The Lady of the Camellias ( French : La Dame aux Camélias ), sometimes called Camille in English, is a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils . First published in 1848 and subsequently adapted by Dumas for the stage , the play premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris , France, on February 2, 1852. It was an instant success. Shortly thereafter, Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi set about putting the story to music in the 1853 opera La traviata , with female protagonist Marguerite Gautier renamed Violetta Valéry.
190-533: Sarah Bernhardt ( French: [saʁa bɛʁnɑʁt] ; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard ; 22 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils , Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo , Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou , and L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand . She played female and male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet . Rostand called her "the queen of
380-558: A Catholic , and left a large sum to be paid when she came of age. Her mother traveled frequently, and saw little of her daughter. She placed Bernhardt with a nurse in Brittany , then in a cottage in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine . When Bernhardt was seven, her mother sent her to a boarding school for young ladies in the Paris suburb of Auteuil , paid with funds from her father's family. There, she acted in her first theatrical performance in
570-454: A demimondaine or courtesan suffering from consumption , and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed la dame aux camélias ( French for 'the lady of the camellias') because she wears a red camellia when she is menstruating and unavailable for sex and a white camellia when she is available to her lovers. Armand falls in love with Marguerite and ultimately becomes her lover. He convinces her to leave her life as
760-541: A societaire , the highest rank of the theater. Bernhardt was earning a substantial amount at the theatre, but her expenses were even greater. By this time she had eight servants, and she built her first house, an imposing mansion on rue Fortuny, not far from the Parc Monceau . She looked for additional ways to earn money. In June 1879, while the theatre of the Comédie Française in Paris was being remodeled, Perrin took
950-477: A "diamond-edge", and the "glory of its hard, electric rage". Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage . Racine was born on 21 December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon ( Aisne ), in the province of Picardy in northern France. Orphaned by the age of four (his mother died in 1641 and his father in 1643), he came into
1140-402: A Christian, Racine could no longer assume, as did Æschylus and Sophocles , that God is merciless in leading men to a doom which they do not foresee. Instead, destiny becomes (at least, in the secular plays) the uncontrollable frenzy of unrequited love. As already in the works of Euripides , the gods have become more symbolic . Venus represents the unquenchable force of sexual passion within
1330-579: A brief recording of her reciting a verse from Phèdre, which has not survived. She crisscrossed the United States and Canada from Montreal and Toronto to Saint Louis and New Orleans, usually performing each evening, and departing immediately after the performance. She gave countless press interviews, and in Boston posed for photos on the back of a dead whale. She was condemned as immoral by the Bishop of Montreal and by
1520-437: A charge of which he is innocent. Only Amurat does not actually appear on stage, and yet his presence is constantly felt. His intervention by means of the letter condemning Bajazet to death (IV 3) precipitates the catastrophe. The queen shows greater variations from play to play than anyone else, and is always the most carefully delineated character. Hermione (for she, rather than the pathetic and emotionally stable Andromaque, has
1710-463: A chest filled with $ 194,000 in gold coins. She described the result of her trip to her friends: "I crossed the oceans, carrying my dream of art in myself, and the genius of my nation triumphed. I planted the French verb in the heart of a foreign literature, and it is that of which I am most proud." No crowd greeted Bernhardt when she returned to Paris on 5 May 1881, and theatre managers offered no new roles;
1900-423: A courtesan and to live with him in the countryside. This idyllic existence is interrupted by Armand's father, who, concerned with the scandal created by the illicit relationship, and fearful that it will destroy Armand's sister's chances of marriage, convinces Marguerite to leave. Until Marguerite is on her deathbed, Armand believes that she left him for another man, known as Count de Giray. He comes to her side as she
2090-681: A dinner for Bernhardt and her friends, toasting "His adorable Queen and her Golden Voice." She formally returned to the Comédie Francaise on 1 October 1872, and quickly took on some of the more famous and demanding roles in French theatre. She played Junie in Britannicus by Jean Racine, the male role of Cherubin in The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais , and the lead in Voltaire's five-act tragedy Zaïre . In 1873, with just 74 hours to learn
SECTION 10
#17328545376202280-414: A dramatic first scene precedes the exposition, a Racinian tragedy opens very quietly, but even so in a mood of suspense. In Andromaque Pyrrhus's unenviable wavering between Hermione and the eponymous heroine has been going on for a year and has exasperated all three. Up to the time when Britannicus begins, Néron has been a good ruler, a faithful disciple of Seneca and Burrhus, and a dutiful son; but he
2470-482: A fervent admirer. The play premiered on 16 January 1872. The opening night was attended by the Prince of Wales and by Hugo; after the performance, Hugo approached Bernhardt, dropped to one knee, and kissed her hand. Ruy Blas played to packed houses. A few months after it opened, Bernhardt received an invitation from Emile Perrin , Director of the Comédie Française, asking if she would return, and offering her 12,000 francs
2660-869: A gold bracelet with diamonds, which was almost immediately stolen from her hotel. The two leading actors both fell ill with yellow fever , and her long-time manager, Edward Jarrett, died of a heart attack. Bernhardt was undaunted, however, and went crocodile hunting at Guayaquil , and bought more animals for her menagerie. Her performances in every city were sold out, and by the end of the tour, she had earned more than 1 million francs. The tour allowed her to purchase her final home, which she filled with her paintings, plants, souvenirs, and animals. From then on, whenever she ran short of money (which generally happened every three or four years), she went on tour, performing both her classics and new plays. In 1888, she toured Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, and Russia. She returned to Paris in early 1889 with an enormous owl given to her by
2850-503: A journey (from Troy to Argos) which must have taken several days. Nor was the unity of place a general feature of Attic tragedy. Æschylus's The Eumenides has two settings and in The Suppliants of Euripides , it is sometimes impossible to tell where the action is taking place at all. But the circumstances of the Greek theatre, which had no curtain and no distinctive scenery and in which
3040-692: A large dining room, at 4 rue de Rome. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War abruptly interrupted her theatrical career. The news of the defeat of the French Army, the surrender of Napoleon III at Sedan, and the proclamation of the Third French Republic on 4 September 1870 was followed by a siege of Paris by the Prussian Army. Paris was cut off from news and from its food supply, and the theatres were closed. Bernhardt took charge of converting
3230-495: A modest salary of 150 francs a month, which he paid out of his own pocket. The Odéon was second in prestige only to the Comédie Française, and unlike that very traditional theatre, specialised in more modern productions. The Odéon was popular with the students of the Left Bank. Her first performances with the theatre were not successful. She was cast in highly stylised and frivolous 18th-century comedies, whereas her strong point on stage
3420-488: A more artistic lifestyle . Experimenting with poetry drew high praise from France's greatest literary critic, Nicolas Boileau , with whom Racine would later become great friends; Boileau would often claim that he was behind the budding poet's work. Racine eventually took up residence in Paris where he became involved in theatrical circles. His first play, Amasie , never reached the stage. On 20 June 1664, Racine's tragedy La Thébaïde ou les frères ennemis ( The Thebans or
3610-435: A novel by Abbé Prévost referenced at the beginning of La Dame aux Camélias , Armand's love is for a woman who is ready to sacrifice her riches and her lifestyle for him, but who is thwarted by the arrival of Armand's father. The novel is also marked by the description of Parisian life during the 19th century and the fragile world of the courtesan. Dumas fils wrote a stage adaptation that premiered February 2, 1852, at
3800-439: A party which included her mother, Morny, and his friend Alexandre Dumas père . The play they attended was Britannicus , by Jean Racine , followed by the classical comedy Amphitryon by Plautus . The play's emotion so moved Bernhardt that she began to sob loudly, disturbing the rest of the audience. Morny and others in their party were angry at her. They left, but Dumas comforted her and later told Morny that he believed she
3990-598: A period of twenty-four hours, or not much exceeding that, whilst epic poetry is unlimited in point of time." Writing centuries after the great Attic tragedians and using their works as a basis for generalization, he does not insist that the action of a tragedy must be confined to a single revolution of the sun, or that it must take place in one locality. He merely says that this limitation was often practised by writers of tragedy, but he well knew that there were many plays in which no such limitation existed. For instance, Æschylus 's Agamemnon compresses into about fifteen minutes
SECTION 20
#17328545376204180-456: A play, Salomé , and Bernhardt planned to originate the title role in London, but British censors banned the play and she never performed it. Bernhardt then performed a new play by Sardou, Theodora (1884), a melodrama set in sixth-century Byzantine Empire . Sardou wrote a nonhistoric but dramatic new death scene for Bernhardt; in his version, the empress Theodora was publicly strangled, whereas
