Untitled Flashcards Set

Week 10 - Medieval Theater: Sacred & Profane

The pervasive presence of both church authority and Christian doctrine didn't mean that all Medieval theatrical activity was directly or even indirectly a vehicle for religious dogma. In addition to the secular popular entertainments mentioned earlier, non-religious -- often comic -- drama becomes increasingly common during this period. One of the most popular forms was farce, which set about to ridicule the foibles of everyday human behavior. As historian Oscar Brockett puts it:

If the religious plays treat the triumph of virtue and the punishment of evil within an eternal order, the farces show imperfect humanity within the social order. Marital infidelity, quarreling, cheating, hypocrisy, and other human failings are the typical subjects. The clever man, even if a sinner, is usually the hero; the dupes deserve their fate because they are stupid or gullible. Sentiment is almost totally absent.

An excellent example of Medieval farce is the anonymously authored Master Pierre Pathelin. The story's eponymous "hero" is a scam-artist/lawyer. To improve his fortunes, he decides he needs a new set of clothes. There's a problem, however: he has fallen on hard times and has no money. Not to be deterred, he concocts a plan to scam the local cloth merchant out of his cloth, which Pathelin's wife will convert into a nice new set of duds.

In this scene, Pathelin visits the Clothier to put his sneaky plan into action (note: a "sou" is a French coin).

SCENE TWO

PATHELIN (approaching the Clothier's shop). Isn’t that the one there? No, I don't think so. Yes it is, by Saint Mary. He deals in cloth goods. (To the Clothier.) God be with you.

GUILLAUME JOCEAULME, CLOTHIER. And God give you joy.

PATHELIN. So help me, you’re just the person I wanted to see. How’s your health, Guillaume? Are you hale and hearty?

THE CLOTHIER. Yes, thank God.

PATHELIN. Here, shake. How are things going?

THE CLOTHIER. Pretty well. (They shake.) At your service. And how are you?

PATHELIN. By Saint Peter, I’m as well as ever. So, you’re enjoying life?

THE CLOTHIER. Yes, but believe me, merchants can’t always do as they please.

PATHELIN. And how’s business? Are you able to keep the wolf from the door?

THE CLOTHIER. So help me God, Master Pierre, it’s hard to say. It’s always work, work, work.

PATHELIN. Ah, what a wise man your father was! God rest his soul. By Our Lady, it seems to me that you're like him in every way. What a good and clever merchant he was.
(He stares at the Clothier.) Your face resembles his, by God, like a perfect picture. If God ever had mercy on one of his creatures, may he grant true pardon to his soul.

THE CLOTHIER. Amen! And to us too if it please him.

PATHELIN. By my faith, he often predicted in great detail the times we live in now; and I often think of what he said, for he was considered one of the best.

THE CLOTHIER. Please sit down, sir. It’s high time I remembered my manners.

PATHELIN. I’m fine like this. By heaven, your father had . . .

THE CLOTHIER. Truly, you must sit down.

PATHELIN. Very well. (He sits down.) “Ah,” he used to say to me, “you will see great marvels." (He stares at the Clothier again.) Look at those eyes, those ears, that nose, that mouth!
So help me God, never did a son more closely resemble his father! And look at that dimpled chin; you’re really a chip off the old block. If anyone should say to your mother that you’re not your father’s son, he’d just be itching for a quarrel. Truly I can't imagine how nature in all her works formed two faces so much alike that one is blemished exactly like the other. Why, it’s as if somebody had spit you both out in the same way, like two gobs against a wall. You’re the very spit and image of your father. By the way, what about the good Laurence, your lovely aunt? Did she pass away?

THE CLOTHIER. No, certainly not.

PATHELIN. How beautiful she was when I saw her, tall and straight and graceful. By the precious Mother of God, you resemble her in shape as if someone had made you both of snow. I think there’s not a family in the whole region whose members look so much alike, (He gets up and stares more intently at the Clothier.) By God, the more I look at you, the more I see your father. You’re more alike than two drops of water, without a doubt. What a gentleman he was, what an honest man, who would sell his goods on credit to anyone who asked.
May God have mercy on him. He always used to give me a hearty laugh. Would to Christ the worst in the world were like him; then people wouldn’t rob and steal from one another the way they do. (He feels a piece ofcloth.) What a fine piece of cloth this is, so soft and smooth, and so attractive.

