1. Introduction

The world of the arts is considered by historians to

reflect the political, social and cultural context of the

society in which it is found. Theatre historians and

dramaturges study this context to better understand the

motivations of the playwright as well as to provide clues

for the director, actor and spectator of the “world of

the play”. Theatre history in France is one of the

richest and most studied contexts; it has given birth to

theatrical movements that have been embraced for

centuries by most of the Western world. Each stage in

France’s theatrical history is a reaction to what is

happening at the time within its society. Sometimes

these stages evolve at an almost imperceptible rate

entailing great effort on the parts of playwrights,

actors and audiences. At other times, the evolution is

so remarkably rapid, that the change is as ephemeral as

is the spectacle itself.

1

Such is the case for the theatre of the French

Revolution from the years 1789 to 1799. In a space of

ten years and with the swiftness of the ever-changing

politics of the time, theatre in France went from the

highly censored esthetic tragedies of the court, to the

freedom of the patriotic theatre of the early days of the

Revolution, to the highly politicized and increasingly

censored theatre of the Jacobin propagandists, to the

light-hearted theatre of the Directory that gave birth to

the Melodramatic movement of the early 19th century

dominated by René Guilbert Pixérécourt.

The swiftness of this evolution in theatre is

matched by the enormous number of plays that were written

and the number of theatres that were formed in Paris

during this ten-year period. Between 1791 and 1800 more

than fifty troupes can be identified (Brockett 336) and

between 1789 and 1815 there were 3,000 new plays with

nearly 40,000 productions in Paris during the same

period. In order to preserve an account of what happened

2

and how it affected society, revolutionaries rushed to

produce commemorative plays and stage elaborate festivals

that served as propaganda for shaping the consciousness

of a newborn society based upon the Rights of Man and

Citizen in a nation turned toward the enlightenment of

the world as its raison d’être. Their efforts to eradicate

a past dominated by oppression and abuse led to a

reordering of their society from the ground up, with all

ties to the monarchy and the Catholic church severed and

a clean sweep made of each citizen’s private and public

life. Nothing was left untouched, citizens demonstrated

their patriotism through a new daily costume and

patriotic language and responded to powerful symbols

including a confusing new calendar that threw out the old

traditions and supposedly based itself upon “nature”;

everyone and everything had a part in the metamorphosis.

“Because revolutionary rhetoric insisted on a complete

break with the past, it called into question all customs,

traditions, and ways of life. What made the French

3

different, what made them seem to themselves and to

observers alike ‘this new race,’ was their profound

conviction that they were establishing a new human

community in a present that had no precedent or parallel”

(Hunt 56).

The scope of this work is not to present a political

or historical analysis of the ten-year period from 1789-

1799. Neither is it my intention to give a complete

dramatic analysis of the plays of the period nor an

exhaustive catalogue of the festivals that were produced

and the production elements therein. It is, however,

important to note the effect of the theatres and

festivals upon the collective consciousness and to see an

evolution from joyous commemoration to weary resignation

and then to a conscious disregard as the society moved

move from a Constitutional Monarchy and Liberal

Revolution (1789-1792) to a Radical Republic (1792-1794)

and then to a Directory period (1794-1799) of the

Revolution. What seemed important to commemorate and

4

remember at the beginning of the Revolution was

deliberately relegated to oblivion by 1799 and this

conscious will to forget is reflected in the change of

theatrical genre as well as the evolution of the

festivals marking what the revolutionaries considered

important in their new lives. I concentrate on Paris in

this work because although the provinces retained some of

their individuality through their own celebrations and

ceremonies, Paris became the model for the entire country

with the systematic removal of the feudal system

previously in place. Centralized government would not

fully be realized until the Napoleonic era; but the way

was paved by the revolutionaries as they invoked first

the Estates General and subsequently the National

Assembly. The deputies, representing the provinces,

convened in Paris to discuss the Nation as an integrated

whole; they turned toward the business of removing the

ways of the past and installing in their place what they

5

hoped would be lasting legacies based upon the equality

of man.

Although most historians dismiss the plays of this

period as lacking merit, these plays were significant as

reflections of the social and political preoccupations of

the time. How those in power influenced the theatre of

the Revolution in Paris is the central issue of my

research; my thesis will demonstrate the full circle that

the theatre in France turned during the ten-year period

in question. Thus, although there was considerable

evolution in the theatre during this time, I would

propose that the revolution (defined in the dictionary as

a return to the original) of the theatre illustrates that

the ideologies that claimed that the Revolution was from

the bottom up, and that it was instigated to ameliorate

the situation of the Third Estate, failed to take hold.

The theatre returned to its place as a divertissement for

the elite: prior to the Revolution, the nobility; after

the Revolution, the bourgeoisie. Different social

6

classes held power at different phases of the Revolution,

and the theatre reflected these shifts in the locus of

power. The people held “power” as audience members and

participants in the theatre for only a short time. It

will be necessary therefore to study how the political

climate of the French Revolution influenced the theatre

and festivals during the revolutionary years in France

and how the spectacle was used as a propagandists’ tool.

I include festivals in this research as the lines between

theatre and festival are particularly blurred at this

time, as we shall later see.

It is first useful to make a distinction between the

popular theatre of the boulevard and the prestigious

court theatres of the Ancien Régime. Under Louis XVI,

the three officially sanctioned theatres, the Comédie

Française, the Comédie Italienne/Opéra-Comique and the

Opéra shared a monopoly over all of the theatres in

Paris1, and the censor dictated what genres were to be

1 By holding monopoly status granted under Louis XIV, the three officially sanctioned theatres, the Comédie Française, the Comédie Italienne/Opéra Comique and the Opéra dictated what the other “minor”

7

performed within these three salles as well as in the

popular theatre of the boulevard. At the outbreak of the

Revolution, the Comédie Française, holding the strongest

position within the monopoly, was considered the most

important theatre for tragedy and French comedy (as

written by Molière and Marivaux) and was responsible for

“the production of almost all new plays of any

importance” (Rodmell 8). The Opéra-Comique was the home

of the commedia dell’arte, irregular comedies and parodies

(Brockett 279), and the Opéra, that of the ballet as well

as one major operatic work each year. To the theatres of

the boulevard (also sometimes called the théâtres de la foire)

were relegated the “minor dramatic forms and popular

idiom banished from the stages of the royal companies and

elite recognition” (Root-Bernstein 42). While the

boulevard theatres benefited from the decree of the

theatres could perform, i.e., pantomime, vaudeville and works rejected by the three official troupes. The minor theatres could notperform without permission the following genres: tragedy and regular comedy (of 5 acts) – ascribed only to the Comédie Française; commediadell’arte scripts, irregular comedies and parodies – ascribed to the Comédie Italienne/Opéra Comique; and operas and ballet – ascribed to the Opéra. This power lasted until the National Assembly abolished all monopolies with their decree in 1791.

8

National Assembly of January 13, 1791 (to which I give

further attention below), Graham Rodmell in his book

French Drama of the Revolutionary Years says that “most

significant opinion-forming by means of dramatic

production seems to have taken place at the major,

erstwhile privileged theatres rather than in the fairs or

on the Boulevard” (11). However, Michèle Root-Bernstein

makes the important point in her book Boulevard Theatre and

Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris that “The popular stage was

thought to play a crucial role in the cultural turmoil

that shook the theatrical world in the years of the

Revolution” (199). It is, therefore, important to

realize that all venues of theatrical production were

affected by the Revolution and each contributed to a

paradigm shift reflected in author, spectator and actor.

There are three major steps to the evolution of the

theatre of the Revolution that are linked to the

predominating notions of the Constitutional Monarchy (the

Liberal Revolution of May 5, 1789 – August 10, 1792), the

9

Radical Republic (August 10, 1792 – July 27, 1794) and

the Directory (Thermidorian and Directory periods July

27, 1794-November 9, 1799). “If art imitates nature,

then tragical nature may be a higher and more intense

form of tragedy and may call, in turn, for a new kind of

theatre; the breaking of social and political bonds

required the breaking of literary and dramatic

conventions. It was the genius of the Revolution rather

than artistic genius that called forth a new style”

(Troyansky 66). The progress of the Revolution is

reflected in this change of style and in the character of

its propaganda. By analyzing several productions from

each of the three periods listed above, one can see the

influence of those in power upon what is presented upon

the stage. One will also be able to chart public

perception of the plays and the ability of the public to

influence what was performed.

The public saw in the characters of the plays of the

Revolution (new plays and adaptations of old ones) real

10

people from their own time, and either applauded them as

revolutionary heroes, or legitimized their downfalls.

In some cases, the same character could be seen at one

period to be a benevolent hero and, with the ever-

changing paradigm shifts, became at a later period the

enemy of the Revolution (as is seen clearly later with

Diderot’s Père de famille). No longer was the play a

representation of time past, but of time present. As

events unfolded in the streets, these same events were

portrayed on the stage, and in this way, the theatre

became a form of mass-media in its own right, along with

the daily journals, pamphlets and club meetings. There

was a move from the vague didactic examples of mythology

to the personal instruction of each and every citizen.

This self-identification personalized the theatre for the

spectator in a way that was unprecedented and as it

became more personal the spectator felt a responsibility

to the theatre that he or she had not felt in the past.

This responsibility carried over in his life as a

11

patriot, as we see a change in everything the citizen

does. By personalizing the theatre, therefore, it is

brought down to the level of the average spectator. What

was once a divertissement only for the nobility became a

meeting place and sounding board for the sans-culottes

and the rising bourgeoisie. Andre Tissier notes that

from 1789 and particularly in January 1791 when the

National Assembly passed the decree liberating the

theatres from the monopoly heretofore held by the

“official” theatres, the theatre belonged to the people;

since each presentation ended with song and celebration

by the public, the theatre “avait étendu ses tentacules

sur toute la ville” (39). The public, no longer

restrained by the privileged class, frequented the

theatre in great numbers; from this demand came a

proliferation of plays written and theatres established.

“Ce qui l’amuse et l’instruit dans une salle de trente

pieds carrés, a tout autant de valeur aux yeux du

philosophe que ce qui l’amuse ou l’instruit dans une

12

salle de cinquante” (40). Tissier points out that with

this new sense of ownership the public became the censor,

“La moindre application malveillante peut valoir à

l’auteur les rigueurs du public” (40). However, this is

not a durable change; we will see with the formation of

the Committee of Public Safety (and then the Directory)

new restrictions on the theatre that take the power away

from the people once again and put it into the hands of

the official censor and those in control of the

government.

2. The Liberal Revolution – May 5, 1789 – August

10, 1792

In the first days of the Revolution, the theatres

were finding their feet in the tumultuous atmosphere of

July 14. Chénier’s Charles IX ou l’Ecole des rois, previously

banned from the stage in 1788 as harmful to the

monarchy’s already precarious position, was performed in

November 1789 after being clamored for by none other than

Georges Danton during a performance of Ericie (Rodmell 62).

13

The mayor, Bailly, aware of the censor’s point of view

but feeling the pressure of the public, allowed the

production to be mounted. The actors of the Comédie-

Française (who had prudently changed their name to the

Théâtre de la Nation) were divided of opinion regarding

its production; the plot turns on the St. Bartholomew’s

Day Massacre of the Protestants in 1572, and Charles IX

throughout is portrayed as weak and vacillating, not

unlike Louis XVI. The audience is tacitly invited to see

parallels between Marie Antoinette and Catherine de

Medicis (Charles’ mother). One of the leading male

actors, E.F. Saint-Fal, declined to play the part of

Charles IX and the part went instead to François-Joseph

Talma, whose popularity appears to have been born at that

point. On opening night, many of the leaders of the

National Assembly, including Mirabeau, Danton and

Desmoulins were present (Rodmell 63) and the lure of a

previously censored play drew a sold-out house. Chénier

defended his play as the first real French tragedy:

14

“At least the Court of Charles IX is depicted

in its true colors; there is not a single scene

in the play which does not inspire a horror of

fanaticism, of civil war, of perjury and

unfeeling, self-interested adulation. Virtue

is exalted, crime is punished by contempt and

remorse, the cause of the people and of

legality is ceaselessly defended against the

courtiers and against tyranny. I therefore

make bold to claim that it is the only truly

national tragedy thus far to have appeared in

France; that no other play is as strikingly

moral; and as an inevitable consequence of

these two undeniable propositions, I make bold

to claim that, to fear public performance of

such a play, one has to be an enemy of reason”

(69).

Danton, after the performance was heard to say,

“Si Figaro a tué la noblesse, Charles IX tuera la

15

royauté” (63). Controversy surrounding the play

continued. It has to be remembered that at this

time (late 1789), the constitutional monarchy had

yet to come to fruition, and monarchists as well as

republicans shared membership in the Jacobin Club.

With Louis XVI in Paris (after the October days),

hope lay with the audiences of Charles IX that their

monarch would learn from the example of the tragedy

of a king who had authorized the slaughter of his

subjects. The closing words of the play underscore

this hope for change:

J’ai trahi la patrie, et l’honneur, et les

lois:

Le ciel en me frappant donne un exemple aux

rois.2

(Act V, Scene iv 1589-90)

2 In quoting the original French from the plays, I have modernized the language for clarity only as necessary where it does not delineate a certain social or economic class of the speaker. In these cases, I have retained any spelling and grammatical errors.

16

By remembering the atrocities of the Saint

Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and by demanding their

staging in a public venue some 200 years later, the

public was making a statement of great importance;

they had had enough of religious fanaticism and

oppression by the Catholic Church and enough of a

gilded monarchy that was turning an indifferent eye

away from the needs of its people. Charles IX was

considered to be the cornerstone of Revolutionary

theatre from this point on, and with the newly found

freedom granted playwrights and theatres by the

National Assembly decree in 1790 liberating the

theatres from the system of the Ancien Régime, the

public had found in the theatre a forum for

recording its objections, hopes, dreams and ideas.

An explosion of theatrical activity followed and,

eager to demonstrate their patriotism, the major as

well as the minor theatres produced such play as

Voltaire’s Brutus, Le Chêne patriotique, La famille patriote ou la

17

Fédération (discussed below), and (in response to the

royal family’s flight to Varennes) La Journée de Varennes

ou Le Maître de poste de Sainte-Menehould. Graham Rodmell

writes: “Even the establishment-minded Comédie

Française found it politic to reopen under a new

name, the Théâtre de la Nation, although the members

of the company retained their title as ‘Comédiens-

Français ordinaires du Roi’” (14). Rodmell quotes a

satirical verse of the day that mocks the Comédie-

Française:

Les Comédiens-Français très prudemment

calculent.

En citoyens ardents ces messieurs

s’intitulent

Théâtre de la Nation,

Titre qui promet à leur ambition

Une recette toujours riche;

Et ‘Comédiens du Roi’ reste encore sur

l’affiche

18

Pour garantir la pension! (14-15)

Le Réveil d’Epiménide à Paris by Carbon de Flins des

Oliviers is a play about a Rip Van Winkle character who

wakens (after falling asleep under the absolute monarchy

of Louis XIV) in contemporary Paris. It praises the new

liberalism and eulogizes the king. But more importantly,

the play was performed at the Théâtre de la Nation the

first of January, 1790; the Comédiens-Français evidently

deemed it necessary to test the waters with a light-

hearted one-act play which would have been

unceremoniously refused by the troupe prior to the

Revolution. The plot is simple and predictable, but

some of the dialogue must have proved difficult for the

more conservative members of the theatre. For

example, in scene iii :

Epiménide: Prés d’ici j’apperçus tout à l’heure,

Des hommes qui marchoient modestement

vétus,

19

Les bourgeois pour les voir, sortant de

leur demeure,

S’écrioient: <<Les voilà ces sages

citoyens,

De l’état du roi les plus fermes soutiens!

>>

Ariste: On doit bien cet homage à leur vertu

suprême

Comment ne pas bénir ceux dont les nobles

voix,

Aux peuples opprimés ont rendu tous leurs

droits?

Epiménide: Les courtisans ont donc bien changé

de système

Ne vous trompez-vous pas?

Ariste: Vous vous trompez vous-même;

Ce ne sont point ses courtesans,

Que consulte un monarque sage.

Epiménide: Mais ce sont donc les parlemens?

20

Ariste: Les parlemens? Pas davantage!

Epiménide: Tous ces fais son bien suprenans:

Quel est donc le conseil du prince?

Ariste: Ce sont tous les honnêtes gens;

Il les aime beaucoup.

An exchange between Epiménide and Madame Brochure in

scene viii demonstrates the revolutionary will to sever

their ties with the esthetic theatre of the Ancien Regime

and turn their backs on the masters of the 17th century:

Epiménide: Quel bonheur!

Je vais donc retrouver en France,

Après une si longue absence,

Tous les divins écrits dont j’ai chéri

l’auteur:

Molière, par exemple.

Madame Brochure: Oh! sa vogue est finie!

Epiménide: De ses vers excellens on s’occupe

toujours?

Madame Brochure: Quelquefois à la Comédie,

21

Encor sont-ce les mauvais jours.

Epiménide: Et ce maitre de l’art, ce sublime

genie,

Corneille…

Madame Brochure: Ah! Monsieur, quel travers!

Epiménide: Racine…

Madame Brochure: On ne lit plus de vers.

Epiménide: Quoi!

Another play of the same type as Charles IX ou l’école des

rois is Pierre le Grand by Bouilly. First performed at the

Comédie Italienne January 13, 1790, this play shows a

king willing to give up all of his royal possessions to

work side by side with his people in manual labor and in

developing his soul through learning about humanity.

Bouilly compares favorably Peter the Great with France’s

own Louis XVI in his Avant-Propos as he says: “J’ai vu

qu’en Russie Pierre le Grand avait dédaigné l’éclat & les

délices du Trône, pour se livrer entièrement au bonheur

de ses peuples; comme Louis XVI le fait aujourd’hui pour

22

le bonheur des Français” (1). He continues: “D’une

multitude de Barbares sans mœurs, sans principes & sans

talents, Pierre-Aléxiowitz en forma une société d’hommes

instruits & policés; en appelant les Français à la

participation des droits de la Royauté, Louis en fait un

peuple de Rois dont il devient le Dieu tutélaire” (1).

Peter the Great’s minister and friend, Le Fort, praises

Peter’s example to the other sovereigns of the world in

the following scene :

Le Fort : Quel exemple vous donnez aux Souverains!

Ah! ne cherchez point à m’attribuer la gloire de vos

actions. Ce que j’ai fait, tout autre l’eût fait à

ma place; mais quel Monarque s’est jamais mis à la

vôtre? L’âge précieux que tant de Princes passent

dans les plaisirs & la mollesse; vous l’avez

employé, vous, à dompter vos passions, à étudier les

hommes, à cultiver les sciences, à vous former une

âme digne de votre rang. Aussi le Ciel a béni vos

projets, & déja vous voyez vos peuples se

23

perfectionner dans les arts que vous vous plaisez à

leur enseigner vous-même.

(Acte 2

scene ii)

When Peter tells Le Fort that he cannot yet leave the

village because he is in love with Catherine, a common

widow and a simple woman, Le Fort wonders what the

Boyards, the greats of the court, would say, but Peter

protests that although she was born in obscurity, her

education, her soul and her sensibility make her his

equal. Peter the Great is worried that Catherine, as

happy and simple as she is in this place, will not want

to leave it when she learns of his real identity as the

Emperor of Russia. He’s afraid that she will reject all

that goes along with being Empress. Deciding not to

reveal his identity to Catherine, he convinces her to

marry him telling her that he was born in Moscow close to

the palace of the Czars but that he does not know who his

parents are.

24

Catherine : Quand on est comme vous, Pierre, on

est toujours l’égal de ce qu’on aime. L’amour, le

véritable amour ne connaît ni les rangs, ni la

naissance; il suffit d’avoir une âme pour mériter

ses faveurs. 

(Acte 3,

scene iii)

When a governor of Moscow arrives to tell Peter

that unless Peter tells the Senate that he did not

kidnap Peter and Le Fort, he will lose his head,

Peter agrees of course to return and to clear the

governor’s name, but in doing so he must reveal his

identity. When Catherine asks why Peter hid his

identity for so long, the governor tells her that he

did it to be loved for his true worth and not for

his name and to assure that he found a woman who was

equal in virtue to share the throne. In the final

scene, Peter asks Catherine to accept his hand and

become Empress, to which she replies that she is not

25

worthy. The villagers who love her urge her to be

their Sovereign and she graciously accepts. The

play ends with Peter pledging his amity and

protection over all of the citizens of Russia, a

pledge that Louis XVI was also forced to make by

oath on the occasion of the anniversary of the fall

of the Bastille, July 14, 1790.

On the subject of oath-taking, and with a new

scrutiny of the church, we see a one-act play by

François-Pierre-Auguste Léger, L’Orphelin et le curé, first

presented at the Théâtre Français July 29, 1790.

Although of little substance, the play does indicate the

concerns of the day: the Curé has lost most of his riches

due to the Estates General law that declared that all

possessions of the Clergy now belonged to the nation.

The Curé had been generous with his money to help an

orphan (Auguste) whose cousin comes to demand the Curé

pay back a loan. The Curé, now destitute, cannot pay it

back and the cousin, Antoine, threatens the priest until

26

he himself finds that he has lost all of his own money

due to a judgment against him. The judgement is in favor

of his cousin Auguste who is now in a position to help

the Curé and repay all of his kindnesses. As the play

opens, we hear the Curé explain to his secretary,

Jeannette, what the Estates General has ordered and how

he must comply. This action takes place just prior to

the requirement that the clergy take the Oath of the

Civil Constitution in July 1790. The Curé feels that it

is his duty to comply with the demand and explains why to

Jeannette.

Le Curé: Tous les biens du Clergé sont declarés appartenir à la nation.

Jeannette: Et ce sont ces dignes états-généraux qui ont fait un coup comme ça.

Le Curé: Nous ne devons point nous plaindre d’un

sacrifice qu’exigeait impérieusement la rigueur des

circonstances: n’était-il pas juste, d’ailleurs de

faire une repartition plus égale de revenus du

clergé?

27

And later:

Le Curé: J’ai fait mon devoir, je ne m’en

repens point.

This play still paints the clergy in a positive

light, as well as the law requiring that the clergy take

the Oath of the Civil Constitution; the nation had not

yet felt the division that this imposition would force

upon it. Jeremy Popkin in his book A Short History of the French

Revolution notes that the controversy over the clergy’s

oath “foreshadowed a major change in the course of the

Revolution. For most of the twelve months following the

storming of the Bastille, the movement had appeared to

have overwhelming support. Opposition to it had come

primarily from circles close to the court and from some

of the old nobility. The argument over Church reform

proved different. For the first time, a significant part

of the population, including large numbers of commoners,

resisted a major piece of revolutionary legislation”

(52).

28

There was born a new dramatic genre, called fait

historique that reconstructed recent events and

produced them in a way that not only acted as

information dissemination (to those who had not been

witness to the event) but also as a commemoration to

those who had been present, glorifying the event and

its heroes. On the first anniversary of the taking

of the Bastille, July 14, 1790, 14,000 national

guardsmen from all over France descended on Paris to

take part in the Fête de la Fédération at the

Champs-de-Mars and swear their fidelity to la Nation, la

Loi et le Roi (Tissier 33). To mark this occasion all of

the theatres of Paris presented their “pièce

fédérative”; for example: Le Chêne patriotique, ou la

matinee du 14 juillet 1790 by Monvel and Dalayrac at the

Théâtre-Italien 10 July 1790; Le Dîner des patriotes ou la

fête de la Liberté by Ronsin at the Théâtre du Palais-

Royal 12 July 1790 (these two pieces advertised the

Fête de la Fédération by being presented in advance

29

of it); La Famille patriote, ou la Fédération by Collot

d’Herbois and produced at the Théâtre de Monsieur 16

July 1790; and Le Retour du Champs-de-Mars by Beffroy de

Reigny at the Beaujolais 25 July 1790. Tissier

writes, “Il est intéressant, quand on examine les

gravures qui ont reproduit la fête de la Fédération,

de voir que le people y semble moins le témoin d’un

défilé et d’une cérémonie patriotique qu’un

participant au spectacle” (34). Lines become

blurred between spectator and actor as choruses of

Ça ira (a rousing revolutionary song with tremendous

public appeal) are sung together by actors and their

audiences at the end of each representation, linking

all citizens in a rally for patriotism. Also

blurred are the genres as theatre moves from

presenting representations to presenting

commemorations. But what happens is that the

interweaving of events and spectacle and the effect

that this has on the public becomes fodder for the

30

Jacobins as they use the theatre to launch their

propaganda campaigns and promote their ideas.

