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Would You Splash Out on a Ticket to Molièe's Palais Royal?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Claude Schumacher
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Extract

Little by little we are building up a reliable picture of what a seventeenth-century Parisian theatre looked like. In Theatre Research International we published an important article by Graham Barlow's on the Hôtel de Bourgogne in our first volume, and we return to the subject with the eye-opening reconstruction of the Palais Royal by Christa Williford in this, our last issue. In the intervening twenty-five years we have published articles on the problem of law and order in the auditorium, on actors and acting in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France; on the interaction between tragedy and the emerging opera, on theory, on dramatic literature, on the morality of actors and actresses, even on publicity; but nothing, specifically, on the identity of the spectator. And without a clearer impression of who patronized the Parisian theatres, we are in danger of missing important clues, not only concerning the theatrical performance, but also in our reading of the dramatic text—which will inform our theatrical decisions.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2000 , pp. 248 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2000

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References

Notes

1. Barlow, Graham, ‘The Hôtel de Bourgogne According to Sir James Thornhill’, Theatre Research International, Vol. I, No. 2, 1976, pp. 86–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Mittman, Barbara G., –Keeping Order on the Stage in Paris in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Theatre Research International, Vol. V, No. 2, pp. 99–107.Google Scholar

3. See in the index at the end of this volume, articles by Margaret McGowan, Dene Bamett, H. T. Barnwell, William Brooks, Pascale-Anne Brault, F. W. J. Hemmings, William Brooks & P. J. Yarrow, Jonathan Marks, Virginia Scott, Claudia R. Jensen & John S. Powell.

4. The most authoritative and best documented study remains to this day Mélèse, Pierre, Le Théâtre et le public en France sous Louis XIV, 1659–1715 (Paris: Droz, 1934)Google Scholar. In English, see Lough, John, Paris Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Oxford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar, See also Mittman, Barbara G., Spectators on the Paris Stage in C17th & C18th, Theater & Dramatic Studies (UMI Research, 1984).Google Scholar

5. In Howarth, William D., ed., French Theatre in the Neo-Classical Era, 1550–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 236.Google Scholar

6. Lancaster, Henry Carrington, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century, Part V, Recapitulation 1610–1700 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942)Google Scholar: ‘In 1682–3;, for instance, over 150,000 admissions were paid at the Comédie-Française, and other persons attended performances without paying. Many spectators, of course, went a number of times in the year, but there must have been well over 100,000 individuals who attended.’ (p. 5)

7. ‘Dans une action où la fatalité du sang joue un si grand rôle, il fallait marquer dès le début la filiation funeste de Phèdre.’ In Racine, Œuvres complètes, edited by Picard, Raymond, coll. La Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p. 1168.Google Scholar

8. Sonnet due to the anti-Racinian cabal of the duchesse de Bouillon, one of Mazarin's nieces, and her brother, the due de Nevers. See Picard, , Racine, Œuvres complètes, pp. 1165–6.Google Scholar

9. See, for instance, Howarth, , French Theatre in the Neo-Classical Era. Doc. 420Google Scholar to 423 list people who are allowed free entry to the theatre and relate a ‘diplomatic’ incident with the Ambassador of Savoy over the queston of free access.

10. To help comparison with the cost of theatre tickets, here are the minimal costs of some basic items: 1 lb. of bread, 1–2 sous; 1 lb. of beef, 2–3 sous; 1 litre of milk, 4–6 sous; 1 dz. eggs, 10 sous; 1 lb. of butter, 5–8 sous; one pair of clogs, 25 sous; one pair of shoes, £3.

11. In Picard, Raymond, La Carrière de Racine, Coll. Idées (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), pp. 73–4Google Scholar. Madame de Maintenon to her brother, Charles d'Aubigné: ‘Je vous envoie un projet de dépenses … sur lequel on peut encore ménager.… Dépense par jour pour 12 personnes—monsieur, madame, 3 femmes, le laquais, 2 cochers, 1 valet de chambre:

Quinze lives de viande à cinq sous par livre 3£ 15s.

Deux pièces de rôti 2£ 10s.

Pour du pain 1£ 10s.

Pour du vin 2£. 10s.

Pour du bois 2£.

Pour du fruit 1£ 10s.

Pour de la chandelle 8s.

Pour de la bougie 10s.’

And she sums up: ‘votre dépense de bouche ne doit pas dépasser 6000 livres par an. J'en mets 1000 pour habiller Madame d'Aubigné … Je mets 1000 livres pour les gages ou les habits des gens, 1000 pour le louage de la maison … 3000 livres pour vos habits et pour l'opéra.’ And she concludes: ‘Tout cela n'est-il pas honnête?’ Well, who could complain?

