Marie-Claude Canova-Green

No art-form is gratuitous, but is tributary of an era and a society. Because it is the result of the combined impact of aesthetic rules and the circumstances of its production or performance, it is externally determined. Because its content-matter bears the mark of the socio-political characteristics of the society which produces it, it acquires a social dimension. The seventeenth-century French ballet de cour is a case in point, whose development during the reign of the early Bourbons coincided with the establishment of absolute monarchy in France.

The ballet de cour was born, at the end of the sixteenth century, of the conscious union of four different arts, dance, music, poetry, and painting. It thus came within the scope of an aesthetics based on a system of correspondences between the arts. Poetry and painting had been associated by Horace in the often-misunderstood ut pictura poesis of his Ars Poetica, and together they defined the art of dancing as a 'poësie muette'[1] or as a 'peinture agissante'.[2] In his preface to the Grand Ballet des Effets de la Nature (1632), Guillaume Colletet drew the implications of these correspondences:

Si les anciens ont appelé la Poësie une peinture parlante, et la Peinture une poësie muette, à leur exemple nous pouvons appeler la Dance, et surtout celle qui se pratique dans nos Ballets, une peinture mouvante, ou une poësie animée. Car comme la Poësie est un vray tableau de nos passions, et la Peinture un discours muet veritablement, mais capable neantmoins de reveiller tout ce qui tombe dans nostre imagination: ainsi la Dance est une image vivante de nos actions, et une expression artificielle de nos secrettes pensées.[3]

Indeed, beyond the various mediums used, dance, music, poetry, and painting had one common purpose, which was the imitation, or representation of Nature. In his Idée des spectacles published in 1668, abbé de Pure saw the ballet as a mirror reflecting the world, one which could reveal its innermost secrets.[4] And the harmonious union of the different arts that the ballet was seeking to achieve was understood to be the means to realize dramatically a harmony directly imitated from that of the heavens, in order to make the human soul partake of the universal harmony by its effect on the passions. In other words the ballet could

[l']élever par [son] moyen à l'Autheur de l'Univers, qui est le grand maistre du Balet que dansent toutes les creatures par des pas et des mouvemens qui sont si bien reglez, qu'ils ravissent les sages et les sçavans, et qu'ils servent de contentement aux Anges, et à tous les Bien-heureux.[5]

The role of the ballet, thought to be the most perfect species of dance, was to transfer celestial harmony to the sublunary world by making it perceptible thanks to a mimetic practice.

In a society torn by religious conflict, the significance, not only moral and philosophical, but also social and political of this conception of the ballet, cannot have failed to be blatantly obvious to both inventors and spectators. A dedicatory poem to Beaujoyeulx, the inventor of the Balet Comique de la Royne (1581) stated that

Finalement tu nous a monstré
Dessous cette plaisante escorce,
Que le vice n'a plus de force
Estant de vertu rencontré.
Par ton esprit admirable,
De la nuict tu fais un beau jour,
De l'hyver qui regne à son tour
Un printemps du tout variable.[6]

The principles involved in the invention and composition of the ballet, its nature as a mixed genre, are all indicative of the specific yearnings and beliefs of sixteenth-century humanists living in days of sectarian strife. But it is also easy to understand what prompted the French monarchy to turn these beliefs to its advantage. By his central position in the entertainment as in the state the king played a dual role both as organizer of the production and as interpreter of this universal order and harmony which he revealed to his subjects by imitating them on stage with a view to projecting them in the commonwealth. The mimetic act was thus also a performative act. To perfect the political metaphor the king distributed roles to the various participants according to their rank and social position and appeared on stage surrounded by courtiers and members of his family in choreographic formations which reproduced the structure of the hierarchical society within which the spectacle originated and which (re)presented itself under the guise of borrowed identities. Expanding a metaphorical commonplace, the poet Benserade had the King say in Les Amants Magnifiques (1670):

Je suis la source des clartés,
Et les astres les plus vantés,
Dont le beau cercle m'environne,
Ne sont brillants et respectés
Que par l'éclat que je leur donne.[7]

Not only did the sun metaphor entail the representation of the universe as an interdependent totality, it also resulted in a hierarchical vision of the world and of the kingdom in which everyone had a place by means of which they could place and define themselves in relation to the geopolitical centre. Monsieur, the King's brother, was the morning star and the courtiers lesser heavenly bodies. Like the mascarade de palais out of which it grew, the ballet could be - and was indeed - read as the kind of ideological representation that the court gave of themselves to themselves.

