Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The actress and the anecdote
- 2 “So perverse was her wantonness”: antitheatricalism and the actress
- 3 In the beginning: “12 livres per year”
- 4 “Those diverting little ways”: 1630–1640
- 5 Mademoiselle L'Étoile: 1640–1700
- 6 “Embellished by art”: 1680–1720
- 7 Lives and afterlives: 1700–2010
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - “Embellished by art”: 1680–1720
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The actress and the anecdote
- 2 “So perverse was her wantonness”: antitheatricalism and the actress
- 3 In the beginning: “12 livres per year”
- 4 “Those diverting little ways”: 1630–1640
- 5 Mademoiselle L'Étoile: 1640–1700
- 6 “Embellished by art”: 1680–1720
- 7 Lives and afterlives: 1700–2010
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
All the arts being linked by intimate rapports and secret analogies, it is perfectly simple that those who cultivate them show the same defects and the same perfections in the different genres: and thus the orator, the poet, the painter, the musician, and the actor will show, in the exercise of his art, more or less génie and more or less goût; he will appear to owe more or less to la nature, more or less to l'étude and la réflexion. If his acting, full of chaleur and of vie, full of sublime traits and irresistible mouvements, is not sustained throughout, if lack of energy succeeds the liveliest expression, if frequent irregularities corrupt its purity, then we admire his génie and regret that goût has not better regulated its use; if, on the contrary, we observe that the development of his moyens naturels is always directed by, always under the surveillance of, that wisdom which prevents the fall, the failure, the vertigo of le génie, which stops it on the edge of the precipice… or which keeps it going when it is not prompted by inspiration, then we will taste the pure and sweet pleasure of the happy agreement of art and nature; that agreement which alone constitutes the true perfection of human production and which is so rarely found.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Women on the Stage in Early Modern France1540–1750, pp. 198 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010