Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice
Identifieur interne : 000F93 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000F92; suivant : 000F94Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice
Auteurs : John GolderSource :
- Theatre Research International [ 0307-8833 ] ; 2008.
Abstract
There is precious little documentary evidence regarding the way in which Molière and his company went about preparing themselves for performance in seventeenth-century Paris. After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, mémoires submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's Registre, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.
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DOI: 10.1017/S0307883308003957
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After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, mémoires submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's Registre, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.</div></front></TEI><istex><corpusName>cambridge</corpusName><author><json:item><name>JOHN GOLDER</name></json:item></author><articleId><json:string>00395</json:string></articleId><arkIstex>ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8</arkIstex><language><json:string>eng</json:string></language><originalGenre><json:string>research-article</json:string></originalGenre><abstract>There is precious little documentary evidence regarding the way in which Molière and his company went about preparing themselves for performance in seventeenth-century Paris. After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, mémoires submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's Registre, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.</abstract><qualityIndicators><score>8.872</score><pdfWordCount>6695</pdfWordCount><pdfCharCount>38318</pdfCharCount><pdfVersion>1.3</pdfVersion><pdfPageCount>13</pdfPageCount><pdfPageSize>493.228 x 700.157 pts</pdfPageSize><refBibsNative>true</refBibsNative><abstractWordCount>156</abstractWordCount><abstractCharCount>1004</abstractCharCount><keywordCount>0</keywordCount></qualityIndicators><title>Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</title><pii><json:string>S0307883308003957</json:string></pii><genre><json:string>research-article</json:string></genre><host><title>Theatre Research International</title><language><json:string>unknown</json:string></language><issn><json:string>0307-8833</json:string></issn><eissn><json:string>1474-0672</json:string></eissn><publisherId><json:string>TRI</json:string></publisherId><volume>33</volume><issue>3</issue><pages><first>250</first><last>262</last><total>13</total></pages><genre><json:string>journal</json:string></genre></host><ark><json:string>ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8</json:string></ark><categories><inist><json:string>1 - sciences humaines et sociales</json:string></inist></categories><publicationDate>2008</publicationDate><copyrightDate>2008</copyrightDate><doi><json:string>10.1017/S0307883308003957</json:string></doi><id>30367BAF4BAF0FA7F45E9F2F73AC5DB6721F21FB</id><score>1</score><fulltext><json:item><extension>pdf</extension><original>true</original><mimetype>application/pdf</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8/fulltext.pdf</uri></json:item><json:item><extension>zip</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/zip</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8/bundle.zip</uri></json:item><istex:fulltextTEI uri="https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8/fulltext.tei"><teiHeader><fileDesc><titleStmt><title level="a">Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</title></titleStmt><publicationStmt><authority>ISTEX</authority><publisher scheme="https://scientific-publisher.data.istex.fr">Cambridge University Press</publisher><pubPlace>Cambridge, UK</pubPlace><availability><licence><p>Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2008</p></licence><p scheme="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-G3RCRD03-V">cambridge</p></availability><date>2008</date></publicationStmt><notesStmt><note type="research-article" scheme="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</note><note type="journal" scheme="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</note></notesStmt><sourceDesc><biblStruct type="inbook"><analytic><title level="a">Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</title><author xml:id="author-0000"><persName><forename type="first">JOHN</forename><surname>GOLDER</surname></persName><note type="biography">john golder is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales. His research centres on theatre architecture and performance practice in pre-Revolutionary France, and he is currently working on an architectural history of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, France's first public playhouse, and a study of Comédie-Française rehearsal practice in the late eighteenth century. His major publications include Shakespeare for the Age of Reason: The Earliest Stage Adaptations of Jean-Francois Ducis, 1769–1792 (Voltaire Foundation, 1992), French Theatre in the Neo-classical Age (CUP, 1997), of which he was an associate editor, and O Brave New World: Two Centuries of Shakespeare on the Australian Stage (Currency Press, 2001), which he co-edited. He also edits a series of quarterly essays on the performing arts entitled Platform Papers, published by Currency House, Sydney.</note><affiliation>john golder is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales. His research centres on theatre architecture and performance practice in pre-Revolutionary France, and he is currently working on an architectural history of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, France's first public playhouse, and a study of Comédie-Française rehearsal practice in the late eighteenth century. His major publications include Shakespeare for the Age of Reason: The Earliest Stage Adaptations of Jean-Francois Ducis, 1769–1792 (Voltaire Foundation, 1992), French Theatre in the Neo-classical Age (CUP, 1997), of which he was an associate editor, and O Brave New World: Two Centuries of Shakespeare on the Australian Stage (Currency Press, 2001), which he co-edited. He also edits a series of quarterly essays on the performing arts entitled Platform Papers, published by Currency House, Sydney.</affiliation></author><idno type="istex">30367BAF4BAF0FA7F45E9F2F73AC5DB6721F21FB</idno><idno type="ark">ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8</idno><idno type="DOI">10.1017/S0307883308003957</idno><idno type="PII">S0307883308003957</idno><idno type="article-id">00395</idno></analytic><monogr><title level="j">Theatre Research International</title><title level="j" type="abbrev">Theatre Research International</title><idno type="pISSN">0307-8833</idno><idno type="eISSN">1474-0672</idno><idno type="publisher-id">TRI</idno><imprint><publisher>Cambridge University Press</publisher><pubPlace>Cambridge, UK</pubPlace><date type="published" when="2008"></date><biblScope unit="volume">33</biblScope><biblScope unit="issue">3</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" from="250">250</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" to="262">262</biblScope></imprint></monogr></biblStruct></sourceDesc></fileDesc><profileDesc><creation><date>2008</date></creation><langUsage><language ident="en">en</language></langUsage><abstract style="normal"><p>There is precious little documentary evidence regarding the way in which Molière and his company went about preparing themselves for performance in seventeenth-century Paris. After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, mémoires submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's Registre, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.