Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater III - English

Man, by the fact of being man, in all countries and in all ages, has had the privilege of expressing his joy or his grief by laughter or by tears. There are other animals that weep, but of all the beings of creation man is the only one that laughs. Why does he laugh? And what are the causes of laughter? It is not necessary for the moment to answer this question. Man laughs; this is a fact which cannot be disputed. He weeps; that is evident. He does not laugh nor does he weep in the same fashion or at the same things in company as alone. A crowd laughs more heartily and boisterously than an individual. Tears are readier and more abundant with an audience than with a single man.

From this disposition of the public to express the most universal sentiments of human nature, of joy and of sorrow, by laughter and by tears, arises the great division of the drama into plays that are cheerful and plays that are sad; into comedy with all its sub-species, and into tragedy and drama with all their varieties.

I do not say that it is the mission of the dramatic author to bring life as it actually is on the stage; that as there are in real life events, some pleasant and some unpleasant, it necessarily follows that we must have comedies and tragedies.

I hold that reality, if presented on the stage truthfully, would appear false to the monster with the thousand heads which we call the public. We have defined dramatic art as the sum total of the conventions by the aid which, in the theater, we represent life and give to the twelve hundred people assembled the illusion of truth.

In themselves, events are not cheerful and they are not sad. They are neither. It is we who impregnate them with our sentiment or color them to our liking. An old man falls; the street urchin who is passing holds his sides and laughs. The woman cries out with pity. It is the same event; but the one has thought only of the ridiculousness of the fall, the other has seen only the danger. The second wept where the first found cause only for laughter.

It is with events from human life as it is with landscapes. We often say of one view that it is hideous and of another that it is agreeable. This is an abuse of words. It is we who bestow on the places we pass the sentiments that move us; it is our imagination which transforms them; and it is we who give them a soul—our own.

It is true that certain landscapes seem better adapted to harmonize with the grief of a heart which is sad; but imagine two lovers in the most forbidding spot, in the midst of steep cliffs, surrounded by dark forests and stagnant waters. The spot would be illumined for them by their love and would remain graven in their memory in delightful outlines. This perfect indifference of nature has even become in recent times a commonplace of poetic development. There is nothing which has more inspired our poets; everybody remembers the two admirable tunes in which Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset played upon this theme: ‘Tristesse d’ Olympio’ and ‘Souvenir.’

How often may we not observe in actual life that which has been pointed out to us in a well-known example in the classic repertory; viz., that the same situation may be treated by laughter or by tears, transported from the comic to the tragic. Mithridates wishes to know of Monime whether in his absence Xiphares has not made love to her, whether she does not love the young man. In order to make her tell the truth he pretends to believe himself too old for her and offers to marry her to the son who bill be better able to take his place in her affection. Monime allows the fatal confession to escape and everybody shivers at the famous line:

“Sire, you change countenance.”

Harpagon, in the ‘Miser’ of Molière, uses the same artifice with Cléante; and the whole audience laughs at the rage of the old man when he delivers his malediction to his son who does not wish to surrender Marianne. It is not then with events, matter inert and indifferent, that we should concern ourselves, but with the public which laughs or weeps according as certain chords are toucht in preference to others.

Having establisht this point we shall answer easily a question which has caused the spilling of a great deal of ink and which has been greatly obscured because those who have discust it have not sought out the fundamental principles.

We agreed just now that by a very natural classification plays are divided into comedies and tragedies. May we have, is it well that we have, pieces for the stage in which laughter is mingled with tears, in which comic scenes succeed painful situations?

Most of those who rebel against the sustained seriousness of tragedy, who advocate the mixing of the tragic and the comic in the same play, have set out with the idea that it is thus things happen in reality and that the art of the dramatist consists in transporting reality to the stage. 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. The body here plays a part as the soul does; and men and events set in action by this double agent pass before us ludicrous and terrible by turns, sometimes terrible and ludicrous at the same time.

Thus the judge will say: ‘Off with his head,—let’s to dinner.’ Thus the Roman Senate will deliberate on the turbot of Domitian. Thus Socrates, drinking the hemlock and discoursing of the immortality of the soul and the one god, pauses to recommend that a cock be sacrificed to Esculapius. Thus Elizabeth swears and speaks Latin.

Thus Richelieu will be companioned by the monk Joseph, and Louis XI will be escorted by his barber, Master Olivier the Devil. 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?