THE CLOTHIER. I had it specially made from the wool of my own sheep.

PATHELIN. Ah, what a good business man you are! But you wouldn’t be your father’s son, if you weren’t. You just never stop working.

THE CLOTHIER. So what do you expect? If a man wants to make a living, he's got to toil and sweat.

PATHELIN (feeling another piece of cloth). And this cloth, is it dyed in the wool? It's as strong as leather.

THE CLOTHIER. It’s a very good fabric from Rouen, and well made I assure you.

PATHELIN. Well, I’m really tempted. By the Lord's passion, I had no intention of buying cloth when I came. I’ve saved up 80 gold pieces to pay off a debt, but I can see you’re going to get 20 or 30 of them. I like that color so much it hurts.

THE CLOTHIER. Gold pieces? Indeed! Is it possible that the people you’re indebted to would take some other coinage instead?

PATHELIN, Oh yes, if I wanted them to. It doesn’t matter to me how it’s paid. (He feels another piece of cloth.) And what cloth is this? The more I look at it, the crazier I am about it. I’ll have to have a coat made of it, and another for my wife.

THE CLOTHIER. As you know, cloth is very expensive these days. I'll sell you some if you wish, but 10 or 20 francs won’t buy very much.

PATHELIN. That doesn't matter; it’s worth the price. Besides, I have a few sous put away that have never seen the light of day.

THE CLOTHIER. God be praised! By Saint Peter, that doesn’t displease me a bit.

PATHELIN. To be brief, I'm so taken with this cloth that I just have to have some of it.

THE CLOTHIER. All right. First you must decide how much you need. Take as much as you want. In fact, I could let you take the entire bolt even if you didn’t have a sou.

PATHELIN. That’s kind of you. Thanks very much.

THE CLOTHIER. Do you want some of this light blue?

PATHELIN. First, how much will a yard cost me? Wait, here’s a penny. God's share should be paid first; it’s only right. “Let no bargain be made before God’s share is paid.” (He puts the coin in a collection box.)

THE CLOTHIER. By God, that’s the talk of an honest man: you’ve really cheered me up. Do you want my last word on the price?

PATHELIN. Yes.

THE CLOTHIER. It will cost you only 24 sous per yard.

PATHELIN. Never! 24 sous? Holy Mother!

THE CLOTHIER. That's just what it cost me, by my soul! l'll have to charge at least that, if you take it.

PATHELIN. The Devil take it! It’s too much.

THE CLOTHIER. But you don’t realize how much cloth has gone up. All the sheep died last winter in the great freeze.

PATHELIN. Twenty sous! Twenty sous!

THE CLOTHIER. I swear to you I have to charge 24. Just wait till market day on Saturday and you’ll see what it costs. A fleece that used to cost 20 pence when they were plentiful, cost me 40 pence last July.

PATHELIN. By God, if that’s the way it is, then without more haggling I’ll buy. Come on, measure it.

THE CLOTHIER. How much do you need?

PATHELIN. That’s easy to figure out. What`s the width?

THE CLOTHIER. The standard Brussels width.

PATHELIN. Three yards for me and two and a half yards for my wife-she’s tall. That makes six yards, doesn’t it? . . . No it doesn’t. How stupid of me!

THE CLOTHIER. It only lacks half a yard of being six exactly.

PATHELIN. Then I’ll round it off at six. Anyway, I need a hat.

THE CLOTHIER. Take that end and We’ll measure it. I’m sure we've got a good six yards here. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . and six.

PATHELIN. Saint Peter’s gut! It's six on the nose.

THE CLOTHIER. Shall I measure it again?

PATHELIN. No, for Pete's sake!There’s always a little gain or loss in business deals. How much is that altogether?

THE CLOTHIER. Let’s see. At 24 sous a yard and six yards, it comes to nine francs.

PATHELIN. That makes six gold pieces, right?

THE CLOTHIER. That’s right, by God.

