Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater V - English

The conclusion is that the distinction between the comic and the tragic rests, not on a prejudice but on the very definition of drama; that this distinction may remain absolute without disadvantage; that there are disadvantages on the contrary if it is not observed; that nevertheless it may be disregarded—not without peril however—on this condition, that the disturbing element shall not interfere with the first impression which should remain single, and that it shall even heighten that impression by a slight effect of contrast.

Consider for a moment that we must come down to the middle of the eighteenth century to find in our literature a single comedy in which a situation turns toward the pathetic and is treated in a manner to bring tears to the eyes of the spectators.

There is no doubt that the founders of our drama, and above all the immortal Molière, had made the very simple observation that in life it often happens that the most joyful events face about suddenly and change joy into despair. After a good dinner you embark with some comrades in a boat for a fishing party. Your spirits are a little flusht with wine; somebody is guilty of an imprudence. A single person has preserved his good sense and warns you of the danger you are inviting. You laugh him to ridicule; he himself yields to the general hilarity. A puff of wind catches the boat crosswise; it capsizes; everybody falls into the water. Two or three remain there and are not recovered till the next day. Is there an accident of more common occurrence? It is the terrible and the pathetic breaking in abruptly and imposing silence on laughter and changing it to tears. This is seen every day; it is the regular course of life.

If the masters of the drama, who could not have failed to make so simple an observation, have nevertheless written as if it had been unknown to them, it is apparent that their sold purpose was not to exhibit life as it really is on the stage, that they had in view another object,—that of showing life in a certain aspect to twelve hundred persons assembled in a theater, and of producing on the multiple soul of this audience a certain impression.

They must have said to themselves, or rather they felt instinctively, that every sensation is stronger the more it is prolonged without being opposed by any other; that an individual, and still more an audience, does not pass easily from laughter to tears in order to return immediately from tears to laughter; that they cling to the first impression; that if you wrench them violently from one sentiment and throw them into a contrary, it will be almost impossible to bring them back later on; that these jolts threaten to destroy their pleasure for them, and are especially wrong because they give the impression that in the theater all is false, the events as well a the lighting, thus destroying the illusion.

As we do not pass in real life suddenly from laughter to tears and return immediately, or almost immediately, from tears to laughter, as the suddenness of these changes, however abrupt they may be, is relieved by intervals of time more or less considerable, which the authors cannot preserve in the theater, the rapidity of these movements, aside from the fact that they tire the audience, has this curious disadvantage, that in pretending to give us life in all its reality they destroy the illusion of this same reality.

You may search all Molière, all Regnard, all Dufresny, all Dancourt, and the rest of the dramatists of the beginning of the eighteenth century, without finding in them a scene which is not in the key suitable to comedy. If all the scenes are not comic, all at least are amiable and pleasant. You will find in them often tender conversations between lovers, scenes of jealousy, lovers opposed by parents; but these scenes present to the mind only the agreeable images of youth and hope. If there is mingled with them some shadow of sadness, it is a grief which is not without sweetness; the smile is always just beneath the tears, as in that admirable account of Hector’s farewell to Andromache, which remains the best example of these mingled sentiments of sun and shower.

Molière never wrote, nor wisht to write, anything but comedies which were comedies from beginning to end. And if you will go back to classic antiquity you will see that he was not an innovator. Show me a passage in Plautus to weep over; and even Terence restricts himself to this scale of tempered sentiments,—to scenes in which, if he allows the tears sometimes to form on the eyelashes, they never fall, and are wiped away at once with a smile.

Everywhere the characteristic of comedy in the great periods in which it flourisht is to be comic.

And even to-day, look at the pieces truly worthy of the name, from those of Augier to the marvellous farces of the Palais-Royal by Labiche, Meilhac, and Gondinet. Do you find in them any mixture of the pathetic? Is the unity of impression destroyed by a tearful scene? Can you easily imagine in ‘Célimare le Bien-Aimé,’ the ‘Effrontés,’ the ‘Testament de César Girodot,’ the ‘Faux-Bonshommes,’ the ‘Gendre de M. Poirier,’ or ‘Mercadet’ a situation which brings tears to the eyes?

I have here chosen purposely as examples works very diverse in tone and in style in order to show that this great law of the unity of impression—without which there is no possibility of illusion for an audience of twelve hundred persons—has been observed instinctively by all the playwrights who were truly endowed with the comic genius.

Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater IV - French

Le Mélange du Comique et du Tragique

Nous avons nous-même, dans notre dernier article, montré, par une histoire assez plaisante, avec quelle singulière facilité, dans la vie ordinaire, l’homme trouvait dans les événements les plus douloureux matière à un rire inextinguible. Il n’est pas un de vous, qui, fouillant dans ses souvenirs personnels, ne pût y rencontrer quelque anecdote du même genre. Mais permettez-moi de presser d’un peu plus près celle que j’ai donnée comme exemple.

Nous voilà tous quatre pris d’un fou rire au lit d’une parente aimée et en train de mourir. Vous m’accorderez bien qu’à ce moment-là, l’image de notre malheureuse tante était loin de notre pensée, qu’elle avait été chassée de nos esprits par un incident grotesque, et si bien chassée qu’il n’en restait plus rien; j’ajouterai que nous-mêmes avons eu quelque peine à nous remettre de cet ébranlement nerveux, à rentrer de cet accès d’hilarité dans les raisons de notre chagrin.

Il est possible que les dames, dont l’impressionnabilité était naturellement plus vive, aient d’un seul bond franchi la distance du rire excessif aux larmes abondantes, et qu’elles aient retrouvé du premier coup leur douleur intacte. Je sais que pour nous deux, mon cousin et moi, il nous fallut plus de temps pour effacer cette impression, pour nous rasseoir dans notre premier sentiment de tristesse.

On l’a bien souvent remarqué: le rire se poursuit longtemps encore après que les causes du rire ont cessé, comme il arrive aux larmes de continuer à couler, après la bonne nouvelle qui aurait dû immédiatement sécher les yeux. L’âme humaine n’est point assez agile pour passer aisément d’une sensation extrême à la sensation contraire. Ces secousses rapides l’accablent d’un trouble douloureux.

De ces réflexions, dont personne, je crois, ne contestera la justesse, on peut conclure que l’homme en proie au chagrin, s’il est distrait par une image qui prête au rire, est violemment emporté loin de ce chagrin et qu’il lui faut pour y revenir un certain espace de temps et quelques efforts de volonté.

Ce qui est vrai d’un homme, l’est, à plus forte raison, d’une réunion d’hommes. Nous avons vu que le propre d’un public était de sentire plus vivement que ne feraient en particulier chacun de ceux qui le composent. Il entre d’une façon plus impétueuse, dans les raisons de pleurer que le poète lui tend; la douleur qu’il éprouve est plus intense, les larmes sont plus faciles et plus abondantes.

Je ne sais quel tyran de l’antique Grèce, à qui les massacres étaient familiers, larmoyait considérablement sur les malheurs d’une héroïne de tragédie. C’est qu’il était public alors, et revêtait pour une soirée les sentiments du public.

Il est aussi plus difficile à une foule de revenir à une impression première dont elle a été écartée par un accident quelconque. Que de représentations interrompues; que de pièces tombées le premier soir pour un lapsus drôle échappé à un acteur, pour un mot piquant lancé du haut du paradis! Rappelez-vous l’histoire de cette plaisanterie devenue légendaire au théâtre, et qui culbuta un drama.

Le roi va faire son entrée en scène.

— «Messieurs, le Roi!» crie le héraut annonçant.

— «Je le marque», réponds du parterre une voix gouailleuse.

Toute la salle part de rire. Il lui devient impossible ensuite de reprendre son équilibre. La voilà lancée sur une autre piste. Les scènes les plus touchantes seront tournées en ridicule. La pièce est perdue.

Dans la vie réelle, ce mélange de larmes et de rire, cette difficulté de reprendre sa douleur après l’avoir quittée n’a aucun inconvénient. Nous l’avons déjà dit et répété cent fois: la nature est indifférente, et la vie de même. Vous pleurez, voilà qui est bien. Vous riez ensuite; à votre aise. Vous riez où il faudrait pleurer: vous pleurez où il siérait mieux de rire. C’est votre affaire. Vous pleurez d’un œil et vous riez de l’autre comme le Jean qui pleure et qui rit de la légende. Peu nous importe.

Au théâtre, il n’en va pas de même. L’auteur qui porte sur la scène les événements de la vie humaine, et qui veut naturellement les rendre intéressants à son public doit chercher les moyens à l’aide desquels l’impression qu’il prétend tirer d’eux sera plus vive, plus forte et plus longe.

Si son intention est d’exciter le rire, il sera par cela seul amené à se défier de tout accident qui pourrait induire son public en tristesse; et si, en revanche, il a pour but de pousser aux pleurs, il écartera de parti pris les circonstances qui, faisant éclater le rire, risqueraient de contrarier l’émotion qu’il veut faire naître.

Il ne s’agit pas du tout pour lui de savoir si dans la réalité le rire est mêlé aux larmes. Il ne cherche point à reproduire la vérité, mais à en donner l’illusion à douze cents spectateurs, ce qui est bien différent. Eh bien, quand ces douze cents spectateurs sont tout entiers à la douleur, ils ne peuvent croire que la joie existe; ils n’y pensent point, ils n’y veulent point penser; il leur déplaît qu’on les tire brutalement de leur illusion pour leur montrer une autre face du même objet.

Et si on la leur montre, malgré eux, si on les force à changer brusquement les pleurs en rire, si cette dernière impression devient dominant, ils s’y tiennent et il leur est presque impossible de revenir à celle qu’ils ont abandonnée. Dans la vie, les minutes ne sont pas comptées et l’on a tout le temps nécessaire pour ménager ces passages d’un sentiment à l’autre. Mais au théâtre, où l’on ne dispose que de quatre heures au plus pour enfermer toute la série d’événements qui composent l’action, il faut que les changements s’opérent d’un mouvement brusque et pour ainsi dire sur place. Un homme tout seul y résisterait; à plus forte raison un public.

Si le poète veut qu’une impression soit forte et durable, il faut qu’elle soit une.

Tous les écrivains dramatiques l’ont senti d’instinct, et c’est pour cela qu la distinction entre le comique et le tragique est aussi vieille que l’art lui-même.

