Dramatis Personae

Abbot Claude Boyer, preacher and poet, also wrote plays and operas. He was a member of the French Academy. His success in the pulpit was poor. As a poet he was mocked and derided by Jean Racine and other contemporary literary figures. His tragedy, Judith, however, did meet with some success. Still, he was considered in his time and by his peers a mediocre writer. Boyer was a frequent guest of the Hotel de Rambouillet, famous in its day as one of the premier French salons. Its guests included some of the best French minds of the day, including Pierre Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Jean-Baptiste Lully. In 1645, Boyer dedicated the first of his twenty-two plays to Mme de Rambouillet. Tyridate is the fifth published work of Boyer.

 

In 1663, poet Katherine Fowler Philips, daughter of a moderate Puritan and wife of a prominent Parliamentarian, translated Pierre Corneille’s tragedy La Mort de Pompée. Her translation was performed that year at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. The publication of Pompey was well-received and secured her reputation as an author. In 1664, a collection of her poetry plus her translation of La Mort de Pompée and her translation of Corneille’s Horace was published, much to her displeasure. She objected to the quality of the printing and the edition was removed from sale. Nevertheless, the book was reprinted in 1669, 1678 and once more in 1710.

 

Thomas Rymer, famous for coining the phrase “poetic justice,” was educated at Cambridge as a barrister, but turned instead to literary criticism. The author of one play, he is better known for his attacks on English playwrights. In A Short View of Tragedy, first published in 1692, for instance, he called Shakespeare’s “Othello” a farce.

 

Charles Perrault’s two volume work contains one hundred eulogies with engraved portraits, fifty per volume, of famous men who had died during the seventeenth century. Hommes illustres is divided into five categories: churchmen, military leaders, statesmen, scholars and men of letters, and artists. The University of Utah copy is particularly rare, one of only a few copies containing portraits of Antoine Arnauld and Blaise Pascal – the portrait of Arnauld mounted at a later date. While the book was still being printed, Jesuits complained about the inclusion of Jansenists. Perrault and his editor, Dezallier, struggled to publish the complete edition of biographical portraits. Threatened with blackmail by the Jesuits and afraid of losing his royal pension, Perrault capitulated. The interference caused no small amount of scandal. Jean Racine purportedly wrote a now-lost poem about the incident.

 

John Oldmixon is best known for his histories, particularly his Critical History of England (1724-1726). This work caused controversy, especially in its defense of Bishop Gilbert Burnet. Oldmixon began his writing career as a poet and dramatist. His first publications were plays. Poverty turned Oldmixon’s pen from poems and plays to political pamphlets and newspaper columns. He was hired by one newspaper to counteract the views of Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Alexander Pope, who included him in The Dunciad (1728). He was not adequately compensated for his efforts. He spent much time appealing to publishers such as the large firm of Jacob Tonson, for funding. His lifetime output, then, is indicative of the girthed Muse met by most professional writers of his day.

 

Irish playwright George Farquhar began his career in the theater in Dublin as an actor. While performing in John Dryden’s The Indian Emperor, he accidently but severely wounded a fellow actor in a sword fight scene. Farquhar foreswore acting for the rest of his life. He moved to London at about the same time that his friend, the well-known actor Robert Wilks did. Wilks encouraged him to write. Farquhar’s first play, a comedy, was produced in 1698.

 

This is the earliest history of dancing in English, written by the son of a dancing master of the same name. Young John Weaver studied Latin and Greek and would pepper his later works with classical quotations in their original languages. Indeed, one of Weaver’s ambitions was to revive the style of acting and dancing of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In 1700 he staged his first production, describing it as “the first Entertainement that appeared on the English Stage, where the Representation and Story was carried by Dancing, Action and Motion only.” During this same time, a new system of dance notation had been published in Paris: R.A. Feuillet’s Chorégraphie. Weaver translated Feuillet into English and published the translation in 1706. That same year he also published A Collection of Ball-Dances Performed at Court, in which, by using Feuillet’s notation, he documented the dances created by Queen Anne’s Royal Dancing Master, Mr. Isaacs. A dancer himself, Weaver taught dance until he died at the age of eighty-seven.

