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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
The best known date in French theatre history between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries is surely February 25, 1830. On that night and for weeks thereafter, the opposing schools of classicism and romanticism clashed openly and bitterly at the Comédie-Française over Victor Hugo's new play, Hernani. To gain some idea of the significance of the struggle, one must remember that for a century and a half the strict formulae of the grand siècle had dominated the stage, that before the romantics no serious dramatist had dared to challenge the quasi-divinity of Racine and Corneille. Their works served as the unquestioned examples for later dramatists, whose tragedies were expected to follow those of the masters not only in the famous three unities, but in every detail of construction, down to the proper placement of pauses within the rigidly controlled poetic line, the alexandrin. Sterile imitations were the almost inevitable result, leading by the beginning of the nineteenth century to the lifeless neoclassic epics of such now mercifully forgotten dramatists as Antoine Vincent Arnault and Luce de Lancival.
1. Patriotic feeling actually forced the cancellation of a tour by English players to Paris in 1822. They were driven from the stage by vegetables and such cries as “Down with Shakespeare; he's one of Wellington's lieutenants!” Borgerhoff, J.L., Le Thėâtre Anglais à Paris sous la Restauration (Paris, 1913), p. 14Google Scholar.
2. Mes Mėmoires (Paris, 1867), IV, 280Google Scholar.
3. 4 June, 1827, quoted in Allevy, M.A., La Mise en scène en France dans la premiere moitié du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 1928), p. 80Google Scholar.
4. Descotes, M., Le Drame romantique et ses grands créateurs (n.p., n.d.), p. 105Google Scholar.
5. Histoire du romantisme (Paris, 1874), pp. 110–113Google Scholar.
6. See Lyonnet, H., Les “Premières” de Victor Hugo (Paris, 1930)Google Scholar.
7. See La Folle Journée, a reprint of the first edition with variants from original manuscripts, volume III of Beaumarchais, Théâtre Complet (Geneva, 1967)Google Scholar.
8. Bergman, G., “Les agences théâtrales et l'impression des mises en scène aux environs de 1800,” Revue d'Histoire du Théâtre, VIII (1956), 228–240Google Scholar.
9. Prompt book at the Comédie-Française. Scripts such as this, with indications of stage movement, are extremely rare at the Comédie for the first part of the nineteenth century. After 1850 sketches of floor plans are fairly common in the scripts, but the movement of actors was not generally and systematically recorded until the Perrin administration, beginning in 1871. Perrin, it might be noted, wrote one of the best surveys of the development of mise en scène during the century, “Etude sur la mise en scène: lettre à Francisque Sarcey,” which appeared in the eighth volume of Noël and Stouilig's Annales du Théâtre et de la Musique (1882).
10. Nouveaux Entractes (Paris, 1890), p. 215Google Scholar.
11. Prompt book at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.
12. Prompt book in the collection of the Association des Régisseurs de Théâtres Francais, assimilated in 1969 by the Bibliothèque de la Ville de Paris. This is the most important such collection in France, with a catalogue (published in 1934) which lists well over one thousand mises en scène for dramatic works and approximately half that number for lyric ones. Since the society was founded in the early years of this century, the majority of these works date from the 1890s and later, but major dramatists from Hugo on are all well represented. This prompt book is one of four in the collection which antedate Hernani.
13. Prompt book in the Bibliothèque de l'Opéra. Among its approximately two hundred mises en scène from the nineteenth century, the Opéra possesses ten pre- Hernani prompt books, both lyric and dramatic. This is the largest number of prompt books from this period which seems to exist in any collection in Paris, though one provincial collection, the departmental archives of Hérault at Montpelier has preserved 26 scripts from the years between 1800 and 1827 with significant indications of mise en scène.
14. Prompt book in the collection of the Association des Régisseurs. This prompt book was published as a supplement to Allevy's, M.A.La Mise en scène, called Edition critique d'une mise en scène romantique (Paris, 1938)Google Scholar.
15. Original script at the Comédie; prompt book and supplementary material on original production and revivals in Henani dossier of the Association des Régisseurs.
16. Mes Mémoires, V, 269–282Google Scholar.
17. Pendell, W.D., Victor Hugo's Acted Dramas and the Contemporary Press, (Baltimore, 1947)Google Scholar.
18. See Carlson, Marvin, “French Stage Composition from Hugo to Zola,” ETJ, XXIII (12 1971), 363–378Google Scholar.
