Theatre as a Prison of Longue Durée

Transcription

1 Theatre as a Prison of Longue Durée Bearbeitet von Henk Gras, Bennie Pratasik, Harry van Vliet, Philip Hans Franses 1. Auflage Buch. 251 S. Hardcover ISBN Format (B x L): 14 x 21 cm Gewicht: 440 g Weitere Fachgebiete > Musik, Darstellende Künste, Film > Theaterwissenschaften > Geschichte des Theaters schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, ebooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte.

2 Introduction The historiography of theatre patrons suffers from its own success. It succeeded early to mould a master narrative that structured its course. This course reads as the loss of a theatrical Paradise, which had to be regained. In terms of social history, this master narrative reads like a class struggle; in terms of theatrical artforms it reads like a battle between spoken and sung drama, which also was connected with class-struggle. Paradise was Greek drama, or even better, its emulation by neoclassicism in the age of le Grand Roi, Louis XIV. Neoclassical theatre architecture became dominant, while neoclassical genres, opera, tragedy, comedy and farce dominated. Local stage architecture and drama-traditions dwindled, for instance in Spain, Germany, and noteworthy, England. 1 Neoclassicism was meant as the style for an international elite. It was, as it were, the common art of the cousin-cousine society, which, whatever language was spoken (French largely), was familiar with each other and with the endless variations, in speech or song, of the same, antique heritage which figured as a global culture. The austere, stoic hero of the classicist drama s was not everyman s cup of tea, while the bourgeois caricatures of the classicist comedy disgust the bourgeois. In London, one of the cradle of European Theatre, a pamphlet-war broke out known as the Jeremy Collier controversy. In 1698, Collier wrote his A Short View of the Immorality and Profanenes of the English Stage. This book was hailed by the members of the Society of the Reformation of Manners and other reform movements. They were opposed by the nobility, gentry, and army, who just came back from the Nine-year War. At stake was the comedy of manners, a sub-genre of comedy, which was en vogue in the reign of Charles II. The almost continuous state of war robbed the Theatres from naturel audience (nobility, gentry, army officers, etc.). Yet, the show must go on, and the managers tried catering for the citizens. These were not amused. Yet, the Theatres were also formidably defended. In the whole sixteen-century, the Puritans had te best arguments: Theatre-going was a waste of money and it affected one s soul. It was a matter of Reason. John Dennis, however, turned the tables, in his The 1 Dryden, in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), was highly critical of the French tragic form. John Dennis, however, supported classicism. Molière was widely imitated in England. In Spain the Corrales lingered on to well in the 18 th century. The baroque and farce traditions also stood out. 11

3 Usefulness of the Stage (1698). Influenced by the English Platonisme and the Enthusiasme-theory, Dennis reject the idea that the rational Soul was the eternal aspect of man. The Soul strove towards to happiness, he says. Happiness is a pleasure and pleasure is a passion, a movement, which the Soul experiences with respect to concrete entities. Reason could never in her abstract rules give that happiness. After death the Soul will be in an endless state of happiness, thus passion, while Reason is super-flues. Hence, the Stoic hero lost ground, whereas middle-class hero had the future. Tender passion was en vogue with the bourgeoisie. The aspiring burgher invented a drama of its own, calling it the drame bourgeois, or bürgerliches Drama, art forms which stressed that each European country had its own mores. 2 Differentiation per nation and different expression of emotion affected national acting styles, both in drama and in opera. The French Revolution was regarded as the artistic guillotine, that bereft classical art-forms of their life, even as it supposedly did with many of the cousins and cousines. From that moment the theatre (drama) was believed to be dominated by the lower middle classes and even workers. Their fare was melodrama. 3 The elite fled to opera. This sad state of affairs lasted till about 1870, when the bourgeois class re-conquered the theatre for their class. It is this book s ambition to empirically test and falsify the obviously socialhistorical dimension of the master narrative of theatre patronage, with an emphasis on the later eighteen- and the (long) nineteenth-century. To do so, it makes use of quantitative methods, both with respect to subscribers for season-tickets and the coupons of anonymous patrons. Many Dutch archives, Dutch theatres, Dutch plays (although often translated from the French and German) and Dutch patrons will pass. Yet, we think our approach is sufficiently relevant to comparative studies on an international scale. The master narrative might have been criticised earlier, but it took about a century or more, before fundamental doubt led to criticism. In The Netherlands, Hennie Ruitenbeek led the vanguard, with an essay on purchasing power related to theatre-going amongst the lower classes in Amsterdam, concluding that the working classes could not afford a theatre ticket. 4 A team of scholars from 2 Neoclassical drama style is sometimes divided in two parts. In the first branch Corneille and Racine were the examples, in the second Voltaire and the Empire-style. This later style is sometimes called neo-classical, which causes sometime confusions. 3 Melodrama is a tricky thing. It started as drama with music, song, and machinery. Paul and Virgenie is a good example. It resembles opera. Very few play-bills use the term melodrama as a genre, but as a pejorative term it was wildly in use. 4 Henny Ruitenbeek, Byna te arm tot schouwburgtydverdryf. Sociale geleding en levensstandaard van het publiek in de Amsterdamse Stadsschouwburg in de eerste helft van de negen- 12

