SOURCE: "Comedy," in Dramatic Theory and Practice in France: 1690–1808, 1921. Reprint by Benjamin Blom, 1968, pp. 6–43.

[In the following excerpt, Jourdain discusses the development of comedy by Molière's successors.]

It would have been difficult for any successors of Molière to avoid the dangerous homage of imitation of his methods. Molière had succeeded in making the theatre national in France, and in popularising the painting of manners in the middle classes of society. Now the whole tendency of the drama in the eighteenth century was to throw more light on the middle classes, and it is important to notice that from the days of Corneille onwards they had become regular playgoers in Paris. The early efforts of eighteenth-century comedy were therefore on Molière's lines, though at first of the nature of caricature of his methods. When writers of comedy began to reflect their own time more exactly, the relation with the spirit of Molière became greater, while the direct imitation of the master was slighter. Then appeared the more original dramatists of the comic stage of the eighteenth century, Marivaux and Beaumarchais; and definite homage was paid to Molière by writers of the new genre, the drame sérieux, who did not yield to the writers for the comic stage in their appreciation of Molière's general aim.

In the transition from the works of Molière to those of the writers who are characteristic of the eighteenth century, the most important comedies are those of Regnard, Dancourt, and Le Sage. Le Sage marks the transition from the imitators of Molière to the writers of comedy with a political and social bias, the greatest of whom was Beaumarchais. Marivaux (1688–1763), though historically earlier than Beaumarchais (1732–1799), is not in the same line of development, and his original treatment of a limited dramatic field must be considered separately.

Of these writers, J. F. Regnard (1656–1710) was the closest to Molière both in time and in the character of his work. Like Molière he worked at first on the lines of Italian comedy, an early journey to Italy having interested him in the art of that country. His strange adventures gave him experience but did not damp his ardour. He was captured together with a Provençal lady by an Algerian corsair, and spent some years of slavery in Constantinople, from which condition he was finally ransomed. He travelled in Flanders, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, Lapland, Poland, Hungary, and Germany. Love and cards shared his interest with travelling, but at last he settled down to a quiet life in his country house at Grillon, and wrote most of his comedies there. He attempted at one time a tragedy, Sapor; he worked sometimes alone and sometimes with Dufresny. But after making many conventional experiments, he took Molière as his pattern, and his best comedies are formed on his master. As Molière had drawn upon the humours of the provinces, Regnard imitated him, and in Le Joueur made fun of the Auvergnat, Toutalas, and in Le Bal of the Gascon, Le Baron, but he had also come across many other types in his travels of which he made full use.

The form of his plays is very varied, their length may be one, or three, or five acts. For in Regnard the length of the play really depends on the size of the subject and thus his form is not conventional. A modern audience sometimes, and somewhat unfairly, finds him long-winded in the longer plays. This is partly no doubt because his imitation of Molière leads Regnard to employ Molière's plan of catch-words or catch-phrases (like Orgon's 'Le pauvre homme'). Regnard, like Molière, repeats a comic effect when he once has achieved it, but Regnard sometimes trusts to an earlier comic association to make the second or third allusion seem amusing. So, in Le Légataire universel, he uses the catch-phrase of ' léthargie.'

The names given to the characters are the conventional ones. Lisette is a suivante, sometimes supplanted by Nérine: the heroine is Léonor, or Isabelle, the regular names of Italian comedy, or sometimes Angélique. The lover is Valère, or Dorante, or Éraste. Géronte is a name for an old man. The valet has many names: he is sometimes Crispin, or Merlin (who really produces wonders on the scene). Valets and soubrettes play a large part in this drama, so do masques and music. Lawyers and usurers are a butt for Regnard's sarcasm as doctors were for Molière's, but the attack on lawyers is one common to the whole of the eighteenth century, as is the insistence on the comic characteristics of the provinces of Normandy, Brittany, Gascony, Burgundy, Auvergne. Madame Bertrand and Madame Argante (both usual comedy names) jostle one another in the drama of Regnard.