PATHELIN. Then, Sir, will you give me that much credit for the short time it takes to come to my house? It's not really credit. You’ll have your money, in gold or in francs, as
soon as you reach the door.

THE CLOTHIER. By our Lady! l’d have to go far out of my way to get there.

PATHELIN. I swear to God, not a word has passed your lips since you failed to speak the gospel truth. You say it’s far out of your way. The thing is, you’ve never wanted to find an occasion to come drink at my house. But this time you will have a drink there.

THE CLOTHIER. By Saint James, I hardly do anything but drink to seal the bargain with my customers. I’ll go, but it’s bad luck, you know, to give credit on the first sale of the day.

PATHELIN. Isn't it worth it if I pay you in gold coins instead of the common currency? By God, we’ll even eat the goose that my wife is roasting.

THE CLOTHIER (aside). This man is driving me crazy! (To Pathelin.) Go ahead then. I’ll come later and bring the cloth.

PATHELIN. There’s no need for that. Will it burden me if I just tuck it under my arm? Not in the least.

THE CLOTHIER. No, don’t bother. It would be more fitting and proper if I carried it.

PATHELIN. May Mary Magdalene send me misfortune if I put you to that trouble. As I said, under the arm. It’ll give me a nice hump. (He puts the cloth under his arm inside his robe.)
There, that's perfect. You’ll have plenty of drink and good cheer before you leave my house.

THE CLOTHIER. Please give me my money as soon as I arrive.

PATHELIN. Of course I will. No, I won’t, by God, not until you’ve been well fed. And I’m glad I didn’t have any money on me. At least you’ll come sample my wine.
Your late father, when he passed my house, used to call out: “Hi there, friend,” or “What do you say?” or “What’s new?" but now you rich people don't care a straw about us poor people.

THE CLOTHIER. God in heaven, I'm a lot poorer than you are.

PATHELIN. Well, so long; goodbye. Come to my house as soon as you can and we’ll drink well, I promise you.

THE CLOTHIER. I’ll do that. Go on ahead, but see that I get the gold.

PATHELIN. Gold? I give you my word. And the Devil take me if I ever broke my word. (He leaves the shop.) Gold, indeed! Well, hang him! He wouldn’t sell to me at my price, only his. But he'll be paid at mine. He needs gold, does he? Fool’s gold he'll get. By God, if he had to run from now till he’s paid, he'd get to the end of the world first.

THE CLOTHIER. Those gold pieces he gives me won’t see daylight for a whole year, I swear, unless somebody steals them. Well, there’s no buyer so clever that he won’t find
a seller who can outwit him. That would-be trickster was stupid enough to pay 24 sous a yard for cloth that’s not even worth 20!

We know that Pierre is up to something by "offering" to carry home the cloth and pay the merchant later. But not until the very end do we discover that The Clothier is working his own scam: charging Pierre more than the cloth is worth! In other words, there's no simple criminal and victim here. They are both up to no good, reaffirming the characteristics of medieval farce Brockett discusses above.

The word "farce" comes from the French word, farcir, which means "to stuff." One explanation for this term is that comic bits were increasingly "stuffed" in between the religious plays in the cycle productions to hold the attention of the audience, which might very well have found the somber, didactic mystery plays a bore. Another idea is that farce "stuffs" a lot of exciting action into the plot. Mention "farce" today, and many people think of hi-speed comedy, with characters racing in and out of doors frantically trying to solve the dramatic conflict of the story.

What accounted for the popularity of this particular type of biting comedy? Why celebrate a "scoundrel" like Pierre Pathelin? In addition to enjoying the intricate plotting that is a feature of modern farce, critic Eric Bentley has suggested that farce is all about repressed desire. According to him, we secretly want to pull the scams that a character like Pierre pulls and engage in all the transgressive behavior we are prevented from doing in our real lives.

The medieval church wasn't wild about these secular farces, and for a few reasons. First, it didn't want people wasting their time with comic theater that conveyed no explicitly religious message, and that might lead them into the very temptations against which the church was railing. Second, if imperfections were to be shown, the church wanted the transgressors punished, not merely laughed at (or worse, along with). And third, the church itself was often the target of various secular popular entertainments, and you can imagine how church authorities, sitting atop a rigid hierarchical order, felt about that!

