Victorien Sardou

• Born: September 5, 1831
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: November 8, 1908
• Place of death: Paris, France

Other Literary Forms

Victorien Sardou wrote only one novel, La Perle noire (1862; The Black Pearl, 1888), which he later adapted to the stage, and numerous pamphlets, of which the best known is Mes Plagiats (1881; my plagiarisms).

Achievements

Victorien Sardou’s range as a dramatist was exceptionally broad. He composed comedies, vaudevilles, historical dramas, political and social satires, melodramas, thesis plays, operas, and operettas—more than seventy works in all. The emphasis he gave to structure over character development has caused him to be widely regarded within the history of French theater as the successor and rival to Eugène Scribe. Although Sardou has often been criticized for overtly manipulating his characters, he is acknowledged as a master craftsman of theatrical effect. The plots of his plays follow carefully planned outlines, progressing to unusual levels of complication before reaching their elaborate solution in a final, “big” scene. During his lifetime, Sardou was one of the most popular and successful playwrights in France, and his works were frequently translated into English for performance in England and the United States. Except for the enduring fame of the operatic version of La Tosca and such occasional reinterpretations as a cinematic version of Madame Devil-May-Care, Sardou’s plays are rarely seen today. Although his social satires were influential in broadening the capacity of French comedy to treat a variety of subjects it had not touched on previously, Sardou’s plays are usually studied now as excellent examples of the well-made play.

Biography

Victorien Sardou’s father, Antoine Léandre Sardou, was a schoolmaster; his mother, Mademoiselle Viard, the daughter of a manufacturer. The family lived in Paris, moving frequently in the course of the elder Sardou’s teaching career. On completion of a secondary education at the Collège Henri IV in Paris, young Sardou began a career in medicine. This practical choice had been at his father’s urging; his personal preference was literature. After eighteen months at the Necker Hospital, Sardou left to become a writer. To support himself, he contributed articles to several journals and encyclopedic works and tutored students in various subjects. Developing an interest in drama, he wrote several plays that were either rejected, or accepted but never performed. In 1854, La Taverne des étudiants (the students’ tavern) was produced at the Théâtre National de l’Odéon. This play was canceled after only a few performances, however, because it had provoked the wrath of Parisian students. The reputation of this failure haunted the young playwright, and five years passed before he succeeded in bringing another play to the stage. During this period, Sardou pored over the works of Eugène Scribe. Beginning with the first act of a Scribe play, he would then compose his own version in order to compare his technique to that of an acknowledged master.

Finally, Sardou managed to gain the attention of Virginie Déjazet. This popular actress produced and starred in Sardou’s second play, Les Premières Armes de Figaro (Figaro’s weapons), as well as several subsequent ones. A year later, Sardou wrote A Scrap of Paper, which became a great popular and critical success. From that point until the last few years of his life, very few seasons passed without the presence of at least one new Sardou play on the Parisian stage. Although he wrote most of his plays and librettos by himself, he occasionally collaborated with other dramatists such as Émile de Naja and Émile Moreau. Sardou composed a number of plays especially for theatrical talents of the period such as Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane, and Henry Irving. Some critics have said that these works represent the weakest part of Sardou’s œuvre, suggesting that the playwright fell too strongly under the influence of the stars involved and conceded too readily to the popular taste of the moment.

Throughout his career, Sardou was regularly embroiled in controversy. Charges of plagiarism were brought against several of his plays. One such incident prompted him to write the self-defense Mes Plagiats. The political overtones of Rabagas nearly caused a riot. Thermidor was banned at the Comédie-Française after a single performance. Uncle Sam, a satire of American customs, was staged in New York before the French government allowed it to be produced in Paris.

Sardou was twice married, first in 1859, to a former actress, Laurentine de Brécourt, who died in 1867, and again in 1877, to Anne Soulié. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1877.

Analysis

Victorien Sardou’s plays blend the foreseeable and the unforeseeable. If his characters are often too entirely predictable, the same cannot be said of the situations in which they find themselves. The pleasure derived from a Sardou work, and indeed the key to the playwright’s skill and talent, lies in the game of wits played out between author and audience as Sardou unravels a seemingly impossible situation into a logical but unpredictable resolution. Although most of Sardou’s serious plays seem overly melodramatic and hence outmoded today, his ingenious plots can still prove absorbing, and his portraits of society as well as the humor of his comic pieces can still be appreciated. In sum, Sardou will continue to be esteemed as a skilled practitioner of the well-made play, a master of plot with a fine instinct for theatrical effect.

