Drame

The theatre of 17th- and 18th-c. France was divided into the realms of tragedy and comedy. Unlike the heroic verse tragicomedy of the 17th c., the drame (or drame bourgeois) which emerged in the mid-18th c. sought to break down this barrier by offering serious representations, in prose, of the lives of ordinary contemporaries.

The first important theorist of the genre was Diderot, though Beaumarchais (Essai sur le genre dramatique sérieux, 1767) and Mercier (Nouvel essai sur l'art dramatique, 1773) also made significant contributions. Inspired by English playwrights (Lillo, Moore), and following the example of the comédie larmoyante, Diderot put forward in his Entretiens sur le Fils naturel (1757) and Discours sur la poésie dramatique (1758) proposals for intermediate genres avoiding the remoteness of tragedy and the frivolity of comedy: ‘tragédie bourgeoise’, ‘drame philosophique’, and ‘comédie sérieuse’. The distinctions between them are not very significant, the important thing being a convincing portrayal of contemporary social life, with appropriate sets, costume, diction, and physical action, which would involve the audience's sympathy, appealing to the fashionable sensibilité of the day. The resulting emotion should be edifying; the philosophes saw the drame as part of the struggle for social and moral progress.

Diderot's own drames (Le Fils naturel, 1757; Le Père de famille, 1758) suffer from melodramatic didacticism, as do those of Beaumarchais (e.g. Eugénie), Baculard d'Arnaud, and Mercier (the most assiduous toiler in this vineyard). The best example of the genre is Sedaine's Le Philosophe sans le savoir. The 18th-c. drame had to endure contemporary ridicule and hostility, and produced no masterpieces, but its long-term effects were considerable. The clear separation of tragedy and comedy proved unsustainable in France and elsewhere. Diderot's arguments won a hearing in Germany by way of Lessing, and much serious European drama of the 19th and 20th c. is arguably a descendant of the movement of the 1750s. [For this, and for the drame romantique, see Drama in France since 1789.]

[Peter France]