To-day the tragic hero lives with the common herd undistinguished; he is not even refused Christian burial when he dies. The world has been used, too, these fifty years to gross sensuality and crime beyond the example of all former times, and human sympathy has been staled by custom; matrimonial jealousy, which held the wolf’s bane and dagger, is now either comic or insipid; a Phædra excites no disgust, an Œdipus inspires no horror. The passions, which sustained the deep tragic interest, are quenched; or they have become prurient and emasculate, and require to be tickled by a vaudeville. Farce has usurped the stage, and the dwarfish imp limps, where tragedy dragged her flowing robes upon the scene.
The French, who, before their Revolution, declaimed against the murders of the English drama, now out-kill all ages and countries. Rapes and massacres have been the staple of their lower plays for many years, and are not uncommon in the best. This taste is on the decline.—The intrigues and amours of young girls in Parisian society—are almost impossible. Danaë was not so guarded in her tower, as the unwedded females in Paris. The loves of married women are therefore the common plots of the French plays, as well as of French novels, and they are publicly applauded, as in the ordinary and natural course of society.—In our cities, the stage, ill attended, and not sustained by original compositions, must be a faithless mirror; but I have no doubt that in Paris it represents the general features correctly.
Each of the French theatres has its range of pieces assigned, and cannot compete with, or injure another. Four of the principal ones, the Italian and French Opera, Théâtre Français, and Opera Comique, pay neither rent nor license, but have two hundred and sixty thousand dollars annually from government. This sum is contributed from the five and a half millions derived from the gambling houses.
They make the devil pay his own debts. The Opera alone has two hundred thousand francs. And we expect in America to support two or three, and bring all our performers and fiddlers from Europe, on the taste of the community! A single singer may make her fortune in our cities, but a company must perish. The annual receipts from all the Parisian Theatres are about one and a half million of dollars. The author retains the control of his pieces, and receives from the theatres of the capital and provinces, a share of every night’s performance during life, with a post obit of ten years. Scribe’s revenue from this source is above twenty-five thousand dollars. A five-act piece pays the author at the “Théâtre Français” one twelfth.
There is a great deal of machinery about the French drama, which is but little known in countries less advanced in the art. For example, each theatre has attached to it a regular troupe of applauders. These were originally got up for occasions, but in course of time they have become as an integral part of the corps dramatique;—they are called Clacqueurs, (Anglice Clappers.) Their art requires a regular apprenticeship, as the other branches of a histrionic education, though not a branch at the “Repertoire.” A person of good capacity may make himself master of it in two or three months.
They who have taken lessons in Clacking under the professors, can clap louder than ordinary people, and they know where to clap, which is something. They can shew also a great deal more enthusiasm than if they were really delighted;—as they who cry at funerals can cry better than persons who are really grieved. On my first visits here, I could not help remarking how much more feeling was a French than an American audience. The Théâtre Français went off in a crash every now and then, which one could hear to the Boulevards; and I could see no great reason for the explosion. On nights of deep tragedy they bring out also the female Clacqueurs. These are taught, one to sob, another to feign to wipe away a tear, and another to scream when a pistol goes off, and they are distributed in different parts of the house. If you see any lady fainting on these occasions, don’t pick her up, she is getting her living by it.
No piece succeeds, or actor either, unless these salaried critics are employed. If neglected, they turn out among the hisses. Even Talma had to pay to this High Chancery his regular tribute. In some of the houses there are two rival companies, and the player is obliged to bribe both, or the rival pack will rise up and bark against him. The actor has his regular interviews with the chief officer, and they agree beforehand upon what parts are to be applauded, with the quality and quantity of the applause. “At this passage,” says Mars, “you must applaud gently, at this a little louder, and at this moderately”—Cependant Madame, a beau sentiment like this——“Quoi! Cependent Monsieur.—It is forty years, sir, since I have been playing in this house, and no one has dared to say to me, ‘Cependant!’ I tell you, you are to keep your ardour to the end of the scene. I have no notion of being blown up to heaven in the middle of a passion, and left dangling two feet in the air at the end of it. Here is the place you are to applaud; here you may give a clap and a brava; and here, (mark well this point,) at this finale I must have the whole strength of your company.”
“Give me your hand, M. Gigolard; here are fifty francs, and a little present for your wife. And, recollect, I must have this evening my Grand Entrée; I have been absent these three months, and my return requires that attention.” A Grand Entrée is where the actress has a burst of acclamation just at her entrance, which is kept up afterwards louder and louder; she bows, and they applaud, and there must be a great conflict between joy and gratitude until she has exhausted a clap worth about ten francs.—These Clacqueurs are, on all ordinary occasions, arbiters of the fate of a play or the actor; it is only at a new piece, and a very full house, that they are obliged to consult a little the impressions of the audience.
The Parisians require to be fed continually upon new pieces, and are seldom contented with less than three of an evening, as the epicure prefers several courses, and does not throw away a good appetite upon a single dish. This has given vogue to their short and piquante pieces, the vaudevilles, and produces them several hundred new ones each season, and the manufacture of these pieces has become a regular business on a large scale. A prime vaudevillist does not pretend to furnish his pieces single handed; he has his partners, his clerks, and his understrappers.
These last are a kind of circumforaneous wits, who frequent public places, and run all over town in search of plots and ideas, or some domestic scandal of dramatic interest, and they have their regular cafés or places of rendezvous, where they work to each other’s hands. If you have come just green from the country, and entering a café, see a number of grave and lean persons seated about at tables, seeming entire strangers to one another, and saying not a word about Louis Philipe, or the “Procès Monstre,” this is a café of the vaudevillists. They hunt particularly after persons who arrive with some originality from the Provinces. In cities men are nearly all cast in the same mould; mixing continually together, there is little departure from the fashionable opinions and expressions.—You will see each one with a newspaper, a pencil, and a bit of paper, reading and commenting.