Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 10

TIe WeII-Made FIa oJ Eugne ScviIe

AulIov|s) BougIas CavdveII


Souvce TIe FvencI Beviev, VoI. 56, No. 6 |Ma, 1983), pp. 876-884
FuIIisIed I American Association of Teachers of French
SlaIIe UBL http://www.jstor.org/stable/392365 .
Accessed 14/02/2011 2248
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=french. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
American Association of Teachers of French is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The French Review.
http://www.jstor.org
THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. LVI, No. 6, May
1983 Printed in U.S.A.
The Well-Made
Play
of
Eugene
Scribe
by Douglas
Cardwell
EUGENE SCRIBE HAS LONG BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED as the
developer,
or
inventor,
of what
is
commonly
called the well-made
play,
and there is an abundance of literature
on
translations, adaptations,
and imitations of his works as well as
general
agreement
on the
importance
of his influence on both French and
foreign
playwrights
well into this
century.
The reaction
against
his
plays-which began
during
his lifetime and continues
today
in the revolt
against
the
"bourgeois"
theater that he
typifies
for
many,
and of which he is indeed a
primary
source-
serves as additional
proof
of his
importance
in the
history
of theater and of the
power
of the forces he
organized
and
directed,
as does also the
viewing
of
many
current films and television
programs,
which bear his
stamp
as clearly as do the
plays
of
Augier, Feydeau, Ibsen,
or Shaw.
The essence of that
power,
the nature of that
stamp, however,
have
generally
defied
definition;
his admirers have had as little success as his detractors. Both
groups
have tended to
emphasize
his technical
skill, usually
without
explaining
it
and without
considering
other factors that
might
have contributed to his success.
Alexandre Dumas fils dismissed him as a
"prestidigitateur
de
premiere
force,"'
while others commented on the absence of
style
and character
development,
but
these
typical generalities
fail to answer
satisfactorily
the
question
raised so often
and so
despairingly by Theophile
Gautier:
Comment se fait-il
qu'un
auteur denue de
po6sie,
de
lyrisme,
de
style,
de
philosophie,
de
verite,
de naturel, puisse
etre devenu l'ecrivain
dramatique
le
plus
en
vogue
d'une
epoque,
en
depit
de
l'opposition
des lettres et des
critiques?2
Gautier
correctly perceives
that Scribe's undeniable technical skills do not ade-
quately explain
his success but cannot do better than to blame the
philistine
audiences of the time who made Scribe the first Frenchman to
get
rich
by writing
plays
while
neglecting
the
playwrights
favored
by
the crimson-vested defender of
Hernani. Most critics have been kinder to the
audiences,
but not to
Scribe,
and
they
have continued to refer to technical skill,
theatrical
tricks,
a basic structure,
a
formula,
which would define the well-made
play
and
explain
its success.
The most recent and most elaborate
attempt
to reduce the well-made
play
to a
formula comes from
Stephen
S.
Stanton,
who claims that "True
examples
of such
Theatre
complet (Paris: Michel-Levy, 1868), III, 206.
2
Histoire de I'art dramatique
en France
depuis vingt-cinq
ans
(Paris: Magnin, Blanchard, 1859), II,
234.
876
THE WELL-MADE PLAY OF EUGENE SCRIBE
drama
display
seven structural features," which he lists.3 The list is
apparently
based on a small number of Scribe's
plays, especially
Le Verre d'eau, which is
included in his
anthology.
While one
might
use the
phrase
"true
examples"
to
imply
that
any
Scribe
play
that fails to exhibit the listed features is not "well-
made," it is not
logical
to
suppose that, having
found a formula for success, Scribe
used it
only
a few times and
ignored
or abandoned it in the remainder of his
plays. Surely any attempt
to define the well-made
play
as
exemplified by
Scribe
must take into account the
thirty-five plays
included in the series Comedies-
Drames
by
the editors of the
only complete
edition of his works.4 Stanton's list is
at the same time too
specific
and too
general:
too
specific,
because it excludes
many
of those
plays;
too
general,
because one could follow it to the letter and still
not
produce
a well-made
play.
A few
adjustments
will not solve the
problem,
for
the
difficulty
lies not
simply
in
finding
a more accurate
formula,
but in the fact
that
accuracy
is
incompatible
with the
brevity
of a formula. The most remarkable
feature of these
plays,
when viewed
collectively,
is their
variety.
