Philippe Quinault

• Born: June 1, 1635
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: November 26, 1688
• Place of death: Paris, France

Other Literary Forms

Philippe Quinault is remembered only for his plays and librettos.

Achievements

During his lengthy literary career, from 1653 to 1686, Philippe Quinault made significant contributions to both drama and opera. His career can be divided into two separate periods. Between 1653 and 1671, he wrote sixteen plays for important Parisian theatrical troupes. Like his eminent contemporary Pierre Corneille, Quinault was a skillful playwright in many dramatic genres. His sixteen plays include seven tragicomedies, five tragedies, three comedies, and La Comédie sans comédie (the comedy without comedy), which contains four separate plays-within-a-play. Quinault’s masterpieces are La Comédie sans comédie and his tragedy Astrate. His major dramatic achievements are his well-constructed plots and his elegant and profound treatments of the theme of love. Unfortunately, many critics since the seventeenth century have misinterpreted Quinault’s plays. In his Satires (1666) and Dialogue des héros de roman (c. 1665), the influential critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux described Quinault as a playwright incapable of portraying any passion stronger than sentimental love. Many critics have blindly accepted Boileau’s simplistic judgment and thus have failed to understand the complex treatment of love in Quinault’s plays.

In the early 1670’s, Quinault began a new career. On January 17, 1671, there was a lavish court performance of Psyché, a play that included musical intermezzos. Corneille, Quinault, Molière, and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully collaborated on Psyché. Quinault wrote the words for three of the intermezzos, which Lully set to music. This performance of Psyché was very well received. After this success, Quinault began writing opera librettos for Lully. Lully and Quinault in fact created French opera and had an enormous influence on French opera composers and librettists for more than a century, producing eleven operas between 1673 and 1686.

Biography

Philippe Quinault was baptized in the Parisian church of Saint Eustache on June 5, 1635. Although the date of his birth is unknown, French children then were normally bapitzed within a few days after birth. Quinault’s father was a baker. At the age of ten or eleven, Quinault became a servant to the French playwright Tristan L’Hermite; it appears that Tristan was responsible for the education which Quinault received. In the early 1650’s, Quinault began the study of law, and by 1655, he was a lawyer. Quinault was only eighteen years old when a prominent Parisian theater company performed his first play, Les Rivales. Between 1653 and 1671, sixteen plays by Quinault were performed in Paris. In 1670, Quinault was elected to the Académie Française.

After the performance in early 1671 of Bellérophon, Quinault began a new career. Between 1673 and 1686, he wrote eleven opera librettos for Lully. Their first opera, Cadmus et Hermione, was so well received at the royal court that Lully did not want to lose such a valuable librettist. He agreed to pay Quinault four thousand pounds for each libretto. In addition to this substantial sum, Quinault also received an annual pension of two thousand pounds from King Louis XIV. Louis XIV granted such pensions to artists, musicians, and playwrights who had contributed significantly to the cultural life of his court. When Quinault died in Paris on November 26, 1688, he was a wealthy man. He had also enjoyed a normal family life. On April 29, 1660, Quinault married a young widow, Louise Goujon. They had six children: five daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Two daughters married, while the other three entered religious life. Quinault’s widow died on May 5, 1710.

Analysis

Philippe Quinault made significant contributions to the history of French theater and opera. His contemporaries recognized both the brilliance of Lully’s music and the high literary quality of Quinault’s librettos. Later commentators, including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Denis Diderot, who disliked Lully’s music, still expressed great admiration for Quinault’s librettos. During his eighteen-year career as a stage playwright, Quinault demonstrated his artistry in three separate dramatic genres: tragicomedy, comedy, and tragedy. Though the theme of love dominates Quinault’s sixteen plays and eleven operas, Quinault did portray love in several different modes. Since the seventeenth century, Quinault has been famous for his descriptions of altruistic and sentimental lovers, but he also described love in a comic vein and as a destructive passion. Quinault was a gifted playwright and librettist whose works merit the serious attention of theater historians.

Although Quinault wrote twenty-seven full-length works, his masterpieces are clearly the plays La Comédie sans comédie and Astrate and his libretto Alceste. Fortunately, modern editions exist for these three masterpieces.

La Comédie sans comédie

La Comédie sans comédie is a fascinating series of four one-act plays-within-a-play. Quinault wrote La Comédie sans comédie for the Parisian Theater of the Marais, and members of this troupe are themselves the major characters in this play, whose unifying theme is theatrical illusion. In the opening act, the characters explain that the main obstacle to their happiness is a middle-class merchant named La Fleur, himself a member of their troupe. La Fleur disdains actors and actresses and does not want his son and daughter, also members of this troupe, to marry people engaged in such a disreputable profession. The other members of the troupe conclude that it is in their own self-interest to convince La Fleur of the excellence of their profession. For the edification of La Fleur and other spectators in the Theater of the Marais, they perform four one-act plays.

