Public Entertainment and Theatre during the Old Regime and the French Revolution: a Quantitative Analysis of Play Titles

Abstract

Of all the valuable research undertaken thus far on eighteenth-century theatre in general and on thatofthe Revolution in particular, one question still remains: Did plays premiered after 1789 plays that had no prior run on Old Regime stages register a new political consciousness as the Revolution progressed, or did they perpetuate themes shown on stage between 1730 and 1788? The French revolutionary era changed the course of European history, and redirected the lives of its millions of beneficiaries and victims. Such change can be found in elite artistic creation, such as the paintings of Jacques-Louis David. And ifthe political revolution of 1789 was mirrored by a revolution in the fine arts, might it not also have affected one in the dramatic arts as well? The present article seeks to determine to what extent a revolution in men's minds occurred during the latter half of the eighteenth century by tracking changes in the vocabulary of play titles, beginning early in the reign of Louis XV and culminating with the end of the Directory in 1799. The authors of this paper seek to discover whether titles of plays first performed during the revolutionary decade reflect revolutionary values or whether they adhere to a champ litteraire ofthe Old Regime. The authors believe that their comparative analysis of the 1789-1799 era with that of the Old Regime will allow them to gauge the evolution of cultural preference and artistic consciousness throughout the eighteenth century, and to determine to what extent the seismic political events of the French Revolution reverberated in drama, as expressed through the wording of play titles. Many historians thus far have supposed that French theater between the years of 1789 and 1799 must have been 'essentially revolutionary'. 1 Yet recent research indicates