André Tissier cites three examples of events that

blurred the line between audience and stage and served to

draw in the spectator to the point of confusion. The

first, Mirabeau à son lit de mort, presented at the Théâtre de

Monsieur on May 24, 1791 depicts the death of Mirabeau

(April 2, 1791) as he is surrounded by his friends who

are still living and well known in Parisian society.

Tissier quotes the Journal de Paris from May 26, 1791, “On a

rendu jusqu’aux cris du people qu’on entend de la rue

demander des nouvelles de Mirabeau, et qui sont peut-être

pour le spectateur ce qu’il y a de plus déchirant” (36).

Tissier cites a second example of the crossover between

spectator and participant on the occasion of the King’s

flight to Varennes and subsequent arrest and return to

Paris. During a presentation of Le Patriotisme récompensé, ou

l’arrivée à Paris des sauveurs de la patrie at the Théâtre lyrique du

faubourg Saint-Germain 2 July 1791, two audience members

31

were ushered up to the stage to receive public honors

when it was discovered that they were the first two to

have actually recognized the King in Varennes and were

instrumental in the arrest. The citizens of Varennes saw

themselves portrayed on the stage on several occasions;

July 7 at the presentation of Les Sauveurs de la France at the

Théâtre Montansier and June 27 at the Théâtre de la

Nation for La Liberté conquise where they cried ‘à la

lanterne’ as the governor of the Dauphiné is taken by the

people. Tissier’s last example shows the link between

the days’ events and the theatre in that on the occasion

of the transfer of Voltaire’s ashes to the Pantheon

(decided by the Assembly May 30, 1791 and carried out on

July 11), the theatres of Paris honored the philosopher

by presenting his own plays or those in which he was

represented as a key character, either originally

scripted as such or added in to existing plays to

commemorate the occasion (Le Journaliste des Ombres and La France

régénérée, for example).

32

Looking closer at several of these plays we see in

each the strong patriotism demonstrated by the authors

through the words of their characters. In La Famille patroite,

ou La Fédération presented at the Théâtre de Monsieur July

17, 1790 a family prepares to celebrate both the Fête de

La Fédération and the marriage of their daughter,

Honorine (the meaning of the name does not escape the

reader) to an artist, a fact that rankles the anti-

revolutionary brother-in-law of her father, a flawless

patriot. One of the domestics describes her approval of

the marriage:

Mariette: Monsieur est plus sage…il ne marie pas

Mademoiselle à un homme de cour…mais à un artiste, à

un homme à talents, cela vaut mieux.”

(Acte 1,

scene ii)

The struggle between the anti-revolutionary and the

patriot is evident in a letter written by Monticourt to

33

Gaspard, Honorine’s father read by him in the fifth scene

of the first act:

Gaspard (reading the letter): “Vous sacrifiez donc votre aimable

fille, Monsieur.” Sacrifier! Allons donc! Un jeune homme

qu’elle aime de tout son cœur, ardent, distingué par

son talent, bon Patriote et citoyen, actif dans

toute la force du terme…Elle ne pouvoit pas mieux

choisir. (il continue) “Cette ardeur démocratique, qui vous

possède, fera le Malheur de vous et des vôtres, voyez ce qu’elle vous

coûte.” Ce qu’elle me coûte…est-ce que l’on compte

avec la patrie..n’est pas une dette qu’on acquitte,

quoiqu’on puisse faire pour elle.

Throughout the play, Gaspard continues to extol the

virtues of the honest, hard-working artist, and his

brother-in-law finally sees the wisdom of the match and

acquiesces to the wedding. In a highly charged patriotic

scene in the fourteenth scene, Gaspard applauds the

patriotism of the visiting National Guardsmen who have

come to the celebration of the Federation. The

34

publisher’s notes at the bottom of the page describe the

reaction of those in attendance: “On ne peut exprimer

avec quel vif intérêt le public a écouté ces détails,

avec quels transports il les a applaudis. M.

Paillardelle (the actor playing Gaspard), supérieur dans tout

son rôle, leur a donné les vrais accens du cœur. Le

patriotisme a decidé le grand success qu’a eu cette

pièce. Quoiqu’apprise à la hâte, elle a été très-bien

jouée. Tous les acteurs ont reçu d’éclatans témoignages

de la satisfaction générale” (23). This satisfaction is

echoed at the end of the play by a veteran who says “La

Nation, la Loi & le Roi sont d’accord pour toujours.”

(Act 2, scene xii) Monticourt relinquishes his old anti-

patriotic ways (“J’ai pour jamais abjuré tous mes

prejugés…Je suis redevenu Citoyen…Les voilà ces titres

chimériques…Je les dépose…sur l’Autel de la Patrie.”) and

the celebration continues at the Festival ending with an

undoubtedly stirring singing of Ça ira by each of the

actors.

35

These emotional sentiments are echoed in Les Citoyens

Français ou le triomphe de la Fédération by Pierre Vacque, also

written for the occasion of the Festival of the

Federation and who dedicates his play on the frontpiece

“A tous les amis de la constitution, par un de ses plus

zélés défenseurs.” Vacque says in his preface: “C’est

surtout à la scène, image perfectionnée de la société, à

donner ces salutaires impressions, qui réagissant dans le

sein de toutes les familles justifieront ces fastueuses

devises qui annonçaient si vainement l’école des mœurs.

Qu’elle présente sans cesse à notre émulation toutes les

vertus, embellies, s’il est possible, par les couleurs

poétiques; mais qu’elle voue à l’opprobre et à

l’exécration, le crime couvert de toutes ses horreurs.

Mais qu’elle représente ces bons Princes qui ont le noble

orgueil de ne régner que par les lois, et qu’ils

paraissent, dans toute leur gloire, entourés de l’amour

et des bénédictions des peuples” (iv).

36

The plot of Les Citoyens Français is almost exactly that

of La Famille patriote in that the marriage of the daughter of

a patriot (a former seigneur who refuses to exercise his

seigneural rights) to an honest man of virtue, much to

the chagrin of his wife and brother-in-law who try to

hang on to the old feudal ways, is to take place at the

same time as the Fête de La Fédération. The plot is,

however, slightly more complicated and interesting as the

mother/daughter struggle here embodies the anti-

revolutionary/patriot struggle. In the third scene of

the second Act, Madame Dorbesson demands of her daughter

to marry the son of the Prince, rather than the the man

she loves, the virtuous Varigni (who is the actual Prince

of Taubourg but who, ashamed of his royal birth and the

feudal system under which he was raised in Germany, is

living as a simple man in France) so that they can all

leave France and go to Germany:

Mme Dorbesson : Le retour et la vengeance de

l’ancien gouvernement se préparent. Et bientôt on

37

verra ces séditieux novateurs; tomber sous le glaive

de ces mêmes lois, qu’ils ont cru pouvoir violer et

changer impunément.

Mlle. Dorbesson : Ah! Je respire! Je pouvais

craindre des assassins, mais non pas une contre-

révolution. Rassurez-vous aussi, Madame. Les

caprices de l’arbitraire ont disparu devant la

volonté nationale, et les lois constitutionelles

sont immuables, comme la puissance souveraine qui

les a instituées.

Added into the mix is the Pélerin, who tells Monsieur

Dorbesson that there must be a restoration of the

Catholic church as well as of the nobility and who says

that the pope condemns as heresy the decree on the civil

constitution of the clergy. To which M. Dorbesson

replies :

Dorbesson : Les foudres du Vatican allumées par

l’ignorance, sont pour jamais éteintes par la

philosophie; et l’on ne verra plus le vicaire d’un

38

Dieu qui a donné l’exemple de l’humilité fouler

orgueilleusement aux pieds les sceptres et les

empires.

In Act V, Scene 16 set at the Champs-de-Mars, there

is a serious threat to the revelling patriots by Brigands

who succeed in wounding several of the National Guardsman

and who kidnap Mlle. Dorbesson.

M. Dorbesson : O ciel, que vois-je! Ma fille sous

le poignard de ce barbare! Arrêtez, respectez son

innnocence! Parle, quelle rançon te faut-il?

Saying that he was a citizen before he was a father,

he draws his sword and prepares to fight alongside a

peloton of children ready to die for their new nation and

the Prince of Taubourg, to whom Madame Dorbesson refused

her daughter’s hand when she thought he was a simple

citizen. Faced with this overwhelming patriotism, the

brigands surrender and M. Dorbesson embraces them as

brothers, asking them to take the oath to la Nation, la Loi et le

Roi.

39

A more light-hearted piece that communicates the

events of the day while maintaining the precarious early

revolutionary ideal that the King is a benevolent father

figure is Louis Abel Beffroy de Reigny’s (also known as

Cousin Jacques) Nicodème dans la lune, ou La Révolution pacifique

presented for the first time November 7, 1790 at the

Théâtre Français Comique et Lyrique. The play is set on

the moon in a community that strongly resembles pre-

revolutionary France, in that the feudal system is in

place wherein the Seigneur exercises power over unhappy

laborers lamenting their fate. In her introduction to

the 1983 edition, Michèle Sanjous says of the theatre of

the Revolution : “Le sujets des pièces et la date à

laquelle elles sont représentées ne font aucun doute: les

événements politiques sont revécus sur la scène dans

l’immédiat” (15) and of Nicodème in particular : “Nicodème

dans la lune avait toutes les chances de réussir; non

seulement la pièce puisait dans les filons du théâtre

comique du XVIIIe siècle, mais elle y ajoutait les vertus

40

« patriotiques » : répandre l’expérience révolutionnaire

de la France, en affirmant publiquement son caractère

universel” (18).

The piece opens with several exhausted workers

complaining to the Curé about the Seigneur who forces

them to work with little food or rest. The Seigneur

orders the Curé to compel the workers to put on a false

contentedness upon the arrival of the Emperor who must

see that the workers benefit from his kindness. The Curé

replies that perhaps it would be better for the Prince to

see the peasants as they are, “tels qu’ils sont, vexés,

molestés, écrasés d’impôts et de droits onéreux, et se

consumant en vains travaux pour les plaisirs et les

folies des Grands,” (Act 1, scene iii) but the Seigneur

will not hear any of this and orders the Curé to comply.

An allusion to the Emperor’s accessibility is made in

Scene IV by Frerot, who tells the other peasants that the

upcoming royal visit is their chance to tell the Prince

of their misery: “Faut parler sans façon aux Souv’rains

41

q’ont le cœur bon.” When Nicodème arrives, he echoes

this sentiment but the paysans are too frightened to do

so. Nicodème offers to act as their spokesman and

proceeds to tell the Emperor tales of how the French,

wanting to rid themselves of tyranny, “aviont assemblé

eune belle assemblée d’gens capables, pour faire d’bonnes

loix; comme quoi leux rois’y était prête de bonne grace,

et comme quoi il avait r’connu qu’on n’est jamais pus

heureux sur l’trône, q’quand on est entouré de’gens

vrais, et qui vous aimont sincèrement3[...]” Act 2, scene

i). He also dreams that in return the King might give

him his pick of the pretty girls on the moon to take back

with him to earth. A very funny subplot reminiscent of

Marivaux emerges with Nicodème and several of the lunar

women, ending with Nicodème’s affirmation that lunar

people are exactly like those on earth. When accused by

a corrupt Minister of the court of perverting the lunar

people, Nicodème retorts that « Gnia q’les mauvaises

mœurs qui pervertissent les Etats; la justice et le 3 See note above.

