The Golden Age of the Boulevard

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By Marvin Carlson
To the theatre historian, the year 1830 means Hugo and the premiere of He rnani. For the great majority of the theatre public of the period, however, Hugo was a name scarcely known and the battle of Hern ani was a minor passing scandal. Neither the new romantic experiments nor the declining neoclassic tradition they were attempting to replace represented theatre to this public. For them, theatre was the rope-dancing of Mme. Saqui, the pantomimes of Deburau , Kiony the elephant performing in plays written especially for him, the view of T imbuktu at the Cosmorama, the spectacular melodramas of Bouchardy, or the full-scale Napoleonic battle recreated at the C irque-Olympique. This astonishingly varied popular theatre was the direct descendant of the fair theatres, which had challenged the entertainment monopoly of the state-supported theatres, with varying degrees of success, for two hundred years. Then, primarily because of the rapidly changing political situation , the great fairs had disappeared . The Foire Saint-Germain , destroyed by fire in 1762, was never rebuilt . The famous parades, the most popular theatrical entertainment at the fairs, were steadily discouraged by the police, and the last was closed in 1777. The last two major fairs , Saint-Laurent and Saint-Ovide, closed in 1786, and their few remaining minor successors did not survive the storms of the Revolution . One might expect that these changes would mean the end o f the entertainments sheltered by the fairs. But entertainments that had survived for so long under all the legal harassments that the authorities, spurred on by the Comedie-Fran<;aise and Opera, could devise, refused to disappear so easily. With their homes outside the city

The title photograph shows acrobats performin g on the Boulevard, wi t h th e Varietes and two panorama theatres in the background .

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walls disappearing, they moved boldly into Paris itself, and, more accessible to their audiences, became more popular than ever. The leader in this movement was JeanBaptiste Nicolet, who, in 1759, established a permanent theatre in the north of Paris on the Boulevard du Temple . Although his permit allowed him to present only ropedancing, the Comedie, knowing from experience how easily such permits were gradually expanded, protested the establishment of any permanent popular entertainment within the city . But the Minister replied that the people needed their spectacles and that t he times of Louis XIV were past. The fears of the Comedie were not in vain. Other d irectors followed Nicolet, and although rigid restrictions were placed on each, the Comedie and Opera complained regularly, and not always successfully, about the erosion of these restrictions . Nicolet added trained animals to his acrobats, then marionettes and parades, then full-scale plays and harlequinades. Although Nicolet's was the first permanent theatre on the Boulevard, the area had already developed as a popular entertainment center. The Boulevard du Temple had been constructed under Louis XIV. For almost a century, it remained little more than a pleasant, tree- lined drive for Parisian s out for Sundays and holidays. During the early 1750's, cabarets, cafes, and a few marionette booths began to appear and a diary of 1753 reports that t he area had "almost the atmosphere of a fair." Mountebanks, jugglers, acrobats, trained animals, and every sort of street spectacle soon appeared on the Boulevard, aimed at tourists and at every level of Parisian society . Rough booths erected for marionettes gave way to more ambitious structures, one of which housed an ephemeral "marine spectacle," then a display of "architecture and mechanical devices" by Antoine Foure, a student of the famous designer Servandoni, and finally Nicolet's new Theatre de la Galte.' The arrival of the Gaite spurred an even more rapid development of this new entertainment cente r, and for the next century the Boulevard du Temple became synonymous with po p ular non-Establishment theatre, despite the opposition of the Comedie and Opera and every sort of legal restriction on performance conditionsrepertoire, size of casts, number of musicians, and whether dialog or song could be added to pantomime . When all legal restrictions were removed in 1791, Paris already had thirty-five theatres, most of them on, or near, the Boulevard, and in the years that followed the number rose to nearly one hundred . Around them gathered many other forms of popular ente rtainment. The fairs had disappeared, but the Boulevard itself now became a perpetual fair-lined with theatres, cafes, and music halls, its wide streets crowded at all hours with strollers and with a rich variety of spectacles for their amusement. There were tumblers, giants and dwarfs; wild men and wild animals; marionettes, monsters and magicians; Osage Indians, trained dogs, bears, and fleas; men who swallowed serpents, stones and cutlery; children who drank boiling oil and walked on bars of red-hot iron; wandering musicians, fortune-tellers, astrologers, and wandering "physicists" who, for a sou, offered a look through a microscope at a flea made as large as a fi st, and, for two sous, treated their patrons to a shock from a revolving electrical apparatus. Behind this constantly varied scene, music poured from the pleasure gardens and the cafes. Many of the established theatres added to the display by employing barkers or presenting lively vaudeville entertainments, the popular parades, before their doors to draw prospective patrons inside. Despite the sto rms of the Revolution, it was a period of amazing richness in popular entertainment. The competition, encouraged by the removal of all privileges, forced every entrepreneur to search continuously for new attractions simply to survive . After 1791, having nothing to fear from either the Comedie or the Opera, Nicolet varied his acrobatics, farces, and pantomimes with Corneille, Moliere, and mythological ballets. The genres began to mix. When Nicolet's major rival, Audinot, invented the panlOmime dia/oguee, adding verses and music to previously mute pantomimes, Nicolet responded by adding musical themes, which he called Leilmo-