The lowest
common denominator is
just
not low
enough
to be of much use. Thus the search
for a formula that will
explain
the structure of the well-made
play
is doomed to
failure. There is no
general
structure that is common to all such
plays.
One
can,
however,
describe common
practices
and tendencies in order to understand better
the
meaning
of that term as it
applies
to Scribe. The
emphasis
will be on the
typical
rather than on the
exceptional,
but the fundamental fact remains that the
range
of
possibilities
is too broad for the
description
to serve as a
prescription.
It
takes more than the
application
of rules to construct a well-made
play.
Scribe's works include several
types
of
play.
Not
only
are there the
expected
comedies with various themes and
settings-social, historical, political-but also
a
play
that
anticipates
the
piece a these
(La Calomnie)
and a serious drama
(Adrienne Lecouvreur).
Dix ans de la vie d'une femme is a
pre-naturalist play that
traces in dismal detail the decline and death of a woman who falls under the
influence of the
wrong friends, and there is even a melodrama
(Les Freres
invisibles).
It is
certainly
not
possible
to
deny
the
flexibility and
variety
of the
well-made
play.
For the
exposition there are some
clearly defined
principles. It must be
complete,
not in the sense that
every
detail about previous events that is to be included in
the
play
must be in the
exposition, but rather that there must be at least an
allusion to
every event, though
the details
may
be filled in later if it suits the
purposes
of the
playwright.
The
exposition must not
precede all the action, but be
mixed in with the first
part
of it. The
play begins
with an event that
precipitates
a crisis in an
already unstable situation, which arouses the interest and
curiosity
of the audience and
gives more life and
energy to the
exposition. Often an action
illustrates the
exposition: when an
unexpected visitor shows
up for breakfast in
the first act of Les Trois
Maupin,
the
tip he gives the "servant" is used to
buy the
groceries needed to feed him, thus
graphically demonstrating the
previously-
mentioned
poverty
of the
family. Scribe avoided
monologues and
dialogues in
3
Introduction to Camille and Other Plays (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957), pp. xii-xiii.
4
CEuvres completes d'
Eugene Scribe, 76 vols. (Paris: E. Dentu, 1874-1885), Vols. I-IX.
877
which the characters
exchange
information
already
known to both of them in
favor of scenes that seem more natural and that often
help
to advance the action.
The "dilution" of the
exposition
with action
obviously prolongs it,
and in the
longer plays,
which
require
a
great
deal of
exposition,
it is not unusual for it to
extend into the
beginning
of the second act.
Generally
it is
spread
over the first
quarter
of the
play.
The action of the well-made
play
is made
up
of
attempts
to overcome a series
of
obstacles, culminating
in the major obstacle that will hold
up
until the
denouement. Obstacles can be of
any type, though they very
often have to do
with communication-either
achieving
it or
preventing
it. There must be several
obstacles in each
play,
and
they
must be
arranged
in
ascending
order of
difficulty,
except
that a
major
obstacle
may
have satellite lesser obstacles that serve to make
it more
imposing,
in which case it is the total
weight
of the
problems
a
protagonist
faces that increases as the
play progresses
as much as the
weight
of the individual
problems.
The reversals associated with each obstacle
usually
come in
pairs,
the
first favorable and the second
unfavorable,
so that the hero's difficulties afford
only
brief
respites
before the final
victory.
Often the action includes a near-
solution
(in
some cases one that would result in an
unsatisfactory denouement)
to
add excitement and
suspense
as well as to
prepare
the real solution. The action
also includes situations,
known as scenes a
faire,
that the audience
longs
for but
regards
as
uncertain,
or dreads but believes to be unavoidable.
They usually
involve a direct confrontation between
protagonist
and
antagonist,
or their
rep-
resentatives,
from which one will
emerge
the victor
(at
least
provisionally).
The
scene a faire
generally
comes
fairly
late in the action and
points
the
way
to the
denouement. There are
usually secondary
scenes a faire as
well;
sometimes one
becomes
part
of the
denouement,
as does the threatened scene a faire that is
avoided at the last minute to save the
happy ending. Though
the
antagonist may
get
his
just
desserts in some other
fashion,
the scene
usually depends upon
the
decisive communication of a
key piece
of
information,
or
upon
its
prevention.
The scene is
carefully prepared, highly
dramatic, and, despite
its structural
importance, designed primarily
for the emotional satisfaction of the audience.
