1. 1500-1789
As in the Middle Ages [see Medieval Drama], dramatic events in the 16th c. usually took place in settings erected or adapted for the occasion, and this practice was to persist throughout the ancient régime, even after the establishment of regular theatres. Venues varied from royal courts at one extreme to city streets at the other. Renaissance drama was mainly performed in colleges and courts, palaces housed ballet and opera, streets were transformed for royal entries or carnivals, while farces amused crowds at the fairgrounds. The 18th c. saw an increased vogue for private theatricals (théâtre de société). Meanwhile, throughout the provinces, travelling players performed in private houses, inns, or tennis courts (jeux de paume); a vivid image of this type of theatre, well known to Molière, is to be found in Scarron's Roman comique.
Gradually, however, proper theatres were set up, first in Paris and then, in the 18th c., in major provincial cities. The principal Parisian theatres in the early classical period are as follows:
(a) the
(b) The Théâtre du Marais, set up by Le Noir and Montdory in 1629 and established in its permanent premises on the Right Bank in 1634, was associated above all with Pierre Corneille. Its greatest period, when it rivalled the Hôtel, was between 1634 and 1646; thereafter it specialized increasingly in machine plays.
(c) The theatre of the Palais-Royal, originally Richelieu's Palais-Cardinal, was built in 1641. It was the first example in France of the Italian style of theatre building. From 1661 to 1673 it was shared by Molière's company and the Italian actors, who had from 1658 to 1660 shared the Salle du Petit-Bourbon, previously a venue for ballet de cour. In 1673 the Palais Royal became the home of the Opéra.
After Molière's death in 1673 there were major reorganizations of the Paris theatre companies. Molière's company, now headed by La Grange, fused with the Marais, and played at the Hôtel de Guénégaud, on the Left Bank, where they were joined in 1680 by the Hôtel de Bourgogne actors. The resultant company was to be known as the Comédie- Française. A new theatre on the Left Bank was built for them in 1689, and they continued to play here until moving to the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries in 1770 and to the newly built Théâtre du Luxembourg (subsequently the Odéon) in 1782.
Alongside the two official theatres, the Comédie-Française and the Opéra, other companies fought to establish themselves. The Comédie-Italienne, having been expelled from France in 1697 for insulting Madame de Maintenon, returned in 1716 and enjoyed a period of great popularity, performing many of Marivaux's comedies. In 1762 they formed the Opéra-Comique in conjunction with players from the ever-popular théâtres de la foire, who had survived their battle with the official theatres and developed a varied dramatic and musical repertoire. Finally, in the mid-18th c., a new generation of popular theatres came into existence on the boulevards surrounding Paris, the théâtres de boulevard which were to flourish in the following century.
It is not easy to generalize about theatres, performances, and audiences at this period. The early theatres such as the Hôtel de Bourgogne and the Marais were long and narrow like the tennis courts that preceded them; only gradually did purposebuilt theatres provide more suitable space for actors and spectators. The 17th c. saw the imposition of unitary sets at the expense of the old décor simultané (where different parts of the stage represented different places), and the increasing domination of the ‘Italian’ style in which proscenium arch and curtain separated stage from auditorium. Acting was highly stylized and (in tragedy) declamatory, but emotionally effective. While sets were relatively simple at the Hôtel, the general tendency was towards spectacular effects, with trompe l'œil decor and much stage machinery; this showy style reached its height—or nadir—at the Opéra.
As for audiences, private productions (e.g. at court) were obviously for an élite. Public theatres, having been rowdy, disreputable places in the reign of Henri IV, acquired a new respectability in Paris by 1640, and over the next 150 years occupied a central place in the rituals of polite sociability. Compared with the socially mixed medieval audiences, the public in the established theatres was limited—seat prices excluded the poor. Nevertheless, audiences were drawn from different ranks of society. John Lough has estimated that at the end of the 17th c. the Comédie-Française had between 10, 000 and 17, 000 regular patrons. Noblemen, bourgeois, servants, students, and writers stood together in the parterre (pit), women and respectable spectators sat in loges (boxes) at the sides and back of the auditorium, while men of fashion continued to make a nuisance of themselves by sitting on the stage itself until 1759 at the Comédie-Française. Audience behaviour became more polite with time, but could still be rowdy by modern standards. Since the auditorium could not be darkened during the candle-lit performances, the audience themselves were a part of the show.
Throughout the period the theatre was subject to official control. Louis XIV, while protecting actors, imposed his will on the theatre, ordering the mergers of 1673 and 1680 and giving various forms of monopoly to the Opéra and the Comédie-Française. Censorship was established in 1701. And the Church never became fully reconciled to the theatre, making its hostility felt in such episodes as the banning of Tartuffe or Bossuet's anti-theatrical outbursts. Louis XIV was godfather to Molière's child, but actors were refused burial in consecrated ground.
[Peter France]
2. Post-1789
The Revolution of 1789 ushered in a period of chaotic competition in the theatre. The law of 13 January 1791 swept away the corporate monopolies and privileges of the Comédie-Française and other official theatres, making it possible for any citizen to set up a public theatre and present plays of any kind. The result was a sharp increase in the number of theatres (over 20 in 1791 alone), most of them shortlived. A new kind of theatrical spectacle emerged with the fêtes révolutionnaires of 1793-4 organized by the painter David.
Stricter control returned with the Directoire and the Napoleonic regime which, in a series of decrees (1806-7), effectively restored the regulatory system of the ancien régime. No new theatre could be established in Paris without a licence; major provincial cities were restricted to two theatres and smaller towns to one. The approval of the préfet was required for running a theatre and that of the censor for staging a new play. The official Paris theatres were limited to four (Comédie-Française, Odéon, Opéra, Opéra-Comique), as were the ‘secondary’ theatres: Gaîté and Ambigu-Comique, given over to melodrama, farce, and pantomime; and Variétés and Vaudeville, devoted to parodies, musical sketches, and bawdy short plays.
Censorship and central control remained the rule under the Restoration and, in spite of attempts to introduce a more liberal system in the 1830s and 1840s, continued to apply during most of the Second Empire. By a decree of 6 January 1864, French theatres were in effect converted into commercial enterprises. They could open without prior approval and were not restricted in the sort of play they could offer, but were still subject to the laws of blasphemy and obscenity and required the prior assent of the censor. Censorship technically disappeared with an act of 1905, but the powers of the préfets remained unchanged in matters of public morals. Formal abolition of censorship had to wait until after World War II.
In the course of the 19th c. a democratization of theatre audiences occurred, aided by the expansion of state education and the growth of a mass press. A rising new commercial and manufacturing class, dating from the 1830s, looked to the stage to provide distraction from its humdrum life or a reflection of its concerns about money, property, and social mobility. From the Second Empire onwards the railways brought provincial visitors and foreign tourists to Paris, swelling the theatre public and the demand for spicy entertainment. Though haussmannisation forced the closure of some popular theatres (e.g. Funambules, 1862), it led to a boom in theatre building (e.g. Châtelet, 1862). Street entertainers were gradually squeezed out in favour of indoor theatrical performances, but the illegitimate stage flourished in the form of cafés-concerts, music-halls, and cabarets (e.g. Le Chat Noir, c.1880). Inevitably repertories and audience loyalties changed over the century, with many famous houses showing remarkable powers of survival. The old Gaîté moved from melodrama to operetta, the Porte-Saint-Martin from Romantic drama to spectacle, the Gymnase from Scribe's ‘well-made plays’ to the serious drama of Augier and Dumas fils.
