9 - France

Summary

The study of medieval French theatre has always lagged far behind that of the English theatre of the same period. This seems particularly ironic in view of the fact that surviving play texts and records of performance are far more numerous in France than in England. Yet the reasons for the disparity are not hard to find. After Francis I had created a taste for the works of the Italian Renaissance, the stars of the Pléiade set out to recast French language and literature in an antique mold. By the next century the royal court had established a hegemony of arts and letters, which the Sun King used to reflect his own absolute rule. Ever since that time the undisputed brilliance of the classical French theatre has eclipsed the unique qualities of all preceding drama. Perhaps the crucial difference between France and England in regard to the development of the theatre is that the French playwrights of the sixteenth century attempted to make a complete break with their medieval antecedents, while their English counterparts did not. Consequently, France produced no Shakespeare, whose works would one day prod scholars into a search for medieval roots, which in turn would reveal a new world of stagecraft, fascinating in its own right. Racine has no medieval roots, and thus, like his royal patron, remains an absolute in French cultural thought.