</p></abstract></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2008">Published</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><extension>txt</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8/fulltext.txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus cambridge not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.2 20060430//EN" URI="journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article dtd-version="2.2" article-type="research-article"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">TRI</journal-id><journal-title>Theatre Research International</journal-title><abbrev-journal-title>Theatre Research International</abbrev-journal-title><issn pub-type="ppub">0307-8833</issn><issn pub-type="epub">1474-0672</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Cambridge University Press</publisher-name><publisher-loc>Cambridge, UK</publisher-loc></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1017/S0307883308003957</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="pii">S0307883308003957</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">00395</article-id><title-group><article-title>Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</article-title><alt-title alt-title-type="left-running"><sc>golder</sc> <italic>Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</italic></alt-title><alt-title alt-title-type="right-running"><sc>golder</sc> <italic>Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</italic></alt-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author"><name><surname>GOLDER</surname><given-names>JOHN</given-names></name><bio><p><sc>john golder</sc> is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales. His research centres on theatre architecture and performance practice in pre-Revolutionary France, and he is currently working on an architectural history of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, France's first public playhouse, and a study of Comédie-Française rehearsal practice in the late eighteenth century. His major publications include <italic>Shakespeare for the Age of Reason: The Earliest Stage Adaptations of Jean-Francois Ducis, 1769–1792</italic> (Voltaire Foundation, 1992), <italic>French Theatre in the Neo-classical Age</italic> (CUP, 1997), of which he was an associate editor, and <italic>O Brave New World: Two Centuries of Shakespeare on the Australian Stage</italic> (Currency Press, 2001), which he co-edited. He also edits a series of quarterly essays on the performing arts entitled <italic>Platform Papers</italic>, published by Currency House, Sydney.</p></bio></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="epub-ppub"><month>10</month><year>2008</year></pub-date><volume>33</volume><issue>3</issue><issue-title>Genetics of Performance</issue-title><fpage>250</fpage><lpage>262</lpage><permissions><copyright-statement>Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2008</copyright-statement><copyright-year>2008</copyright-year><copyright-holder>International Federation for Theatre Research</copyright-holder></permissions><abstract abstract-type="normal"><p>There is precious little documentary evidence regarding the way in which Molière and his company went about preparing themselves for performance in seventeenth-century Paris. After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic>, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, <italic>mémoires</italic> submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's <italic>Registre</italic>, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.</p></abstract><counts><page-count count="13"></page-count></counts><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta><meta-name>pdf</meta-name><meta-value>S0307883308003957a.pdf</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta><meta-name>issue-eds</meta-name><meta-value>Josette Féral</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta><meta-name>displayText</meta-name><meta-value>Special Issue</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta><meta-name>dispart</meta-name><meta-value>Articles</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front><body><sec id="sec1"><title></title><p>In the only monograph to date devoted exclusively to a historical study of rehearsal practice, Tiffany Stern notes that the Duke of Buckingham's 1664 rehearsal-format play, <italic>The Rehearsal</italic>, was ‘a parody of heroic drama, not of rehearsal practice’.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn1"><sup>1</sup></xref> It might be similarly said that Molière's rehearsal play, <italic>L'Impromptu de Versailles</italic> (1663), was conceived as a polemical grenade in a war of words provoked by hostile reactions to his <italic>L'École des femmes</italic>, and not as a documentary study of contemporary rehearsal practice. While it appears to carry ‘complete conviction’ as a ‘portrait of Molière and his troupe in action’,<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn2"><sup>2</sup></xref> we must nonetheless acknowledge that the role Molière creates for himself is self-serving, and designed primarily for a polemical purpose. For example, he interrupts Brécourt in mid-rehearsal – the latter is saying that ‘rien ne lui [à Molière] donnait du déplaisir comme d'être accusé de regarder quelqu'un dans les portraits qu'il fait’ [nothing displeased him [Molière] more than being accused of targeting particular individuals in the portraits he paints] – and gives him an extended line reading. It was normal practice for seventeenth-century authors to attend rehearsals and, in assuming a directorial function, to ‘releve[r] le comédien, . . . s'il apporte plus ou moins de chaleur qu'il n'est à propos dans les passions qui en demandent’ [take the actor up sharply, . . . if he puts either too much more or less heat than is appropriate into the passions he is portraying].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn3"><sup>3</sup></xref> Yet in this instance Molière is taking over from Brécourt in order to be able to answer his critics in his own voice. Thus, while I am hardly suggesting that <italic>L'Impromptu</italic> in no way reflects Molière's ‘actual’ rehearsal practice, it must be remembered that it presents a reality that is both constructed and carefully selective. Molière is under no obligation to offer us ‘the whole picture’ and we should beware of taking everything in the play at face value. It is for this reason that the following discussion of late seventeenth-century rehearsal practice in France will rely heavily on more impersonal sources such as La Grange's famous <italic>Registre</italic>.</p><p>Public performance was less extensively discussed in premodern France than it is today for the simple reason that premodern France held the play on the stage in much lower regard than the play on the page. And evidence of the more private activity that is rehearsal in pre-Revolutionary France has all but disappeared from the records. There are mentions, passing references to it, but no formal accounts or discussions of it. So, to discover what rehearsal might have been and to speculate on its relation to public performance, we must operate like Polonius, ‘by indirection’. While we may regard it as self-evident that the way in which premodern actors rehearsed and prepared themselves affected the way in which premodern audiences watched them, we are obliged to deduce what we can about actual rehearsal practice from such details of its circumstances, its attendant factors, as we can glean from documents such as <italic>L'Impromptu de Versailles</italic> or La Grange's celebrated <italic>Registre</italic>.</p><p>In the main, La Grange's <italic>Registre</italic> is a dispassionate record of those company events that had implications for actor and company finances. It is not about rehearsal. Indeed, at first glance it might lead one to believe that Molière had brought his considerable output before audiences without the benefit of any rehearsal at all. La Grange's purpose is so irrelevant to the troupe's <italic>processus de création</italic> that the words <italic>répétition/s</italic> and <italic>préparation/s</italic> are not even indexed by the editors of the 1947 facsimile edition.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn4"><sup>4</sup></xref> In fact, <italic>répétition</italic> occurs thirteen times, including singular and plural forms, and <italic>préparation</italic> appears five times. It is true that, in a 379-page manuscript covering thirty years of performances, eighteen references are precious few. On the pages covering Molière's fourteen-year career in Paris there are even fewer appearances, totaling a mere four <italic>répétition/s</italic> and three <italic>préparation/s</italic>. Nonetheless, it is with these that we begin.</p><p>The first thing to note is that for La Grange the terms <italic>préparation</italic> and <italic>répétition</italic> are not synonymous. On 26 February 1675 he writes unambiguously, ‘On a cessé de jouer pour les répétitions et préparations de [Thomas Corneille and Donneau de Visé's machine-play] <italic>Circé</italic>’ [We stopped playing for the rehearsals and preparations of . . . <italic>Circé</italic>]. Itemizing the company's expenditures for ‘les préparations de <italic>Psyché</italic>’,<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn5"><sup>5</sup></xref> he lists ‘charpenterie, menuiserie, bois, serrurerie, peintures, toiles, cordages, contrepoids, machines, utensiles’ [carpentry, joinery, timber, metal working, painting, canvases, cordage, counterweights, machines, properties].