12. ‘Document de 1702. État des domestiques d'un logis:

Jean Rulland 36 livres par an

Françon (servante) 26

Jeanne de Laye 7

Silvain Castille 30

Marguerite Meunier 30

Joyeux 8 (marché fait avec son père).’

In Picard, , La Carrière de Racine, p. 72Google Scholar

13. La Grange, in the preface to the 1682 edition of Molière, 's plays, Théâtre de M. de Moliére (Paris: Club des Libraires de France, 1959), Vol. 1, p. 24Google Scholar: ‘le roi trouva à propos d'arrêter [Molière] tout à fait à son service, en lui donnant une pension de 7000 livres’. See also Howarth, , French Theatre in the Neo-Classical Era, especially doc. 91, 93, 101.Google Scholar

14. Picard, , La Carriè;re de Racine, p. 520Google Scholar. Picard cites a telling anecdote: On 19 September 1698 Racine informed one of his sons that he was rejecting a marriage proposal, because the girl's dowry would only have yielded £4000 per annum—an amount which daddy considered insufficient.

15. 270 ‘working days’ at 15 sous represent £202.50 per annum, sum which we divide by 365, and we obtain a ‘gross daily disposable income’ of 11 sous, 1 denier.

Funnily, Lancaster was expecting my base monetary argument, and he dismisses it with patrician disdain. He writes: ‘Nor is the question of expenses a serious argument. Even when “quinze sous” represented a day's pay, the man who earned no more than this amount may well have spent it once or twice a year at the theatre.’ Let me return the compliment of ‘lack of seriousness’. A History of French Dramatic Literature, p. 6.

16. The last available statistics show that in 1998, the net average wage was 130,000 francs in the private sector, and 148,000 in the public sector; in other words more than twice today's minimum. And don't let's forget all the social benefits we enjoy! (146,000 francs a year equal 400 francs a day; so, 30 francs represent less than of that sum.)

17. Lough, , Paris Audiences., p. 51.Google Scholar

18. In Madame de Sévigné: Correspondance, edited by Duchêne, Roger, Coll. La Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1972).Google Scholar

19. Lawrenson, T. E., The French Stage & Playhouse in the XVIIth Century, second edition (New York: AMS Press, 1986), p. 231Google Scholar. In a more recent study, The Contested Parterre (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), seventeenth and eighteenth-century Parisian spectators are accused by Jeffrey Ravel of far more outrageous behaviour. Readers interested in ridiculous scatological details can turn to pp. 44–6 of that book.

20. See Howarth, , French Theatre in the Neo-Classical Era, doc. 104Google Scholar. See also doc. 244–53 which deal with the ‘social mix’ of the audience. But all these judgements are not convincing since they are part of polemical or satirical texts; and d'Aubignac's (doc. 252) condemnation of rowdy elements is routine and exaggerated.

21. Mélèse, , Le Théâtre et le public, p. 210Google Scholar. In a footnote, Mélèse adds that one finds a vivid reconstitution of that seventeenth-century atmosphere in the opening act of Edmond de Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, instead of warning his readers against the fanciful nature of that romanesque depiction.

22. Bossuet, J. B.: Traité de la concupiscence, ‘Maximes et réflexions sur le comédien’, Paris 1879 (Cote BN D64260), p. 137 (my italics)Google Scholar. On p. 149, Bossuet writes that spectators work themselves into a frenzy ‘par le concours des acclamations et des applaudissements et l'air qu'on y (in the theatre) respire est plus malin’. We are far from the den of iniquity which he could easily have denounced if the theatre had been the raucous, raunchy, rowdy … place many a commentator say it was.

23. Le Père François Caffaro, ‘Lettre d'un théologien’, in Boursault, , Piéces de théâtre de Mr. Boursault, Paris 1694 (BN in-8° D 68956), p. 48 (my italics).Google Scholar

24. A proof, among many, that spectators were attentive? Despite the duchesse de Bouillon's worst endeavours, in January 1677, Pradon's bad play failed, and Racine's demanding œuvre gained the reputation of a masterpiece in a matter of days!

25. I have been reading Peter Nichols's enjoyable Diaries since I sent my article to the printers. I should like to share one short paragraph with you. It is dated 2 March 1972: ‘At the Arts Council Drama Panel's meeting, some discussion about middle-class and working-class audiences was brought alive by the chairman quoting Jack Dash, the union leader: “Look at the [London] Festival Hall. That was built by our lot and none of our lot have ever been in it.”’ Nichols, Peter, Diaries 1969–1977 (London: Nick Hern Books, 2000), p. 228.Google Scholar