[In the following essay, King concentrates on Musset's depiction of the title figure in his drama Fantasio as a faithless young man, examining this character's extensive use of exclamation, rhetorical questioning, conditional phrases, and similar ironic or manipulative forms of speech.]

The playwright does not enjoy the novelist's more obvious advantages in portraying and analysing characters, for the benefits obtained from a multiplicity of modes of narration are largely closed to him. The playwright, unlike the third person narrator in the novel, is unable to pause to describe and analyse the emotions of a character; and, in most drama, the soliloquy is used more sparingly than interior monologue or free indirect speech, at least in modern writings. Character indications—age, temperament, etc.—in the dramatis personae or at the beginning of an act or scene are intended primarily for the casting producer or actor, rather than for the public for whose entertainment the work is composed. Of course the reader-spectator of dramatic writings has always—and rightly—been encouraged to pay particular attention, firstly, to what a character says about himself, and, secondly, to what other characters say about him. However characters discuss each other more fully and satisfactorily in the novel than on the stage.

Another approach to character analysis is to examine some of the linguistic and stylistic features with which a playwright chooses to endow the various characters in his play. Indeed a playwright's function is, in a sense, to write speech for a certain number of people, and to differentiate between them in their speech patterns. The author's creation is not the play we see enacted on a stage as much as the text he writes, representing dialogue lasting a certain period of time.

Each of his characters may well be distinguished and defined by certain features: lexical idiosyncrasies, sentence variation and complexity, a preference for certain grammatical forms or combinations, and a frequent or periodic use of tropes.

If we examine Musset's short play, Fantasio, written in 1833, a play about a young “man about town” who becomes court jester in the Bavarian court, four features—not necessarily the principal ones—distinguish, either in frequency or in use, the protagonist's speech from that of the other characters: the use of the exclamation mark, rhetorical questions, conditional sentences, and rhetorical repetitions of grammatical forms. Though frequency counts of some of these features in Fantasio's speech can be measured against that of the other characters, it must be remembered that, for example, the speech of the protagonist, a round character, will almost invariably be richer in stylistic and linguistic features, than other flat characters, and only some of the features, and in certain contexts, will provide clues to character.

Fantasio's exclamatory style is explicitly signalled by the author's liberal use of exclamation marks. They occur not only after interjections but at the end of sentences. In Act I alone Fantasio utters many different interjections: Oh!, Ouf!, Allons, voyons!, Hélas!, Ah!, Ah!, ah!, Ah! mon Dieu!, Eh bien donc!, Eh bien!, Tiens! Tra la, tra la!, Ohé!, and Hé! The gouvernante's speech too is characterized by a number of interjections: En vérité!, Seigneur!, (twice), Seigneur mon Dieu! (twice), Eh bien! (twice), Tiens (without the exclamation mark), Tu crois! and Ah!

The use of the exclamation mark at the end of a sentence varies more considerably still. The author's use of the exclamation mark may appear arbitrary, for some sentences have one whereas others which appear to justify one equally are without. In Act I, 25 per cent of Fantasio's sentences contain an exclamation mark;

Que cela m'ennuie que tout le monde s'amuse!
Comme ce soleil couchant est manqué!
Quelle admirable chose que les Mille et une Nuits!
C'est tout un monde que chacun!
Vive la nature!

This graphic use of the exclamation mark, which could have been used more liberally in the speech of Fantasio but not elsewhere, contrasts sharply with the speech of his boon companion, Spark (8 per cent), and Elsbeth (11 per cent), though less so with the gouvernante (14.5 per cent) and the King (12 per cent). But, unlike Fantasio, the King and the gouvernante are more witnesses to difficult situations and more complex characters, and their function is to react with predictable surprise and bewilderment:

Comme vous parlez tristement!
Le Prince de Mantoue!
Comme vous voilà émue sur la pointe de vos petits pieds!

Closely related to the exclamatory style is the rhetorical question (including the related ratiocinative question) which, too, accounts for 13 per cent of the sentences in Fantasio's speech. A definition of the rhetorical question is complicated by certain idiosyncratic uses by the author. A favourite device is for a speaker to ask a question, which ordinarily would solicit a reply, and instead of pausing for the reply, to continue with a further statement, which tends to free the addressee from an obligation to reply directly:

Ohé! braves gens, qui enterrez-vous là? Ce n'est pas maintenant l'heure d'enterrer proprement.

