De Visé's Les Sœurs Rivales Retrieved?Author(s): Spire PitouSource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Mar., 1961), pp. 248-250Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3039886 .

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De Vise's Les Swurs rivales Retrieved? It is known that de Vise wrote Les Sceurs rivales, in one act and

now lost, which was played five times between July 26 and August 4, 1696 at the Comedie-Frangaise.1 It is suggested here that this play might be the anonymous comedy in MS lodged in the Bibliotheque Nationale and entitled L'amant bien venu ou les deux sceurs rivalles 2 since it is within the realm of plausibility that the subtitle in the MS may have been the title by which the play was designated origin- ally: it describes the central situation more fully and more closely. The fact that the MS is anonymous would not constitute grounds for a possible objection to this hypothesis: the play was considered to be anonymous until the late Professor Lancaster noted the probability that it was by de Vis6e by reason of his having received author's shares when the comedy was played with Andromaque on July 29, 1696 (loc. cit.).

The first surprising fact revealed by an examination of this play is that it is not a comedy at all in spite of having served as a companion- piece for a tragedy and bearing a title implying comic developments. The basic situation is established when the Comte de Mondoura attempts to enlist the older sister's aid in winning the younger sister's hand, and the latter is misled into believing that the count is courting Emilie. So Alcea rejects the count while her older sister enlists their mother's aid in thwarting the count's suit for Alcea's hand. But once the dramatist has established the triangle, he evolves a situation that is by no means comic. For when the count pretends to prefer Emilie at Alcea's suggestion, he finds himself obliged to kill his supposed rival, the duke, in a duel. Thrown into jail for this act, he manages to escape only by means of a pliant jailer and a silken rope concealed in a cake.

It is not true, then, that the play is a pure tragedy since, among other things, the ending is "happy." But there is not a single trace of comedy of intrigue, manners, or character. The tone of the play might best be described, perhaps, as tragi-comic, if it were not for the fact that at times it seems more in the manner of an operetta or even of a novel by Mlle de Scudery.

1 Cf. H. C. Lancaster, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seven- teenth Century (Baltimore, 1929-1942), Iv, 847.

2 Cf. Henri Omont, Bibliothieque nationale; catalogue gdn6ral des manau- scrits frangais; ancien supplerment frangais, I, nos. 6171-9560 du fonds franQais (Paris, 1895), 333, # 9245 (3061), deuxieme portefeuille.

248 Modern Langtage Notes

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Nor is the composition marked by the brevity that one expects to find in a play given with a tragedy. Excluding the two pages devoted to the title and the "noms des personnages," the MS is composed of twenty-one full and closely written pages with stage directions being crammed into narrow margins on more than one occasion. Nor is any space consumed by indicating changes of scene since the copyist, after writing " Acte et Scene Premiere " [sic] at the top of the first page of the text of the play itself, does not stop to indicate any subsequent changes in scene. But, if one is curious enough to apply the classical rule of a scene being established whenever a character enters or exists, the play is found to contain no fewer than forty-one scenes! And, if one entertains the folly of enforcing the tenet that an act is accomplished when all the characters on stage exit simultane- ously, the play is found to be in five acts with the fourth act containing a single scene!

But this lack of indication of division into scene and act, if the dramatist had intended both such divisions originally, may be attri- buted to the carelessness of a hasty copyist who falls into such errors as inadvertently confusing the names of the two sisters, joining singular subjects with plural verbs and vice versa, modifying feminine nouns with masculine adjectives, and indulging in such oddities as " le duc vient d'entre' " or " sont-elle rentr6e," to mention only a few of the frequent lapsi calami. In fact, the nature of these errors induces the conclusion that the MS is not the original, that its author was not even using another MS for the establishment of his text. For the mistakes in the MS are largely phonetic in quality and suggest that the copyist was making a hurried attempt to record the speeches as he heard them on the stage. In fact, even the stage-directions seem to have a descriptive rather than a directive ring.

The reason why the play was so poorly received, of course, would scarely be lodged in the fact of a careless or hurried scribe. The play itself would have to offer the explanation. And, indeed, even a cursory examination of the MS furnishes ample clues as to why de Vise never enjoyed more than the most fleeting success with his play.

In the first place, an audience accustomed to the classical pattern might have rejected the play on the grounds that it was too long and not comic enough to furnish relief for a regular tragedy. Also, its author showed little concern for some of the most rudimentary rules of the theater. No pretense whatever is made of observing the unity of place: the first six scenes occur " dans un salon simplemenit meubl6e oiu donnent d'un cote l'appartement de la marquise et de l'autre celui

VOL. LXXVI, March 1961 249

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d'Alcea "; in the remaining scenes, except for the last, "Les decora- tions represente [sic] un champestre avec des fleurs, promenade, cabinet de verdure "; at the very end of the play the lovers and four other characters appear making their escape " dans une chaloupe A force de ramer." In the middle of the play, the injunction not to permit violence or bloodshed is disobeyed when " Le comte tue le duc " and he puts " Alcea dans un fauteuil tout evanouie." And vraisem- blance suffers throughout the play, because the entire situation is based in the first place upon a childish misunderstanding that could be eliminated so easily by chance, if not by necessity, that it is difficult to understand why the characters persist in ignoring the cause of their troubles.

Secondly and aside from the peculiar dictates of the seventeenth century stage, the play has basic faults in composition. For example, when the dramatist feels the need for another character, such as the duke, he pulls him in by the hair only to have him killed so that the count may be thrown into jail so that Alcea may contrive his escape so that they may run away to marry, etc., etc. Thus, the play seems to be spun out without genuine structure or real motivation. For whatever psychological reasons the characters have for making de- cisions, it is clear that it is the dramatist and not their own person- alities that constitute their strength or weakness. Also, the entrances of the characters are in too many instances accompanied by an almost puerile observation to the effect that it is about time for them to appear. There is a multiplicity of long expository speeches explain- ing why this or that has happened and is about to happen, a feature that is especially deleterious in a prose composition.

It is obviously a disfavor to Donneau de Vise to blow the dust off L'Amant bien vemu ou les deux sceurs rivalles and present it as the product of his pen. But, while there is very little reason to recommend it, this lack of merit would remove all doubt as to why the play disappeared so quickly and so completely from repertory and why, perhaps, the actors of the Comedie-Frangaise were to decline his next offering.

Marquette University SPIRE PITOU

250 Modern Language Notes

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