The wives consent. They decide to bind themselves by an oath. This is the oath:
"LISISTRATA.—Mettez toutes la main sur la coupe, et qu'une seuls répète, en votre nom à toutes, ce que je vais vous dire: Aucun amant ni aucun époux....
"MIRRHINE.—Aucun amant ni aucun époux....
"LISISTRATA.—Ne pourra m'approcher rigente nervo!—Répète."
Myrrine repeats.
"LISISTRATA.—Et, s'il emploie la violence....
"MIRRHINE.—Oui, s'il emploie la violence....
"LISISTRATA.—Motus non addam!"
One can imagine the result of such an oath, which is scrupulously kept.
My readers will remember M. de Pourceaugnac's flight followed by the apothecaries? Well, that will give you some idea of the mise en scène of the rest of the piece. The wives play the rôle of M. de Pourceaugnac, and the husbands that of the apothecaries. And that is one of the plays which, according to the author of Joconde, gave such a high tone to ancient society! It is very extraordinary that people know Aristophanes so little when they are so well acquainted with Conaxa!
"In the ancient republics," our censor continues with assurance, "spectacular games were intended to excite noble passions, not to excite the vicious leanings of human nature; their object was to correct vice by ridicule, and, by recalling glorious memories, energetically to rouse souls to the emulation of virtue, enthusiasm for liberty and love of their country! Well, we, proud of our equivocal civilisation, have no such exalted thoughts; all we demand is to have at least one single theatre to which we can take our children and wives without their imaginations being contaminated, a theatre which shall be really a school of good taste and manners."
Was it at this theatre that Joconde was to be played?
"We do not look for it in the direction of the Beaux-Arts; a romantic coterie, the sworn enemy of our great literature, reigns supreme in that quarter; a coterie which only recognises its own specialists and flatterers and only bestows its favours upon them; an undesigning artiste is forgotten by it. It wants to carry out its own absurd theories: it hunts up from the boulevards its director, its manager, its actors and its plays, which are a disgrace to the French stage: that is its chief object; and those are the methods it employs. We are addressing these remarks to M. Thiers, Minister for Home Affairs, a distinguished man of letters and admirer of those sublime geniuses which are the glory of our country; it is to him, the guardian of a power which should watch over the safety of this noble inheritance, that we appeal to prevent it falling into hostile hands, and to oppose that outburst of evil morals which is invading the theatre, perverting the youth in our colleges, throwing it out upon the world eager for precocious pleasures, impatient of any kind of restraint, and making it soon tired of life. This disgust with life almost at the beginning of it, this terrible phenomenon hitherto unprecedented, is largely owing to the baneful influence of those dangerous spectacles where the most unbridled passions are exhibited in all their nakedness, and to that new school of literature where everything worthy of respect is scoffed at. To permit this corruption of youth, or rather to foster its corruption, is to prepare a stormy and a troubled future; it is to compromise the cause of Liberty, to poison our growing institutions in the bud; it is, at the same time, the most justifiable and deadly reproach that can be made against a government...."
Poor Antony! it only needed now to be accused of having violated the Charter of 1830!
pamphlets which have lent their support to this odious system of demoralisation; whatever else we may blame them for, we must admit that they have repulsed this Satanic literature and immoral drama with indignation, and have remained faithful to the creed of national honour. It is the journals of the Restoration, it is the despicable management of the Beaux-Arts, which, under the eyes of the Ministry, causes such great scandal to the civilised world: the scandal of contributing to the publicity and success of these monstrous productions, which take us back to barbarous times and which will end, if they are not stopped, in making us blush that we are Frenchmen ..."