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn6"><sup>6</sup></xref> In other words, <italic>préparation</italic> refers to preparatory work, in which the focus is on technical matters such as settings and machinery, whereas <italic>répétition</italic> is an activity involving actors, singers and dancers, though perhaps not necessarily exclusively. This distinction is borne out by notes he makes regarding <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic>. In the margin of the entry for Tuesday 22 November 1672 he writes, ‘On a ici commencé les préparations du <italic>Malade imaginaire</italic>.’ [Here we began preparations for <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic>.] Against the date of Tuesday 7 February 1673 he writes, ‘Mardi 7ème Répétition’ [Tuesday 7th. Rehearsal].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn7"><sup>7</sup></xref> Scheduled just three days prior to opening night, this is surely a dress rehearsal.</p><p>It is also significant that La Grange uses <italic>répétition</italic> in the singular here – indeed, that he rarely uses the plural. An entry in his colleague André Hubert's <italic>registre</italic>, referring to the same Tuesday rehearsal, confirms that La Grange is referring to a full-company rehearsal, what we would call a dress rehearsal: ‘On n'a point joué mardi à cause de la répétition générale de la pièce’ [We gave no performance on Tuesday because of the ‘general rehearsal’ of the play].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn8"><sup>8</sup></xref> The point is that, except on two occasions when he indicates that the rehearsal period for a particular production has begun, La Grange only records final, dress rehearsals. Furthermore – and this is surely not accidental – he invariably refers only to productions of works with music and ballet and/or machines, and never to productions of ‘straight’ plays. The plays he mentions are <italic>Psyché</italic> (1671 and 1684), <italic>Circé</italic> (1674), <italic>L'Inconnu</italic> (1675), <italic>Le Triomphe des dames</italic> (1676), <italic>La Devineresse</italic> (1679), <italic>Andromède</italic> (1682) and <italic>La Toison d'or</italic> (1683). On Friday 15 November 1675, for example, he notes that the company has ‘[c]essé p[ou]r la répétition de <italic>L'Inconnu</italic>’ [stopped for the rehearsal of <italic>L'Inconnu</italic>], a machine-play by De Visé and Thomas Corneille, ‘mêlée de danses et de musique’ [interspersed with music and dance], which premiered two days later, on Sunday 17 November.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn9"><sup>9</sup></xref> In exactly the same way, four seasons later, on Friday 17 November 1679, he notes that ‘[o]n ne joua point à cause de la répétition de <italic>La Devineresse</italic>’ [we did not perform because of the rehearsal of <italic>La Devineresse</italic>], another joint effort by the same authors, which opened two days later.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn10"><sup>10</sup></xref> It goes without saying that, on occasion, the last-minute coordination of technical machinery with the human contribution of musicians, singers and dancers would likely necessitate more than one dress rehearsal. This is illustrated in a July 1683 entry where La Grange records three for a revival of one of Pierre Corneille's elaborately spectacular <italic>pièces à machines</italic>:
<list list-type="simple"><list-item><p><inline-graphic xlink:href="S0307883308003957_eqnU1"></inline-graphic></p></list-item></list><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn11"><sup>11</sup></xref>
There are also two ‘general rehearsals’ recorded in October of the following year for the revival of a similarly complex machine-play by Molière, Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault:
<list list-type="simple"><list-item><p><inline-graphic xlink:href="S0307883308003957_eqnU2"></inline-graphic></p></list-item></list><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn12"><sup>12</sup></xref>
However simple its dramatic structure, it stretches the imagination today to believe that in 1661 the original Vaux-le-Vicomte production of a <italic>ballet à entrées</italic> such as <italic>Les Fâcheux</italic> – a complex collaboration involving Molière (actor–dramatist), Pierre Beauchamps (ballet and music), Charles Le Brun (scene painting) and Giacomo Torelli (set design and stage machinery) – might have been ‘conçue, faite, apprise et représentée en quinze jours’ [conceived, written, learnt and performed in a fortnight].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn13"><sup>13</sup></xref> And that productions of such lavish technical complexity as <italic>Circé</italic> or <italic>Psyché</italic> might have taken, from conception to execution, no more than nineteen and forty-five days respectively simply beggars our belief.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn14"><sup>14</sup></xref> Extant documents concerning Molière's <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic> shed a certain amount of light on what the organization of an expensive <italic>comédie-ballet</italic>, with its ‘prologue et . . . intermèdes remplis de danses, musique et ustensiles’ [prologue and . . . interludes filled with dance, music and effects], might have involved.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn15"><sup>15</sup></xref> Before turning our attention to them, however, it is important to acknowledge that neither these documents nor any company <italic>registres</italic> will cast any light on the work the actor did in private, away from the playhouse.</p><p>In Act I of <italic>A Midsummer Night's Dream</italic>, Shakespeare's Peter Quince hands his fellow amateurs the parts they are to play in <italic>Pyramus and Thisby</italic>, ‘entreats’ them to ‘con them’ and arranges to meet them the following night in order to rehearse. In other words, there is to be a period of ‘conning’, or study – which Snug, being ‘slow of study’, hopes will be lengthy – followed by a rehearsal. In France, as in England, the actors' preparation fell into two distinct phases: <italic>étude</italic>/study, which the actor undertook alone, and <italic>répétition</italic>/rehearsal, which was a group activity. As Samuel Chappuzeau says, ‘[Q]uand [les comédiens] se sentent fermes dans leur étude, ils s'assemblent pour la première répétition’ [When the actors feel that their parts are fixed in their memories, they come together to rehearse for the first time as a group].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn16"><sup>16</sup></xref> La Grange and his colleagues in <italic>L'Impromptu de Versailles</italic> have already been given their parts, but, having had inadequate time for study and being far from ‘fermes’, they can see little point in holding a rehearsal:
<list list-type="simple"><list-item><p><inline-graphic xlink:href="S0307883308003957_eqnU3"></inline-graphic></p></list-item></list>
Brécourt and Mlles Du Parc, De Brie and Béjart seem, like La Grange, more terrified of not knowing their lines and the consequent embarrassment of a ‘manquement de mémoire’ [lapse of memory] than of anything else. Though there was more to private study than memorizing lines, Molière may not have thought it easily turned into interesting theatre. For whatever reason, in <italic>L'Impromptu</italic> it is merely implied: by offering no guidance to La Grange regarding the role for which he is cast, nor to Mlles Molière and Du Parc, who are to re-create characters they have played in previous productions (sc. i), he is saying that these actors can be trusted to develop their own characters. This is work that would be part of a seventeenth-century actor's preliminary study.</p><p>Of course, the length of time a play would have been <italic>à l'étude</italic> varied according to its length, its complexity and the urgency with which the production was required. ‘[S]ans besoin les comédiens ne se pressent point’, writes Chappuzeau. He adds, however, that ‘si le temps presse, . . . une grande pièce peut être sue au bout de huit jours’ [Unless they need to, the actors do not hurry. . . . If time is short, . . . a full-length play can be learnt in eight days], and for actors with ‘heureuses mémoires[,] . . . un rôle, quelque fort qu'il soit, ne coûte que trois matinées’ [good memories . . . a part, however long, will only take three mornings [to learn]].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn17"><sup>17</sup></xref> It is not unlikely that Molière had finished writing <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic> by the early autumn of 1672 – the production had, after all, been announced in August that year<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn18"><sup>18</sup></xref> – and that he had had the individual parts copied out and distributed to the actors. In this case an early study would be preferable, as another new comedy, De Visé's <italic>Les Maris infidèles</italic>, was scheduled to open in January 1673, and the actors would soon have more characters to study and lines to learn. Based on the evidence provided by La Grange and by <italic>mémoires</italic> submitted by Jeanne Magoullet (for lighting), Jean Crosnier (heating ‘pour les danseurs’ [for the [male] dancers]) and La Forêt (bread, wine and candles ‘pour les demoiselles de la musique’ [for the female dancers]), we can speculate on what followed: the complex logistical operation that was the rehearsal schedule for Molière's last play.