Théâtre de Chamfort: 'La Jeune Indienne' (1764); 'Le Marchand de Smyrne' (1770); 'Mustapha et Zéangir' (1776) (review)

Better known as the scathing moralist of ancien régime decadence and frivolity and an early champion of the Revolution, Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort was celebrated as a dramatist in his day. Yet, like Voltaire, whose dramaturgy he admired, his plays have fallen into relative obsolescence. This new edition seeks to redress this situation by presenting Chamfort's theatre not only as emblematic of its age but also as sufficiently original to warrant being read and possibly staged today (especially the underrated Le Marchand de Smyrne). The case can certainly be made for La Jeune Indienne (1764), with one of the first (if not the very first) Quakers on the French stage and its striking inter-ethnic marriage as denouement. Mustapha et Zéangir, too, in more subtle ways, illustrates the creative tensions of the eighteenth century, in so far as its classical, tragic framework seeks to accommodate elements of the newer drame bourgeois. The Introduction to this edition charts a tactful and intelligent path between the various, often contradictory, interpretations of Chamfort's work, the only reference lacking being Didier Conejo's thoughtful Problèmes chamfortiens (1992). It also succeeds in showing that Chamfort was always a theatre man — theatre providing more than just the classical moralist topos of the theatrum mundi, as is evidenced by the author's substantial contribution to La Porte's Dictionnaire dramatique (1776). Where this new edition is less convincing is in its inevitable rapprochement of the playwright with the later moralist. It is not, however, the first to fall foul of this temptation, and wisely does not dwell on it overmuch. Far more impressive and substantial is the critical apparatus that supports this edition of Chamfort's three plays: meticulously researched and well annotated, the texts draw on manuscripts in the Bibliothèque-musée de la Comédie-Française, including the prompter's scripts. They are presented via their 'intertextes', giving the full play of possible influences on Chamfort's dramaturgy as well as their 'représentation et réception', spelling out the mixed, often prejudiced, responses to their performance and the international range of their staging (Germany, Spain, Russia, and Holland for La Jeune Indienne). An appendix gives further dates of performances, the names of plays on the same bill, and the money made by each production. Yet the real innovation of the edition lies in its assessment of the plays' contribution to the contemporary shaping of the exotic, specifically their representation of Amerindian and Turkish 'Others'. Thus it examines the popular eighteenth-century tropes of 'bon sauvage', 'barbare', 'corsaire', and 'turc généreux' as they are articulated in Chamfort's plays, while also referencing critical theory classics such as Edward Said's Orientalism. In addition, the volume contains a beautiful iconography of eight illustrations of exotic stage costumes from the mid-to-late eighteenth-century French stage, accompanied by an illuminating short essay on the subject. Apart from a couple of small errors regarding dates (dates of Mustapha et Zéangir's premiere, pp. 192–94; dates of Soliman II's birth, p. 361), and the lack of an index, this intelligent and fascinating re-edition of Chamfort's three principal plays should become a standard reference.