In its broadest formulation,
the structure of a Scribe
play usually
centers around
a
single
character whose decisions and actions
vitally
affect the fates of the other
characters. In
many
of the
plays
a decision is made and then
changed
several
times,
with
appropriate
reactions
by
the other characters,
before the final curtain.
The action
swings
back and forth without
making any
real
progress
until the end.
In another
group
of
plays,
the action is
linear,
with
steady progression
from
beginning
to end. In Reves d'amour,
for
example,
Jeanne
flees from Henri
throughout
the
play,
while Henri overcomes obstacle after obstacle before
finally
catching
her in the last scene. And in Dix ans de la vie d'une femme, the morals
and situation of the title character
go
down
steadily
from
beginning
to end,
with
only
the most
illusory upswings.
Scribe's basic dramatic device is the
quiproquo.
There are
usually
several in
one
play;
one
may
be the basis for the main
action,
but this is not
always
the case
(in
Les Contes de la reine de
Navarre,
for
example,
there is a succession of
878 FRENCH REVIEW
THE WELL-MADE PLAY OF EUGENE SCRIBE
quiproquos,
as
Marguerite
tries one scheme after another to
try
to free her
brother). Usually
the
misunderstanding
is an
accident,
often without the knowl-
edge
of
any
of the
parties
to
it,
but sometimes it is induced with intent to
deceive,
and often
exploited.
The use of the
quiproquo
is
part
of a broader
pattern
in
which the revelation or continued concealment of a
secret,
the
receipt
of certain
information
by
the correct
person,
or the
prevention
of its
discovery by
the
wrong
person
is essential to the
proper
outcome of the action. Various bits of information
may,
in the course of the
play,
be
communicated, withheld, distorted, falsified, or
invented, causing
the
many ups
and downs in the action. One visible indication
of the
importance
of communication in Scribe's
plays
is the constant use of letters
and various documents and
papers. (Over
one-fourth of all scenes involve some
form of
paper stage property,
and
only
eleven of the one hundred
thirty-three
acts have no such
scene.)
The secret or
quiproquo
is
usually
made obvious to the
spectator
from the
beginning,
or at least
early,
but not
always (in
Oscar the
audience must wait until the end of the
play
to learn the true
identity
of the
woman with whom Oscar had a
rendezvous,
after two other candidates are
implicated,
then
cleared).
In this Scribe follows the
policy
that he
reportedly
claimed to be the secret of his art. Octave
Feuillet,
in the
speech
he
gave
when
taking
Scribe's seat at the Academie
Fran:aise, quotes
him as
saying:
Le
publique
m'aime
parce que j'ai
soin de le mettre
toujours
dans ma
confiance;
il est dans le secret de la
comedie;
il a dans les mains les fils
qui
font
jouer
mes
personnages;
il connait les
surprises que je
leur
menage,
et il croit les leur
menager
lui-meme; bref, je
le
prends pour collaborateur;
il
s'imagine qu'il
a fait la
piece
avec
moi,
et naturellement il
'applaudit.5
He
may
indeed have done this for the reason he
states,
but there is also more
potential
for drama and
suspense
when the audience knows the secret than when
it does
not,
for then it is
constantly
aware of what is at stake.
Nevertheless,
this
does not
prevent
Scribe from
springing
a few
surprises
on the audience.
Each scene must make a definite contribution to the
development
of the action.
As could be
expected
in
plays
where communication is so
important,
the combi-
nation of characters to be found
onstage
at a
given
moment is determined
mainly
by
the
potential
for the transfer of information. Some bit of information received
or
imparted,
some act or failure to
act,
some decision or indecision marks
every
scene. A
very important part
of the structure of the well-made
play
is thus
determined
by
the
arrangement
of the entrances and exits of the characters and
the
onstage
combinations that result. The scenes are
usually tightly
linked
together,
as each
prepares
the
next;
the author must thus ensure that each
succeeding
scene has a combination of characters that will
permit
the action to
move forward
according
to
plan.
He
avoids, however,
certain
necessary
combi-
nations as
long
as
possible or,
even more
tantalizingly, permits
and then
interrupts
them, before
finally satisfying
the
carefully
cultivated desire of the audience to
witness the
expected
outcome. He must also avoid excessive and
increasingly
5
Academie
franSaise,
Recueil des
discours, rapports
et
pieces
diverses lus dans les seances
publiques
et
particulires
de l'Acad6mie
francaise, 1860-1869, Premiere Partie
(Paris:
Firmin
Didot, 1866), p.