Week 11 - Renaissance Italy: Putting Theater in Perspective

The term "Renaissance" (French for "Rebirth") as a historical demarcation speaks to several distinct but intertwined phenomena: First, the reintroduction into European society of ancient Greek and Roman ideas, texts, and art that occurred roughly between the early fifteenth and mid sixteenth centuries; second, the desire among many thinkers and artists during this period to distinguish and even disassociate themselves from the immediately preceding medieval era, which they viewed as "backward"; third, a shift in emphasis away from the medieval ideal of contemplative spiritual devotion towards more active engagement with the secular world; fourth, the self-awareness that a new, "modern" era, drawing from but moving beyond the great lessons of antiquity, was at hand, and fifth, the introduction of texts that would lay the early foundations of Western white supremacist ideology. 

Keep in mind, however, that these changes, like many historical transformations, are known to us largely through the writing and art of the European educated (male) elite, who comprised a small part of the population. To what degree, say, a female agricultural worker in rural France or a shopkeeper in a small town in Italy was affected by or even aware of these changes is largely speculative, since their voices are not adequately represented in the historical record, a silencing we have previously noted.

So, with that in mind, let's begin with Leonardo da Vinci's drawing, "Vitruvian Man," circa 1487. The image powerfully reflects a key Renaissance idea that human beings were central players in life's drama. In the Middle Ages, pictures of the human form would typically have had Christ or other biblical figures as their subject matter, or perhaps one of god's "chosen" emissaries, like a king or a pope. And the figures wouldn't have been completely naked; in medieval Catholic doctrine, adult nudity was sinful, not something to be celebrated. But Vitruvian Man, stripped of religious symbols or the trappings of earthly power, is an idealized version of a (European) male, whose nakedness isn't shameful but simply a fact of the material world.

The Renaissance focus on the human physical presence in this world, as opposed to the fate of the soul in the next, is often described as "humanism," although there is more to the idea than that:

A common oversimplification of Humanism suggests that it gave renewed emphasis to life in this world instead of to the otherworldly, spiritual life associated with the Middle Ages. Oversimplified as it is, there is nevertheless truth to the idea that Renaissance Humanists placed great emphasis upon the dignity of man and upon the expanded possibilities of human life in this world. For the most part, it regarded human beings as social creatures who could create meaningful lives only in association with other social beings.
      In the terms used in the Renaissance itself, Humanism represented a shift from the "contemplative life" to the "active life." In the Middle Ages, great value had often been attached to the life of contemplation and religious devotion, away from the world (though this ideal applied to only a small number of people). In the Renaissance, the highest cultural values were usually associated with active involvement in public life, in moral, political, and military action, and in service to the state. Of course, the traditional religious values coexisted with the new secular values; in fact, some of the most important Humanists, like Erasmus, were Churchmen. Also, individual achievement, breadth of knowledge, and personal aspiration (as personified by Doctor Faustus) were valued. The concept of the "Renaissance Man" refers to an individual who, in addition to participating actively in the affairs of public life, possesses knowledge of and skill in many subject areas. (Such figures included Leonardo Da Vinci and John Milton, as well as Francis Bacon, who had declared, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province.") Nevertheless, individual aspiration was not the major concern of Renaissance Humanists, who focused rather on teaching people how to participate in and rule a society (though only the nobility and some members of the middle class were included in this ideal). Overall, in consciously attempting to revive the thought and culture of classical antiquity, perhaps the most important value the Humanists extracted from their studies of classical literature, history, and moral philosophy was the social nature of humanity.

This analysis illuminates a few important points about the Renaissance. First, although humanity figures more prominently as a subject of study and representation, religion is still very central to European ideology. In other words, to declare oneself a "humanist" in this time was not to declare oneself an atheist ("a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods"). Second, whereas medieval plays like Abraham and Isaac and Master Pierre Pathelin were written anonymously, moving forward, plays -- and, indeed, all forms of art -- will be more connected to individual achievement and recognition, as they were in ancient Greece. No longer will European artists toil in relative obscurity serving god or the church, as they often did throughout the Middle Ages. And third, note that the humanist emphasis on "participation in and rule over society" was largely limited to the wealthy (male) elites, who were a distinct minority. The majority of the population, on the other hand, was expected to passively conform to clearly articulated, rigid class and gender hierarchy.    