By the 1890s Parisian theatres attracted about half a million spectators weekly, and on the eve of World War I some 62 permanent theatres operated in the provinces, being especially vigorous in major cities (e.g. Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Rouen) and garrison towns. Theatres, responding to a technical age, provided lavish sets and costumes, elaborate stage machinery, and opulent auditoriums. Sets became increasingly cluttered and there was a vogue for pictorialism and historical authenticity (e.g. Sardou). Gas lighting (Opéra and Variétés, 1822), electric arc lamps (Opéra, c.1846), and carbon filament bulbs (Opéra, 1886) gradually displaced oil and paraffin lamps, producing a brilliantly lit space which necessitated changes in acting and staging.
Actors themselves, while remaining stagey by 20th-c. standards, moved away from the declamation and formal gestures and poses of early 19th-c. theatre towards greater naturalness, intimacy, and flexibility of voice and movement. By the end of the century a cult of the star actor, fostered by foreign and provincial tours, had developed in both the commercial (or boulevard) theatres and the state-subsidized houses. Significantly, the decay of the Comédie-Française and Odéon into museums of dramatic art went hand in hand with the rise of star actors, from Rachel and Delaunay in the 1850s to Bartet and Mounet-Sully in the 1890s.
Reaction against the sterility of the state theatres and a commercial stage dominated by stars, spectacle, and light entertainment was signalled by the revival of mime at the Cercle Funambulesque (1888), the vogue for puppets at Signoret's Petit Théâtre des Marionnettes (1888), and the emergence of three important avant-garde theatres: Antoine's Théâtre Libre (1887-94), Paul Fort's poetic Théâtre d'Art (1890-2), and Lugné-Poë's Théâtre de l'Œuvre (1893-9). These initiated a revolution in acting, scenic design, and lighting, drawing on an adventurous foreign repertory (German, Russian, Scandinavian) and so highlighting the international character of the new ‘art-theatre’ movement.
Antoine and Lugné-Poë herald the era of the theatrical director, blazing the trail for the great reformers of the French stage between the wars: Copeau at the Vieux-Colombier (1913-14, 1919-24), and the ‘Cartel’— Dullin at the Atelier (1922-40), Jouvet at the Athénée (from 1934), Baty at the Montparnasse (1930-47), Pitoëff at the Mathurins (from 1934). Together these were responsible for the most innovative stage productions of the inter-war years, using a variety of means—bare stage, group movement, complex lighting plots, revival of the techniques of the circus and commedia dell'arte—to create dynamic performances. Other valuable experimental groups of the period included Artaud and his associates in the Théâtre de la Cruauté, Saint-Denis and the Compagnie des Quinze (1930-6), and the Laboratoire du Théâtre Art et Action (1917-39).
During World War II theatre in occupied France was controlled by the Germans through a front organization, the Comité d'Organisation des Entreprises de Spectacles. Paradoxically, theatre receipts soared in Paris and an impetus was given to small provincial touring companies, e.g. Le Rideau Gris (Lyon, 1941-2) and Jeune France (1940-2). This wartime revival offset the severe decline in the number of permanent theatre companies operating in the provinces after 1914, a decline countered by scattered enthusiasts, e.g. Pottecher's amateur Théâtre du Peuple de Bussang (from 1895), Gémier's Théâtre National Ambulant (1911-12), and La Compagnie des Comédiens Routiers (1934-7). In the wartime activity of local companies and their predecessors lie the seeds of the movement for décentralisation and the explosion of state-subsidized regional theatres (Centres Dramatiques Régionaux) that occurred after 1945, leading to some 55 established companies working outside Paris by 1980. Between the wars most new plays were produced in commercial or experimental theatres; by 1980 many were staged in Centres Dramatiques Régionaux. While the inter-war theatrical avant-garde tended to be literary and élitist, it became populist after 1945 (e.g. Vilar's TNP, Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil), wedded to the idea of ‘total performance’, and open to foreign theorists and practitioners (e.g. Brecht, Grotowski, Peter Brook).
[S. Beynon John]
Bibliography
- J. Lough, Paris Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1957)
- M. Carlson, The French Stage in the Nineteenth Century (1972)
- J. de Jomaron (ed.), Le Théâtre en France, 2 vols. (1988-9)
- D. Bradby, Modern French Drama, 1940-1990 (1991)
