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Rewriting French ‘Classical Tragedy’: The Case of the

Napoleonic ‘Classique’

Introduction

Over the centuries, what are now termed French ‘classical tragedies’,1 _namely the works of Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Voltaire amongst others, have come to be regarded as relatively stable and each text has been unified through critical editions and educational curricula. However, immediately after the

Revolution it was a very different state of affairs. Firstly, ‘Classicism’ as a notion relating to seventeenth-century works was introduced aposteriori, as Christian Delmas argues.2 It was implemented in large part in reaction to the Germanic invasions of 1814 and 1815, both those of the military and of theory (notably August Wilhelm Schlegel’s Cours de littérature dramatique and Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne in 1814), and then by the Romantics who defined themselves through their opposition to an antedated ‘Classicism’.3 Before this noun became common, classique had existed in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française since 1694 where it was endowed with the sense of authority, uniquely

1 _{The French tend to use the term ‘tragédie classique’ to refer to seventeenth- and} eighteenth-century French tragedy whereas the Anglophone world prefers ‘neo- classical French tragedies’. Since ‘neo-classical’ can also be employed by the French to refer to other periods, this thesis will use the term ‘classical tragedy’ as adopted from the French.

2 _{Christian Delmas, La Tragédie de l’âge classique, 1553–1770 (Paris: Seuil,} 1994), p. 18. An earlier example is Pierre Moreau, Le Classicisme des

romantiques (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1932), pp. 7–8.

3 _{Edmond Eggli and Pierre Martino, Le Débat romantique en France, 1813–}

1830, pamphlets, manifestes, polémiques de presse, 2 vols (Paris: Société d’édition ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1933), I, 247 and Alain Viala, ‘Qu’est ce qu’un classique ?’, Bulletin des bibliothèques de France, 1 (1992), available at

<http://bbf.enssib.fr/consulter/bbf-1992-01-0006-001> [accessed 7 April 2016] (para. 6). Stendhal uses the term ‘classsicisme’ in his 1823 version of Racine et Shakespeare (Paris: Bossange, 1823), p. 12 and p. 43.

relating to authors of the ancient world.4 This term evolved to reference seventeenth-century authors: Voltaire spoke of ‘ces bons livres classiques, qui honorent le siècle de Louis XIV & qui font la bibliothèque des nations’5 _{and the}

Encylopédie used classique to denote linguistic quality.6 By 1798 classique had additionally acquired an educational tone to denote what was read in the classes of the collèges.7 However, in the 1835 edition of the Dictionnaire, classique had developed to signify ‘les Arts d’imitation, […] De ce qui est conforme aux règles strictes de l’art’.8 This 1835 definition implying models and rules is still used in modern scholarship,9 but as its evolution from 1798 shows, the Napoleonic era

4 _{‘Classique. adj. N’est en usage qu’en cette phrase. Autheur classique, C’est à} dire, Un Autheur ancien fort approuvé, & qui fait authorité dans la matiere qu’il traitte. Aristote, Platon, Tite-Live &c. sont Autheurs classiques.’ Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1694, available at: <http://artflsrv01.uchicago.edu/cgi- bin/dicos/pubdico1look.pl?strippedhw=classique> [accessed 20 January 2014]. 5 _{Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, 2 vols(Berlin: Henning, 1751), II, 266.} 6 _{‘On peut dans ce dernier sens donner le nom d’auteurs classiques François aux} bons auteurs du siecle de Louis XIV. & de celui - ci; mais on doit plus

particulierement appliquer le nom de classiques aux auteurs qui ont écrit tout à la fois élégamment & correctement, tels que Despréaux, Racine, &c. Il seroit à souhaiter, comme le remarque M. de Voltaire, que l’académie Françoise donnât une édition correcte des auteurs classiques avec des remarques de Grammaire’,

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc.,

ed. by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2013 Edition), ed. by Robert Morrissey, available at:<http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-

bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1118.encyclopedie0513.5250206> [accessed 22 March 2016].