Qu'importe qu'il fasse une malheureuse? Je laisse mon bon père être un bon roi.

Likewise there is difficulty in determining the status of a cluster of questions, where one answer alone may be expected:

Saint-Jean est mort? le bouffon du roi est mort? Qui a pris sa place? le ministre de la Justice?

The absence of capital letters in the second and fourth questions reveal that they are essentially expansions of the first and third¹. Other rhetorical questions are explicitly signalled by the use of an exclamation mark rather than a question mark:

Ah! Mon Dieu! qu'est-ce que tu vas imaginer là!
Est-il possible que le prince de Mantoue soit parti sans que je l'aie vu!

The ratio of rhetorical questions to all sentences varies considerably from one character to another. Fantasio's use of the rhetorical question (13 per cent) is only a little above average for the work as a whole because it is a feature of some of the other minor characters' speech. One in four of Spark's sentences takes the form of a question, but, with one possible exception, none of these is rhetorical, for his function is to serve as a “feed”, to use the modern jargon, to Fantasio:

Où coucheras-tu ce soir?
Veux-tu ma bourse?
Qui, par exemple?

The high incidence of rhetorical questions in the other characters too, in the king whose questions are more rhetorical, in that the principal aim is to express a point of view in a more polite form, and in the heroine, would suggest that it is a characteristic also of the work as a whole, and, possibly, of the author. Nonetheless in the speech of Fantasio it becomes a form of question-answer debate he has with himself to generate further speech, rather than with other characters with whom, on evidence, he is disinclined to converse, despite what he declares on the subject of communication:

Où veux-tu que j'aille? Regarde cette vieille ville enfumée; il n'y a pas de places, de rues, de ruelles, où je n'aie rôdé trente fois; il n'y a pas de pavés où je n'aie traîné ces talons usés …

Quel plaisir pourraient me faire vos chagrins?, quel chagrin pourraient me faire vos plaisirs? Vous êtes ceci, et moi cela. Vous êtes jeune et moi je suis vieux; belle, et je suis laid; riche, et je suis pauvre.

This usage, sometimes known as the ratiocinative question, is not a true rhetorical question but can be considered as a sub-category.

The third related feature to be examined is the high incidence of conditional sentences. On occasion the protasis takes a disguised form, rather than the conventional “si”:

Dussé-je me faire battant de cloche …
Nous aurions beau nous marier tous, il n'y aurait …

On five occasions, four of them in the speech of Fantasio, the protasis becomes an exclamation, with the apodosis omitted:

Si tu pouvais me transporter en Chine! Si je pouvais seulement sortir de ma peau pendant une heure ou deux! Si je pouvais être ce monsieur qui passe!

In the play, which comprises only 1125 lines², there are 68 conditional sentences, of which 27 occur in the speech of Fantasio, an incidence of 1 conditional sentence in every 14. In the majority of cases, especially in Fantasio's speech, the protasis precedes the apodosis, giving it therefore greater emphasis, as the linear line of thought and utterance—statement followed by qualifying condition—is usually broken, which results in a foregrounding of the hypothesis.

The use of the conditional sentence must be examined in context. In the case of the aide-de-camp, Marinoni, it serves to underline his subordinate relationship to his Prince and his excessive deference:

Si mon souverain l'exige, je suis prêt à mourir pour lui.

Si mon souverain le commande, je suis prêt à souffrir mille tortures.

Permettez-moi de baiser cette main charmante, madame, si ce n'est pas une trop grande faveur pour mes lèvres.

Elsbeth's use (14 times) reflects her dilemma, in that she hesitates in marrying for political reasons, to please her father and avoid war between the two states:

Si je refusais le prince, la guerre serait bientôt recommencée.

Il me plaît, s'il vous plaît; il me déplaît, s'il vous déplaît.

Je pense qu'il est prince de Mantoue, et que la guerre recommencera demain entre lui et vous, si je ne l'épouse pas.

In the case of Fantasio, the conditional sentence reflects his desire to argue and even quibble, and his perpetual debate about the present, and the future, and about life in general:

Si je n'avais pas d'argent, je n'aurais pas de dettes.

S'il y avait un enfer, comme je me brûlerais la cervelle pour aller voir tout ça!

Si je n'étais dans cette prison, je serais dans une autre.

