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‘Theatre as a Nursery of Language’: Learning French through Vaudeville Tunes in Eighteenth-Century England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2023
Abstract
This article examines how French vaudeville tunes circulated in England through both theatrical performances and French-language textbooks (or ‘grammars’). My central concern is to consider how audiences in London – who had little exposure to the rich satirical and cultural connotations that these tunes had acquired over years of performance in Paris – might have been able to grasp their significance within staged works performed by visiting Parisian troupes between the years 1718 and 1735. I suggest that in tracing the transmission of tunes from France to England, scholars should consider a wider range of print sources, since vaudevilles had a social life extending beyond the plays in which they were performed. To this end, I focus on analysing vaudevilles found in French ‘grammars’. The pedagogical nature of these sources explicitly puts on display how French culture was translated for an English readership. By comparing the tunes found in grammars with plays that used the same tunes, I reveal both how Londoners could have become acquainted with the Parisian understanding of French tunes and how the grammar books could have shifted the meanings of these tunes for English readers and audiences. Ultimately, the circulation of French tunes abroad through grammars directs our attention to the material and cultural practices undergirding the mobility of eighteenth-century musical culture.
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References
1 See Romey, John, ‘Songs that Run in the Streets: Popular Song at the Comédie-Italienne, the Comédie-Française, and the Théâtres de la Foire’, The Journal of Musicology 37/4 (2020), 415–458Google Scholar; Blanc, Judith le, Avatars d'opéras: parodies et circulation des airs chantés sur les scènes Parisiennes, 1672–1745 (Paris: Garnier, 2014)Google Scholar; le Blanc, Judith and Schneider, Herbert, eds, Pratiques du timbre et de la parodie d'opéra en Europe (XVIe–XIXe siècles) (Hildesheim: Olms, 2014)Google Scholar; Darnton, Robert, Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Schneider, Herbert, ed., Timbre und Vaudeville: Zur Geschichte und Problematik einer populären Gattung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Olms, 1999)Google Scholar; Clifford Barnes, ‘The Théâtre de la Foire (Paris, 1697–1762): Its Music and Composers’ (PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 1965); and Grout, Donald Jay, ‘The Music of the Italian Theatre at Paris, 1682–97’, Papers of the American Musicological Society 27 (1941), 158–170Google Scholar.
2 Barnes, ‘The Théâtre de la Foire (Paris, 1697–1762)’, 131–138. Pierre Richelet defined the vaudeville as ‘une sorte de chanson qui est dans la bouche du peuple’ (a sort of song that is in the mouths of the people). See his Dictionnaire françois, contenant les mots et les choses, plusieurs nouvelles remarques sur la langue Françoise (Geneva: Jean Herman Widerhold, 1680), 508.
3 Darnton, Poetry and the Police, 80.
4 See Alain-René Lesage and Jacques-Philippe D'Orneval, Le Théâtre de la foire, ou l'opéra comique, ten volumes, volume 1 (Paris: Ganeau, 1721), Preface, no pagination. Here and throughout I adopt modern orthography for the title of this series. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
5 For a full listing of these performances see Erica Pauline Levenson, ‘Traveling Tunes: French Comic Opera and Theater in London, 1714–1745’ (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 2017), 175–239. See also The London Stage, 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments & Afterpieces, eleven volumes in five parts, part 2: 1700–1729, ed. Emmett L. Avery (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960), and part 3: 1729–1747, ed. Arthur H. Scouten (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961).
6 Rogers, Vanessa L., ‘John Gay, Ballad Opera and the Théâtres de la Foire’, Eighteenth-Century Music 11/2 (2014), 173–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Heartz, Daniel, ‘The Beggar's Opera and Opéra-Comique en Vaudevilles’, Early Music 27/1 (1999), 42–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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10 Throughout the main text I use the modernized spelling of the French word ‘paniers’ rather than the ‘panniers’ that is often found in the original sources.
11 Shovlin, John, Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021)Google Scholar, chapter 1, 31–79; Black, Jeremy, Natural & Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
12 Marc Fumaroli, When the World Spoke French, trans. Richard Howard (New York: New York Review of Books, 2011), and John Gallagher, Learning Languages in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 63–65.
13 On the relationship between social class and French/foreign culture in England see Jeremy Black, A Subject for Taste: Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), chapters 5, 101–126, and 10, 211–236; for an explanation of the middling orders see French, H. R. ‘The Search for the “Middle Sort of People” in England, 1600–1800’, Historical Journal 43 (2000), 277–293Google Scholar.
