Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

After the death of Louis XIV. the Comédie Française remained, as before, under the supreme government of the king, his ministers, and the gentlemen of the chamber. The new sovereign showed himself as munificent in the matter of the subvention as his predecessor, and the theatre was once more guaranteed an annual grant of 12,000 francs. A custom was now for the first time introduced, which has since become universal—that of playing a first piece in one act before the principal play of the evening.

Under Louis XV. the Comédie Française was directed, in the matter of engagements and general administration, by the Duc de Richelieu, to whom were submitted the petitions intended for the king. The members of the Comédie Française kept a careful watch over the privileges conferred upon them, and we find them complaining whenever there are any signs of these privileges being interfered with by a rival establishment. Every booth opened at a temporary fair excited the suspicion of the comedians; and they at last succeeded in procuring an order by which the directors of the much-hated Comédie Italienne, now known as the Opéra Comique, were prevented from playing comedies, especially those which had been written expressly for the Comédie Française.

In 1770 the famous company again changed their domicile, and, by the king’s special permission, took possession of the theatre built in 1671 at the palace of the Tuileries. Here they remained twelve years, until 1782, when they left the palace of the kings of France and installed themselves in the house afterwards to become known as the Odéon, on the left bank of the Seine, close to the Luxemburg Palace. According to Fréron, the daring satirist who was in no way afraid to take even Voltaire for his mark, the dramatic literature of France had now fallen to a very low point, by reason of the worldly success of its authors. “The gay life of most of our authors helps,” wrote Fréron, “to keep them within the bounds of mediocrity. Love of pleasure, the attractions of society that luxury which had so long kept them at a respectful distance, now enervate their souls. They are men of society, men of fashion, runners after women, and themselves much run after. They are at every party, every entertainment; no supper is complete without them; they are sumptuously dressed, and have luxuriously furnished rooms. It was not by supping out every night in society that the Corneilles, the Molières, the La Fontaines, and the Boileaus composed those masterpieces which will constitute for ever their glory and the glory of France. They were simply lodged and simply clothed; a large flat cap covered the sublime head of the great Corneille, but all the assembly rose before him when he made his appearance at the play.” Since the days of Fréron the incomes and the luxury of French dramatic authors have greatly increased; a result mainly due to the exertions of Beaumarchais, whose Marriage of Figaro was produced at the Comédie Française two years after its installation at the Odéon in 1784. It was Beaumarchais who secured for French dramatic authors a fixed proportion of the receipts, and caused this equitable arrangement, previously unknown, to be perpetuated.

Under the Revolution, precisely five years after the production of The Marriage of Figaro, the spirit and tone of which seemed to the king himself prophetic of the approaching catastrophe, the Comédie Française assumed the title of “Théâtre de la Nation, Comédiens ordinaires du Roi,” a compromise between loyalty to the old state of things and adhesion to the new of which the members of the company were afterwards bitterly to repent. Dissensions now sprang up between the different members of the company, some royalists, others republicans. On the whole, however, the actors and actresses showed a certain aptitude for {176} placing themselves on good terms with the executive power of the moment. In 1792, on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the players were formally obliged to replace such words as “Seigneur” and “Monsieur” by “Citoyen,” even when the piece was written in verse. In the classical tragedies of Racine the word “Seigneur” constantly occurs, as, for instance, where Agamemnon addresses Achilles, or Achilles Agamemnon. The heroes of the Iliad and of the history of Rome had now to be “Citoyens;” which, apart from the intrinsic absurdity of the thing, could not but spoil the metre.

One effect of the Revolution was to deprive the Comédie Française of the privilege it had so long and so unjustly enjoyed of incorporating in its company any actor or actress whom it might choose to detach from some other troop, not only at Paris, but in any other part of France. It at the same time also lost its monopoly. A split having taken place in the company, a second Comédie Française was started in the Palais Royal with the celebrated Talma, and with Grandmesnil, Dugazon, and Mme. Vestris among its artists. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the loss of Talma, the Comédie Française kept up against all disadvantages. There was, however, too much sense of art, of dramatic propriety among the members to permit the replacement of the word “Seigneur” by “Citoyen,” and as a punishment for neglecting the Governmental order on the subject the whole of the company of the Comédie Française was arrested one night and thrown into prison, with the exception only of Molé, who was apparently looked upon as a good Republican, and some other actor who was away from the capital. The piece performed on the night of the arrest had {177} been a dramatic version of Richardson’s Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded, which, according to the judgment of the Republican Censors, was “full of reactionary feeling.” Possibly the nameless hero, Mr. B——, was addressed from time to time not as “Citoyen,” but as “Monsieur.”