The concept of representation and the need of the monarchical power to take over its mechanisms is central to a proper understanding of court spectacle in the early modern period. Already a sign, by its very existence, of an authority which claimed to be absolute, the ballet endeavoured to make this authority manifest through the use of allegory, through the textual and visual identification of the monarch with mythical figures symbolic of infinite power. By projecting a certain image of the king under the guise of Jupiter, Apollo, or Hercules, actualized by the royal features or any other referential sign, it broadcast a certain conception of the monarchy, both absolutist and imperialistic. And by showing the extent of the king's power, it not only revealed potentialities of force and order, it also legitimized and actualized them. For as Louis Marin has shown, the effect and power of presence of the representational framework is also an 'effect of subject, that is the power of institution, authorization and legitimation as resulting from the functioning of the framework reflected onto itself'.[8] The representational framework 'operates the transformation of force into potential and of force into power, on the one hand by modalizing the force as potential and on the other by valorizing the force as a legitimate and obligatory state, and by justifying it'.[9] This process of modalization/legitimation turns a desire for the absolute of power into the 'real', albeit deferred, satisfaction of this desire. The images of the king projected by the ballet presented the audience and the king himself with the icon of the absolute monarch he desired to be and in which the audience was asked to believe as in the signs of the royal reality. Furthermore, far from exhausting their meaning, the endless repetition of these same images, ballet after ballet, served to reinforce and to validate it. Repetition itself came to be perceived as 'une conséquence de leur véracité, une garantie de leur réalité'.[10]

The assertion of royal authority functioned in the service of the reigning monarch and against those who still opposed it, as did the Protestants and a number of rebellious Grands in the 1610s and 1620s, or the Frondeurs in the early 1650s. At a time when the regime was bent on consolidating the power of the state at home and abroad, the significance of the representation of royal power and the role played in its circulation by the court ballet cannot be underestimated. To dismiss it as propaganda would not only be an over-simplification but also a misunderstanding of the functioning of political spectacle. Political spectacle did not merely project images of the political order, it was an essential component of this order, the means and foundation of its realization.

But court ballets were political in more ways than one. Because they involved a good deal of preparation and many rehearsals, they (and court entertainments in general) had the obvious advantage of providing a welcome occupation for an idle and potentially seditious aristocracy. Hence the rather surprising but legitimate defence of court spectacles by a number of contemporary clergymen:

Or à mon avis, l'un des plus dignes soins de la bonté d'un Souverain envers ses Sujets, est de les empécher tant qu'il peut d'estre oysifs. De sorte que comme il seroit bien mal-aisé, et qu'il ne seroit pas mesme raisonnable de leur imposer des travaux continuels; il leur faut donner les Spectacles, comme une occupation generale pour ceux qui n'en ont point.[11]

A century later abbé du Guet was even more explicit and stated that the purpose of these spectacles was precisely to entertain a number of useless subjects who would otherwise be engaged in promoting disorder in the state.[12] In his Mémoires Richelieu too recounted that Henry IV had said of the Duke of Nemours

[...] qu'aussi il n'y avoit rien à craindre de son humeur, la musique, des carrousels et des ballets étant capables de le divertir des pensées qui pourroient être préjudiciables à l'Etat.[13]

However, court entertainments should not be understood simply negatively, as a means of preventing potential trouble in the state. As early as the reign of Henry II, their more positive sides were recognized and exploited by Queen Caterina de' Medici, who followed the example of the German Emperor Henry the Fowler believed to have 'institu[é] [l'usage des anciens tournois] pour exercer la Noblesse en temps de Paix, pour la tenir unie & pour terminer ses differends dans ces assemblées de Fêtes & de réjouissances'.[14] Like him she attempted to settle aristocratic disputes during court entertainments. Thus the festivals given at Bayonne in 1565 were meant to distract Protestants and Catholics from current religious and political issues. In the same way she used the festivities for the wedding of Henri de Navarre and her daughter Marguerite in 1572, which represented the crowning achievement of her policies of reconciliation, to try and bring together the warring factions.

