"L'entrée du théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique à une représentation gratis" (Entrance to a free show at the Ambigu-Comique Theatre) by Louis-Léopold Boilly-- an 1819 depiction of a crowd at one of the primary venues for melodrama in revolutionary Paris
We are talking about melodrama this week on the way to looking at Victor Hugo’s Hernani and George Aiken’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Melodrama was a defining popular theatre genre of the nineteenth century that builds on some aspects of the 18th century theatre we’ve been talking about and breaks with other aspects.
I. Melodrama as a dramatic genre found in many historical periods
Literally, melodrama means “song” or “music” drama. The term can be used both to refer to a genre found in many historical contexts and a specifc form that developed out of the cultural milieu of the French revolution. The term refers to the kind of music used to accompany such plays, usual intense, emotionally loaded themes. “In these melodramas, a premium was put on surface effects, especially effects evoking suspense, fear, nostalgia, and other strong emotions; the plays were written in a way that would arouse such feelings.” (Wilson/Goldfarb 364) Such conventions, for example, as building suspense with a climactic moment at the end of every act—a “cliffhanger”.
“Briefly defined, melodrama allows spectators to imaginatively experience an evil force outside of themselves, such as a greedy person, a rapacious criminal, or a vast conspiracy. Consequently, melodrama dramatizes social morality; it names the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in our lives and helps us to negotiate such problems as political power, economic justice, and racial inequality. It may also point audiences beyond their present circumstances to transcendental sources of good and evil.” (Zarrilli 254)
“In addition to its heroes and villains, melodrama had other easily recognized stock characters: the threatened woman; the sidekick (a comic foil to the hero); and the ‘fallen woman’ who, even after repenting, is punished for her wicked past.” (W/G 364)
Melodrama achieves its effects through evoking intense, even extreme emotions in the audience. It is the intensity of these emotions that has been the focus of much of the bad connotations we have for melodrama nowadays. Our current prejudices owe much to how much naturalist and realist playwrights like Shaw and Zola denounced melodrama in relation to their own works, but Eric Bentley has defended melodrama against some aspects of their criticism.
Tears: Tears as “the poor man’s catharsis,” more the point of popular melodrama than its moral pretensions. “Having a good cry,” “feeling sorry for oneself”. Bentley charges that the late twentieth century resistance to representations of self-pity suggests a resistance to surging emotion in general, and in particular a preference for cold irony over surging emotion from the lamentations of Greek tragedy to the high emotions of Victorian melodrama.
Aristotelian Pity: We pity the hero of a melodrama because he is in a fearsome situation. We share his fears and pitying ourselves, pity him. This is the characteristic situation of melodrama: goodness beset by badness, hero beset by villain, heroes and heroines beset by a wicked world.
Fear is the genre’s stronger element, the source of its universality. Good melodrama heightens rational fear to an irrational level (i.e. making a genuinely bad villain superhumanly diabolical)
Exaggeration: Melodrama, like Farce, revels in absurdity. From our realistic prejudices, we admit only a narrow range of “artistic” exaggeration. Grand exaggeration requires different criteria. Any exaggeration is justified so long as it is intensely felt. – this is the essentially Rousseauian and Romanticist aspect to melodrama.
In summary:
• Melodramas emphasize exciting plot over character development, the sensational over the subtle, simple morality over moral ambiguity and complexity
• There is frequently an escapist element with a heavy stress on visual spectacle—there’s a clear line of development from spectacular 19th century melodrama to Hollywood action movies.
• Thus, designers began to gain a stature on a par with actors by introducing new stage machinery, flying and other illusionistic devices.
• There is almost always a moral dimension to melodrama with plots culminating in poetic justice (the good are rewarded, the evil punished).
• And melodrama accomplishes its effects by evoking intense emotions of pity and fear in the spectators.
