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From Siege to Lock-out: An Actors' Strike at the Comédie-Française in 1765

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Nick Roddick
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Extract

The aims and ambitions of this article are initially fairly limited. I want to examine a series of events which occurred at the Comédie-Française in April and May of 1765, leading to a complete disruption of normal performances at the theatre, to the imprisonment of most of the company's leading actors, and to the temporary withdrawal from performance of what might otherwise have been eighteenth-century France's biggest ‘box-office hit’, Le Siège de Calais, a patriotic tragedy by Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy. In themselves these events, sometimes known as l'affaire Dubois after the actor most directly involved in them, are little more than a bizarre and sporadically scurrilous footnote to the theatrical history of France in the eighteenth century. But the more one examines them, the more they illuminate certain rather murky areas of literary and social history, two areas in particular: firstly, the social relations of the acting profession at a time when it was, despite considerable pressure from numerous sources, still barred en bloc from the sacraments of the Catholic church; and secondly, the degree of autonomy which could be said to have existed for a company which was, legally, a kind of workers' co-operative but which, at any rate at that stage, operated within a rather ill-defined administrative limbo (it was simultaneously autonomous and totally subject to noble whim). The strike which brought about the cancellation of performances of Le siège de Calais in April 1765 is, then, a specific and in no way typical event, but one which draws together a number of historical strands – literary, theatrical, economic, moral and political – in a particularly interesting way. I want, in the course of this article, to deal with two questions – questions to which I do not really feel able to give definitive answers but which may, when examined, cast doubt upon one or two familiar preconceptions about the nature of the eighteenth-century theatre as a profession, and at the same time open up certain areas of enquiry with regard to the theatre as a material reality rather than a predominantly literary or artistic form. The questions are in themselves quite simple: why did the sociétaires of the Comédie-Française refuse, on Monday, 15th April 1765, to perform a play which, given its enormous success earlier in the year, it was very much in their economic interests to present? And why did the resulting situation become so irreducible that, far from the usual discreet pressures being brought to bear on the relevant authorities to resolve the dispute, it led to the imprisonment of three of the most popular ‘stars’ of the century, and to an effective lockout lasting for almost a month?

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , October 1978 , pp. 45 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1978

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References

Notes

1. Le siège de Calais, Tragédie, Paris, Chez Duchesne, 1765, 80, pp. xvi, 120. There were at least eleven further eighteenth-century editions of the play in France and six more elsewhere. English translations were published in London and Dublin. There were three German translations and a Dutch one.

2. Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la République des Lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu'à nos jours, London, John Adamson, 36 vols, 1777–1789. Entry for 17th February 1765 (Vol. II).

3. Letter to the Count of Durazzo, 5th March 1765, Mémoires et correspondance littéraires, dramatiques et anecdotiques (ed. Favart, A. P. C. & Dumolard, H. F.), Paris, Colin, 1808, Vol. II, p. 209.Google Scholar

4. ibid., pp. 159–60.

5. Fieux, Charles, de Mouhy, chevalier, Abrégé de l'histoire du Théâtre Français, Nouvelle édition, Paris, L'auteur, L. Jorry et J.-G. Mérigot, 1780, Vol. III, p. 92.Google Scholar

6. For the exchange of letters between the poet and the municipality, cf. Journa! encyclopédique, 1765 (4), pp. 127–9, and Bled, abbé O., Le Conseil Municipal de Calais et le poète Bellay, St. Orner, H. d'Homont, 1895Google Scholar. For a description of the painting, which was by Jolain, cf. Mémoires secrets, 19th 01 1769, and Diderot's extremely unflattering account in the 1767 Salon (Œuvres complètes, ed. Assézat, J. & Tourneux, Maurice, Paris, Garnier, 1875–1877, Vol. XI, p. 366)Google Scholar. The painting itself was in the Musée Municipal de Calais up to World War II when it was destroyed, along with most of the Museum's holdings (I am grateful to M. Dominique Viéville, Conservateur du Musée de Calais, for this final – in both senses of the word – piece of information).

7. For detailed descriptions of the gratis, cf. the Mémoires secrets for 12th March 1765 and the anonymous Lettres et observations à une dame de province sur Le Siège de Calais, par M. de ***, Paris, L'Esclapard, 1765.