Il semblerait que lorsque l’on a trouvé cette forme de drame, on aurait dû être amené à mêler dans les premiers temps le rire et les larmes, puisque le drame est une représentation de la vie humaine et que, dans la vie, la joie marche à côté de la douleur, le grotesque accompagne toujours le sublime. Et pourtant la ligne de démarcation a été tracée le premier jour. C’est que, sans bien se rendre compte des raisons philosophiques que nous venons d’énoncer, les poètes dramatiques ont senti que, pour atteindre jusqu’en ses profondeurs l’âme d’un public, il fallait toujours frapper au même endroit; que l’impression serait d’autant plus forte et plus durable qu’elle serait plus une.

Trouve-t-on le plus petit mot pour rire dans les conceptions grandiose d’Eschyle, dans les drames si simple et si émouvants de Sophocle? Il est vrai que, chez Sophocle, les personnages d’une humble condition s’expriment dans un langage familier, qui a pu nous sembler comique, à nous qui avons été nourri dans le préjugé de l’emphase nécessaire à la tragédie. Mais ce style n’a rien de comique en soi non plus, par exemple, que les bavardages de la nourrice dans le Roméo et Juliette de Shakespeare.

Ces gens-là parlent comme ils ont appris à parler; mais ce qu’ils disent n’altère en rien l’expression de tristesse qui doit résulter de l’ensemble. Ils ne donnent pas un autre tour aux événements que l’auteur met en scène. Ils ne détournent pas l’attention du public, ou sur eux-mêmes ou sur des incidents grotesques. Ils aident, dans la mesure de leurs forces, et avec les ressources particulières de leur esprit et de leur tempérament, à l’impression commune.

Ce n’est guère que chez Euripide, génie novateur et de décadence, que l’on rencontrerait la bouffonnerie mêlée de parti pris au drame, et le grotesque faisant invasion dans la tragédie. La scène d’Hercule s’enivrant chez Admète, qui pleure Alceste morte, est célèbre en ce genre.

Je n’ai pas besoin de dire que, chez nous, plus que chez aucun peuple, cette distinction des genres a été marquée dès l’origine et toujours observée jusqu’à ces dernier temps. Nous l’avons même pousée à l’extrême; car nous avons l’amour de la logique à outrance.

On parle beaucoup de Shakespeare qui aurait, lui, dit-on, sans cesse mêlé le grotesque aux sublimes horreurs du tragique, qui aurait passé avec une admirable aisance des larmes au rire et réciproquement. Je n’ai rien vu de pareil pour mon compte dans ses drames qui passent pour les meilleurs et que sont devenus populaires chez toute les nations.

On ne citerait qu’une seule scène de ce genre dans Macbeth, la fameuse scène du concierge qui vient ouvir les portes, le matin même de l’assassinat. Quelques personnes font profession de l’admirer beaucoup. Je vois qu’on la retranche en France; les hommes familiers avec le théâtre de nos voisins m’affirment que sur la plupart des scènes anglaises on la supprime également. J’ai comme une idée que c’était une concession faite par Shakespeare à ce public particulier auquel il s’adressait, public de grands seigneurs un jour, de rudes matelots le lendemain, qui aimaient les plaisanteries énormes et le gros rire.

Remarquez que cette scène ne tient pas à l’action; elle n’est qu’épisodique. Elle ne modifie en aucune façon le sens des événements portés sur la scène par le poète, elle n’en change pas l’impression. C’est un hors d’œuvre; c’est comme une petite pièce insérée dans la grande qui n’a aucun rapport avec elle. Il n’y a pas là mélange, mais juxtaposition de deux éléments contraires. Ce n’est pas la même chose.

Un exemple pour faire entendre cette distinction.

Dans le Malade imaginaire, qui est une comédie et qui par conséquent doit tourner tout au rire, Argan s’étend sur sa chaise longue, feignant d’être mort, et l’on annonce à Angélique qu’elle a perdu son père. Angélique se jette en pleurs aux genoux de son père qu’elle croit en effet trépassé. Supposez que Molière, oubliant qu’il faisait une œuvre comique, eût insisté sur cette situation, qui, après tout est fort touchante.

Supposez qu’il eût prolongée, qu’il eût montré Angélique plongée dans la douleur, se commandant des habits de deuil, réglant la cérémonie des funérailles, et finissant, à force de tendresses exprimées et de larmes répandues par arracher des pleurs au public. Il le pouvait assurément. Il ne lui eût pas été difficile d’émouvoir douze cents personnes assemblées avec ces images de douleur filiale. Et de même dans la scène du Tartuffe, où Marianne s’agenouille devant son père irrité, pour le supplier de la laisser entrer au couvent.

Si Molière se fût laissé aller, il eût précisément commis la faute où Shakespeare à mon sens, n’est pas tombé. Il eût changé la physionomie des événements, j’entends la physionomie dont il avait annoncé que les événements seraient revêtus par lui. Quelle était son intention? C’était de nous montrer, après Belise punie de son avarice, la piété filiale d’Angélique récompensée, et le public éclatant de rire à la vue du père ressuscité pour la marier à son amant.

C’était une impression de gaieté qu’il cherchait. Il l’eût trouvée et rendue impossible, s’il s’était arrêté trop longtemps à la douleur de la jeune fille. Des mêmes événements d’où son idée était de tirer de la gaieté et du rire, il eût fait jaillir des larmes et, au moment venu, le public ne se serait plus retrouvé en disposition de rire. L’ébranlement eût été trop fort pour que le passage se fît sans secousse.

Est-ce qu’il y a rien de pareil dans l’épisode imaginé par Shakespeare? Est-ce que c’est de l’événement même que le poète a tiré ses effets de rire? Supposons, puisque nous sommes en humeur d’hypothèses, supposons qu’il nous eût représenté Macbeth au moment où il entre dans la chambre du roi pour l’assassiner, heurtant une table de nuit et réveillant le monarque qui lui demande: quelle heure est-il? et Macbeth allant voit l’heure à l’horloge.

Ce serait là, en effet, donner un autre tour à l’événement et mêler le bouffon au tragique. Mais je doute fort que si, après un incident de cette nature, Macbeth se fût avisé de frapper Duncan rendormi, ce coup eût produit pour le public, en veine de rire, la même impression. Pourquoi? C’est que du même fait on ne saurait tirer, sur le théâtre, des larmes et du rire, parce que l’impression n’est plus une, et qu’il est impossible à une foule de sauter, sans heurt désagréable de la première à la seconde.

La scène épisodique de Macbeth n’a qu’une influence passagère et médiocre et comme l’action est terrible, comme elle a pris le public par les entrailles, cette impression légère est vite effacée par des sensations infiniment plus fortes. Et cependant, je ne sais si l’on a raison d’imiter Shakespeare en cela! Si en tout cas son exemple peut passer en règle! Il y a toujours quelque danger à détourner le public de l’impression principale; on ignore si l’on sera capable de l’y remettre.

Je ne vois point que, dans Othello, aucune des scènes essentielles qui ont pour but de produire la terreur ou la pitié, soit dérangée par des effets comiques; si dans Hamlet, on en trouverait de telles, c’est que, par son essence même, la pièce étant la peinture d’un être désaccordé, d’une espèce de monomane, admet ce mélange d’idées sombres et de bizarreries ridicules; dans Roméo et Juliette, le personnage de Mercutio, avec ses plaisanteries qui nous paraissent aujourd’hui assez fades, et celui de la nourrice avec son babillage grossier, n’interrompent point les situations d’où les larmes doivent jaillir. Ce sont des rôles épisodiques, et l’on pourrait les supprimer en tout ou en partie (ce qui a lieu, même en Angleterre) que le drame resterait debout.

Ces personnages qui marchent à côté de l’action, pour y jeter un peu de gaieté et détendre les nerfs des spectateurs, ne vont pas à vrai dire contre notre théorie, qui a été celle de tous les siècles. Notre mélodrame moderne les a admis, et il n’y a guère de pièce du boulevard où ils n’aient leurs entrées. Il faut qu’ils se tiennent à leur place, qui est tout à fait secondaire, sans quoi le drame disparaît et se change en comédie. On l’a bien vu dans un exemple célèbre. Rappelez-vous l’histoire fameuse de la représentation de l’Auberge des Adrets. Les auteurs avaient de très bonne foi cru faire un mélodrame dont l’intérêt principal était l’infortuné Germeuil assassiné par des bandits de grand chemin. Les bandits, par malheur (ou par bonheur comme on voudra), étaient représentés par deux excellents artistes, dont l’un s’appelait Serre, et dont l’autre, un homme de génie, était Fréderick Lemaître. Ils tirèrent à eux la couverture; le rire qu’ils excitèrent fut si violent, qu’il devint impossible au public de le maîtriser et qu’on arriva à se pâmer toutes les fois que le nom de l’infortuné Germeuil revenait dans le dialogue. La bouffonnerie introduite dans l’action du mélodrame s’en empara et le mit à la porte.

Tâchez de rappeler vos souvenirs: vous verrez que dans tous les mélodrames, dans toutes les tragédies, soit classiques, soit romantiques, où le grotesque s’est faufilé, il a dû toujours y tenir une humble place, y jouer un rôle épisodique, sans quoi, il eût gâté l’unité d’impression que l’auteur cherche toujours à produire.

S’il en est autrement, c’est que le dessein secret de l’auteur était de faire jaillir la gaieté d’une situation triste en apparence. Ainsi la Joie fait peur. Il est vrai qu’il n’y est question que de la mort d’un jeune homme pleuré par sa mère, par sa fiancée, par sa sœur, par son ami, par un vieux domestique. Mais l’action est arrangée de sorte que le public tout entier soit assez vite averti que le jeune homme n’est pas mort; tout le monde finit par l’apprendre, sauf la mère qui se désole jusqu’au bout.

Mais qui ne voit que la joie des autres est un des éléments constitutifs de ce joli drame, qu’elle y peut par conséquent occuper une grande place, et qu’elle ajoute je ne sais quelle saveur piquante aux pleurs répandus par la pauvre mère. L’impression reste donc ici toujours une, puisque loin d’être gâtée par les rires qu’il soulève sur son chemin, le dramatique de la situation en est encore accru.

La règle est telle:

Il faut que l’impression soit une: tout mélange de rire aux larmes menace de la troubler. Il faut donc mieux s’en abstenir, et il n’y a rien de plus légitime que la distinction absolue du comique et du tragique, du grotesque et du sublime. Maintenant, tout règle est sujette à de nombreuses exceptions.

Si l’auteur se sent la force de subordonner les impressions particulières à l’impression générale qu’il veut produire, s’il est assez maître des esprits de son public pour les faire virer d’un seul coup du rire aux larmes; si le public à qui le poète s’adresse se trouve par l’état de civilisation où il est arrivé, soit par les préjugés dont son éducation l’a empli, soit par l’instinct de la race, plus apte à passer ainsi d’un sentiment à l’autre.