The Renaissance is also associated with important new cultural developments too varied to be discussed fully here: scientific inquiry over superstition; the power of a new merchant middle class with money to spend on the arts (a class which eventually gives birth to the modern capitalist economy); the modern nation-state as we now understand it; great technological advancements; and exploration past the traditional boundaries of the "known world." Some of the developments brought changes we can easily identify as positive -- beautiful new works of art and a better understanding of how the physical world operates -- while some of the changes were harbingers of great suffering. Western exploration, for example, eventually led to empire and colonization, with disastrous and in some cases genocidal consequences for non-European indigenous peoples around the world.   

In fact, growing contact with the non-European world during this era saw the beginnings of European anti-Black attitudes, first among the educated elites, that would metastasize into full-blown white supremacy by the seventeenth century. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea by Gomes Eanes de Zurara of Portugal, published in 1453, was one of the first European books to articulate these perspectives.

The book laid out a defense of burgeoning Portuguese enslavement of Africans -- the first European country to do so -- using the now-familiar tropes of African "inferiority" and European "benevolence." Scholar Ibram X. Kendi explains:

In building up [ruler of Portugal] Prince Henry's evangelical justification for enslaving Africans, Zurara reduced these captives to barbarians who desperately needed not only religious but also civil salvation. "They lived like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings," he wrote. What's more, "they have no knowledge of bread or wine, and they live without covering of clothes, or the lodgement of houses; and worse than all, they had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in bestial sloth." In Portugal, their lot was "quite the contrary of what it had been." Zurara imagined their slave state in Portugal an improvement over their free state in Africa.

Similar accounts followed. In 1526, a Moroccan living in Europe who went by the name name Leo Africanus, published The History and Description of Africa, which promoted denigrating images of Africans similar to Zurara's Chronicle. It may appear ironic that a man himself of African birth -- Morocco is in North Africa -- would become, in Kendi's words, the "world's first known African racist." But Kendi goes on to note that "[a]nyone can consume or produce racist ideas of African inferiority -- any European, any Asian, any Native American, any Latino/a, and any African. Leo's African ancestry hardly shielded him from believing in African inferiority and European superiority, or from trying to convince others of the racist 'truth."'³  

These and subsequent "travel" books were widely read by European elites -- Leo Africanus was presented to the pope -- and helped shaped European racist attitudes in the coming centuries.  

The Renaissance, for all that was new, also incorporated key medieval concepts. The Great Chain of Being, for example, which, as you remember from the last lecture, visually represented the unchangeable hierarchy of existence, remained foundational to the Renaissance world view. And humanism itself didn't just suddenly pop up fully formed on January 1, 1400. It, too, had its roots in earlier ideas about education. This period, then, was a time of both breaking from and continuity with the past.

Before we move on to Renaissance theater, it is important to note that in many other parts of the world at this time -- in the Arab world, for instance -- intellectual and scientific achievements regularly associated with the emergence of the European Renaissance were already in full bloom. However tempting it might be for Westerners to believe that Europe has always been in the vanguard of human civilization, this is a decidedly chauvinistic, self-serving, and manifestly false idea. 

Week 12 - Decolonizing Shakespeare

Building on the Public Theater and Code Switch podcasts, this week we are going to examine in greater detail one of Shakespeare's plays not on his terms, or on the terms of the period in which he lived and wrote, but through perspectives from three distinct times in U.S. history: the early nineteen century, 1958, and 2015. The play -- Othello, the Moor of Venice -- is one of Shakespeare's "Big Four" tragedies, as they've come to be known (the other three are Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear). In other words, for this discussion we are not going to ask what Shakespeare intended when he wrote Othello, or how the play might have been understood by audiences in his time -- although those are certainly worthwhile lines of inquiry -- but how others have engaged with this play in contexts very different from the era that produced it. In fact, we're not even going to read the play, because for our purposes what matters are reactions to the text rather than the text itself. This doesn't mean the play isn't worth reading. It is. And if we had unlimited time, we would read it. But given the inevitable limitations of the course structure, your major reading for this week (other than the lecture) will be a chapter from comparative literature scholar James Shapiro's recent book, Shakespeare in a Divided America. 