Of Paint and Plays

The three elements the talesman must work

Sarcey and the Stage

Francisque Sarcey was the drama critique in Paris for 40 years, from 1859–1899. I have been transcribing his Essai d’une Esthétique de Théâtre from his originally-published newspaper columns which appeared in 1876, and from Brander Matthews’s abridged translation which appeared in book form in 1916.

In preparing to discuss the theater, Sarcey makes analogy with painting:

Au lieu qu’on cherche toujours à la façon des théologiens, les lois d’un art dans la contemplations de je ne sais quel beau idéal, qui serait une émanation de la divinité, ou dans l’étude de ce qu’on appelle l’âme humaine, nous nous plaçons sur le terrain des faits sensibles.

Le peintre prend un morceau de bois ou un lambeau de toile, pour y représenter la vie humaine. C’est une surface plane, n’est-ce pas? Voilà un fait sûr, indéniable. Nous partons de là.

Eh bien, regardons de même pour l’art dramatique, s’il n’y a pas un fait aussi certain que peut l’être celui-là dans la peinture et qui soit également pour lui une condition absolue d’existence et de développement. Si nous le trouvons, nous en pourrons tirer logiquement des conséquences de cet œil; les autres son changeantes, puisqu’elles ne sont commandées que par des accidents de l’organe.

—And here is how Brander Matthews translates it (he takes the third paragraph from a later part of the treatise):

“The first question to be settled then is that of the conditions, material or moral, in which resides necessarily and inevitably the art of which we speak. As it is impossible to separate the art from these conditions, as it lives only thru and by them, as it is not a subtle inspiration wafted from heaven or emanating from the depths of the human mind, but something wholly concrete and definite which, like all living things, cannot exist except in the environment to which it is adapted, we are moved naturally to analize this environment to which the art has accommodated its life, from which it has sprung, so to speak, by a series of successive developments, and of which it will always retain the impress. The painter takes a bit of wood or a scrap of canvas on which to represent life. It is a plane surface, is it not? Here is a fact, sure, undeniable. We will set out from there.

“In the same way let us inquire concerning dramatic art if there is not also a fact which corresponds to this fact in painting and which is in like manner the indispensable condition of its existence and development. If we find this fact we shall be able to draw logically some conclusions as incontestable as the fact itself; and we shall discover afterwards the proof of these conclusions in the history of the art.

“Now, in regard to the theater there is one fact which cannot fail to strike the least attentive; it is the presence of an audience. The word play carries with it the idea of an audience. We cannot conceive of a play without an audience.”

I have some additions to Sarcey’s analogy which I hope will shed more light on it.

Paint

First let’s go back to painting. The board or canvas is not enough; the painter also has need of pigments and some means of applying the pigments to the board or canvas — brush, knife, stylus, thumb, sponge, or something else. A third element comes into play, which is the eye of the viewer. Seurat used the science of optics to construct his great pointillist masterpieces (so Sarcey was also a bit naïve when he said that the chemist had nothing to teach the gardener), so that the individual dots of pigment would be mixed within the eye of the viewer to make an impression of color more vibrant than if the eye merely received passively a flat expanse of one hue.

So in painting, the painter must deal with the canvas, the pigments and his tools, with the aim of pleasing the eye of his viewers.

Plays

In a like way, the playwright deals with the stage (or some such area set apart for the actors to exist), an area given over by imagination to the world of the play, separate from the ‘real’ world in which the audience sits. This is like the painter’s the board or canvas. He also has his actors, the props and backdrops of the stage, and the costumes the actors wear. These are like the pigments and tools the painter uses to apply the pigments to the canvas. And finally there is the eyes and ears of his audience, in which, let us say, the sights and sounds of what happens onstage are blended into a pattern the audience understands as a tale unfolding before them.

So in plays, the playwright must deal with the stage and the actors, with the aim of pleasing the eyes and ears of his audience.

(Note that the ‘playwright’ is rarely the sole talesman of a play, and that the whole company also partake of talesmanship, in the way the scenes are painted and designed, the props arranged, the costumes designed and fitted, and the actors move and speak their lines. All this is usually now under the command of the stage director or manager. I hope in simplifying all the company to the single ‘playwright’ I do not fall into the same mistake I find in Sarcey.)

Consequences

The result of this emendation of Sarcey’s fait aussi certain is to expand our understanding of what the playwright (and the painter) do in his task.

Because the play will be performed, the playwright must take care to write his lines with an eye to how they will sound when spoken aloud by the actors, within the imagined space of the stage. Because the play will be performed, the playwright must be aware of how the actors will move about the stage when they are reacting to other actors’ lines, and how the actors will be dressed, and what the scenery will look like, and what props are available, and so on. All these items — scenery, props, furniture, costumes, actors — the playwright must arrange and move through his tale always with the audience in mind, and how all this will look and sound to the audience.

