Dramatic Authorship and the Honor of Men of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France

Dramatic Authorship and the Honor of Men of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France GREGORY S. BROWN "When [the Minister] learned that I had rushed into print, he . . . had me removed from his employ, on the pretext that a love for letters is incompatible with a mind for business. . . . When I returned to Madrid, I wanted to try again my literary talents, and the theater appeared to me a field of honor." Figaro, in Le Barbier de Seville' In traditional literary historiography, the above citation would be evidence of the subordinated position of writers in eighteenth-century French society and of their desire for autonomy from such protectors as "the Minister" who Umits what his client could write and prevents him from taking his work into print and onto the literary marketplace. Such a reading then would explain Figaro's tum to the theater as a move towards greater independence as a writer, since presumably playwrights could present their work directly to a commercial public and thereby escape subordination to an elite patron.2 Yet Figaro goes on to equate theater not with the writer's independence, but with his "honor," suggesting that as a writer, he sought not the potential for economic autonomy offered by the market for print, but recognition of his social prominence or honorabilité, which could come only from elites.3 Figaro's creator, Pierre-Augustin Carón de Beaumarchais, exemplified an Old Regime bourgeois who sought social prominence through dramatic 259 260 / BROWN authorship. From his own life, Beaumarchais understood that recognition as a man of letters in eighteenth-century France depended less on actual literary production than on conducting oneself according to specifically elite norms of behavior, so as to be recognized as "honorable." At the same time, Beaumarchais—more than most of his contemporaries—understood that the emergence of a more socially heterogeneous "public" of theater spectators and readers of print created a new form of social prominence, which differed from the prominence conferred by elite protectors.4 Most of all, Beaumarchais realized that playwriting for the royal theater, the Comédie-Française, offered a unique opportunity for an aspiring man of letters to demonstrate his adherence to elite norms (by showing disdain for the idea of writing for material gain rather than glory), while at the same time reaching a broad public (through commercial performances and subsequent, printed editions of his plays). This paper, therefore, explores the strategies of Beaumarchais and other aspiring writers to reposition themselves more prominently in literary life by becoming identified publicly as playwrights for the Comédie-Française. First, it explains why being a playwright for the Comédie-Française was important in the latter half of the century. Then, it considers who these would-be writers were by developing a sociological profile of those seeking to be identified as playwrights for the royal theater. Next, it explores writers' strategies for identifying themselves publicly with the Comédie-Française. Finally, it places their strategies in the context of Old Regime society, before offering conclusions about the history and historiography of writers generally in eighteenth -century Europe. I During the reign of Louis XIV, literary patronage in France had been largely consolidated into the court at Versailles; concomitantly, writers were pulled away from their traditional patrons among the provincial nobility, who had sponsored salons, circles and provincial academies and theaters in the early and mid-seventeenth century. This centralization, while limiting the number of writers who could benefit, increased the prestige available to those few who did enjoy elite sponsorship.5 The result was heightened competition among those seeking to identify themselves as writers through royal sinecures , royal academic memberships, and other visible links to the court and the crown. However, in the latter decades of the Old Regime, this centralization trend was reversed, and royal patronage itself declined—thereby reducing the number of writers who could use it to ensure their prominence as honorable. No longer able to depend on provincial aristocrats and distanced Dramatic Authorship and the Honor of Men of tetters / 261 from the royal court, later eighteenth-century writers had to find new ways to identify themselves as "men of letters...