Enlightenment? Culture and Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Europe

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1 History J (Spang) Enlightenment? Culture and Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Europe 29 October 2009 Private Life on a Public Stage Theaters: Cross Section and Façade of a Performance Hall Designed by Monsieur Dumont, Professor of Architecture from the Encyclopédie

2 A D B C A. ticket office B. gallery/hallway leading to the first boxes C. the King s box D. salon adjacent to the King s box Theaters: Performance Halls, cross section of the Royal St. Charles Theater (Naples)

3 Third Day of the Celebrations at Versailles (Molière s Le Malade imaginaire) from Félibien, Divertissements de Versailles données par le Roi après la conquête de la Franche-Comté (1674) from the Harvard Theatre Collection (

4 Grand Theater, Lyon (built, ); nineteenth-century watercolor image (Victoria and Albert Theatre Collection,

5 frontispiece, Théâtre des boulevards, vol. 1 (Paris: Gilles Langlois, 1756) from the Taylor Institution Library, Oxford ( Cross Section and Floorplan of a Concert Hall from the Encyclopédie

6 Marie Joseph Peyre Charles de Wailly, «Interior of the Comédie Française» (BHVP, Paris)

7 There is no city where there are more happy marriages Because of the regulations against luxury, they are not afraid of having many children; thus luxury is not, as in France, one of the great obstacles to population. The drama is not tolerated in Geneva. they fear, it is said, the taste for adornment, dissipation, and libertinism which the actors troupes would disseminate among the young. However, would it not be possible to remedy this with severe and well administered laws concerning the conduct of actors? That way, Geneva would have both theater and morals, and would enjoy the advantages of both. The theatrical performances would form the citizens tastes and would give them a fineness of tact and a delicacy of sentiments which is very difficult to acquire without the help of this art; literature would profit without the progress of libertinism, and Geneva would join to the prudence of Sparta the urbanity of Athens. D Alembert, Geneva, in Diderot and D Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, vol. 7(1758).

8 If theatrical imitations draw forth more tears than would the presence of the objects imitated it is because the emotions are pure and unmixed with anxiety for ourselves. In giving our tears to these fictions, we have satisfied all the rights of humanity without having to give anything more of ourselves; whereas unfortunate people in person would require attention from us, relief, consolation, and work, which would involve us in their pains and at least require that we sacrifice our laziness and from all of that, we are quite content to be exempt. In the final accounting, when a man has admired fine actions in stories and cried for imaginary miseries, what more can be asked of him? Is he not satisfied with himself? Does he not applaud his fine soul? Has he not acquitted himself of all he owes to virtue by the homage he has just paid to it? What more could one want of him? That he practice virtue himself? But he is no Actor. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to D Alembert on the Theater (1758).

9 Another consideration, worthy of a republic so enlightened and so prudent ought perhaps to oblige it to permit a theater. The barbarous prejudice against actors, the abased position in which we have placed these men so necessary for the progress of the arts, is certainly one of the principal causes of the dissoluteness for which we reproach them. If actors were not only tolerated in Geneva but first restrained by wise regulations and then protected and even respected when they had earned such respect, and finally, placed on the same level as all other citizens, this city would soon have the advantage of possessing what is thought to be so rare, and is only so through our own fault: a company of actors worthy of esteem. D Alembert, Geneva, in Diderot and D Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, vol. 7(1758).