Staging Favorites by Francisco Gómez Martos

Author:Francisco Gómez Martos [Martos, Francisco Gómez]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Drama, General, History, Law, Court Records
ISBN: 9781000179286
Google: N-XyDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-09-20T16:00:46+00:00

Drames des favoris

Throughout the first decades of the seventeenth century, French dramatists progressively put aside religious controversy to deal with political issues, and this route led gradually to the mise en scène of political favoritism on the French stage (Amstutz, La Fable du favori 361–452). As an example of this path, the tragic character of Haman, who, according to the Book of Esther, ascended to power by the Persian ruler Ahasuerus, was seen as a religious figure in early seventeenth-century French dramas and later on as a royal favorite, for instance in the play Tragédie nouvelle de la perfidie d’Aman mignon et favori du Roy Assuerus. This play was written around 1617, a year marked by the fall and murder of Concino Concini, the first chamberlain of Louis XIII and favorite of the regent Maria de’ Medici (Dubost).3 Henceforth, the Duke of Luynes, who was featured heavily in court ballet, served as favorite minister of the young Louis XIII for a short period of time. It was also around these years that the term favori entered French prose narrative (Amstutz, La Fable du favori 453) and some of the first dramas focusing on favorite characters were sporadically performed.

The appearance of favorites in theatrical performances became more regular throughout the 1630s and 1640s, coinciding with the ministère of Richelieu, the increase of Roman tragedies, and also a remarkable vogue for plays in the style of Spanish drama. As for this last trend, one of the most outstanding imitators was Jean de Rotrou, a dramatist protégé of Richelieu, who, in turn, might have also had a taste for comedias, since his library at the Palais-Cardinal held works by Spanish playwrights, among them Lope de Vega (Wollenberg 325; Tuilier 421).4 Rotrou wrote at least six dramas featuring favorite ministers based on Spanish plays such as El ejemplo mayor de la desdicha (c. 1625), a comedia de privanza by Antonio Mira de Amescua (Bauer-Funke; Teulade). These dramas lost some of their original models by being adapted to the French dramatic structure of the time; this is the Aristotelian aesthetic that was promoted by the omnipresent Richelieu (Bayard 486).5 Thus the plays were divided into five acts, lacked buffoon characters, and followed the classical canons of the unity of action, time, and place. Apart from Spanish drama, recent English history and theater also provided examples of royal favoritism that French playwrights brought on stage, for instance in the plays featuring favorites by Gautier de Costes de la Calprenède about the fall from favor of the Earl of Essex (1639) or Edward II of England (1640), in addition to a few dramas starring Sejanus, the renowned favorite dramatized by Ben Jonson (Amstutz, La Fable du favori 393–422).

The theatrical representations of favorites in France, however, deviate from the development of Spanish and English dramas on favorites in some important aspects. The French character of the favorite, besides owing some of his features to other dramatic models, overlaps often with the functions of other types of ministers or conseillers (Gethner, “Power Grabbing” 213; Amstutz, “Favoris et conseillers”).

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