Court entertainments were indeed (or at least were believed to be) instrumental in the attempted restoration of order in the kingdom. But because they were also used in the celebration of diplomatic events, such as the signing of peace treaties, the reception of foreign ambassadors or wedding festivities, they took on a wider political significance. Whether they aimed at cementing the friendship between nations, like the nautical entertainment of the Bayonne Magnificences in 1565, which expressed the Queen's desire to ensure not only the union between France and Spain, but also 'le bien universel de toute la Chrestienté',[15] or whether they adopted a more aggressive stance and sought to humiliate the defeated enemy in the commemoration of a military triumph, as in le Ballet de la Prospérité des Armes de France (1641), they were the means to make the grandeur and the meaning of the King's policies intelligible to all his subjects. As Père Ménestrier wrote in 1682, extending his remark to the operatic spectacles of the Académie Royale de Musique, which had by then superseded the court ballets in their political role,

Nous en faisons des réjoüissances publiques, et souvent sous des allegories ingenieuses on represente les évenemens qui font le bonheur de l'Etat, pour en faire goûter aux peuples toutes les douceurs sous les appas du plaisir et du divertissement qui les leur rendent plus sensibles.[16]

Furthermore, as the tangible manifestation by their splendour of the magnanimity and liberality of the prince, as a happy medium between the excesses of prodigality and avarice, court entertainments were a favoured means of displaying the royal virtue of magnificence, which was said to serve 'la gloire de l'Estat' and 'la reputation de la Couronne'.[17] Samuel Chappuzeau claimed in 1674 in his Theatre François:

Mais un seul des Spectacles que le Roy donne à la Cour, et dont il permet la veüe à ses peuples, soit dans la pompe Royale qui les acompagne, soit dans la richesse du lieu où ils sont representez, [...] fait voir à ces mémes Etrangers ce qu'vun Roy de France peut faire dans son Royaume [...].[18]

A view echoed by Louis XIV himself in his Mémoires pour l'Instruction du Dauphin:

[...] et à l'égard des étrangers, dans un Etat qu'ils voient florissant d'ailleurs et bien réglé, ce qui se consume en ces dépenses qui peuvent passer pour superflues, fait sur eux une impression très-avantageuse de magnificence, de puissance, de richesse et de grandeur [...].[19]

In times of crisis the representation of spectacles at court, as well as on the public stage, could demonstrate the financial prosperity of the country and its capacity to sustain the war effort. According to Donneau de Visé, the unquestionable greatness of the King was proved by the fact that

[...] puis que dans la plus grande chaleur de la Guerre, lors qu'il avoit un nombre presque infiny d'Ennemis à combattre seul, l'abondance a toûjours esté égale dans ses Etats, et que les plaisirs n'ont jamais quité Sa Cour.[20]

The tangible manifestation of power represented by court or politically sponsored public entertainment was thought to carry more weight than an official declaration on the state of the nation, whose conventional rhetoric might cast doubt on the truth of the statement. It is no wonder, then, that it was repeatedly used for propagandistic purposes in the last decades of the reign of Louis XIV, notably when the reality of the international situation clearly belied the implications of the performance. Indeed throughout the seventeenth century, the production of a court ballet was an essential piece in the contemporary diplomatic game of deception. In 1641, the prisoners of war Jean de Verth and Ekenfort, who were being held captive in the Bastille, were temporarily released so that they could attend the performance of the Ballet de la Prospérité des Armes de France whose imperialistic message demanded a foreign audience as large as possible.

Moreover the presence of foreign ambassadors in the audience, the attention and honour lavished on them (or not, as the case might be) not only bore witness to the importance of their country on the international stage, but also constituted an indication of the intricacies of French diplomatic manœuvres. The preparation and even the actual performance of these court entertainments were often marred by disputes about precedence between the various ambassadors. These may now seem to be disproportionate to their cause, but they were taken extremely seriously at the time. In 1618 for instance the deliberate exclusion of the French ambassador from the Twelfth Night masque at the court of James I resulted in the recall of the ambassador by Louis XIII and the breaking off of diplomatic ties between France and England. In 1635 too the situation had become so fraught in Paris that court officials were compelled to resort to a compromise:

[...] on leur fit dire que s'ils vouloient venir, on les feroit entrer, non comme Ambassadeurs, qu'ils se placeroient sur les eschafaux qui leur seroient gardés; - mais qu'ils se mettroient confusement avec les Dames, et quelques Courtisans qu'on placeroit avec eux, et que tous y seroient sans rang, ce qu'ils accepterent.[21]

As every ambassador was only too well aware, the recognition of their country necessarily depended on the will of the French king to manipulate court etiquette in their favour. As Norbert Elias has shown,[22] far from being a strict and meaningless formalism, court etiquette and ceremonial were thus a flexible tool in the service of a king and of policies which exploited to their own ends the rivalry in prestige, and thus in power, of other sovereign states. There was no independent functioning of the ritual, no submergence of its purpose as an instrument of royal control by a complete freewheeling of etiquette, although the fetish character of every act in the etiquette was clearly developed under Louis XIV. The ritual remained linked to the political context within which it originated.

Under Louis XIII and Louis XIV the court ballet had come a long way from the courtly entertainment it once was. It had become a political spectacle, a representational discourse exploited by the monarchy to assert its power in a physical space which made both the structure of the court society and the hierarchy of European nation states manifest. But as representation it also signaled the fact that the king was only and truly a king in the images of himself it exhibited, and that the actualization of absolute power was only an imaginary realization of the desire which motivated the monarch. As the historical context of the last decades of the reign of the Sun King amply demonstrated, these images had, in fact, no referent but themselves.

Footnotes

[1] Le P. C.F. Ménestrier, Des Ballets Anciens et Modernes selon les règles du Théâtre (Paris: R. Guignard, 1682), p. 153.

[2] Le P. C.F. Ménestrier, Le Temple de la Sagesse (Lyon: P. Guillimin, 1663), p. 17.

[3] G. Colletet, Le Grand Ballet des Effects de la Nature, in Ballets et Mascarades de Cour, edited by P. Lacroix, 6 vols (rpt Geneva: Slatkine, 1968), IV, 191.

[4] Abbé M. de Pure, Idée des Spectacles Anciens et Nouveaux (Paris: P. Brunet, 1668), pp. 211-212.

[5] Le P. M. Mersenne, 'Livre Second', Harmonie Universelle, contenant la Theorie et la Pratique de la Musique (Paris: S. Cramoisy, 1636), p. 159.

[6] Poème adressé à B. de Beaujoyeulx sur le Balet Comique de la Royne, in Lacroix ed, I, 12.

[7] Molière, Les Amants Magnifiques, in Oeuvres Complètes, edited by G. Couton, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), II, 692.

[8] L. Marin, Portrait of the King, translated by M.M. Houle (Basingstoke: McMillan Press, 1988), p. 6.

[9] Ibid.

[10] P. Ronzeaud, Peuple et Représentations sous le règne de Louis XIV (Aix: Presses de l'Université de Provence, 1988), p. 395.

[11] Abbé F.H. d'Aubignac, La Pratique du Théâtre (Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1657), p. 8.

[12] Abbé du Guet, Réflexions sur les Spectacles (B.N. ms. fr. n. a. 402).

[13] Richelieu, Mémoires, published for the Société de l'Histoire de France, 10 vols (Paris: H. Laurens, 1908-31), I, 39.

[14] Le P. C.F. Ménestrier, Préface, Des Représentations en Musique (Paris: R. Guignard, 1681), p. ê.

[15] Recueil des Choses Notables qui ont esté faites à Bayonne (Paris: Vascozan, 1566), p. 49 vo.

[16] Le P. C.F. Ménestrier, Préface, Des Ballets, p. eiij.

[17] Le P. P. Le Moyne, De l'Art de Régner (Paris: S. Cramoisy, 1665), p. 631.

[18] S. Chappuzeau, Le Théâtre François (Lyon: M. Mayer, 1674), p. 213.

[19] Louis XIV, Oeuvres de Louis XIV, edited by P.A. Grouvelle & P.H. de Grimoard, 6 vols (Paris: Garnery, 1806), I, 193.

[20] Le Mercure Galant (Paris: C. Barbin, February 1680), p. 9.

[21] N. de Sainctot, Mémoires (B.N. ms. fr. 14117), fol. 1095-96.

[22] N. Elias, The Court Society, translated by E. Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).

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