4370-547: A procession and ceremony, for her pet lizard. She received her first communion as a Roman Catholic in 1856 and was fervently religious after that. However, she never forgot her Jewish heritage. When asked years later by a reporter if she were a Christian, she replied: "No, I'm a Roman Catholic and a member of the great Jewish race. I'm waiting until Christians become better." That contrasted her answer, "No, never. I'm an atheist" to an earlier question by composer and compatriot Charles Gounod if she ever prayed. Regardless, she accepted
4560-610: A prophet) likewise had prophetic powers. And thinking a child of seven – the age of Joas ( Jehoash of Judah ) in the Second Book of Kings – too young to have the part given him in Athalie , Racine makes him into a boy of nine or ten on the evidence of the Septuagint version of II Chronicles XXIII 1. In the secular plays, he takes far greater liberties. The frequently conflicting sources of Greek and Roman mythology enable him to fashion
4750-424: A rôle equivalent to that generally played by the queen) is young, with all the freshness of a first and only love; she is ruthless in using Oreste as her instrument of vengeance; and she is so cruel in her brief moment of triumph that she refuses to intercede for Astyanax's life. Agrippine, an ageing and forlorn woman, "fille, femme, sœur et mère de vos maîtres", who has stopped at nothing in order to put her own son on
4940-459: A slave from an enemy country, for whom he is prepared to repudiate his alliances with the Greeks. Orestes' duties as an ambassador are subordinate to his aspirations as a lover, and he finally murders the king to whom he has been sent. Néron's passion for Junie causes him to poison Britannicus and thus, after two years of virtuous government, to inaugurate a tyranny. The characteristic Racinian framework
5130-406: A small cottage in the suburb of Auteuil , and drove herself to the theatre in a small carriage. She developed a close friendship with the writer George Sand , and performed in two plays that she authored. She received celebrities in her dressing room, including Gustave Flaubert and Leon Gambetta . In 1869, as she became more prosperous, she moved to a larger seven-room apartment at 16 rue Auber in
5320-417: A special train with her own luxurious palace car , which carried her two maids, two cooks, a waiter, her maître d'hôtel, and her personal assistant, Madame Guérard. It also carried an actor named Édouard Angelo, whom she had selected to serve as her leading man, and, according to most accounts, her lover during the tour. From New York, she made a side trip to Menlo Park , where she met Thomas Edison , who made
5510-519: A stage version of the controversial drama Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola . Zola had previously been attacked due to the book's confronting content. Asked why she chose this play, she declared to reporters, "My true country is the free air, and my vocation is art without constraints." The play was unsuccessful; it ran for just 38 performances. She then performed another traditional melodrama, Francillon by Alexandre Dumas fils in 1888. A short drama she wrote herself, L'Aveu , disappointed both critics and
5700-492: A stone column and gash her forehead. Regina and Madame Nathalie began shouting at one another, and Bernhardt stepped forward and slapped Madame Nathalie on the cheek. The older actress fell onto another actor. Thierry asked that Bernhardt apologise to Madame Nathalie. Bernhardt refused to do so until Madame Nathalie apologised to Regina. Bernhardt had already been scheduled for a new role with the theater, and had begun rehearsals. Madame Nathalie demanded that Bernhardt be dropped from
5890-607: A theology condemned as heretical by the French bishops and the Pope. Racine's interactions with the Jansenists in his years at this academy would have great influence over him for the rest of his life. At Port-Royal, he excelled in his studies of the classics and the themes of Greek and Roman mythology would play large roles in his future works. He was expected to study law at the Collège d'Harcourt in Paris, but instead found himself drawn to
Sarah Bernhardt - Misplaced Pages Continue
6080-548: A tour of French provincial cities. She and her troupe departed from Le Havre for America on 15 October 1880, arriving in New York on 27 October. On 8 November in New York City, she performed Scribe's Adrienne Lecouvreur at Booth's Theatre before an audience which had paid a top price of a stunning $ 40 ($ 1,263 in 2023) for a ticket. Few in the audience understood French, but it was not necessary; her gestures and voice captivated
6270-459: A wealthy businessman who offered her 500,000 francs. He wept when she refused. Bernhardt wrote that she was "confused, sorry, and delighted—because he loved me the way people love in plays at the theater." Before the first examination for her tragedy class, she tried to straighten her abundance of frizzy hair, which made it even more uncontrollable, and came down with a bad cold, which made her voice so nasal that she hardly recognised it. Furthermore,
6460-461: A white robe with a tricolor banner, and at the end dramatically waved the French flag. The audience gave her a standing ovation, showered her with flowers, and demanded that she recite the song two more times. With her place in the French theatre world restored, Bernhardt negotiated a contract to perform at the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris for 1500 francs per performance as well as 25 percent of
6650-461: A wide variety of languages. The role of Marguerite Gautier has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt , María Félix , Clara Kimball Young , Theda Bara , Yvonne Printemps , Alla Nazimova , Greta Garbo , Micheline Presle , Francesca Bertini , Isabelle Huppert , and others. There have been at least nine adaptations of La Dame aux Camélias entitled Camille . In addition to the Camille films,
6840-470: A year, compared with less than 10,000 at the Odéon. Bernhardt asked Chilly if he would match the offer, but he refused. Always pressed by her growing expenses and growing household to earn more money, she announced her departure from the Odéon when she finished the run of Ruy Blas . Chilly responded with a lawsuit, and she was forced to pay 6,000 francs of damages. After the 100th performance of Ruy Blas , Hugo gave
7030-426: Is based on Marie Duplessis , the real-life lover of the author. Written by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895) when he was 23 years old, and first published in 1848, La Dame aux Camélias is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan , Marie Duplessis . Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier,
7220-474: Is brought back to life. Phèdre differs from Euripides's Hippolytus and Seneca the Younger 's Phædra in the very important respect that, taking the character of Aricie from Virgil , Racine introduces the jealousy motive. Despite the fact that Hippolyte, "ce fils chaste et respectueux", is indifferent to her, Phèdre will not consent to Œnone's suggesting to Thésée that the son has made improper advances to
7410-493: Is dying, surrounded by her friends, and pledges to love her even after her death. The story is narrated after Marguerite's death by two men, Armand and an unnamed frame narrator . Near the beginning of the novel, the narrator finds out that Armand has been sending camellia flowers to Marguerite's grave, to show that his love for her will never die. Some scholars believe that both the fictional Marguerite's illness and real life Duplessis's publicized cause of death, "consumption",
7600-639: Is fairly scrupulous in adhering to his Old Testament sources, taking care to put into the mouth of Joad (the Second Jehoiada ) only those prophetic utterances that are to be found in the Bible . Nevertheless, he takes advantage of a verse in II Chronicles XXIV attributing the gift of prophecy to Joad's son Zacharie ( Zechariah ben Jehoiada ) in order to suppose that the father (whom the Bible does not describe as
7790-578: Is forty-three; she can no longer be useful to the Comédie. Moreover, what roles could she have? I can only imagine that she could play mothers..." Bernhardt was deeply offended and immediately broke off negotiations. She turned once again to Sardou, who had written a new play for her, La Tosca , which featured a prolonged and extremely dramatic death scene at the end. The play was staged at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, opening on 24 November 1887. It
Sarah Bernhardt - Misplaced Pages Continue
7980-484: Is incomparable...The extreme love, the extreme agony, the extreme suffering." However, the abrupt end of her marriage shortly after the premiere put her back into financial distress. She had leased and refurbished a theatre, the Ambigu, specifically to give her husband leading roles, and made her 18-year-old son Maurice, who had no business experience, the manager. Fédora ran for just 50 performances and lost 400,000 francs. She
8170-403: Is now beginning to show a spirit of independence. With the introduction of a new element (Oreste's demand that Astyanax should be handed over to the Greeks; Junie's abduction; Abner's unconscious disclosure that the time to proclaim Joas has finally come), an already tense situation becomes, or has become, critical. In a darkening atmosphere, a succession of fluctuating states of mind on the part of
8360-504: Is possible in Latin or French. The classical unities are strictly observed, for only the final stage of a prolonged crisis is described. The number of characters, all of them royal, is kept down to the barest minimum. Action on stage is all but eliminated. The mangled Hippolyte is not brought back, as is the Hippolytus of Euripides . The one exception to this is that Atalide stabs herself before
8550-628: Is reached when Hermione realizes that Pyrrhus's love for Andromaque continues beyond the grave, or when Phèdre contrasts the young lovers' purity with her unnaturalness which should be hidden from the light of day. Racine's most distinctive contribution to literature is his conception of the ambivalence of love: "ne puis-je savoir si j'aime, ou si je hais?" The passion of these lovers is totally destructive of their dignity as human beings, and usually kills them or deprives them of their reason. Except for Titus and Bérénice, they are blinded by it to all sense of duty. Pyrrhus casts off his fiancée in order to marry
8740-473: Is that of the eternal triangle: two young lovers, a prince and a princess, being thwarted in their love by a third person, usually a queen whose love for the young prince is unreciprocated. Phèdre destroys the possibility of a marriage between Hippolyte and Aricie. Bajazet and Atalide are prevented from marrying by the jealousy of Roxane. Néron divides Britannicus from Junie. In Bérénice the amorous couple are kept apart by considerations of state. In Andromaque