Ainsi il est clair qu’un auteur dramatique aura bien plus de facilité aujour’hui pour introduire dans un drame un élément de grotesque qu’il n’en aurait eu en 1817 où les idées sur l’art étaient beaucoup moins larges, où la sensation du mélange eût été bien plus désagréable.

Je ne conteste pas que les novateurs de 1828 n’aient eu raison de railler cet esprit d’exclusion qui animait leurs contemporains contre toute intrusion du comique dans la trageedie. Ce que je ne saurais admettre c’est que ce soit là un grand progrès. Une facilité, tout au plus.

La règle rest toujours la même. Il faut que l’impression soit une et elle ne saurait l’être que si les personnages qui traînent le comique après eux, ne sont qu’épisodiques, si leurs plaisanteries n’ont que le caractère d’accessoires, faciles à supprimer.

La nature, elle, et la vie humaine sont impartiales devant la joie et la douleur, devant le rire et les larmes et passent avec une parfaite indifférence d’un sentiment à l’autre. Mais avoir démontré cela comme l’a fait Victor Hugo dans l’admirable morceau que nous avons cité l’autre jour, c’est n’avoir rien prouvé du tout, puisque le théâtre n’est pas la représentation de la vie humaine, mais un ensemble de conventions destiné à faire illusion aux spectateurs; et ils ne peuvent avoir cette illusion si l’on déconcerte les sentiments qu’on leur inspire, si l’on trouble leur plaisir.

Dans toute cette dissertation, je n’ai parlé que du comique introduit dans la tragédie ou le drame. Il est évident que ces réflexions pourraient s’appliquer aux situations poignantes et douloureuses se greffant sur une comédie. Cependant ce côté de la question mérite une étude particulière.

Toute la conclusion que nous prétendons garder pour le moment, c’est que la distinction entre le comique et le tragique repose, non sur un préjugé mais sur la définition même du théâtre; que cette distinction peut rester absolue sans inconvénient, qu’il y an a au contraire à ce qu’elle ne soit point observée, que cependant on peut s’en écarter, non sans périls d’ailleurs, à cette seule condition que cet élément étranger ne trouble point l’impression première, qui doit rester une et qu’il l’aide même par un léger effet de contraste.

28 août 1876.

Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater IV - English

It has often been remarkt that laughter persists long after the causes have ceased, just as tears continue to flow after the arrival of the good news which should have dried them immediately. The human soul is not flexible enough to pass readily from one extreme of sensation to the contrary one. These sudden jolts overwhelm it with painful confusion.

From this reflexion, of which no one, I believe, will dispute the justice, we may conclude that when a man is a prey to grief if he is diverted by an idea which inclines him to laughter, he is borne suddenly far from his sorrow and a certain lapse of time and a certain effort of will are necessary for him to return to it.

What is true of one man is even more true of a crowd. We have seen that the peculiar characteristic of an audience is that it feels more keenly than the individuals composing it. It enters more impetuously into the reasons for weeping that the poet gives it; the grief that it experiences is more intense, the tears are readier and more abundant.

I forget what tyrant it was of ancient Greece to whom massacres were every-day affairs, but who wept copiously over the misfortunes of a heroine in a tragedy. He was audience; and for the one evening clothed himself in the sentiments of the public.

It is also more difficult for an audience to return to an impression from which it has been diverted by an accident of some sort. How many performances have been interrupted, how many plays failed the first night, because of a ludicrous slip by an actor or a piquant jest shouted from the gallery. All the house bursts out laughing. At once it becomes impossible for it to recover its equilibrium. It is now launcht on another tack. The most touching scenes will be turned into ridicule. The play is lost.

In real life, this mixing of laughter and tears, this difficulty of returning to your grief after having left it, has no such disadvantage. As we have already said repeatedly; nature is indifferent and so also is life. You weep; it is well. You laugh afterwards, as you please. You laugh when you should weep; you weep when it would be better to laugh. That is your affair. You may weep with one eye and laugh with the other as the weeping and laughing Jean of the legend. It makes little difference to us.

In the theater it is not the same. The author who brings upon the stage the events of life and who naturally desires to make them interesting to his audience, must find means to heighten and render more vivid and more enduring the impression he wishes to create.

If his intention is to provoke laughter, he will be led by that alone to guard against every incident that might induce sadness in his audience; and if, on the other hand, his purpose is to compel tears, he will discard resolutely the circumstances which, by giving rise to laughter, might tend to counteract the emotion he wishes to arouse. He is not concerned in the least to know whether in reality laughter is mingled with tears. He does not seek to reproduce the truth, but to give the illusion of truth to the twelve hundred spectators:—a very different matter. When these twelve hundred spectators are entirely overwhelmed with grief they cannot believe that joy exists; they do not think about it; they do not wish to think about it; it displeases them when they are torn suddenly from their illusion in order to be shown another aspect of the same subject.

And if you do show it to them against their will, if you force them to change abruptly from tears to laughter, and this last impression once becomes dominant, they will cling to it and a return to the mood they have abandoned will be almost impossible. In life minutes are not counted, and we have all the time we need to bring about the transition from one sentiment to the other. But in the theater where we have at our disposal at most only four hours to exhibit all the series of events composing the action, the changes must take place swiftly and, so to speak, on the minute. This a man would resist if he were by himself; all the more will he resist it when he is one of a crowd.

To be strong and durable an impression must be single. All dramatists have felt this instinctively; and it is for this reason that the distinction between the comic and the tragic is as old as art itself.

It would seem that when drama came into being the writers of ancient times would have been led to mingle laughter with tears, since drama represents life, and in life joy goes hand in hand with grief, the grotesque always accompanying the sublime. And yet the line of demarcation has been drawn from the beginning. It seems that, without realizing the philosophic reasons we have just set forth, the dramatic poets have felt that in order to sound the depths of the soul of the audience they must strike always at the same spot; that the impression would be stronger and more enduring in proportion as it was unified.

Do you find the least little word to excite laughter in the grand conceptions of Aeschylus or the simple and powerful dramas of Sophocles? It is true that in Sophocles the characters of humble condition express themselves in familiar language which may seem comic to those of us who have been nourisht in the tradition of a necessary dignity in tragedy. But this style has nothing of the comic in itself, no more, for example, than the chattering of the Nurse in Shakspere’s ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

These characters speak as they would speak naturally; but what they say does not alter in any way the impression of sadness that is to result from the whole. They do not give a turn to the events different from what the author intended. They do not divert the attention of the audience either to themselves or to ludicrous incidents. They contribute in the measure of their ability, with the qualities peculiar to their minds and their temperaments to the general impression. We hardly find except in Euripedes, innovator and decadent genius, buffoonery deliberately mingled with drama, the grotesque invading tragedy. The drunken scene between Hercules and Admetus, who is mourning the death of Alcestis, is a celebrated example of this kind.

I need not say that with us more than with any other people this distinction of species has been markt from the beginning, until recent times. We have even carried it to the extreme, for we have an exaggerated love of logic.

In the ‘Malade Imaginaire,’ which is a comedy and which consequently should turn entirely on laugher, Argan stretches himself on his couch and pretends to be dead, and Angélique is told that she has lost her father. Angélique in tears throws herself beside her father whom she really believes to be dead. Suppose that Molière, forgetting that he was writing a comedy, had insisted on this situation, which after all is very touching. Suppose that he had prolonged it, that he had shown Angélique overcome with grief, ordering mourning, arranging for the funeral, and finally by dint of the tenderness exprest and the tears shed, wringing tears from the audience. He could have done it assuredly. It would not have been difficult for him to move the twelve hundred spectators with these displays of filial grief. And likewise in the scene in ‘Tartuffe,’ where Marianne kneels before her angry father to beg him to allow her to enter a convent.

If Molière had not restrained himself he might have committed the precise fault into which Shakspere, as I understand it, did not fall. He would have changed the aspect of events; I mean by this that he would have changed the mood in which he had led us to believe that the events would be treated. What was his intention? It was to show us, in contrast to Bélise punisht for her avarice, Angélique rewarded for her filial piety, and the audience roaring with laughter at the sight of her father raised from the dead to marry her to her lover.

It was an impression of gayety that he sought. He would have destroyed this impression had he dwelt too long on the grief of the young girl. From the same events he had meant to make use of in arousing laughter he could have extracted tears and the audience would no longer be in the mood for laughter at the proper moment. The shock would have been too strong for the transition to be made easily.

Try to recall your past theatrical experience; you will find that in all the melodramas, in all the tragedies, whether classic or romantic, into which the grotesque has crept, it has always been obliged to take an humble place, to play an episodic part; otherwise it would have destroyed the unity of impression which the author always strives to produce. Wherever this does not hold, it is because it was the secret design of the author to extract mirth from a situation which is sad in appearance. Thus in ‘La Joie Fait Peur’; it is true that the situation in this play is that of a young man mourned by his mother, his fiancée, his sister, his friends, and his old servant. But the action is arranged in such a way that the entire audience is admitted at once to the secret that the young man is not dead. Everybody finally discovers this,—except the mother who remains disconsolate till the very end.

But who does not see that the joy of the others is one of the important elements in this amusing play, that it consequently occupies an important place in the mind of the audience and adds a certain mysterious savor of humor to the tears shed by the poor mother. The impression here then remains single, since far from being spoiled by the laughter which it arouses on its way the dramatic quality of the situation is really heightened. The principle is this: The impression must be single; any mingling of laughter and tears tends to destroy this. It is better therefore to avoid it. There is nothing more legitimate than the absolute distinction of the comic from the tragic, of the grotesque from the sublime. Yet nowadays every rule is subject to many exceptions. It is an exception when the playwright feels himself strong enough to subordinate particular impressions to the general impression, when he can so control the temper of his spectators as to turn them all at once from laughter to tears, when the public he is seeking to please is capable of passing easily from one attitude to another, because of its advanced civilization, its racial instincts, its prejudices due to its education.

It depends on whether the author believes himself able to subordinate the particular to the general impression which he wishes to produce, whether he is sufficiently master of the psychology of his audience to transport them by a single stroke from laughter to tears, and on whether the audience to which he addresses himself is, by reason of the state of civilization at which it has arrived, either by prejudice of education or instinct of race, likely to pass easily from one sentiment to the other.

The rule remains intact. The impression must be single; and it cannot be this if the characters brought in for the comic scenes are anything more than episodic, if their pleasantries are anything more than accessories which can be easily supported.