 

Born in Crete, Nicholas Kalliakis moved to Italy at an early age. He served as professor of Greek, Latin and philosophy at Venice in 1666 and as professor of belles-lettres and rhetoric in Padua in 1667. There he began his study of dance in classical Greece and wrote this, his principal work, published posthumously.

 

The first edition of Irish poet Thomas Southerne’s collected works was printed in 1713. Southerne based his first play, The Persian Prince, on a contemporary novel. The play was a thinly disguised political allegory, which included a very flattering portrait of James II in the form of one character. First produced in 1682 with the help of John Dryden, who wrote the prologue and epilogue, the play was, nonetheless, not particularly successful. After the Glorious Revolution (1688/9), during which Southerne held the rank of captain in Princess Anne’s regiment, he devoted himself to dramatic writing. His 1694 The Fatal Marriage, based on Aphra Behn’s novel, and to which he added a comic element, was a great success. Another success came from another novel by Behn, Oroonoko. The 1688 novel’s main character was Imoinda, an African slave and one of the few representations of black women in early modern literature. However, Southerne changed Imoinda’s skin color from black to white.

 

Jacques Bonnet described the dances of antiquity, listed the ballets performed at European courts between 1450 and 1723, and described several of these in detail. The treatise was put together from the manuscripts of Pierre Bourdelot, and it was itself later regarded as an authoritative source by Louis de Cahusac and others.

 

Jean Philippe Rameau became perhaps the most lauded composer in his day and is the most recognized composer of his era today. He established himself first as a theorist, but his love was for the stage, which he turned to at the age of fifty. Les Fêtes d’Hébé was first performed at the Paris Opera on the 21st of May, 1739. The loose storyline follows Hébé’s distaste for the amorous goings-on of heaven and her determination to find out whether the situation isn’t better on Earth. The piece, Rameau’s fourth work for the stage, was a great success, a musical painting a la Watteau’s shepherds, sylvans, and fauns – highly ornamented and graciously stylized. Les Fêtes was performed nearly four hundred times after its premiere.

 

The works of Johann Gottsched helped develop the purification of the German language. Gottsched’s intent was to reign in excessive and vulgar German literary tastes of the time. His concern was justified, but others rejected this attempt, objecting to artificial rules and championing the cause of imagination. Gottsched stood his ground but was defeated. Before the end of his life he was mocked and sneered at for being doctrinaire. Later critics of Gottsched agree that early modern German theater owed more to him than his contemporary critics gave him credit for. Gottsched wrote several plays, including adaptations of English and French tragedies. Deutsche Schaubühne, is a six volume collection of drama, mostly translations of French plays. The second edition, with its new preface, was the culmination of Gottsched’s life work.

 

Louis de Cahusac was a librettist who worked with dramatists and musicians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). He also contributed to Diderot’s Encyclopédie. In this treatise, Cahusac stressed the importance of studying the theories of all the arts and placing dance in the aesthetic context of the performing arts. Volume one is a history of the dance of ancient and Middle Eastern civilizations. Cahusac relied on the vast literature available to him in classical studies. He contributed new information by presenting an original treatment of dance from the perspective of neo-classical aesthetic philosophy. He paid special attention to Roman pantomime, which he saw as a source of renewal for a decadent academic theater. He argued for the place of pantomime in dance as a discipline for the “imitation of nature.” Volume two describes the renaissance of the arts and the origins of ballet to 1610, in particular the story of dance in France from Catherine de’ Medici to 1643. Cahusac included a discussion of the history of festivals and public ceremonies. Volume three focuses on the establishment of French opera and dance in the court of Henry IV. Cahusac discussed the state of ballet in his own day with many references to persons and events in the thriving Parisian theater. His discussion included comments on theatrical allusion, stage machinery, and the principles of choreography. Cahusac borrowed from other writers but his work was a very early attempt at a comprehensive, complete history of dance.

