Part 3 (2/2)
In order to protect themselves against the encroachments of the Popes, and to resist the changes which they were incessantly striving to introduce into the discipline of the Church, the French bishops laid the foundations of Gallicanism, by declaring immutable all the canons promulgated by the early councils up to the eighth century which had pa.s.sed into the customs of the Church of France. The adoption of these canons was a very serious matter for the theatrical profession in France, for among them was that of the Council of Arles, already mentioned, which expressly excluded the actor from the Sacraments, so long as he followed his calling. However, it was clearly understood that the penalties p.r.o.nounced should not be applied to the regular actor, but only to mountebanks and other persons whose performances might serve to recall those of Paganism; and indeed down to the time of the Reformation, when the Catholic clergy, unwilling to show less austerity than those of the Reformed faith, began to proscribe severely all kinds of amus.e.m.e.nts, even these seem to have been treated with great indulgence.[34]
In 1624, the bigoted Jean de Gondy, Archbishop of Paris, declared in a pastoral letter that actors ought to be deprived of the Sacraments and ecclesiastical burial, and stigmatized their profession as ”infamous and one unworthy of a Christian.” Nevertheless, until the latter part of the seventeenth century, thanks in a great measure, no doubt, to the patronage bestowed on the stage by Richelieu and Mazarin, in practice the greatest tolerance prevailed, and the clergy accorded to the actor the same treatment as to all other good Catholics. Thus, on January 6, 1654, we find Moliere appearing as G.o.dfather at a church at Montpellier, and, in 1670 and again in 1672, discharging the same duty at churches in Paris, while his marriage, in February 1662, at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, was celebrated without the least difficulty being raised.
Strange as it may appear, it was the protection accorded the theatre, and the extreme indulgence shown to all connected with it, by a great party in the Church itself that was directly responsible for the termination of this happy state of affairs and the violent reaction, of which the conduct of Harlay de Chanvalon and the cure of Saint-Eustache towards Moliere was but the beginning.
For some time, the Jesuits seem to have regarded the theatre with disfavour; but towards the middle of the seventeenth century, perceiving that it might very readily be made to serve as a vehicle for the propagation of their own ideas, their att.i.tude changed, and they not only permitted all who came under their influence to attend the play, but even encouraged the pupils in their colleges to perform theological comedies, in which their enemies, the Jansenists, were held up to ridicule. This, naturally, had the effect of exasperating the zealots of Port-Royal and their numerous adherents, who, always hostile to the drama, quickly became bitterly antagonistic and required but very slight provocation to declare open war.
This provocation was not long in coming. In 1665, the clever but eccentric playwright Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, the author of _Les Visionnaires_, having pa.s.sed ”_a la devotion la plus outree_,” espoused the cause of the Jesuits, and, believing that he had received a call from Heaven to combat the heretics--that is to say, the Jansenists--made a violent attack upon them. The Jansenists replied by the pen of their famous publicist, Nicole, who stigmatized those who wrote for the theatre as ”public poisoners, not of bodies, but of souls.” Racine, believing his honour touched, joined in the fray and ridiculed the bigotry of Port-Royal. Nicole rejoined with a _Traite de la Comedie_, wherein, relying on the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, he condemned not only dramatic authors, but those who interpreted them.
”The playhouse,” said he, ”is a school of Vice. The profession of an actor is an employment unworthy of a Christian,” and much more to the same effect. Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, formerly a generous patron of the drama and of Moliere, but now, for some time past, a Jansenist of the most advanced type, published a similar work, and gave it as his opinion that a troupe of actors was ”a troupe of devils,” and to amuse oneself at the play was to ”delight the demon.” So the war went on.
The attacks of Nicole and the Prince de Conti were not without their effect; they aroused the zeal of all who disliked the theatre and believed it prejudicial to morality; and a regular campaign was organised. All unconsciously, Moliere himself forged a terrible weapon for the enemies of his profession. The production of _Tartuffe_ aroused a perfect storm of indignation among all sections of the clergy; Jesuit and Jansenist united in denouncing the play, its author, and his calling. A cure of Paris, one Pere Roulle, demanded that the writer, ”this demon clothed with flesh and habited as a man, the most notorious blasphemer and libertine that has appeared for centuries past, should be delivered to the flames, the forerunners of those of h.e.l.l;” Bourdaloue preached against it; Bossuet declared the works of the poet to be a tissue of buffooneries, blasphemies, infamies, and obscenities; and Hardouin de Perefixe, the then Archbishop of Paris, issued an order forbidding people ”to represent, read or hear _Tartuffe_ recited under pain of excommunication.”