Nature itself and life are impartial in the presence of joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, and pass with perfect indifference from one sentiment to the other but to have demonstrated this, as did Victor Hugo in the admirable passage which we cited above, proves nothing; since a play is not a reproduction of life but an aggregate of conventions designed to produce upon the spectators the illusion of life; and they cannot have this illusion if the author disconcerts them by changing the sentiments which he inspires, if he disarranges their pleasure.

Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater - Introduction by Brander Matthews

In the brilliant essay on the Comédie-Française which Henry James wrote forty years ago [1876], and which had for its text the series of critical analyses of the histrionic attainments of the chief performers at the House of Molière, then recently put forth by Francisque Sarcey, the American critic declared that the French critic was so predominant in the Parisian press that he held “in his hand the fortune of a play” and that if he “devoted an encouraging line and a half to a young actress, mademoiselle immediately had a career.” This may be an overstatement, but it can hardly be called a misstatement. For the final thirty years of the nineteenth century Sarcey was the most influential of all the theatrical reviewers of France, even if he could not actually make or unmake a new play or a new player.

Henry James analized the reasons for Sarcey’s enviable influence and for the weight of his words. Sarcey was “sternly incorruptible;” he had “a religious respect for his theme;” he had a habit of taking the theater seriously, with “unwearying attention to detail;” he had “the scenic sense, the theatrical eye;” he was “shrewd and sagacious, and almost tiresomely in earnest.” And now that nearly a score of years have past since Sarcey ceased to contribute to the Temps his weekly review of the passing show, a later generation has ratified the praise, even if not a few latterday critics are disposed to see Sarcey’s limitations with a disenchanted eye. M. Gustave Lanson, for example, in his inestimable history of French literature, holds that Sarcey’s theory of the theater was somewhat too narrow and that it was sometimes too rigidly enforced.

But no one of the younger generation has denied that Sarcey had a theory of the theater, that this theory has left its impress upon the contemporary French drama, and that it has been developed by Sarcey himself as the immediate consequence of his immense experience and his indefatigable attendance in the playhouse. Sarcey’s opinions about the art of the drama were the direct result of his observations in the theater itself,—just as were the opinions of Aristotle and of Lessing. He had no kinship with the erudite Italian theorists of the Renascence who evolved their dramatic dogmas from their inner consciousness, being deprived of the privilege of persistent playgoing and having occasion only sporadically to see a good play well acted.

Sarcey was continually seeing good plays well acted; he was continually analizing his own impressions at these performances, and he was continually investigating the impressions made upon his fellow-playgoers. As a result of this relentless inquiry, pursued for two score years, he discovered for himself certain of the principles of the drama,—just as Lessing had discovered them in like manner a century earlier. For Lessing, Sarcey had ever an exalted respect, as a critic of the keenest acumen and as a constant playgoer of alert intelligence. He said to me once that when he chanced to find in Lessing’s ‘Hamburg Dramaturgy’ an opinion which he had already arrived at by his own reflexion, he felt encouraged and confirmed in his belief that his own view was sound.

When we compare Sarcey as a dramatic critic with a predecessor like Jules Janin or with a contemporary like Jules Lemaitre we cannot help noting that however inferior he may be in wit, in felicity of phrase, in charm of style, he is superior in his possession of a compact body of doctrine about the drama, which might be a little too systematic at times, but which sustained and supported his judgments upon the plays of the moment and which gave to these judgments a validity and a significance often absent from the sparkling effusions of Janin and Lemaitre, neither of whom took the theater very seriously and both of whom now and then yielded to the temptation of accepting the play they were supposed to be criticizing either as a peg on which to hang pretty garlands of figures of speech or as a springboard from which to dive off into philosophical disquisition.

Sarcey might on occasion apply his code too rigorously; but at least he had a code to apply. He might be over-emphatic at times in declaring the rigid limits of the drama and in insisting upon the futility of well meant efforts to enlarge its scope, to broaden its mission, to bestow upon it a more significant message; but he was inexorably honest in setting forth these opinions of his, and they were founded upon an intimacy with the theater possest by none of his opponents. As to his critical insight and his integrity there is no room for dispute; and not a few of the principles Sarcey insisted upon, either first declared by him or by him more clearly formulated, are now among the commonplaces of dramatic criticism, employed incessantly by writers often unfamiliar with his name.

In his weekly articles Sarcey frequently mentioned the book which he proposed to devote to the ‘History of Theatrical Conventions’; but he never wrote it,—and perhaps he never really intended to write it. Thirty years ago when I askt him when this long awaited volume was to appear, he laught and responded, “If I ever do write it, what shall I have left to fill up those long columns of my weekly article in the Temps?” Yet he had at least made a beginning of this book in a series of more or less connected articles publisht weekly in the Temps in the summer and fall of 1876, when there happened to be only a few new plays demanding critical consideration.

After Sarcey’s death in May, 1899, there was an immediate demand for a collection of his theatrical reviews. This demand had been heard during his lifetime and he had always resisted it, on the ground that his articles contributed to a daily paper and dealing with the plays of the day, were too journalistic in tone and in temper, too temporary in their illustrations and allusions, to warrant their reproduction in a series of volumes aspiring to the dignity and permanence of literature. Other Parisian dramatic reviewers, Jules Janin and Théophile Gautier, August Vitu and Jules Lemaitre, might garner their newspaper sheaves and strive to rescue their hebdomadal effusions from the swift oblivion of the back number; but Sarcey resolutely refused to be tempted by the lure of this fleeting immortality.

What he had declined to do himself his son-in-law, Adolphe Brisson, piously undertook after his death; and in 1900 Brisson issued the first volume of ‘Quarante ans de Théâtre,’ followed in rapid succession by six other volumes, in which selections from Sarcey’s weekly articles were classified under various heads. The first volume dealt with the Comédie-Française, always the center of Sarcey’s solicitude; and it contained also his discussion of the principles of dramatic criticism. More valuable than this discussion was the group of successive articles written in 1876 in which he considered the fundamental basis of the art of the theater, in which he dealt with the necessity of conventions in the drama (as in all the other arts), and in which he discust the separation of species, the setting off of the tragic from the comic.

It is a selection from this series of papers which is here translated, with many excisions and suppressions, due to the desire to present sarcey’s views in a form easy of apprehension by readers not so familiar with the French stage as were the subscribers to the Temps forty years ago. The excisions have been made so as to sharpen Sarcey’s points without in any way modifying or obscuring his views; and the passages selected for presentation here adequately reveal his method, which was closely akin to the method of Aristotle and to the method of Lessing. They disclose also his manner, his intellectual integrity, his playful common sense, his total absence of pedantic pretentiousness.

This inquiry into the esthetic of the theater seems to be only a portico to an edifice which was never erected; and yet even if it is but a beginning, it sets forth sound doctrine about the drama. It contains at least the outline of his opinions in regard to theatrical conventions; and it is greatly to be regretted that he never resumed the articles and that he never supported these opinions by the host of illustrations he employed in later years in dealing with the drama of the day.

Perhaps it may be well here to supplement the condensed statement of the necessary conventions of the drama which Sarcey made in the articles in the Temps from which these selections have been taken, and to amplify the theory he laid down. He began by declaring that the drama, like all the other arts exists and can exist only by departing from the mere facts; and he had no difficulty in showing that the painter is also forced to express the essential truth of nature by suppressing or altering reality. The late John La Farge, in his very suggestive essay on ‘Ruskin, Art and Truth,’ made a similar declaration of principles:—

“When I work as an artist I begin at once by discarding the way in which things are really done, and by translating them at once into another material. Therein consists the pleasure that you and I take in the work of art,—perhaps a new creation between us. The pleasure that such and such reality gives me and you has been transposed. The great depth and perspective of the world, its motion, its never resting, I have arrested and stopt upon a little piece of flat paper. That very fact implies that I consider the flatness of my paper a fair method of translating the non-existence of any flatness in the world that I look at. If I am a sculptor I make for you this soft, moving, fluctuating, colored flesh in an immovable hard, rigid, colorless material; and it is this transposition which delights you, as well as me in a lesser degree who have made it. Therefore at the very outset of my beginning to affect you by what is called the record of a truth, I am obliged to ask you to accept a number of the greatest impossibilities, evident to the senses, and sometimes disturbing when the convention supposed to be agreed upon between you and myself is understood by only one of the two parties in the carrying out of the matter.”

In other words, the art of the painter is possible only when there is a convention, an implied contract, between the artist and his public, that he can translate and transpose in contradiction to the facts, and that he is permitted to represent as motionless (for the chosen moment) that which is in reality never still. So the art of the sculptor is based on a tacit agreement, which permits him to represent in clay or marble or bronze, in hard monochrome, that which in fact is soft and multicolored. So the art of the drama is possible only when the convention is accepted that the playwright may condense his story and omit all the needless details and all the extraneous particularities which would in real life delay and dilute the action.

The dramatist has to accept the condition that his plays are to be performed, by actors, in a theater and before an audience. The actor departs from the fact, and must so depart, when he makes love in tones that reach clearly to the last row of seats in the topmost gallery. The theater can present a forest with growing trees only by the aid of painted canvas, which we must accept in accordance with our agreement. And the audience has only a limited time and a limited understanding, so that the story must move swiftly and must be made transparently clear by artifices of exposition.

The convention underlying the modern problem-play in prose is that all the characters say what they have to say in the fewest possible words and that what they say is understood by all the other characters at the first hearing. The convention underlying the comedy of Molière is that all the characters belong to a race of beings, whose native and necessary speech is the rimed french alexandrine. In Shaksperian tragedy this native and necessary speech is English blank verse. In pantomime it is gesture; and in opera it is song.

When Tolstoy, in his misguided attempt to ascertain ‘What is Art’ objected to a dying tenor in silk tights singing with his last breath, he was simply refusing to be a party to the convention by which alone can opera exist. This refusal was of course within Tolstoy’s right; but by it he deprived himself of the specific pleasure which only the art of the modern music-drama can bestow.

In all the forms of the drama, comedy and tragedy, problem-play, pantomime and opera, the audience gladly permits departures from the facts of life, if this departure is for its pleasure and for its profit. In reality Othello and Desdemona talkt to each other in Italian, yet as few of us are familiar with any tongue but our own, we are glad to have them speak English. But if we wish to enjoy a performance by two great actors of different races, Othello by Salvini and Iago by Booth, we must extend the license we have granted by our implied contract and permit Othello to use the language which he would have used in real life while Iago and all the others to use the language which they would not have used but which is more satisfactory to us.