14 For linguistic histories of eighteenth-century French grammars see Coffey, Simon, ‘French Grammars in England 1660–1820: Changes in Content and Contexts Paving the Way to the “Practical” Grammar-Translation Manual’, Histoire Épistémologie Langage 41/2 (2019), 137–156CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Michèle Cohen, ‘French Conversation or “Glittering Gibberish”? Learning French in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Didactic Literature in England 1500–1800: Expertise Constructed, ed. Sara Pennell and Natasha Glaisyer (London: Routledge, 2016), 99–117.
15 Jean Caravolas, Histoire de la didactique des langues au siècle des Lumières: précis et anthologie thématique (Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2000), 20. For a complete listing see R. C. Alston, ‘The French Language Grammars, Miscellaneous Treatises, Dictionaries’, in A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800, twenty-one volumes in thirty-eight parts, volume 12, part 1 (Leeds: author, 1985).
16 Cohen, ‘French Conversation or “Glittering Gibberish”?’, 104.
17 Cohen, ‘French Conversation or “Glittering Gibberish”?’, 105–108; Coffey, ‘French Grammars in England 1660–1820’, 140; and Gallagher, Learning Languages. Both Cohen and Coffey point out that by the mid-eighteenth century, beginning with Louis Chambaud's A Grammar of the French Tongue (1750), pedagogical methods shifted away from orality and towards writing as a means of more deeply comprehending grammatical construction.
18 During the Hanoverian regime Michel (Michael) Malard and Jean Palairet served as French tutors to the children of King George II. J. E. Tandon was French tutor to Lady Mary Godolphin, who was the dedicatee of his French-grammar book and the daughter of the Second Duchess of Marlborough. For more on the lives of French grammar authors, including their employment and émigré statuses, see Coffey, ‘French Grammars in England 1660–1820’, 146–150, and Caravolas, Histoire de la didactique des langues au siècle des Lumières, 20–34. On the life of Abel Boyer specifically see J. F. Flagg, ‘Abel Boyer: A Huguenot Intermediary’ (PhD dissertation, Boston University, 1973).
19 Raymond Hickey, Eighteenth-Century English: Ideology and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 70. French grammars ranged in cost from one shilling and sixpence to two shillings during the early eighteenth century, which was about the equivalent of a day's wages for a skilled tradesperson. See ‘Currency Converter: 1270–2017’, The National Archives www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ (2 July 2022). See also Gallagher, Learning Languages in Early Modern England, 75–76.
20 From the title-page of J. E. Tandon's A New French Grammar, third edition (London: John Millan and Joseph Fox, 1736).
21 Guy Miege, Miege's Last and Best French Grammar (London: William Freeman and Abel Roper, 1698), 125–129.
22 As grammarian François Cheneau states in The True French Master (London: J. Pote, 1752), ‘I always caused my scholars, after their compositions were perfected, to get them by heart, and take every opportunity to speak and hold discourse’ (A3r–A3v); see also Cohen, ‘French Conversation or “Glittering Gibberish”?’, 105–108.
23 The quoted text is the refrain of the song, giving the aspiring French speaker several opportunities to practice pronunciation as they sing through the text multiple times. See Jean Palairet, A New Royal French Grammar, second edition (London: E. Howlatt, 1733), 420–421.
24 See, for example, Solomon Lowe, French Rudiments: Consisting of a Grammar of the Language (London: author, 1740), 90, and Joseph Gautier's The True Practical French Grammar (London: author and William Sandby, 1743), 108–109 and 126–146.
25 This calculation also includes airs from the Opéra, such as ‘Aimable vainqueur’ by André Campra and ‘Que n'aimez-vous? cœurs insensibles’ by Lully, that were widely parodied in the Parisian popular theatres and became vaudevilles through their widespread use. On parodied opera airs see Grout, ‘The Music of the Italian Theatre at Paris’ and Le Blanc, Avatars d'opéras.
26 For an extensive exploration of this idea see Kathryn Moncrief and Kathryn McPherson, eds, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (London: Routledge, 2016).
27 See Levenson, Erica, ‘From Royalty to Riots: Nation and Class in the Reception of French Musical Theater in London’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 50 (2021), 141–152Google Scholar.
28 Aaron Hill, The Prompter 13 (24 December 1734); original italics.
29 Lesage and D'Orneval, Le Théâtre de la foire, ou l'opéra comique, ten volumes (Paris: Ganeau, 1721–1734). These same tunes can also be found in the anthology Les Parodies du Nouveau Théâtre Italien (Paris: Briasson, 1731).
30 ‘Suivons l'amour’ was originally the closing chorus of the prologue in Lully's Amadis (1684), but became widely parodied in the Parisian theatres.
31 Rogers, ‘John Gay, Ballad Opera and the Théâtres de la Foire’, 192–193.
32 Abel Boyer, The Compleat French-Master, for Ladies and Gentlemen (London: Tho. Salusbury, 1694).
33 For an analysis of the circulation of this Purcell tune in Boyer's grammar and beyond see Lebedinski, ‘The Travels of a Tune’.
34 Florent Carton Dancourt, Les Vendanges de Suresnes: comédie de Mr. Dancourt (Paris: chez T. Guillain, 1696).
35 André Blanc, F. C. Dancourt, 1661–1725: la Comédie Française à l'heure du soleil couchant (Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place, 1984), 67–68.
36 For a complete listing of such tunes see Romey, ‘Songs that Run in the Streets’, 440–441.
37 Philibert-Joseph Le Roux, Dictionnaire comique, satyrique, critique, burlesque, libre et proverbial (Amsterdam: Z. Chastelain, 1750), 315–316. The proverb was also quoted as early as the sixteenth century by Rabelais in La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel, book 2, chapter 27 (1534), to imply when someone or something is too late, or an occasion has passed: François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Burton Raffel (New York: Norton, 1991), 68.
38 The London Stage, part 2, volume 2, 654–664.
39 A play entitled only L'Usurier gentilhomme was performed on 15 January 1722. Its relationship to the play performed a few weeks later on 2 February remains unclear, but it is possible that it merged with Les Vendanges de Suresnes to form one entertainment, given that the latter did the same with L’Été des coquettes on 19 February. Both performances in February were ‘by royal command’.
40 The tune ‘Adieu paniers, vendanges sont faites’ appears in almost every volume of the Lesage and D'Orneval Théâtre de la foire anthology in addition to the later Les Parodies du Nouveau Théâtre Italien anthology.
41 The London Stage, part 2, volume 2, 657.
42 Claude and François Parfaict, ‘1718 Foire Saint Laurent’, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des spectacles de la foire, two volumes (Paris: Briasson, 1743), volume 1, 218–219. It is likely that the fair-theatre troupes went to London in 1718 in part because of this event.
43 On the suppression of the fair theatres in Paris see Robert Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), chapter 4, 81–97.
44 Each French play was typically only performed once or twice on London stages. The London Stage lists performances of Les Animaux raisonnables (sometimes advertised as ‘The Reasonable Animals’) on 17, 19 and 26 March and 9 June 1720 at The King's Theatre, 23 March 1721 at the Little Haymarket Theatre, 29 January and 22 February 1725 at the Little Haymarket Theatre, and 11 and 15 November 1734 at the Little Haymarket Theatre.
45 John Burgoyne, The Lord of the Manor, a Comic Opera, as It Is Performed at the Theatre Royal Drury-Lane, with a Preface by the Author (London: T. Evans, 1781).
46 The musical numbers of this opera by William Jackson were in fact published, yet the French song mentioned in the libretto is absent from the published score. This further suggests that ‘Adieu paniers’ was well enough known in England at this time that no notation was required. See William Jackson, The Lord of the Manor: A Comic Opera . . . adapted for the Voice and Harpsichord (London: John Preston, 1781).
47 Burgoyne, The Lord of the Manor, 35.
48 Burgoyne, The Lord of the Manor, 35.
49 The tune ‘Adieu paniers’ is set to numerous different contrafacta in the manuscript ‘Chansonnier, ou recueil de chansons anecdotes, depuis l'année 1600 jusqu’à 1744’ (British Library, London (Gb-Lbl), Egerton MS 814–817), which belonged to William Chappell, a nineteenth-century British historian who collected folk songs. This chansonnier is another indication of the long-lasting circulation of ‘Adieu paniers’ in England.
50 J. E. Tandon, A New French Grammar: Teaching to Read, Speak, and Understand the French Tongue (London: E. Howlatt, 1733), 114–115.
51 La clef des chansonniers, ou recueil des vaudevilles depuis cent ans & plus, notez, et recueillis pour la première fois par J. B. Christophe Ballard, two volumes (Paris: Ballard, 1717), volume 2, 264–265.
52 Joseph Bergin, The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 300. For more on these religious conflicts see Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), chapter 2, 75–134.
53 The Fronde, a series of civil wars in seventeenth-century France, is often discussed in eighteenth-century historiography as an impressive moment of transgression against the French government, because there were ‘honest attempts to legislate a constitutional monarchy into existence in 1648–9’. David Parrott, 1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the ‘Fronde’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 3.
54 See especially Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation.
55 Michel Malard, The True French Grammar (London: J. Brown, 1716). Similar goals are present in Malard's companion pedagogical text entitled The French and Protestant Companion . . . with the Defence of the Protestant Religion, and the Death of Popery. The whole in English and French, for the Use of the Young Princesses (London: author and Mr. Marshall, 1718).
56 Most notably, Boyer compiled histories of British royalty (History of King William the Third and The History of the Reign of Queen Anne Digested into Annals) and published contemporary news and parliamentary debates in his journal The Political State of Great Britain (1711–1729). For more on these texts see Flagg, ‘Abel Boyer’, chapters 4 and 5, 212–353.
57 There is little surviving biographical information on J. E. Tandon. However, the views espoused in ‘Tes beaux yeux’ align with Huguenot propaganda of the time, which emphasized the tyrannical nature of absolutist rule in France. See David J. B. Trim, ed., The Huguenots: History and Memory in Transnational Context (Boston: Brill, 2011), 238. The third edition of Tandon's French grammar was also published by the Huguenot printer John Millan in London.
58 Harris, Frances, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 259CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
59 Lesage and D'Orneval, Théâtre de la foire, ou l'opéra comique, volume 3 (Paris: Ganeau, 1721), 349.
60 For more on how the utopian world of the female-governed Amazonian island was used to critique marital conventions see Ray, Marcie, ‘Dystopic Marital Narratives at the Opéra-Comique during the Regency’, Musica Perspectiva 6/2 (2013), 49–83Google Scholar.
61 Lesage and D'Orneval, Théâtre de la foire, ou l'opéra comique, volume 3, 325–326.
62 Parrott, 1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the ‘Fronde’, 3. See also Steinberg, Sylvie, ‘Le Mythe des Amazones et son utilisation politique de la Renaissance à la Fronde’, in Royaume de Fémynie: Pouvoirs, contraintes, espaces de liberté des femmes, de la Renaissance à la Fronde, ed. Wilson-Chevalier, Kathleen and Viennot, Éliane (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999), 261–273Google Scholar.
63 Such an interpretation reveals a new perspective on gender and French-language pedagogy. Michèle Cohen has examined how French grammars helped in fashioning the English ‘gentleman’ in the eighteenth century (see ‘French Conversation or “Glittering Gibberish”?’), yet Tandon's grammar reveals how such sources could have helped cultivate the politically engaged female.
64 In addition to these sources, French tunes could also be found in songbook miscellanies in the early eighteenth century, a genre popular in the domestic sphere explored by Alison DeSimone in The Power of Pastiche: Musical Miscellany and Cultural Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Clemson: Clemson University Press, 2021), chapter 3, 99–166.
65 On Thomas Cross as engraver of single-sheet songs (many of which derived from the London stage) see Herissone, Rebecca, ‘“Exactly engrav'd by Tho: Cross”? The Role of Single-Sheet Prints in Preserving Performing Practices from the Restoration Stage’, The Journal of Musicology 37/3 (2020), 305–348CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 ‘A Song to Celia who was forc'd to Marry another Her Lover being absent. Made therefore to [the tune of] Aimable Vanqure by Mr. Durfey’ (London, 1704) (GB-Lbl, H. 1601. (61)). The tune ‘Aimable vainqueur’ was also parodied in the French popular-theatre repertory (see Les parodies du nouveau Théâtre Italien, volume 4) and danced to on London stages. On its danced versions see Goff, Moira, ‘The Celebrated Monsieur Desnoyer, Part 2: 1734–1742’, Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 31/1 (2013), 86, 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67 My research has focused on the music notebooks held in the MS Music School, MS Douce and MS Rawlins Poet collections (Special Collections) at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (GB-Ob).
68 For example, ‘Hannah Pearson’ probably played French tunes (like ‘Folies d'Espagne’) on the lute or guitar, since they are notated using tablature in her notebook (GB-Ob, MS Mus. Sch.F. 579 (26602)). ‘Mr. Fonronce’ probably used French tunes to practise transposing to his suited vocal register (GB-Ob, MS Mus. Sch.G. 608 (26605)).
69 For more on the use of these vaudeville tunes in The Beggar's Opera see Rogers, ‘John Gay, Ballad Opera and the Théâtres de la Foire’, 185–186.
70 Both The Beggar's Opera and the Cotillon sets of playing cards can be accessed through the ‘Albert Field Collection of Playing Cards’, Columbia University Library's Digital Collections, https://library.columbia.edu/resolve/clio13484140 (numbers 5 and 8) (2 July 2022).
71 ‘The following song . . . we have received from a correspondent at Paris, where it is now sung in almost every place, and is as much celebrated as the famous old song to the same tune’. The Morning Chronicle (7 August 1777).
72 The older versions of this tune (popular in the 1730s and 40s) used sexual innuendos on the image of a stolen friar's ‘crutch’ to poke fun at various targets of critique (see Darnton, Poetry and the Police, 89). It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to guess how such an innuendo might work in the context of the Chevalier d’Éon's story.