What unites the perspectives we are bringing to bear on Othello this week is race and its inevitable companion, racism. The character of Othello is identified in the play as a Moor, a term from the Middle Ages used to describe indigenous Muslim inhabitants of North Africa. In Shakespeare's England, however, the term was more elastic. It could indeed mean a North African Muslim (although the English at that time didn't actually use the word "Muslim"), but it could also refer to someone from other places in the Mediterranean, like Turkey or Spain (Moors invaded and subsequently ruled Spain for roughly 500 years in the Medieval era).

The English also called Moors "blackamoors," a reference to the fact that their skin was a darker color than Europeans. In this sense, to the English of Shakespeare's day "Moor" could also mean any black person from Africa, not just someone from North Africa. While the English drew distinctions between skin colors -- and attached significance to those distinctions -- this begs the question, Was England racist in Shakespeare's time? Well, we know that the English regarded pale skin as a sign of virtue and beauty. We also know that a range of negative associations with the color black had long been embedded in Christian European culture. For example, black was often equated with the devil and witchcraft. It didn’t take much for the European imagination to transfer those associations to people with darker skin, and to construct a world-view in which pale skinned humans were "superior" to darker skinned humans. This pre-existing prejudice helps explain why the mid-fifteenth European century travel literature we discussed last lecture characterized newly-encountered Black Africans in starkly negative terms, and why educated Europeans appeared so receptive to this characterization. By the early 1660s -- fifty years after Shakespeare's death -- Europeans had moved on to debating the cause of this alleged Black "inferiority," and two distinct camps emerged: those who subscribed to a fabricated "climate theory" (mentioned in the lecture on ancient Greece), and those who believed in the equally bogus "curse theory," or the idea that god had cursed the descendants dark-skinned Ham, son of Noah -- i.e., Africans -- making them legitimate targets for enslavement.

On the other hand, the idea of race as a genetic construct, inherited through blood, and supported not by the bible but by "modern" pseudo-science -- the framing of race of that would emerge in the eighteenth century -- did not exist at this time. Nor was European society in Shakespeare's day centrally organized around the oppression and exploitation of Black people, although England was already participating in the emerging enslavement of Africans. For those who see racism not just as a set of ugly prejudices held by individuals but as the ideological engine for a system of economic extraction and exploitation, European society at the turn of the seventeenth century didn't yet meet that standard, although it would in the not-too-distant future. Indeed, when Shakespeare was writing plays, the terms "White People" and "Black People" were not in general usage because, the anti-black prejudices of Elizabethan society notwithstanding, those fixed categories of human collectives hadn't been firmly established yet, or at least not in the way we use those terms today. For these reasons, British historian Onyeka Nubia, whom you will meet in one of this section's videos, argues against calling Shakespeare’s England a racist society by today's standards.

Week 13 - France: Absolutism and the Neoclassicism Ideal

A couple of weeks ago, we explored the emergence of the neoclassical ideal for playwriting in Renaissance Italy (you may want to go back and briefly review that in Week 9). As we then discussed, that ideal -- and all its attendant rules -- had relatively little effect on the two most popular forms of public theater in Italy: the opera and commedia dell'arte. In 17th century France, however, its impact was far more profound.

Until mid-century, however, the neoclassical ideal had as little effect on the public theaters in France as it did on the public theaters in Italy. Commedia dell'arte and farce were popular, neither which could have cared less about the neoclassical rules. Also popular were the plays by the man generally regarded as France's first professional playwright: Alexandre Hardy. He claimed to have written over six hundred plays ("only" thirty-four survive), and while they adhered to some of the neoclassical conventions, they pretty much ignored the "unities" of time, place, and action. He also put violence onstage, a big neoclassical no-no (but perhaps a reason for his popular success). 

