Seul en scène: le monologue dans le théâtre européen de la première modernité (1580-1640) (review)

Clotilde Thouret sets herself the ambitious task in Seul en scène of charting the poetic, historical, and philosophical foundations and developments of the monologue in early modern theatre from France, Spain, and England. Drawing on work on the early modern self by such critics as Terence Cave and Charles Taylor, Thouret is convincing in her suggestion that the monologue reveals a new kind of interiority on the threshold of modernity. The book is divided into three main parts, of which the opening section, 'Poétique du monologue baroque', is devoted to both theory and practice in the development of the monologue as a specific dramatic form. As Thouret argues, 'le monologue n'est pas donné a priori comme le lieu de l'intériorité du personnage; il le devient au cours des XVI^e et XVII^e siècles' (p. 24). The second part focuses on structural considerations as well as dramatic efficacy, where the monologue is viewed as mediation between onstage action and the audience, moving to ways in which the monologue creates its own dramatic space, and concluding with a new consideration of the monologue not simply as a pause in the action, but as 'une pièce privilégiée dans la chaîne des passions' (p. 238). The third part, 'Dramaturgies de l'intériorité', is concerned with the monologue as mimetic representation of the psyche. Taking into account the three countries' different modalities that reveal distinct imaginaries of the self, Thouret delineates a process that she calls the progressive interiorization of identity. The grasp of her primary and secondary material is impressive, and her arguments are made with conviction and elegance. I have only a few quibbles. The word 'baroque', to my mind, is used rather too freely to cover so many diverse forms of theatre from different countries, but she is not the only critic to have employed such vague terminology when writing about the period. Also, as far as French dramatists are concerned, she tends to focus on a select band of largely canonical authors and does not explore the full diversity of theatrical writing from the period; it is also regrettable that she chooses to end her study before the emergence of the great French exponent of the dramatic monologue, Jean Racine. Although the presence of an index bucks the still too frequent trend in francophone scholarly studies of not providing any index at all, it is woefully inadequate to list only names of works and authors prior to 1800, especially in a book of such theoretical and conceptual sophistication. However, overall this volume represents a magnificent achievement and surely will remain as the benchmark study on monologues for many years to come.