8930-507: Is the supreme irony of the play. Théramène's récit describes, in the most memorable and poetic language, an event which would be infinitely less moving if it were to be seen it imperfectly represented upon the stage. As regards the unity of action, Racine differs sharply from William Shakespeare in excluding minor plots (compare the parallel themes of blind and unnatural fatherhood and the retribution it invokes, in King Lear ) and in ruling out
9120-551: The Fronde ) to new heights of international prominence. Political achievement coincided with cultural and gave birth to an evolution of France's national identity, known as l'esprit français. This new self-perception acknowledged the superiority of all things French; the French believed France was home to the greatest king, the greatest armies, the greatest people, and, subsequently, the greatest culture. In this new national mindset, Racine and his work were practically deified, established as
9310-619: The Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich , the brother of the Czar. Her 1891–92 tour was her most extensive, including much of Europe, Russia, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Samoa. Her personal luggage consisted of 45 costume crates for her 15 different productions, and 75 crates for her off-stage clothing, including her 250 pairs of shoes. She carried a trunk for her perfumes, cosmetics and makeup, and another for her sheets and tablecloths and her five pillows. After
9500-578: The Jansenist sect were revived. He and his wife eventually had two sons and five daughters. Around the time of his marriage and departure from the theatre, Racine accepted a position as a royal historiographer in the court of King Louis XIV , alongside his friend Boileau. He kept this position in spite of the minor scandals he was involved in. In 1672, he was elected to the Académie française , eventually gaining much power over this organisation. Two years later, he
9690-516: The Methodist press, which only increased ticket sales. She performed Phèdre six times and La Dame Aux Camélias 65 times (which Jarrett had renamed "Camille" to make it easier for Americans to pronounce, despite the fact that no character in the play has that name). On 3 May 1881, she gave her final performance of Camélias in New York. Throughout her life, she always insisted on being paid in cash. When Bernhardt returned to France, she brought with her
SECTION 50
#17328545376209880-538: The Saint-Étienne-du-Mont church in Paris. The quality of Racine's poetry is perhaps his greatest contribution to French literature. His use of the alexandrine poetic line is considered exceptionally skilful. Racine's work faced many criticisms from his contemporaries. One was the lack of historic veracity in plays such as Britannicus (1669) and Mithridate (1673). Racine was quick to point out that his greatest critics – his rival dramatists – were among
10070-485: The Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris. Eugénie Doche [ fr ] created the role of Marguerite Gautier, opposite Charles Fechter as Armand Duval. "I played the role 617 times," Doche recalled not long before her death in 1900, "and I suppose I could not have played it very badly, since Dumas fils wrote in his preface, 'Mme. Doche is not my interpreter, she is my collaborator'." In 1853, Jean Davenport starred in
10260-471: The last rites shortly before her death. In 1857, Bernhardt learned that her father had died overseas. Her mother summoned a family council, including Morny, to decide what to do with her. Morny proposed that Bernhardt should become an actress. This idea horrified Bernhardt, as she had never been inside a theatre. Morny arranged for her to attend her first theatre performance at the Comédie Française in
10450-412: The étiquette and conventions of a royal court for the true expression of human passion. French critics, too, revolted. Racine came to be dismissed as merely "an historical document" that painted a picture only of 17th century French society and nothing else; there could be nothing new to say about him. However, as writers like Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Flaubert came onto the scene to soundly shake
10640-579: The Amore Theatre in Athens. It is also the inspiration for the 2008 musical Marguerite , which places the story in 1944 German-occupied France . In My Ántonia by Willa Cather , the characters Jim Burden and Lena Lingard are much moved by a theatrical production of Camille, which they attend in book 3, chapter 3. Love Story , published by Eric Segal in 1970, has essentially the same plot updated to contemporary New York. The conflict here centres on
10830-501: The Commune or damaged in the fighting, but the Odéon was still intact. Charles-Marie Chilly, the co-director of the Odéon, came to her apartment, where Bernhardt received him reclining on a sofa. He announced that the theaters would reopen in October 1871, and he asked her to play the lead in a new play, Jean-Marie by André Theuriet . Bernhardt replied that she was finished with the theatre and
11020-461: The Comédie Française. She was supposed to recite verses from Racine, but no one had told her that she needed someone to give her cues as she recited. Bernhardt told the jury she would instead recite the fable of the Two Pigeons by La Fontaine . The jurors were skeptical, but the enthusiasm and pathos of her recitation won them over, and she was invited to become a student. Bernhardt studied acting at
11210-491: The Comédie Française. That little world was stiff, gossipy, jealous. I remember my few months at the Gymnase. There they talked only about dresses and hats, and chattered about a hundred things that had nothing to do with art. At the Odéon, I was happy. We thought only of putting on plays. We rehearsed mornings, afternoons, all the time. I adored that." Bernhardt lived with her longtime friend and assistant Madame Guérard and her son in
11400-648: The Comédie-Française. She played Henriette in Molière's Les Femmes Savantes and Hippolyte in L'Étourdi , and the title role in Scribe's Valérie , but did not impress the critics, or the other members of the company, who had resented her rapid rise. The weeks passed, but she was given no further roles. Her hot temper also got her into trouble; when a theater doorkeeper addressed her as "Little Bernhardt", she broke her umbrella over his head. She apologised profusely, and when
11590-463: The Conservatory from January 1860 until 1862 under two prominent actors of the Comédie Française, Joseph-Isidore Samson and Jean-Baptiste Provost. She wrote in her memoirs that Provost taught her diction and grand gestures, and Samson taught her the power of simplicity. For the stage, she changed her name from "Bernard" to "Bernhardt". While studying, she also received her first marriage proposal, from
SECTION 60
#173285453762011780-514: The Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria . The only European country where she refused to play was Germany, due to the German annexation of French territory after the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War. Just before the tour began, she met Jacques Damala , who went with her as leading man and then, for eight months, became her first and only husband. ( see Personal life ) When she returned to Paris, she
11970-512: The French, however, as "Racine, La Fontaine, or generally speaking the chefs-d'œuvre de l'esprit humain could not be understood by foreigners." The 20th century saw a renewed effort to rescue Racine and his works from the chiefly historical perspective to which he had been consigned. Critics called attention to the fact that plays such as Phèdre could be interpreted as realist drama, containing characters that were universal and that could appear in any time period. Other critics cast new light upon
12160-535: The Gaiety Theatre in London demanded that Bernhardt star in the opening performance, contrary to the traditions of Comédie Française, where roles were assigned by seniority, and the idea of stardom was scorned. When Perrin protested, saying that Bernhardt was only 10th or 11th in seniority, the Gaiety manager threatened to cancel the performance; Perrin had to give in. He scheduled Bernhardt to perform one act of Phèdre on
12350-441: The Greek pattern of tragedy. His tragic characters are aware of, but can do nothing to overcome, the blemish which leads them on to a catastrophe. And the tragic recognition, or anagnorisis , of wrongdoing is not confined, as in the Œdipus Tyrannus , to the end of the play, when the fulfilment of the prophecy is borne in upon Œdipus; Phèdre realizes from the very beginning the monstrousness of her passion, and preserves throughout
12540-411: The Left Bank. Duquesnel described the reading years later, saying, "I had before me a creature who was marvelous gifted, intelligent to the point of genius, with enormous energy under an appearance frail and delicate, and a savage will." The co-director of the theatre for finance, Charles de Chilly, wanted to reject her as unreliable and too thin, but Duquesnel was enchanted; he hired her for the theater at
12730-416: The Odéon into a hospital for soldiers wounded in the battles outside the city. She organised the placement of 32 beds in the lobby and the foyers, brought in her personal chef to prepare soup for the patients, and persuaded her wealthy friends and admirers to donate supplies for the hospital. Besides organising the hospital, she worked as a nurse, assisting the chief surgeon with amputations and operations. When
12920-568: The Paris press ignored her tour, and much of the Paris theatre world resented her leaving the most prestigious national theatre to earn a fortune abroad. When no new plays or offers appeared, she went to London for a successful three-week run at the Gaiety Theater. This London tour included the first British performance of La Dame aux Camelias at the Shaftesbury Theatre; her friend, the prince of Wales, persuaded Queen Victoria to authorise
13110-474: The Romans, he orders Monime to take poison. Dying, he unites the two lovers. Thésée is a rather nebulous character, primarily important in his influence upon the mechanism of the plot. Phèdre declares her love to Hippolyte on hearing the false news of his death. His unexpected return throws her into confusion and lends substance to Œnone's allegations. In his all-too-human blindness, he condemns to death his own son on
13300-518: The Tuileries Palace for Napoleon III and his court. Afterwards, the emperor sent her a brooch with his initials written in diamonds. In her memoirs, she wrote of her time at the Odéon: "It was the theatre that I loved the most, and that I only left with regret. We all loved each other. Everyone was gay. The theatre was a like a continuation of school. All the young came there...I remember my few months at
13490-550: The Western tradition and world literature. Racine was primarily a tragedian , producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection" as Phèdre , Andromaque , and Athalie . He did write one comedy, Les Plaideurs , and a muted tragedy, Esther for the young. Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic (12 syllable) French alexandrine . His writing is renowned for its elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what American poet Robert Lowell described as