Words

In the same way, the talesman who is a writer, and uses only words to be read to tell his tale, must be aware of these three general elements of his art: first the page upon which the words will be displayed, and its layout, its texture, its colors, and any other decorations or parts of the physical design; second the words which the writer proposes to print upon this page; third how those words on those pages will affect the reader through his senses and the way he apprehends the tale.

(Composed on keyboard Monday, April 21, 2008)

Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater II - English

I emphasize this point because it is the point of departure, because from this simple fact we can derive all the laws of the theater without a single exception.

A moment ago I said that the painter is constantly obliged to represent everything on a flat surface, whether objects having all their dimensions or deep perspectives. How does he accomplish this? By a series of conventions, or tricks if you prefer, some of which are indicated and imposed by the structure and habit of our eyes and can hardly be modified, while the others are mere traditions which have no foundation in the necessity of things and are constantly variable. The same is true of the theater. Its business is to represent life to a crowd. This crowd performs in some sort for dramatic art the function of the flat surface in painting. It requires the intervention of similar tricks, or if you like the term better, of conventions. An example or two in order to enable you better to understand this. A crowd can scarcely be held together for more than four hours; or put it at five, six, eight, ten—let us say a whole day, tho that is going rather far. It is certain that the following day, if this crowd collects again, it will not be composed of the same elements. It will still be a crowd, but it will not be the same crowd. The representation of life that we can exhibit before a crowd cannot then exceed an average of six hours in length. That is a face of absolute necessity, against which no argument can prevail. The reading of a book may continue two months, the reader remaining always the same. But the crowd, by the fact of being a crowd, requires that a drama end in six hours or less.

The action represented evidently lasts more than six hours. Even in case it were confined within this narrow limit (which might happen after all) it would require a mass of innumerable details for which we could find no room under this compression of time. It was necessary a moment ago to resort to deceptions in order to represent perspective on a flat surface; it will be necessary to resort to conventions in order to give the impression that a long time has elapst when we have only six hours at our disposal.

Let us take another example, drawn this time from the moral order. It is asserted that a crowd thinks and feels differently from the individuals which compose it. I do not imagine that there is need at present of proving a fact so well known and so authentic.

The distinguishing mark then of this collective being which we call the public is a certain confirmation of the eye. It has the singular privilege of seeing things from another angle, illuminated by a light different from that of reality. The crowd changes the appearance of these things; where there are certain lines it sees others; where there are colors of a certain sort it sees different shades.

Well, if you present to this collective being, whose eyes have this gift of bizarre transformation, events from life just as they happen in reality, they will strike the crowd as being false, for they appear to the spectators altogether different from what they appear to the individuals composing the audience.

Suppose a scene-painter should give to his canvas backgrounds the tones he has observed in nature, his picture, lighted by the glare of the foot-lights, would appear grotesque. So do facts and sentiments drawn from reality and transported just as they are to the stage. It is absolutely necessary to accommodate them to the particular disposition of mind which results among people when they assemble in the form of a crowd, when they compose an audience. Therefore deceptions—conventions—are essential. Among these conventions some are permanent, others temporary and changeable. The reason is easy to understand. The audience is composed of individuals; and among individuals there are sentiments—in very small number, it is true,—which are general and universal, which we find in varying degrees among all the civilized peoples who alone have developed a dramatic art. Likewise there are prejudices (in still smaller number) which we encounter in all times and in all countries. These sentiments, these prejudices, or in a word, these ways of looking at things, always remaining the same, it is natural that certain conventions, certain tricks, should be inherent in all drama, and that they should be establisht as laws.

On the contrary there are other sentiments, other prejudices, which are changeable, which vanish every time one civilization is succeeded by another, and which are replaced by different ways of seeing.

When the eyes of the audience change, the conventions invented to give the illusion of life should change also, and the laws which the technic each epoch has promulgated and which it has in good faith believed to be universal and unchangeable are destined to fall. But these laws may hold good for a long time; and they do not crumble except under the repeated assaults of intelligent criticism and of innovators of genius.

What are the universal conventions, those that have their root in all humanity? What, on the other hand, are the temporary conventions? What has been their influence? How have they arisen and how fallen into disuse?