7 _{‘Classique, se dit aussi quelquefois De ce qui a rapport aux classes des} Collèges. Devoir classique. Exercice classique.’ Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1798, available at: <http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-

bin/dicos/pubdico1look.pl?strippedhw=classique> [accessed 22 March 2016]. 8 _{Ibid. Words enter dictionary only once they have been established and so we} can see that usage of these meanings of classique date from somewhere between 1798 and 1835.

9 _{Georges Forestier, La Tragédie française: passions tragiques et règles}

classiques (Paris: A. Colin, 2010), p. 70; René Bray, La Formation de la doctrine classique en France (Paris: Nizet, 1961), pp. i–v and p. 307; and Jacques Truchet, La Tragédie classique en France (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975), p. 20 and p. 46. Truchet additionally develops the notion of ‘conventions’, p. 13. The very instability of the term has led Georges Forestier

was a key moment in the development of this idea and its relationship to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre (rather than authors alone). From 1680 to 1814, Jean-Pierre Perchellet argues, tragedy was endowed with an ‘héritage classique’ whereby new creations followed a previous example and a model.10 Yet very few scholars have investigated how pre-existing tragedies changed over time, or how they were understood and rewritten for another era. This history is necessary to understand the later term ‘Classicism’ and how new works interact with this heritage.

Rewriting classical tragedies was far from heretical in post-revolutionary France. I will investigate how the tragedies were rewritten during the ancien régime and the Revolution to adapt to changing poetological and ideological situations. Then, I will demonstrate how the Napoleonic era transformed this tragic past. These rewritings can be understood as ‘translations’ in the broadest sense for the younger generation and its horizon of expectation. My investigation will use documents which have never before been analysed to challenge the temporal fixity that ‘Classicism’ often denotes in modern scholarship, and demonstrate how it must be understood within a specific historical context. This chapter will adopt the term ‘classique’ when referring to the traditions and models transmitted from the seventeenth century to underline the specificity of the tragic models inherited by Napoleonic society, how they were understood, and how this tradition was continued.

Tragedy has long been associated with the State. Tragedies written for the Bourbon courts in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France were inherently linked to the development of centralised power, the purification of the French language, and thus to France’s (assumed) cultural hegemony over other

and Jean-Pierre Néraudau to talk of ‘des classicismes’, an important notion to understand the variety of the movement and its afterlife, see Georges Forestier and Jean-Pierre Néraudau, eds, Un classicisme ou des classicismes ? : actes du colloque, université de Reims, 5, 6, 7 juin 1991 / organisé par le Centre de recherches sur les classicismes anciens et modernes (Pau: Publications de l’université de Pau, 1995).

10 _{Jean-Pierre Perchellet, L’Héritage classique. La Tragédie entre 1680 et 1814} (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004).

European countries.11 Such culture additionally carried the memory of France’s former glory, as both contemporaries and modern scholars have recognised. David Bell has argued that nationalism, the construction of a nation, started in France with the Revolution. Crucial to the ability to forge a political community of peoples, Bell contends, was its collective culture ‘whether language, customs, beliefs, traditions, or some combination of these’.12 Contemporary critics

believed that the national diffusion of classical tragedy and its importance in the culture and education of the Napoleonic elite, who were to run France, would aid the reconstruction of the country after the Revolution and reform the basis of French society.13

In first section of this chapter I will examine the tragic inheritance from the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, highlighting the changes to which it had been subjected. In the second section I will focus on the Napoleonic period, and analyse the continuing evolution of these tragedies in the light of changes in aesthetic taste as well as a new developing project of nationhood. One of the clear legacies of the Revolution was the way in which theatre could be used

11 _{See Rahul Markovits, Civiliser l’Europe. Politiques du théâtre français au}

XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2014), pp. 10–21. More generally see Thomas Docherty, ‘Tragedy and the Nationalist Condition of Criticism’, Textual Practice, 10 (1996), 479–505.