One important difference between Molière and the writers of comedy in the eighteenth century is that Molière at his best does without accessories for his characters. Their calling and their views so far as they are external to the plot are neglected; the necessary setting and no more is given to the personages of his drama. We are aware that the households in L'Avare and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme are the ordinary middle-class households of the time: we can see the stratum of cultivated society in which the characters in Le Misanthrope and Les Femmes savantes move. But we are given no previous history and practically no present details of their circumstances, except where, as in the case of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, it is important to know that M. Jourdain has prospered. But in eighteenth-century drama (and in this respect nineteenth-century drama has followed closely on its antecedents) opinions and social conditions are insisted on, even when these are quite external to the plot. Now Regnard is not himself exempt from this habit; he shows, in fact, the first symptom of the change, in Le Joueur, and Le Legataire universel: though he has less of what, from the point of view of drama, we may call a defect, than the writers of the drame bourgeois. A good deal of time is however taken up in his plays by the description of circumstances that do not develop character. We are told at length in Le Légataire universel about Géronte's will, about his relations and the different plans for the disposal of his money: but Géronte is left by the dramatist in the last scene of the last act exactly where he was at first. In L'Avare we are aware of a conflict in the mind of the miser, but while Géronte's opinion in Le Légataire universel is puzzled and changeable, he goes through no crisis of feeling or thought. Regnard, however, possesses a power of psychological description in detail which shows that he can observe human nature even though he cannot concentrate motives and action into the plot of his play. For example, he treats the subject of jealousy with great ability. In the scene in Le Joueur between La Comtesse and Angélique, the subtle change from the well-mannered woman of the world to the jealous primitive woman is excellently indicated. Again, in the same play Angélique, softening to Valère, is heard to say harder and harder things to him in a gentler and gentler voice: while the soubrette approves less and less as the scene goes on. Here is an opportunity for a good actress to express the psychology of the real emotion of Angélique. But these character-studies do not control the plot. In Le Joueur, which had its English origin, and had been already treated by Dufresny, Regnard desired to make the character of Valère consistent all through the play. Valère goes off the stage saying to his valet:

Va, va, consolons-nous, Hector: et quelque jour
Le jeu m'acquittera des pertes de l'amour.

This trait certainly gives the play a unity of meaning, but the extreme consistency of the hero's behaviour removes the action from life to mechanism and destroys our interest. Regnard's plays thus are precursors of the 'well-constructed plays' of Scribe in the nineteenth century; the pleasure of the audience lies in an admiration of the author, who unravels a subtle mystery, or works out a problem set just one step in advance of the public which follows his moves. Besides exciting this interest in the plot as in a game to be guessed, Regnard produces amusement by insisting on laughable traits. This he does all through his théâtre, from the scene in Le Bal where the lover is hidden in the 'cello case, to the farcical scenes of plot and counterplot in Le Légataire universel. The sermon and the moral are to his mind of minor importance.

Regnard was followed by Dufresny (1648–1724), a slighter writer, with whom he often worked, but the Esprit de contradiction and Reconcilation normande are both amusing and vivacious though long drawn out. In Le Mariage fait et rompu the last words show Dufresny's inheritance of Molière's hatred of hypocrisy:

Tout bien considéré, franche coquetterie
Est un vice moins grand que fausse pruderie.
Les femmes ont banni ces hypocrites soins;
Le siècle y gagne au fond, c'est un vice de moins.

The titles of Dufresny's plays always take the form of the paradox which suggests the type of plot treated in them; besides those already mentioned we might instance Le Double Veuvage and Les Mal-assortis, and La Malade sans maladie. They are written in prose, and are so witty that they repay reading, even though what Dufresny calls 'l'architecture de la pièce' is sometimes hurried and imperfect. In some of his plays Dufresny has introduced 'vaudevilles' and songs, obeying the taste of the time for bringing in music to vary the monotony of a play. Like Regnard, Dufresny works on quite conventional lines, trusting to the brilliance of his dialogue to carry off his pieces. He enhances this effect by constantly bringing on to the stage some character who is acutely aware of the motives and absurdities of the others. Frosine acts this part in Le Double Veuvage.

Dancourt (1661–1725) was attracted, like Molière, by the desire to paint the manners of the middle classes. At the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth there was a great deal to observe, for the love of money and the love of pleasure dominated all classes, and produced a kind of confusion of values in which we find the strongest possible contrast to the century in which Corneille had reigned. Self-interest in every department was the motive of a society that lived under a corrupt government and had the example of a corrupt court before its eyes. Hopeless of being able to apply a remedy, the French at that time consoled themselves by getting all the material pleasure they could out of life. The drama of Dancourt reflects this condition, which he has finely observed. No character stands out in heroic contrast to the rest, but a whole bevy succeed one another in an eternal race for advantage. Dancourt had the qualities necessary for getting sharp impressions of this society upon paper. He got his effect by putting down a great deal of detail without feeling any fear of boring his audience. Take a little one-act play like Le Tuteur. The mystification of persons by night foreshadows a more famous scene in Beaumarchais' Mariage de Figaro, but there is very little comparatively at stake in Le Tuteur. Bernard and his accomplice, Lucas, are too evidently intended to be fooled by the rest. The moral is that only the person with wits can pursue an advantage and keep it. In the series of plays beginning with Le Chevalier à la mode we have better characterisation. Madame Patin has her ambitions, which are like those of Monsieur Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but the idea of the play is carried out more farcically than was the case in Molière's, and it is without the witty back-handed attacks by which the dupe, M. Jourdain, expresses his criticism of the society in which he attempts to move. There is, in the process, an immense amount of talking done on the stage, and this is in itself a satire on a class of society that engineered results by words instead of by wholesome labour.