The signal event in the ascendancy of the neoclassical ideal in France was the so-called “Querelle du Cid," or "The Le Cid quarrel," after the furor surrounding the play Le Cid by Pierre Corneille, the so-called "Founder of French Tragedy."

The play, based on a mythic Spanish hero, El Cid, went astray of the playwriting "rules" the neoclassical critics so cherished: it contained far too many events for a single day, (violating "verisimilitude" and the "unity of action"), the play's heroine, Chimène, fails to properly mourn her father's death (violating "decorum"), Rodrigue visits Chimène in her private chambers (BIG violation of decorum!), and this very serious play has a very happy ending (violating "unity of genre"). Then there's the minor fact the Chimène ends up marrying her father's killer -- Rodrigue. In other words, from their point of the view, the neoclassical critics had quite a lot to complain about.

The interesting thing about this quarrel is how the government used it to push for the establishing artistic norms in playwriting, something that would seem strange to us were it to happen today. Our government, particularly at the local level, may involve itself in issues of obscenity in art, but it doesn't tend to issue declarations regarding the acceptable artistic standards for writing a play or painting a portrait, much less does it publicly criticize works of art it deems to have "strayed" from those standards (critics may do that, but the government doesn't). Indeed, the very idea that there are "rules" to creating "correct" art is a pretty foreign one to us now. But this was taken very seriously in 17th century France, even more seriously than it was in Italy, the home of the neoclassical ideal.

The state instrument for enforcing the neoclassical ideal was the Académie Française (French Academy), which issued a public rebuke to Corneille for his above-mentioned infractions of the neoclassical ideal. Now, the Academy was technically an advisory institution only, with no power to legally coerce writers into following its injunctions. It also had no power to curtail the play's immense popularity with the public, who seemed to care little whether it followed the neoclassical ideals or not. But the Academy did have the de facto ("in fact," as opposed to de jure, "by law") power to influence, or "persuade," writers to follow its admonitions, and after the judgement in the case of Le Cid the neoclassical rules became the accepted standard for playwrights writing in the state-sponsored theaters.

The academy's influence shouldn't surprise. It was, after all, officially constituted by King Louis XIII, at the urging of his most powerful adviser, Cardinal Richelieu (it had been a private academy of intellectuals before the King gave it a state patent).

A serious issue was at stake here, for the French Academy's criticism of Le Cid was no less than an attempt on the part of the state to ensure that art -- in this case, the theater -- served its needs, not the artists' or even the public's, which, as noted earlier, was perfectly happy with plays that did not follow the neoclassical ideal. 

And what were those interests of the state? Chief among them were order, discipline, and submission to authority. France at this time was heading into the era of "absolutism," when the power of the king was seen as, well, absolute. France's next king, Louis XIV, would capture this spirit in three very simple words that have been attributed, some say mistakenly, to him: "L'État, c'est moi," or, "I am the state." Whether he actually said these words or not, they accurately reflect the idea, held by French royalty of the day, that the king ruled supremely and by divine right. The neoclassical ideal, with its strict emphasis on the unities and decorum, on everyone knowing their place and behaving "properly," was in many ways the perfect artistic expression of this absolutist vision. 

Although royal absolutism no longer exists in France, the Academy Française is still around today. It consists of 40 members (called, modestly enough, "Immortals") whose main function now is to render advisory opinions on French language usage. Some French academics and critics are concerned about the increasing "Anglicization" of French. For example, they are opposed to so-called "loan words," words taken from one language and incorporated into another. The Academy, for example, was opposed to the use of the word "Walkman" (those portable tape players from the 80s). Their solution? "Le baladeur " ("the balladeer"). One more relevant fact about the Academy: of the 719 immortals that have served since its inception, all of six have been women (.8 of 1 percent).

Week 14 - Theater of the English Restoration: Women Take the Stage

Restoration comedy is most famous for its male playwrights and rakes and women dressed in men's clothes for the benefit of male audience members, and yet playwright Aphra Behn, author of the Restoration comedy, The Rover, managed to become one of the most successful writers of the day. Her success was certainly atypical of time when women were thought not to possess the same levels of wit as men, and had far fewer opportunities to forge professional writing careers than men. The prologue to a book of poetry by another female writer of the period, Anne Bradstreet, who lived in what is now New England, illustrates the problems facing women writers:

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on female wits:
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,   
They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.