12 _{David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France, Inventing Nationalism, 1680–}

1800 (Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 3–21, quote p. 21; Lauren Clay, Stagestruck. The Business of Theater in Eighteenth-Century France and Its Colonies (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2013), p. 7; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn (London; New York: Verso, 2015). 13 _{La Harpe maintained that the masterpieces needed to be brought back to} educate the people, this would mean no more Revolution, and Geoffroy reiterated the need to impose an order both in politics and in literature. Jean Racine, Œuvres complètes de Jean Racine avec le commentaire de M. de la Harpe et augmentées de plusieurs morceaux inédits ou peu connus, 7 vols(Paris: Agasse, 1807), I, 3 and Jean Racine, Œuvres de Jean Racine avec des

commentaires par J.L. Geoffroy, 7 vols(Paris: Le Normant, 1808), I, p. vii. As

Eric Hobsbawm has shown, the formation of a nation on linguistic grounds was reserved for the literate and the elite, who in turn enforced these criteria

throughout the State, Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 56 and p. 62.

overtly for propaganda purposes. Consequently, I will also consider theatrical performance and the manipulation of pre-existing tragedy as part of Napoleon’s propaganda. Finally, I will investigate the legacy of Napoleonic rewritings. In sum, my chapter will demonstrate the specificity of the Napoleonic ‘classique’ conception of tragedy, reminding us that the view of the theatrical past is specific to a particular moment.

1. The ‘Classique’ Tragic Inheritance

Tragedy played a role in the reconstruction of post-revolutionary France with the re-foundation of the canon of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire. These were the most performed playwrights, but this canon was extended beyond the theatre walls and to a variety of audiences through publications. Only a few scholars have properly investigated how these tragedies metamorphosed over the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Antonio Sergi has worked on Phèdre

(1677) during the Revolution;14 _{Sabine Chaouche has a number of publications} on the revision of pre-existing plays;15 Pierre Frantz has demonstrated the varying eighteenth-century versions of Athalie (1691);16 Sophie Marchand has treated Jean-François Marmontel’s (1723–1799) reworking of Venceslas

(1648);17 Eric Eigenmann has analysed François Tronchin’s (1704–1798) rewriting of Corneille inspired by Voltaire’s Commentaires sur Corneille

14 _{Antonio Sergi, ‘“Phèdre”corrigée sous la Révolution’, Dix-huitième siècle, 6} (1974), 153–65.

15 _{Sabine Chaouche, ‘Enjeux des reprises à la Comédie-Française : les}

palimpsestes du texte théâtral au XVIIIe siècle’, Studi Francesi, 168 (2012), 465– 76; Sabine Chaouche, La Mise en scène du répertoire à la Comédie-Française : 1680–1815, 2 vols (Paris: Champion, 2013); Sabine Chaouche, Relevés de mise en scène (1686–1823) : ‘L’Homme à bonne fortune’, ‘Le Joueur’, ‘Le Distrait’ (Comédie-Française) (Paris: Champion, 2015).

16 _{Pierre Frantz ‘Les Dénouements en action au XVIII}e _{siècle’, in La Fabrique du}

théâtre avant la mise en scène (1650–1880), ed. by Mara Fazio and Pierre Frantz (Paris: Desjonquères, 2010), pp. 332–42.

17 _{Sophie Marchand, ‘La Mise en scène est-elle nécessaire ? L’Éclairage} anecdotique (XVIIIe siècle)’, in La Fabrique du théâtre, ed. by Mara Fazio and Pierre Frantz, pp. 40–50.

