©Copyright 2012 Jessica N. Kamin Playwrights on the Threshold Between Stage and Study: paratexts and polemical texts in seventeenth century French theater Jessica N. Kamin A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2012 Reading Committee: Dr. Geoffrey Turnovsky, Chair Dr. Douglas Collins Dr. Mary O’Neil Program Authorized to Offer Degree: French and Italian Studies University of Washington Abstract Playwrights on the Threshold Between Stage and Study: paratexts and polemical texts in seventeenth century French theater Jessica N. Kamin Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Geoffrey Turnovsky French and Italian Studies The seventeenth century in France was a golden age of “Neoclassical” theater, where the Dramatic Poem was subject to a two-step reception by its publics for judgment as both performance and print. While scholars have explored the rapport of theater to its abstract public, and of plays to stage and page, the articulation of a hierarchy of judgment by the public in terms of spectators and readers has remained largely underappreciated. This dissertation analyses the treatment of the Dramatic Poem’s judgment in the Theater and Study as seen in the paratextual and polemical spaces where playwrights communicate directly with their public. Based on prefaces, dedications, and related materials from over 210 plays by 70 authors from 1630 to 1680, the analysis begins by re-reading the famous Quarrel of the Cid. In Chapter 1, I demonstrate that Corneille departed in his management of the Cid's publication from the norms of civility of a two-step reception of his work in the Theater and in the Study, elevating spectator approval in a way that invited critique from learned readers who associated legitimate judgment with Neoclassical rules in the Study. In Chapter 2, I show that Molière—l'homme de théâtre— chose to print his theater pieces, thus opening himself to the judgment of readers and evaluations by dramaturgical rules, but using his theatrical persona and blurring of boundaries between conventions of stage and page to distraire—to distract his public through entertainment—from the role of readers as judges of his work. In Chapter 3, I show that tragic authors such as Jean Racine were working under different constraints and precedents in the relationship of their work to Stage and Study. After comparing tragedy and comedy and analyzing paratexts to tragedies from the 1640s to 1660s, I offer an interpretation of Racine's choice to re-write several prefaces to his most famous plays. Taken together, these three chapters reveal a dynamic legacy of the Querelle du Cid in the way that poets and publics perceive of the Dramatic Poem and its judgment in both the Theater by spectators and the Study by readers. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................................ ii Introduction..................................................................................................................... 1 Theater performance and publication in the age of the Querelle du Cid ........ 5 Richelieu’s influence on the theater ................................................................ 11 Stage and Study: the stakes of the Querelle du Cid ....................................... 15 Public and Publication .................................................................................... 16 Materials and Methods ................................................................................... 20 Overview of chapters ..................................................................................... 23 Chapter 1: Theater and Study in the Querelle du Cid .................................................... 26 Contemporary paratexts: two-step reception in the Theater and Study ......... 27 Publishing the Cid: Corneille’s break with the civilities of Stage and Study.. 38 Stage and Study in La Querelle du Cid .......................................................... 44 Spectator judgment in question ...................................................................... 46 Hierarchies of judgment ................................................................................. 56 Relocating critiques from the Theater to the Study ........................................ 60 The Verdict of the Expert: interventions by the Académie Française and Guez de Balzac ............................................................................................... 66 Paratexts in tension: the aftermath of the Quarrel .......................................... 69 Chapter 2: Blurring the Boundaries between Stage and Study: Molière’s paratexts 75 from 1660-1673 ............................................................................................................. Molière in Print: phases of publication .......................................................... 76 Précieuses and Pirates: stealing the écrivain out of the Theater .................... 79 Molière’s difference: blurring the boundaries of Stage and Study ................ 92 Turning rhetoric to reality: The Quarrel of L’Ecole des femmes ................... 100 “On sçait bien que les Comedies ne sont faites que pour estre joüées”: paratexts from 1666 to 1673 ....……………………………………............... 114 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 125 Chapter 3: Genre and paratext: transitioning Racine's tragedies from Stage to Page .... 127 Part One: Tragedy’s constraints and precedents ............................................ 128 The mirror function of comedy and tragedy .................................................. 132 Genre and the limits of reflexive representation ............................................ 136 Tragedy’s precedents in paratexts from the 1640s to early 1660s ................. 139 Page to Stage to Page .................................................................................... 151 Part Two: Racine’s paratexts: re-educating a problematic public ................. 153 Original Paratexts .......................................................................................... 155 Anti-models of spectatorship: sense and sensibility ...................................... 159 Revised prefaces ............................................................................................ 171 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 179 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 181 Summary of chapters ..................................................................................... 181 Legacy of the Querelle du Cid on the ‘neoclassical’ public .......................... 183 Legacy of the Querelle du Cid on theater and the rise of opera .................... 185 Recommendations for future study ................................................................ 187 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 190 i LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure A. Bosse, Abraham. La Galérie du Palais ....................................................... 215 Figure B. Frontispiece to Le Véritable Coriolan .......................................................... 216 Figure C Chronology of the Querelle du Cid ............................................................... 217 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to offer my sincere thanks for the support I received as the Alvord Fellow in the Humanities for 2010-2011 through the generosity of Mrs. Nancy Alvord and the late Dr. Ellsworth Alvord. In addition, I thank the Simpson Center Society of Fellows 2010-2011 as well as colleagues at the SSCFS/NASSCFL 2011 joint conference in London for the stimulating, cross- disciplinary conversations that helped advance my research that year. Many thanks to Geoff Turnovsky for his insightful reading and constructive criticisms of my work-in-progress. Finally, I offer the deepest gratitude to my husband, Mark Kamin, whose loving support has nurtured my body and soul, challenged my perceived limitations, and celebrated every small victory along the way. iii 1 Introduction "...cette Tragicomedie aura l'approbation qu'elle merite, et qui se doit attendre en semblables Pieces, du Jugement qu'on en peut faire sur le papier, plutôt que de l'applaudissement du Theatre" Les Cinq Auteurs, l’Aveugle de Smyrne (1638) "J'en laisse le jugement aux habiles des-interessez qui l'ont veu representer [sic], et te conseille, LECTEUR, de suspendre le tien, jusques à ce que tu l'ayes ouy par la bouche des originaux. Les Comediens y donnent des graces que tu ne sçaurois t'imaginer en le lisant, de sorte que ceux qui luy font visite dans l'Hostel de Bourgogne, l'estimeront tousjours d'avantage que les autres qui ne le cognoistront que par la lecture" Le Vert, Le docteur amoureux (1638) In the heat of the famous Querelle du Cid, these two very different prefatory remarks accompany printed plays into readers’ hands. Both appear in 1638, the year that Jean Chapelain's Sentiments de l'Académie Française sur la tragi-comédie du Cid hit the press as an official response in a chain of publications sparked by Pierre Corneille's successful play and George de Scudéry's critical Observations in 1637. Both prefaces speak of the play in two forms—as