8. Correspondance littéraire et critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc., ed. Tourneux, Maurice, Paris, Garnier, Vol. VI, 1878, p. 229.Google Scholar

9. Le Siège de Calais ou la Mi-Carême, Dragonnade, , dédiée à ceux qui n'avant pas l'moïen d'dépenser vingt sous pour s'faire éreinter, Paris, L'Esclapard, 1765Google Scholar; and Le Retour et les Effets du Siège de Calais, Comédie, En un acte en Prose, mêlée de Vaudevilles, A l'occasion de la Tragédie donnée Gratis, A Vaugirard et se vend à Paris, Cuissart, 1765.

10. Essai sur les moeurs, Œuvres complètes, ed. Moland, , Paris, Garnier, 1877–1885, Vol. XX, p. 21.Google Scholar

11. cf. the ‘Titres et pièces concernant Le Siège de Calais’ in Œuvres complètes de M. de Belloy, Paris, Moutard, 1779, Vol. II, p. 309. Most of the other information contained in this paragraph comes from the same source.

12. op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 244.

13. cf. Joannidès, A., La Comédie-Française de 1680 à 1920, Paris, Plon, 1921.Google Scholar

14. The following account is based on the Mémoires secrets, Colle, 's Journal et mémoires (ed. Bonhomme, Honoré, Paris, Didot, 1868, Vol. III)Google Scholar, Grimm's Correspondance littéraire, the Mercure de France and Mlle Clairon's memoirs (Mémoires de Mlle Clairon, de Lekain, de Préville, de Dazincourt, de Molé, de Garrick, de Caldoni), ed. Barrère, M. Fr., Paris, Didot, 1846.Google Scholar

15. 2nd May 1765 (Vol. II).

16. 15th April 1765 (Vol. II).

17. cf. Grimm, , op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 259.Google Scholar

18. cf. Collé, , op. cit., p. 28.Google Scholar

19. op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 282. The dates are those of the 7 Years' War.

20. ibid., p. 261.

21. ibid., p. 260.

22. idem.

23. As calculated by Collé, op. cit., p. 32.

24. Mémoires, pp. 36–7.

25. cf. Siaud, Simon, La Comédie-Française. Son histoire, son statut, Paris, Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1936.Google Scholar

26. cf., in particular Bourquin, Louis, ‘La controverse sur la comédie au XVIII siècle et la Lettre à d'Alembert’, Revue d'Histoire Littéraire, XXVI (1919), pp. 43–86, 555–76Google Scholar; XXVII (1920), pp. 548–70; XXVIII (1921), pp. 549–74; Moffat, Margaret M., Rousseau et la querelle du théâtre au XVIIIe siècle (thesis), Paris, E. de Brocard, 1930Google Scholar; and Barras, Moses M., The stage controversy in France from Corneille ta Rousseau, New York, 1933.Google Scholar

27. Paradoxe sur le comédien, Œuvres complètes, Vol. VIII, p. 397.

28. de Marrousem, Pierre, ‘Une association ouvrière de l'ancien régime, la Comédie-Française’, Séances et Travaux de l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 72e année, Nouvelle série, Vol. CLXXVIII, 1912, pp. 479–90.Google Scholar

29. Mémoires secrets, 20th 04 1765 (Vol. II).

30. op. cit., p. 29.

31. Lettres historiques et critiques sur les spectacles, Avignon, Libraires associés, 1762, p. 11.

32. Œuvres complètes, Paris, J.-F. Migne, 1855, Vol. IV, p. 238 (From the Réflexions morales, politiques, historiques et littéraires sur le théâtre, written between 1763 and 1778).

33. Mann, Abbé Théodore-Augustin, Le pour et le contre des spectacles, Mons, G. J. Beugnies, 1782, p. 110.Google Scholar

34. Duguet, Abbé Jacques-Joseph, Pensées sur les spectacles, No place, no date, p. 1.Google Scholar

35. Letter to Clairon, Mlle, 1st 05 1765Google Scholar, Correspondance and related documents, Definitive edition by Theodore Bestermann, Various publishers, 1968–1977, Vol. XXIX, p. 76 (D. 12577).Google Scholar

36. Amsterdam, 1761.