Le Jeu Research Articles

Shakespeare and Opera by Gary Schmidgall

Reviews403 4 Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion par Adam de la Halle précédé du Jeu du Pèlerin (London: George Harrap, 1960). 5 Medieval French Plays, ed. Richard Axton (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971). Though liberties are taken with the translation and the melodies, the result is a musical setting that flows well. The edition by Jean Beck and J. Murray Gibbon, The Play of Robin and Marion: Mediaeval Folk Comedy Opera (New York: G. Schirmer, 1937), is much less usable with romantic keyboard arrangements of the melodies and translations into very quaint English. 6 See Beck and Gibbon, The Play of Robin and Marion. Gary Schmidgall, Shakespeare and Opera. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp. xxii + 394. $35.00. This is an excellent book by one of the most engaging writers on opera. The volume contains thirty-four discrete essays that are centered on the premise that Shakespeare's plays are essentially operatic in conception . While this is not an idea that is unique to this book, Schmidgall has delved further into this subject and presented more substantiating evidence than any other author heretofore. Although the individual essays are complete works in themselves, reading them in succession helps to establish points of continuity. Schmidgall is very insistent on the notion that Shakespearian plays and opera owe their similarities to the fact that they are both rhetorical in nature. This is a particularly important point because both the elevated speech and the singing of Shakespearian drama and opera are unfathomable except within a context of rhetorical expression. After Schmidgall has established the primacy of rhetoric, he demonstrates that emotional excess—i.e., melodrama—is central to the construction and performance of Shakespearian plays and opera. He then argues that, since rhetoric and melodrama are the essential dramaturgical ingredients of opera and Shakespearian plays, contemporary expectations of verisimilitude and naturalness of expression are therefore inadequate for their complete understanding. Indeed, as Schmidgall points out so well, the more natural the mode of expression the less operatic or Shakespearian it is. Schmidgall arranges in ascending order the modes of dramatic expression in Shakespeare: naturalistic prose, heightened prose, highly rhetorical prose, normal blank verse, heightened blank verse, and rhymed couplets . The operatic analogues are: spoken speech, recitative or declamation , accompanied recitative, arioso, aria or concerted ensembles, and coloratura. These similarities of dramatic expression yield similarities of construction and design. For instance, Schmidgall sees an analogy between the Shakespearian soliloquy and the operatic solo aria. He also notes that both operas and Shakespearian plays use plays within plays 404Comparative Drama (or operas within operas, as in the case of Richard Strauss' Capriccio) and additionally exhibit a tendency toward set speeches or scenic types —e.g., brindisi or preghiera). The last hundred pages of the book, given over to discussion of operas that have been made of Shakespeare's plays, provide a particularly valuable section because Schmidgall examines in great detail little-known Shakespearian operas such as Aribert Reimann's Lear as well as canonical works such as Verdi's Otello. Shakespeare and Opera is a very substantial book that will prove to be of value to those interested in Shakespeare, in opera, or in both. Although ample endnotes are provided, one wishes for a bibliography. But that is perhaps the fault of the publisher, not the author, and in no way diminishes the cogency and strength of Schmidgall's arguments. WILLIAM E. GRIM Worcester State College Elizabeth Hale Winkler. The Function ofSong in Contemporary British Drama. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991. Pp. 363; 35 musical examples. $48.50. From the premise that song in drama is a genre to itself, standing separate from either song or drama, Elizabeth Hale Winkler has constructed a theory to account for the effect created when a playwright intrudes a song into the dramatic context. While she touches on several approaches to analyzing the effect of song or music, including semiotics and various psychological avenues, her preferred analytical mode is "agonistic" or "dissociative," based on "alienating functions and devices" derived from the dramatic theories of Bertolt Brecht and those who followed or were influenced by him. She says that "many contemporary dramatists...