It is not sufficient simple to affirm that drama is the representation of life. It would be a more exact definition to say that dramatic art is the sum total of the conventions, universal or local, permanent or temporary, by the aid of which in representing life in the theater, the audience is given the illusion of truth.

Sarcey - Treatise on the Theater 2 - French

LES CONDITIONS DE L’ART DRAMATIQUE.

On a coutume, quand on cherche une définition de l’art dramatique, de dire que le drame est la représentation de la vie humaine.

Assurément, le drame est la représentation de la vie humaine. Mais quand on a dit cela, on n’a pas dit grand’chose, et l’on n’a rien appris à ceux que l’on a munis de cette formule.

Tous les arts d’imitation sont des représentations de la vie humaine. Tous ont pour but de nous mettre la nature sous les yeux. Est-ce que la peinture a un autre objet que de nous figurer soit des scènes de la vie humaine, soit des lieux où elle s’encadre? Et la sculpture ne s’efforce-t-elle pas de nous rendre des images de créatures vivantes, tantôt isolées et tantôt réunies en groupe.

De tous ces arts, on pourrait dire tout aussi justement qu’ils sont des représentations de la vie humaine, en d’autres termes des copies de la nature.

Mais, nous pouvons remarquer tout aussitôt (car c’est une observation qui n’exige aucune réflexion et saute aus yeux de prime abord) que chacun de ces arts a des moyens d’action différents, que les conditions auxquelles il est obligé de se soumettre pour représenter la vie humaine imposent à chacun d’eux l’emploi de procédés particuliers.

Ainsi, dans la peinture, il s’agit de représenter sur une surface plane des objets qui ont tous leur côtés, et des scènes de la vie humaine, qui, dans la réalité, ont exigé pour se mouvoir un vaste espace de profondeur.

Il est clair que si l’on veut tenter une esthétique de la peinture, il faudrait tenir un grand compte de cette condition et de toutes les autres, s’il y en a d’autres que sont essentielles à cet art, sans lesquelles cet art lui-même n’existerait pas.

La première étude à faire c’est donc celle des conditions matérielles ou morales dans lesquelles se meut nécessairement, fatalement l’art dont on parle. Comme il est impossible d’abstraire l’art de ces conditions, comme il ne vit qu’en elles et par elles; comme ce n’est pas un souffle subtil envoyé du ciel ou émané des profondeurs de l’esprit de l’homme, mais bien quelque chose de concret et de précis qui, comme tous les êtres organisés, ne peut subsister que dans le milieu auquel il s’est adapté, il est tout naturel d’analyser ce milieu aux nécessités duquel il a accommodé sa vie, d’où il est sorti en quelque sorte, par une série de développements successifs, dont il gardera éternellement l’empreinte.

Vous voyez quelle méthode nous allons suivre.

Au lieu qu’on cherche toujours à la façon des théologiens, les lois d’un art dans la contemplations de je ne sais quel beau idéal, qui serait une émanation de la divinité, ou dans l’étude de ce qu’on appelle l’âme humaine, nous nous plaçons sur le terrain des faits sensibles.

Le peintre prend un morceau de bois ou un lambeau de toile, pour y représenter la vie humaine. C’est une surface plane, n’est-ce pas? Voilà un fait sûr, indéniable. Nous partons de là.

Eh bien, regardons de même pour l’art dramatique, s’il n’y a pas un fait aussi certain que peut l’être celui-là dans la peinture et qui soit également pour lui une condition absolue d’existence et de développement. Si nous le trouvons, nous en pourrons tirer logiquement des conséquences de cet œil; les autres son changeantes, puisqu’elles ne sont commandées que par des accidents de l’organe.

Vous ne trouverez pas autre chose dans tout le cours des études que nous commençons ensemble; et j’estime que vous serez surpris du nombre infini de conséquences que l’on peut tirer d’un fait véritable et bien observé.

3 juillet 1876.

Sarcey Treatise on the Theater - I (English)

I am going to propose for your consideration the ideas which I believe should form the first chapter of a treatise on the art of the theater. But a few words by way of preface are necessary. Most readers, when you speak to them of a treatise on the art of the theater, or to express it more simply as did our fathers, when you speak to them of the Rules of dramatic art, believe that you have in mind a code of precepts by the aid of which one is assured, if he writes, of composing a piece without faults, or if he criticizes, of being able to place his finger precisely on every defect.

At bottom this prepossession is entirely French; and it does not date from yesterday. You doubtless recall the worthy Abbé d’Aubignac who, having promulgated a code of dramatic literature, wrote a tragedy according to his own formula and made it prodigiously tiresome. This misadventure has never cured the public of its belief in the efficacy of Rules.

