La Grande Mademoiselle, 1627-1652

by Arvède Barine

The ballet was interlaced by a double collation. One part of the collation was composed of the rarest and most delicious of fruits; the other part was composed of confitures in little baskets, which eighteen dancing pages presented to the guests. The baskets were all trimmed with English ribands and with golden and silvern tissue. The pages presented the baskets to the lords and then the lords distributed them among the ladies.

Mademoiselle was one of the company, and she received her basket with profound satisfaction. Three days after the first comedy of Baro was played the Court again visited the Cardinal's theatre to witness a second play by the same author. Baro was a well-known literary hack. He had been d'Urfé's secretary and had continued Astrée when d'Urfé laid down his pen. The success of the second representation was phenomenal.

The ornamentation of the theatre [commented the Gazette], the pretty, ingenious tricks invented by the author, the excellences of the verse ... the ravishing concert of the lutes, the harpsichords, and the other instruments, the elocution, the gestures, and the costumes of the actors compromised the honour of all the plays that have been seen either in past centuries or in our own century.

We consider Baro's plays insipid, but they were very successful in their day.

February 19th was a gala day at the Théâtre de Richelieu. A fête was given in honour of the Duke of Parma. First of all they gave a very fine comedy, with complete change of play, with interludes; lutes, spinnets, viols, and violins were played.

The Gazette de France tells us that there was a ballet, and then a supper, at which the guests saw "the fine buffet, all of white silver," which the Cardinal gave to the King some years later. Though the theatre was the chief amusement in 1636, the theatrical representations and ballets, "interlaced by collations" and by interludes, were considered a good deal of dancing and a good deal of play-acting for a priest, even when disseminated over a period of three weeks.

The conclusion of the report in the Gazette proved that Richelieu was conscious of his acts, and that he did not disdain to justify himself. "Without flattering his Eminence," said the Gazette, "it may be said that all which takes place by his orders is always in conformity with reason and with right, and that the duties which he renders to the State never conflict with those that all Christians owe—and which he, in particular, owes—to the Church." Mademoiselle attended all the fêtes, and she was less than ten years old. She, herself, gave a ball and a comedy in honour of the Queen in the palace of the Tuileries.

In that day children in their nurses' arms were taken to see the play. A contemporary engraving depicts the royal family at the theatre in Richelieu's palace. The "hall" is in the form of an immense salon much longer than it is broad; at one end is the stage, raised by five steps; along the walls are two ranks of galleries for the invited guests. The women sit in the lower gallery, the men sit above them; seats have been brought into the centre of the hall, and on them sit Louis XIII. and his family. In the picture Monsieur is sitting on the King's left hand. On Anne of Austria's right hand, in a little arm-chair made for a child, sits the Dauphin, who must have been three, or possibly four, years old at that time. On the right hand of the Queen, beyond the Dauphin, stands a woman holding a great doll-like infant, the brother of the Dauphin.

The playgoing infantine assiduity, the custom of carrying children in swaddling bands to the theatre to witness comedies of every species, good or bad, assured the theatre of a position in public education; the children of the aristocracy drank in the drama with eye and ear—if I dare express myself thus—and at an age when reason was not present to correct the effect of impressions. The repertory of the theatre was one of the most dramatically romantic and sentimental ever known to France and the one of all others best fitted to turn a generation from sound reality to false and fantastic visions.

The general movement of that day may be classed as an aberration due to the fact that the drama was a new pleasure; the inconveniences attendant upon its influences had not been recognised, but it is probable that some of the condemnations uttered by the moralists and by the preachers of the seventeenth century in the name of religion and of decency were called forth by the presence of children at the play; the men who were most bitter in denunciations which amaze us by the excess of their hostility spoke from experience and had reason for their bitterness. The Prince de Conti, the brother of the great Condé, might have furnished unique commentaries on the criticisms of the day, had he cared to recall a treatise which he wrote (The Plays of the Theatre, and Spectacles) when he was emerging from a youth far from edifying.