69.
879
hard-to-justify
entrances and exits
by any
of the characters. In Scribe's
plays,
major
characters
average
at least three scenes
per appearance,
sometimes more
than
four-scarcely
a frenzied
pace. Though
there should be two or three
characters
onstage
most of the time in order to control the
spread
of information
properly,
more are needed here and there for the sake of
variety.
Often most or
all of the main characters are on
stage
for the last
scene,
for the
long-awaited
revelation of the facts that will make
possible
the
happy ending,
or that will
give
certain characters (and the
audience)
some anxious moments before the
danger
of
a fatal revelation is
dissipated,
often
by
means of the artful lie. At the end of Le
Verre
d'eau,
for
example,
disastrous scandal is averted when
Bolingbroke
asserts
that he has sent Masham to see his wife
Abigail
in the
queen's apartments.
In fact
Masham is not married and has come to see the
queen.
Typically,
one character will dominate each
act,
but the same
person
does not
dominate all the acts in a
play.
In Adrienne
Lecouvreur,
the dominant characters
are,
in
turn,
the
princess, Michonnet, Adrienne,
the
princess,
and Adrienne. This
domination is indicated
by
the fact that the character is
onstage through
most or
even all of the scenes of the
act,
but it is not
usually
limited to that constant
presence.
The character
may
be
actively seeking
to affect the outcome of the
action,
or
undergoing
successive shocks as others act for or
against him,
or
merely
looking
on as others
struggle
(as
a
prelude,
of
course,
to more direct action later
on).
The act
usually
ends on a definite shift in the fortunes of a main character
and often has as its
purpose
the
preparation
of that shift.
One of the most obvious areas of structural variation is in the
number, length,
importance,
and
relationship
to the main
plot
of the
sub-plots.
Most
plays
have
at least one
sub-plot,
and there
may
be as
many
as
seven, usually quite solidly
linked to the main
plot.
In Le Verre
d'eau,
for
example,
the
love-plot
of Masham
and
Abigail
and the
plot
of
Bolingbroke
to return to
power
become
interdependent
as the three characters work
together
to obtain their several ends. In other
plays,
the
sub-plot
is more
parallel
than
dependent
(in
Les Trois
Maupin
the rise of
Henri in
society
and in the
military,
due to the
protection
of amorous ladies at
court,
is
independent
of his sister's rise to fortune while
masquerading
as a famous
singer,
also at
Versailles, though
their
contemporaneous presence
there does lead
to some
exciting complications
in the
action).
The
importance
of the
sub-plot
varies from
negligible
to virtual
equality
with the main
plot.
Even
though
the
plots
generally
stretch from the first act to the
last, they
can start
anywhere
and end
anywhere. They
do have to
end,
for a stable situation must be established before
the final
curtain;
a
"lady
or the
tiger?" ending
is not
permitted
in a well-made
play.
The denouement must first of all be
swift,
often
taking place
in the last scene.
There are several
ways
of
bringing
about the final
reversal; by
whatever means,
it
usually
comes at the moment when all
hope
seems
lost,
when a solution seems
either
impossible
or too late to
prevent
the
catastrophe.
The reversal must be
unpredictable,
and much of the art of the well-made
play
lies in the
preparation
of its elements in such a
way
that the audience will not be able to
put
them
880 FRENCH REVIEW
THE WELL-MADE PLAY OF EUGENE SCRIBE
together
before the
right moment,
but will
quickly recognize
the
logic
of the
solution once it is
presented
to them.
While this
summary
of
general tendencies,
common
practices,
and even a few
rules offers a kind of
portrait
robot of Scribe's
plays,
the
many exceptions
and
variations
emphasize
their
irreducibility,
and the aesthetic choices
implied by
the
characteristics cited indicate that the well-made
play
as
developed by
Scribe is as
much a
philosophy
as it is a form. As Ferdinand Brunetiere
pointed
out, Scribe
practices
the theatrical
equivalent
of "l'art
pour l'art," treating
the theater as the
Parnassians treated
poetry.6
Unlike
them, however,
a
primary principle
of his
philosophy
is a concern for
pleasing
his
audience,
which he saw as the
general
public,
not an elite.
In the
speech
he delivered at his
reception
into the Acad6mie
FranSaise,
Scribe
expressed
a
part
of that
philosophy:
Vous courez au
theatre,
non
pour
vous instruire ou vous
corriger,
mais
pour
vous
distraire et vous divertir.