All the old prejudices of the Church against the theatre awoke with redoubled force. All the old anathemas against the hapless actor, which had been allowed to slumber for centuries, were dug up by industrious theologians, and the clergy waited eagerly for opportunities of applying them. In 1671, Floridor, the famous tragedian of the Hotel de Bourgogne, fell dangerously ill and sent for the cure of Saint-Eustache to give him absolution. The cure flatly refused, save on condition that the actor would engage, in the event of his recovery, never again to set foot on the stage. Floridor gave the required promise; nevertheless, when he died, he was buried without ecclesiastical rites. Moliere himself, as we have just seen, was the next victim of priestly intolerance.
The funeral took place on February 21, at nine o'clock in the evening, in conformity with the orders of Chanvalon. By that hour, an immense crowd had gathered in front of the house, drawn thither, no doubt, merely by curiosity. Armande, however, ”unable to penetrate its intention,” became much alarmed, fearing that the enemies of her husband were organising a riot, and that some indignity to his remains was intended. She accordingly determined to endeavour to appease it, and going to a window, threw out handfuls of silver to the amount of one thousand livres, ”at the same time, imploring the a.s.sembled people to give their prayers to her husband, in terms so touching that there was not one among those persons who did not pray to G.o.d with all his heart.”
The body of Moliere was not taken into the church, but conveyed direct to the cemetery of Saint-Joseph; the coffin, covered by a large pall, being preceded by two priests and six _enfants bleus_ carrying lighted tapers in silver sconces, and followed by a considerable number of people, many of whom bore torches. Among the mourners were Boileau, La Fontaine, Chapelle, and the players of the Palais-Royal.
When the cortege reached the cemetery, which was situated in the Rue Montmartre, a long delay occurred, as the gate was closed and the keys had been forgotten. While awaiting their arrival, the mourners were able to read, by the light of the blazing torches, a placard posted on the wall, which bore the following verses:--
”Il est pa.s.se ce Moliere Du Theatre a la biere; Le pauvre homme a fait un faux bond; Et ce tant renomme bouffon N'a jamais su si bien faire Le _Malade imaginaire_ Qu'il a fait la mort pour tout de bon.”
At last, the keys arrived, and the ceremony was concluded without further incident. Moliere was interred in the middle of the cemetery, at the foot of the cross. Not a word was spoken over his grave.[35]
Above the last resting-place of her husband Armande placed a large tombstone, which was still to be seen in 1745, when the brothers Parfaict published their _Histoire du Theatre Francais_. ”This stone,”
writes t.i.ton du Tillet, ”is cracked down the middle, which was occasioned by a very n.o.ble and very remarkable action on the part of his widow. Two or three years after Moliere's death, there was a very severe winter, and she ordered to be conveyed to the cemetery a hundred loads of wood, which were burned on her husband's tomb, to warm all the poor of the quarter; the great heat of the fire caused this stone to crack in two.”
It is, as we have said elsewhere, an exceedingly difficult task to arrive at a definite conclusion in regard to the conduct of Armande.
That she was the abandoned woman that the _Fameuse Comedienne_ and the writers who follow it have depicted her we entirely decline to believe.
If she had been, is it conceivable that Moliere would have lived with her so long, or that, once having broken with her, he would ever have been brought to consent to a reconciliation? On the other hand, to pretend that she was an irreproachable wife seems as hazardous as to affirm her misconduct. There is no smoke without fire, and the separation between her and her husband--a separation lasting for five years--is a highly suspicious circ.u.mstance. Its immediate cause may, of course, have been merely incompatibility of temper--for the account of the matter given by the _Fameuse Comedienne_ is utterly unreliable--but, at the same time, it may very well have been occasioned by a far graver reason. On the whole, the wisest course would appear to be to adopt a middle position, and, while refusing to accept the statements of her detractors, to be equally diffident about a.s.sociating ourselves with the somewhat violent reaction in the lady's favour which has set in within recent years.
