Indiscretions | The Characters
In the following essay, Crowson states that the characters in Les Parents Terribles (Indiscretions) give themselves over to the play, reacting to their circumstances as the play governs their actions.
The mechanisms that direct Cocteau’s later plays are much more complex than those of his first attempts at dramatic creation. Whereas La Voix humaine, for example, unfolded in a strictly linear fashion, Les Parents terribles, Renaud et Armide, and L’Aigle à deux têtes depend on a conflict of archetypes and motifs. The logic of Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde and Bacchus derives in part from the author’s personal mythology but belong also to a larger, more accessible system. In the later plays, though characters remain mechanical dolls,...
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