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Ch. 16 The Royal Era - Coggle Diagram

- - - - (“new classicism”) the accepted dramaturgy of the era
    - - ideal play was one in which the characters spent most of their time posing, gesturing, and talking.
    - - records of the period are replete with documents:
        
        hundreds of plays with prefaces and whole volumes of contemporary criticism, theatre anecdotes, and descriptions of performances
  - - - provided playwright Jean Baptiste Poquelin (Molière) with a palatial theatre (the Palais-Royale),
      - commissioned and produced Molière’s plays at celebrations in his royal chateaux
      - and even performed in some of Molière’s works
    - - attended Restoration dramas
      - he revoked the eighteen-year prohibition against theatre production
      - revoked the centuries-old ban on women acting on the stage
    - - city intellectuals
      - bourgeoisie
      - the king and his court
        
        When attending a play, the king, played the role of chief drama critic.
      - members of the
        emerging professional classes
      - social pretenders
  - - - an arched or squared opening that divided the theatre in half, sharply separating the house and stage areas,
    - - major plays were staged
        fairly simply, with scenery placed well behind the actors
    - - courtiers who wanted could purchase seating on the stage itself.
    - - the expanded admission
        of women into the acting profession
  - - - focus on a single action
      - took place in a single locale
      - within a single day’s time
    - - stage clear at the end of each act
      - the avoidance of onstage violence
    - - a fixed quatrain of six-foot iambic lines
      - with each pair of lines rhyming in an alternating pattern of masculine and feminine (stressed and extended stress) endings,
      - and with each line also having a momentary break (caesura) after the sixth syllable
- - - - a forerunner of modern-day tennis
      - was a rectangular structure with spectator galleries on the two long sides and an open or windowed area running around the building below the roof. Because it was free of partitions and provided for both daylight (the windows) and the seating of spectators (the galleries),
      - when the game became less popular the theater took over the courts
  - - - political and romantic
      - assignation
      - continual hawking and peddling of drinks and foods
      - brawls between doorkeepers and flippant cavaliers
    - - the more costly onstage seating
  - - - the leader of his own celebrated troupe
      - producer of dozens of plays by other writers
      - leading roles in most of his productions
      - often railed against excessive dramatic strictures, and his works themselves embody some of the most incisive dramatic criticism of his time
    - - the son of the royal upholsterer to King Louis XIII
    - - His first enterprise—the Illustre Théâtre in Paris—failed within two years, and he was imprisoned for the theatre’s debts.
        
        Following his release, Molière and his troupe headed south, where for the next 12 years they entertained public and gentry alike in
        
        the company was invited to play for king Louis XIV—one of Molière’s own plays, that secured royal favor and led to his installation at the Théâtre du Petit Bourbon
        
        they received from King Louis XIV the official name of King’s Comedians
        
        Louis XIV provided Molière with his theatre and his title, commissioning plays from him annually, requiring him to premiere all his plays at court before the public, and even dancing in some. He granted Molière an annual pension and became the godfather of Molière’s first child.
- - - - theater followed the same shape
        
        Three improvements came
        
        raked stage and auditorium
        
        acting apron
        
        elegant décor
        
        The performers’ splendid satin and silk costumes, high heels (for both men and women), towering “perukes” (wigs), handkerchiefs that draped almost to the floor
      - followed the same audience expectations as French Theater