They were cited against Corneille when he wrote the ‘Cid,’ and against Molière when he gave us the ‘School for Wives.’ Poor Corneille struggled as best he could in his prefaces to release himself from these laws which threatened to strangle him. And in the ‘Critique de l’École des Femmes’ Molière has preserved for us a record of the annoyances which the pedants of his time sought to impose on him; and it is here that he delivered his famous dictum: “There is no other Rule of the theater than that of pleasing the public.”

We have laught at this overstatement; we have not taken it at all seriously; and less than sixty years ago our fathers saw what difficulty those who were then called the Romanticists experienced in freeing themselves from the fetters of the code of tragedy laid down by Bossu, put into verse by Boileau, commented upon and reinforced by all the critics of the eighteenth century, with Voltaire at their head and after him La Harpe and Marmontel.

This national prejudice has its root in our philosophic education. From our infancy we have been taught that there is an ideal perfection which has an existence of is own and which is like an emanation from divinity; that everybody carries about with him a conception of it more or less clear, an image more or less enfeebled; and that works of art should be declared good or bad according as they approach or depart from this type of perfection.

I will not entangle myself by affirming that there is no such beau ideal or archetype of absolute perfection. I confess simply that I do not know what is meant by this, that these are questions outside my province, which I do not comprehend. It may be that in the sublunary regions there exists a form of drama supreme and marvellously perfect of which our masterpieces are only pale counterfeits; I leave to those who have had the good fortune of beholding this, and who say they are delighted by it, the duty and the pleasure of speaking of it with competence.

Rules do not render any great service in criticizing any more than they do in creating. The best that can be said for them is that they may serve as directions or guide-posts. After all, those who have no ear never love music and always beat time out of measure when they listen. Native taste sustained and purified by training, reflexion, and usage, can alone help you to enjoy works of art. The first condition of having pleasure is to love; and we do not love by rule.

It is customary in seeking a definition of dramatic art to say that drama is the representation of life. Now, assuredly drama is the representation of life. But when one has said that, he has said no great thing; and he has taught nothing to those whom he has furnisht with this formula.

All the arts of imitation are representations of life. All have for their purpose the placing of nature before our eyes. What other object has painting that that of portraying for us either scenes from life or places which serve as a setting for it? And does not sculpture strive to render for us the images of living creatures, now single and now joined in groups. We may say with equal truth of all the arts that they are representations of life; in other words, copies from nature. But we see just as readily (for it is an observation that does not require reflexion) that each of these arts has a different means of expression, that the conditions to which it is obliged to submit in order to represent life impose on each of them the employment of particular processes. Thus painting concerns itself with the representation on a plane surface of objects which have all their dimensions and of scenes from life which in reality would require for their existence a vast depth of background. It is clear that if you wish to suggest a theory of painting you must take careful account of this condition and of all the others, if there are any others, which are essential to this art, without which the art itself could not exist.

The first question to be settled then is that of the conditions, material or moral, in which resides necessarily and inevitably the art of which we speak. As it is impossible to separate the art from these conditions, as it lives only thru and by them, as it is not a subtle inspiration wafted from heaven or emanating from the depths of the human mind, but something wholly concrete and definite which, like all living things, cannot exist except in the environment to which it is adapted, we are moved naturally to analize this environment to which the art has accommodated its life, from which it has sprung, so to speak, by a series of successive developments, and of which it will always retain the impress. The painter takes a bit of wood or a scrap of canvas on which to represent life. It is a plane surface, is it not? Here is a fact, sure, undeniable. We will set out from there.

In the same way let us inquire concerning dramatic art if there is not also a fact which corresponds to this fact in painting and which is in like manner the indispensable condition of its existence and development. If we find this fact we shall be able to draw logically some conclusions as incontestable as the fact itself; and we shall discover afterwards the proof of these conclusions in the history of the art.