In Le Chevalier à la mode Migaud, who is courting Madame Patin, says that he has always been afraid of her disposition, but is willing to marry her on account of family interests, while Le Chevalier, who also is courting her, says to Crispin, the valet, in the plainest words, that he is in love with her money. He is in the meantime accepting presents of horses and a carriage from a baroness to whose hand he is also a pretender. In these circumstances Migaud's plan is successful and the Chevalier, who is excluded, says that he only regrets Madame Patin's money and is intending to pay further attentions to the baroness. Dancourt has lifted the veil that obscures low motives, and thus his drama is an account not so much of what people were accustomed to say, but of what they actually thought. The truth of the painting was undeniable, and the fidelity of his dialogue to unavowed reasons for conduct makes for a psychological realism that is at the same time strangely lacking in bitterness. While the attack on the vices of the time is as sharp as Balzac's on those of the age of Louis Philippe, there is no trace of resentment in Dancourt. He writes in a detached and good-humoured way that at first hides from the reader the selfishness and brutality of the human nature he exposes to view.

Dancourt works out his ideas further in Les Bourgeoises à la mode (1697) and Les Bourgeoises de qualité (1700). In the last-named play the characters only gradually detach themselves from their background, and this is one of the effects of Dancourt's very real art. They appear first of all to show some fixed idea, some clear tendency of the mind, and then touch after touch reveals them as persons. For example Naquart the procureur in the first scene says:

Il ne s'agit point de conscience lâ-dedans; et entre
personnes du métier….

while Le Tabellion answers:

… Pourvu que je sois bien payé, et que vous accommodiais vous-même toute cette manigance-lâ, je ne dirai mot, et je vous lairai faire, il ne vous en faudra pas davantage.

In the next scene with the Procureur du Châtelet Naquart shows his extreme indifference to the evil of luxury, while Blandineau regrets the better old times.

His wife has the gaming habit of the age:

J'ai joué, j'ai perdu, j'ai payé, je n'ai plus rien, je vais
rejouer, il m'en faut d'autre en cas que je perde.

and explains to her husband that it is by 'complaisance' that she lives in a cottage in the country with him and his tiresome family, 'J'aime à paraître, moi; c'est là ma folie.'

It is the waiting-maid, Lisette, who presently makes the situation clear. While Blandineau considers that his wife must be out of her mind, Lisette remarks that Madame is very wise, she takes her pleasure, and gives her husband all the trouble. 'Qui est le plus fou de vous deux?' Blandineau can make no real impression on the conditions round him. As one person after another comes on to the scene, all are moved by some spring of selfishness, but their selfishness reveals itself as different in different characters. Blandineau will not face the new standard of life, his wife will not give up her ambition, nor her sister her desire to be a great lady and to be worshipped as young and beautiful. Angélique is less unsympathetic because her faults are the faults of youth, and she is puzzled by life, while Lisette is clear-sighted; but the scheme by which Angélique gains her lover and M. Nacquart marries Blandineau's sister-in-law is a stage trick which would only be tiresome were it not that the result shows up the shallowness of La Greffière, who is to become Madame Nacquart, and of the other characters in the compact. Every one has been ready to take the easy path, and to give up love and honour for an income. It is thus a decadent society which Dancourt paints: the nobility has lost its glory, the bourgeoisie is losing its simplicity in imitating the decadent. As the chorus of peasants sing at the end of the play:

Chacun ressent la vérité
Du ridicule ici traité:
Tout est orgueil et vanité
Dans la plus simple bourgeoisie.
Du ridicule ici traité
Paris fournit mainte copie.

Even as early as 1700, when this play was first acted, there were many allusions to revolutionary feeling in the air. The high prices and expense of living are mentioned, together with an assurance that the world was in an epoch of revolution, while offices are bought by Madame Carmin and Madame Blandineau for their husbands.

The names Dancourt gives his characters show very little change from Molière. The suivante is generally Lisette, the ingénue Angélique, the farmer Lucas, the valets La Fleur, L'Olive, L'Epine, La Montagne, or sometimes Crispin or Jasmin. Many peasants come in, whose names are those of the peasants of light opera, and the dialect is (as in Molière) that of the surburbs of Paris, or the country closely adjoining the capital. There is then the traditional frame in Dancourt, but a realism of treatment which prepares us for the more bitter realism of the plays which come later in the century, and the type of which is the Turcaret of Le Sage. Piron and Gresset, Boissy and Fagan were writing comedies of society during this time of transition.

