Classical Theatre
French Literature
Course 1 · Chapter 4 · Classical Theatre
The seventeenth century is called the Grand Siècle, the Great Century, and its writers wrote for a king who wanted his court to be the centre of Europe. The same Louis XIV who used music as an instrument of power (see French Music 2) also made the theatre part of the machinery of the state. Out of this partnership came three dramatists whose plays are still performed daily in France: Corneille, Racine and Molière. This chapter looks at the rules they worked under, the quarrels they provoked and the poet who turned animal stories into one of the most quoted books in the language. Names, dates and attributions are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.
The Rules
French classical drama followed a set of rules, taken partly from ancient writers and partly from the critics of the time, that governed what a proper play looked like. Writers and critics argued about them heatedly, and the argument itself shaped the plays.
The three unities
A play should have one action, take place in one location and cover no more than a day (check the details). The aim was a tight, concentrated drama.
Propriety
Characters and events should be fitting for the stage: violence took place offstage and was reported, and language was kept elevated in tragedy (check).
Verisimilitude
The action had to seem believable, even if it was not strictly true to history.
The alexandrine
Serious plays were written in rhymed twelve-syllable lines, the alexandrine, which gave French drama its stately sound.
Corneille and the Quarrel of Le Cid
Pierre Corneille (1606 to 1684) is usually seen as the first great French tragic dramatist (check the dates). His play Le Cid, first performed in 1637, tells of a young nobleman forced to choose between love and family honour, and it was a huge popular success (check). It was also attacked by critics for breaking the rules, and the newly founded Académie française was asked to judge the dispute, which produced a long public controversy (check the details). The episode shows how seriously the French took the rules, and how far the state, through the Académie, was involved in literary taste.
Racine
Jean Racine (1639 to 1699) is usually regarded as the master of French classical tragedy (check the dates). His plays, such as Andromaque and Phèdre, are written in polished alexandrines and focus on the inner struggle of characters overwhelmed by passion (check the dates). The action is often reduced to a few people in a room, talking, and the effect comes from the intensity of the language. Racine was educated by religious scholars with a severe moral outlook, and the tension between passion and guilt in his plays is often linked to that background (check). After Phèdre in 1677 he largely stopped writing for the theatre and took a post at the court (check).
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622 to 1673), who wrote under the stage name Molière, was an actor, theatre manager and playwright, and is the great comic writer of the French stage (check). His plays mock hypocrites, misers, social climbers and pedants, and they are still performed constantly. A few examples are listed here.
| Play | Target | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Tartuffe | Religious hypocrisy | First performed in 1664 and banned for several years after complaints from powerful religious figures; allowed again later (check the dates) |
| Le Misanthrope | A man who cannot stand social insincerity | A comedy with a serious edge (check) |
| L'Avare | A miser | A classic of character comedy (check) |
| Le Bourgeois gentilhomme | A rich man who wants to be an aristocrat | Created with music by Lully for the court (check) |
| Le Malade imaginaire | A hypochondriac | The last play; Molière is said to have fallen ill during a performance and died soon after (check the story, which is well known but tidier than the records may allow) |
Molière's company eventually became part of the Comédie-Française, founded in 1680 and still the national theatre (check). The French language is sometimes called "the language of Molière", a phrase that shows the status of his work.
La Fontaine and the Fables
Jean de La Fontaine (1621 to 1695) published his Fables in several collections from 1668 onward (check). They retell stories from ancient writers such as Aesop, with animals standing for human types: the cunning fox, the vain crow, the grasshopper and the ant. They are written in flexible, witty verse and carry sharp comments on power and the court. Generations of French children have learnt them by heart, which makes them one of the most widely shared texts in the language.
Madame de Lafayette
The same period produced one of the first great French novels of psychological analysis, La Princesse de Clèves, published in 1678 and attributed to Madame de Lafayette (check the authorship and the date). Set in a Renaissance court, it follows a married woman who falls in love and confesses it to her husband. It was the subject of a debate when first published, and again in recent years when it was ridiculed by a politician and defended by readers (check the details).
Exercises
Explain two of the rules of French classical drama and say what effect each had on the plays.
Describe the difference between Corneille and Racine, and explain why the quarrel over Le Cid shows the state's involvement in literary taste.
Choose one play by Molière or one fable by La Fontaine, and describe its target and how the writer attacks it.
Quick Reference
- Rules: three unities, propriety, verisimilitude, the alexandrine
- Corneille: Le Cid (1637) and the quarrel it caused
- Racine: Andromaque, Phèdre; passion and guilt
- Molière: Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, L'Avare, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme
- La Fontaine: the Fables; animals as human types
- Lafayette: La Princesse de Clèves (1678)
- Check: performance dates, Molière's death story, authorship
Next chapter: The Enlightenment, which covers Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau.