Chapter 22 - The Livrets of Molière’s Plays

Summary

Livrets were distributed to the spectators of all of Molière’s plays created at court and involving music, from Le Mariage forcé (1664) to La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas (1671). They explained the action, described the decors, costumes and dances, and gave the names of those dancing. This chapter explore three ways of reading these livrets. First, they are precious traces of the conditions in which the plays were created within court entertainments. Second, they constitute a specific branch of theatre publishing with its own aesthetics – involving a combination of different art forms and an accumulation of different pleasures – and its own audience, which is designated as an elite. Finally, because they contribute to the representation of monarchical power, they are a way of demonstrating a close relationship with this power and of recording it in the long-lived form of print. All this makes them an ideal site in which to observe the ways in which theatrical practices were institutionalised in the second half of the seventeenth century, and the central role Molière and his troupe played in this process.