457 - Bienvenue à Shakespeareville
.
.
English? Shmenglish. Not longer than 250 years ago, France basked in the glory of its uncontested cultural superiority. French was the sole language of civilised and courtly discourse throughout Europe. French art, philosophy and literature shone like beacons of haute culture, showing the way for the rest of the world. It was hard to see how any other nation could contribute, much less compete. Especially not les Anglais. Their colonial and commercial successes were begrudgingly acknowledged, attributed to the same streak of practicality in their national character that was used to dismiss English culture, then judged to be as much of an oxymoron as, until recently, English cuisine. England is a nation of shopkeepers, Napoleon snorted (1). Earlier, in 1777, Voltaire had told the Académie française that
.
“French [theatrical] masterpieces have been performed before every court and in every academy of Italy. They are played everywhere from the borders of the Arctic Sea to the sea which separates Europe from Africa. It will be time to argue when the same honour has been done to a single piece of Shakespeare.”
.
Voltaire appreciated England and English culture – and certainly the English press (his Lettres philosophiques were published in English first) – but he developed a hatred for the ever growing French idolatry of Shakespeare, whom he called “nothing but a provincial clown”:
.
“What makes the whole thing even more calamitous and horrible, is the fact that I am the one who first mentioned this Shakespeare; It was I who first revealed to the French the few pearls that I had discovered in his enormous dungheap. never did I expect that one day I’d be helping to trample underfoot the crowns of Racine and Corneille so that they could be set on the head of a barbaric barnstormer!”
.
Despite Voltaire’s best efforts, the Bard’s work caught on, an essential ingredient in the multi-faceted anglomanie that swept France from the 1750 onwards, when it became clear that English culture was more than mere rosbif for the soul. The French love-hate for Shakspeare (as he was sometimes called) is a microcosm of the push and pull of Anglo-French relations over the last few centuries (2).
.
Just how popular Stratford’s favourite son has become in France is demonstrated by the literary congress advertised by this poster – on Shakespeare, in Paris. It’s hard to imagine a reciprocal gathering in London, exploring and celebrating the oeuvre either of Corneille or Racine.
.
Shakespeare & la cité took place over three days in March in the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris. It discussed such subjects as Urbanité et théâtralité dans le Londres de Shakespeare, Shakespeare et l’érotique de la ville, and Entre destruction et édification: ambivalence de la Cité à la Renaissance. The serious bits were interspersed with period music and Elizabethan high tea.
.