Whatever may have been Armande's sins or shortcomings, however, we should, in justice to her, remember that the responsibility for Moliere's unhappiness did not rest entirely with her. If she was selfish, vain, and frivolous, greedy for pleasure, and impatient of contradiction, Moliere possessed the nervousness and irritability so frequently a.s.sociated with genius in a very marked degree, and which, in his case, were aggravated by ill-health and overwork. The servant of a public ever exacting and eager for novelties, the strain to which he was subjected, always very great, must, at times, have been well-nigh unbearable; for we must remember that he was not only a dramatist, but an actor, not only an actor, but a manager. The financial affairs of the troupe, it is true, were in the capable hands of La Grange; but Moliere made himself responsible for its efficiency, and though the _Impromptu de Versailles_ no doubt conveys an exaggerated idea of his difficulties in this direction, they were probably considerable. The jealousy between the two princ.i.p.al actresses, Armande and Mlle. de Brie, must have been alone a fruitful source of trouble. In these circ.u.mstances, it is not difficult to understand that the little trials of domestic life, which in the majority of men arouse but a pa.s.sing feeling of annoyance, should have presented themselves to him as intolerable vexations, and that the sudden gusts of pa.s.sion in which, we are told, he was wont to indulge on the most trifling provocation, should have widened the breach between himself and Armande, whose narrow mind was incapable of comprehending that in such outbursts men of her husband's temperament oft-times seek relief for long weeks of mental strain and anxiety. Add to all this the fact that Moliere was of an excessively jealous disposition, and it becomes obvious that the marriage was doomed to failure from the very first; in fact, the only thing to occasion surprise is that the inevitable rupture did not take place at a much earlier date, and that it was ever healed.
Moliere, as we have seen, had been buried on February 21, and three days later the theatre of the Palais-Royal reopened with a performance of the _Misanthrope_, Armande playing Celimene. Her conduct in thus resuming her place in the company so soon after her husband's death was commented upon very unfavourably;[36] but it would appear to have been dictated by stern necessity. In the face of the formidable compet.i.tion of the Hotel de Bourgogne, the troupe of Moliere, already terribly weakened by the death of its chief, could not possibly have afforded to lose its leading actress for even a brief period; and Armande, therefore, decided to sacrifice her own feelings to the interests of her colleagues.
Indeed, as matters stood, the continued existence of the ”Comediens du Roi” as a separate company was soon in imminent peril. During the Easter recess, the Hotel de Bourgogne intrigued vigorously against them, with the result that four of the best players, with Baron at their head, resigned their places and pa.s.sed over to the older theatre; while, shortly afterwards, Lulli obtained the king's permission to make the theatre of the Palais-Royal the home of French opera, and the unfortunate _Molieristes_ found themselves without a stage to act upon.
This was a crus.h.i.+ng blow; and when, very reluctantly, the troupe had made overtures to their old rivals in the Rue Mauconseil, with a view to an amalgamation, and had been met by a curt refusal, the position seemed almost desperate.
Well indeed was it for Armande and her colleagues that they numbered among them, in the person of La Grange, one of the shrewdest and most capable men of business who ever trod the boards of a theatre. Born, about 1640, at Amiens, of respectable Picard stock, La Grange, after two or three years' experience in the provinces as a strolling player, joined his fortunes to those of Moliere; and, in May 1659, on the death of Joseph Bejart, stepped into his shoes as the _jeune premier_ of the troupe. As an actor, he appears to have been altogether admirable, the type of the perfect lover, as understood in those days, and, according to the anonymous author of the _Entretiens galants_, to see him play with Armande in such a piece as the _Malade imaginaire_ was a sight not easily forgotten: ”Their acting continues still, even when their part is concluded; they are never useless on the stage; they play almost as well when they listen as when they speak. Their glances are never wasted; their eyes do not wander round the boxes; they know that the theatre is full, but they speak and act as if they see only those who are concerned in their role and action.”
But, excellent actor as was La Grange, he was even better as an ”orator”[37] and manager, posts which, at the time of Moliere's death, he had occupied for some six years; and there can be no doubt that much of the success which had attended the troupe was due to his skill in gauging the public taste, his untiring energy, and his personal popularity. To him, too, we owe that wonderful _Registre_, a perfect mine of accurate and detailed information about the doings of Moliere's troupe, the Hotel Guenegaud, and the early years of the Comedie-Francaise; while it was under his auspices that the first complete edition of his old chief's works was given to the world.
On the advice of La Grange, Armande now resolved on a bold stroke. Some years before, a play-loving n.o.bleman, the Marquis de Sourdeac, had built a theatre in a tennis-court in the Rue Mazarine, near the Luxembourg, where opera had been performed, until, in March 1672, the intriguing Lulli had succeeded in securing for himself the exclusive right of representing musical pieces. It was a fine house, fitted up with every convenience, ”with a stage,” says Samuel Chappuzeau, in his work on the Paris theatres of the time, ”large enough to allow the most elaborate machinery to be worked.” La Grange proposed that the troupe should acquire this theatre, and himself undertook the negotiations, which resulted in the Marquis de Sourdeac and his partner, a M. de Champeron, ceding to Armande their lease of the property for the sum of 30,000 livres, of which 14,000 was to be paid in cash and the balance by fifty livres on each performance given there.
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