Virginia Scott, Women on the Stage in Early ModernFrance: 1540–1750
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010.
EAN 9780521896757.
336 p.
Présentation de l'éditeur :
VirginiaScott examines how the stereotype of the actress has been constructed.
Focusing on actresses in Franceduring the early modern period, Virginia Scott examines how the stereotype ofthe actress has been constructed. The study then moves beyond that stereotypeto detail the reality of the personal and artistic lives of women on the Frenchstage, from the almost unknown Marie Ferré – who signed a contract for 12livres a year in 1545 to perform the “antiquailles de Rome” or other“histories, moralities, farces, and acrobatics” in the provinces – to thequeens of the eighteenth-century Paris stage, whose “adventures” haveovershadowed their artistic triumphs. The book also investigates the ways inwhich actresses made invaluable contributions to the development of the Frenchtheatre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and looks at the“afterlives” of such women as Armande Béjart, Marquise Du Parc, CharlotteDesmares, Adrienne Lecouvreur, and Hippolyte Clairon in biographies, plays, andfilms.
Virginia Scott is Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater,University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She specializes in commedia dell'arteand French theatre of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Herbooks include The Commedia dell'Arte in Paris, which won the George Freedleyaward, and Molière: A Theatrical Life. Professor Scott is also a dramaturg,playwright, actor, and director.
Contents
Acknowledgments, viii
Introduction, 1
1 The actress and the anecdote, p. 11
2 “So perverse was her wantonness”: antitheatricalism and the actress, p. 38
3 In the beginning: “12 livres per year”, p. 59
4 “Those diverting little ways”: 1630–1640, p. 101
5 Mademoiselle L'Étoile: 1640–1700, p. 142
6 “Embellished by art”: 1680–1720, p. 198
7 Lives and afterlives: 1700–2010, p. 246
Bibliography, p. 289
Index, p. 313