Probably this theory of the conventions by which alone the drama is made possible had been suggested by one or another of Sarcey’s predecessors,—altho I have failed to find anything of the kind in all my reading in the history of theatrical theory. Even if suggested by one or another of the earlier critics, the theory owes its general acceptance today to the sharpness which which Sarcey seized it, to the clearness which which he set it forth, and to the frequency with which he insisted on it.

Another theory of Sarcey’s, not so important, perhaps, and yet as useful, is that which asserts that there are in every story suitable for the stage certain interviews, certain moments, certain scenes, which the dramatist must show us in action, which he cannot merely relate, and which must not happen between the acts. Sarcey called these the scènes à faire, the scenes which must be dealt with by the dramatist, and which can be omitted only at the risk of dumbly disappointing the spectators. Mr. William Archer has accepted this theory, and has suggested that we should term the scènes à faire, the Obligatory Scenes.

Unfortunately M. Brisson has not replevined for us any one of Sarcey’s articles in which this theory is stated. Therefore it has seemed best to devote the second half of these selections to Sarcey’s characteristically logical discussion of the artistic advisability of separating the comic and the tragic. Even if Sarcey’s argument is not altogether convincing to us of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, it is one which it is wise for us to consider carefully and to weigh cautiously. Attention should also be called to the fact that altho Sarcey was here setting forth a dogma strenuously insisted upon by the Italian promulgators of the classicist code, he did not support it by the argument they derived from their study of Greek and Latin drama, in which they discovered that there were no humorous passages in tragedy and no strongly dramatic passages in comedy. Sarcey was consistent in basing his contention upon his analysis of the attitude of the audience, on his observation of the difficulty experienced by Parisian playgoers when they were confronted by the necessity of changing abruptly from the mood of tears to the mood of laughter.

Brander Matthews.
(April, 1916.)

Picture Logic

A clue to how the mind works

Free Will and Its Base

I have written a few posts on the idea of Free Will and the growing knowledge of what really goes on in the brain when we ‘decide’ to do something. To sum up: there is one part of the brain that signals to another part of the brain to get ready to do something. This second area of the brain is the part that is in charge of organizing the muscles to act: it draws on remembered templates of sequences of muscle actions involved in doing things that we have done before and done often enough so that the pattern has been noted and stored in memory.

When the internal ‘need’ or ‘urge’ or as I like to think of it, ‘pressure’ builds up to a threshold point, the second area of the brain begins to send out the commands to the muscles to start doing the action. Shortly after these commands go out, the part of the brain that we identify with our conscious self, becomes aware that this is going on, and has a very-brief interval of time during which it can block the action. In other words, our ‘free will’ is really only the ability to say ‘no’ to an action urged and initiated in other parts of the brain; it is nothing but a ‘free won’t’ as Ed Yong called it.

All this has been shown by scientific study. There is a great deal more to learn from such studies. Leaps forward in the discipline of mental studies come when instruments are developed that give us views into the brain and what is going on in there while people think and decide and act. As the instruments become more sensitive and more precise, we will gain more knowledge.

There is also another path to learn about all this, which comes from self-study and introspection. This is the path long followed in India and East Asia. The results have been hidden as esoteric lore, for the model of education in those parts has been to withhold knowledge within the tradition of a particular school, and different schools do not share what they know. The results have also been considered poetically, which is not an invalid way to consider the nature of the world (it is the basis of all of what we call philosophy after all) but it uses terms so different from those that science uses in the Western world that it is often difficult to share knowledge between the two camps, even when the schools of the mystics of Asia have been persuaded to open their books and tell what they have learned.

Still, self-study is something each and every one of us can pursue. It is indeed part of being human, part of growing up, and a vital part of moral education.

The Trigger

So in this vein I watch myself at times to see how it is that I decide things. Mostly (out of habit and training, I suppose) I watch myself in the morning, after waking part-way, but before rising. This is a time when my mind is looking inward, and I am more self-aware; my decisions seem to be slowed down, so I can follow them with a bit more ease.

This morning I glimpsed something I never had before. It was a picture of the consequence of not acting. I was feeling a ‘pressure’ to turn over or adjust my position. I have two wisdom teeth that are impacting over the years, on the right side of my jaw. Lying on my right side with my head on the pillow adds pressure to these impacted wisdom teeth, and that hurts a little. More, I have the notion that such pressure increases the impaction (this may or may not be true, but it is the idea that I hold, so it’s valid within my own set of delusions).

So there I was, having turned onto my right side with my head on the pillow. It was resting on my cheek with a slight pressure on those wisdom teeth — not much, just a small pressure. I was aware that I should turn over or rest the upper part of my head on my palm so as to raise my cheek off the pillow, but at the same time I do like to lie on my right side, and the pressure, I deemed (or rather, my rational self, that part of me I identify as ‘me’ deemed) that the pressure was so light that it couldn’t harm me. So I lay there a few moments longer when, all of a sudden, I glimpsed a flash of a picture, or a combination picture and proposed experience, of the me at the dentist’s office having those wisdom teeth pulled, which I fear will be very painful and damaging in other ways, and which I would avoid if I can manage it.

Immediately upon receiving this picture, I rolled over onto my left side. I had to do it; the pressure had passed the threshold point, and I watched myself, and allowed myself, to carry through with the action.

I rolled over onto my left.

What I saw then was that it was the picture that had triggered the action. It was very quick and forceful, very much like flipping a switch or pulling a trigger of a gun.

Weariness and Strength

There is one other aspect to this process that occurred to me as I lay (on my left side) and considered what I had done and how I had decided to do it. It is the notion that the brain works with glucose as its fuel, and when that fuel runs low, the brain has a lowered resistance — a lower ability to say ‘no.’ Saying ‘no’ burns glucose — it works the brain, as a muscle is worked, just as it feels subjectively, and glucose is burned, down, maybe, to a point that we can no longer say ‘no.’ Then we are ‘helpless’ against the urges of those other parts of us, that act on these picture triggers.

If we then carry on with the metaphor of the physical muscle, we should be able to train up our resistance, our ‘will power’ by exercising it. The more we say ‘no’ and the longer we can hold out saying ‘no,’ the stronger our brains will get. Either our ‘will power’ will be trained to work more efficiently using less glucose, or the sources and supplies of glucose will be trained up to greater quantities.

(Here I am using glucose as a sort of shorthand to refer to all those resources we use up in saying ‘no’ — it might be glucose alone, at least glucose is the prime suspect now in the researches I have seen; but it might also be something else entirely, a neurotransmitter for instance, or some electrical activity; it might also be something else working along with glucose. I don’t think we know enough as yet to say with much certainty. But it seems likely, if we accept materialism, that something physical is going on in our brains when we exert ‘will power’ because it feels that way, and we do get ‘tired out’ or intoxicated by liquor, a depressant, so that we have a lower ability to say ‘no.’)

This training should deal both with long term goals to be carried out over many days weeks or months, as well as short term, and immediate actions, such as whether or not to roll over in bed. We should take every opportunity to say ‘no’ or at least to say ‘not yet’ and then lengthen the duration of the period our ‘not yet’ holds true.

Logic

The other implication that I gleaned from this experience is the idea that our ‘subconscious selves’ (those parts of ourselves that make decisions and that are not part of the logical, verbal, prefrontal left cortex) do not act illogically, but on another sort of logic, something I’ve long thought of as ‘dream logic.’ The picture of me in the dentist’s chair was proposed as associated with going on lying on my right side — or as the consequence of going on lying on my right side. This is a logical connection.

But it can also work, I imagine, by mere association, for that is the way we train ourselves to so many things. It is the way our base fears spring up, for example, from childhood traumas. We learn that some places or actions immediately gave rise to, or took place alongside, severe pain. The connection might not be logical or even true; it might have been something else in the situation that led to the pain. But we have it in our heads — we have ‘learned’ it — that it was A that led to the pain, and not Aa, that small part of A that was the logical, actual cause.

(Composed on keyboard Saturday, April 26, 2008)

On the Grand Scale

How do we make our tales feel big?

Milestones

Some tales feel major. They have an epic feel. When we finish hearing or reading or watching them, we feel as if we’ve been through a war, as if we have undergone great changes in our life, as if nothing will be the same. They act like milestones in the lives of us the audience.

These tales give me the greatest feeling of pleasure from tales.

So it’s not surprising that from time to time the question comes to me, How do I make my tales work like that? What’s the trick?

What follows is not at all definitive. It isn’t even complete. This is only as far as I’ve gotten so far in answering that question.

Big is Big

These epic tales can cover large vistas of time or space. They can also cover a large vista of the inner life of a character, but it seems to me in this case (which I haven’t explored very much) the talesman is best advised to follow the models of spans of time and space — in other words, to use the same techniques.

Big in space means that the tale tells of events that happen over a large geographic (or cosmic) area. But what is ‘large’ here? It means well beyond the common ken. That is just a way of adapting scale to scale. If you look at a tale from an urban point of view, we would then cover the space of the whole city, from its outer edges to its inner core. Most of the folk who dwell in a city are only able to move in a small part of the whole. They restrict themselves to a few local neighborhoods (most of the time) and are pent up within a certain class or ethnic group within the city. A big tale of the city would take a hero, set up for us his usual milieu, and then watch him leave that milieu, while never leaving the city proper, and visit other neighborhoods, quarters, ghettos, barrios, maybe from the poorest to the richest, from beggars to the princes of the city. But a tale about a nation would take the hero from his city, which he has almost never left before, and send him out into other cities, other climes within the nation, and so on. And a tale about space would seem small if it covered only from the Earth to the Moon, even though that space, measured in kilometers, is greater than a trip around the world. So a big tale about space must take its hero into vaster scales of travel and experience.

Big in time means years, decades — centuries. Here the physical arena can be limited to what the hero commonly knows, but the bigness is a question of the changing of days, months, years, and decades. We could call it a big tale if it told of a farmer who never left his own home fields, but we watched him from the time his parents met to his birth, his childhood, his making of his own family in adulthood, his dealings with his children, with his grandchildren, and the aftermath of his death at a great age. Once again the scale is relative; the tale of a man’s whole life could be but a part of a saga that spans generations of a family or the cosmic scale of civilizations and worlds as in E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman cycle.

Soft and Loud, Humble and Proud

Along with these journeys, a big tale will use the like of volume in a symphonic work to take us readers ‘out there and beyond.’ Such a tale may begin with what seems a simple (deceptively simple) and calm, quiet scene, a trivial bit of business that will end by having vast consequences. It is then the talesman’s task to keep it in his audience’s mind both the mighty oak and the tiny acorn from which it grew. In a like way, when the vast consequences reach the peak of their frenzy, the big tale will often not end abruptly but will show the aftermath, in descending shudders, until it reaches again what seems a simple and calm, quiet scene to end — but we the audience will still hear the echoes of the tumult that has been reached.