Le Sage, in Turcaret (1709), which is his most remarkable play, uses the method of realism which we have found in Dancourt, but succeeds in creating a type that is a worse satire on the bourgeois than Dancourt's characters had been. Turcaret has risen in the world, but brings up to the surface all the vices of the different strata of society with which he has mixed. And it is made clear that each section of society claims to rise in turn until the very lowest moves up. At the end of the play Frontin, the valet trompeur, rejoices at Turcaret's defeat, and believes that his own reign has begun. In the critique of the play Le Sage makes one character in the dialogue ask if Frontin's reign would not end, as Turcaret's did, in disaster. Asmodée, the demon, answers: 'Vous êtes trop pénétrant.' In the same dialogue one of the two interlocutors says that the picture of the times is too true to life: while a Spaniard is made to complain of the lack of intrigue in the play, for intrigue was still demanded in Spain at the time, though the French comedy of character did without it. From the point of view of public success, says the demon Asmodée, the piece is not interesting. It is realistic, and makes vice hateful, but it does not excite sympathy for the characters: 'faire aimer les personnages.'

Le Sage's criticism of his own play, then, shows that public opinion has swung round, partly through the influence of the drame, to demanding in comedy some characters with which the audience would be in sympathy. On the whole, however, Le Sage's plays take little part in this new development.

Le Sage (1667–1748), in his desire to live by the results of his literary work, expressed one change that was rapidly taking place in the eighteenth century. The literary patron who ensured the freedom of the artist from all the anxieties of life, and left him to exercise the highest and most delicate art in the most comfortable conditions, was already a thing of the past. In the future, art must appeal to the populace, and the artist must live upon the sale of his work. Not only then in the drama, but in other forms

of literature, the writer had henceforth the public in his mind. He had gained his liberty from a sometimes oppressive aristocratic patronage, but he had bartered it for the favour of the crowd. Le Sage felt the difficulty of the position. 'Je cherche à satisfaire le public,' he said, when reproached for his bitter attacks against actors in Gil Bias, 'mais le public doit permettre que je me satisfasse moimême.'

The country from which Le Sage drew his inspiration was Spain; both his prose-writing and his drama bear the marks of this influence. As a dramatist Le Sage used several genres. He wrote for the Théâtre de la Foire, and contributed largely to its temporary revival. He also wrote for the Opéra-comique, and did a great deal for this new genre of drama.

Even in the translations from the Spanish, which formed the material for all his earlier plays, Le Sage showed that he had the gift of style; and a style that could accommodate itself to the delineation of many different types of characters. Spanish liveliness seems to have communicated itself to him; he had the gift of beginning his scenes with appropriate and easy dialogue, and ending them on a note of expectation which linked the different scenes and acts together. The facts that the Spanish play included a well-marked intrigue, and also that the characters were individual, were not without their influence on Le Sage, but he had also the native French sense of form, and reduced the play No ay Amigo para Amigo from five acts to three before its representation in Paris in 1702. His first original play, La Tontine, was written in 1708, but was withdrawn by the author, and then produced again in 1732. It is extremely slight and imitative. Crispin rival de son maître, acted in 1707, marks a considerable advance on the earlier plays. The characters all bear the conventional names of comedy; but Crispin, in this play as in La Tontine, is the person of invention and skill, the valet upon whom his master wholly depends, and who takes a tone of equality with him from the first moment of the action. The satire on a society in which the valet could be taken for a gentleman is sufficiently marked, and the dishonesty of Crispin is equalled by the dishonesty of his young master, who does not pay him his wages and lets him live by his wits. The selfish hunting for money is expressed here as in Dancourt's plays, but instead of bare realism, Le Sage uses satire, and the whole treatment is more light and witty than in Dancourt. Valère is speaking of his attraction to Angélique, and the riches of her father:

Madame Oronte, the mother of Angélique, with her weak heedlessness, is well depicted. Though she is only moved by the emotion of the moment, and is subject to flattery, she believes herself to be guided by reason.

Effectivement, Lisette, je ne ressemble guère aux autres
femmes: c'est toujours la raison qui me détermine.

Le Sage treated vice like folly by making it ridiculous, but as there were few good traits in the play (except perhaps the honesty of Monsieur Orgon) upon which to dwell, the whole play had the effect of satire, and it was not under the prevailing influence of the drame. Turcaret (1709) was written at a bitter moment, when the war of the Spanish Succession was at its height. It is possible that the unconscientious juggling with money to serve private ends, which was one of the consequences of the condition of public finance, urged Le Sage to greater harshness in his attitude to all forms of making profit or pleasure out of money. Allusions to play occur all through the piece: and in the third act occurs the conversation with M. Rafle in which the latter details to Turcaret the cases of honest men who have been swindled and beggared. The tone of the whole play would suggest a later date in the eighteenth century, but in reality it comes early, though the note of bitterness forestalls the attitude of the people under Louis XVI, when they revolted again, and with effect, against the pressure of money exactions on the part of the government. Le Sage then reflects satirically in his plays the elements of danger in contemporary manners.