A Scrap of Paper

A Scrap of Paper illustrates procedures, situations, character types, and themes commonly found in Sardou’s comedies. The first scenes are typically expository. Many Sardou plays begin with a group of minor characters who are chatting with one another. A servants’ conversation supplies the necessary background. The house has been closed for three years. The former owner died suddenly, shortly after the marriage of her older daughter, Clarisse. This daughter has now returned, accompanied by her husband and her sister. As the servants clean the parlor, the housekeeper warns them not to touch a certain porcelain statue; only the mistresses of the house may dust it. The characters appear one by one as the first act progresses.

Sardou unites a diverse group on the common ground of marriage, a favorite theme both for him and his period. Prosper is seeking to marry in order to inherit from a rich uncle. Clarisse’s sister Marthe has caught his eye, and he asks for her hand; she has also caught Paul’s eye. Paul’s awkward attempts at courtship are favorably received, but Madame Thirion, his tutor’s wife, priggishly disapproves and tries to disrupt his advances to Marthe. Clarisse’s cousin Suzanne, in her thirties and attractive, has never married. She prefers her independence, one suspects, because she has never found a man whom she could consider her equal. Clarisse and Vanhove seem to have settled into a comfortable marriage. She did not marry him for love, but she does not give any sign of disliking him after three years of wedlock. Vanhove is cold and aloof, but beneath lies a jealous, suspicious man, as he eventually reveals. The Thirions and another neighbor, Busonier, represent still other possibilities in the range of marital experience: Madame Thirion, belying her dovish name of Colomba, more resembles a harpy, while Busonier’s wife, to his undisguised joy, has just run off with a lover.

When Clarisse and Prosper discuss his proposal to marry her sister Marthe, it is clear that their relationship is far from casual. The audience discovers that three years earlier, Clarisse and Prosper had been passionately in love with each other; the courtship came to an abrupt end when she was whisked off to Paris for a marriage of convenience with Vanhove. Clarisse had written a letter to Prosper imploring him to elope with her, but he had failed to respond. Now Clarisse maintains that she is quite happy, but when she mentions the letter, Prosper informs her that he never received it—indeed, that he could not have, for he was feverish in bed as the result of a duel he had fought for her honor on that fatal night when they last saw each other. Thunderstruck, Clarisse realizes that her letter must still be in its secret place—under the porcelain statue mentioned in the opening scene.

What follows is highly amusing as both Clarisse and Prosper attempt to remove the letter without anyone else becoming aware of its existence. Eventually he gains possession of it. From his first appearance, Prosper impresses the audience with his wit and spirit. It seems a foregone conclusion, therefore, that the mousy Clarisse will lose in any confrontation with him. Indeed, one wonders what attraction she had held for him. The situation becomes more interesting, then, when Suzanne appears. Prior to her entrance, she has been discussed in very complimentary terms, and when she appears, it is on the action-stopping exclamation, “I’m here!” Struck by the curious movements and remarks of both her cousin and Prosper, it does not take Suzanne long to fathom most of the truth. She joins the struggle on Clarisse’s behalf, declaring war on Prosper as he amicably escorts her offstage at the end of act 1, under Vanhove’s puzzled and somewhat suspicious gaze. If Clarisse was not a suitable match for Prosper, Suzanne gives all indications that she is.

In act 2, the situations outlined in act 1 begin to unfold. Paul challenges Prosper to a duel. Prosper accepts but specifies that he will elect the Japanese style of dueling, harakiri. The older man employs poise and address to dissuade his young rival and thereby seems to assume the lead in the contest for Marthe’s hand. Paul then falls into another comical situation, as he scuttles back and forth between Marthe and Madame Thirion, attempting to carry out orders from one that countermands what the other has just asked of him. Finally, Paul leaves, and Marthe exits a few moments later, indicating in an aside her interest in following him. The balance in the Prosper-Marthe-Paul triangle has shifted; Prosper has lost favor.

Suzanne and Prosper confront each other. He refuses to relinquish the letter, promising instead to burn it only if and when he renounces his courtship of Marthe, adding that, actually, he would have burned the letter of his own accord if Suzanne’s declaration of war had not piqued his gaming spirit. Suzanne accepts his challenge to discover the letter’s hiding place and promises in her turn to make Prosper burn the letter before her eyes. He retorts that if she can succeed in doing that, he will renounce his claim to Marthe and leave immediately. Such witty verbal sparring as that contained in this scene prompted some critics to compare Sardou to Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.

