LA MORT DE MITRIDATE - University of Liverpool

La Mort de Mitridate
(11 November). 32 Alan Howe sees further signs of the play’s success in these
details, 200 livres being the same amount that the dramatist would later receive
for his very successful Comte d’Essex, so a good sum for a first-time playwright
to be earning. 33 Not only that, but the money was to be paid immediately, somme
comptant, at a time when most authors were kept waiting for their payment. The
fact that the date of publication was set for the autumn probably also indicates that
the actors wanted to keep performances of the play exclusively to themselves for
as long as possible. On 15 August 1636 Corbie fell to the Spanish, and for four
months the enemy was only eighty miles from the capital. One of the largest
armies since Henri IV was levied and put under the command of Gaston
d’Orléans with the mission of raising the siege. Sommaville obtained the privilège
for La Mort de Mitridate on 30 September, and the achevé is dated 16
November, 34 two days after Corbie had been retaken, the Gardes françaises, as
was their right, having been the first to march into the city. 35 At such a time of
national crisis, military duties must undoubtedly have occupied La Calprenède’s
energies, which is why he finds himself apologizing for the misprints, explaining
that he was absent for most of the printing and therefore only had time to correct
the end of the fifth act. Although La Calprenède protests that he is more soldier
than dramatist, nothing we know of him gives us any sense of him wanting to hide
his light under a bushel, but the play was published without his name on the title
page. Given his commercial acumen, Sommaville undoubtedly decided to put
1637 on the title page of a play published in late 1636 in order to extend its life as
a nouveauté into the new year.
Despite whatever military duties La Calprenède had, this was a very prolific
time for him. On 7 February 1637 his publisher obtained the privilège for three
further plays which had undoubtedly already been performed: his first two tragicomedies,
Bradamante and Clarionte, and his second tragedy Jeanne, reyne
d’Angleterre. He would go on to write five more plays before turning to fiction
writing in the early 1640s.
Dramatizing History
As Georges Forestier has written: ‘dans la perspective du travail de mise en
intrigue, la tragédie classique se révèle être un genre fondé sur le principe de la
cause finale’. 36 The title of La Calprenède’s first play announces the fact that by
32
Paris, Archives nationales, Minutier central, LVII, 52 (29 April 1636); transcribed in
Alan Howe, Écrivains de théâtre, 1600-1649 (Paris: Centre historique des Archives
nationales, 2005), p. 256.
33
Ibid., p. 105. As a successful play, it is curious that there appear not to have been any
pirated editions.
34
See p. 151.
35
Hardy de Périni, III, 34.
36
Essai de génétique théâtrale: Corneille à l’œuvre (Geneva: Droz, 2004), p. 14.
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