13680-551: The action. They invariably reflect the character of their masters and mistresses. Thus, Narcisse and Burrhus symbolize the warring elements of evil and good within the youthful Néron. But Narcisse is more than a reflection: he betrays and finally poisons his master Britannicus. Burrhus, on the other hand, is the conventional "good angel" of the medieval morality play . He is a much less colourful character than his opposite number. Œnone, Phèdre's evil genius, persuades her mistress to tell Hippolyte of her incestuous passion, and incriminates
13870-509: The actress she had once slapped. However, she was frequently in conflict with Perrin, the director of the theatre. In 1878, during the Paris Universal Exposition , she took a flight over Paris with balloonist Pierre Giffard and painter Georges Clairin , in a balloon decorated with the name of her current character, Doña Sol . An unexpected storm carried the balloon far outside of Paris to a small town. When she returned by train to
14060-544: The affair "her abiding wound", but she never discussed Maurice's parentage with anyone. When asked who his father was, she sometimes answered, "I could never make up my mind whether his father was Gambetta , Victor Hugo , or General Boulanger ." Many years later, in January 1885, when Bernhardt was famous, the Prince allegedly came to Paris and offered to formally recognise Maurice as his son, but Maurice politely declined, explaining he
14250-510: The age of 10, with the sponsorship of Morny, Bernhardt was admitted to Grandchamp, an exclusive Augustine convent school near Versailles . At the convent, she performed the part of the Archangel Raphael in a story based on the Book of Tobit . She declared her intention to become a nun but did not always follow convent rules; she was accused of sacrilege when she arranged a Christian burial, with
14440-542: The apartments of Titus and Bérénice in Rome; Agamemnon's camp at Aulis ; an antechamber in the temple at Jerusalem: by choosing such vague and remote settings Racine gives his plays a universal character, and the presentation of conflicting and hesitating states of mind is not hampered by an undue insistence on material surroundings. At times, of course, the unity of place leads to slightly far-fetched meetings: why, for instance, does Pyrrhus come to see Oreste (Act I Sc. 2), rather than
14630-420: The audience and lasted only 12 performances. She had considerably more success with Jeanne d'Arc by the poet Jules Barbier , in which the 45-year-old actress played Joan of Arc , a 19-year-old martyr. Barbier had previously written the librettos for some of the more famous French operas of the period, including Faust by Charles Gounod and The Tales of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach . Her next success
14820-439: The audience directly: "Friends, you wish to defend the cause of justice. Are you doing it by making Monsieur Dumas responsible for the banishment of Monsieur Hugo?". With this the audience laughed and applauded and fell silent. At the final curtain, she received an enormous ovation, and Dumas hurried backstage to congratulate her. When she exited the theatre, a crowd had gathered at the stage door and tossed flowers at her. Her salary
15010-546: The audience in Bajazet ; but this is acceptable in a play conspicuous for its savagery and Oriental colour. Tragedy shows how men fall from prosperity to disaster. The higher the position from which the hero falls, the greater is the tragedy. Except for the confidants , of whom Narcisse (in Britannicus ) and Œnone (in Phèdre ) are the most significant, Racine describes the fate of kings, queens, princes and princesses, liberated from
15200-451: The audience, Sir George Arthur, wrote that "she set every nerve and fibre in their bodies throbbing and held them spellbound." In addition to her performances of Zaïre , Phèdre , Hernani , and other plays with her troupe, she gave the private recitals in the homes of British aristocrats arranged by Jarrett, who also arranged an exhibition of her sculptures and paintings in Piccadilly , which
15390-587: The audience, and she received a thunderous ovation. She thanked the audience with her distinctive curtain call; she did not bow, but stood perfectly still, with her hands clasped under her chin, or with her palms on her cheeks, and then suddenly stretched them out to the audience. After her first performance in New York, she made 27 curtain calls. Although she was welcomed by theatre-goers, she was entirely ignored by New York high society, who considered her personal life scandalous. Bernhardt's first American tour carried her to 157 performances in 51 cities. She travelled on
15580-413: The biggest offenders in this respect. Another major criticism levelled at him was the lack of incident in his tragedy Bérénice (1670). Racine's response was that the greatest tragedy does not necessarily consist in bloodshed and death. Racine restricts his vocabulary to 2500 words. He rules out all workaday expressions since, although the Greeks could call a spade a spade, he does not believe that this
15770-460: The care of his grandparents. At the death of his grandfather in 1649, his grandmother, Marie des Moulins, went to live in the convent of Port-Royal and took her grandson with her. He received a classical education at the Petites écoles de Port-Royal , a religious institution which would greatly influence other contemporary figures including Blaise Pascal . Port-Royal was run by followers of Jansenism ,
15960-514: The cast. She would receive 5,000 francs per performance, 15% of any earnings over 15,000 francs, plus all of her expenses, and an account in her name for 100,000 francs, the amount she owed to the Comédie Française. She accepted immediately. Now on her own, Bernhardt first assembled and tried her new troupe at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique in Paris. She performed for the first time La Dame aux Camélias , by Alexandre Dumas fils . She did not create
16150-536: The center of Paris. Her mother began to visit her for the first time in years, and her grandmother, a strict Orthodox Jew, moved into the apartment to take care of Maurice. Bernhardt added a maid and a cook to her household, as well as the beginning of a collection of animals; she had one or two dogs with her at all times, and two turtles moved freely around the apartment. In 1868, a fire completely destroyed her apartment, along with all of her belongings. She had neglected to purchase insurance. The brooch presented to her by
16340-534: The character of Ériphile. The disclosure that Iphigénie's treacherous rival was herself called Iphigeneia at birth and should be sacrificed in the heroine's place prevents a tragic outcome. In creating Andromaque, Racine believes he must "[se] conformer à l'idée que nous avons maintenant de cette princesse". Astyanax, whom Euripides describes (in The Trojan Women and the Andromache ) as having been thrown from
16530-474: The chief administrator of the Théâtre Français , who offered Bernhardt a place as a pensionnaire at the theater, at a minimum salary. Bernhardt made her debut with the company on 31 August 1862 in the title role of Racine's Iphigénie . Her premiere was not a success. She experienced stage fright and rushed her lines. Some audience members made fun of her thin figure. When the performance ended, Provost
16720-456: The chorus almost always remained on stage throughout the play, were such that it was frequently desirable to confine the action to a single day and a single place. The only rule which Aristotle lays down concerning the dramatic action is that, in common with all other forms of art, a tragedy must have an internal unity, so that every part of it is in an organic relationship to the whole and no part can be changed or left out without detracting from
16910-453: The city, Perrin was furious; he fined Bernhardt a thousand francs, citing a theatre rule which required actors to request permission before they left Paris. Bernhardt refused to pay, and threatened to resign from the Comédie. Perrin recognised that he could not afford to let her go. Perrin and the Minister of Fine Arts arranged a compromise; she withdrew her resignation, and in return was raised to
17100-520: The coal supply of the city ran out, Bernhardt used old scenery, benches, and stage props for fuel to heat the theater. In early January 1871, after 16 weeks of the siege, the Germans began to bombard the city with long-range cannons. The patients had to be moved to the cellar, and before long, the hospital was forced to close. Bernhardt arranged for serious cases to be transferred to another military hospital, and she rented an apartment on rue de Provence to house
17290-507: The comic element. The fact that Act II scene 5 of Andromaque or many of the scenes of Alexandre le Grand and Mithridate have comic undertones is beside the point. Will Andromaque agree to marry Pyrrhus? Will Agamemnon sacrifice Iphigénie? Can Esther persuade her husband to spare the Jews? The plots of Bajazet , Phèdre and Athalie are scarcely more complex than the rest. Unlike such plays as Hamlet and The Tempest , in which
17480-428: The common practice of hiring claqueurs in the audience to applaud stars. She used the new technology of lithography to produce vivid color posters, and in 1894, she hired Czech artist Alphonse Mucha to design the first of a series of posters for her play Gismonda . He continued to make posters of her for six years. In five years, Bernhardt produced nine plays, three of which were financially successful. The first
17670-406: The company on tour to London. Shortly before the tour began, a British theatre impresario named Edward Jarrett traveled to Paris and proposed that she give private performances in the homes of wealthy Londoners; the fee she would receive for each performance was greater than her monthly salary with the Comédie. When Perrin read in the press about the private performances, he was furious. Furthermore,
17860-498: The constricting pressures of everyday life and able to speak and act without inhibition. Greek tragedy, from which Racine borrowed so plentifully, tended to assume that humanity was under the control of gods indifferent to its sufferings and aspirations. In the Œdipus Tyrannus Sophocles 's hero becomes gradually aware of the terrible fact that, however hard his family has tried to avert the oracular prophecy, he has nevertheless killed his father and married his mother and must now pay
18050-423: The court and the other guests. Her next role at the Gymnase, as a foolish Russian princess, was entirely unsuited for her; her mother told her that her performance was "ridiculous". She decided abruptly to quit the theater to travel, and like her mother, to take on lovers. She went briefly to Spain, then, at the suggestion of Alexandre Dumas, to Belgium. She carried to Brussels letters of introduction from Dumas, and