(1764);18 Catrin Francis that of Voltaire’s Brutus (1731) and Antoine-Marin Lemierre’s (1733–1793) Guillaume Tell (1767)during the Revolution, alongside a brief mention of the former’s La Mort de César (1735);19 _{and Stéphane Zékian} has examined some early nineteenth-century rewritings of the ‘classics’.20 As I will show, there was no stable text in the eighteenth century, to the extent that the celebrity actors of the time, Henri-Louis Lekain and Mademoiselle Clairon, were working from different versions of the text.21 Indeed, playwrights rewrote their own plays, and posthumous editions rearranged and deleted roles.22 From the analysis of the pre-existing rewritings of tragedy, we can establish how Napoleonic society received a reworked heritage which had a direct effect not only on how it carried out its own rewritings, but how the era understood the tragic model and its tradition. This in turn impacted the composition and reception of new Napoleonic tragedies.

a. The Eighteenth Century

From Napoleonic sources it is clear that several of these tragic rewritings dated from the eighteenth century, fundamentally altering the tragic past for

18 _{Eric Eigenmann, ‘Cinna sans clémence ? La Tragédie de Corneille “remise au} théâtre” par Voltaire et Tronchin’, Dix-septième siècle, 225 (2004), 747–55. 19 _{Catrin Mair Francis, ‘The Politics of Appropriation in French Revolutionary} Theatre’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Exeter, 2012), pp. 86–156. 20 _{Stéphane Zékian, L’Invention des classiques, le ‘siècle de Louis XIV’ existe-t-}

il ? (Paris: CNRS éditions, 2012), pp. 150–73. 21 _{Marchand, pp. 40–50 (p. 41).}

22 _{See Voltaire, Amélie ou le Duc de Foix, tragédie en cinq actes, 1752 in}

Théâtre de Voltaire : édition stéréotype, d’après le procédé de Firmin Didot, 12 vols (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1801), VII. The published edition is a rewriting of

Voltaire’s original Adélaïde Du Guesclin so the publisher has marked with an asterisk the lines which have been rewritten by Voltaire, p. 79, note 1. Adélaïde Du Guesclin was also rewritten by LeKain in Voltaire’s lifetime for its new production in 1765, see Voltaire, Adélaïde Du Guesclin, tragédie,représentée pour la première fois, le 18 janvier 1734, et remise au théâtre le 9 septembre 1765, donnée au public par M. Le Kain, comédien ordinaire du roi (Paris: Veuve Duchesne, 1766), pp. iv–v. Jean-François de La Harpe, Lycée, ou cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, 16 vols (Paris: H. Agasse, an VII–an XIII [1799–1804]), IX (1799), p. 49.

Napoleonic society. In 1799, the great critic Jean-François de La Harpe (1739– 1803) explained that Corneille was ‘le pere de la tragédie’ and Le Cid (1637) was the first French tragedy, discounting previous works by the likes of Jean Mairet (1604–1686), or the fact that Le Cid was originally a tragicomedy.23 La Harpe continued to telescope Corneille when he explained that the latter’s tragic production commenced with Le Cid and Cinna (1643), although in reality Corneille had already composed at least eight plays and another tragedy, Médée

(performed 1634–35, published 1639)before 1636–37.24 This distorted view of the tragic past is additionally testified to by La Harpe’s claim that from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘[n]ous avons vingt auteurs dont il est resté des ouvrages au théâtre,’ and that ‘Corneille, en quarante ans de travaux, a laissé au théâtre à peu près le même nombre de pieces [sic] que Racine en dix.’25 Tragedy’s past history had been rewritten.

Le Cid,the first ‘tragédie’ according to Napoleonic critics, had a long history of rewriting. It was published as a tragicomedy in 1637, republished as a tragedy in 1648 with new paratexts, and then again in 1660 with significant changes, especially in the first and last acts, where Chimène and Rodrigue separate rather than marry as they had done in 1637.26 However, others also reworked Le Cid. La Harpe explained that the role of the Infante ‘fut retranché lorsque Rousseau le lyrique arrangea le Cid de la manière dont on le joue maintenant’.27 So the version performed during the Napoleonic era was a

rewriting by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1670–1741) from 1734. Rousseau justified

23 _{La Harpe, Lycée, IV (1799), p. 219. Mairet authored a ‘tragédie’, La}

Sophonisbe, published in 1635.