Prosper leaves, and Clarisse appears. The events that follow underline the difference between Clarisse and Suzanne: Clarisse, distraught in a stereotypically feminine fashion, loses her head; Suzanne, reasoning calmly, not only finds the letter but also manages to allay the jealous suspicions of Vanhove, who appears unexpectedly. With Suzanne’s strength of character completely confirmed at this point, the action is dominated by her for the remainder of the act. Instead of destroying the letter, she rolls it up and arranges it conspicuously on the fireplace grate, where it can readily be used as tinder.

Prosper returns and discovers Suzanne in his study, apparently asleep. The scene that follows is highly entertaining. Prosper becomes visibly more and more enamored of Suzanne; it is obvious that he is preparing to propose marriage to her. Intent on getting him to burn the letter, Suzanne fends off his advances (without entirely discouraging them) as she keeps inventing excuses for him to light the lamp. Frustrated by her reticence and eager to prove his sincerity, Prosper snatches what he believes to be the letter and impulsively burns it. In fact, it is not the letter, and at the critical moment the elusive note once again escapes destruction. As Suzanne begins to explain to Prosper that he is holding the real letter in his hand without realizing what it is, Vanhove again arrives suddenly. Prosper, fearing that Suzanne will be compromised by being found alone in a darkened room with him, lights a candle with the scrap of paper in his hand. Still unaware of what it is, he tosses the burning paper out the window, but the flame is extinguished in the fall, and someone outside picks up what remains of it. The ensuing explanation places Prosper entirely at the mercy of the woman he loves. His reversal of attitude lends greatly to the humor of the situation. Suzanne commands Prosper to find what is left of the letter. His former composure now shattered by his newly discovered feelings, he hurries off to do her bidding. The shawl that she places over his shoulders to ward off the evening chill and her own shaken demeanor suggest, however, that this beautiful lady is not without mercy for her apparent victim.

Earlier, Prosper had chosen a deliberately obvious “hiding place” for the letter—he left it on his desk among other letters. Similarly, Suzanne placed the letter in plain sight on the fireplace. Sardou repeats this stratagem a third time when the letter reappears in the barrel of Thirion’s hunting rifle as a container for a beetle. The paper thus remains tantalizingly in plain sight until Paul decides to write to Marthe and seizes the scrap without noticing that it already contains a message.

The finest humorous moments of act 3 stem from cases of mistaken identity. Suzanne, in order to protect Clarisse, has pretended to be Prosper’s wronged and estranged mistress, and Vanhove has vowed to bring about their reconciliation and marriage. With this purpose in mind, he confronts Prosper, who thinks that when Vanhove admits that he “knows all,” he means that he has discovered the former relationship between Prosper and Clarisse. Before the misconception can be clarified, Suzanne arrives and launches into a scene for Vanhove’s benefit. After a few confusing moments, Prosper realizes what she is doing and cooperates because he loves her and sees his opportunity to coerce her into marrying him. The reconciliation they feign for Vanhove turns into a real one when it becomes clear to Suzanne that she is irremediably caught in her own white lie. She finds herself propelled into Prosper’s open arms not entirely in spite of herself. The balance of power in the relationship now shifts a final time, in Prosper’s favor.

Just when the play seems happily ended, Thirion enters, indignant that someone has sent a love letter to his wife. He demands that Vanhove identify the handwriting. Vanhove turns the letter over as he accepts it and therefore reads Paul’s message and not Clarisse’s. In a masterful twist of the plot, the maid to whom Paul had entrusted his note had given it to Madame Thirion. In retrospect, this outcome is not unexpected. Earlier, the maid had commented slyly on Madame Thirion’s constant whisperings to Paul, and Paul had not actually said the name of the person to whom he had wished the letter delivered. Clarisse’s honor is saved, nevertheless, when Prosper, recognizing the letter, snatches it from Vanhove and claims it as his. When Suzanne is called on to witness her future husband’s new breach of faith, she placidly remarks that she knows the contents of the note and that Vanhove may burn it, which he does.

A Scrap of Paper is composed around a popular formula—the couple meant for each other who resist their mutual attraction for a time before finally succumbing to it. Sardou moves this formula briskly through elaborate, surprising twists that he always meticulously prepares in advance. The first act is expository; the second act is devoted to the complication and ends on the climax of the action; and the third act contains the denouement. Thus, A Scrap of Paper neatly exemplifies the classic construction of the well-made play.

As sympathetic as Prosper and Suzanne are, as amusing as the development of their personal relationship is, the events in which they become involved playing hide-and-seek with Clarisse’s letter are even more attractive. This is typical of Sardou’s plays, in which the action commonly upstages the characters. Even in such a play as Madame Devil-May-Care, which was written especially to showcase the talents of Réjane, and in which the lead role offers an actress the opportunity to shine in witty dialogue, the entanglements of the plot are what ultimately hold the audience’s attention. The psychology of Sardou’s characters is essentially one-dimensional and, consequently, quite predictable. Dramatic tension stems from what happens rather than from why it does or to whom.

In such theater, objects and motifs assume great importance. In A Scrap of Paper, a letter carries the entire play forward. In Hazardous Ground, the key to a private garden, a young man’s hat, and a woman’s pearl necklace figure prominently. In La Tosca, the object is a carelessly forgotten fan, and in Let’s Get a Divorce, a false telegram. Often these objects seem unimportant, but in Sardou’s plots inconsequential objects regularly occasion actions of serious magnitude.

Sardou was noted for the painstaking care he devoted to the mise en scène of his works, often taking a personal hand in the actual realization of his specifications when a play was performed. The set for Prosper’s study, with all its paraphernalia and souvenirs of a returned world traveler, provides a rich visual image. Given the role of objects in what happens during this play, many of the props are there out of practical necessity. Later in his career, especially in the historical dramas, Sardou specified elaborate settings and costumes less for any practical purpose than for that of creating a sumptuous and grandiose spectacle appropriate to the scope of his subject.

Humor in a Sardou comedy occasionally approaches slapstick. In A Scrap of Paper, characters who have been searching frantically on hands and knees rise suddenly and simultaneously, claiming that they had been doing nothing at all. In Les Femmes fortes (strong women), one character packs a large trunk, and another character, seemingly without the knowledge of the first, unpacks it. The lover of Let’s Get a Divorce must contend with a door that the husband has booby-trapped with an alarm and automatic lock. The lover is halfway across the room as the door is shutting before he remembers this. He dashes back to the door and holds it open with an outstretched foot as he attempts to converse persuasively with the lady whom he wishes to seduce.

A Scrap of Paper represents a society that is not particularly anchored to a specific time or place. Many of Sardou’s plays, however, treat questions which concerned his contemporaries. Daniel examines the problem of religious versus civil marriage; Hazardous Ground explores the tensions created when Parisians began moving to the country in search of a healthier way of life; Les Femmes fortes mocks American ways of educating young women; and Let’s Get a Divorce wryly suggests what could happen if divorce were allowed.

Patrie

Many critics regard the historical drama Patrie as one of Sardou’s masterpieces. Written relatively early in his career, it was not influenced by the idiosyncrasies of any particular actor or actress, and while set on a grand scale, it is not lavish in the sense that many of his later historical dramas were. The play contains many elements in common with other Sardou dramas: spectacular happenings, telltale motifs, a jealous woman who brings destruction to all around her, complex stage settings, and a complicated plot that relies strongly on coincidence. It is the story of lovers’ triangles, with the difference that the heroine is not a flesh-and-blood woman.

Patrie contains eight tableaux. The elaborate details of these sets and the number of episodic characters involved in them provide a colorful background for the action. The story takes place in Spanish-governed Brussels in 1568. The initial tableau evokes the disorder of military occupation: Groups of soldiers gather around fires, gaming, cooking, cleaning their weapons. Children and camp followers serve them drinks; patrols come and go. As gunfire is heard in the background, soldiers discuss the overflowing prisons and the executions that have been ordered as a consequence. That the army has set up camp in the city’s meat market (whose hooks protrude from the beams) underscores the cruelty with which the Spaniards oppress the citizenry.

Two noblemen are escorted into these grim circumstances. One vociferously defies his captors; he is La Tremoïlle—Protestant, member of the French court, and, at the moment, prisoner of war. The other is Rysoor, a Flemish count. The conversation reveals both men’s noble character and further details of the political and religious struggle that is taking place.

During the trial scene that follows, it becomes clear that a patriotic resistance movement exists. Rysoor trembles visibly when the Spanish tribunal discusses the failure of Karloo Van der Noot to surrender his militia’s weapons. This brave young captain, Rysoor informs La Tremoïlle, is as dear to him as a brother. Karloo’s case is dismissed until the next day, giving him the night in which to comply with the order. Rysoor gains release after the testimony of a Spanish captain, who swears to having seen him at home the previous evening. Rysoor is dumbfounded by this account because he had, in fact, been away. He discovers further that the Spaniard claims to have wounded the captain’s hand. Rysoor reluctantly concludes that if the story is true, then his wife has been unfaithful.

Act 1 establishes the spirit of patriotism that is to be the true protagonist of the play and introduces an adulterous triangle. Act 2 immediately reveals the other two members of this triangle—Dolores, the unfaithful wife, and Karloo, the young patriot for whom Rysoor had been so concerned. Dolores is young, Spanish, and Catholic; her husband is none of these. As her sharp remarks testify, these differences have estranged her from him. Paralleling the political situation, the affair between Dolores and Karloo has now reached a crisis. Threats of rupture, however, only draw them together even more passionately.

Rysoor arrives and, setting aside his personal concerns, consults privately with Karloo about the progress of an insurrection planned for that very night. This patriotic duty accomplished, he then confronts Dolores with her infidelity. She admits her guilt but blames him for having caused the situation. He cannot imagine, she says, the terrible loneliness of a passionate heart that cries out with love only to be answered by the word “patriotism.” Herein lies the primary cause of Dolores’s infidelity: She had discovered a rival for her husband’s affection and had reacted with uncontrollable jealousy. She cannot admit that any of Rysoor’s love should be denied her, even for so worthy a cause as patriotism. A woman’s country, as she informs her husband, is love. The explanation of Dolores’s jealousy uncovers a second triangle behind the one that involves her with Karloo and Rysoor: herself, her husband, and their country. It points to a third one as well. Since Karloo, like Rysoor, loves his country, at some point Dolores will again be faced by patriotism as a rival.

In act 3, driven by her passions, Dolores denounces her husband to the military governor, the Duke of Alba, in exchange for the life of her lover, who remains unnamed. The duke, however, forces her to tell him the names of all the conspirators whom she had recognized when earlier she had followed her husband to their meeting. This scene is heavy with irony, for Dolores still does not know that Karloo is one of the insurgents, nor does she recognize his sword (surrendered to the duke in an earlier scene) when she identifies the ribbon on it as the rebels’ insignia. The truth is not revealed until she hears the order for Karloo’s arrest. Dolores’s actions in this sequence effectively undercut any sympathy that she may have gained by her initial explanation of her marital predicament: To sacrifice her husband for the lover she had taken out of jealous frustration is thoroughly reprehensible.

The political and sentimental strands of the plot fuse as the climax of the play draws near. At the moment that Rysoor is giving command of the rebel forces to Karloo, he notices Karloo’s wounded hand—the sign that he is Dolores’s lover. Rysoor must now choose between patriotic and personal duties. To allow himself to be dominated by personal revenge at this moment would be for him to commit a crime against the commonweal. So, consistent with his previous decisions, Rysoor once again subordinates his personal concerns to his patriotic zeal and sends Karloo forth to battle. The act ends as the Spaniards surprise and capture the conspirators.

In act 4, Dolores obtains Karloo’s release by taking advantage of the fact that Karloo had recently rescued the duke’s beloved daughter from an angry mob. Rysoor eventually commits suicide, but not before he has pardoned Karloo and made him promise to kill the traitor who denounced them. Act 5 is brief. Devastated by his mentor’s death, Karloo confronts Dolores, determined to break with her and live only to avenge his comrades. Dolores selfishly attempts to dissuade him by visions of the freedom that now lies before them. Karloo finally agrees to leave with her. When she mentions her own safe-conduct, however, Karloo realizes that the woman he loves is the traitor he must kill. Now the necessity of choosing between patriotic and personal concerns falls to him. He hesitates a moment but then honors his patriotic vow and stabs Dolores with the same dagger that had killed her husband.

Instantly struck with remorse, Karloo heeds Dolores’s dying plea to join her and leaps from the window to his death in the blazing fire that is consuming his captured comrades in the town square below. By dying, he atones for his murder of Dolores and for his betrayal of Rysoor’s friendship. Furthermore, Karloo regains his patriotic honor, which had been jeopardized by Dolores’s machinations. The hero’s self-immolation thus reestablishes the order of things and provides an appropriate ending to a melodramatic tale of violent passions.

Bibliography

Hart, Jerome. Sardou and the Sardou Plays. Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1913. In this classic work, Hart examines the French dramatist and his plays.

Nicassio, Susan Vandiver. Tosca’s Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Nicassio examines the play and opera La Tosca, examining Sardou’s work, as well as that of Giacomo Puccini. Bibliography and index.