Mademoiselle Clairon

The 18th-century French actress Hippolite Clairon was famous for her portrayal of classic heroines, but she also inspired contemporary dramatists to write parts specifically for her.

According to the biographer Frederick Hawkins, "Many tragedies were written in the hope that she might appear in them, and nearly all of those in which she did appear received at least a temporary vitality from her disciplined art and intensity of passion."

Voltaire was a particular admirer of hers, and he penned the role of Idamé in L'Orphelin de la Chine expressly for Clairon. That play was based on a Yuan-era zaju play from China, but ended up being re-adapted by dramatists all over Europe, including Arthur Murphy.

The admiration between Voltaire and Clairon was mutual. Hawkins claims that in Clairon's eyes Voltaire "had always been a sort of demi-god. On his side, the aged philosopher was quite prepared to view her as a demi-goddess, especially after witnessing in his little theatre the superb combination of art and truth which her acting had presented."

Clairon began her career at the Comédie Italienne, debuting in a small role in a play by Marivaux. She became famous, however, at the Comédie-Française, playing many of the parts exalted by the neoclassical French stage, including Racine's Phèdre.

One reason for Clairon's success might have been her comparatively physical style of acting. The writer Denis Diderot claimed her "acting sometimes has a pathos beyond all the resources of the art of oratory." Clairon was able to declaim with the best of her rivals, including the notorious Marie Françoise Dumesnil. In addition to that, though, she moved with a naturalness rarely seen before on the French stage.

With Clairon's new style of acting came a new style of costume design as well. Traditionally, French actors wore a mixture of ancient and modern dress when appearing in plays on Greek and Roman subjects. Clairon strove for a new level of authenticity in historical costuming, and the rest of the French theatre followed.

She survived the French Revolution, but like many artists who were associated with the old regime, she fell on hard times after the change in government. Her economic need became a boon to historians, and she published her memoirs in 1799, quickly selling out the first edition.

The Commedia Legacy

Traditional commedia dell'arte used stock characters performing improvised actions and dialogue. However, during the eighteenth century, this improvisational form became increasingly codified with written scripts that were based on traditional characters and scenarios.

The commedia style influenced the drama of many countries. In France, where the Comédie Italienne was one of two state-sanctioned theatres in Paris, the French author Pierre Carlet de Marivaux wrote a series of plays using commedia characters, but with written scripts rather than bare-bones scenarios. Though Marivaux had begun his career writing works for the more respectable Comédie Française, he is best remembered for the commedia-inspired works he wrote for its smaller rival.

Marivaux's most famous play, The Game of Love and Chance, uses multiple stock characters from commedia, including the servant character Arlecchino who appears as "Arlequin" in the play. However, Marivaux introduces a level of emotional complexity to his characters that was rarely seen in commedia performances of the past. The same is true of his later play The Triumph of Love, first performed in 1732. Though critics attacked the play and it closed after only six performances, Triumph of Love is now considered a classic. Marivaux's later plays became increasingly bitter. His 1744 comedy The Dispute depicts a cruel scientific experiment in which aristocrats have orphaned boys and girls placed in an Eden-like setting to see if men or women are less likely to be faithful in a state of nature. Neither gender comes off particularly well in the play.

While Marivaux was clashing with critics in Paris, Carlo Goldoni was writing commedia-inspired scripts in Italy. He actually began writing tragedies and operas, but at the request of the actor Antonio Sacchi he wrote the comedy The Servant of Two Masters. Though the play originally had sections that allowed for improvisation, Goldoni revised the play in 1753 to codify the action in a complete script. The play uses stock commedia characters, such as the old miser Pantalone and the quarrelsome innkeeper Brighella, but gives them set dialogue, eliminating much of the need for (and fun of) improvisation. Goldoni's success in Italy drew the attention of people in other countries, and in 1762 he settled in Paris, then considered the center of the theatrical world.

Goldoni took charge of the Comédie Italienne, but while audiences wanted the old tricks of traditional commedia, he wanted to move forward to a new, more realistic form of comedy. In 1763, he wrote the first version of his play The Fan, a comedy in which multiple lovers quarrel over a misunderstanding involving one of the simplest of objects, the titular fan. The self-consciously ridiculous play failed to make an impression in Paris, so Goldoni translated it into Italian and premiered the new version in Venice in 1765, where it was a hit. The play contains an attractive widow named Geltruda, who is a theatrical descendant of the many vivacious young widows played by Isabella Andreini in commedia plays during the Renaissance. Similarly, the play's apothecary, Timoteo, has elements of the learned yet foolish Dottore character from commedia.

The playwright that Goldoni most often quarreled with was Carlo Gozzi, another Italian writer, but one who wished to preserve rather than reform the conventions of commedia. Gozzi's 1761 play The Love of Three Oranges satirized Goldoni and other reformist writers, and Gozzi gave the play (along with other scripts) outright to Sacchi's struggling company of commedia performers to keep them going. Many of Gozzi's plays, including The Stag King, are based on fairy tales. His 1762 play Turandot was later turned into an opera, and in 1765 Gozzi wrote a sequel to The Love of Three Oranges called The Green Bird. Though Gozzi used commedia techniques, he also utilized Asian characters and settings to lend an element of exoticism to his plays. Thus, even in preserving commedia, he aided in its gradual evolution.