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  • Bonjour, I'm Mike Rugnetta, this is Crash Course Theater, and bienvenue to our second

  • episode set in France: French Renaissance 2: The Renaissancening.

  • Today, we're taking a closer look at theater architecture in Renaissance France, company

  • organization, and the status of actors.

  • And remember all of those neoclassical rules from the last time?

  • Today we'll meet a guy who broke a bunch of them: the hilarious, possibly incestuous,

  • much-buried comic writer Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière.

  • We'll look at his most controversial play Tartuffe, and also the play that killed him.

  • So grab your baguette, and let's go.

  • INTRO The first French theaters weren't purpose-built

  • for theater.

  • Most were former tennis courts.

  • Really, really large tennis courts.

  • But in 1548, the main producer of mystery plays, the Confrerie de la Passion, decided

  • to build a permanent home, the Hotel de Bourgogne.

  • The government outlawed mystery plays that same year, though, so the Confrerie accidentally

  • ended up owning a secular theater.

  • It consisted of a pit or parterre below and a bunch of galleries and boxes above, the

  • highest of them called the paradis, because it was so close to heaven.

  • Get it?

  • In 1634 the Theatre du Marais was built, on the site of a former tennis court, no less.

  • It burned down, and a nicer version was built in 1644.

  • So the Hotel de Bourgogne had to get nicer, too.

  • At first, these theaters were built assuming medieval style scenery, not all that fancy

  • Italian chariot and pole stuff, but they got there eventually.

  • The government didn't allow a theater troupe to settle permanently in Paris until 1629,

  • so in the early years, the Confrerie rented the theater to some of the hundreds of touring

  • companies who just happened to be passing through.

  • The repertory, then, mostly consisted of medieval farces, classical adaptations, and foreign

  • plays, plus a handful of new French pastorals and tragedies when they got lucky.

  • In 1629, the king allowed the Troupe Royale to settle in at the Hotel de Bourgogne.

  • And in 1643 another company was allowed to take over the Theatre du Marais.

  • They were joined in 1658 by Molière's company, the Theatre de Monsieur.

  • So - now that theaters have actors, who went to go see those actors at their theaters?

  • Well, everyone!

  • Though women usually wore masks.

  • Like London, performances took place in the afternoons.

  • Unlike London, the snack bar sold macarons.

  • C'est magnifique!

  • Nobles were sometime seated on the edge of the stage, scandalously close to the working

  • men standing in the pit.

  • Companies usually consisted of eight to twelve actors, plus a couple of apprentices, and

  • every member shared some of the proceeds.

  • After 1607 women performed as well.

  • The status of actors remained dicey, but in 1641 superfan Louis XIII issued a proclamation

  • saying that actors should be really, really careful not to perform anything immoral or

  • indecent.

  • But as long as they avoided lewdness, “we desire that their occupation, which is capable

  • of providing innocent diversion for our people from certain blameworthy activities, shall

  • not be held to their discredit, nor prejudice their reputation.”

  • Isn't it nice when acting isn't criminalized?

  • I think it's nice when acting isn't criminalized.

  • But, that still doesn't change the church's habit of denying actors baptism, marriage

  • or Christian burial.

  • We've come a long way, I guess.

  • Still plenty far to go, though.

  • As Louis XIII's proclamation suggests, his successor Louis XIV, and their chief ministers

  • loved theater and made France the performing arts vanguard of the late Renaissance.

  • Richelieu was such a fan that he had a theater built into his own house, the Palais Cardinal,

  • and made sure there was plenty of Italianate scenery to fill it.

  • But even before Richelieu's time, the court went big for royal entries, processions, festivals

  • and masques, called ballets de cour.

  • Remember those really expensive and elaborate masques that sort of bankrupted England and

  • helped bring about the Civil War?

  • Charles picked up the habit in France.

  • Louis XIV loved masques.

  • When Versailles was being built, he sponsored one calledPleasures of the Enchanted Island.”

  • And It lasted three days.

  • Around this time, opera also came into vogue, courtesy of composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

  • Other kinds of theater weren't as fancy.

  • French comedy was mostly a mix of medieval farce and ancient sources with jokes borrowed

  • from touring Italian commedia dell'arte players.

  • In the seventeenth century, a popular homegrown troupe emerged consisting of the actor-writers

  • Turlupin, Gros-Guillaume, and Gaultier-Garguille.

  • Obviously these are stage names.

  • No one names their kidFat William.”

  • Or Turlupin.

  • Gaultier played old men, Gros-Guillaume played fat men, Turlupin played wily servants.

  • They became so popular that they had to play two shows a day in their temporary theater,

  • which upset the more respectable actors at the Hotel de Bourgogne.

  • Those actors appealed to Richelieu.

  • He went and saw the comedians and decided ... they were funny!

  • They should join the Bourgogne's Troupe Royale!

  • And that went pretty well until Gros-Guillaume made fun of a magistrateand then was thrown

  • into jailand died.

  • Such is the world Molière arrives instock characters, ancient sources, and fat jokes.

  • Molière used them all, but also created something new: contemporary comedies tweaking the morals

  • and manners of the French bourgeoisiethe very people who were his audience.

  • Molière was born in 1622 and well educated.

  • When he left school his dad gave him a position at court: the keeper of the king's carpets

  • and upholstered furniture.

  • Very Fancy.

  • But Molière gave it all up to become ... an actor.

  • When he was twenty-one, he ran off with the actress Madeline Bejart and they founded the

  • Illustre Theatre.

  • They toured for a couple years before going bankrupt.

  • Molière went to prison for a day.

  • Someone paid the debt, and then the troupe went back to touring.

  • Molière founded a new company, picked up a couple of patrons, and started writing farces

  • that gently mocked French manners.

  • He arrived in Paris in 1658, and impressed the kingwho gave his troupe the title

  • Troupe de Monsieur and let them share a palace theater with a commedia company.

  • And how did Molière celebrate?

  • He wrote Les Precieuses Ridicules, a play that made fun of the Academie Francaise.

  • It probably won't shock you to learn that Molière was not into the neoclassical rules.

  • Molière spent most of his life in hot water.

  • He wrote School for Wives, a comedy about an old man who tries to marry his young ward.

  • When people called it immoral, he wrote The Critique of the School for Wives, a play that

  • mocked those objections and the people who made them.

  • A group called the Devots objected to the naughtiness of the plays and their realism,

  • but the king was a fan, and even gave Molière a pension.

  • And when the original palace theater was torn down, the king hooked Molière up with another

  • palace theater.

  • Scholars have divided Molière's comedies into comedies of manners, character, and farces.

  • Molière wouldn't have understood his output this way, but some of his plays lean heavily

  • on the stock characters we've come to know and love.

  • Others, while still funny, have greater psychological depth and are more closely attuned to contemporary

  • French society.

  • Molière's comedy wasn't based on exaggeration or wild coincidence—I'm looking at you,

  • Plautus.

  • He believed that the duty of comedy was to hold a mirror up to life, a mirror that involved

  • some extremely witty dialogue.

  • You haven't achieved anything in comedy unless your portraits can be seen to be living

  • types,” he said.

  • One of Molière's best-loved and most scandalous plays is the 1664 comedy Tartuffe or L'Imposteur!

  • Hold up that mirror, Thoughtbubble: We meet Orgon, a bourgeois dad who has recently

  • fallen under the sway of Tartuffe, a holy man.

  • Actually, Tartuffe isn't a holy man: he's a con man, and everyone in Orgon's family

  • realizes this but Orgon, and his mother.

  • Orgon believes Tartuffe and decides to give him his daughter, Mariane.

  • Mariane is not psyched.

  • Tartuffe also convinces Orgon to disinherit and banish his son, Damis.

  • Orgon's family tries to get him to see through Tartuffe, but they're unsuccessful.

  • Elmire, Orgon's clever wife, convinces Orgon to hide under the table while Tartuffe tries

  • to seduce her.

  • Finally Orgon realizes Tartuffe is a fraud, but Tartuffe gets hold of some incriminating

  • letters and has Orgon kicked out of his own house and accused of treason.

  • It seems like it's all going to end badly, but somehow Louis XIV hears about Tartuffe's

  • duplicity and arranges to have him arrested.

  • Rex ex machina!

  • Orgon gets his stuff back, the family is reunited, and his daughter gets to marry someone she

  • likes.

  • Guess how much the Catholic church liked Tartuffe?

  • Not at all!.

  • A lot of religious leaders thought Molière's attacks were about them specifically.

  • The Archbishop of Paris wrote a letter saying he would excommunicate anyone who saw or even

  • read the play.

  • Pressured by the church and by family, the king supported a ban.

  • Molière had to revise the play, rewriting it so that it made less fun of the church

  • and he also changed the main character's name, but that version was banned, too.

  • He wrote a third version in 1669, and that's the one we have today.

  • Thanks, Thoughtbubble!

  • In 1667, an anonymous letter was published, Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur, defending

  • the comedy.

  • It was probably written by Molière, but we don't know for sure.

  • The letter said that it's right to laugh at the ridiculous and that the audience would

  • become more moral through that laughter.

  • The author hoped people would see the hypocrisy, pretension and greed that Moliere skewered,

  • and work to rid themselves of those same qualities.

  • Basically: LOOK IN THIS HERE MIRROR, SOCIETY.

  • In 1673, Molière premiered his last play, The Imaginary Invalid, about a hypochondriac

  • who tries to marry his daughter off to a doctor.

  • Molière played Argan, the hypochondriac.

  • But Molière really was ill.

  • He'd had tuberculosis for many years and began coughing up blood during a performance.

  • He was carried home and died that night, before he could renounce acting and be given last

  • rites.

  • That's right: the church denied him a Christian burial.

  • But Louis XIV intervened and had him buried in a churchyard.

  • Now here's the part Yorick likes: A century later, after the Revolution, Molière was

  • dug up and moved to the museum of French monuments.

  • Twenty-five years after that, he was buried again in Pere Lachaise, where you can visit

  • his grave today.

  • Rest in peace, Jean-Baptiste.

  • After Molière's death, there's a bunch of hassle with theaters and troupes, but several

  • members of his troupe were absorbed into the newly formed Comedie Francaise, which is still

  • going today and still performs his plays as part of the repertory.

  • Next time we're heading off to the “””New””” World.

  • Oh, and guess who gets scripted theater going there?

  • That's right.

  • It's another nun.

  • Until next timecurtain!

Bonjour, I'm Mike Rugnetta, this is Crash Course Theater, and bienvenue to our second

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モリエール - 風刺と多くの埋葬の男クラッシュ・コース・シアター#21 (Moliere - Man of Satire and Many Burials: Crash Course Theater #21)

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    Pei-Yi Lin に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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