42

courage n’y font jamais q’du bien…par ainsi, voyais qui

d’nous deux est l’pervertisseux” (Act 3, scene ii). The

Emperor, after reflecting on everything Nicodème has told

him, decides to begin the Revolution himself so that he

can derail it and open his garden to all of his citizens

to listen to their woes and protect them from the corrupt

Minister and Seigneur. We see in this play another

miraculous change of heart in the Minister and Seigneur

who decide to come together with the Emperor to put all

right. Nicodème’s aria at the end of the piece describes

the happy results of the parallel events that occured on

August 4-5, 1789 (when the National Assembly dismanteled

the old order by decreeing the abolition of seigneurial

dues and special privileges) in France on earth :

Oui Messieurs, tout l’monde en France

A tout d’suite été d’accord;

Clergé, Noblesse et Finance,

Ont cédé leux droits…d’abord…

Tout chacun, sans résistance,

43

D’y r’noncer a pris grand soin… 

(Acte 3, scene 6)

The women all vying for Nicodème to take them back to

earth change their minds after seeing the favorable

change in circumstances on the moon and the play ends

with a huge celebration of new-found liberty and

conscience.

After Louis XVI’s acceptance (albeit reluctant) of

the Constitution in September 1791, the king’s popularity

is reflected in plays that celebrated his magnanimity.

Georges-François Desfontaine wrote Le District de village that

has as characters local nobles who gladly renounce their

feudal rights (in the spirit of August 1789) (Carlson

17). The year 1791 also saw the decree by the National

Assembly that liberated the theatres from the system of

the Ancien Régime. This decree came as a result of a

proposal to the National Assembly by thirty of the

important dramatists of the time, who, dissatisfied by

the monopoly held by the Comédie-Française, petitioned

44

the Assembly and called for the abolition of these

special privileges. They sought “freedom for the

establishment of an unlimited number of theatres and for

all works on the classical repertory to enter the public

domain, whilst seeking the right of all living authors to

control their work as their own property and to be able

to make their own terms with actors and directors” (19).

A law to this end passed on January 13, 1791 and in the

words of historian Marvin Carlson, “Nothing in the course

of the Revolution was to have more effect on the

theatrical world than the adoption of this legislation”

(19).

The result of this legislation was the explosion of

theatrical activity heretofore mentioned. Eager to

demonstrate their patriotism, the major theatres as well

as the minor theatres produced plays such as Voltaire’s

Brutus, Le Chêne patriotique, La Famille patriote ou la Fédération and (in

response to the royal family’s flight to Varennes) La

Journée de Varennes ou le Maître de poste de Sainte-Menehould (played

45

in the boulevard theatres). The economic equality

suggested in the legislation of January 1791 was not easy

to attain, as the major theatres (having suffered from

low box-office sales due to the flight of their chief

subscribers, the nobility) were threatened with enormous

debts (Root-Bernstein 202). Another consequence of the

new law was that with the abolition of the office of the

censor, playhouses were free to perform “bawdy plays

often anticlerical in nature” (Rodmell 22). The formerly

privileged theatres found it necessary to open their

doors to a broader public by reducing ticket prices, but

what resulted was a confusion of dramatic traditions, as

described by Michèle Root-Bernstein. All theatres, Root-

Bernstein says, could “perform any genre or play

indiscriminately, whether appropriate or not to their

theatrical means or public” (207). Root-Bernstein lists

no less than eleven genre descriptions that were used

before the end of 1794, including: “historical dramas,

lyrical dramas, tragedies based on current events,

46

patriotic panoramas, patriotic scenes, episodic plays and

heroic tragic-comedies” (212).

It is after the January 1791 National Assembly

declaration that freed the theatres to perform any and

all pieces of their choosing that the theatre of the

philosophes (most notably le drame) made a strong showing.

This is evident in the number of representations of plays

by Voltaire and by Diderot; and although Beaumarchais is

not considered by every critic to be a philosophe, his

Figaro made numerous appearances as well. In his article,

“La Place du théâtre de Diderot sous la Révolution”,

Pascale Pellerin charts the number of representations of

Diderot’s Père de Famille each year of the Revolution from

1789 to 1800 and the remarkable spike of performances in

1791 (30 in that year compared to 7 in the previous year)

illustrates that the philosophe theatre certainly contained

the revolutionary message. Pellerin writes: “Pour

éduquer le peuple, il faut l’émouvoir en mettant en scène

des personnages auxquels il puisse s’identifier; il

47

s’agit d’atteindre le spectateur dans sa réalité psycho-

sociale. Les theories dramatiques de Diderot annonçaient

celles de la Révolution” (90). Diderot’s reform of the

theatre called for a representation of the social

condition rather than of a character, a “natural” style

of acting and speaking, and scenes of life reminiscent of

the painter Greuze where the modest domestic interiors

illustrated the family in all of its triumphs as well as

its woes. A further analysis of how Diderot’s Père de

famille fits into the revolutionary landscape is discussed

below.

3. The Radical Revolution –August 10, 1792 – July

27, 1794

Obviously we now see that the precarious

balance existing between revolution and monarchy was

as ephemeral as the faits historiques presenting the

events of the day, and it was amidst this turbulence

that the second movement manifested itself in the

theatrical and political evolution during the

48

Revolution: the profound social change that was to

come with the suspension of the king, the subsequent

call for election of the National Convention and the

proclamation of the Republic by the Convention on

September 22, 1792. What marks this period in the

history of the Revolution is the fear of conspiracy.

So much is the imagined community4 the basis of

civic identity that it is impossible for the

politicians to understand negotiation. The

revolutionaries saw conspiracy everywhere, fearing

that others might not be committed to the new

community and worse still, conspiring against it

alongside the counterrevolutionary forces plotting

from foreign soils. The world became divided into

two factions: heroes and villains; it was hard to

find a middle ground between the two. The fear of

conspiracy grew to become the basis of the Terror,

4 The imagined community is a society in which there was a new definition of the individual as the locus of identity and rights and where citizens pledged allegience to the nation rather than to the kings or to the social classes.

49

which became the politics of intimidation and of

surveillance. Identifying those who were disloyal

to the revolution was now a major concern. Some

14,000 prisoners (what was left of the nobility) who

had been rounded up after the storming of the

Tuileries Palace (August 10, 1792) were butchered by

gangs of sans-culottes in what became known as The

September Massacres and according to Graham Rodmell,

“The September Massacres saw the closure of the

theatres, some not to be reopened” (26). Those that

did reopen after the dust settled demonstrated an

even more enthusiastic interest in proving their

revolutionary patriotism. Benefit performances for

the poor were given by theatres during the holy

seasons, when ordinarily they would be closed.

Monies raised during these projects went to “widows

and orphans of patriots as well as to the impending

war” (Root-Bernstein 215). Plays such as L’Emigrant ou

le Père Jacobin and Le Patriote du dix août were written and

50

performed as well as (curiously) the much more

controversial L’Ami des lois by Jean-Louis Laya.

Jean-Louis Laya’s play is a moderate Girondist

comedy that thinly veils an argument for freedom

with order, thus attacking the Jacobins. Worse, it

contained characters readily recognizable as Marat

and Robespierre, who were gaining influence at the

time (Rodmell 28). The play was mounted on January

2, 1793 by the Théâtre de la Nation (the former

Comédie-Française) at the same time that the

Convention was preoccupied with the King’s trial and

evidenced the struggle for control between the

Girondins and the Montagnards. Rodmell writes that

at this time the Montagnards “accused the Girondins

of being lukewarm in their attitude to the

Revolution and of being federalists and the

Girondins accused the leaders of the Montagne,

especially Robespierre, of lack of respect for the

law and of dictatorial tendencies” (137).

51

Complaints about the play were lodged with the

Convention, which deferred the matter to the

Commune, which immediately banned the performance on

the grounds that it would cause “[...]une

fermentation alarmante dans les circonstances

périlleuses où nous sommes” (28). Laya fired back

to the Convention that in banning his play the

Commune was resurrecting the old practices of

censorship. The Convention responded that it was

not within the rights of the municipalities to

suspend production of any plays, and the play was

again performed (although we will see only several

months later that that indeed will be the case).

The Commune’s response was to close all of the

theatres in Paris to avoid civil agitation if the

play was performed. At the same time, the

Convention condemned Louis XVI to death and the

Girondist moderation portrayed in the play was now

out of step with current political thought. The

52

rapidity of this event indicates the rapidity of

events changing the political landscape of

revolutionary France. This was not the last time

that motivations of the Théâtre de la Nation would

be under question. On August 1, 1793 the Nation

mounted Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, which seemed at first

glance inoffensive until it was hinted that

“nobility rather than virtue was rewarded” (32).

Alexandre Rousselin, publisher of the journal

Feuille du Salut Public, is quoted by Rodmell as

demanding on September 3 that “ce sérail impur soit

fermé pour jamais…que tous les histrions du Théâtre

dit de la Nation, qui ont voulu se donner les beaux

airs de l’aristocratie, dignes par leur conduite

d’être regardés comme gens très suspects, soient mis

en état d’arrestation dans les maisons de force[…]”

(32). The members of the company as well as the

author, Neufchâteau, were promptly arrested and the

Nation closed.

53

On April 6, 1793 the Committee of Public Safety

had been formed with 12 members charged in handling

particular problems facing the Republic such as the

armies, finance and public instruction. The leading

figure among the Committee members at this time was

undoubtedly Robespierre (elected to the Committee on

July 27, 1793) whose influence grew to dangerous

proportions. His reputation for disinterested

devotion to the public good gave him the nickname

“the Incorruptible” (Popkin 83). Robespierre

recognized early the didactic value of the theatre

and sought to use the stage as a vehicle to infuse a

republican morality into its audience. By early

1794 “The government of Robespierre and Saint-Just

was in a position of absolute power, with the

Convention and the Paris Commune both subservient to

it. All power was now with the governing

committees, especially the Committee of Public

Safety. Controls over the world of the theatre

54

increased sharply. In April it was decreed that all

class titles should be banned from the stage and be

replaced with the simple appellation ‘citoyen’,

regardless of common sense terms of the period in

which the play was set and equally regardless of the

rules of rhyme or metre” (Rodmell 37).

Performances of L’Optimiste ou l’homme content de tout,

written in 1788 by Jean François Collin

d’Harleville, were allowed in June, July and August

of 1793 (113). L’Optimiste is considered a light-weight

comedy, but it demonstrates the nervousness of the

day, since Collin d’Harleville had to defend it when

it was attacked by Fabre d’Eglantine, a rival if

unsuccessful playwright, who had become a member of

the Committee of Public Safety in March 1793.

According to Graham Rodmell, Fabre d’Eglantine

accused Collin of being counter-revolutionnary,

suggesting that it was “commissioned, or at any rate

suggested by the Establishment under the Ancien

55

Regime to transmit the message that, far from

ignoring the miserable and the downtrodden, they [the

nobility] were guided by virtue and love of order

alone” (111).

Looking at the play, we see that the plot

revolves around a family of whom only the father, M.

Plinville, is optimistic in the face of several

blows, including the loss of all of his worldly

goods. Plinville’s daughter, Angélique, is

betrothed to M. de Morinval, an eternal pessimist

who only sees the negative in everything and

everyone. Angelique is full of sorrow as well

because of Morinval’s age (he is almost 50 to her

16). Picard, de Plinville’s servant is a complainer

too, and wishes that their roles were switched. De

Plinville’s wife suffers from “migraines” (which

appear to come on at will) and also bemoans her

“condition”. M. Belfort is de Plinville’s secretary

and Angelique’s unhappy English teacher, and in love

56

with her as she is with him. Reading the dialogue

between M. Plinville and all of the negative

characters is delightful, as he seems completely

unabashed at their words and actions. In the first

act M. de Plinville tells us that (and this is an

important point in light of d’Eglantine’s

accusation) no matter what his station in life, he

would be happy, finding the positive in whatever

life would bring to him:

Quand j’y songe, je suis bien heureux, je suis

homme,

Européen, Français, Tourangeau, Gentilhomme:

Je pouvois naître Turc, Limousin, Paysan;

Je ne suis Magistrat, Guerrier ni Courtisan:

Non: mais je suis Seigneur d’une lieue à la

ronde,

Le château de Plinville est le plus beau du

monde.

