French Renaissance Theatre

• Considered one of best playwrights of all time.
• Birth and class.
• Parents
• Madeline Bejart and Illustre Theatre.
• Ran into financial problems and was imprisoned for debt.
• Released and gathered a group of actors to tour around France.
• Moliere did this for about 10 years.
• Examples of plays
• His plays were performed in front of some very important people, like Louis XIV.
• In addition to writing plays, Moliere also acted.
• Death
• The church denied him burial on their sacred ground.

• Born in 1694 to a wealthy family.
• He went to Jesuit College Louis-le-Grand and returned home at age 17.
• Voltaire wanted to start a career in writing, but his father opposed it.
• His father sent him away to The Hague in 1714, where he stayed for a year.
• Returned in 1717.
• Accused of writing a satire about the Regent.
• Completed first play "Odiepe at Bastille."
• Began "Henriade", and changed his name to Voltaire.
• Exiled from England in 1726.
• Studied ideas of John Locke and Issac Newton.
• Studied England's constitutional monarchy, freedom of speech, and religious tolerance.
• In 1729 he was allowed back into France, and in 1735 was allowed back into Paris.
• 1751 Fredrick of Prussia invited Voltaire to stay at his court, but he stayed only until 1753 because Fredrick was easily offended by him.
• Returned to Paris at the age of 83.
• Saw his last play, "Irene", produced before he died in 1778.

Le Cid

Tartuffe or The Imposter

Voltaire

Moliere

Comedic Franchise

The Utilities

Theaters

• There were three types of utilities.
• The utility of time, the utility of place, and the utility of action.
• The utility of time stated that not play's plot could exceed 24 hours.
• The utility of place stated that the plays setting could be in only one place.
• The utility of time stated that there could on be one central story involving a small group of characters. Sub-plots were not allowed in plays.

• France had many theaters during the Renaissance period.

Comedie Francaise

• Built in 1680 and is considered the world's first national theater.

The Hotel de Bourgogne

• It was a theater that separated the classes, it had box seats for the wealthy, and the lower classes had to sit in the orchestra seats.
• The Hotel De Bourgone could hold 1,600 people.

The Palais- Royal

• Cardinal Richelou built it as an extension to his own palace.

Famous Plays

The Genre Rule.

The Genre rule is a very simple rule. It simply states that comedy and tragedy could not combine. Obviously that is not still the rule today, but back then it was.

French Renaissance Theatre

• Plays were very popular during the Renaissance.
• One popular play was "The Doctor in Spite of Himself".
• Farce comedy was written by Moliere in 1666.
• "Tartuffe" (the imposter) is one of the most famous theatrical plays by Moliere.
• It is about a family who has fallen under the influence of a fraud named Tartuffe.
• Another very poplular play is "Le Cid" written by Pierre Cornielle. Pierre got the idea for the play from of the legend of Diaz de Vivar.
• Diaz de Vivar was a medieval hero of Spain.

Verisimilitude

Ideologies

• At this time there were many ideas about what plays should be like.
• Primarily these rules and ideas tried to keep the play as real as possible.
• The most popular rules were Verisimilitude, Decorum, The Genre Rule, and the Utilities.

• Verisimilitude states that all plays must be true to life.
• Plays were not allowed to have any supernatural events in them because supernatural events were not seen in everyday life.
• Ghosts and apparitions were not realistic and therefore were not allowed to be portrayed on stage.
• Essentially Verisimilitude prohibited anything that was not realistic to be performed on stage.

Jean Baptiste Polquien AKA Moliere

Playwrights

Decorum

• Decorum deals with the characters in a play.
• Decorum states that characters have to behave appropriately based on their sex, age, profession, and rank.
• Characters had to act on stage like they would in real life.

There were many playwrights during the French Renaissance period. Some of these playwrights were Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, Pierre Cornielle, Jean Racine, and François Marie Arouet.

French Renaissance Playwrights

Voltaire AKA François Marie Arouet