</p><p>Let us suppose that, as autumn 1672 turned into winter and a second revival of the spectacular <italic>Psyché</italic> settled profitably into the Palais-Royal schedule,<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn19"><sup>19</sup></xref> playing uninterruptedly on Friday, Sunday and Tuesday (the so-called <italic>jours ordinaires</italic>) of each week, technical preparations for <italic>Le Malade</italic> were about to begin. As we have seen, they commenced on 22 November, almost twelve weeks before the opening night (10 February 1673), and they consisted, doubtless, of the design and construction of the play's three settings and several dozen costumes. Under the direction of Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Pierre Beauchamps, composer and choreographer respectively, the all-male dancers – La Grange and the suppliers refer only to ‘danseur/s’<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn20"><sup>20</sup></xref> – were scheduled to rehearse every day from 19 December until the opening (except for Christmas Day, and Thursday 5 January and Friday 27 January 1673), for a total of fifty days. According to Crosnier's heating bill, the daily rehearsal ran from eight o'clock in the morning until two o'clock in the afternoon, although, in probability, the dancers did not begin until the hall had warmed up.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn21"><sup>21</sup></xref> December and January were arguably the coldest months of the year. Why rehearsals should have finished at two o'clock is more easily understood: three times a week until 22 January, the dancers would have needed to rest prior to ‘going on’ again three hours later in <italic>Psyché</italic>.</p><p>Dance rehearsals were held on fifty different days. On fourteen days, from 22 December, rehearsals were also scheduled for the production's four female singers (actually, three females and one male <italic>en travesti</italic>). And on fifteen days, from 16 January onwards, rehearsals were scheduled for the actors. John S. Powell has feasibly suggested that ‘the extraordinary amount of attention devoted to the ballets’ might imply a particularly complex choreography by Beauchamps.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn22"><sup>22</sup></xref> Certainly, a total of fifty dance rehearsals is surprisingly high, even more so if the actors, dancers and singers worked independently. The extent to which this was the case, or to which individual rehearsals involved small or large groups, is something the documents do not indicate. Crosnier's bill alone gives an indication of the time of day at which players were called. While mornings were obviously the most suitable time, it is by no means impossible that rehearsals were scheduled after as well as before the day's performance, as would be the case on 5 February 1728, when Adrienne Lecouvreur complained that she had three rehearsals, two during the day and one after <italic>Andromaque</italic>, in which she had a role.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn23"><sup>23</sup></xref></p><p>In view of the <italic>comédie-ballet</italic>'s very strong musical component, it is unfortunate that no details of orchestral rehearsals have come down to us, nor a companion bill to La Forêt's, that details bread and wine distribution and rehearsal arrangements for male singers. Only in La Grange's <italic>Registre</italic> do we find, quite independent of the company actors who are required to sing, a list of ‘douze violons . . ., douze danseurs . . ., 3 symphonistes, 7 musiciens et musiciennes’ [twelve violinists . . . twelve male dancers . . . 3 orchestral players, 7 singers, male and female]. Hired at a per-performance rate, these additions all contributed to the production's hefty <italic>frais journaliers</italic> [daily expenses].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn24"><sup>24</sup></xref></p><p>Crosnier's marginal note of ‘grandes répétitions’ against the date of 23 January is not easily interpreted.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn25"><sup>25</sup></xref> While it suggests that, eighteen days out from the opening night, rehearsals were of larger scale and more intensive – perhaps integrating the contributions hitherto under the discrete control of Molière, Charpentier and Beauchamps – one hesitates to believe it is synonymous with Hubert's ‘répétition générale’. Even by twenty-first-century standards, nearly three full weeks of final dress rehearsals seem excessive. Apart from this, it was not until the full company rehearsal on 7 February that Jeanne Magoullet supplied thirty-two pounds-weight of candles. At earlier rehearsals, for which she delivered only two pounds, actors must have worked in a gloom close to Stygian.</p><p>While it is gratifying to have the evidence of suppliers' bills regarding <italic>Le Malade</italic> with which to flesh out La Grange's unembellished statements of economic fact, as we have seen, such documentation is far from comprehensive and raises as many questions as it answers. For example, since no document gives any indication of location, where are we to imagine all these rehearsals taking place? Are we to take it for granted that Molière invariably used the stage of the Palais-Royal?<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn26"><sup>26</sup></xref> This would surely have been the case for the <italic>répétition générale</italic> held on Tuesday 7 February. As Chappuzeau insists, ‘[L]a dernière répétition doit être juste comme lorsqu'on la [la pièce] veut représenter’ [The final rehearsal should be exactly the same as a performance].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn27"><sup>27</sup></xref> We can probably be confident that he used the same stage on the other <italic>jours ordinaires</italic>, when he had right of access, at least for some of the later <italic>grandes répétitions</italic>. But where did he work on the days allotted to the Italian company with whom he shared occupancy of the theatre? What reciprocal sharing arrangements did the two troupes have? How did two independent troupes manage the practicalities of alternating performance days? It is unthinkable that they had no access to other spaces in the Palais-Royal for the purpose of rehearsal. The fact is that we simply have no evidence of these matters.</p><p>More surprising than this is the fact that we seem to have no unequivocal evidence that the Italians were actually resident in Paris and playing regularly during the 1672–3 season. It is perfectly understandable that La Grange rarely mentions the Italians (and then only for financial reasons): they were an independent organization whose activities only infrequently impinged upon those of Molière's company. However, there is, I believe, good reason to entertain the view that they <italic>were</italic> in fact operational at the Palais-Royal between April 1671 (when they contributed half the refurbishment costs of the theatre<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn28"><sup>28</sup></xref>) and April 1673 (when they set off on a five-month trip to England<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn29"><sup>29</sup></xref>). First, we have no evidence that they were <italic>not</italic> operational.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn30"><sup>30</sup></xref> Second, from November through to January Molière adhered strictly to his allotted Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Had the theatre been available to him on the intervening days, one might reasonably expect him to have sought to profit from the Italians' absence – as, indeed, his company would in September 1678 and from August to October 1679, while the Italians were entertaining the court at Fontainebleau.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn31"><sup>31</sup></xref> Moreover, one might also expect him to have scheduled the final rehearsal of <italic>Le Malade</italic> on the afternoon immediately preceding the day of the opening, as the Comédiens français would when they revived the machine-plays <italic>Andromède</italic> (July 1682), <italic>La Toison d'or</italic> (July 1683) and <italic>Psyché</italic> (October 1684).