Or,
ce
qui
vous divertit le
mieux,
ce n'est
pas
la
v6rite,
c'est la fiction. Vous retracer ce
que
vous avez
chaque jour
sous les
yeux
n'est
pas
le
moyen
de vous
plaire:
mais ce
qui
ne se
presente point
a vous dans la vie
habituelle, l'extraordinaire,
le
romanesque,
voila ce
qui
vous
charme,
c'est la ce
qu'on s'empresse
de vous offrir.7
Scribe's own
plays
show that this statement cannot be
accepted literally,
but with
minor emendations it can be made to fit them with reasonable
accuracy.
It is
apparent
that he
sought
above all to entertain rather than to instruct or to correct
his
audience,
which
explains
in
large part
the reaction
against
him
by
Dumas fils
and the other writers of the
piece
a these.
Though
there is a lesson in most of his
plays,
it is treated
lightly
and with
good
humor
(La
Calomnie is the
exception
among plays
labeled
"com6die"),
so that the
spectator
has no sense of
being
preached
to. There are also no lessons that his audience would not
agree with,
at
least when
applied
to someone else. The
primacy
of entertainment is the root of
Scribe's
philosophy
of the
theater,
from which
grow
the
principles
that he
observed almost without
exception.
He himself indicated some of these
principles
in his
preface
to the Theatre de
J.-F. Bayard:
C'etait la
gaiete,
la
verve,
la
rapidite,
l'entrain
dramatique!
L'action une fois
engagee
ne
languissait pas!
Le
spectateur,
entraine et
pour
ainsi dire
emporte par
ce mouvement de la
scene, arrivait
joyeusement
et comme en chemin de
fer,
au
but
indique par l'auteur,
sans
qu'il
lui fiut
permis
de s'arreter
pour
reflechir ou
pour critiquer ....
Le faux et le
larmoyant
sont
faciles; c'est avec cela
que
l'on
fabrique
du drame!
voila
pourquoi
nous en
voyons
tant! La verite et la
gaiete
sont choses rares! La
comedie en est faite! voila
pourquoi
nous en
voyons
si
peu!
Peu d'auteurs ont
possede
a un
degre
aussi elev6 que lui, l'entente du
theatre,
la connaissance de la scene et toutes les ressources de l'art
dramatique! Sujet
6
"Scribe et Musset," Les
Epoques
du theatre francais
(1636-1850) (Conferences
de
1'Odeon) (Paris:
Calmann-Levy, 1899), p.
353.
7
Acad6mie
francaise, Recueil des
discours, 1830-1839
(Paris:
Firmin
Didot, 1841), p. 325.
881
presente
et
developp6
avec
adresse,
action serr6e et
rapide, p6ripeties soudaines,
obstacles crees et franchis avec
bonheur, d6nouiment
inattendu, quoique
savam-
ment
prepar6,
tout ce
que l'exp6rience
et 1'etude
peuvent
donner venait en aide
chez lui a ce
qui
vient de Dieu seul et de la
nature, l'inspiration, l'esprit,
la verve
et cette
qualit6
la
plus
rare de toutes au theatre:
l'imagination, qui
invente sans
cesse du nouveau ou
qui
cree
encore,
meme en imitant.8
Scribe was
talking
about
Bayard,
but the
qualities
he
picks
out and the values he
reveals in
expressing
them
represent
as much a
portrait
of himself as a
description
of his
colleague
and collaborator. The first
paragraph expresses
the
goal;
the last
indicates the means. Both are
exemplified by
Scribe's
plays.
The reference to truth
apparently
contradicts the insistence on fiction in the
passage
cited
earlier,
but a careful
reading
of his
plays clearly
reveals that it is a
certain combination of truth and fiction that is intended. Scribe's
concept
of truth
is related to audience
acceptance,
or
plausibility,
a concern of most
playwrights,
but a
special problem
for
Scribe,
with his
emphasis
on the
fictional,
the extraor-
dinary,
and thus
upon plot
and the maintenance of
suspense.
This
required
characters that the audience can
identify
with and care about
and,
even more
important,
a basic situation and events that
develop
it and that are
interesting.
This means that
they
must be
uncommon,
for as Scribe
pointed
out in the
passage
quoted above,
what one sees
every day
is not
entertaining;
but at the same time
they
must not be
impossible,
for then the
spectator
ceases to believe and loses
interest. The same result follows a
too-great
consciousness of the fact that the
playwright
is in
complete control,
which can be caused
by
events that are too
predictable
or too
capricious.