Je suis de mes vassaux respecté comme un Roi,

57

Adoré comme un père: il n’est autour de moi

Pas un seul pauvre oh! non; mes voisins me

chérissent;

Mes fermiers sont heureux, & même ils

s’enrichissent.

J’ai, du moins je le crois, une agréable

humeur;

Trop ni trop peu d’esprit, & sur-tout un bon

cœur.

Je suis heureux époux, & père de famille.

Je n’ai point de garçons, mais aussi quelle

fille!

J’ai de bons vieux amis, des serviteurs zélés.

Je te rends grace, ô Ciel! Tous mes vœux sont

comblés.

(Act 1, scene x)

Although a noble, M. de Plinville is clearly a

generous man who goes out of his way to make

everyone around him happy. When he receives a

58

letter saying that he has lost all of his riches due

to his friend’s gambling of his money, M. de

Plinville says:

J’aurai moins de laquais, & j’en serai ravi:

Par un seul domestique on est bien mieux servi.

Nous vivrons gais, contents: que faut-il

avantage?

Nous nous aimerons bien; nous aurons en partage

Les vrais trésors, la paix, le travail, la

santé,

Et…le premier des biens, la médiocrité.

(Act 4, scene iv)

When M. de Plinville’s servant Picard says he

is fed up serving and wants to leave, the benevolent

de Plinville tells him that he’s right, he would be

happier at home with his family. This touches

Picard, who decides to stay, even without wages. At

the end of the play, the family’s woes are no more

as Belfort’s father returns after winning at

59

gambling (the money de Plinville lost through his

friend) and will give them the money if Angelique

marries his son. Although the play is obviously a

comedy with little political value or message, the

minor controversy stirred up by Fabre d’Eglantine

shows the sensitivity of the revolutionaries to

anything that might have presented the nobility in a

positive light. Rodmell says that Collin insisted

both upon “the validity of appealing through the

heart to men’s sense of morality rather than through

reason to effect political change and upon the

importance of not being so solemn as to frown upon a

little entertainment” (112). Rodmell quotes Collin

in his Epitre à ma Muse:

“Quand on rirait un peu, voyez! Le grand

Malheur!

Qu’on réforme l’Etat, j’y consens de bon cœur.

L’utile, j’en conviens, l’utile est préférable;

Mais à l’utile on peut allier l’agréable.

60

Les plaisirs purs et vrais sont toujours de

saison.” (112)

One month prior to the Pamela scandal, the

Committee of Public Safety had “suggested” to

theatres that they perform more patriotic plays, but

in August 1793 “un décret de la Convention instaure

les representations gratis <<par et pour le

Peuple>>. A compter du 4 de ce mois seront

représentées trois fois la semaine, sur les théâtres

de Paris qui seront désignés par la municipalité,

les tragédies de Brutus, Guillaume Tell, Caius Gracchus et

d’autres pieces dramatiques qui retracent les

glorieux événements de la Révolution et les vertus

des défenseurs de la liberté” (Frantz 11). At a

debate at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre had put

forth that any troupe guilty of performing

“aristocratic plays” (like Pamela) should be

arrested. With these actions and words, the

censorship was reestablished and the theatres’

61

freedom to perform at will was abolished. F.W.J.

Hemmings in his book Theatre and State in France, 1760-1905

says “Preventative as opposed to repressive

censorship was effectively introduced by a

complementary law of 2 September 1793, in which the

Commune was given the responsibility of overseeing

the repertoire of every theatre to make sure that no

hint of royalism or criticism of the new regime

should be suffered on the stage” (95). And he goes

on to say, “It has been calculated that of the 450

plays produced in Paris in the years 1793-1794, some

two-thirds carried a political message” (97). Thus

the brief moment where the theatre was in the hands

of the people has concluded and the propaganda

machine is going full tilt.

Once the Terror had begun, many theaters were

closed and their company members, along with those

suspected of counter-revolutionary practices, were

rounded up and arrested. The Opéra lost its

62

directors, Francœur and Cellerier, and Mlle

Montansier, the directrice of a new theatre, was

denounced by Hébert and Chaumette (Rodmell 34) for

taking money from Marie-Antoinette for the purpose

of running the new theatre. She was arrested with

her assistant Neuville on November 4. It is clear

that the liberty enjoyed for two short years by the

theatres of Paris was reversed by the fear of

threats to the new republic. As Frantz writes, “Une

série de décrets vient remodeler la liberté, lui

donner le visage sévère d’une institutrice jacobine

qui enseigne et réprime” (11). The Convention saw

fit to subsidize those theatres of which it

approved, giving 50,000 to the Théâtre de la

République and 25,000 livres to the Théâtre de

l’Egalité formed by the Committee of Public Safety.

The Opéra received 200,000 livres for its

“extraordinary service” (Root-Bernstein 232). The

popular Théâtre des Sans-Culottes of the boulevard

63

received a mere 5,000 livres and this, says Root-

Bernstein, demonstrates the effort of the Committee

of Public Safety to reinstate the theatrical

hierarchy that had all but toppled in 1792 (233).

Several radicals from the original Comédie-

Française (the actor Talma included) split to form

their own theatre, le Théâtre de la République,

before the arrests and closure of the Nation. The

company had fresh in their memory what had happened

to their colleagues of the Nation and sought to take

no risks (Rodmell 34). The day after the execution

of Marie-Antoinette (October 16, 1793), they mounted

an unmistakably republican production by Sylvain

Maréchal, Le Dernier jugement des rois. This play enjoyed

considerable success and its author, Maréchal, had

written works attacking the entire notion of

monarchy, such as the following: “Malheur au peuple

dont le roi est généreux! Le roi ne peut donner que

64

ce qu’il a pu prendre à son peuple. Plus le roi

donne, plus il a pris au peuple” (161).

Le Jugement was received by an audience that

showed by their applause the extent to which the

play was to their taste, and the Feuille du Salut

Public wrote that “le parterre et la salle entière

paraissaient composés d’une legion de tyrannicides,

prêts à s’élancer sur l’espèce léonine, connue sous

le nom de rois” (164). Hébert wrote in his Père

Duchesne that “tu verras Le Jugement dernier des rois,

tu verras tous les brigands couronnés la corde au

col, jettés dans une île déserte, tu verras le pape

faire amende honorable, et obligé de convenir qu’il

n’est qu’un joueur de gobelets; tu verras tous les

tyrans de l’Europe obligés de se dévorer eux-mêmes,

et engloutis, à la fin de la pièce, par un volcan.

Voilà un spectacle fait pour des yeux républicains”

(165).

65

The plot of this one-act play is simple. Sans-

culottes representatives, one from each of the major

newly republican countries of Europe, have brought

their respective tyrannous leaders to a desert

island (a popular setting also in pre-Revolutionary

theatre) on which has been living for twenty years

an exiled old Frenchman. The old man, having left

prior to the Revolution, is astonished and overjoyed

to learn that in overthrowing their leader in the

name of freedom from oppression, “Les Français sont

donc devenus des hommes!” (Hamiche 285). The

leaders, in all of their elegance and finery, are

deposited on the island where they promptly fall to

bickering and physically abusing one another. An

amusing moment for the audience comes when the

Empress Catherine the Great of Russia fights with

the Pope, breaks his cross and forces him to confess

that “Un prêtre…un pape…est un charlatan…un joueur

de gobelets” (301). The end comes for the tyrants

66

as the volcano erupts, spewing lava that engulfs

them in a scene so terrific that it required a

proclamation by the National Convention to provide

the Théâtre de la République with twenty pounds of

saltpeter and twenty pounds of gunpowder for each

performance (Rodmell 166). With war supplies in

demand, this requisition to the theatre is proof

positive of the official support for the play. The

propaganda value of the piece was indeed so high

that it was worth the 11,000 francs (166) to

Maréchal when the Convention ordered its reprinting

and dissemination among the soldiers fighting the

war. In fact, on the anniversary of the King’s

execution, Louis Sentex of the Jacobin club proposed

that all of the theatres of Paris be required to

perform the play. As Rodmell points out, “there is

no doubt about it, though: France and Europe are

offered one way, and one way only, forward. That is

67

the Jacobin way, the way of the Terror. The only

good king is a dead one” (186).

4. The Thermidorian and Directory Periods – July

27, 1794 – November 9, 1799

The Terror, instigated by the Committee of Public

Safety and headed by Robespierre, created a backlash to

this frenzy of patriotic commemoration and public

involvement in the theatre. With opposition to the

dictatorial rule of the Committee of Public Safety and

the arrest and execution of Robespierre, Sainte-Juste and

Couthon (July 28, 1794) came a change in the world of

entertainment in the theatre. In his book Le Monde des

théâtres pendant la Révolution, Jacques Hérissay writes of an

interesting form of protest taking place in the salles of

the Theatres of Paris. During a performance on January

22, 1795 at the Théâtre des Arts, members of the audience

led by the jeunesse dorée (an interesting new social group

made up of middle-class youths) threw scraps of paper

(feuillets) onto the stage demanding the actors read what

68

was written thereon. The actor, Chéron, proceeded to

read a verse that applauded the violence against the

“buveurs de sang” (Robespierre et al.). Chéron was forced

to repeat the words on the paper when the crowd demanded

it and promised to put the words to music for the

following performance. The crowd the next day demanded

again that the poetry be read and from that point on

“presque chaque soir et dans chaque salle, semblables

faits se reproduisent” (286). Plays were interrupted,

citizens demanded it (and other feuillets) read, others

protested, and several of the theatres, fearing violence,

were forced to close their doors. The police had to

intervene and ordered that no unsigned text was to be

read. This led to the legislation that “désormais, pour

concilier à la fois la tranquillité publique et la

liberté de penser, afin aussi que la responsabilité ne

fût pas illusoire, l’auteur des impromptus serait tenu de

les lire lui-même sur les théâtres ou d’être présent à

côté de l’acteur qui les lirait ou les chanterait.”

69

(287). The final result of the demonstrations was that

prior to each performance the Cri du peuple or the Réveil du

peuple (the latter being the more popular) was read aloud,

then La Marseillaise and Ça ira were sung. Busts of Marat and

of Lepeletier (previously holding the place of

distinction in the foyers of several theatres) were at

first vandalized by the young people of the jeunesse dorée

(accompanied by cries of “À bas Marat…À bas l’homme aux

quatre cent mille têtes [295]), then removed by the

National Convention who decreed that “les honneurs du

Panthéon ne pourraient être décernés à un citoyen, ni son

buste placé dans le sein de la Convention Nationale et

dans les lieux publics, que dix ans après sa mort” (297).

On April 27, 1795 Charles-Pierre Ducancel’s play

L’Intérieur des comités révolutionnaires, ou les Aristides modernes was

performed at the Théâtre de la Cité-Variétés. Rodmell

writes that L’Intérieur des comités is as representative of the

Thermidorean Reaction as Le Jugement dernier des rois was of the

Terror itself (190). The play was evidently conceived by

70

Ducancel after a dinner party in May 1795 where each and

every guest complained about the brutal actions of the

Committee of Public Safety and other revolutionary

committees in the name of the revolutionary ideal. The

play itself is set in Dijon and each one of the

characters (renaming themselves with proper republican

Roman names) that is a member of the town’s Revolutionary

Committee has a background in scurrilous activities that

are now legitimized through their appointment to the

committee. Ducancel portrays these characters not only

as corrupt but also as illiterate and ignorant, puffed up

as they are by their own importance since prior to their

appointments to the committee, they were humbly employed.

Torquatus (formerly Fétu) was a rempailleur, Brutus

(formerly Ficelle) was a portier de maison, and Scevola, a

coiffeur. Their ignorance is comically evident, for

example in Act I, scene viii:

Torquatus, bas à Brutus.: Brutus, sais-tu lire, mon

ami?