Not only were the actors and actresses of the Comédie Française imprisoned, but also the dramatists in the habit of writing for the theatre, with Alexander Duval, author of Les Héritiers and other amusing comedies, and Laya, who had dramatised “Pamela,” among them. One of the members of the Committee of Public Safety, the ferocious Collot d’Herbois, is reported to have said that “the head of the Comédie Française should be guillotined, and the rest sent out of the country.” The famous actor, Fleury, sets forth in his “Memoirs” that on the margin of the depositions in the case of Mdlle. Raucourt, who had been arrested with the other members of the company, the said Collot d’Herbois had written with his own hand, in red, an enormous G. {178} This was a death sentence without appeal, G standing for guillotine. “Arrested in 1793 with most of the principal actors and actresses, she was,” says Fleury, “as a first step, imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie; but already she was marked down for the scaffold. The Queen had protected her; she had received numerous benefits from the Royal Family; and she was suspected of gratitude for so many favours.” In common with all her colleagues of the Comédie Française, who like herself had been arrested, Fleury among the number, Mdlle. Raucourt owed her life to the courage and ingenuity of a clerk in the employment of the Committee of Public Safety, who destroyed the Acts of Accusation drawn up by Collot d’Herbois for presentation to Fouquier-Tinville. Considerable delay was thus caused, during which the anger entertained against the theatrical troop gradually evaporated, though some of the players remained in prison until the fall of Robespierre. It was understood meanwhile that no such words as “king” or “queen,” “lord” or “lady,” were to be used on the stage, and the members of the Comédie Française had received a sufficiently severe lesson to render them disinclined for the future to set at naught the edict on the subject.

As soon as she had regained her liberty, Mdlle. Raucourt tried to form a company for herself, and, succeeding, took a theatre, which was soon, however, closed by order of the Government, some allusion to its severity having been discovered in one of the pieces represented. Mdlle. Raucourt thenceforward made no secret of her hostility to the Directory, which, now that the Reign of Terror was at an end, could be attacked, indirectly at least, without too much danger. Fleury tells us that Mdlle. Raucourt’s costume was a constant protest against the existing order of things; which, from a feeling of gratitude towards the Royal Family, her constant patrons, and from painful feelings in connection with that guillotine beneath whose shadow she had passed, she could not but hate. “She wore on her spenser,” says Fleury, “eighteen buttons in allusion to Louis XVIII., while her fan was one of those weeping-willow fans, the folds of which formed the face of Marie Antoinette.” Fleury speaks, moreover, of a certain shawl worn by Mdlle. Raucourt, of which the pattern, once explained, traced to the eyes of the initiated the portraits of Louis, the Queen, and the Dauphin. One day he accompanied her to a fortune-teller who had been expected to predict the restoration of the monarchy, but who foretold instead the revival of the Comédie Française. “The woman,” says Fleury, “had read the cards aright, for in 1799 an order from the First Consul re-assembled in a new association the remains of the company dispersed at the time of the Revolution.” But now the theatre was burnt down; and though the Comédie Française existed as an institution, and received in 1802 a special subsidy of 100,000 francs, it was not until 1803 that, in conformity with an order from the First Consul, it took possession of the building in the Rue Richelieu, close to the Palais Royal, where it has ever since remained.

As under Louis XIV., so under Napoleon, the Comédie Française followed the sovereign to his palatial residence wherever it might be; to Saint-Cloud, to Fontainebleau, to Trianon, to Compiègne, to Malmaison, and even to Erfurt and Dresden, where Talma is known to have performed before a “pit of kings.” Nor did Napoleon forget the Comédie Française when he was at Moscow, during the temporary occupation and just before the fatal retreat; though it may well have been from a feeling of pride, and a desire to show how capable he was at such a critical moment of occupying himself with comparatively unimportant things, that he dated from the Kremlin his celebrated decree regulating the affairs of the principal theatre in France.