Le Jeu de Robin et Marion by Adam de la Halle

Reviews399 exactly seem earned by the preceding analysis. A close explication of the opening scene oí Laforza del destino, for instance, ends with this not uninteresting non sequitur: "Far from being a linear, steady itinerary, Verdi's artistic development follows a tortuous, intermittent path" (p. 139). And Petrobelli grandiosely concludes from Bellini's ransacking of a French play for his / puritani that the composer thus "discovered ... his cultural roots. And he connected himself to them, made use of them, kept them as a model with a clarity of vision we find only in the true artist" (p. 189). A more full and up-to-date bibliography of Verdi scholarship from this author would have been a valuable addition to this volume, and some repetitious passages stating his methodological principles should have been edited out. It is odd that a learned book like this should appear without an index. No one would accuse the author—on the basis of this book, at least—of possessing a sense of humor. There is one moment of unintended glee, however, that his editor or translator might have saved him from: his remark about "the only leading character in the entire Verdian corpus who has no first name, who is merely 'Lady Macbeth '" (p. 143). Verdi, of course, was following his idol "Schaspeare," who famously failed to specify either how many children she had or her name. A good thing, too, since the first name of the historical Lady Macbeth would have been the devil to sing. According to Lord Haile's Annals of Scotland, it was Gruach. GARY SCHMIDGALL New York City Adam de la Halle. Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, ed. Shira I. SchwamBaird (text) and Milton G. Scheuermann (music). Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 94A. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. Pp. xxxiv + 153. The enduring fascination on the part of audiences and scholars alike for Adam de la Halle's late thirteenth-century Play of Robin and Marion is evident in the continuing emergence of editions, recordings, and live performances of this work. The most recent addition to the play's bibliography is Shira Schwam-Baird's scholarly performing edition with English translation for Garland's extensive Library of Medieval Literature under the general editorship of James Wilhelm and Lowry Nelson, Jr. Schwam-Baird's effort adds to a growing number of accessible editions and English translations of the text of the play, many of which were produced by renowned scholars. With reliable editions and translations generally available, one may wonder at Garland's decision to undertake such a project that appears, on the surface, to be 400Comparative Drama essentially redundant. Certainly, the publication of Schwam-Baird's edition must solicit expectations of fresh insights into the play based on significant new scholarship. In the "Literary Introduction" to the edition, Schwam-Baird claims to have "freshly transcribed" the text from MS. P "with little editorial emendation" (p. xxii). The choice of MS. P is in keeping with all but a few published editions, most notably that of Ernest Langlois1 who arrived at his text through an attempt to exploit the Picard dialect and a conflation of all three known manuscript sources of the play (P, Pa, and A).2 Indeed, with the exception of adding modern punctuation, Schwam-Baird does appear to stay with the text of MS. P even when the reading may not scan properly or make sense. In such cases, explanatory notes are provided in a section following the play to help clarify the reading. Following the "Notes" section is an exhaustive list of manuscript variants compiled in an easy-to-read tablature format. Schwam-Baird's edition also includes the anonymous Jeu du Pèlerin and the two interpolations inserted in the MS. P version of Robin and Marion. Despite claims of "freshness," Schwam-Baird's transcription differs only in the slightest degree from that of Jean Dufournet's comprehensive 1989 edition3 and of Kenneth Varty's earlier publication.4 Dufournet chose to emend the few confused verses of the MS. P text while providing the original readings in footnotes on the page; thereby Dufournet made sense of the text and documented his alterations while avoiding the...

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REVIEWS Get access Untersuchungen zu Jean Bodels Mirakel ‘Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas’. By ARNOLD ARENS. Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 1986. 165 pp. DM 48.00. T. D. HEMMING T. D. HEMMING BRISTOL Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume XLIII, Issue 3, July 1989, Page 317, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/XLIII.3.317 Published: 01 July 1989

La Littérature canadienne francophone by Edwin Hamblet

B ook R eviews Sherzer brings an impressive scope of erudition to bear upon the texts she examines, and she makes it work; the result is never the foregrounding of the critical apparati, but rather an insightful view of how French fiction exemplifies the nature of signification in our time. C e c ils L in d say University of Nevada, Reno Edwin Hamblet. L a L itté r a tu r e c a n a d ie n n e fra n c o p h o n e . Paris; Hatier (Profil Forma­ tion/Français; 419/420), 1987. Pp. 159. Scholars and students of Canadian literature in French will welcome this small volume, both as a useful reference tool and as a pleasant book just to read. Professor Hamblet demonstrates here that the literature of French-speaking Canada has solid roots going back to the 17th century and still putting forth abundant flowers; he shows it to be the product of a Catholic people marked by a joie de vivre that dissimulates a tendency toward introspec­ tion and melancholy. Under British rule, these peoples have produced a literature that is “ militante, engagée, retranchée dans un nationalisme...,” and that bears witness to their refusal to be assimilated by “ 250 million Anglo-Saxons who live at their doors.” (This may be a bit hyperbolic, as not all “other” Canadians and Americans are “ Anglo-Saxon.”) Hamblet divides his work by centuries undei-which the various genres are subsumed. (These include memoirs, poetry, novel, and chanson.) Within the genre categories, chief practitioners are portrayed in excellent short but critical vignettes, and an excerpt is pro­ vided from a representative major work by each author entered. Let us take note that despite its brevity the book intends to serve as a reference not only to Québécoise literature, but also, though only briefly, to Acadian masters. No attempt is made, however, to deal with literature from provinces west of Quebec, still rather understudied at this date and therefore not pertinent to this volume, in which the canon is well respected—as would be necessary and expected in view of the book’s scope. Lists of key dates and a sufficiently thorough bibliography complete this welcome, because much needed, contribution, which will serve as a quick reference for the scholar and student alike. It is affordable, accessible, reliable, and comes highly recommended by this reviewer. Ja n is L. P a llis te r Bowling Green State University Hédi Bouraoui. R o b e rt C ham pigny: p o è te e t p h ilo so p h e. Paris-Genève: ChampionSlatkine , 1987. Pp. 271. This volume of memorial writings, edited by Hédi Bouraoui, illuminates the various facets of the late Robert Champigny’s life and work—as a poet, philosopher, scholar and critic, professor of literature, and defender of the fellowship of all living beings—and offers a coherent appreciation of his achievement, from his days as a student of Bachelard to his years as a major voice of French literary creation and analysis in the United States, from his formulations of genre distinctions and the philosophical underpinnings of detec­ tive fiction to his lyric and narrative verse and his love of animals. The book, written in both English and French, falls into several parts. Twelve essays examine the published poetry and criticism; the contributors include such distinguished scholars as Edouard Morot-Sir in “Mise en abyme, mis en programme: l’écriture inaugurale de Robert Champigny” (pp. 21-30), Germaine Brée in “ Le Jeu Philosophique: V o l . XXVII, No. 4 107 ...

