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Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

JOHN GOLDER
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Abstract

There is precious little documentary evidence regarding the way in which Molière and his company went about preparing themselves for performance in seventeenth-century Paris. After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, mémoires submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's Registre, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 33 , Special Issue 3: Genetics of Performance , October 2008 , pp. 250 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2008

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References

NOTES

1 Stern, Tiffany, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 130.Google Scholar

2 Howarth, W. D., Molière: A Playwright and His Audience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 24.Google Scholar

3 Chappuzeau, Samuel, Le Théâtre français, ed. Monval, Georges (Paris: Jules Bonnassies, 1875), pp. 72–3.Google Scholar

4 Le Registre de La Grange, 1659–1685, ed. Bert Edward Young and Grace Philputt Young, 2 vols (Paris: Droz, 1947; repr. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977).

5 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, p. 170. Here and throughout I have modernized and standardized seventeenth-century spelling and punctuation.

6 Ibid., p. 126.

7 Ibid., p. 142.

8 Le Registre d'Hubert, 1672–1673, ed. Sylvie Chevalley, Revue d'histoire du théâtre, 25 (1973), pp. 1–146, here p. 116.

9 Ibid., p. 177.

10 Ibid., p. 227.

11 Ibid., p. 321.

12 Ibid., p. 341.

13 Preface to Les Fâcheux, in Oeuvres complètes de Molière, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), Vol. I, p. 483. See also Powell, John S., ‘Pierre Beauchamps, choreographer to Molière's Troupe du Roi’, Music and Letters, 76 (1995), pp. 168–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, pp. 170 and 123.

15 Ibid., p. 144. The statistics and analysis that follow are based on Documents sur ‘Le Malade imaginaire’, ed. Edouard Thierry (Paris: Berger Levrault, 1880), pp. 145–91.

16 Chappuzeau, Théâtre français, p. 72.

17 Ibid.Loret, Jean, La Muse historique, ed. Livet, Charles-Louis (Paris: 1877), Vol. III, p. 398 (letter of 20 August 1661)Google Scholar, claims that the actors in Les Fâcheux had learned their lines in three days.

18 Le Mercure galant, 6 August 1672, quoted in Mongrédien, Georges, ed., Recueil des textes et des documents du XVIIe siècle relatifs à Molière, 2 vols (Paris: CNRS, 1965), Vol. II, p. 420.Google Scholar

19 In a modified version of the original production, created the previous year on the vast stage of the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries Palace.

20 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, p. 144; and Thierry, pp. 159 and 193.

21 Thierry, p. 164.

22 Powell, ‘Pierre Beauchamps’, p. 184.

23 Letter of 5 February 1728, in Lettres d'Adrienne Lecouvreur, ed. Georges Monval (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1892), p. 48.

24 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, p. 144.

25 Ibid., p. 160.

26 E.g. Powell, ‘Pierre Beauchamps’, p. 184, n. 82.

27 Chappuzeau, Théâtre français, p. 72.

28 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, p. 125.

29 Boswell, Eleanore, The Restoration Court Stage, 1660–1702 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932), p. 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 To my knowledge, the only evidence that hints at the Italians' absence, or at the occasional availability of the stage to Molière, is Hubert's entry, on Friday 8 July 1672, the date of the premiere of La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas and Le Mariage forcé: ‘Frais extraordinaires pour le déjeuner de la répétition d'hier’ [Extraordinary expenses for the meal at yesterday's [ensemble] rehearsal] (Chevalley, Revue d'histoire du théâtre, p. 30). As the previous day was a Thursday, an ‘Italian’ day, and, since the rehearsal in question must have been a dress rehearsal, presumably the stage itself was required.

31 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, pp. 210 and 223–6.

32 Ibid., pp. 296, 321 and 341.

33 Hitchcock, H. Wiley, ‘Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the Comédie-Française’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 24 (1971), pp. 255–81, here p. 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Delia Gambelli, ‘Les Italiens’, Journal des trois théâtres, 15 (mai 2005), pp. 20–3, here p. 23.

34 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, pp. 141–2.

35 Ibid., pp. 50–1.

36 Caldicott, C. E. J., La Carrière de Molière entre protecteurs et éditeurs (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 68 and 84Google Scholar. Unaccountably, Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, p. 136, only records the visite to St Cloud.

37 In 1672–3 the company gave a total of 171 individual performances, but only played twenty-four double-bills.

38 The exact number of performances given during the season's six visites and three voyages is unknown.

39 Crow, Joan, ed., La Comédie des comédiens (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1975), Vol. II, 1. My emphasis.Google Scholar

40 These and the statistics that follow are based on the registres de la recette journalière (daily box-office receipt registers) and the registres des feux (payment registers), conserved in the Archives of the Comédie-Française (ACF).

41 For an extended discussion of eighteenth-century rehearsal practice, see my ‘Rehearsals at the Comédie-Française in the Late Eighteenth Century’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. XXX, No 3 (2007), pp. 325 – 62.

42 Le Censeur dramatique, 4 vols (Paris: 1797–1835; repr. Geneva: Minkoff Reprints, 1973), Vol. II, p. 351 (30 nivôse VI). Author's emphasis.

43 Paradoxe sur le comédien, in Oeuvres esthétiques de Diderot, ed. Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier, 1965), pp. 320–1 and 364.

44 Letter to Comédiens français, [16] August 1784, Dossier Molé, ACF.

45 Foreword to Les Deux amis, in Beaumarchais: Théâtre [&] lettres relatives à son théâtre, ed. Maurice Allem and Paul-Courant (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 647.

46 R[ichard] V[alpy], ‘The Sketch of a Fortnight's Excursion to Paris in 1788’, The Gentleman's Magazine, October 1797, p. 814.

47 The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of 18th-Century Acting (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätverlag, 1987), pp. 386–433.

48 Stern, Rehearsal, p. 235.

49 Ibid.

50 Remarks on the Character and Manners of the French, in a series of letters written during a residence of twelve months in Paris and its environs (London, 1769), Vol. I, p. 82 (24 November 1766).

51 Chappuzeau, Théâtre français, p. 145. My emphasis.

52 Le Registre de La Grange, Vol. I, p. 270.

53 I am grateful to David Whitton for kindly reading an early draft of this essay.