Neoclassical French Theater Neoclassical French Theater

The neoclassical French theater’s conventions were inspired by the classical drama of Greece and Rome. Hence the term neoclassical to describe it. Like its ancient antecedents, the seventeenth-century French theater observed the ancient unities: the unity of time (24 hours) the unity of time (24 hours) the unity of place (a single setting) the unity of place (a single setting) the unity of action (a single plot) the unity of action (a single plot)

The Three Unities Moliere’s Tartuffe honors all three. Plays that violated the unities were thought to be crude and inelegant by the educated neoclassical audience, which consisted largely of courtiers, aristocrats, and well-to-do merchants. Tartuffe was performed for the court of Louis XIV.

An aristocratic mirror French neoclassical plays sometimes reflected the ideas and upheld the values popular among these classes; sometimes they satirized them. In either case, the good manners, wit, and common sense of neoclassical comedy mirrored the aristocratic world and suited its audience.

Neoclassical stage The neoclassical stage differed from the stages of Shakespeare and Sophocles in being an indoor theater with a picture-frame stage. The proscenium arch with its curtain separated audience from actors. Neoclassical plays were enacted on a box stage, which represented a room with a missing fourth wall, allowing the audience to look in on the action.

Scenery & Costumes The scenery was not elaborate. It was painted and served as a backdrop Candles and lanterns illuminated both the actors and the audience. Costumes tended toward the elaborate and ornate as in Elizabethan drama. Both Elizabethan and neoclassical actors wore ordinary costumes in contemporary dress that was appropriate to the social status of the characters. Both Elizabethan and neoclassical actors wore ordinary costumes in contemporary dress that was appropriate to the social status of the characters.

Women on stage A major difference between neoclassical and earlier drama was that female actresses assumed women’s roles, enabling playwrights to include more extensive, more frequent, and more realistic love scenes than had been possible previously (since boys had assumed women’s roles in Shakespeare’s time).

Dialogue rules over action As in the earlier eras of drama, however, language still did much of the work, so that even though the intimacy of the French neoclassical playhouse – with a capacity to seat perhaps four hundred spectaors – allowed for refinements of facial and physical gesture, action remained subordinate to dialogue.

Moliere Moliere was a poet and an actor as well as a playwright. He performed in his own plays, playing Orgon in Tartuffe. Moliere’s genius was limited to comedy. His comedies were satiric rather than romantic.

The King of Farce Moliere was the king of farce. He was the most influential playwright of the neoclassical period and had the largest impact on playwrights after his time. He freely admitted to depicting the failings of humans truthfully. He used farcical characters to depict true character-types of the time period but was persecuted for attacking human weakness.

Characteristics of Neoclassical Plays He utilized the criteria of the Académie, as well as neoclassical language (he often used rhymed couplets). Another characteristic of neoclassical theatre that is often apparent in his plays is deus ex machina. In two of his most popular plays, Tartuffe and The Would-Be Gentleman, the conflict resolves in the end with a letter arriving from the king solving all the problems and providing closure to the story.

The Comedie Francaise Molière also had his own theatre troupe, and their theatre was called the Palais Royal. In 1665, Louis XIV made Molière's troupe “The Kings Men." He died in 1673 while acting in The Imaginary Invalid.The Church refused to bury him because he was associated with the theatre Louis became upset and, in the end, Molière was buried at night at a small church. In 1680, Louis XIV combined Moliere’s group with another to create the Comedie Francaise, the first (and still existing) national theatre.

Tartuffe Tartuffe satirizes both religious hypocrisy and fraudulence. It also exposes the obsessive fanaticism and the blind gullibility of those who allow themselves to be victimized by the greedy and the self- serving. When Tartuffe was first staged in 1664, it stirred up those who considered it an attack on religion.

Religion or hypocrisy? Moliere retitled it The Imposter to indicate that Tartuffe’s piety is fraudulent, the original version of the play was censored and banned. To defend himself and the play against charges that Tartuffe attacked religion, Moliere wrote three prefaces and later changed his original ending.

Brilliance of Language After five years, the publicity enhanced the play’s popularity, and the work returned to the stage under the protection of the King. Its three-hundred-year-plus life span, however, is due neither to royal protection nor to notoriety, but rather to the ingenuity and vitality of its plot, the profundity of its characterization, and the brilliance of its language, unerringly translated by Richard Wilbur into rhymed iambic pentameter couplets.

DiYanni, Robert. Literature Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Boston, Massachusetts, Alvin Goldfarb. Bibliography: A. Houssaye, Behind the Scenes of the Comédie Française (1889) H.C. Lancaster, The Comédie Française, 2 vols (1941; 1951).