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tifs, to his short plays. From these experiments the first melodramas developed.

Th roughout the Revol ution, the theatres suffered under an arbitrary and constantly shifting policy of censorship, but there was never an attempt to limit their numbers or define their modes of production in the manner of the ancien regime. It was Napoleon who restored this tradition in 1807, reducing the number of Parisian theatres from the thirty-three that had survived the Revolution to eight , each with a clearly defined repertoire. He set up four major national theatres: the Theatres de l'Empereur and de l'lmperatrice (later the Comedie-Franc;aise and the Odeon), the Opera, and the Opera-Comique, and four minor boulevard theatres, the Gaite and Ambigu-Comique (the oldest boulevard theatres, founded by Nicolet and Audino!), the Varietes, and the Vaudeville. The Empereur had exclusive rights to the pre-Revolutionary Comedie repertoire and part of the repertoire of the old Comedie Italienne. The Imperatrice possessed the rest of this repertoire, plus whatever new plays it would henceforth premiere. The Opera and Opera-Comique, of course, controlled their respective genres. The Gaite and Ambigu were required to share the new melodrama, now a fully developed form embellished not only with song but with other spectacular trappings-ballet, lavish and often exotic settings and costumes, even performing animals. The genre assigned to the Vaudeville was the light comedy or parody ornamented with songs from which it took its name. Its subjects were decorous and frequently literary; no other minor theatre made so strong an effort to attract refined audiences. The Varietes, on the contrary, held most closely to the broad and extravagant spirit of the old fair theatres-gross buffoonery, snatches of song, acrobats, crude puns, and irreverent satire were staples here. Members of polite society affected never to attend the Varietes, but after 1807 the theatre was provided with a large number of grilled boxes, and the popularity of these proved that the theatre had a strong appeal to persons who wished to see without being seen . The Varietes was also very popular with foreigners, who could enjoy its gross physical humor and its emphasis on spectacle and action without troubling over the dialog. Since Napoleon made no attempt to regulate spectacles that he d id not consider theatrical, the decree of 1807 had little effect on Paris' other popular entertainments. In most of the city's large squares, and especially near the Pont Neuf, the mountebanks, musicians, and acrobats continued to display their skills to a delighted public, as they had in most of these same locations since the days of Henri IV. A vast market of mountebank doctors was on the Place des Victoires, their booths festooned with many-colored flags, the air ringing with songs and spiels and with the sounds of cymbals, clarinets and hunting horns. The public pleasure gardens, an invention of the Revolutionary years, featured other entertainments. Concerts were an inevitable feature, and acrobats, fireworks, trained animals and balloon ascensions were common. New attractions appeared yearly, however, such as the popular "Russian mountains," the ancestor of the modern roller-coaster, or a mechanical giant representing Gargantua that regularly consumed a titanic meal at Tivoli. The Napoleonic decree had little effect on the carnival atmosphe re of the Boulevard du Temple. Few theatres closed, most simply retreating from regular dramatic offerings to exhibitions of the sort from which they had developed-acrobatics, magicians, clowns, concerts, and marionettes. A traveler, strolling down the Boulevard from the Porte-Saint-Martin at this time, would pass not only a con stantly changing array of street entertainments, but an almost unbroken line of more permanent pleasure resorts on both sides of the avenue. First, on the left, came a pair of popular cafes and, on the right, the rotunda and public garden of Paphos, a resort of somewhat dubious reputation. Except for Sundays arid holidays, a journal of the time reports, the Paphos was "the haunt of criminals and vagrants, of depraved working girls and of women as ugly as they are importunate.'" Next, on the left, came a series

