear Voltaire's description of the manner in which, in the time of

Louis XIV., Augustus delivered his discourse to Cinna and Maximus.

Augustus entered with the step of a braggadocio, his head covered with a

four-cornered peruque, which hung down to his girdle; the peruque was

stuck full of laurel leaves, and above this he wore a large hat with a

double row of red feathers. He seated himself on a huge fauteuil, two

steps high, Cinna and Maximus on two low chairs; and the pompous

declamation fully corresponded to the ostentatious manner in which he made

his appearance. As at that time, and even long afterwards, tragedies were

acted in a court-dress of the newest fashion, with large cravats, swords,

and hats, no other movements were practicable but such as were allowable

in an antechamber, or, at most, a slight waving of the hand; and it was

even considered a bold theatrical attempt, when, in the last scene of

_Polyeucte_, Severus entered with his hat on his head for the purpose

of accusing Felix of treachery, and the latter listened to him with his

hat under his arm.

However, there were even early examples of an extravagance of an opposite

description. In the _Mariamne_ of Mairet, an older poet than Corneille,

the player who acted Herod, roared himself to death. This may, indeed, be

called "out-heroding Herod!" When Voltaire was instructing an actress in

some tragic part, she said to him, "Were I to play in this manner, sir,

they would say the devil was in me."--"Very right," answered Voltaire, "an

actress ought to have the devil in her." This expression proves, at least,

no very keen sense for that dignity and sweetness which in an ideal

composition, such as the French Tragedy pretends to be, ought never to be

lost sight of, even in the wildest whirlwind of passion.

I found occasionally, even in the action of the very best players of the

present day, sudden leaps from the measured solemnity in recitation and

gesticulation which the general tone of the composition required, to a

boisterousness of passion absolutely convulsive, without any due

preparation or softening by intervening gradations. They are led to this

by a sort of obscure feeling, that the conventional forms of poetry

generally impede the movements of nature; when the poet any where leaves

them at liberty, they then indemnify themselves for the former constraint,

and load, as it were, this rare moment of abandonment with the whole

amount of life and animation which had been kept back, and which ought to

have been equally diffused over the whole. Hence their convulsive and

obstreperous violence. In bravura they take care not to be deficient; but

they frequently lose sight of the true spirit of the composition. In

general, (with the single exception of the great Talma,) they consider

their parts as a sort of mosaic work of brilliant passages, and they

rather endeavour to make the most of each separate passage, independently

of the rest, than to go back to the invisible central point of the

character, and to consider every expression of it as an emanation from

that point. They are always afraid of underdoing their parts; and hence

they are worse qualified for reserved action, for eloquent silence, where,

under an appearance of outward tranquillity, the most hidden emotions of

the mind are betrayed. However, this is a part which is seldom imposed on

them by their poets; and if the cause of such excessive violence in the

expression of passion is not to be found in the works themselves, they at

all events occasion the actor to lay greater stress on superficial

brilliancy than on a profound knowledge of character [Footnote: See a

treatise of M. Von Humboldt the elder, in Goethe's _Propyläen_, on

the French acting, equally distinguished for a refined and solid spirit of

observation.].