<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn32"><sup>32</sup></xref> That he made neither of these arrangements suggests that he did not have the theatre to himself.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn33"><sup>33</sup></xref></p><p>Nor was <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic> the only play that Molière's company had in rehearsal in January 1673: only seventeen days before <italic>Le Malade</italic>, Donneau de Visé's <italic>Les Maris infidèles</italic> opened for what proved to be a miserably short run. The box-office earnings fell off so quickly that after only four performances it was replaced by <italic>Les Femmes savantes</italic> for two performances prior to the final rehearsal of <italic>Le Malade</italic>.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn34"><sup>34</sup></xref> Not since November 1662, when Molière opened Boyer's <italic>Tonnaxare</italic> a fortnight after De Prade's <italic>Arsace</italic>, had two premieres followed so hard one upon another at the Palais-Royal.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn35"><sup>35</sup></xref> Clearly, De Visé's comedy and Molière's must have been in rehearsal concurrently and using some, if not all, of the same actors. In view of the fact that, of the two works, Molière's demanded the most energy, commitment and, in all likelihood, time, we may wonder just what short shrift was given to De Visé's work.</p><p>It was an unusual occurrence for Molière's actors to be rehearsing two new plays at the same time. There had not been such pressure of work since November 1667, when De Visé's <italic>Délie</italic>, his <italic>L'Embarras de Godard</italic> and La Thorillière's <italic>Cléopâtre</italic> were concurrently <italic>à l'étude</italic>. In fact, from the point of view of the company as a whole, the 1672–3 season had a number of unusual features – aside from the fact that it was the last in which they would operate as a discrete and independent unit. The revival production of <italic>Psyché</italic> ran for an extraordinary thirty-one performances, only seven short of its opening Palais-Royal run and more than any previous production had achieved, with the exception of <italic>L'Ecole des femmes</italic> and <italic>Les Fâcheux</italic>. Furthermore, the company was only called upon to give performances for the court on three occasions, twice at Versailles for Louis and once at St Cloud for Monsieur, markedly fewer command performances than in previous seasons.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn36"><sup>36</sup></xref> Moreover, from the point of view of Molière himself the season was, of course, unique. Apart from his untimely death, the season differs in that it is the only one in which thirty-one of his performances were in minor roles. The role of Zéphire in <italic>Psyché</italic>, a mere two scenes long, is so small that he speaks a mere forty-seven lines before flying off in a machine. The inclusion of <italic>Psyché</italic> in this season's programme somewhat distorts the fact that over the previous seasons Molière had become increasingly indispensable.</p><p>However demanding one considers Molière's final season to have been for his company, in terms of the number of performances given it was markedly less onerous than others, such as the 1668–9 season, when they gave 192 individual performances, 136 of which were components of double bills.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn37"><sup>37</sup></xref> In addition, I estimate they gave seventeen performances for the court or other private patrons.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn38"><sup>38</sup></xref> Their repertory comprised twenty-six plays, of which thirteen were written by Molière. If we imagine that Molière played in each and every one of these performances, he would have given 209 performances. Without wishing to underestimate the workload of the company, or to belittle the achievement of their leader – whose offstage roles as dramatist, company manager, director and ambassador at court were in addition to, and as significant as, any he played onstage – we should nonetheless bear certain factors in mind when seeking to understand the circumstances of seventeenth-century rehearsal practice. First, like those of the rival Hôtel de Bourgogne and Marais theatres, Molière's troupe only played on three nonconsecutive days each week. Second, double bills were very much the exception to the rule: the sixty-eight given in 1668–9 are more than three times as many as the average between 1668 and 1673. Third, four new plays – including the five-act <italic>Tartuffe</italic> – were introduced into the repertory, but at the relatively leisurely rate of one every twelve weeks or so. And fourth, as the case of <italic>Psyché</italic> has already demonstrated, extended runs of financially lucrative productions were by no means uncommon. <italic>Tartuffe</italic> may be the best example to cite. It held the Palais-Royal stage exclusively for twenty-eight performances from 5 February 1669 until the end of the season. It is not the only one, however. Subligny's <italic>La Critique d'Andromaque</italic> ran, as half of a double bill, for sixteen consecutive performances.</p><p>While readily acknowledging that repeated, and especially consecutive, performances of a text serve to drive an actor's lines into his/her memory, modern actors would still blench at the prospect of having to retain and keep fresh as many as twenty-six roles in a single season – a task made all the more difficult if, as was the case for Molière's actors in the 1668–9 season, sixteen of them were never performed above six times. They would no doubt concur with Georges de Scudéry, who in the 1630s considered line-retention – ‘la force de la mémoire, pour apprendre [les vers] promptement, <italic>et les retenir après toujours</italic>’ [a powerful memory for learning [lines] quickly and then retaining them for ever] – an essential attribute of the professional actor.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn39"><sup>39</sup></xref></p><p>But if modern actors are likely to pale at the workload of their late seventeenth-century counterparts, they would faint away at that of Comédie-Française actors a century later. To throw Molière's situation into some relief, let us briefly consider the workload of his eighteenth-century counterpart, Pierre-Louis du Bus, known as Préville. In the 1775–6 season – which was in no way an exceptional season – the Comédiens français gave 602 individual performances, two per day in double-bills, before their Paris audiences on each of 302 playing days.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn40"><sup>40</sup></xref> Moreover, they played on every day of the week, never playing the same texts on consecutive days. It was an alternating daily repertory of the most intense kind. In addition, they gave forty-seven court performances at either Versailles or Fontainebleau. The company repertory that season comprised an astonishing 169 different plays, seven of them new.</p><p>While there was a significant difference of size between Molière's company and that in which Préville played – the Comédie-Française of the 1770s had more than twice the membership of the Palais-Royal troupe of 1672 – the effect this had on individual responsibilities was negligible. For example, in the 1775–6 season Préville, who was fifty-three years old and the leading comic actor of the age, played ninety-two different roles in eighty-six different plays. These were mostly major roles such as Beaumarchais's Barbier de Séville, Lesage's Turcaret and many of Molière's own great anti-heroes. The following season he played eighty-eight roles in eighty-two plays and in the 1777–8 season ninety roles in ninety plays. Should these figures be thought at all untypical, it should be noted that other actors, leading and secondary, carried workloads no less punishing. François-René Molé, France's first Hamlet, played sixty-nine different roles in sixty-eight plays, and company mainstay Etienne Dauberval performed ninety-eight roles in ninety-two plays.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn41"><sup>41</sup></xref></p><p>In the light of such statistics, it comes as no surprise to read Grimod de La Reynière's reproach: ‘[S]ouvent le matin même la pièce est à peine sue; en sorte que cette première représentation n'est qu'une dernière répétition, tandis que ce devrait être le contraire’ [Often, on the morning [of a premiere] the text has barely been learnt; with the result that the first performance is no more than a last rehearsal, whereas it ought to be the opposite]. Far more astonishing is his next paragraph:
<disp-quote><p>Il faut cependant rendre justice aux Comédiens français, ce n'est pas à eux que ces reproches s'adressent. Ils ont à soutenir la réputation de cet ensemble admirable, [. . .]. Cet ensemble n'a jamais mieux paru que lors des représentations du <italic>Mariage de Figaro</italic>, l'ouvrage le plus parfaitement joué que l'on ait vu à la Comédie-Française; mais aussi l'on se rappelle que l'auteur en fit <italic>cinquante</italic> répétitions.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn42"><sup>42</sup></xref></p><p>[But credit must be given to the actors of the Comédie-Française, for it is not at them that the present criticisms are directed. They have an enviable reputation for ensemble-playing to uphold. [. . .] This unity was never more in evidence than in their production of <italic>Le Mariage de Figaro</italic>, the most perfectly performed ever seen at the Comédie-Française; but at the same time it should be remembered that the author did hold fifty rehearsals of it.]</p></disp-quote>
Beaumarchais was not the only dramatist to urge the need for repeated rehearsals. When an Italian production of <italic>Le Père de famille</italic> had benefited from an extended rehearsal period, Diderot asked,
<disp-quote><p>Et quand imaginez-vous que la troupe commence à jouer, à s'entendre, à s'acheminer vers le point de perfection qu'il exige? C'est lorsque les acteurs sont épuisés de la fatigue de ces répétitions multipliées, ce que nous appelons blasés. De cet instant les progrès sont surprenants, chacun s'identifie avec son personnage.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn43"><sup>43</sup></xref></p><p>[And when do you think the company really starts to act, to understand one another, to move towards that point of perfection that he [the director] insists upon? It is when the actors are exhausted by constant and repeated rehearsal and have stopped thinking about what they are doing. From this moment on, their progress is astonishing: each of them identifies with his/her character.]</p></disp-quote>
While this kind of preparation might occasionally have been possible – for example, in the winter of 1672–3, when <italic>Psyché</italic>'s entended tenure of the Palais-Royal stage enabled Molière to devote uninterrupted time to <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic> – it is unimaginable that it was regular practice in the 1770s. A more realistic, albeit barely adequate, schedule is implied by the following letter by Molé:
<disp-quote><p>Je pourrais jouer <italic>Le Bienfait anonyme</italic> jeudi, mais, ne pouvant pas répéter demain [i.e. Tuesday], nous n'aurions des répétitions que mercredi et cela ne suffirait pas. Ne pourrait-on pas jouer <italic>Le Mariage</italic> [<italic>de Figaro</italic>] vendredi et samedi <italic>Le Bienfait</italic>, alors, on pourrait répéter mercredi, jeudi et vendredi; à la rigueur on pourrait trouver que trois répétitions sont trop pour une pièce déjà jouée . . . [Mais] il y a dedans des rôles nouveaux, des acteurs nouveaux, tout cela semble exiger à peu près le soin qu'on met à une nouveauté.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn44"><sup>44</sup></xref></p><p>[I could play <italic>Le Bienfait anonyme</italic> on Thursday, but, not being able to rehearse tomorrow [i.e. Tuesday], we could only have [company] rehearsals on Wednesday, and that would not be enough. Couldn't we play <italic>Le Mariage [de Figaro]</italic> on Friday and <italic>Le Bienfait</italic> on Saturday? That way we could hold our [company] rehearsals on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We might find that three rehearsals are too many for a play we have already put on . . . [But] some new roles have been added and there are some new actors – all of which would seem to demand almost as much care as we take over a new play.]</p></disp-quote></p><p>When Beaumarchais himself congratulates the Comédiens français for ‘le soin [avec lequel ils] se consultent et varient leurs positions théâtrales aux répétitions, jusqu'à ce qu'ils aient rencontré les plus favorables, qui sont alors consacrés . . . dans le manuscrit déposé à leur bibliothèque’ [the trouble they take at rehearsals to discuss things with one another and keep changing their positions on stage until they have found the most appropriate, which are then set down . . . in the manuscript lodged in their library],<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn45"><sup>45</sup></xref> and when an English visitor to the Comédie-Française makes special note of the fact that ‘the French are far beyond [the English] in the art of grouping their characters on the stage. In their processions, in their position even in a dialogue, a considerable attention is paid to that particular, and with great effect’,<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn46"><sup>46</sup></xref> they presumably have in mind the ‘care’ lavished on productions such as <italic>Le Mariage de Figaro</italic> or <italic>Le Malade imaginaire</italic>, which make exceptional demands on resources. Indeed, there is ample evidence in the many contemporary <italic>livres de souffleur</italic> [prompt-books] conserved in the Archives of the Comédie-Française that eighteenth-century actors relied to a considerable extent on established practice as their guide in determining stage positions. As Dene Barnett has demonstrated, these positions were largely dictated by patterns of social behaviour off the stage.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn47"><sup>47</sup></xref></p><p>The person responsible for recording these positions at the Comédie-Française was called the <italic>secrétaire-souffleur-répétiteur</italic>, less a title than a duty list. For, in addition to undertaking most of the company's writing duties, it was he who, like a modern stage manager, scheduled and attended rehearsals. It was also he who occupied the <italic>trou du souffleur</italic> [prompt-hole] throughout the performance – with ‘the book’ set down on the stage floor before him – and prompted. ‘He was’, writes Tiffany Stern, ‘though half-hidden, a kind of focus for the performance itself’.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn48"><sup>48</sup></xref></p><p>To refer to the prompter in the legitimate English theatre as ‘half-hidden’ is something of an understatement. It is hard to see him as a ‘focus [and] part of the play itself’, when he is standing in the downstage-left wing.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn49"><sup>49</sup></xref> At the Comédie-Française, on the other hand, he was unavoidable: ‘[J]ust as the curtain is drawn up, a trap-door is opened in the front of the stage and . . . nothing is presented to . . . view but a well-dressed head, which happens to be that of the prompter’.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn50"><sup>50</sup></xref> As the <italic>trou du souffleur</italic> was unhooded prior to the nineteenth century, the prompter could both see and be seen. But the French prompter's station had not always been a hole downstage centre. In 1674, writes Chappuzeau, ‘[I]l est de sa charge de tenir la pièce <italic>à une des aîles du théâtre</italic> tandis qu'on la représente’ [it is his job to hold the book in one of the stage-wings during the performance].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn51"><sup>51</sup></xref></p><p>Stationed between the side wings, he was hardly in an ideal vantage point from which to conduct proceedings or even to make himself heard. And since seventeenth-century performance tended to be focused well downstage of the setting, beneath the forestage chandeliers, actors were poorly placed to see a prompter who was standing upstage of them. This is not all. By the 1670s it had long been established economic practice for theatre companies to allow wealthy male patrons to sit on either side of the forestage – occupying most of the vacant space that separated the actors and their prompter. It is questionable whether, under such circumstances, a prompter served much useful purpose. But perhaps this did not matter. After all, the actors only performed three times a week, had a far lighter repertory, ran successful plays for a number of consecutive performances, and so had more time for study than their eighteenth-century counterparts, as well as more frequent opportunities to rehearse by performing. We may surely speculate that, generally speaking, actors in Molière's day were better prepared and less in need of the prompter's services than in Préville's.