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o f th ea tres alte rn atin g w ith ca fes: th e Delasse me nts, close d by N apo leo n but now shelte rin g Du jo n and hi s train ed b irds, th e closed Th eat re d es Je un es Tro u bad o urs, Hurpin 's Ombres Chinoi ses, and th e Theatre d es Patagoni e ns, now th e home of the po pul ar ac roba t M alaga. N ex t ca me th e two offic ial bo uleva rd th ea tres, th e A mbi gu and Gaite, sepa rated b y a cafe, th en th e wax mu se um of C urtius, o ne of t he g reat attracti o ns o f pre- Revo l utio nary Pa ris. Aft e r t he po pul ar cafe -co nce rt Apo ll o (th e fo rm e r Th eatre Sa ns-Pretention ) ca me th e Th eatre d es Pyg mees, whi ch feat u red m ag ica l transfo rm ati o ns and mini ature sce nes enl arged b y an in ge n io us sys te m of mirro rs. Th e Pyg mees was best kn o wn , ho w eve r, not fo r an y o f these marve ls, b ut fo r t he parades pe rf o rmed o utsid e its doo rs by Bo beche and Ga limaf re, th e last g reat p ract iti oners of this ge nre w hi ch , at thi s time, w as o ne o f Paris' favo rit e att ract io ns. In th e trad itio nal mann e r of clo wn pai rs, th e two set eac h o th e r off pe rfectl y both in style and p hys iq ue, and th o ugh th e ir pa rades mi gh t co n tain eas il y recog ni za bl e Fre nch typ es o f co mmedi a fi g ures, mos t of th e ir ro ut in es w e re based o n t he i r ow n cont rast. Bobeche w as elega nt and hand so me, d ressed in va ri abl y in a red vest, ye ll ow b reeches , b lu e stock in gs, a b lac k c ravat, a red w ig and a three-co rn e red hat. Hi s st yle and sharp wi t m ad e him th e idea l of th e bea u mo nd e. Galimaf re, o n th e ot he r hand, was ado red by th e pop ul ace . His dress was th at o f a No rm an peasa n t wi th hun t in g ca p and ro ugh w ig, not always t idy o r part ic ul arl y well brushed . His large face was fi xe d almos t co nt inuo usly in a foo lish smil e and his wit w as no match for hi s pa rtn e r's. Still , hi s b roadsword app roac h co uld occas io nall y d efeat Bo beche's rap ie r; but , w in o r loose, hi s fo lli es we re th e d eli ght o f his publi c. M an y o f th e ir parades we re p rese rved by this pu bli c in di ari es and jo urn als, and th eir humo r is o ft en surprisin gly un dated :
" H ere is a lette r from a fri end of you rs. I' ll read it to yo u, since I ima gin e yo u've forgo tt en how. Li sten. (rea d s) M y d ear fr iend , I mu st in fo rm you t hat sin ce yo u r d epart u re yo u r siste r has co mmitted seve ra l in d isc ret io ns; in f ac t sh e ha s had twelve love rs in six mo nth s. " " Th e mise rab le creat u re! I mu st go at on ce to ki ll he r and p rese rve t he f am ily ho nor! " " Wa it. (read s) She h as earn ed som e ten t ho usand francs by thi s li ght co nd uct and half of it is yo u rs." " W ell , aft e r all , she's a go o d girl w ith ce rta in qualitie s... " W ait a bit , m y f rien d . (rea ds) U nh app il y, t hi eves brok e in to h e r hou se while she was o ut and carri ed off t he w ho le sum ." " Th e ro gue ! T he rasc al ! Maste r, don ' t hold me ba ck any lo nger. I m ust go p uni sh he r! " " On e mo ment more. (read s) H app il y, th e t h ieves w ere arrested th e ne xt day and th e entire sum was found o n t hem ." " In fa ct, th e p oo r g irl has p erh aps bee n th e victim of goss ip . . . ." "( read s) Th e ten t h ousa nd f ran cs, howeve r, have bee n co nfi scat ed by t he poli ce and no o ne kno ws w h en th ey wi ll be released ." " Si r, I see th at I m ust wait a bit befo re mak in g a jud gment.""