18240-409: The debt until 1900. Later, however, when the Comédie Française theatre was nearly destroyed by fire, she allowed her old troupe to use her own theatre. In April 1880, as soon as he learned Bernhardt had resigned from the Comédie Française, the impresario Edward Jarrett hurried to Paris and proposed that she make a theatrical tour of England and then the United States. She could select her repertoire and
18430-511: The direst consequences (Œdipus's killing a stranger on the road to Thebes, and marrying the widowed Queen of Thebes after solving the Sphinx 's riddle), nor is it simply an error of judgment (as when Deianira , in the Hercules Furens of Seneca the Younger , kills her husband when intending to win back his love); it is a flaw of character. In a second important respect, Racine is at variance with
18620-477: The doorkeeper retired 20 years later, she bought a cottage for him in Normandy. At a ceremony honoring the birthday of Molière on 15 January 1863, Bernhardt invited her younger sister, Regina, to accompany her. Regina accidentally stood on the train of the gown of a leading actress of the company, Zaïre-Nathalie Martel (1816–1885), known as Madame Nathalie. Madame Nathalie pushed Regina off the gown, causing her to strike
18810-466: The drawing-room comedy Frou-frou by Meilhac-Halévy, both of which were highly successful on the London stage. In six of the eight plays in her repertoire, she died dramatically in the final act. When she returned to Paris from London, the Comédie Française asked her to come back, but she refused their offer, explaining that she was making far more money on her own. Instead, she took her new company and new plays on tour to Brussels and Copenhagen, and then on
19000-593: The economy of the play. No dramatic critic has ever dissented from this unity of action ; but the unities of time and place were in fact read into the Poetics by theoreticians of the New Learning ( Jean de La Taille ) and other writers ( Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye and Jean Mairet ). The support which the unities received from Cardinal Richelieu eventually secured their complete triumph and Pierre Corneille , who had not conformed to them in his earlier plays, did so from
19190-408: The emperor and her pearls melted, as did the tiara presented by one of her lovers, Khalid Bey. She found the diamonds in the ashes, and the managers of the Odéon organised a benefit performance. The most famous soprano of the time, Adelina Patti , performed for free. In addition, the grandmother of her father donated 120,000 francs. Bernhardt was able to buy an even larger residence, with two salons and
19380-466: The emperor's scruples of conscience and sets him on a career of vice of which Britannicus's murder is merely the prelude. By the beginning of Act IV of Phèdre , Œnone has besmirched Hippolyte's character, and the Queen does nothing during that Act to exculpate him. With the working-out of a situation usually decided by the end of Act IV, the tragedies move to a swift conclusion. In the religious plays, Racine
19570-535: The end of her career. Besides Guitry, she shared the stage with Édouard de Max , her leading man in 20 productions, and Constant Coquelin , who frequently toured with her. La Dame aux Cam%C3%A9lias In some of the English-speaking world, The Lady of the Camellias became known as Camille , and sixteen versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The title character is Marguerite Gautier, who
19760-493: The enemy Brothers ) was produced by Molière's troupe at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal , in Paris. The following year, Molière also put on Racine's second play, Alexandre le Grand . However, this play garnered such good feedback from the public that Racine secretly negotiated with a rival play company, the Hôtel de Bourgogne , to perform the play – since they had a better reputation for performing tragedies. Thus, Alexandre premiered for
19950-573: The first American production of the play, a sanitized version that changed the name of the leading character to Camille—a practice adopted by most American actresses playing the role. The role of the tragic Marguerite Gautier became one of the most coveted among actresses and included performances by Sarah Bernhardt , Laura Keene , Eleonora Duse , Margaret Anglin , Gabrielle Réjane , Tallulah Bankhead , Lillian Gish , Dolores del Río , Eva Le Gallienne , Isabelle Adjani , Cacilda Becker , and Helena Modjeska . Bernhardt quickly became associated with
20140-413: The foundations of French literature , conservative readers retreated to Racine for the nostalgia of his simplicity. As Racine returned to prominence at home, his critics abroad remained hostile due mainly, Butler argues, to Francophobia . The British were especially damning, preferring Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott to Racine, whom they dismissed as "didactic" and "commonplace." This did not trouble
20330-564: The great Pierre Corneille . In his own plays, Racine sought to abandon the ornate and almost otherworldly intricacy that Corneille so favored. Audiences and critics were divided over the worth of Racine as an up-and-coming playwright. Audiences admired his return to simplicity and their ability to relate to his more human characters, while critics insisted on judging him according to the traditional standards of Aristotle and his Italian commentators from which he tended to stray. Attitudes shifted, however, as Racine began to eclipse Corneille. In 1674,
20520-410: The hand of Cleopatra." Bernhardt's violent portrayal of Cleopatra led to the theatrical story of a matron in the audience exclaiming to her companion "How unlike, how very unlike, the home life of our own dear Queen!" Bernhardt made a two-year world tour (1891–1893) to replenish her finances. Upon returning to Paris, she paid 700,000 francs for the Théâtre de la Renaissance , and from 1893 until 1899,
20710-491: The highly respected poet and critic Boileau published his Art Poétique which deemed Racine's model of tragedy superior to that of Corneille. This erased all doubts as to Racine's abilities as a dramatist and established him as one of the period's great literary minds. Butler describes this period as Racine's "apotheosis," his highest point of admiration. Racine's ascent to literary fame coincided with other prodigious cultural and political events in French history. This period saw
20900-574: The historical empress died of cancer. Bernhardt travelled to Ravenna, Italy, to study and sketch the costumes seen in Byzantine mosaic murals, and had them reproduced for her own costumes. The play opened on 26 December 1884 and ran for 300 performances in Paris and 100 in London, and it was a financial success. She was able to pay off most of her debts, and bought a lion cub, which she named Justinian, for her home menagerie. She also renewed her love affair with her former lead actor, Philippe Garnier. Theodora
21090-611: The human being in Euripides ' Hippolytus ; but closely allied to this – indeed, indistinguishable from it – is the atavistic strain of monstrous aberration that had caused her mother Pasiphaë to mate with a bull and give birth to the Minotaur . Thus, in Racine the hamartia , which the thirteenth chapter of Aristotle ’s Poetics had declared a characteristic of tragedy, is not merely an action performed in all good faith which subsequently has
21280-558: The leading actresses. She almost immediately caused another offstage scandal, when she was invited to recite poetry at a reception at the Tuileries Palace hosted by Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie , along with other actors of the Gymnase. She chose to recite two romantic poems by Victor Hugo , unaware that Hugo was a bitter critic of the emperor. Following the first poem, the emperor and empress rose and walked out, followed by
21470-464: The life of a legitimate son. The reason for these changes in the Homeric and Euripidean traditions is obvious: if Andromaque had been Pyrrhus's mistress (as in Euripides ), why should she refuse to marry him? Racine, like Homer , conceives her as sublimely faithful to Hector; yet the tension (III 8) between maternal love and a reluctance to marry Pyrrhus must (as in Euripides ) be paramount. And so Astyanax
21660-458: The lines and practice the part, she played the lead in Racine's Phèdre , playing opposite the celebrated tragedian, Jean Mounet-Sully , who soon became her lover. The leading French critic Sarcey wrote "This is nature itself served by marvelous intelligence, by a soul of fire, by the most melodious voice that ever enchanted human ears. This woman plays with her heart, with her entrails." Phèdre became her most famous classical role, performed over
21850-507: The main characters brings us to the resolution – generally in the fourth Act, but not always ( Bajazet , Athalie ) – of what by now is an unbearable discordance. Hermione entrusts the killing of Pyrrhus to Oreste; wavers for a moment when the King comes into her presence; then, condemns him with her own mouth. No sooner has Burrhus regained his old ascendancy over Néron, and reconciled him with his half-brother, than Narcisse most skilfully overcomes
22040-487: The monster, and Théramène has come back to announce his master's death. Furthermore, Aricie only leaves the stage at the end of V 3, and therefore in the space of two short scenes has met her dying lover on the seashore and has taken her leave of him! These chronological inconsistencies pass unnoticed in the theatre. Racine invariably observes the unity of place. A room in Pyrrhus's palace at Buthrotum ; an antechamber separating
22230-610: The moral fables, Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691), both of which were based on Old Testament stories and intended for performance by the pupils of the school of the Maison royale de Saint-Louis in Saint-Cyr (a commune neighboring Versailles, and now known as "Saint-Cyr l'École"). Jean Racine died in 1699 from cancer of the liver. He requested burial in Port-Royal, but after Louis XIV had this site razed in 1710, his remains were moved to
22420-697: The net profit. She also announced that she would not be available to begin until 1882. She departed on a tour of theatres in the French provinces and then to Italy, Greece, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Austria, and Russia. In Kyiv and Odessa , she encountered anti-Semitic crowds who threw stones at her; pogroms were being conducted, forcing the Jewish population to leave. However, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, she performed before Czar Alexander III , who broke court protocol and bowed to her. During her tour, she gave performances for King Alfonso XII of Spain, and