71

Brutus: Hélas! Je n’en suis encore qu’à l’alphabet;

si tu savais comme c’est difficile d’apprendre à

lire!

Torquatus: Eh! Mon Dieu! Comment donc que j’allons

faire? Je ne savons pas lire non plus.

In Acte II, scene ii, the members of the committee

demonstrate their ignorance of geography in not knowing

where Bourges is but believing Barcelona to be in France.

The exchange between Scevola, Torquatus and Fanchette (a

domestic) in this scene is amusing, as Fanchette clearly

outwits these bumbling members of the committee as she

applies for a passport to travel to Bourges.

The irony of the Revolutionary Committee using

strong Roman republican names but acting unscrupulously,

and a man of reason and principal being named Vilain, is

not lost on the reader. Vilain refuses to change his own

name and comments on this practice in Act 1, scene viii:

“J’avais cru, moi, qu’il n’y avait que les filous qui

changeaient de noms.” After witnessing Torquatus’ and

72

Brutus’ exchange above, Vilain comments on the

ridiculousness of these members of the Committee:

Et voilà deux members d’un comité révolutionnaire!

Grand Dieu! Dans quel siècle sommes-nous? Est-ce

croyable que trente mille bons citoyens tremblent

devant des misèrables de cette espèce![...] Ils me

feront périr, eh bien! Tant mieux. Pour peu que les

choses durent, ce sera bientôt le sort commun de

tous les honnêtes gens.

(Act 1, scene ix)

The only honest man on the Committee, Dufour (who is a

target in the rest of the Committee’s sights and who,

incidentally, knows how to read), stands up to the

President of the Committee in the second act:

Je vous arrête ici, president: quelque soit le sort

qui m’attend, je combattrai toujours vos principes,

parce qu’ils nous mèneraient de la barbarie à

l’esclavage. On ne sert pas la liberté avec les

armes qui la détruisent[…]

73

(Act 2, scene v)

And later, he states:

Loin de régénérer les peuple, la terreur les abrutit

et les dégrade.

(Act 2, scene v)

Rodmell points out that “truth is never as simple, never

as black-and-white as propagandists would have us

believe. Le Jugement dernier des rois and L’Intérieur des comités

révolutionnaires are excellent illustrations of that” (194)

and he says that this is the last real political

propaganda play of the Revolution.

Revivals of Beaumarchais’ La Mère Coupable on May 5,

1797 and of Joseph de Lafont’s Les Trois frères Rivaux on

August 4 of the same year seem to be the last of a dying

breed of plays that referred to events of the day.

Beaumarchais having returned to Paris after surviving the

Terror in exile, reworked his last play to be presented

at the Feydeau (formerly known as the Théâtre Français et

Italien de la Rue Feydeau but shortened by the public to

74

the Feydeau [Carlson 95]). The characters are the same

as those in the original of 1792, but the count and

countess are no longer addressed by title and “references

to divorce, political pamphlets and the instability of

society and the government” (Carlson 248) make the play

contemporary but do not enhance its dramatic qualities.

According to Carlson, at the performance of Les Trois frères

rivaux in August, “the audience interpreted a line in the

play as an attack on the government, as one of the

characters bore the same name as the contemporary

Minister of Justice and when at one point the valet’s

master observed, “M. Merlin, you are a rascal” the

audience roared with delight” (249). Apparently the play

was unable to continue and the theatre did not restage

the play. Carlson points out that a few years before the

same mistake would have meant that the theatre would have

been officially closed and the actors arrested, but

“strong government action was difficult in mid-1797 with

the public still suspicious of any movement suggesting a

75

return to the Terror” (249). The forces of the backlash

to the Terror, therefore, had consequently gained full

control.

Under the Directory, F.W.J. Hemmings tells us that

the use of citoyen on the stage as a form of address rather

than monsieur was made rather “apologetically and with a

half-smile” (99) and although censorship under the

Directory was still a strong reality, weariness of this

repressive control is evidenced by a story Hemmings tells

us of Alphonse Martainville and his vaudeville Les

Assemblées primaires, which “included certain satirical

comments on the electoral system introduced on 22 August

1795” (100). The play was well-received by the public on

March 17, 1797, but was banned after the fourth

performance. Martainville wrote a letter to Limodin, the

secretary of the central police bureau, saying that if he

did not allow the play to be staged, he would cause

trouble adding that: “The general public wants to see it

and you have no right to deny them”; to which Limodin

76

retorted, glowering: ‘What do I care about the general

public? I don’t give a damn whether it’s pleased or not”

(100). Martainville promptly sent his play to a

publisher in Paris so that the general public could read

the play at their leisure. Hemmings tells us that “it

would be difficult to find a clearer illustration of the

contempt into which the efforts of the government to

control theatrical productions and to suppress

undesirable plays had fallen during the Directory” (100).

According to Hérissay “au bout de quelques mois,

l’indifférence finit par dominer, bravos, et sifflets

s’atténuèrent et les hymnes se déroulerent au milieu du

silence” (322). The final movement in this theatrical

evolution had begun: the people, weary of turbulence,

ready for relief, welcomed a new sentimentality in

theatre with the play Rivaux d’eux-mêmes, written by

Pigault-Lebrun. It is the story of a woman who,

separated from her husband by war, fails to recognize him

on his return, as he fails to recognize her, but all ends

77

well with a scene of mutual recognition at the end.

Graham Rodmell says that when one “considers this play

one has almost the impression that the Revolution had

never happened” (196) and compares it to the lighthearted

plays by Marivaux of the same type. He goes on to say

that “not surprisingly in view of what had happened over

the previous few years, there had developed a taste for

theatrical entertainment devoid of any political content”

(203-204). And Hérissay says, this was the dénouement,

“les derniers sursauts de la grande crise où la France se

débat depuis huit ans et dont elle va mettre trois ans

encore à se guérir” (323). A new sensibility was born:

melodrama was to last until the Romantics took the stage

in France with Victor Hugo and Hernani. On the eve of yet

another revolution, this play swept the country with its

liberalism and nationalism provoking intense controversy

as had the performances of many plays during the

Revolution of 1789.

5. One Play – Three Interpretations

78

The success of Diderot’s Père de famille during the

Revolution seemed to hinge upon how the spectator

perceived its characters. While it was performed 191

times during the Revolution (Pellerin 91), the

vilification of certain characters shifted several times.

When we examine the public perception of this play during

different phases of the Revolution, we can see how,

although we do not consider Diderot’s play to be

revolutionary, it is adopted and adapted by the

revolutionaries to suit their changing purposes. Pellerin

writes: “La representation du Père de famille était propre à

justifier la politique anticléricale de la Constituante,

à rassembler le peuple autour de Louis XVI en lui offrant

un modèle d’obéissance à travers le personnage de Sophie”

(95). The father is seen at this time as a tormented but

positive figure around whom the family will reconcile

themselves. The shift in thinking comes in 1793 (21

representations of the piece that year) when the father

is seen as a throwback to the authoritative Ancien

79

Regime, as Pellerin quoting the Rapports des observateurs de

Paris of September 1793 writes, “[…]le langage de la

tyrannie retentit à nos oreilles républicaines, et la

contre-révolution s’opère chaque jour sur nos théâtres.

J’ai été indigné qu’un père de famille, un vieillard

respectable par ses vertus, nous rappelât d’antiques

préjugés, nous parlât encore de naissances, de fortune de

rang, et reprochât à son fils l’habit honorable du

pauvre, dont il s’est revêtu, et qu’il ose qualifier de

travestissement indigne. Il est toujours temps qu’une

loi sage fasse taire tous ces échos de la tyrannie, et

que la voix de la Liberté ait seule droit de se faire

entendre” (96-97). Under the Terror, Sophie is still

the representation of wisdom, virtue and purity, but

rather than applauding the father as the hero rallying

the family around him, it is now Saint-Albin, his son,

who gains acclaim for his willingness to step outside of

his social class and love Sophie in all of her poverty.

The father is now relegated to villainy. We see yet

80

another change in perception after the Terror and during

the Directory in 1794 when as Pellerin writes, “Le succès

du Père de Famille peut aussi témoigner de la résistance

tacite des spectateurs à la politique de Robespierre qui

possédait un trait commun avec le Commandeur, le célibat”

(97) and later, “L’image du père bon et généreux, mais

désigné par ses adversaries comme tyran hypocrite qui se

flatte de l’obéissance de son peuple, concordait

totalement avec le personnage du roi bien plus sans doute

qu’avec celui de Robespierre” (99-100).

Under the Directory, Le Père de Famille all but

disappears; by late 1799 and early 1800 (the beginning of

the Napoleonic period), Pellerin notes in his chart only

5 to 15 representations of the play. What does surface

however in 1798, is a theatrical adaptation of Diderot’s

Jacques le fataliste, illustrating perfectly the point that the

theatre of the Directory was no longer politically driven

but more interested in a subject that would divert the

public’s attention from the horrors of the past 8 years.

81

Although there is no surviving text of this adaptation,

Pellerin quotes one of the comptes rendus of the polices de

théâtres that gives us an indication of the public’s

reception of the piece. He quotes “[…]le fond de détail

de ce vaudeville n’ayant aucun rapport avec les affaires

politiques, ni le nouvel ordre des choses, je pense que

l’on peut sans inconvénient en autoriser la

représentation” (101).

6. The Evolution of the Festival

Turning our attention to the festival and the

symbolism of the revolutionary ideal, we see an even more

powerful sign of the revolutionary will to eradicate an

oppressive past and replace it with a new vision. It is

no accident that many theatre historians also study the

festival and ritual because theatrical elements are found

in both. It goes without saying that one finds costumes,

actors, spectators, scripts etc. in the festival and the

ritual and the Revolution was not the first period in

history to incorporate theatre and theatrical conventions

82

in its festivals. Greek historians believe that the

origins of Greek theatre lay with the festival of

Dionysus where a competition was held for the best

tragedy, the first won by Thespis (from which we derive

the word thespian). The Romans used theatre to

supplement their bloody games held in the Coliseum and at

the Circus Maximus. After a near 1000-year banishment by

the Catholic Church, the theatre made a re-appearance in

the Middle Ages, on the occasion of the Quem Quaeritis

(during the Easter festival in or around the year 978)

when three priests played the part of the three Marys at

the same time that a German nun, Hroswitha used the

tragedies of Seneca to instruct young nuns. The Catholic

Church also used theatrical conventions in their pageants

as a way of educating illiterate parishioners during

other Christian festivals such as Ascension and

Assumption.

The festival was indispensable to revolutionary

educators, for without it the present generation, who

83

would not be returning to the classroom, would be

unreachable. They also reached above and beyond the

schools, involving entire communities and forming

national identities (Wojcik 40). The festival was the

perfect occasion to produce the desired effect in the

citizens by enlisting all of the senses through

spectacle. The easiest way to communicate the Republican

ideal was to include the citizen in a hands-on and

interactive manner that strove to break the fourth wall

and serve as a mirrored reflection of the Revolution

itself. Vovelle writes: “[...] dans l’instantané de la

fête se concentrent tous les rêves d’un instant” (157).

Early on, the revolutionaries realized the importance of

the festival for society to replace Catholicism with a

social religion that would preach civic virtue,

egalitarianism, trust, openness and goodness. Festivals

were a way to attempt a blending of the religious and the

social and to give the public a sense of involvement in

the reshaping of its society. To participate and witness

84

one of these events is to become part of that world, to

become part of the imagined community. Theatricized

festivals make politics beautiful, make them

comprehensible to the most ignorant, and communicate the

message in a way that can be duplicated as the need

arises. Lynn Hunt writes, “Political symbols and rituals

were not metaphors of power; they were the means and ends

of power itself. Governing cannot take place without

stories, signs, and symbols that convey and reaffirm the

legitimacy of the governing in thousands of unspoken

ways” (54). Symbols and festivals gave the revolution a

lasting power that was a secular reminder of the

tradition of republicanism and revolution. In the words

of Mona Ozouf, “Car le législateur fait des lois pour le

peuple, mais c’est la fête qui fait le peuple pour les

lois” (16).