Beyo nd th e Pyg mees, t he appea l of th e Bo ul eva rd lesse ned , but stroll e rs wh o co ntinued w e re offe red t he attracti o ns of seve ral ca fe-th ea tres and ca barets, Th eve nelin 's auto mats (a g ro up o f mechanica l f igures that w e re repo rted to move in a surpri sin gly rea listi c man ne r), and two mo re w ax muse ums. On th e ot he r sid e o f th e Bo ul eva rd , th e wh ole area beyon d the ga rd en o f Paph os was taken up by th e far mo re po pul ar and res pectab le cafes , and Jardin Tu rc, with its ki osks o f co lo red glass, a Chin ese brid ge, ve rda nt wa lks, shelte red nooks, an d h ang in g la nte rn s. Th e ga rd en w as no t lac kin g th eat ri ca l fare. "Va ud ev ill es and harl eq uin ades are off e red all o ve r th e ga rd en ," a co nte mpo rary j o urn al re po rt ed . " Th e refreshme nts are not p arti c ul arl y good , but th e musicia ns and acto rs mu st be pa id fo r so meho w ." Fro m fo ur in th e af-

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ternoon, just after dinner, until eleven in the evening, this was one of the most frequented gathering places in Paris. Two of the great spectacle theatres of the capital managed, like the humbler cafes and mountebanks, to escape Napoleonic legislation-the Cirque Olympique and the Porte-Saint-Martin. The Cirque Olympique had been founded in 1782 by Philip Astley, an Englishman and a former Sergeant Major of Dragoons, who created the first modern circus by adding acrobats, rope dancers and brief pantomimes and spoken scenes to his popular equestrian spectacles. The war with England and the coming of the Terror forced Astley to leave his profitable venture and sell o ut to Antonio Franconi, founder of a famous circus family . Franconi's sons, Laurent and Henri, succeeded their father in 1805, and resisted the decree of 1807 by arguing, successfully, that their venture was a circus, not a theatre, and therefore exempt from the general closing. Laurent's wife was an outstanding rider, Henri's a pantomimist of grace and skill; but the real stars of the theatre were the stag Coco and the elephant Baba. Coco was tame enough to wander freely among the audience, presenting flowers to ladies and eating from their hands, but he was also a featured performer in a whole series of elaborate dramas such as Hapde's A cteo n chan ge en ce rf (1811) and Henri Franconi's Le Pont infe rnal (1812). The central scene in each was invariably a hunt with the stag pursued by men and dogs through the roughest mountain wilderness the carpenters and machinists of the Cirque could design, saving himself at last by a spectacular leap across a gaping chasm. Baba, scarcely larger than a bull, had less thespian skill, but could uncork champagne bottles, remove a handkerchief from his trainer's pocket and dance the gavotte. His successor, Kiouny, proved far more versatile and like Coco inspired a number of plays. The greatest of these, L 'Elephant du Ro i d e Siam, called on the talents not only of Kiouny and accompanying human actors , but on Sergent, a composer, Bertotto, a ballet designer, and some of the major scene designers of the period-Leroux, Dumay, and Philastre. With such attractions, the Franconis soon established a reputation throughout Europe. The Porte-Saint-Martin was the only theatre closed by the 1807 decree that raised a serious protest. Its position was a strong one; it had a large, well-equipped house and it was popular and financially stable. In melodrama and in the spectacular fairy play that had developed along with it, the Porte-Saint-Martin rivaled the Ambigu and Gaite, which had been established longer; its ballets were considered superior even to those of the Opera; its mime, Mazurier, was judged by Talma himself as one of the three "true actors" then living. As the monkey Jocko, he create d a vogue for simian pantomimes that swept Europe. For two years, the theatre's directors submitted petition after petition until at last they were allowed to reopen as the Jeux Gymniques. To protect the establishment theatres, the new house was restri cted to "acrobatics, historic tableaux, military displays, and prologs," with any dramat ic works to be presented by no more than two actors." It was the same sort of restrictive legislation common for minor theatres before the Revolution, and the Jeux Gymniques followed the pattern of most of those, gradually departing farther and farther from its legal bonds until a protest from the Opera caused it to be closed again in 1811. Napoleon's restrictions on the number of Parisian theatres were repealed in 1815, but the restored monarchy retained the practice of granting new privileges only with severe limitations on the genre or the method of production. W hen the Funambules opened in 1816 it was restricted to "acrobatic displays," so that when the theatre began to present pantomimes, each actor was still required to m ake his entrance on a tight rope, which was stretched permanently across the stage . The Almanach des Spectacles of 1822 reported that " The leading man is forbidde n to take part in the action and to concern himself with affairs of th e heart without having first performed a few leaps and don e some cartwheels ."" Even Frederick Lemaitre , greatest of the