The treatment of action in medieval poetics, 1175‐1280

This essay explicates the notion of “action” as it was articulated in the New Poetics and as it served as a topical system for poetic invention. Adam de la Halle's “Le Jeu de la Feuillee” is analyzed as a case study of rhetorical topics employed for dramatic invention.

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Book reviewed in this article:Romantic, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background: 1760‐ 1830. By Marilya ButlerWilliam Blake. His Art and Times. By David BindmanThe letter and Prose Writings of William Cowper. Edited By James King and Charles Ryskamp.Presences of Nature. British Landscape 1780–1830. By Louis Hawes.Cowper's Poetry: A Critical Study and Reassessment. By Vincent Newey.The Religious Life of Samuel Johnson. By Charles E. Pierce Jr.The Letters and Papers of Sir John Hill. By G. S. Rousseau.Revolutionary Writers: Literature and Authority in the New Republic, 1725–1810. By Emory Elliott.The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and its Transformations. By Ian Donaldson.Swift at Moor Park: Problems in Biography and Criticism. By A. C. Elias.Jonathan Swift: The Brave Desponder. By Patrick Reilly.Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire. By Howard D. Weinbrot.Diderot: Le Neveu de Rameau. By Jacques ChouilletVictims, Authority and Terror: The Parallel Deaths of d'Orlkans, Custine, Bailly and Malesherbes. By George Armstrong Kelly.The Eighteenth Century Renaissance. By Prys Morgan.God's Playground. A History of Poland. By Norman Davies.Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American revolution against patriachal authority, 2750–2800. by Jay Fliegelman.Der Aufstieg des Hauses Kaunitz. By Grete Klingenstein.The Glorious Cause: the American Revolution 1763–1789. By Robert Middlekauff.Austria's Eastern Question 1700–1789. By Karl A. Roider, Jr.The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, edited by P. Langford.The Friends of Peace. Anti‐War Liberalism in England, 1793–1815. By J. E. Cookson.Interpreting the French Revolution. By Franqois Furet.Challoner and his Church. A catholic Bishop in Georgian England. By Eamon Duffy.The Political Works of Thomas Spence. Edited by H. T. Dickinson.The People's Clearance: Highland Emigration to the British North America 1770–1815. By J. W. Bumsted.The Devonshire Diary. William Cavendish Fourth Duke of Devonshire, Memoranda on State of Affairs, 1759–1762. Edited with an introduction by Peter Brown and Karl Schweizer.Clermont‐de‐Lodsve, 1633‐1 789: Fluctuations in the Prosperity of a Languedocian Cloth‐Making Town. By J. K. J. Thomson.Judicial Reform in France before the Revolution of 1789. By John Carey.Armies and Warfare in Europe, 1648–1789. By John Childs.Diary of John Quincy Adums November 1779 ‐ December 1788. By David Grayson Allen, Robert J. TaylorJacobite Estates of the Forty‐Five. By Annette M. Smith.L'Ecole des meres, comedie (1744). By P. C. Nivelle de La Chaussee. Edited by Isabelle Bernard.The Irresistible Diderot. Edited (with translations) by John Hope Mason.Pediatrie des Lumih‐es. By Daniel Teysseire.Voltuire: A Biography. By Haydn Mason.Marivaux: Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard and Les Fausses Confidences. By G. E. Rodmell.Voltaire: Dictionnuire philosophique. By Christopher Todd.Diderot: La Religieuse. By Vivienne Mylne.Jean‐Jacques. The Early Life and Work of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau 1712–1754. By Maurice Cranston.Order and Chance: The Pattern of Diderot's Thought. By Geoffrey Bremner.Lord Bolingbroke: Contributions to the Craftsman. By Simon Varey.Schiller and the Historical Character. By Lesley Sharpe.Gesamtverzeichnis der Lessing‐Handschriften. Edited by Wolfgang Milde.Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Herausgegeben & kommentiert von Klaus L. Berghahn.Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Die Juden. Mit Dokumenten zur Entstehung und Wirkung herausgegeben von Wilhelrn Grosse.Hume's moral theory. By J. L. Mackie.Sister Peg: A Pamphlet Hitherto Unknown by David Hume. By David R. RaynorThe Private Case: an Annotated Bibliography of the Private Case Erotica Collection in the British (Museum) Library. Compiled by Patrick J. Kearney.Sexuality in Eighteenth‐Century Britain. By Paul‐Gabriel Boucé.Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early‐Nineteenth Centuries. Edited and translated by Peter Le Huray and James Day.Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in Eighteenth‐Century Germany. By Bellamy Hamilton Hosler.Music in Eighteenth‐Century England. Essays in memory of Charles Cudworth. Edited by Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett.

