LA MORT DE MITRIDATE - University of Liverpool

Introduction
Invention, adaptation and rearrangement strike one as the keynotes rather than
historical fidelity. 59 To continue Forestier’s point, dramatists of the time would
feel that ‘on a été supérieurement fidèle à l’histoire, puisqu’on y a ajouté des
“ornements” pour mieux la servir auprès du public’ (p. 101). What the subject of
Mithradates provided La Calprenède with was a story with a well-known ending
that offered the possibility of spectacular treatment. Such a situation is exceedingly
dramatic. Getting the characters to that denouement allowed opportunities
for conflict, confrontation and rhetorical display. History is viewed as the
purveyor of immediate, powerful situations that promise to take the audience on
an emotional rollercoaster ride. For La Calprenède the historical will always cede
to the dramatic. As such he honorably falls in line with most other dramatists and
theorists of the time in viewing history as just the ‘“lieu” de l’action’, the
distinction being for Forestier that for Corneille ‘l’histoire est le sujet de
l’action’. 60
The New Dramaturgy
La Calprenède is writing his plays during one of the most exciting decades of the
seventeenth century for theatre. When he begins writing in the mid 1630s, the
battle between the Irréguliers and the Réguliers is virtually over, the former
defending a theatre that wants to be free-ranging and unregulated and the latter
perceiving themselves to be rational and modern in their championing of the value
of the dramatic rules of the ancient classical dramatists. As Alain Viala writes:
‘Sophonisbe de Mairet instaure en 1634 les règles dans la tragédie’. 61 Writing in
its wake, it is doubtful that the young dramatist thought twice about which route
to follow. Mairet had shown the way, and La Calprenède opts to be modern.
Dramatic theory would follow, 62 but La Calprenède already has examples on the
Parisian stage of what is involved, indeed what is required, in writing thoroughly
modern plays.
In keeping with the new dramaturgy as exemplified by Sophonisbe, La
Calprenède constructs a play which depicts the last stages of a crisis and where
everything proceeds logically and determinedly towards the catastrophe and
denouement. His attitude to his sources falls into the respectable contemporary
tradition of choosing an historical subject, of which he honours the essential facts,
59
60
61
62
Later plays such as La Mort des enfans d’Hérodes, Edouard and Phalante will mark a
drift away from history to dramatizations and novelizations as source material.
‘Théorie et pratique’, p. 100.
Le Théâtre en France des origines à nos jours, ed. by Alain Viala (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1997), p. 183.
As well as the documents produced in reaction to Le Cid, La Mesnardière’s Poétique
is of 1639, while d’Aubignac’s Pratique du théâtre, although written in 1640, will not
be published until 1659.
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