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boulevard actors, performing at the Funambules early in his career, entered walking on his hands and going into a forward somersault, though his part was a "Count Adolph" of illustrious lineage. Perhaps the most ingenious director in circumventing such restrictions was Pierre Alaux of the Panorama-Dramatique, who was given permission in 1819 to present dramas, comedies, and vaudevilles on the condition that he never have on stage more than two speaking actors. By hiring a quick-change artist, who could appear as a new character every few minutes, and employing life-size marionettes whose lines were spoken from the wings, Alaux managed to create the impression of working with a full company. Despite these ingenious adaptations, the major attraction at the Panorama-Dramatique was the scenery, as it was in many Parisian theatres. The love of visual spectacle brought to the Opera and the fairs by Servandoni early in the eighteenth century and fed by a growing interest in the exotic, the supernatural, and the sublime, reached its high point in the French theatre of the Empire. Melodrama houses such as the Ambigu and Gaite were scarcely less lavish in such display than the Cirque Olympique or the Porte-Saint-Martin . Even more significantly, Paris experienced a vogue for theatres of pure scenic spectacle, without a single actor-human or animal. The fi rst panoramas were exhibited to Londoners by the painter Robert Barker in 1787 and to Parisians by the American inventor Robert Fulton in 1799. During the next several years, the painter Prevost created a series of panoramas along the Boulevards and in 1804, Daguerre, the pioneer in photography, opened his Theatre Pittoresque, which offered, instead of plays, scenes of sunrises, seas, gardens, streets, and famous buildings. More than twenty similar establishments opened between 1815 and 1820. There were panoramas of London, Jerusalem, Rome, Athens, Constantinople, and Timbuktu; panoramas of famous historical events, and a whole series of variations-a Neorama and Georama, a Europarama, even a Cosmorama. The most ambitious and successful of these establish ments was the Diorama, opened by Daguerre and Bouton in 1822. Here 350 spectators could be seated on a circular platform and turned 360 degrees to view a huge painting 42 feet high which completely surrounded them and could be illuminated from both front and back to create a variety of atmospheric effects. Many of the minor houses closed by Napoleon were reorganized and revived under the more relaxed conditions of the Restoration. The Associes survived during the Empire as a cafe-theatre, the Apollon, offering its guests pantomimes, harlequinades, and eventually even operas with the 16-sou cup of coffee or chocolate. Soon after the Restoration a new theatre patent was sought for the house by a wellknown rope-dancer of the time, Mme. Saqui, whose father was an acrobat in the fairs and at one time a performer for Nicolet. During the Revolution, Mme. Saqui trained herself in rope-dancing in the provinces with such success that, on her return to Paris, Napoleon called her "his passion" and bestowed on her the title of "first dancer of France ." Not a festival was given at Saint-Cloud or an imperial victory celebrated without her participation, and her performances at imperial celebrations outside of France gave her a European reputation as great as Talma's. Mme. Saqui's new Theatre Acrobate was restricted to rope dancing, though she could introduce other nontheatrical fair entertainment for variety, such as Jacques de Falaise, "the polyphage," who would swallow any object submitted to him by a member of the audience . Her bright prospects were dimmed considerably by the appearance of a major competitor only a few months later. As a result of a quarrel with the noted acrobat, a coach driver named Bertrand decided to gain revenge by opening a rival theatre next to hers. With capital provided by a friend, an umbrella merchant who was devoted to boulevard entertainment, Bertrand gained not a patent, but a tolerance, which could be withdrawn at any moment without notice or explanation. On this shaky basis he opened the Funambules, a house restricted, at least in theory, to acrobatic displays.