Each play-within-a-play illustrates a different contemporary dramatic genre. Act 2 is a pastoral play, act 3 is a farce, act 4 is a tragedy, and act 5 is a tragicomedy that utilizes elaborate stage machinery. Each dramatic genre would normally require three or five acts for a complete play, but the twenty-year-old Quinault was already such a skillful playwright that in each one-act play, he expressed the essential elements of a specific dramatic genre. Both the pastoral play and the farce are very witty. His pastoral play is in fact an elegant parody of traditional pastoral comedies. While act 2 stresses the artificiality of pastoral drama, act 3, the farce entitled “The Glass Doctor,” deals with a very strange type of madness. The doctor is convinced that he is made of glass; if others touch him, he may break into pieces. This disturbed doctor also speaks French in a ludicrous and highly Latinate style.

The literary source of acts 4 and 5 is the epic Gerusalemme conquistata (1593; Jerusalem Conquered, 1907), written by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544-1595). Act 4 describes the fatal love between the Christian prince Tancrède and the pagan warrior Clorinde. Despite their religious differences, the crusader and the infidel love each other deeply. During a battle, however, Clorinde’s helmet and armor hide her true identity from Tancrède, who kills her. After her death on the stage, Tancrède pronounces a moving monologue and then commits suicide. The costume worn by the actress playing Clorinde hid her identity and sex and thus created a theatrical illusion. This one-act tragedy also establishes a close link between love and violence.

Act 5 further develops the intimate connection among love, violence, and fate. The main characters in this tragicomedy with machines, set on the enchanted island of Armide, are the pagan magician Armide and the Christian knight Renaud. During the Crusades, Renaud killed many enemies, including several of Armide’s cousins, yet after having seen a portrait of Armide, Renaud fell madly in love with her. When he reaches her enchanted island, Armide plans to kill him. The god of Love, however, intervenes and shoots an arrow into her heart. All ends well for the two lovers in this tragicomedy, which illustrates the adage omnia vincit amor (“love conquers all”). Quinault makes good use of extensive stage machinery—Armide and the god of Love are frequently suspended in the air—and using such elaborate devices was an essential element in the eleven operas on which he collaborated with Lully. La Comédie sans comédie illustrates the fluency and the range of a young playwright who would later write very successful comedies, tragicomedies, tragedies, and opera librettos.

Astrate

Astrateis Quinault’s masterpiece. Like the one-act tragedy “Tancrède” in La Comédie sans comédie, Astrate describes a beautiful love that is nevertheless doomed to failure. Like many heroes and heroines in the tragedies of Jean Racine (1639-1699), the two major characters in Astrate, the lovers Astrate and Queen Elise, understand lucidly the inexorability of fate and their personal responsibility for setting in motion fate’s destructive mechanism.

Long before the action of this tragedy began, Elise’s father has overthrown and imprisoned King Adraste. One of King Adraste’s young sons was saved from capture by a loyal but unknown subject. After having ascended to the throne herself, Elise ordered the execution of the imprisoned King Adraste in order to ensure the eventual transfer of power to her beloved subject Astrate. She thus committed murder for the sake of love. Despite Astrate’s low social status, she prefers him to the politically influential General Agénor, whom her father had designated as her future husband. She realizes that her refusal to marry Agénor may well provoke a military uprising in her kingdom, but she willingly accepts this danger.

The last three acts of Astrate are dramatically very successful. Following the second act, Elise transfers to Agénor the royal ring, which symbolizes both her troth and royal power. As she fully expects, Agénor quickly abuses this new power, which gives Queen Elise a convenient excuse to have Agénor arrested. At the very moment when Agénor orders his guards to arrest Astrate, Géraste, the captain of the Queen’s guards, enters, arrests Agénor, and transfers the royal ring to Astrate. Elise thus humiliates the haughty Agénor and demonstrates publicly her true love for Astrate.

At the beginning of act 4, however, Astrate learns that there is an insurmountable obstacle to his marriage with Elise. The courtier Sichée has reared Astrate as his own son. Astrate now discovers that he is the son of King Adraste and thus the legitimate heir to the throne. Thanks to the efforts of Sichée, other loyal subjects will soon overthrow the murderous tyrant Elise and place Adraste’s sole surviving son on the throne. Sichée argues that justice requires Astrate to sacrifice love for honor. Sichée cannot believe that his “son” could marry a regicide. Whatever he chooses, Astrate will never attain happiness.

When Astrate reveals his true identity to Elise, she is shocked but answers him in a calm and philosophical manner. She now recognizes the close link between fate and personal responsibility. Both she and Astrate realize that it is her fate to die, thus reestablishing moral order in the kingdom. When for the sake of love she freely chose to have King Adraste executed, she grossly violated the moral law and set in motion the destructive and irreversible mechanism of fate.

Act 5 further illustrates the destructive potential of a criminal passion. In order to avoid an ignominious death at the hands of the rebels, Elise must commit suicide. Astrate is unable to accept her death, and he loses all desire to live. At the end of this tragedy, Elise is dead onstage and Astrate has either died of a broken heart or gone mad; the ending is ambiguous. Elise’s heinous “crime of love” thus produces three victims: Adraste, herself, and Astrate.