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II. Precursors in German romanticism
A. 1770s: The Sturm und Drang dramatists, inspired by Rousseau’s advocacy of natural, sentimental humanity against the restrictions of Enlightenment rationalism. Jacob M.R. Lenz’s The Soldiers advocated state-sponsored prostitution to satisfy the natural desires of soldiers. Some of these plays were censored, but many circulated in print. The early works of Goethe and Schiller were composed within the movement. (224-5)
B. 1780s: Friedrich von Kotzebue (1761-1819) became the most popular playwright in early 19th century Europe. Avoided the social controversy of the Sturm und Drang playwrights, but embraced their Rousseauian sentimentalism. Misanthropy and Repentance (1787) and over 200 works that followed explored democratic potential in Rousseau’s philosophy. “Kotzebue’s dramas appealed to a wider audience by encouraging them to believe that all people, with or without enlightened reason, were already natural, ethical, and authentic human beings.” (226)
C. 1790s: Gothic thrillers—started in fiction in 1790s, moved into drama—focused on hero-villains “usually a remorseful but still passionate figure who rules female captives and fights ghosts from his past in a crumbling castle. Although these hero-villains struggle in proper sentimental fashion to reform, most go to their deaths without renouncing their desire for lust and revenge” (226)—response to the failure of sentimentalism to explain evil.
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III. The impact of the French Revolution
In 1789, much of Europe and the world still looked to France as the most advanced nation in the world. There was initial approval in Enlightenment circles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and abolition of state monopolies. However, the beheading of the king and the Reign of Terror (1792-1795), implemented by Danton and Robespierre in the name of Reason showed Enlightenment principles taken to a horrible extreme. The ensuing wars brought chaos. There was much admiration of Napoleon when he emerged in 1799 as France’s leader, but then Napoleon plunged Europe into catastrophic wars until 1815.
As McConachie argues, stories about individual villains provided scapegoats for people living during these revolutionary times, and these were the seeds of melodrama.
“The dynamic of the Revolution itself and the wars that followed enjoined Europeans to make absolute distinctions between friend and foe, hero and villain, ‘us’ and ‘them’. In addition, the Revolution (coupled with Rousseauian thinking) had induced a desire for utopia, the conviction that naturally good people might create a society in which evil could be banished from the world. Revolution and war degraded the value of enlightened reason, which many believed had led to The Terror, and elevated nature and intuition as better guides to morality and possible utopia.” (226)
In this climate, 18th century sentimentalism was reformulated for the stage with a simplified ethics. “The first melodramas presented a world in which a traditional utopia of order and happiness was just around the corner if only the good people used their intuition to root out and banish the bad people from society.” (227)
Working class “boulevard” theatres in late 18th century France presented all kinds of popular entertainments that had moved indoores from the fairground theatres, including pantomimes and tableaux vivants (usually with spectacular scenes of violence and suspense or historical events– think historical dioramas in museums).
A few of the first melodrama composed during the French Revolution:
1796 Victor, or The Child of the Forest by Guilbert de Pixerecourt(1773-1844). The first melodrama.
1800 Coelina, Or the Child of Mystery by Pixerecourt depicts the restoration of absolutist values in a French village while praising the superior intuition of common folk and the hope for a future free of bourgeois greed.
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IV. The development and spread of melodrama
Melodrama brought demand for significant improvements in the painted flat scenography that was still dominant in 1800. Like the French Revolution itself, the aesthetic of melodrama was to hide nothing from the audience. Whereas neoclassical drama (like ancient Greek theatre) generally did not represent horrible deeds onstage to preserve the genteel sensibilities of upper and middle class audiences, melodrama emphasized such intense scenes. Exotic locales called for larger stages and three-dimensional scenery. In the 1840s, huge water tanks were installed to facilitate a craze for nautical dramas. Introduction of gaslight after 1825 enabled lighting effects and spectacular eruptions and explosions. By the 1880s, there were sinking ships, steaming trains and galloping horses.
Melodrama was initially rejected as crude by highbrow audiences, but it proved flexible enough to gain wide popularity over the nineteenth century. A huge increase in working-class spectators (who, thanks to the industrial revolution, were increasing in urban centers and gaining disposable income for entertainment) helped fuel the spread. There were politically-oriented works like The Bottle (1847, pro-temperance) and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852, abolitionist) that attracted even religious conservatives to the theatre. Actors like Charlotte Cushman and Henry Irving became celebrities on the melodramatic stage.
After 1850, playwrights like Eugene Scribe (1791-1861), Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) and Dion Boucicault (1822-1890) incorporated aspects of the well-made play into melodrama. “In brief, the plot of the well-made play depends on a secret, known to a few characters and the audience, on which the fate of many—perhaps an entire nation—hangs. Through the clever manipulation of chance and circumstance, all of which must appear logical and plausible, the playwright leads the audience to an ‘obligatory scene’ in which the secret is revealed and the characters must resolve their conflicts.” (228)
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