The
response
to the
danger
of
predictability
leads
Pierre Voltz to
begin
his definition of the
"piece
bien faite"
by calling
it "une
piece
oi la
part
du hasard reste
grande, puisque
les 6evnements
passent
au
premier plan
et doivent faire naitre l'int6ret
par
leur
imprevu."9
The other extreme
is avoided
by
the careful
preparation
that
precedes
the coincidences and other
apparent
interventions of
chance,
so that the audience
accepts
them as
perfectly
justified
or even natural. Indeed it could be
argued
that the
primary
and most
consistent characteristic of the well-made
play
is the
thoroughness
with which
every action, every event,
even
every
entrance and exit is
prepared, explained,
justified.
Another
part
of the solution is to imbue the fictions with an aura of
reality,
a
process
that leads Scribe to introduce a new
degree
of realism in the theater,
and
some
critics,
at
least,
have seen a definite resemblance between the world he
portrays
and
contemporary
France. Stendhal
praises
him for
being
"le seul homme
de ce siecle
qui
ait eu l'audace de
peindre,
en
esquisse
il est
vrai,
les moeurs
qu'il
rencontre dans le monde."'0 The
characters,
the
setting,
the
problems
are all taken
(except
in his historical
plays,
and some would
say
even in
them)
from the
society
of his time. It is
only
the
plot
and certain situations that are
manifestly fictional,
8
Theatre de Jean-Francois Bayard precede
d'une notice
par
M.
Eugene
Scribe
(Paris: Hachette,
1855), I, vi, vii-viii.
9
La Comedie
(Paris:
Armand Colin, 1964), p.
136.
'o Memoires d'un touriste
(Paris:
Honor6
Champion, 1932), I,
449.
882
FRENCH REVIEW
THE WELL-MADE PLAY OF EUGENE SCRIBE
and it is
only
there that one finds
any
substantial amount of
"l'extraordinaire, le
romanesque"
of which Scribe
spoke.
Real life is not
quite
so full of
happy endings,
of
coincidences,
of elections-as Stendhal noted in the
sequence
of the
passage
quoted
above-that are made in
twenty-four hours,
and not
quite
so
many
millions
belong
to unattached heiresses or handsome
young
men. The structure
of Scribe's
plays
is thus
totally
artificial-while it
may
be flexible to fit the
individual
situation,
it is still a kind of
abstraction, imposed
from the outset and
designed
to meet dramatic needs rather than to
duplicate
"real life." To hide this
artificial
skeleton,
in addition to the measures described above and
generally
the
suspense-building
devices of which he makes such skillful
use,
he fleshes out his
plays
with
many
details chosen from
reality; hence,
the use of
contemporary
manners, life-style,
and
surroundings
and the
presence
and
especially
the
manip-
ulation of an abundance of
stage properties,
which
are,
to all
appearances, real,
and whose
significance
in the action and
variety
of uses
represent
an
important
innovation in
stagecraft.
Even his much-criticized
style, by corresponding closely
to the actual
spoken language
of the
day,
is
part
of the
reality
he transfers to the
stage
to
help
maintain the
plausibility
of his
plots
and thus to
permit
him to hold
the interest of the
spectator.
To hold the interest of the
spectator requires,
of
course,
more than
plausibility,
and the
study
of Scribe's statements and
plays
shows us how he chose to
go
about
it. He offered his audience involvement and excitement while
they
were in the
theater and a sense of satisfaction to savor on the
way
home. Since audiences
always
love
romance, every play
has a love interest. Sometimes it is
primary,
but
often it
supports, by eliciting greater
audience
sympathy
and involvement, a main
plot
that carries a social or moral
message,
or even, in a few
plays, political
commentary (Bertrand
et
Raton, L'Ambitieux).
He avoided ideas, events, or
characters that would shock or
displease
and
sought
those with which the audience
could most
easily identify.
