Transcript The Neoclassical French Theater

Neoclassical French Theater
The neoclassical French theater’s
conventions were inspired by the classical
drama of Greece and Rome. Hence the
term neoclassical to describe it.
Like its ancient antecedents, the
seventeenth-century French theater
observed the ancient unities:
the unity of time (24 hours)
the unity of place (a single setting)
the unity of action (a single plot)
The Three Unities
Moliere’s Tartuffe honors all three.
Plays that violated the unities were
thought to be crude and inelegant by the
educated neoclassical audience, which
consisted largely of courtiers, aristocrats,
and well-to-do merchants.
Tartuffe was performed for the court of
Louis XIV.
An aristocratic mirror
French neoclassical plays sometimes
reflected the ideas and upheld the values
popular among these classes; sometimes
they satirized them.
In either case, the good manners, wit, and
common sense of neoclassical comedy
mirrored the aristocratic world and suited
its audience.
Neoclassical stage
The neoclassical stage differed from the
stages of Shakespeare and Sophocles in
being an indoor theater with a picture-frame
stage.
The proscenium arch with its curtain
separated audience from actors.
Neoclassical plays were enacted on a box
stage, which represented a room with a
missing fourth wall, allowing the audience to
look in on the action.
Scenery & Costumes
The scenery was not elaborate. It was
painted and served as a backdrop
Candles and lanterns illuminated both the
actors and the audience.
Costumes tended toward the elaborate and
ornate as in Elizabethan drama.
Both Elizabethan and neoclassical actors
wore ordinary costumes in contemporary
dress that was appropriate to the social
status of the characters.
Women on stage
A major difference between neoclassical
and earlier drama was that female
actresses assumed women’s roles,
enabling playwrights to include more
extensive, more frequent, and more
realistic love scenes than had been
possible previously (since boys had
assumed women’s roles in Shakespeare’s
time).
Dialogue rules over action
As in the earlier eras of drama, however,
language still did much of the work, so that
even though the intimacy of the French
neoclassical playhouse – with a capacity
to seat perhaps four hundred spectaors –
allowed for refinements of facial and
physical gesture, action remained
subordinate to dialogue.
Moliere
Moliere was a poet and an actor as well as
a playwright.
He performed in his own plays, playing
Orgon in Tartuffe.
Moliere’s genius was limited to comedy.
His comedies were satiric rather than
romantic.
The King of Farce
Moliere was the king of farce. He was the
most influential playwright of the
neoclassical period and had the largest
impact on playwrights after his time.
He freely admitted to depicting the failings
of humans truthfully.
He used farcical characters to depict true
character-types of the time period but was
persecuted for attacking human
weakness.
Characteristics
of Neoclassical Plays
He utilized the criteria of the Académie, as
well as neoclassical language (he often used
rhymed couplets).
Another characteristic of neoclassical theatre
that is often apparent in his plays is deus ex
machina.
In two of his most popular plays, Tartuffe and
The Would-Be Gentleman, the conflict
resolves in the end with a letter arriving from
the king solving all the problems and
providing closure to the story.
The Comedie Francaise
Molière also had his own theatre troupe, and
their theatre was called the Palais Royal.
In 1665, Louis XIV made Molière's troupe “The
Kings Men."
He died in 1673 while acting in The Imaginary
Invalid .The Church refused to bury him because
he was associated with the theatre
Louis became upset and, in the end, Molière
was buried at night at a small church. In 1680,
Louis XIV combined Moliere’s group with
another to create the Comedie Francaise, the
first (and still existing) national theatre.
Tartuffe
Tartuffe satirizes both religious hypocrisy
and fraudulence. It also exposes the
obsessive fanaticism and the blind
gullibility of those who allow themselves to
be victimized by the greedy and the selfserving.
When Tartuffe was first staged in 1664, it
stirred up those who considered it an
attack on religion.
Religion or hypocrisy?
Moliere retitled it The Imposter to indicate
that Tartuffe’s piety is fraudulent, the
original version of the play was censored
and banned.
To defend himself and the play against
charges that Tartuffe attacked religion,
Moliere wrote three prefaces and later
changed his original ending.
Brilliance of Language
After five years, the publicity enhanced the
play’s popularity, and the work returned to the
stage under the protection of the King.
Its three-hundred-year-plus life span, however,
is due neither to royal protection nor to notoriety,
but rather to the ingenuity and vitality of its plot,
the profundity of its characterization, and the
brilliance of its language, unerringly translated
by Richard Wilbur into rhymed iambic
pentameter couplets.
DiYanni, Robert. Literature Reading Fiction, Poetry,
Drama, and the Essay. Boston, Massachusetts, 1998.
Alvin Goldfarb. Bibliography: A. Houssaye, Behind the
Scenes of the Comédie Française (1889)
H.C. Lancaster, The Comédie Française, 2 vols (1941;
1951).