4 Utrecht and Rotterdam started a larger project on theatre patronage in Rotterdam. This book is the first result. 5 In 2000, two years after our first essay on this topic, Davis and Emeljanow published a book in which they falsified the British version of the master narrative of theatre patronage, as it was sustained by Allardyce Nicoll and George Rowell (amongst many others), who saw a progression towards the restoration of literary drama, improved standards of production, and greater social respectability, both on and off stage. 6 The repertoire of melodramas was explained by the low taste and low class of the composition of the audience. Particularly, the power of the gallery audience caused the decline of the drama (p. 97). The authors quote Nicoll: The stage in the early part of the century was largely a popular affair, and for the most part bourgeois opinion regarded its delights with cringing disapproval. Typical audiences were composed mainly of lower-class citizens with a sprinkling of representatives from the gayer or more libertine section of the aristocracy. The staid middle-class and the respectable, dignified nobility tended to look upon the stage as a thing not to be supported in an active manner. 7 tiende eeuw, in: Economisch en Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek (1993), Curiously, Ruitenbeek, in her Kijkcijfers (Amsterdam, 2002), ponders the view that the City Theatre was not in decline, because the performances brought in quite some money. This puts the cart before the horse. Critics and historians complained about the quality of the audience s composition, which cannot be deduced from rough estimations of the number of spectators. For the Amsterdam theatre, there are lists of receipts roughly from the early 1820s till the early 1840s. Only for the seasons and , ticket sales accounts per rank are available. 5 See Henk Gras en Bennie Pratasik, Theateronderzoek in Nederland: een historiografische en bronkritische verkenning aan de hand van Corvers Tooneel-aantekeningen (1786), in: De Achttiende Eeuw, 29 (1997), 2, Henk Gras en Philip Hans Franses, Theatre-going in Rotterdam, ; A Statistical Analysis of Ticket Sales, in: Theatre Survey, Vol. 39, no. 2, 73-98; Henk Gras, De geschiedenis van de Rotterdamse schouwburg is die van het Nederlands toneel, in: Historisch Tijdschrift Holland, no. 1 / 2, 2000, 76-88; Henk Gras, Interne verdeeldheid. Het onderzoek naar de smaak van het toneelpubliek in de negentiende eeuw, De Negentiende Eeuw, 24 no. 1, 2000, Henk Gras, Souperminnende NRC-heren en andere bemoeials: de rol van de markt in het negentiende-eeuwse theaterbestel, in: Boekman-Cahier, no. 52, 2001, 45-62; Henk Gras, Philip Hans Franses, and Marius Ooms, Did men of Taste and Civilization Save the Stage? Theater-going in Rotterdam, A Statistical Analysis of Ticket Sales, in: Journal of Social History, vol. 36 (2003), no. 3, , Henk Gras and Harry van Vliet, Paradise Lost nor Regained: Social Composition of the Theatre Audiences in the Long Nineteenth Century, in: Journal of Social History, no. 2 (2004), Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow, Reflecting the Audience. London Theatregoing, (Iowa, 2001), pp The works in question are Allardyce Nicoll s A History of English Drama, , Vol. 4, Early Nineteenth-Century Drama (Cambridge, ) and Vol. 5, Late Nineteenth-Century Drama (Cambridge, 1946). George Rowell, The Victorian Theatre (Cambridge, ). See on the topic of actors versus literary drama on the economics of the British stage, the book of that title by Tracy Davis (Cambridge, 2000) and Jacky Bratton, New Reading in Theatre History (Cambridge, 2003). 7 Davis and Emeljanow, Reflecting the Audience (2001),