Now, in regard to the theater there is one fact which cannot fail to strike the least attentive; it is the presence of an audience. The word play carries with it the idea of an audience. We cannot conceive of a play without an audience. Take one after another the accessories which serve in the performance of a dramatic work—they can all be replaced or suppressed except that one. Thus theaters ordinarily are provided with a platform in the form of a stage, but you can imagine one without this; in fact comedies are played in drawing-rooms without changing the arrangement of the room. This may not be very convenient, but at any rate it does not alter the meaning of the comedy. The foot-lights are arranged to light the actors from below; and this is a very useful device, since it places the faces of the actors in full light and makes them seem younger and more animated by suppressing the shadows of the eyebrows and the nose. But is it a necessary condition? Assuredly not. You may imagine such other lighting system as you please, to say nothing of the sun, which was the sole illumination of the ancients who certainly had a theater. You may even dispense with the scenery and the costumes. Corneille and Molière have been played in barns by strolling actors grotesquely costumed according to the state of their humble wardrobes. It was none the less the ‘Cid’ or the ‘School for Wives.’ Shakspere, as we have been told a hundred times, did not trouble himself in the least about scenery. A board was set up on the stake which indicated in writing where the action was taking place; and the imagination of the spectator filled in the rest to sit himself. It was none the less ‘Othello’ or ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

But a play without an audience is inconceivable. It is possible that a king may at some time or other indulge the fantasy of seating himself alone in a play-house and having played for himself alone some piece commanded by him. Such an eccentricity is only the exception which proves the rule. The king represents the absent audience; he is the crowd all by himself. And likewise the famous solitary spectator at the Odéon in the old days—the one whom Lireux provided with a foot-warmer,—he was the representative of the absent multitude. This legendary spectator was not only a spectator, he was the public. He included in his own person the twelve hundred truants who should have occupied the vacant seats above him. They had delegated their powers to him; it was they who applauded with his hands and who bore witness of their boredom when he opened his mouth to yawn.

It is an indisputable fact that a dramatic work, whatever it may be, is designed to be listened to by a number of persons united and forming an audience, that this is a necessary condition of its existence. As far back as you can go in the history of the theater, in all countries and in all ages, the men who have ventured to give a representation of life in dramatic form having begun by gathering the spectators, Thespis around his chariot as Dumas around his ‘Étrangère.’ It is with a public in view that they have composed their works and had them performed. This then we can insist on:—No audience no play. The audience is the necessary and inevitable condition to which dramatic art must accommodate its means.

Sarcey: Essai d’une Esthétique de Théâtre (original)

DÉFINITIONS.

Je m’en vais proposer à vos réflexions les idées, qui, selon moi, devraient former le premier chapitre d’une esthétiqe de théâtre.

Mais quelques mots de préface sont nécessaires.

La plupart des lecteurs, quand on leur parle d’une esthétique de théâtre, ou pour m’exprimer plus simplement, comme faisaient nos pères, quand on leur parle des règles de l’art dramatique, croient qu’il s’agit en effet d’un code de préceptes, à l’aide desquels, on est assuré, si l’on écrit, de composer une pièce sans défauts, si l’on juge de mettre précisément le doigt sur les défauts d’une pièce.

Je reçois sans cesse des lettres de jeunes gens qui m’écrivent: «Monsieur, c’est en m’inspirant des principes que vous développez avec tant d’autorité que j’ai tenté d’aborder le théâtre… Je lis assidûment les feuilletons dans lesquels vous exposez la pratiqe du théâtre; vous verrez, si vous voulez bien jeter les yeux sur mon manuscrit, que j’ai tâché de me conformer aux règles que vous avez édictées, que sont celles du bon sens» … ou quelque autre compliment de ce genre.

Je sais bien la part qu’il faut faire, en ces banalités de commande, aux devoirs de la politesse. Une idée surnage, c’est qu’il y a des règles et qu’en observant ces règles, on fait de bonnes pièces; qu’on en fait de mauvaises en les violant.

Au fond, c’est un préjugé tout français.

Il ne date pas d’hier. Vous vous rappelez bien ce brave abbé d’Aubignac qui, après avoir promulgué un code de littérature dramatique, fit une tragédie selon la formule donnée par lui-même et la fit prodigieusement ennuyeuse. Cette mésaventure n’a jamais guéri le public de croire à l’efficacité des règles.

On les a opposées à Corneille, quand il donna le Cid, à Molière, quand il fit jouer l’École des femmes. Ce pauvre Corneille se débat du mieux qu’il peut dans ses examens contre ces lois, dont on prétendait l’enserrer.

Molière nous a, dans la critique de l’École des femmes, conservé le souvenir des tracasseries qui lui furent suscitées par les pédants de son époque, et c’est là qui’il a dit ce grand mot qu’il n’y a d’autre règle au théâtre que de plaire au public.