The First English Version of Marivaux's "Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard"

In the cultural exchange between France and England during the Restoration and eighteenth century, French comedy was a popular export sent across the Channel. One wonders how the French comic spirit could have survived the voyage, for (like wines) not all comedies travel well. Moliere's were easily the most palatable to English taste, as can be judged by the abundance of translations, adaptations, imitations, and plagiarisms. His clearly articulated plots, boldly delineated characters, and sharp robust wit found a receptive audience in England. Marivaux's comedies, however, did not win such popularity-for reasons that may be suggested as we examine the first English version of one of his best-known plays. The curtain of our investigation rises, so to speak, at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket on Thursday, October 31, 1734, when a French company presented Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, ou Arlequin maitre et valet, a comedy in three acts. The second performance, a month later, was played At the particular Desire of several Persons of Quality.2 Very likely one of these persons was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, famous today as a letter writer, poet, traveler, and eccentric. The versatile Lady Mary had long been interested in drama. Before Joseph Addison's Cato was staged (in 1713), it was submitted to her by her husband for correction; and Addison followed some of the suggestions she put forth in a critical essay that she noted was suppress'd at the desire of Mr. Addison.3 (It remained unpublished until this century.) On her way to Constantinople a few years later, she saw a German farce and an Italian comedy in Vienna, as well as George I's company of French comedians at Hanover, and, on her way back to England, an affecting performance of Racine's Bajazet at the Comedie-Franqaise.4 During the many years she resided in London she attended the theater, of course; and in addition she served as play doctor for Henry Fielding's early comedies and for Edward Young's tragedies5 and by herself composed at least one act of a satirical comedy entitled Some People.''6 If Lady Mary saw Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard in 1734 she would have been reminded of her own courtship, however different it was from that in the play; and she certainly could have felt a kinship with the heroine, whose common sense and romantic idealism were similar to her own. Presumably she then got hold of the printed text of the play, published in Paris in 1730 (the same year it was first staged), and set about translating and adapting it into English. Her final draft, which remained among her papers, is a very neat fair copy in her own hand entitled A Comedy/Simplicity.7 Restrained by aristocratic decorum, she could not

Dice Games and Other Games in Le Jeu de saint Nicolas

AbstractScholars have attempted to determine the precise details of the dice games played in the tavern in Le Jeu de saint Nicolas but have not connected these particular games to the play's larger structural and thematic design. Jean Bodel's alterations of the Iconia Sancti Nicolai legend are governed by the concept of game as an activity defined and delimited by rules, set off from events of the “real world,” yet intently pursued. His modifications are appropriate to a dramatic representation, for drama itself in the Middle Ages was considered “play,” a game. The idea of game was deeply rooted in the medieval imagination: all human history was seen as a contest between God and Satan that is controlled and determined by God. Bodel contrasts the rule-governed realm of the pagans with the Christian realm of belief and celebrates God's supreme control of the game of history.

Review. Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, ed. by F. J. Warne. Bodel, J.

REVIEWS Get access JEAN BODEL: Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas. Edited by F. J. WARNE. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (Blackwell's French Texts). 1951. xxxv+113 pp. 7s. 6d. H. H. LUCAS H. H. LUCAS HULL Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume V, Issue 3, January 1951, Pages 267–268, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/V.3.267 Published: 01 January 1951

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Journal Article REVIEWS Get access JEAN BODEL: Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas. Edited by F. J. WARNE. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (Blackwell's French Texts). 1951. xxxv+113 pp. 7s. 6d. H. H. LUCAS H. H. LUCAS HULL Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume V, Issue 3, January 1951, Pages 267–268, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/V.3.267 Published: 01 January 1951