LOUISE H. FORSYTH
The Drama of our Past. Major Plays from Nineteenth-Century Quebec contains complete translations of five full-length plays and five short playlets representative of French dramatic writing in 19th century Quebec. Although always mentioned by scholars and teachers of Quebec theatre and its history, these plays have not been previously translated into English. In fact, most are unavailable in French except in old library copies. They are known primarily through secondary sources and on the basis of what critics and historians have already written about them. They are seldom, if ever, considered for performance. The corrections and new interpretations made by Doucette through careful scholarship in studying primary sources and situating these sources in their historical context constitute an important aspect of the book.
The volume begins with a short "Prologue" where Doucette provides general historical and social background for the plays and their authors. In addition, Doucette has written an introductory essay for each play containing information, as relevant, regarding texts, authors, cultural, political and historical context, sources, the situation of theatre, performances, characters, setting, and language. The themes of the plays vary widely and reflect a society in the process of diversification and cultural affirmation. In his translations, Doucette has captured, not only the sense, but also the tone, spirit and linguistic register of the original French text. The result is lively English texts, which would probably sound quaint, although theatrically effective, if produced today. Doucette comments on the particularities of the language of the plays in the final section of each introductory essay. When the French register is more or less standard, he chooses an equivalent English level, not stressing language qualities which would remind readers that these are 19th century texts. He does not attempt to reproduce authentic English dialects of 19th century Quebec. This is probably a wise choice. When characters speak in dialects as a result of class or geographic origin, Doucette finds equivalents from various levels of generic popular speech.
Doucette has also provided extensive and detailed notes for his introductory essays and the dramatic texts themselves. The scholarship reflected in the notes, of a kind one usually finds only in critical editions, is impeccable. By themselves the notes constitute a significant contribution of new or updated knowledge regarding a long and important period in Quebec theatre history. My small quibble with the notes derives from their very richness and attention to detail, since they are not easy to skim, and there are no charts or other summary presentations of key data. For example, while publication information for each play is included in the notes, there is no bibliography of primary sources. Such a bibliography would have been a useful addition.
The Drama of Our Past will be of interest primarily to historians of Quebec dramatic literature. It can be viewed, in effect, as a companion volume to Doucette's major study of Quebec theatre history: Theatre in French Canada: Laying the Foundations 1606-1867 (1984), to which the notes frequently refer. Although Doucette provides available information on the staging of the plays and accompanying events, neither volume focuses on performance activity and theatrical practice in nineteenth century Quebec. This is primarily because 19th century Quebec playwrights almost never wrote for the professional stage, and also because some of the plays written during this century were, in fact, never performed, nor even necessarily written to be performed.
Doucette's introductory essay to Joseph Quesnel's one-act Anglomania or Dinner, English-Style, probably written in 1803, provides information on the author, the difficult theatrical moment, and the social and political context. Events of this time in Lower Canada, France and the United States are relevant for an understanding of Quesnel's satirical intent in Anglomania. Of particular importance is the will of local English-speaking administrators to assimilate the French-speaking population. Church interests did not encourage the francophone population to resist British dominance. Nor did those of many of the francophone seigneurial elite, fascinated with things British and attracted by the power and influence alliances with the English appeared to offer. The play ridicules a stereotypical French-Canadian seigneur for his infatuation with all things and people British and for his willingness to sacrifice his family members, possessions and traditions in order to achieve his silly ambitions.
The names of the authors of the five short Status Quo Comedies of 1834 are not all known with certainty. These polemical playlets, that Doucette classes as armchair political theatre, were written not for dramatic production, but for newspaper publication, a popular 19th century subgenre. Written by members of opposing political camps in the period immediately preceding the 1837-38 Patriote uprising, they are richly informative regarding personalities, events and incidents: "the grit and slime of partisan politics." Doucette's translation moves skilfully among the stiff formality of 19th century journalistic prose, the slang of personal reflections or conversation among close political allies, and the snide innuendo contained in all language registers of these humorous playlets.
