Versailles Impromptu

After the critical reception of his comedy The School for Wives, the French dramatist Molière wrote two one-act defenses of himself, The Critique of School for Wives and The Versailles Impromptu, the latter of which shows the playwright's own company attempting to rehearse a play for the king.

Molière, who originated the role of Arnolphe in The School for Wives, appears as himself, attempting to wrangle a troupe of actors into finishing the rehearsal on time. He is annoyed by a group of busybodies who constantly interrupt the rehearsal. The one-act comedy shows not just the rehearsal, but a play-within-the-play, in which characters discuss Molière's work, much as they had in The Critique of School for Wives. Silly characters speculate on who is being attacked in Molière's plays, while sensible ones take his comedies for being mere fictions.

To say all of this is a bit meta is perhaps an understatement. Molière had only recently married Armande Béjart, a young actress who had also appeared as Élise in The Critique of School for Wives. She appeared on stage as herself in The Versailles Impromptu, berating her husband (playing himself), who had also written the play. When he calls her names in exasperation, she remarks quite reasonably, "you wouldn’t have said that to me a year and a half ago" while he was still courting her. Though Molière wrote the play, he appears to give his wife the better argument.

Also appearing in the play is Mademoiselle Du Parc, an actress known more for her tragic portrayals than her comedy. When Molière tells her she is to play an affected young lady, she responds (presumably in an affected manner) "How could that be, when there’s nobody in the world less affected than I am?" I imagine that Du Parc was in on the joke, even if it was at her expense. Historically, she thrived as a part of Molière's company, though she later left (at the instigation of the tragic dramatist Jean Racine) to join a rival company at the Hôtel de Bourgogne.

The whole play is filled with in jokes. Most of the major actors in Molière's company make appearances as exaggerated versions of themselves, including Catherine de Brie, who originated the role of Agnès in The School for Wives, and Brécourt, who was the original Alain. We probably don't get half the jokes today, but it's still fun to read the play and envision what one of Molière's rehearsals was really like. I imagine they were quite dramatic, even if not quite as outrageous as the one in the play!

Thoughts on Racine

            In the 1660s and 1670s, Jean Racine wrote a series of plays, mostly on classical subjects, that included such admired works as Andromache, Britannicus, and Iphigenie. Along the way, however, he also made many enemies in the theatre. Moliere's company produced (at a loss) Racine's first two plays to be performed. Racine repaid the favor by jumping ship and allowing the Hotel de Bourgogne to produce the second play only days after its premiere. Even worse, Racine had fallen in love with the leading tragic actress in Moliere's company, Therese du Parc, a stunning woman Corneille himself had once courted. Racine not only won her heart, but convinced her to join the rival company at the Hotel de Bourgogne as well. In 1667, du Parc originated the title role in Andromache at the Hotel de Bourgogne. The next year, she was dead, and her mother later accused Racine of poisoning the actress.

            By the time Racine wrote his masterpiece, Phedre, in 1677, he had become a very controversial figure. He wrote the play for his new mistress, Marie Champmesle, whom he had met when she played the lesser role of Hermione opposite du Parc in Andromache. Champmesle was frequently praised for her naturalistic acting, and the title role in Phedre provided her with a perfect opportunity to display her skill.

            Sparse and focused rather than grand and sprawling like the plays of Corneille, Phedre is everything that The Cid is not. Racine boiled down Euripides' play Hippolytus to its essence and gave each tautly written line dramatic force. In contrast to the encyclopedic vocabulary of Shakespeare, Racine used a mere 4,000 French words in his plays, and the language of Phedre is particularly restricted. While Corneille chafed under neoclassical restrictions, Racine triumphs in minimalism.

            Though Phedre was undoubtedly an artistic triumph, it was a commercial disaster. Racine had made too many enemies, and it would now come back to haunt him. His previous play, Iphigenie, had been threatened when a rival company produced a play on the same subject to directly compete against the Hotel de Bourgogne. Racine plotted to have the rival performance postponed, but the next time he would not be so lucky.

            Two years prior to Phedre, Racine might have been involved in getting a play by rival dramatist Jacques Pradon pulled from its run in spite of a series of successful performances. Even if Racine was innocent of this particular slight, Pradon had a grudge, and so did much of the rest of the theatre community in Paris. Pradon wrote a rival play called Phedre and Hippolyte. Though Pradon's play is virtually forgotten now, it drew crowds of enthusiastic admirers, while Racine's play opened to tepid applause from houses with suspiciously empty seats.

            Racine never again wrote a play for the public stage. An orphan, he had been raised in a religious institution run by an ultra-conservative sect known as the Jansenists, who were deemed heretics by mainstream Catholics. After giving up the stage, he married a strict Jansenist wife who had allegedly never read a word of his plays.

            At the request of the Marquise de Maintenon, who had secretly become Louis XIV's second wife, Racine wrote two religious dramas to be performed by students at a school for girls the marquise had established in 1684. The plays, Esther and Athalie, are both based on Biblical subjects, and while they have their admirers, most critics find them timid and uninteresting when compared to Phedre.