EITTH SITUATION, REVOLT
From Gordian Plot
(Elements: Tyrant and Conspirator)
As already observed, this situation is, in a measure, the converse of Class B of Situation VI.
Intrigue, so dear to the public of the past three centuries, is obviously supplied by the very nature of the subject we are now to consider. But, by some strange chance, it has, on the contrary, always been treated with the most open candor and simplicity. One or two vicissitudes, a few surprises all too easily foreseen and extending uniformly to all the personages of the play, and there we have the conditions which have almost invariably been attached to this action, so propitious, nevertheless, to doubts, to equivocation, to a twilight whose vague incertitude prepares the dawn of revolt and of liberty.
Contents |
A
A Conspiracy Chiefly of One Individual
"The Conspiracy of Fiesco," by Schiller; Corneille's "Cinna"; to some extent the "Catilina" of Voltaire (this tragedy belongs rather to the Thirtieth Situation, "Ambition"); "Thermidor"; "The Conspiracy of General Malet" (Auge de Lassus, 1889); "Le Grand Soir" (Kampf); "Le Roi sans Royaume" (Decourcelle, 1909): "Lorenzaccio" (Musset).
A Conspiracy of Several
"The Conspiracy of the Pazzi" by Alfieri; "Le Roman d'une Conspiration" (by Fournier and Carre, after the story of Ranc);
"Madame Margot" (Moreau and Clairville, 1909); and, in comedy, "Chantecler" (Rostand, 1910) with its parody "Rosse, tant et plus" (Mustiere, 1910).
B
Revolt of One Individual, Who Influences and Involves Others
Goethe's "Egmont"; "Jacques Bonhomme" (Maujan, 1886); "La Mission de Jeanne d'Arc" (Dalliere, 1888). Example from fiction: "Salammbo." From history: Solon feigning madness.
A Revolt of Many
"Fontovejune," by Lope de Vega; Schiller's "William Tell"; Zola's "Germinal"; "The Weavers of Silesia," by Hauptmann (forbidden in 1893 with the approval of a Parliament soon afterward dissolved); "L'Automne," by Paul Adam and Gabriel Mourey (forbidden in 1893 with the approval of another Parliament shortly before its dissolution); "L'Armee dans la Ville" (Jules Romain, 1911): "The Fourteenth of July" (Roland, 1902). From fiction: a part of the "Fortunes des Rougon" by Zola. From history; the taking of the Bastile, and numerous disturbances of the same period.
Example: A Tale of Two Cities
Example: Braveheart
This species of action, particularly in modern scenes, has given fine virile dramas to England, Spain, Italy and Germany; of a forceful and authoritative character in the two first countries, of a youthful enthusiastic type in the two last. France, most certainly, would seem of all countries the most likely to understand and express such emotions.
But. . . "Thermidor" was prohibited "for fear" it might offend the friends (centenarians apparently) of Maximilian; "Le Pater" "for fear" it might be displeasing to Communists; Zola's "Germinal" and "L'Automne" by Adam and Mourey (two works Dainted in widely different colors, as the titles sufficiently indicate) were stopped "for fear" of the objections of a few conservatives; "Other People's Money" by Hennique, "for fear" of shocking certain financiers who have since been put behind bars; "Lohengrin" (althougn the subject is Celtic) was long forbidden "for fear" of irritating a half-dozen illiterate French chauvinists; an infinite number of other plays "for fear" ot annoying Germany (or our parlor diplomats who talk of it). . . . Yet others "for fear" of vexing the Grand Turk!
Is it possible, notwithstanding all this, to find a single instance in which a dramatic production has brought about a national calamity such as our censors fear? The pretext is no more sincere than are those urged for excluding from the theater any frank and truthful representations of love. A rule against admitting children should be sufficient to satisfy modesty on this point; even that is little needed, since children unaccompanied by their elders rarely apply for admission.
Our sentimental bourgeoisie apparently holds to the eighteenth-century opinion that it is more dangerous to listen to these things in public than to read of them in private. For our dramatic art—which, be it noted, has remained, despite its decline, the one great unrivalled means of propagating French thought throughout Europe—has been forbidden, little by little, to touch directly upon theology, politics, sociology, upon criminals or crimes, excepting (and pray why this exception?) adultery, upon which subject our theater, to its great misfortune, now lives, at least two days out of three.
The ancients had a saying that a man enslaved loses half his soul. A dramatist is a man.
comments
In stories of revolution, our sympathies can be directed to either side, to sympathy for the freedom fighters against an oppressive regime or support for the law enforcement officers who fight self-promoting criminals.
Revolution is a theme of our teenage years as nature impels us to rebel against parental control and flee the family fold to spread the genetic seed far and wide.
Revolution is also scary for adults as it threatens to disrupt and destroy the system that they have learned and accepted as law