Si vous me rendez la liberté, on va me prendre au collet.

This use serves an entirely different purpose from that of the comically urbane aide-de-camp.

Though sentence length—a simple word count shows that Fantasio's speech contains the longest sentences—is partly a result of extensive subordination and embedded word groups, it is determined more by the grammatical parallelisms of forms, which characterize the speech of all the characters. Such syntactic repetitions have already been illustrated in the quotations showing the peculiar use of rhetorical questions in Fantasio's speech. Often sentences are subdivided into smaller sentences by the use of a semi-colon:

Quelque belle fille toute ronde comme les femmes de Miéris; quelque chose de doux comme le vent d'ouest, de pâle comme les rayons de la lune; quelque chose de pensif comme …

Buvons, causons, analysons, déraisonnons, faisons de la politique; imaginons des combinaisons de gouvernement …

Il faut que je me grise, que je rencontre l'enterrement de Saint-Jean, que je prenne son costume et sa place, que je fasse enfin la plus grande folie de la terre …

This is description for the sake of description, speech for the sake of speech. One word or syntactic structure immediately engenders another parallel one. The communication to others of metaphysical ideas or further information is of secondary importance.

Ideas are attractive to Fantasio because they afford him the opportunity to juggle with words. Indeed a particular incident or detail or word uttered by another character serves as a pretext to display his talent in expressing some epigrammatic comment on life or experience in general:

SPARK:
Va donc au diable, alors!
FANTASIO:
Oh! s'il y avait un diable dans le ciel! s'il y avait un enfer, comme je me brûlerais la cervelle pour aller voir tout ça! Quelle misérable chose que l'homme! ne pas pouvoir seulement sauter par sa fenêtre sans se casser la jambe! …
SPARK:
Si tu étais amoureux, Henri, tu serais le plus heureux des hommes.
FANTASIO:
L'amour n'existe plus, mon cher ami. La religion, sa nourrice, a les mamelles pendantes comme une vieille bourse au fond de laquelle il y a un gros sous …
ELSBETH:
Ce palais en est une assez belle (une = une cage); cependant c'en est une.
FANTASIO:
La dimension d'un palais ou d'une chambre ne fait pas l'homme plus ou moins libre. Le corps se remue où il peut; l'imagination ouvre quelquefois des ailes grandes comme le ciel dans un cachot grand comme la main.

Often a simple statement provides a pretext for developing a metaphor, comparing the human brain to the streets of a city, or a princess to a toy canary operated by a spring.

The high incidence of exclamations, rhetorical questions and conditional sentences in Fantasio's speech compared with a lower incidence of these combined features in other characters, suggests that Fantasio uses speech for special effects, not to solicit and impart information, but to argue and debate. In this, rhetorical questions, to which he often provides some answer himself, and conditional sentences are closely allied in that they reflect his desire to debate with himself, though aloud, in the presence of others. He enjoys manipulating words and thoughts.

Indeed what is becoming apparent is not so much his profundity on metaphysical questions, but his verbal dexterity, his use of words and grammatical constructions for effect, less to express deep thought but to entertain his audience by the manner in which he manipulates words and thoughts. In Act I, his audience comprises his boon companions, and, more appropriately, perhaps symbolically, in Act II, the court where he has assumed the post of court jester and punster. In the form-content relationship, the emphasis is on form, inasmuch as the two can be distinguished.

A brief description of the principal distinctive stylistic and linguistic traits of Fantasio's speech, his exclamatory, rhetorical style with interjections, questions, complex subordination of sentences, an extensive use of conditional sentenecs, his use of any pretext to express some aphoristic generality or protracted metaphor, all constitute not so much his character and beliefs, but clear clues to them.

With such verbal versatility, he displays qualities which suggest to his friends and himself that he should be a writer. His friend Spark, for example, recommends that he becomes a “journaliste ou homme de letters” for “c'est encore le plus efficace moyen qui nous reste de désopiler la misanthropie et d'amortir l'imagination”. Later, Fantasio states, perhaps only in jest, that he is writing “une élégie qui décidera de mon sort”. On two occasions he expresses admiration for the Thousand and One Nights, and imitates the escapist fairy-tale language when he first speaks in Act I and again later:

Il était une fois un roi de Perse …

Il y avait une fois un roi qui était très sage, très sage, très heureux, très heureux …

Elsewhere he refers to Jean-Paul, to a “romance portuguaise”, which in fact comes from Byron, and to Pope and Boileau, all of whom use a style of language which is consistent with Fantasio's.