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Bertrand prospered despite his unstable legal position . In 1817, he discovered a talented family of acrobats and rope-dancers, the Deburaus, performing in the Cour Saint-Maur and engaged them for the Funambules. One of the sons, Jean-Baptiste, appeared without much success in brigand roles until, by chance, he was given the opportunity to substitute for the theatre's Pierrot in 1819. His success was immediate and enormous and, until his death in 1846, his Pierrot was one of the great attractions of the Parisian stage. Earlier Pierrots had been secondary characters, cynical unfaithful servants who were generally little more than the butt of the more fanciful Harlequin's jokes. Now Harlequin and Columbine, the Captain and the traditional young lovers of the pantomime were all pushed into the background by Deburau's fascinating Pierrot-graceful, svelte, naive and open as a child yet able to assume all the elegance and splendor of the most refined aristocrat. Deburau's Pierrot took on a different character in almost every play, but a warmth and rich observation of humanity united them all. After 1820, the authorities rarely attempted to check the steady erosion of the regulations imposed on almost every minor theatre. The state-supported theatres no longer found it worthwhile to complain except in cases of outright theft of their repertoire . Complaints of infractions now came to authorities mainly from disgruntled minor rivals, and were generally ignored. The legislation that restricted each theatre to a distinctive genre had been repealed and most minor houses now mixed melodramas with comedies, vaudevilles, and pantomimes-perhaps all on the same evening, since two, three, or even four plays were offered nightly. As programs changed at least once a week, this was a period of enormous productivity. The vogue for melodrama was still great, and brigands, plots, and violence were so favored on Boulevard stages that during the 1820's it became popul arly known as the Boulevard du Crime. The Almanach des Sp ectacles of 1823 demonst rated th e appropriateness of this title. By counting up the crimes on Boulevard stages for the previous two decades, the Almanach claimed, it found "Tautin has been stabbed 16,302 times, Marty has been poisoned in various ways 11,000 times , Fresnoy has been murdered 27,000 times, Mlle. Adele Dupuis has been the innocent victim of 75,000 seductions, abductions, or drownings, 6,500 capital charges have tested Mlle. Levesque's virtue, and Mlle. Oliver, whose career is scarcely launched, has already tasted the cup of crime and vengeance 16,000 times.'" The period from 1815 to 1830 produced 280 new melodramas to add to the hundreds of revivals, but even though these violent entertainments gave the Boulevard much of its distinctive tone, they were only a small part of the minor theatres' total production . The same period produced 369 new comedies, 200 new comic operas, 1,300 new vaudevilles, and innumerable lesser dramatic works. Because of their diversity, a large number of theatres were able to coexist on the Boulevard without serious problems of competition. As their fortunes improved, so did their physical surroundings. Gas lighting was installed along the Boulevard, the rough paving was smoothed, wooden barriers were erected to control each theatre's queues, marquees were built to give protection from the weather, the theatres themselves were steadily remodeled and improved, and the humble structures previously mixed in among them were replaced by elegant town houses and cafes . The proprietors of these new establishments began to make common cause with the directors of the Boulevard theatres to drive out the street vendors and entertainers, pleading that they created a continual disturbance and were an affront to their respectable neighbors. By 1830, they were able to rid the Boulevard of every mountebank, marionette, and p arade, and , naturally, of much of its color. Now, only in the theatre of Mme. Saqui could audiences find displays like those of the former fairs. Some street entertainments, most notably the parad e, disappeared after 1830, but others, seemingly indestructible, simply returned to their traditional haunts around the Pont Neuf or into the area of the present Place du Chatelet .