</p><p>So is it possible to say when a more urgent need of these services might have made itself felt? I know of no written evidence to confirm it, but I rather suspect that it occurred in 1680, and followed hard upon the foundation of the Comédie-Française. Molière's death in 1673 triggered a radical two-stage act of rationalization. The first stage was the immediate amalgamation of the remnants of his company with the best of the Marais company, and the second, seven years later, was the merger of that company with that of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. The new, greatly expanded company gave their first performance as the Comédie-Française on Sunday 25 August 1680. It was a day on which the Paris theatre world changed for ever, when new work practices of both performance and performance-preparation came into effect. It is perhaps not entirely a matter of coincidence that, only twelve short months later, on 9 August 1681, La Grange made this marginal note in his <italic>Registre</italic>: ‘Aujourd'hui commencé à payer le nommé Boucher qui tient la pièce à la place de St Georges à raison de 20s par jour’ [Today [we] began to pay the aforesaid Boucher, who holds the book in place of St Georges, at a daily rate of 20s].<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn52"><sup>52</sup></xref> Who knows, perhaps the heavier demands on the company prompter had caused St Georges to be replaced ‘on the book’ by someone more reliable? Whatever the reason, the actors, however overwhelming they may have found their new conditions, would at least have had the consolation of knowing where to find a prompter whom they could see and hear.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn53"><sup>53</sup></xref></p></sec></body><back><fn-group><title>NOTES</title><fn id="fn1" symbol="1"><label>1</label><p><citation citation-type="book" id="ref1"><name><surname>Stern</surname><given-names>Tiffany</given-names></name>, <source>Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan</source> (<publisher-loc>Oxford</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>Clarendon Press</publisher-name>, <year>2000</year>), p. <fpage>130</fpage>.</citation></p></fn><fn id="fn2" symbol="2"><label>2</label><p><citation citation-type="book" id="ref2"><name><surname>Howarth</surname><given-names>W. D.</given-names></name>, <source>Molière: A Playwright and His Audience</source> (<publisher-loc>Cambridge</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>Cambridge University Press</publisher-name>, <year>1982</year>), p. <fpage>24</fpage>.</citation></p></fn><fn id="fn3" symbol="3"><label>3</label><p><citation citation-type="book" id="ref3"><name><surname>Chappuzeau</surname><given-names>Samuel</given-names></name>, <source>Le Théâtre français</source>, ed. <name><surname>Monval</surname><given-names>Georges</given-names></name> (<publisher-loc>Paris</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>Jules Bonnassies</publisher-name>, <year>1875</year>), pp. <fpage>72</fpage>–3.</citation></p></fn><fn id="fn4" symbol="4"><label>4</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange, 1659–1685</italic>, ed. Bert Edward Young and Grace Philputt Young, 2 vols (Paris: Droz, 1947; repr. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977).</p></fn><fn id="fn5" symbol="5"><label>5</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, p. 170. Here and throughout I have modernized and standardized seventeenth-century spelling and punctuation.</p></fn><fn id="fn6" symbol="6"><label>6</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn5">Ibid.</xref>, p. 126.</p></fn><fn id="fn7" symbol="7"><label>7</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn5">Ibid.</xref>, p. 142.</p></fn><fn id="fn8" symbol="8"><label>8</label><p><italic>Le Registre d'Hubert, 1672–1673</italic>, ed. Sylvie Chevalley, <italic>Revue d'histoire du théâtre</italic>, 25 (1973), pp. 1–146, here p. 116.</p></fn><fn id="fn9" symbol="9"><label>9</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn8">Ibid.</xref>, p. 177.</p></fn><fn id="fn10" symbol="10"><label>10</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn8">Ibid.</xref>, p. 227.</p></fn><fn id="fn11" symbol="11"><label>11</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn8">Ibid.</xref>, p. 321.</p></fn><fn id="fn12" symbol="12"><label>12</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn8">Ibid.</xref>, p. 341.</p></fn><fn id="fn13" symbol="13"><label>13</label><p>Preface to <italic>Les Fâcheux</italic>, in <italic>Oeuvres complètes de Molière</italic>, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), Vol. I, p. 483. See also <citation citation-type="journal" id="ref4"><name><surname>Powell</surname><given-names>John S.</given-names></name>, ‘<article-title>Pierre Beauchamps, choreographer to Molière's Troupe du Roi</article-title>’, <source>Music and Letters</source>, <volume>76</volume> (<year>1995</year>), pp. <fpage>168</fpage>–86.</citation></p></fn><fn id="fn14" symbol="14"><label>14</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, pp. 170 and 123.</p></fn><fn id="fn15" symbol="15"><label>15</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn14">Ibid.</xref>, p. 144. The statistics and analysis that follow are based on <italic>Documents sur ‘Le Malade imaginaire’</italic>, ed. Edouard Thierry (Paris: Berger Levrault, 1880), pp. 145–91.</p></fn><fn id="fn16" symbol="16"><label>16</label><p>Chappuzeau, <italic>Théâtre français</italic>, p. 72.</p></fn><fn id="fn17" symbol="17"><label>17</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn16">Ibid.</xref> <citation citation-type="book" id="ref5"><name><surname>Loret</surname><given-names>Jean</given-names></name>, <source>La Muse historique</source>, ed. <name><surname>Livet</surname><given-names>Charles-Louis</given-names></name> (<publisher-loc>Paris</publisher-loc>: <year>1877</year>), Vol. III, p. <fpage>398</fpage> (letter of 20 August 1661)</citation>, claims that the actors in <italic>Les Fâcheux</italic> had learned their lines in three days.</p></fn><fn id="fn18" symbol="18"><label>18</label><p><italic>Le Mercure galant</italic>, 6 August 1672, quoted in <citation citation-type="book" id="ref10"><name><surname>Mongrédien</surname><given-names>Georges</given-names></name>, ed., <source>Recueil des textes et des documents du XVIIe siècle relatifs à Molière</source>, 2 vols (<publisher-loc>Paris</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>CNRS</publisher-name>, <year>1965</year>), Vol. II, p. <fpage>420</fpage>.</citation></p></fn><fn id="fn19" symbol="19"><label>19</label><p>In a modified version of the original production, created the previous year on the vast stage of the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries Palace.</p></fn><fn id="fn20" symbol="20"><label>20</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, p. 144; and Thierry, pp. 159 and 193.</p></fn><fn id="fn21" symbol="21"><label>21</label><p>Thierry, p. 164.</p></fn><fn id="fn22" symbol="22"><label>22</label><p>Powell, ‘Pierre Beauchamps’, p. 184.</p></fn><fn id="fn23" symbol="23"><label>23</label><p>Letter of 5 February 1728, in <italic>Lettres d'Adrienne Lecouvreur</italic>, ed. Georges Monval (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1892), p. 48.</p></fn><fn id="fn24" symbol="24"><label>24</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, p. 144.</p></fn><fn id="fn25" symbol="25"><label>25</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn24">Ibid.</xref>, p. 160.</p></fn><fn id="fn26" symbol="26"><label>26</label><p>E.g. Powell, ‘Pierre Beauchamps’, p. 184, n. 82.</p></fn><fn id="fn27" symbol="27"><label>27</label><p>Chappuzeau, <italic>Théâtre français</italic>, p. 72.</p></fn><fn id="fn28" symbol="28"><label>28</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, p. 125.</p></fn><fn id="fn29" symbol="29"><label>29</label><p><citation citation-type="book" id="ref6"><name><surname>Boswell</surname><given-names>Eleanore</given-names></name>, <source>The Restoration Court Stage, 1660–1702</source> (<publisher-loc>London</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>Allen and Unwin</publisher-name>, <year>1932</year>), p. <fpage>118</fpage>.</citation></p></fn><fn id="fn30" symbol="30"><label>30</label><p>To my knowledge, the only evidence that hints at the Italians' absence, or at the occasional availability of the stage to Molière, is Hubert's entry, on Friday 8 July 1672, the date of the premiere of <italic>La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas</italic> and <italic>Le Mariage forcé</italic>: ‘Frais extraordinaires pour le déjeuner de la répétition d'hier’ [Extraordinary expenses for the meal at yesterday's [ensemble] rehearsal] (Chevalley, <italic>Revue d'histoire du théâtre</italic>, p. 30). As the previous day was a Thursday, an ‘Italian’ day, and, since the rehearsal in question must have been a dress rehearsal, presumably the stage itself was required.</p></fn><fn id="fn31" symbol="31"><label>31</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, pp. 210 and 223–6.</p></fn><fn id="fn32" symbol="32"><label>32</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn31">Ibid.</xref>, pp. 296, 321 and 341.