LA MORT DE MITRIDATE - University of Liverpool

La Mort de Mitridate
A Machine for Entertaining
La Calprenède sets out to entertain. La Mort de Mitridate is a theatrical machine,
the component parts of which are all designed to produce pleasure. By the choices
the dramatist makes of subject matter, of how to organize that initial material, of
what characters to retain or invent and what to do with them during the course of
the play, what conflicts to give them and what words to express themselves with,
how to get them from the beginning to the inevitable end announced by the title,
La Calprenède is making decisions that will affect the kind of entertainment an
audience will find in his play. Nonetheless, the pleasures will be disciplined ones,
according to the rules of the victorious new regular dramaturgy.
Formal Pleasures
In La Mort de Mitridate the symbiotic relationship between the two antithetical
poles of protagonist and antagonist established a structural formula, upon which
La Calprenède was still continuing to produce variations in his last extant play. 125
Since, to the family, Pharnace appears to have the fate of Mitridate in his hands,
appeals are made to the son on the father’s behalf. Attempts are made to bring the
two together in the hope that communication will provide a solution, and when
Mitridate is himself obstinate, appeals must be made to him for his own good. The
result of the appeal mechanism is a rhythm dependent upon alternations of hope
and despair: hope that a concession will be granted, despair if it is refused, revived
by a further hope that perhaps at least a reprieve might be possible.
Each act of La Mort de Mitridate appears self-contained, a decision being
taken in the first scene and the result of that decision being seen in the last, a
result which pushes another character into a further decision. Each of the three
central acts deals with an attempt to save the family. Such acts begin on a note of
resolution and hope that the new attempt will be successful and end in despair at
the failure of that attempt, spurring another character on to suggest hopefully
another possiblity. Ends of acts thus achieve that dynamism which Scherer sees as
indispensable. 126 In Act II the hope is that Mitridate’s sortie will provide a
military solution to the dire situation the family finds itself in. In Act III, the sortie
having failed, the hope is that Bérénice will succeed in changing her husband’s
mind. In Act IV, Bérénice not having succeeded in moving Pharnace, will
Mitridate be able to be more persuasive with his wayward son? First scenes and
last scenes of acts are thus loci of both results and decisions, oriented both to the
past and to the future.
The play has, however, been criticized for the slimness of its action. Médan
remarked on ‘le vide de l’action et sa froideur’ (p. 48) and Pierre Barrière on its
125 His fidelity to this structure makes it possible for Lancaster to detail the elements of
La Calprenède’s ‘ideal tragedy’, in ‘La Calprenède Dramatist’, Modern Philology, 18
(1920-21), 121-41, 345-60 (p. 358).
126 Dramaturgie classique, p. 206.
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