Marlin p erfo rmin g b ehind a h eavy wire screen a l Ih e Po rl eSainI -M arlin.

With the departure o f such pe rformances, the quarter was as peaceful as an y in Paris during th e d ay, but th e c rowds that bega n to ga th e r abo ut five , when th e box offices o pened, proved that the Boulevard had lost non e of its popularity. Major houses like the Comedi e now ope ned at seve n , but th e boulevard theatres, with their lon g programs, often bega n at 5:15 or 5:30. Even so, a po lice d ec ree of 1834 req uiring all theatres to clos e at eleve n P.M. met with co nsid e rab le protest. Th e g reatest th eatri ca l art ists of France w e re to be found at these minor houses. At th e ir hea d was the brill iant Frede ri ck Le m artre, g reatest of the French romantic acto rs. Close to him in po pularity and frequently pe rfo rmin g with him were Marie Dorva l and Pier re Bocage. De burau st ill reig ned at th e Fun ambul es, supported by Laurent, a clown from Engl and . A whole ga laxy of lesse r stars fill ed th e minor theatres-Virginie D ejazet, Mlle. George, M elin g ue, Lock roy, Lig ie r, and Lafe rriere, to name only a few-so t hat a n umber of ho uses co uld offer performers as capa ble as, and in so me cases supe ri or to , those at th e Comedie itse lf. Th e symbo li c importance of the Comedie was still g reat, howeve r, and Hugo and Dumas were clearly co r rec t in th eir judgment that romantic drama must ca pture thi s citade l before it would be tak en se riou sly by French men of lette rs. Th e ir opponents obv iously agreed , as th e famo us battle over H ern ani and the less famous stru gg les within the Comedi e over the presentation of ot her works by Hugo, Dumas, and Vign y clearly demonstrated . Once thi s battle was won, th e romantics w e re quick to leave the hostile g round of the Comedie for the more congenial boulevard theatres. Everyone, save a few e mbitte red classicists , att ended the Po rt e-Sa int-Martin, and its program was as varied as its publi c. Visual spectacle was its spec ialty , not only in th e ro m antic works but in melodramas , histo ri ca l pagea nts, and fairy plays-all popular forms presented at the theatre. Onl y th e Cirque-Ol ympique could ri va l the PorteSaint-Martin in suc h spectacl e, and , unwillin g to mi ss any opportunity to win audi ences, th e latter house chall enged the Cirque eve n in the prese nt at ion of animal acts. Behind a heavy wire scree n that protected th e audience, th e admired train e r Martin sta rred in plays that req uired him to fi ght lion s, tigers, and h ye nas with his bare hand s. The Pari sian stage had departed so far from Napol eo ni c ideal s th at neither H are l nor hi s audiences saw any in cong ruity in alternating lion tamin g and premi e res by Victor Hugo on the same stage. Th e particular spec ialty of the Cirque during this pe riod wa s vast histori ca l p agea nts, fo r whi ch the theat re emp loye d a permanent compa ny of more than 100 actors, 30 horses, and a large staff of desig ne rs and technicians. Entire battles were rec reated at th e Cirque o n a huge stage co nn ected by ramps to a circ us-style arena in the mid st of the audience . He re, too , the fairy play reached its apogee in such works as Zaz ez izozu (1834) an d Les Pilules du Diable (1839) with underwater scenes, e ruptin g vo lca noes, dancing bears, monste rs, enchanted forests, cas tl es, and grottos. Advances in technolog y were quickly utili zed, too . Pilul es featured the fi rst train on a Pari sian sta ge, whi ch no t only roll ed onto th e stage but ex plod ed.

GOLDEN AGE OF THE BOULEVARD

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The Revolution of 1830 destroyed the last vestiges of impe rial theatrical restrictions . Anxious to demonstrate his love of liberty, Louis-Ph i lippe removed any restrictions on the opening of new theatres, allowed theatres access to the repertoires of all the others, and abolished censorship , giving Parisian playhouses a freedom that they had not enjoyed since the fi rst enth usiastic legislation of t he Revol ution . The results were as catastrophic in 1830 as they had been in 1791, and within months the government was besieged with complaints from the church and from moralists about profane or obscene performances, and from all sorts of prominent citizens who found thems elves be ing publicly represented and mocked in the Boulevard theatres. Within three months, the govern ment felt obliged to forbid the theatres "instigating any action considered a crime or misdemeanor, attacks against the king and royal dignity, offenses toward the Chambers, fore ign sovereigns, and the legally recognized religion, seditious expressions, outrages to public or religious morality, the representation of any person living or alive within the past 25 years, whether named or presented in such a way that he can be recognized," and further, to require all plays to be submitted to a censor fifteen days before production so that these regulations could be enforced .' The arrival of Rachel at the Comedie in 1838 restored a measure of the popularity to the national theatre that it had last enjoyed in the days of Talma, but the minor houses offered too varied and attractive a competition to be much affected . For a century and a half, the major dramatic artists and authors of France had been found exclusively at the national theatres, but these post-Revolutionary years had broken that pattern . Lemaitre, generally considered the greatest French actor of the period, never appeared at the Comedie at all. Hugo and Dumas felt the necessity of proving themselves by productions at the Comedie , but found that t heir plays were in fact better interpreted elsewhere. Augier and Dumas fils, the leading dramatists of the next generation, established their reputations entirely outside the national theatres, at the Gymnase and Vaudeville. For such major artists of the late nineteenth century as Bernhardt, Coquelin, and Rejane, the Comedie was only one of many theatres where they might display their talents, and not even their favored one . The status and respectability gained by the boulevard theatres during the nineteenth century was achieved, not surprisingly , with some loss in color and variety. The popular roots from which they sprang-the parades, pantomimes, and acrobats of the fairs-were gradually expelled first from the theatres themselves, then even from their environs. Gradually, the memory of these entertainments faded, until by the late nineteenth century boulevard entertainment came to mean a highly polishec;! but insubstantial and largely predictable fare designed for a rather monochromatic bourgeois audience. The old Boulevard du Temple itsel f was destroyed in Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, but the theatres, relocated elsewhere in Paris, had already become an important part of the Establishment against wh ich they were originally pitted. Gone forever was the heady mixture of the early nin eteenth-century Boulevard, where acrobatics, major literary premieres, romantic ballets , trained dogs and horses, and spectacular melodramas and fairy plays competed for audiences within a few hundred yards of each other. The constant borrowing, or stealing, of ideas and techniques among artists had created a theatrical period of unusual richness and diversity.

FOOTNOTES:
I Campardon, Spectacles, 1, 332. , Tribun al vo lat ile, 28, 29, quot e d in He nri Beaulieu , Les Th eatre s d u bouleva rd du Crime (Paris, 1904), p. 175. ' Theodore Faucher, HislOire du bo ul eva rd du Te mple (Paris, 1863), pp. 43- 44. , Tribun al Vo latil e, 32-34, quoted in Beaulieu, bo uleva rd d u C ri me, p . 173. 5 Albe rt , Les Theatres d es bo ul eva rds (Paris, 1902) , p . 230. A lmanach d es spectacles, 1822, qu o ted in Gustav Cain 's The atres d e Paris (Paris, 1906) p. 110. 7 Quote d in Be a uli e u, bo uleva rd d u C rime, pp. 5-6. Albe rt , b o uleva rds, pp . 335- 39.