</p></fn><fn id="fn33" symbol="33"><label>33</label><p><citation citation-type="journal" id="ref7"><name><surname>Hitchcock</surname><given-names>H. Wiley</given-names></name>, ‘<article-title>Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the Comédie-Française</article-title>’, <source>Journal of the American Musicological Society</source>, <volume>24</volume> (<year>1971</year>), pp. <fpage>255</fpage>–81, here p. 269</citation>; and Delia Gambelli, ‘Les Italiens’<italic>, Journal des trois théâtres</italic>, 15 (mai 2005), pp. 20–3, here p. 23.</p></fn><fn id="fn34" symbol="34"><label>34</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, pp. 141–2.</p></fn><fn id="fn35" symbol="35"><label>35</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn34">Ibid.</xref>, pp. 50–1.</p></fn><fn id="fn36" symbol="36"><label>36</label><p><citation citation-type="book" id="ref8"><name><surname>Caldicott</surname><given-names>C. E. J.</given-names></name>, <source>La Carrière de Molière entre protecteurs et éditeurs</source> (<publisher-name>Amsterdam</publisher-name>: <publisher-loc>Rodopi</publisher-loc>, <year>1998</year>), pp. <fpage>68</fpage> and 84</citation>. Unaccountably, <italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, p. 136, only records the <italic>visite</italic> to St Cloud.</p></fn><fn id="fn37" symbol="37"><label>37</label><p>In 1672–3 the company gave a total of 171 individual performances, but only played twenty-four double-bills.</p></fn><fn id="fn38" symbol="38"><label>38</label><p>The exact number of performances given during the season's six <italic>visites</italic> and three <italic>voyages</italic> is unknown.</p></fn><fn id="fn39" symbol="39"><label>39</label><p><citation citation-type="book" id="ref9"><name><surname>Crow</surname><given-names>Joan</given-names></name>, ed., <source>La Comédie des comédiens</source> (<publisher-loc>Exeter</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>Exeter University Press</publisher-name>, <year>1975</year>), Vol. II, 1. My emphasis.</citation></p></fn><fn id="fn40" symbol="40"><label>40</label><p>These and the statistics that follow are based on the <italic>registres de la recette journalière</italic> (daily box-office receipt registers) and the <italic>registres des feux</italic> (payment registers), conserved in the Archives of the Comédie-Française (ACF).</p></fn><fn id="fn41" symbol="41"><label>41</label><p>For an extended discussion of eighteenth-century rehearsal practice, see my ‘Rehearsals at the Comédie-Française in the Late Eighteenth Century’, <italic>British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies</italic>, Vol. XXX, No 3 (2007), pp. 325 – 62.</p></fn><fn id="fn42" symbol="42"><label>42</label><p><italic>Le Censeur dramatique</italic>, 4 vols (Paris: 1797–1835; repr. Geneva: Minkoff Reprints, 1973), Vol. II, p. 351 (30 nivôse VI). Author's emphasis.</p></fn><fn id="fn43" symbol="43"><label>43</label><p><italic>Paradoxe sur le comédien</italic>, in <italic>Oeuvres esthétiques de Diderot</italic>, ed. Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier, 1965), pp. 320–1 and 364.</p></fn><fn id="fn44" symbol="44"><label>44</label><p>Letter to Comédiens français, [16] August 1784, Dossier Molé, ACF.</p></fn><fn id="fn45" symbol="45"><label>45</label><p>Foreword to <italic>Les Deux amis</italic>, in Beaumarchais: <italic>Théâtre [&] lettres relatives à son théâtre</italic>, ed. Maurice Allem and Paul-Courant (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 647.</p></fn><fn id="fn46" symbol="46"><label>46</label><p>R[ichard] V[alpy], ‘The Sketch of a Fortnight's Excursion to Paris in 1788’, <italic>The Gentleman's Magazine</italic>, October 1797, p. 814.</p></fn><fn id="fn47" symbol="47"><label>47</label><p><italic>The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of 18th-Century Acting</italic> (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätverlag, 1987), pp. 386–433.</p></fn><fn id="fn48" symbol="48"><label>48</label><p>Stern, <italic>Rehearsal</italic>, p. 235.</p></fn><fn id="fn49" symbol="49"><label>49</label><p><xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn48">Ibid.</xref></p></fn><fn id="fn50" symbol="50"><label>50</label><p><italic>Remarks on the Character and Manners of the French, in a series of letters written during a residence of twelve months in Paris and its environs</italic> (London, 1769), Vol. I, p. 82 (24 November 1766).</p></fn><fn id="fn51" symbol="51"><label>51</label><p>Chappuzeau, <italic>Théâtre français</italic>, p. 145. My emphasis.</p></fn><fn id="fn52" symbol="52"><label>52</label><p><italic>Le Registre de La Grange</italic>, Vol. I, p. 270.</p></fn><fn id="fn53" symbol="53"><label>53</label><p>I am grateful to David Whitton for kindly reading an early draft of this essay.</p></fn></fn-group></back></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo><title>Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" contentType="CDATA"><title>Molière and the Circumstances of Late Seventeenth-Century Rehearsal Practice</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">JOHN</namePart><namePart type="family">GOLDER</namePart><role><roleTerm type="text">author</roleTerm></role><description>john golder is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales. His research centres on theatre architecture and performance practice in pre-Revolutionary France, and he is currently working on an architectural history of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, France's first public playhouse, and a study of Comédie-Française rehearsal practice in the late eighteenth century. His major publications include Shakespeare for the Age of Reason: The Earliest Stage Adaptations of Jean-Francois Ducis, 1769–1792 (Voltaire Foundation, 1992), French Theatre in the Neo-classical Age (CUP, 1997), of which he was an associate editor, and O Brave New World: Two Centuries of Shakespeare on the Australian Stage (Currency Press, 2001), which he co-edited. He also edits a series of quarterly essays on the performing arts entitled Platform Papers, published by Currency House, Sydney.</description></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="research-article" displayLabel="research-article" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</genre><originInfo><publisher>Cambridge University Press</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Cambridge, UK</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">2008</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">2008</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><abstract type="normal">There is precious little documentary evidence regarding the way in which Molière and his company went about preparing themselves for performance in seventeenth-century Paris. After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, mémoires submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's Registre, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.</abstract><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Theatre Research International</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="abbreviated"><title>Theatre Research International</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0307-8833</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1474-0672</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">TRI</identifier><part><date>2008</date><detail type="title"><title>Genetics of Performance</title></detail><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>33</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>3</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>250</start><end>262</end><total>13</total></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">30367BAF4BAF0FA7F45E9F2F73AC5DB6721F21FB</identifier><identifier type="ark">ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1017/S0307883308003957</identifier><identifier type="PII">S0307883308003957</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">00395</identifier><accessCondition type="use and reproduction" contentType="copyright">Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2008</accessCondition><recordInfo><recordContentSource authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-G3RCRD03-V">cambridge</recordContentSource><recordOrigin>Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2008</recordOrigin></recordInfo></mods><json:item><extension>json</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/json</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8/record.json</uri></json:item></metadata><annexes><json:item><extension>gif</extension><original>true</original><mimetype>image/gif</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/6GQ-FNXCGSP6-8/annexes.gif</uri></json:item></annexes><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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