Alceste

After Astrate, Quinault wrote three more stage plays: one comedy, La Mère Coquette, and two tragedies, Pausanias and Bellérophon. After eighteen years as a successful and prolific playwright, Quinault became the opera librettist for Lully. Although Quinault and Lully collaborated on eleven operas between 1673 and 1686, Alceste is generally considered to be their finest opera.

Alceste exemplifies a creative use of the classical tradition in a new dramatic form. The literary source of this opera is Euripides’ powerful tragedy Alkēstis (438 b.c.e.; Alcestis, 1781). Euripides describes the immense sacrifice made by Alcestis, who, after the death of her husband, Admetus, takes his place in Hades so that he may live again. Quinault’s opera contains a fascinating blend of both comic and tragic elements. Quinault totally transformed Euripides’ serious tragedy by introducing several comic subplots. In the fourth act of his libretto, Quinault even portrays the crossing of the river Styx, and Charon, the ferryman in the underworld, in a very lighthearted manner. Quinault and Lully strove to furnish elegant and aesthetically pleasing entertainment for Louis XIV and his court. As the chief French patron of the arts during his reign, Louis XIV rewarded handsomely playwrights and composers who had contributed to court performances of plays and operas.

Alceste was first performed on January 12, 1674, in the Parisian theater of the Palais Royal. Six months later, a lavish performance of Alceste took place on the Marble Courtyard at the Palace of Versailles before the royal family. Alceste became Louis XIV’s favorite opera. The five acts of Alceste are preceded by a formal overture and an allegorical prologue in praise of Louis XIV’s recent military victories. Each of Quinault and Lully’s eleven operas begins with an overture and a prologue.

During the first act, preparations are being made to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of Alceste and Admète. In order to complicate the simple plot of Euripides’ tragedy, Quinault added several sets of comic and serious lovers. Both the sentimental Alcide and the violent Lycomède still hope to dissuade their beloved Alceste from marrying Admète. Lycomède kidnaps Alceste and imprisons her on his island. While trying to liberate Alceste, Admète is mortally wounded. In addition to these lovers, Quinault created three comic lovers: the fickle Céphise, whom both Straton (Lycomède’s confidant) and Lychas (Alcide’s confidant) love. One of the highlights of act 1 is a duet between Straton and Céphise. Straton sings the virtues of perfect fidelity in love, while Céphise praises inconstancy. This duet is an elegant parody of a conventional love duet.

Unlike Euripides, Quinault does not limit his work to the magnanimity of his title character. In his opera, Alceste, Admète, and even Alcide all strive to surpass one another with extraordinary acts of generosity. In act 3, Admète discovers to his horror that Alceste has taken his place in Hades. He then expresses both his love for Alceste and his despair in a beautiful recitative: “Sans Alceste, sans ses appas,/ Croyez-vous que je puisse vivre!” (“Without Alceste, without her charms,/ Do you believe that I can live!”). Life without Alceste has no meaning for him. Alcide then promises to descend into Hades to bring Alceste back alive, if Admète will yield Alceste to him. Although he loves Alceste, Admète sacrifices his own happiness so that she may live again. For his part, Alcide willingly risks his life for the sake of love.

The fourth act demonstrates the incredible power of love. Charon, the ferryman of the river Styx, opens this act with his recitative: “Il faut passer tôt ou tard/ Il faut passer dans ma barque” (“Sooner or later everyone must pass into my boat”). This beautiful set piece has become the most famous recitative in the eleven operas of Quinault and Lully. Alcide’s passion is so pure that the eternal laws governing the universe are changed in his favor. Charon must transport him, a living person, across the Styx; Pluto and Proserpina, god and goddess of Hades, allow the dead Alceste to live again and to return to her homeland. As Pluto and Proserpina both agree, love must be stronger than death.

Once back in Greece, Alcide quickly realizes that Admète and Alceste will never be happy if they are separated. Alcide then makes a supreme gesture of magnanimity by yielding Alceste to Admète. Quinault and Lully end their opera in a very lighthearted manner. Straton and Céphise sing witty recitatives on the pleasures of love.

Bibliography

Connon, Derek, and George Evans, eds. Essays on French Comic Drama from the 1640s to the 1780s. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Provides information on French drama in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Quinault was active. Bibliography and index.

Norman, Buford. “Ancients and Moderns, Tragedy and Opera: The Quarrel over Alceste.” In French Musical Thought, 1600-1800, edited by Georgia Cowart. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, 1989. An examination of Quinault’s Alceste.

Norman, Buford, and Michele Vialet. “A Woman’s Fate in the Balance: The Persephone Myth in Quinault and Lully’s Proserpine.” In Images of Persephone: Feminist Reaching in Western Literature, edited by Elizabeth T. Hayes. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. A look at the Persephone myth in Quinault’s work.

Smith, Patrick J. The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of the Opera Libretto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. This study of librettos touches on Quinault’s contribution.

Trott, David, and Nicole Boursier, eds. The Age of Theater in France. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Academic Printing and Publishing, 1988. This group of papers examines the state of drama in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Quinault was writing.