Likewise, those ‘quiet’ moments will have their counterpart in scenes that we could call ‘humble’ and which will be struck against other scenes that we could call ‘proud.’ This is like to the contrasts we saw in the big tale of the city: we will watch the hero as a poor man and a mighty; or watch him go among the poor as well as among the mighty. Scenes of poverty will contrast with the pomp and ceremony of the ruling class.

Scale of Tone and Other Techniques

This brings the big tale closer to the Romantic notion that contrast lies at the heart of an artist’s technique, and the starker the contrast the better. These scenes of contrast need not abut each other, but the talesman must keep the grand in the reader’s mind when he shows them the tiny, and vice-versa.

Arc of Character Has its Own Scale

The changes the main characters go through should also be more than the changes most men endure. By this I mean not only in their outer circumstances but also in their hearts. They will be very different men at the peak of the tale than they were at its start, and at the tale’s end they will be very different men than they were at its peak.

Space and Time are Not Within the Page Alone

There is another type of ‘space’ and ‘time’ for these big tales, for normally they take up many pages of text, and many minutes of screen time, relating, and reading. The same tale can seem ‘bigger’ when it takes up more time to get through; I suspect this is mainly because we the audience go through more changes while we take in the tale, and yet that can’t be the whole of it, for we will sit through a long play or movie whilst our lives sit in abeyance, apart from whatever wheels of consideration still turn deep in our hearts relating to the problems as yet unresolved in our lives. We can’t really do anything about those problems, but we can consider them, even if we are not openly aware of doing so, and in relating our problems and our lives to what we hear of in the tale, we can shift our attitude towards them. A simple example would be that the big tale, in showing us the grand scale of its events, may make our problems seem smaller, less critical, and more manageable by contrast.

The End is Not the Beginning

Whatever the measure of the tale’s bigness, where it ends is distant from its start. Sometimes these big tales take a complete circle only to underscore how far the end is from the start, paradoxically: we are taken back to the ground of origin only to see more clearly what changes have taken place. So for example J. R. R. Tolkien takes both his hobbits back home after their journeys in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings only for them and us to see the Shire in a very different light.

This is a common technique used in these big tales.

Big Tales Have Tales Inside Them

One technique used is to have tales that take up a part of the big tale, that might serve as tales themselves. The best example I can give is that of the physical journey, though it must also apply to movement through time and a hero’s inner life.

In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien gives us a journey which is broken into many different smaller journeys. At each stage of the journey, we the audience know only that the heroes mean to go to a certain destination, and neither we nor they know what they will do after that, or whither they might go next. This has the effect on us, as we look back over the tale, of seeing it as composed of several smaller tales.

After preparatory matter in the Shire, Frodo Baggins and his companions Sam, Pippin, and Merry set out for Tookland, still within the general land where hobbits live, but seen as ‘strange’ and somewhat foreign to the hobbits of the Shire proper. From there they mean to travel farther.

Just getting to Tookland is an adventure in itself. From there they will go to Bree to meet Gandalf, they hope — this is another great journey. At Bree they learn that Gandalf has been delayed, and they agree to let Strider lead them on to Rivendell. The journey to Rivendell is the longest leg yet, and fraught with yet graver peril. At Rivendell they find Gandalf at last, and a Council is held, at which it is decided that Frodo must take the Ring to Mt. Doom in Mordor. They set out along the way but cannot cross the mountains as they wished, and must go under the mountains through the mines of Moria, which gives a great change in the tone of the journey (such changes of tone also help to vary the journey and mark off separate segments of the tale). From Moria they enter Lothlorien, a great contrast in place and inhabitants. After this there is a short journey down river, and the company parts ways.

Parting into two companies allows Tolkien to take us on the next segment, divided into two: one party goes to rescue Pippin and Merry from their captors, while Frodo and Sam wander the wastes on the East side of the river with the new goal of finding a door into Mordor — after which they don’t quite know what they will do.

When Pippin and Merry are free of their captors, this segment splits again: we follow the two hobbits among the Ents in Fangorn Forest, and the others into Rohan and battle. These two sides come together again at the White Tower, only to divide again, now in three: Pippin goes with Gandalf to Gondor, Merry rides with the knights of Rohan, and Strider and his companions take another and darker road to Gondor. These three come together again for the battle of Gondor.

When Gondor is delivered, for a time, Strider Gandalf and the others march to assault Mordor. This makes a new leg to this now-united braid of segments, and is set against Frodo and Sam, who have entered Mordor and now must cross its dread terrain to Mount Doom.

When the menace is overcome, there is a celebration and healing in Gondor, a coronation, and the beginning of the journey back to the Shire, forming a last segment of the journey. But at the Shire the hobbits find all not well, and they must rally their fellows and free the Shire. They do so, but the Shire has changed forever, even as the hobbit-travelers themselves have. We have come back to the beginning only to remark on how much everything has changed.

One other note on how this grand journey has been split into smaller parts, is that each leg of the journey ends with a time of rest. This follows the traditional cycle of all journeys, each stage ending with a rest at which we are told of other activities beside movement. So at Tookland the hobbits take a bath and get dressed, and make new plans; at Bree there is ale-drinking, and a dance, and new considerations; at Rivendell there is peace, healing, and the council; Lothlorien serves as a sort of rest-stop after the dread of Moria; the coronation of the King at Gondor is the rest-stop of the journey Out, to be followed by the journey Back Again.

Only the Start

This is only the surface of this topic. I hope I will learn more about it and be able to add that knowledge here later.

(Composed on keyboard Friday, April 25, 2008)

The Ink on Cromwell’s Face

There are more reasons than one to include a scene; sometimes buffoonery adds to horror.

Sarcey on the Mixing of Laughs and Tears

In his treatise on drama or Essai d’une Esthétique de Théâtre Francisque Sarcey wrote that he considered it a mistake to mix comedy and tragedy within a single play. This had been a matter of some controversy in the French theater in the 1900s, ever since Hugo and the Romantics broke that and other conventions of the classical French drama.

Sarcey’s comments have been posted here in both the original French (transcribed from an image-pdf available online of Sarcey’s collection of writings, Quarante Ans du Théâtre which was published in 1900) and in Brander Matthews’s 1916 translation (transcribed from the image-pdf edition at Google Books). In this essay, Sarcey mentions Victor Hugo’s Preface to his play Cromwell on mixing one particular bit of clowning, which Hugo claimed to be an historical fact. Here are the relevant passages from Sarcey, who disputes the opinion that ‘since comedy and tragedy mix in real life, it is appropriate to mix them on stage’ —

C’est cette vue fort simple que Victor Hugo, en son admirable préface de Cromwell, a développée dans ce style tout plein d’images qui lui est propre. Je préfère citer ce morceau éblouissant:

«Dans le drame, tel qu’on peut sinon l’exécuter, du moins le concevoir, tout s’enchaîne et se déduit ainsi que dans la réalité…

«Ainsi Cromwell dira: J’ai le parlement dans mon sac et le roi dans ma poche ou de la main qui signe l’arrêt de mort de Charles I^er, barbouillera d’encre le visage d’un régicide, qui le lui rendra en riant. Ainsi César dans le char de triomphe, aura peur de verser, car les hommes de génie, si grands qu’ils soient, ont toujours en eux leur bête qui parodie leur intelligence. C’est par là qu’ils touchent à l’humanité et c’est par là qu’ils sont dramatiques.

«Du sublime au ridicule, il n’y a qu’un pas, disait Napoléon quand il fut convaincu d’être homme, et cet éclair d’une âme de feu qui s’entr’ouvre illumine à fois l’art et l’histoire, ce cri d’angoisse est le résumé du drame de la vie.»

Voilà de superbe éloquence. Mais les grands poètes ne sont pas toujours des philosophes très exacts. La question est mal posée. Il ne s’agit pas du tout de savoir si dans la vie, le bouffon se mêle au terrible, en d’autres termes, si la trame des événements humains fournit, à ceux qui en sont ou les témoins ou les acteurs, de quoi rire et pleurer tour à tour, c’est là une vérité qui n’est pas contestable et qui n’a jamais été contestée.

Les données du problème sont tout autres.

Douze cents personnes sont réunie dans une même salle et forment un public de théâtre. Ces douze cents personnes sont-elles aptes à passer aisément des larmes au rire et du rire aux larmes? Est-on maître de transporter ce public d’une impression à l’autre, et ne risque-t-on pas de les affaiblir toutes les deux par ce contraste subit?

Par exemple, pour se renfermer dans les traits historiques que cite Victor Hugo, il ne s’agit pas du tout de savoir si Cromwell, après avoir signé l’arrêt de mort de Charles I^er, a ou n’a pas barbouillé d’encre le visage d’un de ses collègues; si cette plaisanterie grossière, a ou n’a pas excité un rire épais dans l’assemblée. Le fait est authentique; on ne saurait donc le contester. Ce qu’on demande (en art dramatique au moins); c’est uniquement si le fait jeté tel quel sur la scène a chance de plaire à douze cents personnes réunies.

Ces douze cents personnes sont tout occupées de la mort de Charles I^er, sur laquelle on a cherché à les apitoyer. Elles versent des larmes de sympathie et de tendresse. On leur met tout à coup, sous les yeux, un acte de bouffonnerie burlesque, en alléguant que, dans la réalité, le grotesque se mêle sans art au tragique. Riront-ils? et s’ils rient, éprouveront-ils une satisfaction véritable? ce rire ne leur gâtera-t-il pas la douleur à laquelle ils avaient plaisir à s’abandonner?

And in the translation by Brander Matthews —

It is this very simple view that Victor Hugo sets forth in his admirable preface to ‘Cromwell’ in that highly imaginative style which is so characteristic of him. I prefer to quote this brilliant passage:

“In drama, as one may conceive it, even tho he is unable to write it, everything is linkt together and everything follows in sequence as in real life…

Thus Cromwell will say: ‘I have Parliament in my bag and the king in my pocket,’ or with the hand which signs the death warrant of Charles I. he will smear with ink the face of a regicide who does the same to him laughingly. Thus Caesar in the triumphal chariot is afraid of upsetting; for men of genius however great they may be have in them an imp which parodies their intelligence. It is by this quality that they link themselves with humanity and it is by this that they are dramatic.

‘From the sublime to the ridiculous is only one step,’ said Napoleon when he was convicted of being human, and this flash from a fiery soul laid bare illumines at once art and history, this cry of anguish is the summing up of drama and of life.”