22610-651: The new chief executive of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers , and obtained a pass to go to Germany to return them. When she returned to Paris several weeks later, the city was under the rule of the Paris Commune . She moved again, taking her family to Saint-Germain-en-Laye . She later returned to her apartment on the rue de Rome in May, after the Commune was defeated by the French Army. The Tuileries Palace , city hall of Paris, and many other public buildings had been burned by
22800-456: The old warrior, and, at a certain moment when the public, touched and enchanted by you, applauded, I wept. The tear which you caused me to shed is yours. I place it at your feet." The note was accompanied by a tear-shaped pearl on a gold bracelet. She maintained a highly theatrical lifestyle in her house on the rue de Rome. She kept a satin-lined coffin in her bedroom, and occasionally slept in it or lay in it to study her roles, though, contrary to
22990-492: The opening night, between two traditional French comedies, Le Misanthrope and Les Précieuses . On 4 June 1879, just before the opening curtain of her premiere in Phèdre, she suffered an attack of stage fright. She wrote later that she also pitched her voice too high, and was unable to lower it. Nonetheless, the performance was a triumph. Though a majority of the audience could not understand Racine's classical French, she captivated them with her voice and gestures; one member of
23180-399: The other way around, except to conform to this rule? Lastly, the unity of place necessitates the récit and this again is in complete harmony with Racine's fundamental aims: how would Andromaque gain by our being able to see Pyrrhus and his bride approach and enter the temple? The important fact is the effect of Cléone's words upon Hermione. Oreste's relating to Hermione the murder of Pyrrhus
23370-498: The part of a young woman and a young boy, Zacharie, the first of many male parts she played in her career. The influential critic Sarcey wrote "she charmed her audience like a little Orpheus." Her breakthrough performance was in the 1868 revival of Kean by Alexandre Dumas, in which she played the female lead part of Anna Danby. The play was interrupted in the beginning by disturbances in the audience by young spectators who called out, "Down with Dumas! Give us Hugo!". Bernhardt addressed
23560-512: The parts assigned for her performance were classical and required carefully stylised emotions, but she preferred romanticism and fully and naturally expressing her emotions. The teachers ranked her 14th in tragedy and second in comedy. Once again, Morny came to her rescue. He put in a good word for her with the National Minister of the Arts, Camille Doucet . Doucet recommended her to Edouard Thierry,
23750-512: The penalty for these unwitting crimes. The same awareness of a cruel fate that leads innocent men and women into sin and demands retribution of the equally innocent children, pervades La Thébaïde , a play that itself deals with the legend of Œdipus . Racine is often said to have been deeply influenced by the Jansenist sense of fatalism. However, the link between Racine's tragedy and Jansenism has been disputed on multiple grounds; for example, Racine himself denied any connection to Jansenism. As
23940-566: The perfect model of dramatic tragedy by which all other plays would be judged. Butler blames the consequential "withering" of French drama on Racine's idolized image, saying that such rigid adherence to one model eventually made all new French drama a stale imitation. The French installation of Racine into the dramatic and literary pantheon evoked harsh criticism from many sources who argued against his 'perfection.' Germans like Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dismissed Racine as höfisches Drama, or "courtly drama" too restricted by
24130-610: The performance. Many years later, she gave a private performance of the play for the queen while she was on holiday in Nice. When she returned to Paris, Bernhardt contrived to make a surprise performance at the annual 14 July patriotic spectacle at the Paris Opera, which was attended by the President of France, and a houseful of dignitaries and celebrities. She recited the Marseillaise , dressed in
24320-519: The play Clothilde , where she held the Queen of the Fairies role and performed her first of many dramatic death scenes. While in the boarding school, her mother rose to the top of Parisian courtesans, consorting with politicians, bankers, generals, and writers. Her patrons and friends included Charles de Morny, Duke of Morny , the half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III and President of the French legislature. At
24510-490: The play a lucidity of mind that enables her to analyse and reflect upon this fatal and hereditary weakness. Hermione's situation is rather closer to that of Greek tragedy. Her love for Pyrrhus is perfectly natural and is not in itself a flaw of character. But despite her extraordinary lucidity (II 1; V 1) in analysing her violently fluctuating states of mind, she is blind to the fact that the King does not really love her (III 3), and this weakness on her part, which leads directly to
24700-599: The play inspired Giuseppe Verdi to put the story to music. His work became the opera La traviata , set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave . On March 6, 1853, La traviata opened in Venice, Italy at the La Fenice opera house. The female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, is renamed Violetta Valéry, and the male protagonist, Armand Duval, is renamed Alfredo Germont. La Dame aux Camélias has been adapted for some 20 different motion pictures in numerous countries and in
24890-593: The play was unsuccessful. Bernhardt had built up large expenses, which included a 10,000 francs a month allowance paid to her son Maurice, a passionate gambler. Bernhardt was forced to sell her chalet in Sainte-Addresse and her mansion on rue Fortuny, and part of her collection of animals. Her impresario, Edouard Jarrett, immediately proposed she make another world tour, this time to Brazil, Argentina , Uruguay , Chile, Peru , Panama , Cuba , and Mexico, then on to Texas , New York City, England, Ireland, and Scotland. She
25080-416: The play – are obvious even to the most inattentive spectator. Unlike his rival, who crams into his plays "quantité d'incidents qui ne se pourraient passer qu'en un mois", Racine describes fluctuating states of mind which, in the rapidly mounting tension, are brought abruptly to a crisis from which there is no retreat. The so-called Aristotelian rules happen to suit this type of drama perfectly since they lead
25270-404: The playwright to concentrate the tragic action on those few hours when, after months or years of emotional tension, a new event supervenes and precipitates the catastrophe. The most striking evidence of Racine's success in fitting his tragedies into this very stringent framework is that, when watching them, the audience ceases to be aware that the unities exist. Not long before he wrote Phèdre ,
25460-451: The plot he thinks suitable to his characters and, above all, to present the old stories in a modern light. Whereas Euripides , in his Iphigenia in Aulis , averts the heroine's death only by causing Artemis to spirit her away to Tauris, putting a hart in her place on the sacrificial altar. Racine, determined to avoid the miraculous, borrows from a minor Greek writer, the geographer Pausanias ,
25650-423: The popular stories, she never took it with her on her travels. She cared for her younger sister who was ill with tuberculosis, and allowed her to sleep in her own bed while she slept in the coffin. She posed in it for photographs, adding to the legends she created about herself. Bernhardt repaired her old relationships with the other members of the Comédie Française; she participated in a benefit for Madame Nathalie,
25840-444: The pose and the princess of the gesture", and Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours worldwide and was one of the early prominent actresses to make sound recordings and act in motion pictures. She is also linked with the success of artist Alphonse Mucha , whose work she helped to publicize. Mucha became one of the more sought-after artists of this period for his Art Nouveau style. Henriette-Rosine Bernard
26030-606: The power of life and death over the other characters. Pyrrhus forces Andromaque to choose between marrying him and seeing her son killed. After keeping his fiancée waiting in Epirus for a year, he announces his intention of marrying her, only to change his mind almost immediately afterwards. Mithridate discovers Pharnace's love for Monime by spreading a false rumour of his own death. By pretending to renounce his fiancée, he finds that she had formerly loved his other son Xipharès. Wrongly informed that Xipharès has been killed fighting Pharnace and
26220-527: The psychological theater descended from Racine have made us unaccustomed to that immediate and violent action which the theater should possess' (p. 84). At present, Racine is still widely considered a literary genius of revolutionary proportions. His work is still widely read and frequently performed. Racine's influence can be seen in A.S. Byatt's tetralogy ( The Virgin in the Garden 1978, Still Life 1985, Babel Tower 1997 and A Whistling Woman 2002 ). Byatt tells
26410-573: The regularity of the plays' structure and versification. The suffering lover Hermione, Roxane or Phèdre is aware of nothing except her suffering and the means whereby it can be relieved. Her love is not founded upon esteem of the beloved and a concern for his happiness and welfare, but is essentially selfish. In a torment of jealousy, she tries to relieve the "pangs of despised love" by having (or, in Phèdre's case, allowing) him to be put to death, and thus associating him with her own suffering. The depth of tragedy
26600-451: The relative economic classes of the central characters. Jean Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( / r æ ˈ s iː n / rass- EEN , US also / r ə ˈ s iː n / rə- SEEN ; French: [ʒɑ̃ batist ʁasin] ; 22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in
26790-517: The remaining 20 patients. By the end of the siege, Bernhardt's hospital had cared for more than 150 wounded soldiers, including a young undergraduate from the École Polytechnique, Ferdinand Foch , who later commanded the Allied armies in the First World War . The French government signed an armistice on 19 January 1871, and Bernhardt learned that her son and family had been moved to Hamburg. She went to
26980-499: The rise of literary giants like Molière, Jean de La Fontaine , Boileau, and François de La Rochefoucauld , as well as Louis Le Vau 's historic expansion of the Palace of Versailles , Jean-Baptiste Lully 's revolution in Baroque music, and most importantly, the ascension of Louis XIV to the throne of France. During Louis XIV's reign, France rose up from a long period of civil discord (see
