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Reviewed by:
  • L’Ami des lois par Mark Darlow et Yann Robert
  • Logan J. Connors
Jean Louis Laya: L’Ami des lois. Édition présentée, établie et annotée par Mark Darlow et Yann Robert. (MHRA Critical Texts: Phoenix, 4). London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2011. 372 pp.

Jean-Louis Laya’s L’Ami des lois (1793) is perhaps unknown to theatre professionals, scholars, and students. Its premiere and subsequent suppression during the French Revolution, however, caused nothing short of an uproar during one of the most turbulent moments in history. Laya’s comedy was a boisterous public event during its own time: it interrupted Louis XVI’s trial, provoked the re-establishment of theatre censorship, and caused the closing of the Comédie-Française and the imprisonment of its troupe. Mark Darlow and Yann Robert present this satire about contemporary political factions and legal hypocrisy as not just a successful play but also a site on which readers today can obtain a more accurate picture of theatre’s powerful social role [End Page 254] during the Revolution. They highlight the genesis, execution, themes, and critical after-math of L’Ami des lois through close analysis of the dramatic script and commendable archival investigation, unearthing such disparate sources as political tracts, financial documents, and police reports related to the play. With his comedy, Laya claimed to provide a moderate vision of French society based on law, reason, and executive restraint. According to Darlow and Robert, Laya’s goal was to ‘enseigner au peuple qu’il tient son pouvoir de la loi’ (p. 85) — a set of judicial and legislative principles that were supposed to prevent royalist or anarchist greed from suffocating individual liberty and social justice. Forlis, the play’s protagonist, is an advocate of reason; he endures the wrath of corrupt aristocrats on one side and power-hungry anarchists on the other. It is little surprise that Laya provoked the ire of Jacobin radicals and monarchists alike (the play was quickly banned in 1793 and Laya nearly lost his head). The editors trace the tumultuous performance history of L’Ami des lois, proving that the play caused an unprecedented scandal in cultural and political milieux in early 1793 (one of the bloodiest periods of the Revolution). They argue that Laya infused the theatre with judicial powers by representing contested political issues and by symbolically casting spectators as judges inside a theatrical space, thus endowing the theatre with ‘une fonction politique et juridique sans précédent’ (p. 86). The extensive examination of the play, variants to the dramatic script and annexes of critiques, judicial disputes and legislative actions provide a holistic picture of Laya’s comedy. Newcomers to the Revolution’s theatre will particularly enjoy the Introduction, which elucidates the complexity of the period’s theatre repertoires, censorship rules, and spectator behaviours. The edition’s shortcomings are few: some scholars of Ancien Régime theatre might find too many claims that the close relationship between theatrical and actual events in L’Ami des lois was without precedent; some readers with an interest in the poetics of Revolutionary theatre might have enjoyed more analysis of the play without the dominant ‘trial lens’ that Darlow and Robert propose. Nevertheless, the editors prove overwhelmingly that Laya’s comedy was a veritable social event in its time and is a necessary read today for students and scholars of the Revolution and of its rich, but often overlooked, theatrical culture.

Logan J. Connors
Bucknell University
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