In
part
because of that identification and also
perhaps
due to an innate
gentleness
and
"gaiete,"
the comic elements in his
plays arise
from situation or
language
rather than from serious character flaws or farcical
action. He enlivened his
plays
with a wide
variety
of characters, with
amusing
as
well as admirable
traits, but seldom is a character
subject to ridicule. There are
few real
villains,
and
punishments
for misdeeds are seldom cruel. The
problems
are
real,
or at least
realistic, but the solutions are
simpler
than in real life, less
painful,
for the
purpose
is to distract the
spectator from his
problems, not to force
him to confront them. The
plot
takes
precedence over the
message, and also over
character
development,
a choice
deplored by critics but
apparently not
regretted
by
audiences. Scribe
kept
them
concentrating
on the action, wondering how the
play
would end and how it would
get there. He
appreciated the visual as well as
the verbal nature of
drama, as can be seen in his
emphasis on sets, on movements
and
stage business, and
especially
on the
multiplicity of
stage properties. His
expositions
are
thorough,
so that the action will be
easy to follow and the
motivations of the characters clear. He made the audience
privy to most of the
secrets,
so that
they
would have a
feeling
of
complicity with the author, but
reserved some
ingenious surprises,
to avoid the boredom that would result from
883
excessive
predictability.
The final
surprise,
of
course,
is the manner of
producing
the reversal that
precipitates
the denouement
that,
in addition to
being logical
and
credible,
is
complete,
with no loose ends left
dangling.
It is also the
ending
the
audience has come to
desire, including
the achievement of
justice
and the
marriage
of the two-or four-most
sympathetic young people (exceptions:
Adrienne
Lecouvreur and the
atypical
melodrama Les Freres
invisibles,
which end in murder
and
suicide, respectively).
Coincidences are
frequent-often
to
simplify
and
expedite
the
development
of the
plot-but plausibly justified.
Scribe
scrupulously,
even
ruthlessly,
eliminated non-essentials so that
nothing
slows down the action
or diverts attention from it and
exploited fully
the dramatic
potential
of each
situation and action. This extreme dramatic
efficiency
results in the use of the
fewest
possible
characters: in a
complex plot, they
will often
play multiple
roles.
Masham,
for
example,
is the lover of
Abigail,
the
object
of the
rivalry
between the
queen
and the
duchess,
and the killer
(in
a
duel)
of
Bolingbroke's
cousin
(Le
Verre
d'eau).
If these
principles
seem familiar-and
they
should-that is a measure of Scribe's
success
through
the
years,
for
they
do not
permit
us to
distinguish
him from
many
of his
successors,
but
they
do differentiate him from his
predecessors; though
some followed a few of these
principles,
none
adopted
them
all,
and the new
combination reveals his
originality,
as does his
ability
to use
appropriately
and
imaginatively
all the
techniques,
all the tricks and devices available to the
playwright, impressive
in their
variety
and their
complexity. Attempts
to reduce
them to common factors
only
serve to
emphasize this,
as can be seen in the case
of Michael
Kaufmann,11
whose
long
list of
devices, situations,
and actions that are
repeated
in Scribe's
plays
includes
scarcely any
items
repeated
more than a few
times;
and when one looks at the
examples
listed and at their
contexts,
it becomes
apparent
that the
general circumstances,
the
significance,
the
importance,
the
types
of characters involved,
and often even the effect are so different that the
various instances can be said to be
repetitions only
in the most
superficial
sense.
Thus in the end Kaufmann
brings
new evidence of Scribe's
ability
to renew
constantly
the means at his
disposal.
He did not invent new
ones,
but as Gustave
Larroumet
said,
"des ses
premi&res pieces,
la
fa:on
dont le
sujet
est
con:u,
developpe,
conduit au denouement, denote un
inventeur,
et a un tel
degre, que
cette invention est du
genie."12
His
philosophy
of the theater led him to choose a
form that was "d6nue de
poesie,
de
lyrisme,
. . . de
naturel," precisely
because it
resulted in a
greater degree
"de
verite,
de
naturel," according
to his own definition
and, apparently,
that of his audience. It is not the mechanical
application
of a
formula,
but the deliberate choice of the elemental
aspects
of
drama, developed
with unusual
imagination
and
skill,
and a
finely-honed
sense of how to involve
and
satisfy
an audience that constitute the well-made
play
of
Eugene
Scribe.
SALEM COLLEGE
(N.C.)
1
Zur Technik der Komodien von
Eugene
Scribe
(Hamburg:
Lutke und Wulff, 1911).
12
"Le Centenaire de Scribe," Pref., in Edouard Noel and Edmond
Stoullig,
Les Annales du Theatre
et de la
musique,
17' annee (Paris: Charpentier, 1891), p.
vii.
884 FRENCH REVIEW

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi