The Politics of Spectacle

in the Age of Louis XIV

Parodying the Pleasure Principle: Dom Juan:

A Festival Play for Parisians

Elizabeth Woodrough

University of Exeter

Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre, Molière’s most spectacular comedy, is generally portrayed as a ‘machine play’, and as quite unlike any of his other plays because of its episodic plot, although it is now recognised that the intrigue has been more carefully constructed than critics from Voltaire to H.C. Lancaster were once prepared to acknowledge (Whitton, p. 4). An instant box-office success, its almost immediate suppression has been regarded as a greater mystery than the banning of Tartuffe the previous year. The analysis of the play which follows here will challenge many of the common assumptions about this extraordinary play, a kind of divine comedy, which moves heaven and earth in its study of life and death, the pursuit of sexual pleasure, and the supernatural, and which differs from the legend even in its ending. According to this modern legend, Don Juan, finding himself in a graveyard, invites a corpse to his fête de noces. The corpse comes to the feast, but eats nothing. He then invites the young man back to the graveyard where a feast of scorpions and snakes has been laid on a table next to his own tomb. In the seventeenth century, the tale was popularised in a number of dramatised versions by Spanish, French and Italian playwrights. This article shows that one of the special features about Molière's Dom Juan, known principally by the title Festin de pierre at the time and still centred around a feast, is that it was produced as a subtly disguised festival play, extending in more ways than one the court festival of which Tartuffe ou l’Hypocrite was the unacknowledged centrepiece.

Dom Juan is not classified as one of Molière's court plays, because it was never performed at court. However, by looking afresh at the records which have survived of the grandly conceived setting used at the Palais-Royal theatre in February and March 1665, it can be argued that this town play projects an inverted mirror image of the inaugural Versailles festival organised for the divine young monarch the previous year, and contains a number of visual quotations from the Plaisirs de lIle enchantée, the park at Versailles then under construction, and the classical imagery most closely associated with the confirmation of royal power. The play has long since lost its capacity to shock audiences by its impiety, even if the theatrical effects can still be impressive, and the fact that the authentic text was neglected for so many centuries is a subject of some fascination. Close comparison with the legend and with accounts of the Plaisirs de l’Ile enchantée suggests that the original production of Molière’s Dom Juan may have been just as subversive as those who fulminated against it in the seventeenth century maintained, desacralising almost everything that was held sacred in the age of Louis XIV from the honnête homme to the holy sacraments and the King himself. It was perhaps not without due cause that for almost two centuries the play was only performed in France in Thomas Corneille’s watered-down verses, a version produced with the approval of Molière’s widow. Dom Juan was only finally given pride of place among Molière’s works in 1947 when Louis Jouvet, who admitted that he was suffering from an incurable bout of Domjuanitis, produced a full-scale revival at the Théâtre de l’Athénée.

According to its seventeenth-century critics, Dom Juan was the work of the devil incarnate, and more impious than anything to be found in pagan literature (Couton, II, p. 1204). The author of the widely circulated Observations sur une comédie de Molière intitulée Le Festin de pierre, a certain duc de Rochemont, who has never been satisfactorily identified, accused the play of making fun of ‘ce qu’il y a de plus saint et de plus sacré dans la religion’ (Couton, II, p. 1199). Rochemont wanted the work burnt; others were ready to send Molière himself to the stake. A sonnet circulating in manuscript form at the time demanded that the dramatist responsible for such a play be bound hand and foot and then dumped in the bottom of the Seine, incarcerated in prison, or eaten alive by vultures for all eternity: ‘Pour montrer aux impies à se moquer de Dieu’ (Dejean, p. 11). Did the authentic text of Molière’s play justify such reactions, or is the draconian censorship to which this play was subjected simply to be ascribed to the fanaticism of religious zealots in the Rochemont mould? If dozens of censors were set to work on the text over a period of some twenty years, should we look again not only at the references to belief and unbelief most sensitive to the accusation that they represent a revolt ‘contre l’autel’ (Couton, II, 1199), but also at the couple of humorous references which Molière includes to Alexander, searching like the hero for new worlds and new women to conquer, or to the Statue of the Commandeur ‘avec son habit d’Empereur romain’, who arranges the final festin de pierre?

Direct connections between Dom Juan and the court of Louis XIV are rarely made now, and there is no indication that it was the occasional classical allusions in the play that drew the censors’ attention. There is, however, no denying their topicality in the year in which the monarch, this ‘nouvel Auguste et nouvel Alexandre’ (Ferrier-Caverivière, p. 61) having represented the Roman Emperor on horseback in the Carrousel of 1662, had taken the role of Alexander at Carnival time in a ballet by Benserade entitled La Naissance de Vénus. The ballet was performed in January. Dom Juan opened in February and in his very first speech, the hero compares himself directly to Alexander: 'et comme Alexandre, je souhaiterai qu'il y eut d'autres mondes, pour y pouvoir étendre mes conquêtes amoureuses' (I, ii). References to Alexander were particularly prominent in the period 1660 to 1668, and became, like those to the Emperor Augustus, increasingly banal in the later decades of the century. This was the year, too, that Racine dedicated his tragedy Alexandre to the only King ‘qui a l’âge d’Alexandre ait fait paraître la conduite d’Auguste’ and tested the tension in the comparison with the great warrior monarch whom he had taken as hero. There is always a degree of ambiguity or tension in such allusions, whether in ballets or plays (See Canova-Green, p.32, and Worth and Hawcroft, eds, p. xxii). Alexander had also become a commonplace in paintings honouring Louis XIV, underlining aspects of his Kingship that had also been evoked in the Plaisirs. The second of Le Brun’s four reflections on this theme showing Alexander’s triumphal entry into Babylon, riding a chariot pulled by an elephant, was completed in 1665 and now hangs in the Louvre. In July 1664, shortly after the Plaisirs, Louis was also presented by Cardinal Chigi with a painting by Guillaume Courtois entitled Alexandre vainqueur de Darius à la bataille dArbelles, a gift from the French papal nonce.

There is no King, or Emperor in Molière’s Dom Juan, and there is no royal dedication either, as there is in Racine’s Alexandre. There was no statue at the sumptuous festin held during the Plaisirs de l’Ile enchantée in 1664. Yet, 1665 was the year in which statues were first installed in the gardens of Versailles and the cour de marbre. In Molière’s version of Don Juan, the figure of the King merges with that of the Statue of the Commandeur with no name, known as Dom Pierre in other versions of the legend. Molière employs only the diminutive Pierrot as the name of the peasant, whose fiancée Dom Juan seeks to seduce from under his nose, who would be at home in any commedia farce. If the Commandeur is not given the name Pierre, the possible meaning of the alternative French title of the play, becomes rather more obscure. How should we interpret (this) Festin de pierre (variously translated as the feast of stone, or the feast of Peter), which is both the alternative title and the climax of the play and inspired by L’Invité de Pierre, the title used by the Italians and adopted by the French, but is a distinctly odd allusion, when nobody who goes or went by the name of Pierre is present at the final feast, dead or alive?

A festin de pierre, or feast of stone, was a rare event even at court, but it is interesting to note that a stone statue of Apollo was the centrepiece of the banquet held at the Grand Divertissement in July 1668 (Du Crest, p. 28). It is always necessary to proceed with extreme caution where the parallels between literature and life are concerned. A number of features of Dom Juan and its original mise en scène nevertheless encourage a referential reading. Contemporary portraits of Louis XIV on horseback in the Carrousel held in celebration of the Dauphin’s birth, wearing his flame-coloured costume with plumes to match, and dressed in the manner which was already so closely associated with the King’s symbolic role, seem to suggest that Molière’s choice of costume for the Statue and Dom Juan, and for Sganarelle, who is the most grandly dressed of all the Sganarelles and servants in his repertoire, may be significant. Dock suggests that ‘Dom Juan's splendid costume may have been one of the major reasons for the play's suppression’ (p. 154). He asserts that it is the references to red ribbons and feathers and gold decorations, which allow us to identify the costume which La Grange wore as Dom Juan, in the inventory of Molière’s belongings drawn up on 24 April, 1673, and confirm this comic hero’s social eminence (pp. 155-156). Dock points out that such details suggest the young aristocrat’s audacity, since the colours are so close to Louis XIV's own livery (p. 155). He argues that the gold on his costume that impresses upon Pierrot that he must be ‘queque gros, gros Monsieur', can only denote noble or royal status, since Louis XIV had recently revived the decree which reserved for himself and the nobility the monopoly of wearing gold and silver decorations (p.155 and p.155, n.9). The Statue decked out in a fancy costume à l'antique, with the Roman skirt which Dom Juan mocks, also makes us think of the portrait of the King astride his horse in the role of a Roman Emperor in the Carrousel in 1662 reproduced in Pellisson’s Festiva et capita (1670), or in the role of Roger in Les Plaisirs, even if Molière did not use an equestrian statue in the play itself.

It is worth remembering that the age of Louis XIV was dedicated to the allegorical interpretation of the King’s actions and that Molière had been initiated into the mechanics of royal myth-making, its fusions, confusions and anachronisms just six months or so before he wrote Dom Juan. In any case there was likely to be some overlap between the King’s highly theatrical attempt to relive a legend at Versailles, in which Molière had played a leading role, and the dramatist’s own attempt to bring a legend to life on stage. Both the Plaisirs and Dom Juan invoke mythological commonplaces, and have aristocratic characters dashing around the woods on horseback. The play, like the Festival, is considered to be in many ways more baroque than classical. It is true also that Molière also had experience of other provincial festivals, like the celebrations held during the Etats de Languedoc, on which to draw. The history of Tartuffe, however, is sufficient evidence in itself to suggest that, as he became an increasingly important member of the team of writers and artists chosen to work on the long-term project of Versailles, the dramatist increasingly courted controversy, though it is generally thought that he regarded the King as sacrosanct, and for good reason given the fate of such poets as Claude le Petit, who was burned at the stake in 1662, having had his hand severed at the wrist for his irreverent verses.

There can be little doubt that the ambitious director of what was, at the beginning of 1665, still the Troupe de Monsieur found himself in a difficult financial position, and in need of royal support, when, in late 1664, he turned to the matter of the production of a new comedy in the tradition of a commedia dell’arte farce, focusing on a master and his valet. On December 3 Molière commissioned, for the sum of 900 livres to be paid in three stages, a set of six paintings for the scenery by two artists known for their work in perspective at the Théâtre du Marais, Jean Simon and Pierre Prat, rather than simply relying on his usual stage designer, Jean Crosnier. Unable to recycle Tartuffe ou l’Hypocrite on the stage in Paris, after the court premiere which was meant to launch the new play had resulted in an immediate ban by royal decree on all public performances, the dramatist needed to produce another major comedy quickly in order to compensate for the loss of future box-office takings and any shortfall in payment from the King. Despite increasing financial difficulties at the beginning of 1665, when the Company’s old debtors tried to call in their money (Duchêne, p. 411), Molière seems to have wanted to rival, in so far as it was possible within a Paris theatre, the sumptuous settings and fabulous stage costumes of the very court entertainment which, the previous year, had exposed the playwright to censure and acclaim in equal degrees. Just as the Plaisirs were the inspiration for work undertaken on the château and the gardens by the rest of Louis XIV’s creative team in subsequent years, so Molière seems to have revised his view of what could be undertaken in the Parisian theatre in the light of his recent experience of the grandeurs and misères of court festival. The message of Tartuffe would not be forgotten, but restated with new vigour, and in the framework of a more grandiose spectacle than had been possible on that occasion, and located in a palatial theatre. As Rochemont observed, Molière had already made it clear to all by 1665 ‘qu’il fera[it] paraître son Tartuffe d’une façon ou d’autre’ (Couton, II, p. 1206). It seems that Dom Juan was part of that strategy.