27170-546: The role after starring in Camellias in Paris, London, and several Broadway revivals, plus the 1911 film. The dancer and impresario Ida Rubinstein successfully recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid-1920s, coached by the great actress herself before she died. Of all Dumas fils 's theatrical works, La Dame aux Camélias is the most popular around the world. In 1878, Scribner's Monthly reported that "not one other play by Dumas fils has been received with favor out of France". The success of
27360-429: The role unless she apologised. Because neither yielded, and Madame Nathalie was a senior member of the company, Thierry was forced to ask Bernhardt to leave. Her family could not understand her departure from the theater; it was inconceivable to them that anyone would walk away from the most prestigious theatre in Paris at age 18. Instead, she went to a popular theatre, the Gymnase, where she became an understudy to two of
27550-587: The role; the play had first been performed by Eugénie Dochein in 1852, but it quickly became her most performed and most famous role. She played the role more than a thousand times, and acted regularly and successfully in it until the end of her life. Audiences were often in tears during her famous death scene at the end. She could not perform La Dame aux Camélias on a London stage because of British censorship laws; instead, she put on four of her proven successes, including Hernani and Phèdre , plus four new roles, including Adrienne Lecouvreur by Eugène Scribe and
27740-402: The same plot: for example, Michel le Clerc produced an Iphigénie in the same year as Racine (1674), and Jacques Pradon also wrote a play about Phèdre (1677). The success of Pradon's work (the result of the activities of a claque ) was one of the events which caused Racine to renounce his work as a dramatist at that time, even though his career up to this point was so successful that he
27930-418: The same subject had been dealt with by Gabriel Gilbert and Mathieu Bidar, both of whom had kept Hippolyte off stage after Act IV. Racine, on the other hand, brings him into Act V scene 1, the last line of which is only seventy or eighty lines earlier than Théramène's récit in V 6. In the four minutes which these lines take to recite the young prince has gone out with Théramène, has met, fought and been killed by
28120-569: The second time, by a different acting troupe, eleven days after its first showing. Molière could never forgive Racine for this betrayal, and Racine simply widened the rift between him and his former friend by seducing Molière's leading actress, Thérèse du Parc , into becoming his companion both professionally and personally. From this point on the Hôtel de Bourgogne troupe performed all of Racine's secular plays. Though both La Thébaïde (1664) and its successor, Alexandre (1665), had classical themes, Racine
28310-507: The sexless grace of the voices of choirboys, or the not quite real pathos of Pierrot ." Anatole France wrote of her performance in Lorenzaccio : "She formed out of her own self a young man melancholic, full of poetry and of truth." This was followed by another successful melodrama by Sardou, Gismonda , one of Bernhardt's few plays not finishing with a dramatic death scene. Her co-star was Lucien Guitry , who also acted as her leading man until
28500-564: The stepmother – until (IV 5) she discovers that he has loved Aricie all along. Racine's works have evoked in audiences and critics a wide range of responses, ranging from reverence to revulsion. In his book Racine: A Study (1974), Philip Butler of the University of Wisconsin broke the main criticisms of Racine down by century to show the almost constantly shifting perception of the playwright and his works. In his own time, Racine found himself compared constantly with his contemporaries, especially
28690-439: The story has been the adapted into numerous other screen versions: Amongst many adaptations, spin-offs, and parodies, was Camille , "a travesty on La Dame aux Camellias by Charles Ludlam , staged first by his own Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1973, with Ludlam playing the lead in drag . In 1999 Alexia Vassiliou collaborated with composer Aristides Mytaras for the contemporary dance performance, La Dame aux Camélias at
28880-509: The story of Frederica Potter, an English young woman in the early 1950s (when she is first introduced), who is very appreciative of Racine, and specifically of Phedre . The linguistic effects of Racine's poetry are widely considered to be untranslatable, although many eminent poets have attempted to translate Racine's work into English, including Lowell, Richard Wilbur , Ted Hughes , Tony Harrison , and Derek Mahon , and Friedrich Schiller , German , and Monsignor Pádraig de Brún into
29070-489: The system of unrequited passions borrowed from tragicomedy alters the dramatic scheme, and Hermione destroys a man who has been her fiancé, but who has remained indifferent to her, and is now marrying a woman who does not love him. The young princes and princesses are agreeable, display varying degrees of innocence and optimism and are the victims of evil machinations and the love/hatred characteristic of Racine. The king (Pyrrhus, Néron, Titus, Mithridate, Agamemnon, Thésée) holds
29260-528: The theatre of Porte Saint-Martin and starred in Nana-Sahib , a new play by Richepin, a costume drama about love in British India in 1857. The play and Richepin's acting were poor, and it quickly closed. Richepin then wrote an adaptation of Macbeth in French, with Bernhardt as Lady Macbeth , but it was also a failure. The only person who praised the play was Oscar Wilde , who was then living in Paris. He wrote
29450-408: The theatre, arrived in Paris, and moved into the apartment with Bernhardt. After a month, he returned to Brussels and told his family that he wanted to marry the actress. The family of the Prince sent his uncle, General de Ligne, to break up the romance, threatening to disinherit him if he married Bernhardt. According to other accounts, the Prince denied any responsibility for the child. She later called
29640-399: The threat of sacrifice. Phèdre, passive and irresolute, allows herself to be led by Œnone; deeply conscious of the impurity of her love, she sees it as an atavistic trait and a punishment of the gods; and she is so consumed by jealousy that she can do nothing to save her beloved from the curse. The confidants' primary function is to make monologues unnecessary. Only very rarely do they further
29830-435: The throne, vainly tries to reassert her influence over Néron by espousing the cause of a prince whom she had excluded from the succession. Roxane, the fiercest and bravest in Racine's gallery of queens, has no compunction in ordering Bajazet's death and indeed banishes him from her presence even before he has finished justifying himself. Clytemnestre is gentle and kind, but quite ineffectual in rescuing her daughter Iphigénie from
30020-481: The time of Le Cid (1636) onwards. But even he found them a tiresome imposition. Only by a very ready suspension of disbelief can we accept that in the space of twenty-four hours El Cid kills Chimène's father in a duel, overwhelms the Moorish invaders during the night and fights a second duel only a few hours after the enemy has fled. These discrepancies – and others besides, which Corneille admits to in his Examen of
30210-527: The tour, she brought back a trunk filled with 3,500,000 francs, but she also suffered a painful injury to her knee when she leaped off the parapet of the Castello Sant' Angelo in La Tosca . The mattress on which she was supposed to land was misplaced, and she landed on the boards. When Bernhardt returned from her 1886–87 tour, she received a new invitation to return to the Comédie Française. The theatre management
30400-451: The tragic peripeteia of III 7, is the hamartia from which the tragic outcome arises. For Racine, love closely resembles a physiological disorder. It is a fatal illness with alternating moods of calm and crisis, and with deceptive hopes of recovery or fulfilment ( Andromaque , ll. 1441–1448; Phèdre , ll. 767-768), the final remission culminating in a quick death. His main characters are monsters, and stand out in glaring contrast to
30590-556: The underlying themes of violence and scandal that seem to pervade the plays, creating a new angle from which they could be examined. In general, people agreed that Racine would only be fully understood when removed from the context of the 18th century. Jean-Yves Tadié noted that Marcel Proust developed a fondness for Racine at an early age, "whom he considered a brother and someone very much like himself..." In his essay, The Theatre and Cruelty , Antonin Artaud claimed that 'the misdeeds of
30780-515: The walls of Troy and killed, and whose death is foreshadowed in book 24 of the Iliad , is made to survive the capture of Troy and the extinction of his dynasty. In another respect also, Racine departs from the lines laid down by the Andromache , for whereas in the earlier play the heroine fears that the son she has had by Pyrrhus may suffer death if she refuses to marry the father, the later heroine fears for
30970-476: The years around the world, often for audiences who knew little or no French; she made them understand by her voice and gestures. In 1877, she had another success as Doña Sol in Hernani , a tragedy written 47 years earlier by Victor Hugo. Her lover in the play was her lover off-stage, as well, Mounet-Sully. Hugo was in the audience. The next day, he sent her a note: "Madame, you were great and charming; you moved me, me
31160-464: The young prince on Thésée's unexpected return. Céphise, knowing how deeply attached Pyrrhus is to her mistress, urges the despairing Andromaque to make a last appeal to him on her son's behalf, and so changes the course of the play. Racine observes the dramatic unities more closely than the Greek tragedians had done. The philosopher Aristotle points out the ways in which tragedy differs from epic poetry: "Tragedy generally tries to limit its action to
31350-569: Was a 19th-century euphemism for syphilis , as opposed to the more common meaning of tuberculosis. Dumas fils is careful to paint a favourable portrait of Marguerite, who despite her past is rendered virtuous by her love for Armand, and the suffering of the two lovers, whose love is shattered by the need to conform to the morals of the times, is rendered touchingly. In contrast to the Chevalier des Grieux 's love for Manon in Manon Lescaut (1731),
31540-438: Was a failure. She wrote immediately to Perrin "You forced me to play when I was not ready...what I foresaw came to pass...this is my first failure at the Comédie and my last." She sent a resignation letter to Perrin, made copies, and sent them to the major newspapers. Perrin sued her for breach of contract; the court ordered her to pay 100,000 francs plus interest, and she lost her accrued pension of 43,000 francs. She did not settle