That is superb eloquence. But the great poets are not always very exact thinkers. The question is badly put. We are not at all concerned to know whether in real life the ludicrous is mingled with the terrible; in other words, whether the course of human events furnishes by turns to those who are either spectators or participants food for laughter and for tears. That is the one truth which no one questions and which has never been questioned. But the point at issue is altogether different. Twelve hundred persons are gathered together in the same room and form an audience. Are these twelve hundred persons likely to pass easily from tears to laughter and from laughter to tears? Is the playwright capable of transporting the audience from the one impression to the other? And does he not run the risk of enfeebling both impressions by this sudden contrast?

For example, to confine ourselves to the historic incidents cited by Victor Hugo, it does not at all concern us to know whether Cromwell after having signed the death warrant of Charles I. did or did not smear with ink the face of one of his colleags; whether this coarse pleasantry did or did not give rise to a coarse laugh in the assembly. The fact is authentic; we do not attempt to question it. The only thing we ask (in dramatic art, at least) is whether the fact, if placed on the stage just as it happened, is likely to please the twelve hundred persons in the audience.

These twelve hundred persons are entirely occupied with the death of Charles I. concerning which the author has sought to stir their pity. They are shedding tears of sympathy and tenderness. Suddenly the author places before them an act of broad buffoonery, alleging that in reality the grotesque mingles artlessly with the tragic. Do they laugh? And if they laugh do they experience a genuine satisfaction? Does not this laughter spoil the grief to which they found pleasure in abandoning themselves?

Contrasts Emphasize

It is not my task here to put words in the mouth of the great M. Hugo. Nor do I wish to argue against M. Sarcey on terms other than those he chose. All I want to do is to use this example to look deeper into the matter of why and how a talesman might justify including in his tale the ink on Cromwell’s face.

First (to stick to the topic of comedy vs. tragedy) we must say that opposites, in building stark contrast, can redouble each other’s effects. If Hugo gets his audience to laugh at the ink on Cromwell’s face, and then feel guilty about it, he turns them into accomplices in the regicide, and deepens their grief and horror at the unfortunate king’s fate. They may well feel more pity for the king, if they feel they have taken part in acceding to his execution.

Laughter is not all One

Then there is the matter of what sort of laughter the scene evokes — and what sort of laughter it paints. It can be a wholesome belly-laugh, which indeed is the only kind of laugh that Sarcey seems to indicate. But it could also be a nervous laughter, both on the part of the audience and the characters. It could be the clowning serves as a distraction both to the audience and to Parliament, away from the act they contemplate, and have authorized. Not all laughter is wholesome, and not all laughter comes from mirth. Sometimes we laugh because we can no longer bear the tension of something terrible.

Character and Distance

There is also another matter, for if we the audience fail to find the clowning funny, we then remove our sympathies with the clowns. Humor often joins us with the humorist; if he makes us laugh, he brings us to his side. But if he fails, he ‘dies’ on stage. And any audience that does not find the ink on Cromwell’s face to be funny, will at once step apart from him, and look upon him, his partner, and the whole Parliament, from the outside, and disapprovingly.

Character and Buffoonery

Now let’s go back to M. Hugo’s assertion that the scene is historically accurate, that it actually took place. M. Sarcey does not dispute this; I myself have no idea one way or the other. But let us say that it is true. Then we have something that bears intently upon the character of Cromwell. If Hugo in his play wanted to show who Cromwell really was (that ambition is at odds with everything Hugo stood for as a poet, but it would bear upon what many historical talesmen seek to achieve) then this ‘crowning’ act of his career, this pivotal point in British history, the execution of Charles I, must be examined as one of the keys to who Cromwell (or at least Hugo’s idea of Cromwell) really was.

Very well: M. Hugo finds in his research this odd and jarring note: upon signing the king’s death-warrant, Cromwell and his aide daub each other’s faces with the ink from the warrant, and both laugh. The image is striking, and would certainly strike M. Hugo, for Hugo adored contrasts; pitching the sublime against the ridiculous was in some ways the essence of Romanticism and Hugo’s art. Hugo would not be able to get the image out of his head; he then would not be able to resist including it in his play. For Hugo, the ink on Cromwell’s face somehow touches on the very nerve of Cromwell’s character. What sort of man is it, who could indulge in this bit of buffoonery at such a moment, and then heartily laugh at the result? This is who M. Hugo’s Cromwell is. This is what M. Hugo’s Protestants were; such is the character of these men in this time.

Clowns and the Art of Seduction

Finally, we look at the martial strategies of the talesman. Here we regard the talesman as the puppet-master and us the audience are his puppets. M. Hugo paints us a scene that will frighten us, make us uneasy. (We must remember that the French theatergoers of the 1900s bore the execution of their own monarch in the Revolution as almost current events; the Revolution split France into two camps that waged war for over a century, the Right that stuck to kings, church, and authoritarian rule by the elites, and the Left that clamored for equal rights for all, civil government, and even communism. M. Hugo surely would have written his Cromwell both as historical piece and with an eye toward his own country’s past. In the same way his audience would have been moved to recall the death of the unfortunate Louis alongside that of the unfortunate Charles.)

What can M. Hugo the talesman do to relieve us of our unquiet, to make us hate Cromwell a little bit less? He can make Cromwell laugh, at a bit of foolery such as any boy would love. He can make us all laugh with him.

The laugh is the clown’s sure path to the boudoir of his sought-after lady love.

It is also his path into the hearts of his audience.

One Scene Many Uses

I have spoken out of both sides of my mouth here. I have said the scene is useful because it makes us laugh; I have said it is useful because it leaves us cold. I have said it wins us to Cromwell’s side; I have said it sets us apart from him and makes us dislike and mistrust him more.

Well, which is it?

That depends upon the talesman. No talesman but the highest genius could hope to win both opposite effects at once; it may be doubted whether even the highest genius could do it. But a master talesman could pick one or the other, and use that to his purpose, depending on his aims for the tale as a whole.

So we can say that, while setting aside M. Hugo’s argument that ‘because it happened, I must include it’ as weak, and agreeing with M. Sarcey that it is the effect that plays in the house that matters to the 1200 souls who have bought the night’s tickets, we can all the same state that there are several legitimate and forceful uses the ink on Cromwell’s face could be put to, and any one of them demands its inclusion.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday, April 24, 2008)

Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater III - French

LES PIÈCES GAIES ET LES PIÈCES TRISTES.

Les hommes, par cela seul qu’ils sont hommes, dans tous les pays et dans tous les temps ont eu ce privilège d’exprimer leur joie ou leur douleur par le rire or par les larmes. Encore y a-t-il d’autres animaux qui pleurent; mais de tous les êtres de la création, l’homme est le seul qui rie. Pourquoi rit-il? Et quelles sont les causes du rire? C’est une question que, pour le moment, il ne nous est pas nécessaire de résoudre. J’y reviendrai, non qu’elle ait, à mon avis, grand intérêt dans une esthétique de théâtre; mais elle a occupé si longtemps les philosophes, elle a donné lieu à tant de savantes dissertations que le sujet a fini par prendre de l’importance.

L’homme rit, c’est un fait qui n’est pas contestable; it pleure, cela est évident; il ne rit pas, il est vrai, ni ne pleure de la même façon, ni des mêmes choses en compagnie que seul, il y aura là sans doute, plus tard, des distinctions essentielles à faire; mais nous nous contenterons à cette heure d’une observation sommaire, qui est vraie dans sa généralité, c’est qu’un public rit de meilleur cœur et plus bruyamment qu’un individu; c’est que les larmes sont plus faciles et plus abondantes chez une foule que chez un homme.

De cette disposition du public à exprimer les sentiments les plus universels de la nature humaine par la joie et par le chagrin, par le rire et par les larmes, est née la grande division des œuvres de théâtre en pièces gaies et en pièces tristes; en comédies, avec tous leurs sous-genres; en tragédie et en drama, avec toutes leurs variétés.

Remarquez bien, je vous prie, ce détail dont les conséquences iront très loin.

Nous ne disons point: le poète dramatique a pour mission de transporter la réalité sur la scène; et comme il y a dans cette réalité des événements gais et d’autres tristes, il est nécessaire aussi qu’il y ait des comédies et des drames.

Nous tenons que la réalité, si on la jetait toute vive derrière la rampe, paraître toujours fausse à ce monstre aux mille têtes qu’on appelle le public. Nous avons défini l’art dramatique un ensemble de conventions à l’aide desquelles, en représentant la vie humaine sur un théâtre, on donne à douze cents personnes assemblées l’illusion de la vérité.

Les événements, par eux-mêmes, ne sont jamais ni gais ni tristes. Ils sont indifférents. C’est nous qui les imprégnons de nos sentiments et les colorons à notre gré. Un vieillard tombe; le gamin que passe se met les poings sur les côtes et ricane. La femme s’écrie de pitié. C’est le même fait: l’un n’a songé qu’au ridicule de la chute, l’autre n’en a vu que le danger. La seconde a pleuré où le premier avait trouvé matière à rire.

Il en est des événements de la vie humaine à cet égard comme des paysages de la nature. On dit souvent d’un site qu’il est affreux et d’un autre qu’il est agréable. Il y a là un abus de termes. C’est nous qui répandons sur les lieux où nous passons les sentiments qui nous agitent, c’est nous dont l’imagination les transforme, c’est nous qui leur donnons une âme, la nôtre. Il est vrai que certains paysages sembleront mieux faits pour s’harmoniser avec les douleurs d’un cœur triste; mais supposez deux amoureux dans l’endroit le plus sauvage, au milieu des rochers les plus abruptes, et tout autour des bois sinistres sur des eaux croupissantes. Le site s’illuminera pour eux des joies de leur amour, et restera gravé dans leur mémoire en traits délicieux. Cette parfaite indifférence de la nature est même en ces derniers temps devenu un lieu commun de développement poétique. Il n’y en a point qui ait mieux inspiré nos poètes, et tout le monde a présents [sic; présenté?] à la mémoire les deux admirables morceaux que Victor Hugo et Alfred de Musset semblent avoir voulu jouer sur ce thème: Tristesse d’Olympio et Souvenir.

Il y a mieux, et c’est une observation que l’on a déjà faite bien souvent: de même que le bonheur le plus vif se goûte souvent, par un effet de contraste, au milieu des paysages les plus âpres et les plus mornes, ce sont les faits les plus sombres en apparence qui font très souvent éclater le rire le plus intense.

