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The Decor of Molière's Stage: The Testimony of Brissart and Chauveau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Roger W. Herzel
Roger W. Herzel*
Affiliation:
State University oj New York, Albany
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Abstract

The engravings that appeared as frontispieces in seventeenth-century editions of Molière’s works show that the decor of his stage was not nearly so universalized and unspecific as is generally believed. Each of his plays had its own individualized setting, and he laid increasing stress on the scenic environment for his plays as his career progressed. His earliest plays were set in variations of the traditional decor of comedy: the street before two houses. In Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope he made the stage represent a private domestic interior. In plays like Le Sicilien and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme the scenic definition of stage space became more fluid and fanciful. And in his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, Molière used the most advanced scenic technology of his day to provide a decor that reflected the extravagant folly of his hero.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 93 , Issue 5 , October 1978 , pp. 925 - 954
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1978

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References

Notes

1 Eugène Despois, Le Théâtre français sous Louis XIV (Paris: Hachette, 1874), p. 130. This gross oversimplification has been corrected by Jacques Schérer, La Dramaturgie classique en France (Paris: Nizet, 1950), pp. 149–95.

2 Le Théâtre français, p. 130. All translations of excerpts from French texts are mine.

3 “Baroque et préciosité,” Revue des Sciences Humaines, NS 55–56 (1949), 221.

4 S. Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer, L'Histoire de la mise en scène dans le théâtre français à Paris de 1600 à 1673 (Paris: Nizet, 1960), p. 59.

5 Le Mémoire de Mahelot, Laurent et d'autres décorateurs de l'Hôtel de Bourgogne et de la Comédie-Française au XVIIe siècle, ed. Henry Carrington Lancaster (Paris: Champion, 1920).

6 Quoted in Claude and François Parfaict, Histoire du théâtre françois depuis son origine jusqu'à présent (Paris, 1745–49; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), ix, 389.

7 “Racine and Chauveau,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (1951), 262–66.

8 See Picard, p. 263, n. 1. Book illustrations for a third dramatic category, the machine play, were realistic in a different sense. Since the primary attraction of these plays was the scenery itself, the illustrations aimed at reproducing the “magical” illusions as convincingly as possible and were drawn from the ideal eyepoint in the center of the auditorium. As a result, it is rather difficult in these drawings to pick out the separate components of the decor. But this subservience to the illusion is precisely what the illustrators of Molière avoided: see esp. Figs. 8, 10, and 20, which are drawn from less-than-ideal eyepoints to make clear that it is a stage set, not an actual room, that is represented.

9 The tricentennial of Molière's death has made Brissart's frontispieces much more widely available than before: the edition of 1682 has been reissued in facsimile (Geneva: Minkoff, 1973), and most of the engravings have also been reproduced in Sylvie Chevalley's Molière en son temps (Geneva: Minkoff, 1973).

10 Eugène Despois and Paul Mesnard, Notice bibliographique, Vol. xi of Œuvres de Molière (Paris: Hachette, 1873–1900), pp. 40, 71. All quotations from Molière are from this edition, and translations are mine.

11 Bosse's engraving is compared to the sketches of Mahelot by Gaston Louis Malécot, “A propos d'une estampe d'Abraham Bosse et de l'Hôtel de Bourgogne,” Modern Language Notes, 48 (1933), 279–83.

12 Figs. 5 and 7 are discussed, and ground plans based on them are provided, by Pierre Sonrel, Traité de scénographie (Paris: Librairie Théâtrale, 1956), pp. 59–60.

13 Donneau de Visé, Zélinde (Paris, 1663), Se. iii. Quoted by Ch. L. Livet, “Molière illustré: Les Primitifs,” Le Livre, 7 (1885), 40. The problem was not a new one. Cf. Dépit amoureux ii.i.341–47; Pierre Corneille, Examen de La Galerie du Palais.

14 Marcel Gutwirth, “Tartuffe and the Mysteries,” PMLA, 92 (1977), 35.

15 Quentin M. Hope, “Place and Setting in Tartuffe,” PMLA, 89 (1974), 48.

16 Pierre Corneille, Examen d'Andromède. Cf. Schérer, p. 193.

17 Paul Lacroix, Iconographie moliéresque, 2nd ed. (Paris: Fontaine, 1876), pp. 17–18. Though I accept Lacroix's attribution, I do so with some reluctance. The awkwardness with which the human figures are drawn—particularly Tartuffe's left hand, Elmire's right hand, and Orgon's lower body—does not seem characteristic of Chauveau's work. But Chauveau, whose output was prodigious, had apprentices, and perhaps one of them is to blame (see Picard, p. 271, n. 3.). And this engraving does display Chauveau's strong interest in the scenic background and the care and skill with which he rendered it.

18 The prosperous bourgeoisie had decorated their rooms in the style shown since the 1630s, with tapestries covering the walls and with mirrors and portraits hung on top of the tapestries. See André Blum, Abraham Bosse et la société française au dix-septième siècle (Paris: Albert Morancé, 1924), Pls. 10, 12, 13, 14, 17; L'Œuvre gravé d'Abraham Bosse, ed. André Blum (Paris: Albert Morancé, 1924), Pls. 5, 11, 18, 20, 21, 28, 32, 34.

19 T. E. Lawrenson, The French Stage in the XVIIth Century: A Study in the Advent of the Italian Order (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 108–13.

20 George R. Kernodle, From Art to Theatre: Form and Convention in the Renaissance (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1944), pp. 210–11.

21 Premier Registre de La Thorillière 1663–1664, ed. Georges Monval (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1890). passim.

22 The contract is published in Madeleine Jurgens and Elizabeth Maxfield-Miller, Cent ans de recherches sur Molière, sur sa famille, et sur les comédiens de sa troupe (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1963), pp. 399–401.

23 Cf. Laurent's entry, p. 121, for Jodelet ou Le Maître valet, discussed above.

24 Le Registre de La Grange 1659–1685, ed. Bert Edward Young and Grace Philputt Young (Paris: Droz, 1947), i, 124–25.

25 See Roger W. Herzel, “The Function of the Raisonneur in Molière's Comedy,” Modern Language Notes, 90 (1975), 572–73.

26 Quoted in Pierre Mélèse, Répertoire analytique des documents contemporains d'information et de critique concernant le théâtre à Paris sous Louis XIV 1659–1715 (Paris, 1934; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1976), p. 146. My translation.

27 La Grange, i, 144; Le Registre d'Hubert 1672–1673, ed. Sylvie Chevalley, Revue d'Histoire du Théâtre, 25 (1973), 116–31.

28 Variant stage directions—from, respectively, the 1682 ed. and the 1683 ed.—cited in Œuvres.

29 Agne Beijer, “Le Théâtre de Charles xii et la mise en scène du théâtre parlé au xviie siècle,” Revue d'Histoire du Théâtre, 8 (1956), 197–214.

30 See, e.g., Beijer, pp. 213–14; also Jacques Vanuxem, “Le Décor de théâtre sous Louis xiv,” Dix-Septième Siècle, 39 (1958), 196–217.

31 Research for this article was made possible by a Research Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies and a grant from the Research Foundation of the State University of New York.