In the years between the Court Festivals of 1664 and 1668, when Tartuffe was off the stage, the dramatist’s response to the ban imposed on his work seems to have been even more audacious, ambitious and unconventional than has been realised hitherto. The contract for the original construction of sets at the Palais-Royal theatre suggests that, as in Molière’s directorial debut in Paris in the 1640s, commercial considerations were not the priority they perhaps should have been. The detailed schedule of the sets for the authentic play was rediscovered in the early 1960s by Jurgens and Maxfield Miller in the Minutier Central in Paris, offering a welcome supplement to the descriptions of the Dom Juan set by Laurent and Mahelot, which refer only to Thomas Corneille’s version of the play first performed in 1677, which substitutes scenes of seduction for more controversial passages. With its five splendid outdoor decors and one interior, the backdrop to Molière’s Dom Juan, representing, according to the text, the island of Sicily, was remarkably reminiscent of the varied six-day programme of the Plaisirs de l’Ile enchantée which the duc de Saint-Aignan had organised with such panache in the grounds of Versailles. The last act of this Festival had been played out in and around the bassin d’Apollon, where the impressive stucco façade of Alcinas palace, the source of such amazement and wonder amongst a court so eager for an architectural structure to match the aspirations of their ruler that would house them in style while at Versailles, built on a tiny island in the middle of the pond, was destroyed in a blaze of fireworks that symbolised the baptism of fire of the château neuf. Pintard compares the first set of the play, depicting the façade and arcades of a palace with the palace and gardens of the Luxembourg Palace (Delmas, p. 57). Rather than an allusion to any of the Parisian palaces, however, the descriptions given on the painters’ bill of the various flats commissioned to serve as backdrops for the fast-changing action, as master and servant proceed from the court to a country village, a forest, a temple, and a palace chamber before ending up in front of a town-gate, seem to echo the royal progress in the second week of May 1664 around the château of Versailles, its gardens, real and imitation palaces, theatrical sets, and forests, which Molière had just witnessed for himself. The various stages of the play, regarded as ‘unequivocally upsetting the spectator’s normal associations’ in respect of French classical drama (Potts, p. 65), in fact correspond quite closely to the order of entertainments of the Plaisirs, which had the village of Versailles and peasant folk as its backdrop, and came to a complete end only when the King and court made their way back to the Louvre and entered Paris through one of the town gates of Paris. Such multiple scene changes, which had to be carried out not only between the Acts, but also within Act III, making the sudden appearance of the Statue of the Commandeur on stage more startling still, rendered the structure of the play even less satisfactory from a classical perspective. Six scene changes fit awkwardly into five acts. Sudden surprises were, however, one of the most desired effects in the Parisian theatre in the 1660s and at court, as Félibiens accounts of the premieres of La Princesse d’Elide and George Dandin confirm. Constant surprises would have accounted for much of the impact which Dom Juan had on its first audiences of Dom Juan which, like the Festival itself, seems to have ended with a display of fireworks, and caused, as Rochemont must allow, a considerable ‘Brouaa’ (sic) amongst the parterre and delighted other spectators, too, even if they proceeded to condemn the play the moment the spectacle was over (Couton, II, p. 1207).

Dom Juan is often the pretext for a discussion of the fashion for machinery in the theatre in mid seventeenth-century France and the talents of the Italian machinists or ‘feinteurs’ who had been brought to Paris to introduce new forms of spectacle (See C. Drapron). Despite the desirability of surprise effects, and the additional art work which Molière commissioned, the final production costs of this ‘machine play’ may not, in fact, have been exorbitant. Loret’s advance publicity emphasises the wonders of the forthcoming production: ‘Les changements de théâtre / Dont le bourgeois est idolâtre / Selon le discours qu’on m’en fait / Feront un surprenant effet’ (Duchêne, p. 414). He is no guide, however, as to whether the special effects lived up to expectations, although it is generally assumed that the Statue of the Commandeur appeared, and Dom Juan disappeared, through a trap door (Delmas, p. 53). The programme of a rare performance in Dauphiné in the late 1660s promises a full description ‘des superbes machines et des magnifiques changements de théâtre du Festin de Pierre ou l’athée foudroyée de M. de Molière’ (Horville, p. 45), apparently confusing the play with another, and trying to compensate for stage effects that would be even more difficult to recreate in the provinces. It is quite possible that in this often farcical interpretation of the legend, the Statue itself looked more like a Parisian street mime covered in flour than some giant operated by heavy machinery. Brissart’s illustration of the festin depicts a figure similar in scale to Dom Juan and Sganarelle. As we have said, the dramatist chose not to represent the Statue of the Commandeur either as a King or astride a horse, as in other versions of the legend. We do not know the reasons for Molière’s decision here. He seems, in any case, to have been content to reserve the real deus ex machina for the ending of Tartuffe.