Rien n’est plus grave et plus poignant que l’idée de la maladie et de la mort; il n’y en a pas d’où le rire jaillisse avec une plus irrésistible énergie. Ce serait mal choisir ses exemples que de citer Molière et Regnard et tant d’autres poètes comiques qui ont tiré précisément de ces tableaux moroses leurs plus grands efforts d’hilarité. On me répondrait qu’il y a là un artifice de l’écrivain et que son habileté consiste en effet à avoir tordu des situations cruelles pour en exprimer un rire étincelant.

Mais dans la vie, c’est la même chose. Il n’est rien de plus vrai que le mot du bonhomme d’Henri Monnier qui, après avoir conté un enterrement auquel il vient d’assister, conclut son récit par cette phrase devenue célèbre: «Enfin nous n’avons jamais tant ri».

Il n’est personne qui ne puisse trouver dans son observation personnelle quelques circonstances analogues, où le rire s’est échappé d’une image toute pleine de larmes. Je sais que, pour moi, mes réflexions sur ce point de théorie datent d’une scène de famille, où j’ai vu, de mes yeux vu, quatre personnes pâmer d’un rire inextinguible au lit de mort d’une parente qui leur était bien chère, et qu’elles ont abondamment pleurée.

L’histoire vous paraîtra invraisemblable; permettez-moi de vous la conter. J’y ai si souvent réfléchi depuis, que les moindres détails m’en sont présents à la mémoire, bien que quinze ans se soient passés depuis lors.

Une de mes tantes, que nous aimions beaucoup, était en grand danger. Comme elle avait été prise d’une fluxion de poitrine, étant de passage à Paris, où elle n’habitait point, ma mère l’avait recueillie, et la soignait dans son très petit appartement.

A la nouvelle de sa maladie, deux nièces étaient accourues, pour aider ma mère et la relayer au besoin. On n’avait point de place pour les loger: on leur avait mis des matelas par terre, dans la chambre à côté; elles y dormaient tout habillées.

Le soir vers minuit, au sortir du théâtre, je pénétrais doucement dans l’appartement dont j’avais la clef et demandais des nouvelles avant de m’aller coucher. Comme je venais d’entrer dans la chambre, où ces deux dames sommeillaient assises sur un matelas, ma mère sort de chez la malade un vase intime à la main, et sans me voir, car la chambre n’était que faiblement éclairée par une veilleuse.

— Mes enfants, leur dit-elle, vous n’avez rien de ce qu’il faut: je vous apporte ça.

Et comme elle leur montrait l’objet en question, elle m’aperçoit, tombe dans me bras, en sanglotant et sans quitter son vase.

— Oh! mon pauvre enfant! elle est bien mal! Nous sommes bien malheureux.

Moi, que voulez-vous? Je sentais ce diable de vase que ma mère m’agitait avec désespoir dans le dos; me voilà pinçant les lèvres et retenant une prodicieuse envie de rire qui m’étouffait. J’en aurais triomphé; mais je vois ces deux jeunes femmes qui, de leur côté, faisaient des efforts inimaginables pour ne pas éclater. Nous partons tous les trois, au grand scandale de ma mère, qui, en ôtant le bras de mon cou, voit la cause de ce rire malséant et part de rire elle-même, après nous, non sans se récrier d’indignation:

— Les petites sottes! a-t-on jamais vu cela!

Et, tout en riant, elle gesticulait, désolée, son objet à la main. Au beau milieu de cette scène, la porte s’ouvre: c’était le mari d’une de ces dames qui venait, lui aussi, demander des nouvelles. Il voit, en entrant, les éclats de notre joie.

— Elle est sauvée? s’écria-t-il.

Ce mot rend ma mère au sentiment de la situation et renouvelle sa douleur. Elle repart en sanglots et, brandissant son vase:

— Elle est au plus mal, au contraire; elle ne passera pas la nuit; ce sont ces petites sottes!

— Je t’en prie, ma tante, dit l’autre, qui sentait le rire lui monter à la gorge, si tu veux larmoyer comme ça, mets ton vase par terre.

Dame! nous avons pleuré de tout notre cœur, le lendemain; mais ce soir-là!… Et ce qu’il y a de plus curieux, c’est que le souvenir de cette scène est resté invinciblement lié, dans ma mémoire, à l’image de ma pauvre tante à l’agonie.

Je me la suis rappelée bien souvent en voyant jouer soit le Malade Imaginaire soit le Légataire universel et d’autres farces du vieux répertoire, où de ces thèmes éminemment sérieux, de la maladie ou de la mort, l’écrivain a fait jaillir tout à coup des gerbes de rire.

Dans cet exemple et dans bien d’autres il est clair que l’événement, à ne le prendre qu’en soi, était fort triste; il avait fait couler auparavant et il fit couler après beaucoup de larmes; il excita le rire par le contraste; c’est que, par eux-mêmes, les fait sont incolores; que ce ne sont pas eux qui recèlent les émotions dont ils nous affectent; nous les tirons de nous-mêmes, et ils n’en sont que l’occasion, le prétexte.

Que de fois ne peut-on pas observer dans la vie ce que l’on se plaît à signaler dans un exemple connu de l’ancien répertoire: qu’une même situation peut également se traiter par le rire ou par les larmes, se transporter du genre comique dans la tragédie. Mithridate veut savoir de Monime si, en son absence, Xipharès ne lui a pas fait la cour, si elle n’aime point ce jeune homme. Pour lui faire dire la vérité, il feint de se croire trop vieux pour elle, et il offre de la marier à ce fils, qui tiendra mieux sa place près d’elle. Monime laisse échapper l’aveu funeste, et tout le monde frémit au fameux vers:

… Seigneur vous changez de visage.

Harpagon, dans l’Avare de Molière, use du même artifice avec Cléante, et le public tout entier rit de la fureur du viellard quand il donne sa malédiction à son fils, qui ne veut point lui céder Marianne.

Ce n’est donc point des événements, matière inerte et indifférente, qu’il faut s’occuper; mais du public qui rit et qui pleure, selon qu’on a chez lui touché de certaines cordes, préférablement à d’autres.

Ce point bien établi, nous allons résoudre aisément une question qui a fait verser des torrents d’encre et que l’on a embrouillée à plaisir, faute de remonter aux vrais principes.

Nous sommes convenus tout à l’heure que, par une division fort naturelle, les pièces se sont partagées en comédies et en drames.

Peut-il y avoir, est-il bon qu’il y ait des œuvres théâtrales où le rire se mêle aux larmes, où les scènes comiques succèdent aux situations douloureuses?

La plupart de ceux qui s’insurgent contre le sérieux continu de la tragédie, qui ont prêché le mélange du tragique et du comique, dans le même drame, sont partis de cette idée que c’est ainsi que les choses se passent dans la réalité, et que l’art dramatique consiste à porter la réalité sur la scène. C’est cette vue fort simple que Victor Hugo, en son admirable préface de Cromwell, a développée dans ce style tout plein d’images qui lui est propre. Je préfère citer ce morceau éblouissant:

«Dans le drame, tel qu’on peut sinon l’exécuter, du moins le concevoir, tout s’enchaîne et se déduit ainsi que dans la réalité. Le corps y joue un rôle comme l’âme, et les hommes et les événements mis en jeu par ce double agent passent tour à tour, bouffons et terribles, quelquefois terribles et bouffons tout ensemble.

«Ainsi le juge dira: A la mort, et allons dîner! Ainsi le Sénat Romain délibèra sur le turbot de Domitien. Ainsi Socrate buvant la ciguë et conversant de l’âme immortelle et du Dieu unique, s’interrompra pour recommander que l’on sacrifie un coq à Esculape. Ainsi Élisabeth jurera et parlera latin.

«Ainsi Richelieu subira le capucin Joseph, et Louis XI son barbier, maître Olivier le Diable. Ainsi Cromwell dira: J’ai le parlement dans mon sac et le roi dans ma poche ou de la main qui signe l’arrêt de mort de Charles I^er, barbouillera d’encre le visage d’un régicide, qui le lui rendra en riant. Ainsi César dans le char de triomphe, aura peur de verser, car les hommes de génie, si grands qu’ils soient, ont toujours en eux leur bête qui parodie leur intelligence. C’est par là qu’ils touchent à l’humanité et c’est par là qu’ils sont dramatiques.

«Du sublime au ridicule, il n’y a qu’un pas, disait Napoléon quand il fut convaincu d’être homme, et cet éclair d’une âme de feu qui s’entr’ouvre illumine à fois l’art et l’histoire, ce cri d’angoisse est le résumé du drame de la vie.»

Voilà de superbe éloquence. Mais les grands poètes ne sont pas toujours des philosophes très exacts. La question est mal posée. Il ne s’agit pas du tout de savoir si dans la vie, le bouffon se mêle au terrible, en d’autres termes, si la trame des événements humains fournit, à ceux qui en sont ou les témoins ou les acteurs, de quoi rire et pleurer tour à tour, c’est là une vérité qui n’est pas contestable et qui n’a jamais été contestée.

Les données du problème sont tout autres.

Douze cents personnes sont réunie dans une même salle et forment un public de théâtre. Ces douze cents personnes sont-elles aptes à passer aisément des larmes au rire et du rire aux larmes? Est-on maître de transporter ce public d’une impression à l’autre, et ne risque-t-on pas de les affaiblir toutes les deux par ce contraste subit?

Par exemple, pour se renfermer dans les traits historiques que cite Victor Hugo, il ne s’agit pas du tout de savoir si Cromwell, après avoir signé l’arrêt de mort de Charles I^er, a ou n’a pas barbouillé d’encre le visage d’un de ses collègues; si cette plaisanterie grossière, a ou n’a pas excité un rire épais dans l’assemblée. Le fait est authentique; on ne saurait donc le contester. Ce qu’on demande (en art dramatique au moins); c’est uniquement si le fait jeté tel quel sur la scène a chance de plaire à douze cents personnes réunies.

Ces douze cents personnes sont tout occupées de la mort de Charles I^er, sur laquelle on a cherché à les apitoyer. Elles versent des larmes de sympathie et de tendresse. On leur met tout à coup, sous les yeux, un acte de bouffonnerie burlesque, en alléguant que, dans la réalité, le grotesque se mêle sans art au tragique. Riront-ils? et s’ils rient, éprouveront-ils une satisfaction véritable? ce rire ne leur gâtera-t-il pas la douleur à laquelle ils avaient plaisir à s’abandonner?

Telles sont les questions qu’il faut se poser et dont ne se sont pas même douté les révolutionnaires du romantisme, qui se sont jetés avec tant de vivacité dans ce débat.

14 aoút 1876.