However Fantasio is not a writer. Indeed he has no profession:

Remarques-tu une chose, Spark? c'est que nous n'avons point d'état; nous n'exerçons aucune profession.

J'aime ce métier (de bouffon) plus que tout autre; mais je ne puis faire aucun métier.

A knowledge of other writings of Musset (especially “Rolla” written in the same year) and the author's biography would suggest that Fantasio is probably a victim of an education which prepares a man for a life of leisure which financial circumstances no longer permit. But this is an extra-literary explanation. The text itself suggests that Fantasio believes in nothing; the political expediency he opposes is typified by a marriage of convenience, and political leaders who are essentially buffoons. War alone may provide some activity to disguise the monotony of daily existence: “Si la guerre est déclarée, nous saurons quoi faire de nos bras”.

Literature, on the other hand, which promises to be a worthy escape, is shown to be only a substitute, and therefore vain and contemptible. How can we believe in art, if we fail to believe in life, experience, love, human communication, on which art is based, Fantasio seems to ask. Spark points out to him this function of art to “désopiler la misanthropie et d'amortir l'imagination”. Wine, not artistic creativity, is the only escape: “Un sonnet vaut mieux qu'un long poème (because it's shorter), et un verre de vin vaut mieux qu'un sonnet”. Towards the end of the play, Fantasio explicitly expresses the inferiority of art to action: “Ah! si j'étais poète, comme je peindrais la scène de cette perruque voltigeant dans les airs! Mais celui qui est capable de faire de pareilles choses dédaigne de les écrire”. Since life, and, in consequence, art can offer nothing new, Fantasio expresses his horror of new novels and demands an “old worn-out pun”. Art is degraded into a kind of acrostic, he declares, in which the poet juggles with words and difficult rhymes.

Fantasio who does not believe in action, though he welcomes the prospect of war, and not only appears to hold creative art in contempt, but also to lack the necessary application to complete a work of art, is left with his linguistic skills and verbal wit with which he cloaks an array of fashionably pessimistic comments on life, art, love, to entertain his friends and the court.

Beaucoup parler, voilà l'important; le plus mauvais tireur de pistolet peut attraper la mouche, s'il tire sept cent quatre-vingts coups à la minute, tout aussi bien que le plus habile homme qui n'en tire qu'un ou deux bien ajustés.

Un calembour console de bien de chagrins; et jouer avec les mots est un moyen comme un autre de jouer avec les pensées, les actions et les êtres.

In a sense these last lines reflect part of the romantic dilemma; the dynamic experimentation of form and linguistic possibilities and an overwhelming belief in the value of art (which Fantasio does not share) combined with a profoundly negative cosmic view. The artist can only devote his writing (and the jester Fantasio his speech) to giving expression to it. Like the writer, Fantasio is an entertainer who does not impart or solicit information, but who thinks aloud, to impress his audience with his verbal wit and sombre thoughts, on whatever topic that presents itself.

Musset's hero is affected by the mal du siècle, but the spoken word provides a strong antidote. The use of the exclamation, rhetorical questions and repetitions, and conditional sentences provide a clue to one major aspect of his character, which would be less fully understood and elucidated by a more general psychological and philosophical approach. The psychologist would almost certainly seek to show that Fantasio becomes a court jester because of his mal du siècle, an escape into irony, fantasy and mechanical existence. Indeed there are statements in the text to substantiate this interpretation, which one critic has fully analysed³. Nonetheless his assumption of the role of court jester is surely not explained solely because circumstances happen to provide that outlet. His temporary employment as jester is a symbolic representation of the poet for whom words replace acts. Just as no action is found with any real value or significance, words too are empty, and destined for the entertainment of a listening audience, rather than for a reader, for Fantasio, a potential writer, has no faith, no application, no consistent vision, to encourage him to translate his rich linguistic talents into a written work of art.

Notes

1. In this case, one might conclude, as I have done, that there are two “ordinary” questions, and two rhetorical questions.

2. Numbered in the Bordas edition.

3. David Sices, “Musset's Fantasio: The Paradise of Chance”, The Romanic Review, Volume 58, 1967, pp. 23-37.