5 Rowell is quoted for his conviction that in the early nineteenth century butchers and barber had driven (...) fashionable clients from the pit to the boxes, or in many cases out of the playhouse altogether (ibidem). Nicoll and Rowell saw things improve in the later nineteenth century, because of the good taste of some actor-managers (Macready, Phelps, the Bancrofts, Irving, Gilbert and Sullivan), which brought back a better-mannered audience. Queen Victoria personally took an interest in the process of refashioning manners in theatre audiences and elevation of the repertoire. 8 Davis and Emeljanow criticised the narrative of decline and resurrection of quality drama and ditto audiences for the London stage. Using among other materials, playbills, newspapers, transport schedules, and the census reports, they rejected the idea that theatres were class-based. Yet, they still took the view of the more low melodrama the more lower-class theatregoers. Of France and Germany comparable stories are told. With respect to the latter (divided) country, the (probably apocryphal) instance of Goethe giving up his position as intendant in Weimar because of the staging of Pixérécourt s Le Chien de Montargis (in which a dog played a major role), has been given symbolic value. 9 This master narrative of theatre historiography was recently rehearsed by Bruce A. McConachie as Melodramatic Formations. 10 The master narrative is particularly prone to construct patronage by way of play bills. 11 Our concern with Davis and Emeljanow s is the poor quantitative analysis. 12 The Dutch version of this master narrative also assumed that neoclassical tragedy invited an elite patronage in the late eighteenth century. Due to the 8 Davis and Emeljanow, Reflecting the Audience (2001), More likely, he gave up when the duke of Weimar s mistress, the actress Caroline Jagermann was given control over the company. The Weimar theatre in its heydays staged three plays per week, of which one was a musical play, and another a Von Kotzebue of Iffland play. See Marvin Carlson, Goethe and the Weimar Theatre (Ithaca, 1978), John Prudhoe, The Theatre of Goethe and Schiller (Oxford, 1973). 10 Bruce A. McConachie, Melodramatic Formations. American Theatre & Society, (Iowa City, 1992). 11 See particularly Jacky Bratton, New Reading in Theatre History (Cambridge, 2003) and for the Netherlands, Simon Koster, Comedie in Gelderland (Zutphen, 1997). 12 The authors assumed that theatres were predominantly patronized by people from the vicinity, they turned to the census reports to reconstruct the local population. The enumerations from the census reports in the many case studies, however, led to small insight, because they are not grouped and statistically analysed, hence, they do not lead to a clear synchronic and diachronic picture of the development of the social structure of patrons, neither in the districts under consideration, nor in the synthesis. Tables could have helped the reader. In other places in this study, however, they also stress that patrons travelled far to see a show, which contradicts somewhat the assumption of vicinity, particular because their numbers are unknown. Yet, a complex and detailed picture of play-going and audiences composition is the result, a result which beats the Nicoll-Rowell view. 14

6 French Revolution the lower middle-class and the working class took over the best ranks in the theatre in the first half of the nineteenth century, which was testified by the melodrama-boom. The elite fled to opera, and only returned to drama in the 1870s. Inspired by the bourgeois fear of socialism, a movement set in for the elevation of the theatre: Shakespeare, Greek tragedies and other canonized works got a firm hold in the repertoire. The stage should show timeless art, not social engagement. As Hans de Leeuwe noticed, the literate and rich bourgeoisie organised itself to reconquer the theatre for their own class. 13 In Belgium and the Netherlands, were the founding-years of the Dutch Stage League, which aimed, under the leadership of the banker-poet H.J. Schimmel, at founding a drama academy, a model review journal, and a national theatre company. This troupe was indeed founded in 1876: The Society The Dutch Stage, led by Schimmel. The fact that Queen Sophie visited The Danicheffs in 1876 was the ultimate proof that the balance had changed in favour of the civilized classes. What would the theatre have been if there hadn t been queens? In 1881 the model troupe was allowed to call it self the Royal Society. The master narrative is a story of Paradise Lost and Regained, focussing on the city elites and the petty bourgeois, even on the working classes. The leading Dutch theatre historians of the middle twentieth century adhered to this view. 14 The Stage League also put back on the agenda the issue of stage-subsidy. Some departments of the League paid the lease of the theatre for the manager(s), provided that they would stop staging melodrama. The question of state-subsidy had always been linked with censorship. Therefore, the main creator of the 1848 constitution, the liberal Thorbecke, framed the dictum that art wasn t a government interest, which in practice meant relative lenient censorship but no subsidies from taxpayers money. The tables turned after WWII, when social-democrats and Catholics tried to fight American culture ( film and jazz ) with drama and opera. 13 De Leeuwe, Antoine Jean le Gras (1975), The Dutch tradition of the dominant narrative is best mirrored by Ben Hunningher, Een eeuw Nederlands toneel (Amsterdam, 1949), and his Het dramatisch werk van Schimmel (Amsterdam, 1931). Ben Albach, Helden, draken en komedianten (Amsterdam, 1956); H.H.J. de Leeuwe, Antoine Jean le Gras, een Nederlands regisseur der negentiende eeuw in Rotterdam, in: Rotterdams Jaarboekje (1975), ,