Involving the public in the festivals was key to a

symbolic breaking with the past. In order for the public

to internalize civic and political responsibility, they

85

had to become citizens of this new society, participating

in its “cleansing” ceremonies which included (on both

ends of the spectrum) oath-taking and collectively

cheering the beheading of the King and Queen. The

philosophes harked back to the Golden Age, where life

communed with a bountiful nature as the ideal example for

a festival and joined this with the examples from a Greek

and Roman past. A new social structure rested upon every

move, or so they believed. Consequently, the

revolutionaries believed that festivals could become the

vehicle for education combining politics, psychology,

aesthetics, morality, propaganda, and religion. People

would go home not only happy, but enlightened as well

(Wojcik 39).

Rousseau’s idea of the festival, however, was that

it should be simple, more about people than about

spectacle, where all class differences were laid aside.

In his Lettre à d’Alembert Rousseau writes “Nous avons déjà

plusieurs de ces fêtes publiques; ayons-en davantage

86

encore, je n’en serai que plus charmé. Mais n’adoptons

point ces spectacles exclusifs qui renferment tristement

un petit nombre de gens dans un antre obscur; qui les

tiennent craintifs et immobiles dans le silence et

l’inaction; qui n’offrent aux yeux que cloisons, que

pointes de fer, que soldats, qu’affligeantes images de la

servitude et de l’inégalité. Non, peuples heureux, ce ne

sont pas là vos fêtes! C’est en plein air, c’est sous le

ciel qu’il faut vous rassembler et vous livrer au doux

sentiment de votre bonheur[...] Plantez au milieu d’une

place un piquet couronné de fleurs, rassemblez-y le

peuple, et vous aurez une fête. Faites mieux encore:

donnez les spectateurs en spectacle; rendez-les acteurs

eux-mêmes; faites que chacun se voie et s’aime dans les

autres, afin que tous en soient mieux unis” (233-234)

Ozouf writes about this model of the festival, “Il y a eu

un temps sans emploi du temps, une fête sans divisions et

presque sans spectacle. Dans la nuit des origines, une

assemblée festive s’est tenue, dont les participants se

87

sentaient comblés par leur simple réunion. Fête

primitive, fête primordiale, à laquelle il suffirait au

fond de revenir” (11). It was a spontaneous way to teach

civic virtue that is related to the general will. Also

important to note was that social and economic conditions

had not improved much for the masses since July 14, 1789.

People continued to live in the streets, bread was still

expensive and hard to come by, winters were harsh with

little heat available and the abstract sentiments of the

Revolution, as promising as they were, did not feed nor

clothe the poor. The festival was a way to divert the

public from its daily misery, a way in which everyone

could come together to celebrate being alive and being free,

although the poor citizen still went home to an empty pot

afterward.

Vovelle writes , “Lorsque l’on analyse, comme on a

commencé à le faire, l’ordre des cortèges qui se mettent

en place à l’hiver de 1793 pour célébrer les victoires,

les martyrs de la liberté, les premiers anniversaires

88

d’une Révolution qui commence à célébrer son propre

passé, on voit se mettre en place toute une symbolique

dont les emblèmes s’organisent en un discours pédagogique

explicite” (163). The Minister of the Interior, François

de Neufchâteau, in his Ordre, Marche et Cérémonies,

demonstrates this importance of arrangement as he

describes the triumphal procession of the monuments to

the Arts and to the Sciences to accompany the festival of

Liberty on 9 Thermidor. The first element at the head

of the procession is a banner on which is written “Histoire

Naturelle,” denoting the importance given to nature. Each

element of the Arts and Sciences is then methodically

placed within the procession; those needing further

clarification are preceded by a banner with an

inscription. For example, in the second division of the

procession, peopled by artists, musicians and actors, the

banner that heads up the march is inscribed with the

following words :  “Les sciences et les arts soutiennent

en embellissant la liberté” (3).

89

7. Phase One in the Festival Cycle – Traditional and

Spontaneous Festivals lead to an Organization by the

National Guard

Like the plays of revolutionary theatre,

revolutionary festivals were numerous, as Mona Ozouf

writes: “dès qu’on ouvre les cartons où dorment les

archives des fêtes, la variété et l’abondance sautent aux

yeux: Jeunesse, Victoires, Vieillesse, Agriculture,

Époux, République, Souveraineté du Peuple…que de fêtes!”

(21) Certain of these festivals exemplify the use of

symbols and abstractions to replace the old ways of the

Ancien Régime and demonstrate a cycle corresponding to

what we have already seen in the theatre. The first of

these revolutionary celebrations were largely

spontaneous, as Popkin describes them: “the planting of

the ‘liberty trees’ – poles festooned with revolutionary

symbols” (55). But they gradually became more and more

structured, or “systemized”. National Guardsmen began to

organize what were called “federations,” wherein groups

90

from neighboring towns would converge to honor the new

constitution. The culmination of this was the Festival of

Federation that marked the one-year anniversary of the

storming of the Bastille, a pageant coordinating the

recruitment and mobilization of the National Guard.

“Telle qu’elle a été réalisée par la volonté collective

des milliers de Parisiens dont le bénévolat collectif a

permis l’aménagement du Champs-de-Mars pour la date du 14

juillet 1790, on comprend que la fête de la Fédération

ait pu présenter, pour les témoins qui nous en ont laissé

la description (ainsi Sébastien Mercier), l’idéal

insurpassable auquel ils se référont avec nostalgie par

la suite” (Vovelle 162). The Festival of Federation more

closely resembled the Rousseauist ideal of spontaneity

and non-theatricality and several traditional elements

were found, i.e. communal meals, dancing and references

made to the saints and myths. By being held outdoors in

the Champs-de-Mars, the festival brought the sense of

religion out of the church and closer to nature, an

91

element inspired by Rousseau. And because it was

organized by the National Guard, the festival was

organized as it were “from below”. In the next phases,

we will see how the festivals are increasingly organized

“from above” taking away from the people this method of

spontaneous expression. While the Festival of Federation

contained elements of traditional festivals held prior to

the Revolution and had religious overtones (there was a

religious service), it also demonstrated a new infusion

of patriotic display. The King and the delegates from

all over France took the oath “to be faithful forever to

the nation, the law and the king”. This oath would become

one of the vital characteristics of subsequent

celebrations that marked these revolutionary festivals as

entirely different from their predecessors and

demonstrated the transfer of sacrality from Catholicism

to the new civic religion, analyzed so well by Mona Ozouf

in her book, La Fête Révolutionnaire, 1789-1799. Vovelle

describes that although a superficial solidarity existed

92

at the Festival of the Federation, “les lézardes

apparaissent, et si, quand on chante en chœur ‘allons

Français au Champ-de-Mars’, un autre couplet plus

populaire fredonne:

‘Aristocrate te voilà donc foutu,

Le champ de Mars te font la pellé au cul,

Nous baiserons vos femmes

Et vous serez pendus...’” (162)

A very interesting observation of the day’s

festivities in Paris is given to us in an extant

letter sent by an anonymous Frenchman, “D***”, to

the Mayor Bailly. Entitled Songe Patriotique ou le

Monument et la Fête, the writer describes with unbridled

patriotism and joy the scene that he witnessed in

dream with a stranger in a house overlooking the

spot where once stood the Bastille and where, during

the Festival of the Federation, a temple that is a

symbol of the fall of the Bastille is being

dedicated to France’s new-found freedom. It is

93

important to remember that this is his wish that he

is communicating to the Mayor, and his dream,

although fictive, paints a poetic picture of the

festival surrounding the dedication of this imagined

temple on the site of the destroyed Bastille. The

description he gives of the ceremony and procession

is congruous with other descriptions we have of the

Festival of the Federation at the Champs-de-Mars.

He notes upon his arrival on the scene, “La

joie et la santé brilloient sur tous les visages; et

l’esprit d’égalité avoit fait refluer jusques aux

dernières classes des citoyens, cette politesse

aimable qui semble être le caractère distinctif et

François, et que le sentiment généreux de la liberté

empèchoit de dégénérer en bassesse” (12). “D***”

continues to describe the scene from his new

friend’s (M. Belfond) apartment balcony. M. Belfond

tells “D***” from where came all of the material

required to make the huge edifice on the Champs-de-

94

Mars. He speaks of the voluntary contributions from

citizens all over the country in creating the temple

demonstrating the unification of the Frenchmen in

their desire to build the monument to liberty. The

procession begins, and our eyewitness describes the

joy on the participants’ faces and the honor and

love evident in their reception of the “Représentans

de la Nation” (20). When “D***” questions where the

King is, Belfond replies, “Vous ne le verrez point,

une indisposition le prive, en ce jour, d’un

ineffable plaisir, le spectacle du bonheur d’une

nation qu’il chérit, et qui lui rend amour pour

amour” (20-21). “D***” notes that the most

beautiful sight in all of the festivity is the

people themselves. “D***” and his host descend to

the site and enter the temple where “D***” describes

what he sees of the statue of Liberty: “ses yeux

animés d’un feu doux brilloient avec majesté, et la

sincérité paroissoit habiter sur ses lèvres

95

légèrement entr’ouvertes…Couverte d’armes défensives

(car la liberté ne peut exister sans la force et la

prudence), elle sembloit négliger l’usage d’une

lance et d’une épée que l’on voyait auprès d’elle,

et qu’entouroit l’olivier, symbole de la paix” (23-

24). The description continues and we feel “D***”’s

passion and emotion as witness to the scene. This

valuable account goes far in communicating to us

what the average Frenchman experienced during this

festival and indeed in the early part of the

Revolution, and although florid in its idealism,

the sincerity with which it is written is moving

even to 21st century readers. The importance of the

role played by the average Frenchman in this

festival is typical of this first phase in the

Festival Cycle in that the sans-culottes figured

greatly in the planning and execution of this first

wave of revolutionary commemoration.

96

8. Phase Two in the Festival Cycle – The

Festival of Lasting Symbolic Significance

The next important noteworthy festival is the

Festival of Liberty in 1793, where symbol played an

enormous part in the reconstruction of French society’s

vision of itself. What we see here is the seizing of

opportunity by the Jacobins to educate the public through

spectacle that includes, of course, strong symbols. The

symbol of the goddess of Liberty first appeared during

the Revolution on a medal commemorating the establishment

of a new municipal government in Paris in July 1789. In

her book The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the

French Revolutionary Era, Madelyn Gutwirth gives an excellent

analysis of the different ways in which Liberty was

portrayed during the Revolution and what this effective

symbol meant for both men and women. She writes: “For

many men, and many women as well, the too-self-sufficient

goddess – acting without, and seeming to need no, male

protectors – would have appeared not as liberating, but

97

as threatening to the male supremacist gender

accommodation” (265). However, Lynn Hunt writes, “By the

end of the decade, Liberty was indelibly associated with

the memory of the Republic she had represented. In

collective memory, La République was ‘Marianne’. The name

first given Liberty – the Republic – in derision by

opponents of the Revolution soon became a familiar

nickname of affection, and her image reappeared in every

subsequent republic” (62).

The Convention, wanting an abstract symbol that

could not be tied to France’s monarchical past, had

introduced the Roman goddess of Liberty to replace the

image of the King. At the time of the Festival, the

Commune (the Paris city government) sought to defy the

Church’s hold on the people. As Hunt writes, “Liberty

was secular, easily associated with reason (both were

represented iconographically as female figures), and

opposable to the central female figure of Catholicism,

the Virgin Mary. The people present were able to convert

98

the abstract, secular goddess into a living Carnival

Queen, who called to mind the queens of traditional,

popular religious rituals (65). Across the country,

women were chosen to play “Liberty” in the festival who

were beautiful but still ordinary. The conception of

revolutionary beauty was exalted as being plain but

strong and identifiable as the antithesis of the

patriarchal monarchy. Liberty was also costumed in

natural flowing garments that were in direct contrast to

the finery and frippery of Marie Antoinette and the

courtesans of Louis XVI.