24 _{Ibid., p. 67. Prior to Le Cid, the Pléiade edition of Corneille cites Mélite ou les}

fausses lettres (1633), Clitandre ou l’innocence délivrée (1632), La Veuve ou le traître trahi (1634), La Galerie du palais ou l’amie rivale (1637), La Suivante

(1637), La Place royale ou l’amoureux (1637) Médée (written 1634–35, published 1639), and L’Illusion comique (written 1635–36, performed 1639). Georges Couton, ‘Chronologie du théâtre de Pierre Corneille’, in Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, textes établis, présentés et annotés par Georges Couton, 3 vols(Paris: Gallimard, 1980–87), I (1980), pp. lxix–lxxiii.

25 _{La Harpe, Lycée, I, 77 and V, 249.}

26 _{See George Couton, ‘Le Cid: Notice’, in Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. by} Georges Couton, I, 1449–77 (pp. 1466–71).

27 _{La Harpe, Lycée,}

his suppressions because ‘la longueur et l’inutilité’ of the Infante encumbered the action, thus her removal rids the play of any non-essential action.28 _Ironically, Rousseau legitimised his changes through what the theatrical rules had become. Although La Harpe did not mention it, Rousseau also deleted the characters of Léonor and the Page. In 1682, the last edition of Le Cid published during Corneille’s lifetime,the Infante had 227.17 lines, Léonor 61.83 lines, and the Page 2.5 lines.29 By removing these characters half of the female roles and nearly sixteen per cent of the text disappeared.

Turning to another Napoleonic source, the 1801 edition of Œuvres de P. Corneille which contains Voltaire’s Commentaires sur Corneille, it seems Rousseau’s version of Corneille was rewritten again for performance. At I. 6

Voltaire notes: ‘Aujourd’hui, quand les comédiens représentent le Cid, ils commencent par cette scène.’30 This cut is not in the 1734 edition but it

obviously occurred in the ‘rewriting’ of the tragedy between the printed text and the stage. Le Cid is not the only case: the role of the Empress Livie was cut in

Cinna because it was deemed futile and only weakened the merit of Auguste’s clemency, which in the original version was activated by Livie herself.31 These inherited cuts were still in place during the Napoleonic era and influenced the reception of the ‘classique’ model.

At the turn of the century, as La Harpe and the 1801 version of Voltaire have demonstrated, the public was aware of the ability to rewrite classical tragedy, something many modern scholars overlook in their works on

28 _{Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, Pièces dramatiques choisies et restituées par}

Monsieur *** (Amsterdam: Changuion, 1734), p. v.

29 _{‘Nombre de vers par acte dans le texte, Le Cid (1682) de Corneille, Pierre’,} available at <http://www.theatre-

classique.fr/pages/programmes/vers.php?t=../documents/CORNEILLEP_CID.xm l> [accessed 22 April 2015].

30 _{Pierre Corneille, Œuvres de P. Corneille, avec le commentaire de Voltaire sur}

les pièces de théâtre, et des observations critiques sur ce commentaire par le citoyen Palissot, 12 vols (Paris: Didot aîné, 1801), III, 131. Voltaire says that this

cut is inherited from Rousseau but upon consultation of his 1734 this rewriting cannot be found. The 1801 edition of the text and its scene divisions can be distinctly different to modern editions.

31 _{Eigenmann, pp. 747–55. This cut is confirmed by the cast lists in the ‘registres} des feux’ at the Comédie-Française.

‘Classicism’. The fact that La Harpe’s Lycée, ou cours de littérature ancienne et moderne (1799–1804)remained in use until 1850 extended the life span of these changes, highlighting the flexibility of these ‘classical tragedies’ for the future generations.32 Certainly, Corneille’s own rewritings of Le Cid mean that it was not the most stable of all tragedies, but it is imperative to recognise that the version performed for over 150 years, during which ‘Classicism’ was invented and contested, was not the version of Corneille himself, nor the version that has been the basis for much modern scholarship. The recognition of this inherited rewriting then seriously questions the dominant narratives of tragédie classique

and its evolution.

1801 saw another eighteenth-century account of tragic adaptation in the first publication of Mémoires de Henri Louis Lekain, the great eighteenth-century