Literary Sociability and Literary Property in France, 1775–1793 by Gregory S. Brown

Author:Gregory S. Brown [Brown, Gregory S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351922067
Google: g2RBDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-02T16:20:55+00:00

Outsider as Insider as Outsider: New Playwrights, the SAD and the Public

Du Buisson had been born in 1746 to a merchant family and raised in the French Caribbean colony of Martinique. He had not achieved any standing in literary life when on February 13, 1780, he first proposed a play to the royal troupe, which rejected it. On April 13, he wrote again, and this overture also met with indifference. In May, Du Buisson made a third and more determined effort to capitalize on the Comédie’s immediate need for tragedies resulting from the suppression of the tableaux and the absence of Brizard. First, he wrote to Sauvigny, La Harpe and Gudin de la Brenellerie, who had each chosen Brizard to play their respective leads. Du Buisson asked each to cede their position on the repertory to him.24 The trading of places on the repertory had been, in previous decades, a standard authorial tactic, and such trading had become even more frequent in the early 1770s, when the Comédiens accepted more plays than they could perform, creating more authors with positions to trade. However, the troupe had not accepted Du Buisson’s play, so he had no position to trade up. Moreover, his requests for cessions from other writers, with whom he had no relationship, were thoroughly unconventional and unlikely to be granted. Du Buisson understood this and so employed this tactic in conjunction with another one more suited to his situation as an unknown playwright. On June 2, he wrote to the troupe offering to renounce all “pecuniary retribution, excepting the right … of an edition” if the Comédiens would agree to stage the play “within … two months.” Du Buisson’s offer reached the Comédiens the same week as a nearly identical proposition from Rosoi. Whether or not their efforts were coordinated, both aspiring writers appealed to the company’s desire for new writers who would be less self-interested than the SAD authors; both alluded to the “difficulty that has arisen between you and several authors … to the detriment of the public.”25

Rosoi, some fifteen years earlier, had been out-positioned by a playwright with better connections at the court, Belloy. He now represented himself to the troupe as a solitary “artist [of] genius,” disinterested in court politics or the issues raised by the SAD. He characterized the SAD Commissioners as “penny-pinching administrators with great power [économes d’une grande gestion].” However, the Comédiens and their protectors apparently perceived Rosoi as carrying too much baggage from his longstanding presence in literary sociability and deferred performance of his play. They turned instead to a total outsider, Du Buisson. On June 21, his play, retitled Nadir, entered the Comédie’s register of accepted works, ahead of the tragedies previously accepted by Sauvigny, La Harpe and Gudin.26

Beaumarchais first learned of Du Buisson from Cailhava, who wrote to him in June about a play submitted to the Comédie Française by an unknown writer, “Mr. Du Buisson, newly arrived with a tragedy,” on the exotic theme of the former Shah of Persia.

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