Pierre Petitclair's two-act The Donation of 1842 was the first play by a native Québécois to be written, performed and published here. Doucette finds convincing external and internal evidence for the play's topicality, despite its derivative classicism in structure, plot, characterisation and language. The play's plot is taken right from French comic tradition and the current fashion of melodrama: a rich uncle, foolishly infatuated with a scheming scoundrel who has evil designs on his money, comes dangerously close in his self-deception to ruining the lives of his niece and the handsome young man of integrity she loves. The lively dialogue of two servants provides the voice of common sense. The female servant has sufficient insight and initiative to foil the plans of the villain, make the uncle see his foolishness, and bring about the marriage of the young lovers. Performances of The Donation appear to have enjoyed considerable success in Quebec City.
Doucette has included a second play by Pierre Petitclair, the two-act A Country Outing, first performed in 1857, next performed in 1860 under the distinguished patronage of the most active French-Canadian patriotic and cultural association, the Société Saint-Jean Baptiste, and published posthumously in 1862 with a "Preface" by the publisher. The theme of A Country Outing is similar to that of Quesnel's Anglomania: the threat of linguistic and cultural assimilation. At the centre of the comedy is the foolish French-Canadian anglomaniac Guillotte who has returned to the village of his birth with his father and two friends, both francophile English-Canadians. Guillotte, who has snobbishly changed his name to William, is ridiculed throughout the play by his elders, his country cousins and his anglophone friends. He is rewarded at the end of the play with ostracism from all social groups.
Louis-Honoré Fréchette's four-act Félix Poutré, the most popular and best-known 19th century Quebec play, was first performed in 1862. In it Fréchette made extensive use of the memoirs of Félix Poutré, just published in French and in English translation. Poorly written and filled with untruths, they were purportedly the memoirs of a heroic 1838 Patriote, who foiled those that treacherously plotted against the French-Canadian cause and who managed to escape the gallows only through feigning madness. Doucette provides a detailed discussion of the dramatic interest, structure and language of Fréchette's play, which is a significant re-working of Poutré's ghost-written text. Doucette also usefully situates the play and its extraordinary success in its historical context.
Archibald Cameron of Locheill, or an Episode in the Seven Years' War in Canada (1759) is a three-act dramatic adaptation for the college stage of Philippe Aubert de Gaspé's novel Les Anciens Canadiens (1863). It was first performed in 1865 at the Collège de L'Assomption and first published in 1894. Doucette's translation is based on a 1868 manuscript. The play dramatizes a decisive moment of Quebec history through the experiences of a young Scots nobleman, forced to take refuge in Canada before the Seven Years' War and befriended by a French-Canadian seigneurial family. When war breaks out he returns to New France to fight with the British, obliged to carry out cruel measures against his former friends. The play depicts the French and the Indians as much more noble than the victorious, barbaric British. Doucette provides publication and performance history, as well as a brief comparative study of the novel and the play. He succeeds in showing that the play is not merely derivative of the novel.
The Drama of Our Past is a publication which meets a real need. Doucette's translations are elegant and accurate. The scholarship with which these first-time translations are presented is outstanding. The book does not quite, however, live up to its intent of "represent[ing] the broad range of dramatic writing in nineteenth century Quebec." This is so because, as Doucette fully acknowledges, other translations of major 19th century Quebec plays have already appeared, most particularly in Volume Four of Canada's Lost Plays. A table listing all the major plays of the century would have been informative and could have prevented any possible misconceptions which The Drama of Our Past might create. A more serious omission in the volume is the absence of any text written after 1865. Thus, no mention is made of the major changes and new thematic departures which occurred in Quebec theatre during the second part of the century, particularly in the final decades. I would argue, for example, that the building of the Monument National in Montreal and the plays of Félix-Gabriel Marchand, including Jean-Claude Germain's translation of Les Faux Brillants into contemporary Québécois (1897, 1977), deserved at least a mention among the "major plays of nineteenth-century Quebec."