By decision of the radical Paris city government,

the festival in honor of Liberty planned for November 10,

1793 was transformed instead into a “Triumph of Reason.”

Scheduled originally for the former Palais Royal, the

event was moved to Notre Dame Cathedral (renamed the

Temple of Reason) to make the attack on Catholicism more

explicit (62-63). The woman representing Liberty sat on

a raised pedestal in the place where originally sat a

99

statue of the Virgin Mary. Surrounded by busts of

Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin and Montesquieu, two lines

of torch-bearing young girls filed bowing past the altar

on which were inscribed the words, “A la philosophie”.

Liberty descended from the temple to greet the people who

were singing this hymn:

Come down, oh Liberty, daughter of nature; the

people has reconquered its immortal power: they re-

erect your altar on the pompous ruins of antique

imposture (Parker 57).

The Convention had had no part in this, at least not

officially, and so, once the festival had been presented,

the participants marched off to the Convention to invite

the deputies to a repeat performance. The people, guided

by their local government in Paris (the Commune) had put

on their own play (Hunt 65).

9. Phase Three of the Festival Cycle – the Religiosity

of Festivals

100

The next turning point of this history of the

Revolutionary Festival consists of those festivals of the

Supreme Being on 20 Prairial, year II (June 8, 1794).

Vovelle writes that “[...] les procès-verbaux multiples,

venus de toute la France, attestent qu’elle a été, malgré

tout ce qu’on en a écrit, un immense succès collectif”

(163). Robespierre knew how important the festival was

to society, and this festival was his triumph: he himself

portrayed the Supreme Being. He realized that the

festival had to provide images of the new transparency,

of the new social equality, and that transparency was not

possible without didactism. His purpose was to draw more

on the interplay between civic life and religious belief

with new rites and new ceremonies to displace Catholicism

with socialized religion. The new conception of God is

as a universe that works according to natural laws. In

Robespierre’s interpretation of the correspondence

between God’s natural order and man’s social order, to

participate and witness one of these events is to become

101

part of that world, to become part of this imagined

community. But the Festival of the Supreme Being was

also to prove his downfall as in so doing, he gave

himself a “dangerous preeminence” (Palmer 333).

Robespierre was singled out as the possessor of power and

was deemed to be purely ambitious. Palmer writes that

“members of the Convention marching with their president

in the front row purposely lagged behind so that

Robespierre would appear to be hurrying forward in a

desire to march alone” (333). This smacked of

dictatorship to the wary revolutionaries made suspicious

by the Terror who tended to seek out and execute anyone

suspected of counterrevolutionary thought or action.

The local organizers of the Festival of the Supreme

Being followed their own inspiration and made the

festival both the apogee of the great popular

celebrations and the forerunner of the disciplined

affairs that would be imposed under the Directory. The

great artist David was enlisted as pageant-master to

102

ensure the esthetic of the festival. Each moment of the

festival was planned to be effective in eliciting an

emotional response from the public, from the music

selected, to the costumes worn by the participants.

“Every man, woman and child in Paris had a part to play”

writes Palmer (328). The Festival was so well planned

that it even “anticipated the moments when the throngs

were to break into applause, and when, in the fashion of

the times, they were to let tears well up in their eyes

from tender joy” (328).

In the Festival of the Supreme Being, as in other

festivals, rhetoric played a large part in communicating

the revolutionary message and serving as a reminder of

the revolutionary cause. Lynn Hunt writes, “Verbal

explanation was essential because the symbolic framework

of the Revolution required constant clarification.

Revolutionary political culture was by nature continually

in flux; the mythic present was always being updated.

New symbols and images appeared every few months and

103

“old” images went through frequent modifications. The

speeches, the banners, and the inscriptions directed the

attention of participants and spectators” (74). Thus,

placards and banners with key phrases were paraded and

allegorical figures were labeled so that their symbolic

meaning would not be confused and the correct public

response would be elicited. Palmer writes, “At the foot

of these seats (where sat members of the National

Convention) stood an artfully contrived figure of

Atheism, among smaller figures of Ambition, Egotism,

Discord and False Simplicity. On these figures was

written ‘Sole Foreign Hope.’” (329). Robespierre spoke

of the end of tyranny and legitimized the reason for the

gathering as an acknowledgment that the Supreme Being

“has created the universe to show his power” (Parker 57).

After his speech, a statue to atheism was burned and,

behind it, one representing wisdom emerged from the smoke

and ashes. The procession then moved to the Champs-de-

Mars (again seen as a sacred place) where the crowd sang

104

patriotic hymns and celebrated the wisdom of the Supreme

Being.

10. Phase Four of the Festival Cycle – The

Directory Festivals

With the Directory period, the momentum begun by the

spontaneous festivals at the beginning of the Revolution

seemed to slow down and grind to a standstill. What

happened to the theatre also happened to the realm of the

Festival. Weary of constant strife, controversy and

terror, people wanted now only to forget and to move on.

In fact, from 1795 to 1800, that is from the Thermidorean

Convention to the end of the Directory, there appeared

one of the most characteristic periods in the adventurous

history of the revolutionary festival. It was then that

the Thermidorean bourgeoisie in power tried to construct

in systematic and synthetic festivals – which Robespierre

had earlier dreamed about – the symbolic expression of

its view of the world. Whereas the festivals at the

beginning of the Revolution associated themselves with

105

the legacy of Rousseau and stressed the spontaneity of

the masses seeking and finding in the festival their own

enjoyment, these new festivals proposed a more organized

system to generate collective conditioning (294-295).

Parker writes: “the aim of the calendar and the schemes

of the festivals was to punctuate the year as Sundays,

traditional religious festivals and saints’ days had

done: to bring the values of Revolution right into the

pattern of time experienced by ordinary people” (54). A

law of May 7, 1794 had set up thirty-six festivals, one

for each décadi (every tenth day), on which every citizen

was to “absorb the ideas on which the new order was

founded. The festivals would draw his thoughts on

successive décadis, to the Supreme Being and Nature, to

the human race, to liberty and equality, to love of

country, to hate of tyrants and traitors, to truth and

justice, to various virtues, to youth and age, happiness

and misfortune, agriculture and industry, ancestors and

posterity” (Palmer 327). In other words, these festivals

106

were to act as a reminder to all citizens of the work of

the Revolution and its ideals. By cueing the citizen to

reflect upon these ideas, the festivals would provide a

continuity for the Revolution that would endure in the

hearts and minds of every newly responsible and

politicized citizen.

These ceremonies, which aimed to convince and

instruct, belonged to a cycle that juxtaposed various

kinds of festivals: those on the anniversaries of July

14, 1789 (the taking of the Bastille), January 21, 1793

(the execution of Louis XVI), 9 Thermidor (the fall of

Robespierre, July 27, 1794), with those in Ventôse

celebrating the sovereignty of the people and those in

Vendémiaire commemorating the founding of the Republic;

also festivals stressing morality – those for the young,

for the old, for agriculture, and for expressing

gratitude, and all those were in addition to the funeral

ceremonies for dead heroes. Relying on the past while

organizing the future and projecting an ideal community

107

whose moral ceremonies were supposed to reflect it, the

period of the Directory was only partially successful in

its festivals. There was a burst of festivals in the

years IV 1795-1796 and VI 1797-1798, but they were

inhibited in the years III 1794-1795 and V 1796-1797 by

stronger counterrevolutionary attitudes.

Vovelle writes: “[...] cette histoire reste

finalement celle d’un échec: la cérémonie directoriale se

brise sur les retours de la fête à l’ancienne, profane

autant même que religieuse” (164). Evidently the public

had had enough, not of the message itself but of the

method of its delivery. These commemorative acts began to

replace in importance the events themselves and became

idealized and remembered in a way in which they began to

depart from the way the original event really was. The

sheer numbers of festivals, the over-planning, the

trimmings and trappings: none of it rang true enough to

provide a lasting legacy of the festival itself. Where

once the festival was an impromptu celebration of joy and

108

liberty, it now became a stultifying display of order and

control. We see a remarkable parallel between this

cycle and that of revolutionary politics and society.

The contrast between the first of the revolutionary

festivals and those at the end of the revolutionary

period is striking. “La Révolution aurait échoué à

réaliser le rêve rousseauiste de l’abolition du

spectacle, qui déboucherait sur la plénitude de la fête”

(Vovelle 168). The festival was no more than a stylized

performance; the Goddess of Liberty was really just an

actress from the Opéra costumed in clothes from Greek

tragedy. The artificiality of the “production” of the

ceremony killed its spontaneity and therefore rendered

the festival no more than a representation, a play.

11. Conclusion

Revolutionary discourse took the form of newspapers,

pamphlets, posters, songs, dances, plays, festivals and

symbols. The two means of communicating the Revolution,

words and images, are called collectively the “rhetoric”,

109

and the Revolution was the first event with which the

public became acquainted in this kind of political

discourse. But the work of keeping up with ever-changing

rhetoric proved to be too much for the public bombarded

by abstract images of little substance. Lynn Hunt writes,

“It was only in the strife of the moment, the helter-

skelter of republican politics, that the symbols and

rituals of republicanism were tried, tested and

ultimately chosen. Without them, there would have been

no collective memory of republicanism and no tradition of

revolution” (86).

The theatrical spectacle is only one element of the

arts that changed and adapted along the tumultuous course

of the revolution. Songs, music, the beaux-arts, all

reacted in their own ways. But the theatre spectator and

festival participant because he or she experiences the

event in the company of others as a community (thus

experiencing what is referred to as communitas) is moved

in such a way that he or she is changed forever. The

110

collective memory of a group is manipulated by this and

by attendance at festivals designed to reiterate the

revolutionary message. When performed today, over two

hundred years later, the plays written during the period

seem hollow and thin. The descriptions of the festivals,

with their solemnity and over-specificity seem silly and

artificial to 21st century society. What is interesting,

though, is that these records are maintained and studied

now not for content but for the way in which the

revolutionary message was propagated to form a cultural

identity that has not perished over time and still

remembers the message of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”

while keeping close to heart the image of “Marianne” and

all that she stands for from 200 years ago. The symbolic

cues of these elements and others, such as the tri-

colored flag and La Marseillaise, are still powerful enough

to evoke emotions stirred not from direct memory of an

event but from a generational transference of importance

of the event that left an indelible mark not only on

111

France’s political history but also on its cultural

history.

In the final analysis, although one can argue that

when looked at by themselves, the theatre of the French

Revolution and the festivals that employed theatrical

conventions did not necessarily benefit the average

citizens of the years 1789-1799 as they had hoped, the

groundwork was laid for future generations to seize upon

the ideals and methods expressed in these spectacles to

help change their condition and to continue to fight to

eradicate the differences in the social classes in the

following two centuries. When we look at the Revolution

from below, however, from the eyes of the sans-culottes,

we see that their hopes for a better life expressed and

propagated in the form of the spectacle were only briefly

available to them. The Republican collectivity as

enacted through an audience participating in or being

moved by the theatre and the festival was a new

experience for the sovereign public. The feeling of

112

belonging to a new order and in that sense of

contributing to something that was bigger than the

individual, gave the sans-culottes a responsibility for

which they were perhaps unprepared. As the power to

decide their own fate was systematically and politically

removed from them during the years 1789-1799, the power

to express themselves artistically was also fleeting as

the new elite, the Bourgeoisie, worked to separate itself

from the Third Estate and replaced the Ancien Regime with

a new form of class distinction: economic. The

propaganda value of the spectacle was too tempting to be

ignored by the Jacobins. They found censorship and

control under the name of moral instruction necessary to

ensure that the correct message was broadcast at the

correct time and to a malleable audience, which by nature

of this revolution was pulled into the Rousseauist ideal

of a social contract in an imagined community where

everyone could expand the revolutionary conversation

through spectacle. The key word here, however, is

113

“imagined”: the reality of the 10-year period from 1789-

1799 was that although the Revolution was professed to be

“from below” and for the benefit of the poor and

oppressed, what resulted was that the sans-culottes were

again left behind by an emerging and powerful Bourgeoisie

that had used the power of the masses ultimately to gain

control.

114