David M. Hayne
The tremendous expansion of cultural activity in Quebec over the past quarter-century has been particularly evident in the theatre. In 1961 only three new Quebec plays were published; in the mid-1980s more than forty original plays are performed, and usually published, in Quebec each year. Critical, historical and documentary publications devoted to Quebec theatre have multiplied at a similar rate, making the appearance of Pierre Lavoie's bibliography of nearly 1,700 items both timely and welcome.
The bibliography is preceded by a forty-page 'présentation' deploring the current state of research and of archival holdings on French-language theatre in Canada. The author pleads for concerted governmental and private action to create a documentation centre, a library and a museum for the study of Quebec theatre. The remainder of the introduction offers a brief critical review of existing bibliographical and archival resources, and describes the scope of the present compilation. The latter does not include primary dramatic writings and does not pretend to completeness except in the case of books, monographs and theses; the coverage of periodical articles is necessarily selective. As is usual in French-language works, no distinction is made between 'theatre' and 'drama'.
The first two sections of the bibliography (pp 55-94) are devoted to 'Bibliographies spécialisées' (limited to theatre and dramatic writing) and 'Bibliographies générales' (Quebec literature and criticism in general); the opposite order would have been more logical. There is some inconsistency in the placing of particular items: the Dossiers de presse sur les écrivains québécois ... (no 1) appear under 'Auteurs dramatiques', whereas a bibliography of Laurent Tremblay (no 34) is listed under 'Varia'. The inclusion of some titles is puzzling: Liste collective des journaux non-canadiens dans les bibliothèques du Canada (no 118) or misleading: Claude Thibault's Bibliographia canadiana (no 126) is concerned with Canadian history, not literature). Some cross-referencing would have been desirable: no 47 describes the firrst [sic] three volumes of judge Rinfret's compilation, whereas the fourth volume appears as no 193 with no cross-reference in either place. The annotation is generally useful, providing fairly detailed summaries of the contents of important works like Ball and Plant's Bibliography of Canadian Theatre History 1583-1975 (no 23), although other items carry no comment whatsoever. For example, no 49 is a Catalogue des pièces de théâtre conservées au Séminaire de Nicolet; one would like to know approximately how many plays or from what period.
The third section (pp 94-110) is concerned with audio-visual material, listing both catalogues of available material and individual films, film strips, cassettes, records and tapes. This is a novel feature of the bibliography since existing compilations are usually based exclusively on printed sources. Most items are satisfactorily identified, although there is some inconsistency in the form of entry and in the abbreviations used: 'Réalisation', for example, appears sometimes as 'R.' sometimes as 'Réal.', or even in full.
Section 4 ('Etudes théâtrales', pp 110-302: unfortunately, new sections do not begin and end on separate pages) is the most extensive in the book, including nearly 800 items roughly sub-divided by format (monographs, lectures, articles, etc.). This outdated method of classification poses problems: items do not always lend themselves to such categorization, and, furthermore, every conceivable type of content is haphazardly juxtaposed within each category, making the study of any one topic impossible without constant reference to the index. Happily, the index is extremely good, both in its thematic coverage and its accuracy, permitting the finding of entries concerning particular theatres, authors or organizations. Even the most diligent reader, however, may be daunted by the need to look up some fifty separate references for information on children's theatre or on radio drama; an analytical arrangement of the material by subject would have brought each of these groupings into a single section, and made of the bibliography a study guide rather than a reference work. The situation, is, of course, aggravated in those infrequent cases where the index does not provide the necessary help: there is no entry for 'Burlesque' in the index, although there are several titles (nos 360, 439, 8652 866) concerned with it, and there are no cross-references to link these related titles. Despite such organizational weaknesses, however, this section is unusually complete in its coverage of the secondary literature of contemporary Quebec theatre, although less inclusive of material on the history of theatre in the province.
The remaining three sections (pp 302-466) are especially valuable, being devoted to archival holdings, university theses and government publications concerned with theatre. Information on these three types of sources is difficult to assemble and verify, and is not readily available elsewhere. The listing of archival holdings includes both governmental and private archives, the latter being in part those of former classical colleges. The dates covered, the dimensions of the holdings and the existence of a finding aid are indicated: the postal address or name of the archivist responsible for the private collections would have been a useful addition. The holdings of the major public archives (Public Archives of Canada, Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, Bibliothèque municipale de Montréal) are described in some detail under the names of the authors or organizations concerned, as are the archives of important collections like those of the Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires du Québec (Université Laval) or of the Centre de recherche en civilisation canadienne-française (University of Ottawa); the latter's address (no 1209) has recently changed.
The listing of master's and doctor's theses is virtually exhaustive and frequently includes a summary or a table of contents. The arrangement is by author of the thesis, making recourse to the index essential. Here again cross-reference would have been helpful, many theses having also appeared in the form of articles or books listed elsewhere in the bibliography (compare nos 372 and 1427, 397 and 1441, etc). There are supplementary lists of theses registered in Quebec or in France that are presumably in preparation, and of bibliographies of theses. The final section cites numerous government documents related to the theatre issued by both federal and provincial ministries and agencies. An excellent dictionary index of names, play-titles, periodicals and subjects treated completes the book.
As will be apparent, the bibliography is not without some technical drawbacks: an awkward system of classification, a lack of cross-references, the absence of a list of abbreviations, unevenness in the level of annotation and comment, and inconsistencies in the format and capitalization of entries (chiefly in English-language titles). Yet its positive qualities far outweigh these flaws. As a bibliography of Quebec theatre it is much more complete than any compilations now available, and its information is on the whole accurate. A very few names among the hundreds mentioned are misspelled (Charles Dédéyan, James Reaney, Douglas Lochhead) but the vast majority are accurately transcribed, as are the references themselves. The text has obviously been carefully prepared and checked, and typographical errors are rare. Bibliographical research on this scale is a long and frustrating task, and all students of Quebec theatre will be grateful to Pierre Lavoie for furnishing them with a reliable reference work for the study of a complex and rapidly expanding cultural phenomenon.