31730-424: Was a revival of her performance as Phédre, which she took on tour around the world. In 1898, she had another success, in the play Lorenzaccio , playing the male lead role in a Renaissance revenge drama written in 1834 by Alfred de Musset , but never before actually staged. As her biographer Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote, she did not try to be overly masculine when she performed male roles: "Her male impersonations had
31920-555: Was admitted to the highest levels of society. According to some later accounts, she attended a masked ball in Brussels where she met the Belgian aristocrat Henri, Hereditary Prince de Ligne , and had an affair with him. Other accounts say that they met in Paris, where the Prince came often to attend the theater. The affair was cut short when she learned that her mother had had a heart attack. She returned to Paris, where she found that her mother
32110-481: Was already entering into controversy and forced to field accusations that he was polluting the minds of his audiences. He broke all ties with Port-Royal, and proceeded with Andromaque (1667), which told the story of Andromache , widow of Hector , and her fate following the Trojan War . Amongst his rivals were Pierre Corneille and his brother, Thomas Corneille . Tragedians often competed with alternative versions of
32300-497: Was another critical and popular success for Bernhardt. The critic Sarcey wrote "She has the sovereign grace, the penetrating charm, the I don't know what. She is a natural artist, an incomparable artist." The directors of the Odéon next decided to stage Ruy Blas , a play written by Victor Hugo in 1838, with Bernhardt playing the role of the Queen of Spain. Hugo attended all the rehearsals. At first, Bernhardt pretended to be indifferent to him, but he gradually won her over and she became
32490-450: Was another melodrama by Sardou and Moreau , Cleopatra , which allowed her to wear elaborate costumes and finished with a memorable death scene . For this scene, she kept two live garter snakes , which played the role of the poisonous asp which bites Cleopatra . For realism, she painted the palms of her hands red, though they could hardly be seen from the audience. "I shall see them," she explained. "If I catch sight of my hand, it will be
32680-435: Was attended by both the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Gladstone . While in London, she added to her personal menagerie of animals. In London, she purchased three dogs, a parrot, and a monkey, and made a side trip to Liverpool, where she purchased a cheetah, a parrot, and a wolfhound and received a gift of six chameleons, which she kept in her rented house on Chester Square, and then took back to Paris. Back in Paris, she
32870-432: Was better, but that she was pregnant from her affair with the Prince. She did not notify the Prince. Her mother did not want the fatherless child born under her roof, so she moved to a small apartment on rue Duphot, and on 22 December 1864, the 20-year-old actress gave birth to her only child, Maurice Bernhardt. Some accounts say that Prince Henri had not forgotten her. According to these versions, he learned her address from
33060-615: Was born at 5 rue de L'École-de-Médecine in the Latin Quarter of Paris on 22 October 1844. She was the daughter of Judith Bernard (also known as Julie and in France as Youle), a Dutch Jewish courtesan with a wealthy or upper-class clientele. The name of her father was not recorded for a long time, but he is known now to have been an attorney in Le Havre . Bernhardt later wrote that her father's family paid for her education, insisted she be baptized as
33250-498: Was destined for the stage. After the performance, Dumas called her "my little star". Morny used his influence with the composer Daniel Auber , the head of the Paris Conservatory , to arrange for Bernhardt to audition. She began preparing, as she described it in her memoirs, "with that vivid exaggeration with which I embrace any new enterprise." Dumas coached her. The jury comprised Auber and five leading actors and actresses from
33440-485: Was entirely satisfied to be the son of Sarah Bernhardt. (While the story is in character for Maurice, note that the Prince died in 1871 when Maurice was 6.) To support herself after the birth of Maurice, Bernhardt played minor roles and understudies at the Porte Saint-Martin theatre, a popular melodrama theatre. In early 1866, she obtained a reading with Felix Duquesnel, director of the Théâtre de L'Odéon (Odéon) on
33630-498: Was extremely popular, and critically acclaimed. Bernhardt played the role for 29 consecutive sold-out performances. The success of the play allowed Bernhardt to buy a new pet lion for her household menagerie. She named him Scarpia, after the villain of La Tosca . The play inspired Giacomo Puccini to write one of his more famous operas, Tosca (1900). Following this success, she acted in several revivals and classics, and many French writers offered her new plays. In 1887, she acted in
33820-443: Was followed by two failures. In 1885, in homage to Victor Hugo, who had died a few months earlier, she staged one of his older plays, Marion de Lorme , written in 1831, but the play was outdated and her role did not give her a chance to show her talents. She next put on Hamlet , with her lover Philippe Garnier in the leading role and Bernhardt in the relatively minor role of Ophelia . The critics and audiences were not impressed, and
34010-495: Was forced to give up the Ambigu, and then, in February 1883, to sell her jewellery, her carriages, and her horses at an auction. When Damala left, she took on a new leading man and lover, the poet and playwright Jean Richepin , who accompanied her on a quick tour of European cities to help pay off her debts. She renewed her relationship with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII . When they returned to Paris, Bernhardt leased
34200-421: Was given the title of "treasurer of France", and he was later distinguished as an "ordinary gentleman of the king" (1690), and then as a secretary of the king (1696). Because of Racine's flourishing career in the court, Louis XIV provided for his widow and children after his death. When at last he returned to the theatre, it was at the request of Madame de Maintenon , morganatic second wife of King Louis XIV, with
34390-412: Was going to move to Brittany and start a farm. Chilly, who knew Bernhardt's moods well, told her that he understood and accepted her decision, and would give the role to Jane Essler, a rival actress. According to Chilly, Bernhardt immediately jumped up from the sofa and asked when the rehearsals would begin. Jean-Marie , about a young Breton woman forced by her father to marry an old man she did not love,
34580-441: Was her complete sincerity. Her thin figure also made her look ridiculous in the ornate costumes. Dumas, her strongest supporter, commented after one performance, "she has the head of a virgin and the body of a broomstick." Soon, however, with different plays and more experience, her performances improved; she was praised for her performance of Cordelia in King Lear . In June 1867, she played two roles in Athalie by Jean Racine;
34770-457: Was immediately raised to 250 francs a month. Her next success was her performance in François Coppée 's Le Passant , which premiered at the Odéon on 14 January 1868, playing the part of the boy troubadour, Zanetto, in a romantic renaissance tale. Critic Théophile Gautier described the "delicate and tender charm" of her performance. It played for 150 performances, plus a command performance at
34960-416: Was increasingly discontented with Perrin and the management of the Comédie Française. He insisted that she perform the lead in the play L'Aventurière by Emile Augier , a play which she thought was mediocre. When she rehearsed the play without enthusiasm, and frequently forgot her lines, she was criticised by the playwright. She responded "I know I'm bad, but not as bad as your lines." The play went ahead, but
35150-483: Was its artistic director and lead actress. She managed every aspect of the theatre, from the finances to the lighting, sets, and costumes, as well as appearing in eight performances a week. She imposed a rule that women in the audience, no matter how wealthy or famous, had to take off their hats during performances, so the rest of the audience could see, and eliminated the prompter's box from the stage, declaring that actors should know their lines. She abolished in her theatre
35340-485: Was offered a new role in Fédora , a melodrama written for her by Victorien Sardou . It opened on 12 December 1882, with her husband Damala as the male lead, and received good reviews. English novelist Maurice Baring, who wrote a biography of Bernhardt, wrote "a secret atmosphere emanated from her, an aroma, an attraction, which was at once exotic and cerebral...She literally hypnotised her audience." Another journalist wrote "She
35530-637: Was on tour for 15 months, from early 1886 until late 1887. On the eve of departure, she told a French reporter: "I passionately love this life of adventures. I detest knowing in advance what they are going to serve at my dinner, and I detest a hundred thousand times more knowing what will happen to me, for better or worse. I adore the unexpected." In every city she visited, she was feted and cheered by audiences. The actors Edouard Angelo and Philippe Garnier were her leading men. Emperor Pedro II of Brazil attended all of her performances in Rio de Janeiro and presented her with
35720-468: Was the first French author to live almost entirely on the money he earned from his writings. Others, including the historian Warren Lewis , attribute his retirement from the theater to qualms of conscience. However, one major incident which seems to have contributed to Racine's departure from public life was his implication in a court scandal of 1679. He got married at about this time to the pious Catherine de Romanet, and his religious beliefs and devotion to
35910-421: Was waiting in the wings, and she asked his forgiveness. He told her, "I can forgive you, and you'll eventually forgive yourself, but Racine in his grave never will." Francisque Sarcey, the influential theater critic of L'Opinion Nationale and Le Temps , wrote: "she carries herself well and pronounces with perfect precision. That is all that can be said about her at the moment." Bernhardt did not remain long with
36100-416: Was willing to forget the conflict of her two previous periods there, and offered a payment of 150,000 francs a year. The money appealed to her, and she began negotiations. However, the senior members of the company protested the high salary offered, and conservative defenders of the more traditional theatre also complained; one anti-Bernhardt critic, Albert Delpit of Le Gaulois , wrote "Madame Sarah Bernhardt
#619380