On a ri de cette boutade; on ne l’a point prise au sérieux, et nos pères ont vu, il n’y a pas soixante ans, avec quelle peine ceux qu’on appelait alors les romantiques se sont affranchis des vielles entraves dont les avait garrottés le code do la tragédie, édicté par les Bossuet, mis en vers par les Boileau, commenté et imposé par tous les critiques du dix-huitième siècle, Voltaire en tête, et derrière lui les La Harpe et les Marmontel.

Ce préjugé national a sa racine dans notre éducation philosophique. On nous a, dès l’enfance, persuadé qu’il y a un beau idéal, qui existe par lui-même, qui est comme une émanation de la divinité, que chaque homme en porte au dedans de lui-même une conception plus ou moins nette, une image plus or moins affaiblie; et que les œvres de l’art doivent être déclarées plus ou moins bonnes selon qu’elles se rapprochent ou s’éloignent de ce type de perfection.

De même que les prêtres commandent au nom du Dieu qu’ils expliquent, de même, les critiques jurés et assermentés, ou soit disant tels, se sont autorisés de cet idéal de perfection pour édicter des lois et juger les écrivains. Comment le connaissaient-ils, où l’avaient-ils vu? Eh! mon Dieu! Vous bien savez ce qu’on a dit: Si les nègres s’avisent jamais de peindre le bon Dieu, ils le feront tout noir à leur ressemblance. Ces Messieurs ont fabriqué leur idéal à l’image de leur éducation, de leur pensée, du milieu d’idées et de préventions dans lequel ils vivaient plongés pour l’heure. Tout ce qu’ils aimaient eux-même, tout ce qui était conforme à l’état de civilisation où l’on était parvenu de leur temps, ils l’ont attribué à leur grâce, un idéal d’une ressemblance très confortable, ils s’en sont servis comme d’un étalon pour mesurer toutes les œuvres présentes, passées et à venir.

Ils étaient bien sûrs de leur affaire. Ne s’appuyaient-ils pas sur quelque chose d’éternel et d’immuable, sur une des faces de Dieu?

Aussi faut-il voir de quel ton d’assurance ils rendaient leurs oracles. Ils y mettaient la raideur des grammairiens qui promulguent d’une voix tranchante: ne dites pas… dites… Personne ne s’est jamais avisé de demander à MM. Noël et Chapsal, ni à M. Poitevin en vertu de quelle autorité, ils mettaient Bossuet, Fénelon et Voltaire en pénitence. On a le droit de trancher lorsqu’on parle au nom de l’éternel, de l’immuable bon goût, dont les droits sont, comme on disait en 48, antérieurs et supérieurs.

Je ne me mêlerai point d’affirmer qu’il n’y a point de beau idéal ne d’archétype de perfection absolue. J’avoue tout simplement que je ne sais pas ce qu’on entend par là, que ce sont des questions hors de ma portée, auxquelles je ne comprends rien. Il peut se faire que dans les espaces sublunaires, il existe une forme suprême et marveilleusement accomplie du drame, et que nos chefs-d’œuvre n’en soient que de pâles contrefaçons; je laisse à ceux qui ont eu le bonheur de la contempler et que s’en disent tout éblouis, le soin et le plaisir d’en parler avec compétence.

Ce sont les théologiens de la critique. Ils partent d’une idée a priori et par voie de déduction, ils arrivent à tracer les règles immuables du beau. Sur ce terrain, ils sont inattaquables. Comment leur prouverai-je que leur beau n’est pas le vrai beau? On n’a aucun moyen, je ne dis pas de les convaincre, mais même de les atteindre.

Je me contente de faire, comme je puis, œuvre de science, car l’esthétique est une science véritable, et, comme toute science, elle ne repose que sure des faits bien observés.

Les règles ne servent pas de grand’chose pour bien juger, pas plus qu’elles ne sont utiles pour composer d’excellentes pièces. C’est tout au plus, si elles peuvent être employées comme indications ou point de repère. Au fond, ceux qui n’ont pas l’oreille juste n’aimeront jamais la musique et battront toujours la mesure à contre-temps, lorsqu’on en jouera devant eux. Le goût naturel, soutenu, épuré par l’education, la réflexion et l’habitude peut seul vous aider à jouir des œuvres d’art. La première condition pour avoir du plaisir c’est d’aimer, et l’on n’aime point par règle.

Une esthétique, telle que je l’entends, n’a donc, ni pour les écrivains ni pour les auditeurs, aucun but d’utilité pratique.

Mais n’est-ce pas l’honneur de la science de n’avoir, dans les études quelle poursuit, que des vues entièrement désintéressées, et n’est-ce pas justement pour cela qu’on l’appelle la science pure?

Quelle utilité pratique y a-t-il à savoir tant de choses auxquelles des hommes dévoués passent leur vie? Un jardinier met un oignon en terre, et l’oignon pousse. Son art à lui, c’est de choisir un terrain convenable et de l’arroser quand il fait sec. L’oignon donne sa fleur, il n’en veut ni n’en sait davantage.

Le savant arrive, il montre par de longues et patientes analyses quels éléments la plante a emprunté au sol, quels à l’air et quels à l’eau; par quel travail elle se les est appropriés et elle en a accru sa substance propre. Il distingue les parties dont elle se compose, les organes don’t elle est douée, cherche les fonctions de ces organes… A quoi tout cela sert-il? Au fond, il ne s’agit que d’avoir la fleur et de réjouir ses yeux; de se délecter en la respirant, si elle a du parfum. C’est là le but pratique et le reste n’est rien.

Et cependant c’est ce reste qui attire invinciblement la curiosité des hommes. Ils veulent savoir, pour le plaisir de savoir, ils ont la passion de la vérité pour elle-même; ils mettent d’autant plus d’ardeur à poursuivre ces spéculations qu’elles sont plus inutiles. Le soleil en continuerait-il moins d’envoyer ses rayons à la terre, parce que nous ne saurions pas à quelle distance il est de nous, quelle est la quantité de chaleur qu’il distribue sur notre globe, quls rapports il soutient avec les autres astres?

Il en va de même de la science qui nous occupe.

Les grands écrivains ne cesseront jamais de porter des chefs-d’œuvre comme les oignons de fournir des fleurs et le soleil de verser sa lumière. Jamais non plus, l’humanité ne cessera d’admirer ces créations de leur génie et d’en jouir sans demander pour cela, ni les uns ni les autres, conseils aux savants en ique.

La tâche de ces savants est autre.

L’esthétique, on ne saurait trop le répéter, car le préjugé est terrible et il a pour lui l’Université tout entière, qui chaque jour le nourrit de ses leçons, l’esthétique n’est pas chargée de faire pousser plus vite ou plus abondamment les chefs-d’œuvre pas plus qu’elle ne saurait les empêcher. Sa mission n’est pas même de les rendre plus agréables, et d’augmenter par là la somme de nos jouissances.

Elle s’enferme purement, uniquement, absolument dans l’étude des faits qu’elle analyse pour en tirer des lois. C’est la chimie appliquant ses procédés d’analyse à ces sortes d’êtres qu’on appelle des pièces de théâtre. Jamais un chimiste ne s’aviserait de dire, après avoir décomposé un corps et avoir noté la disposition des éléments par rapport les uns aux autres: C’est dommage que les chose soient ainsi: moi, je les aurais arrangées autrement. Elles seraient plus belles de cette façon. Il sortirait de ses attributions. Ce n’est pas là son affaire. Il n’a qu’à constater des faits et à les grouper.

L’esthéticien est un chimiste.

Il ne cherche pas en lui-même ni en Dieu, la cause ou la règle des phénomènes. Après avoir fait la part de cette force première dont le secret lui échappe, le génie, il étudie toutes les conditions du milieu où se sont produits en chefs-d’œuvre les éléments dont il se compose; il recommence en cent façons ces analyses et s’il trouve des faits qui se reproduisent toujours les mêmes, il les prend pour base de ses recherches ultérieures, il les rattache les uns aux autres, il en marque les relations nécessaires qui deviennent des lois.

Des lois scientifiques et non des règles de bien écrire et de bien juger, ce sont là deux ordres d’idées très différents, qu’au moment d’entamer ces études, je supplie les lecteurs de ne pas confondre.

26 juin 1876.

Beginning Sarcey

Starting today, I will be posting Francisque Sarcey's 'A Treatise on the Theater' both as translated and abridged by H. H. Hughes in 1916, and as contained in the collection of Sarcey's reviews and essays, ‘Quarante Ans de Théâtre: Feuilletons’ The original French I found online only in a pdf edition, page by page. I’ve transcribed it, and I hope I have caught all the errors in my transcription. The English I found via Google books in a pdf form, so I’ve had to transcribe that as well. Bilingual readers will note just how much Hughes cut and changed from Sarcey’s original (though it is possible that Sarcey collected the newspaper columns in book form, and in so doing changed them somewhat — in other words, Hughes may have been dealing with the Treatise in a different form than the only one I have been able to find. I may try my hand at translating the original Sarcey columns myself, if there is enough difference to warrant the attempt.