 

Francois Danican Philidor came from a talented musical family, including his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. He began his musical education while a page-boy at Versailles, where he began singing with the Royal choir of Louis XV. During this time he also learned chess. A few of his early musical compositions were performed at Versailles, although he supported himself as a young man by copying and teaching music. In 1745, stranded in the Netherlands, he played chess to make his living. British officers escorted him to London where he established his reputation as the best chess player in Europe. A decade later he returned to Versailles to apply for the position of court composer, but he was turned down because his work was considered “too Italian.” Ironic, since he was known for his aggressive chess playing in the Italian school. Nevertheless, Philidor established a fairly successful career as a composer of comic opera. Eventually, however, discouraged by the greater success of others, he returned to a career at chess.

 

Giovanni-Andrea Gallini was director of the Kings Theatre in London. In Critical Observations, he promoted the use of contemporary dance terminology. The first two chapters contain a history of dance which is largely indebted to Cahusac’s La danse ancienne et moderne, although without acknowledgement. Chapter three, “On the air and port of the person” summarizes the positive traits a student acquires from learning how to dance: a head erect without stiffness, a body upright without affectation, a gait firm and assured without heaviness, a bearing light and airy without indecency. A poem in celebration of Mr. Marcell, Gallini’s master, is appended. A “Description of several steps and movements practiced in the art of dancing” describes the ballroom, provides a glossary, explains floor patterns, illustrates the true and false positions, comments on a few steps, and denigrates the use of chorégraphie, or dance notation.

 

David Garrick (1717-1779) studied for a short time under Samuel Johnson before they both went to London. Garrick began his passionate career with the stage as a drama critic and a playwright. He began acting in 1741 and became an instant sensation. In 1747, he went into partnership to buy the theater at Drury Lane, and went on to make the theater a popular success, introducing more authentic costumes and stage settings. Garrick continued his acting to rave reviews. Although he continued to manage the Drury Lane theater, Garrick stopped acting in 1766. Garrick’s biographer, Arthur Murphy, was an Irish attorney, journalist, actor playwright, and biographer. He began work at a merchant’s counting-house on the recommendation of his uncle in 1747. After refusing to go to Jamaica for the merchant, and thereby alienating his uncle, Murphy went to London. In 1754 he began acting, playing the title roles of Richard III and Othello. He wrote more than twenty plays. His first play, The Apprentice, was performed at Drury Lane in 1756. Murphy’s plays were almost all adaptations from the French, and very successful, earning him fame and fortune. His career illustrates the precarious financial and legal situation of dramatic authors in Georgian England. He worked and wrote at a time when the English theater was redefining the playwright’s position within the burgeoning culture of print. Murphy spent his entire life as a playwright and barrister addressing the professional status of the dramatic author. His greatest success in this endeavor came from his play, Hamlet, with Alterations, a parody of David Garrick’s radical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Although the play was not produced or published in Murphy’s lifetime, it changed the conversation about the bond between a dramatic author and the dramatic text as product.

 

Essentially a history of Greek, Roman, early religious dance, and French court dance, the text is drawn from numerous writers including Mme. Elise Voiart, Joseph Juste Scaliger, Claude Francois Menestrier, Lous de Dahusac, Denis Diderot, and Jean-Georges Noverre. A large part of this book takes the form of conversations with "Sophie" and, occasionally, two more participants named Heraclite and Democrite. Baron writes about the dances of the period of Catherine de Medici and after. Baron is indebted to De Cahusac’s work La Danse Ancienne et Moderne (1754), a fact admitted by the author toward the end of the book. His work, however, is full of additional notes and anecdotes. It also has a folded plate of Feuillet notation. The work went into several later editions under the title Lettres à Sophie sur la danse…

 

P. E. Alerme based this writing on letters to students and friends. Alerme considered dance an integral part of physical education. This text was written for the middle class, an attempt to democratize dance but also to ensure, through proper education that the art of dance would remain on an elevated artistic and social level. Alerme was with the Royal Academy of Music in Paris, and passed along details about the conventions of theatrical dancing that he believed should be reflected in the manners of social dancing – in formal ballroom settings and at more intimate functions. The author proposed the use of a mechanical corset, for either sex, to help prevent “falling” into sin while dancing the night away. Alerme’s serious if not somewhat naïve treatise presages several qualities found in the opportunistic characters of late nineteenth French novels by writers such as Guy de Maupassant, Gustave Flaubert, and Emile Zola. Alerme’s work was referenced often in later nineteenth-century dance literature. University of Utah copy in original blue wrappers.