Once again, the language may seem unfamiliar, but see if you can work your way through it. What is she saying? Most people think I should be sewing rather than writing, and if I do write something good, it won't be taken seriously because everyone will say I either stole it or, being a woman, I was lucky ("by chance"). Male writers had plenty of reason to complain about their critics; indeed, they often wrote prologues to their plays that did just that. But of all their complaints, they never made the case that they were never given the opportunity to succeed because they were men.

The reference above in the Bradstreet quote to "female wits" wasn't random. In 1696, an anonymous writer ("Mr. W. M") penned a satirical stage comedy by that name, ridiculing three of the leading women dramatists of the period: Mary Delarivière Manley, Mary Pix, and Catherine Trotter. Note the playwright's uncomplimentary description of the two of the main characters in the character list:

Marsilia, A Poetess, that admires her own Works, and a great Lover of Flattery
Calista, A Lady that pretends to the learned Languages, and assumes to her self the Name of a Critic

The plot of the story revolves around the rehearsals of one of the "poetess" Marsilia's plays, and is often described as a misogynistic and anti-feminist attack on female playwrights, although recent re-evaluations stress that this may be a simplistic and even inaccurate assessment.³ Whatever the intentions of this particular play, the three women playwrights may have had the last laugh. They appropriated the name "Female Wits" and applied it to themselves as a positive descriptor, certainly not the last time a ridiculed group has taken ownership of insulting language and repurposed it for different ends.

*   *   *   *   *

With the rise economic and political rise of the English commercial/merchant class (a.k.a., the bourgeoisie/middle class), and, more importantly, the rise of bourgeois values that stressed propriety and decorum, the licentious comedies of the Restoration came under counterattack. The merchant class wanted to see theater that reinforced its values, which put a premium on the virtuous being rewarded and the wicked, punished. And that, as we know, was not the aim of Restoration comedy.

Religious forces joined the fight, as we see in theologian Jeremy Collier’s "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage" (1698). This influential pamphlet, which started a public "pamphlet war" that lasted almost 20 years, attacked the theater as a singularly iniquitous enterprise. “[N]othing," he states in the opening, "has gone farther in Debauching the Age than the Stage Poets, and Play-House.” In particular, he attacked Restoration comedy for its lack of poetic justice, which demanded that people be rewarded or punished in proportion to their deeds.

Although Collier's attack drew protests from playwrights, he hit a vein with many middle class audience members. Think about it: You are part of this new commercial class generating ever higher levels of wealth. Yet, the traditional aristocratic class, which retains most of the political power, looks down on you as a cheeky, ill-bred upstart; a commoner who just happens to have made a lot of money. The aristocrats hold most of the important offices, they have all the important titles, they have noble coats-of-arms that go back generations. You can't compete with that, but what do you have, at least in theory, that they don't? Propriety! Sobriety! Rectitude! You save and reinvest money like a good businessman should, you don't throw it all away on rakish pursuits. You're a producer of goods and services, not a just a profligate, gambling with your inherited wealth. You go to church and believe in "moral" behavior, not lascivious debauchery. In the coming century, all across Europe, theaters will increasingly cater to and reflect these attitudes as the merchant class gradually displaces the aristocracy as Europe's ruling elite.

Despite their differences, however, the monarchy and the merchant class, competitors for state power, agreed on one thing: There was a lot of money to be made in enslaving human beings from Africa. Both the crown and the bourgeoisie became deeply involved in the transatlantic slave trade in the second half of the seventeenth century, and in 1672 King Charles II established the Royal African Company to oversee this lucrative enterprise. The company's official seal, pictured below, showed an elephant with a European-style castle on its back, flanked by two Africans. The motto that rings the seal, written in Latin, translates as "By royal patronage commerce flourishes, by commerce the realm." By the turn of the eighteenth century, the monarchy, enslavement, and the emerging capitalist economy had become inseparably intertwined.