L. E. Doucette
A brief history of dramatic and para-dramatic literary forms dealing with political topics in French Canada before 1834. Texts discussed are from newspapers and separately-printed pamphlets.
Un tracé de l'évolution d'une littérature dramatique et 'para-dramatique', parue soit dans des journaux, soit dans des brochures imprimées à part, et consacrée à des thèmes politiques au Canada français avant 1834.
Before the twentieth century, by far the best known 'political' plays in the history of theatre in French Canada were those usually referred to as the Comédies du statu quo. These vigorous and blatantly partisan productions appeared in the columns of rival newspapers (and, in two cases, in separate pamphlet form) in the immediate wake of the passage of the 92 Resolutions by the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada in 1834. This time hostilities remained verbal, but the deep divisions which would bring physical violence three years later were only too obvious. As we shall see in the second part of this study (Vol. 3 no. 1, Spring 1982), there were more of these comédies than the three hitherto identified. As we shall also see, this sort of para-dramatic literature already had a history behind it in this country, so that its sudden and brief flowering in the provincial capital in that late spring of 1834 was not as rare and spontaneous an occurrence as has sometimes been stated.
A basic cause of the perennial difficulties encountered by theatre in French Canada until fairly recent times was the deep-seated ambivalence of that society's attitude towards it. On the one hand the Catholic Church, the most influential institution in Québec society, remained firmly opposed to any form of public theatricals - an opposition that was particularly consistent under the leadership of Joseph-Octave Plessis, Curé of Québec, Coadjutor of Lower Canada's single diocese in 1801, Bishop, then Archbishop, from 1807 until his death in 1825. Under his strong hand, even the modest theatrical activity which had hitherto been tolerated, and sometimes even encouraged, in the educational institutions of the province, was severely curtailed; and any attempts at the establishment of a theatrical season, a troupe, even a single 'profane' performance, were sure to encounter stiff opposition, overt or covert as the occasion dictated, from Church authorities.
Yet, to complete the dichotomy, on the other hand every educated French-Canadian had been exposed, since his or her earliest catechism classes, to paratheatrical pedagogic methods, to the extent that the dramatized dialogue/debate had become central to this educational system. This was particularly remarkable at the higher levels. At the Jesuits' College in Quebec, for example, topics of debate were set and pupils made to practise, one against the other, on a daily basis. Once a week a prepared encounter took place, on Saturday morning (hence its name, 'la Sabbatine'); once a month, an even more formalized disputatio ('la Menstruale'), in which students were encouraged to impersonate the real or fictitious character whose ideas they might be espousing; and once a year, towards the end of term, came the only public session comprised of such dialogues, 'une espèce de tournoi dialectique, qui a tout l'intérêt dramatique d'une lutte,' as L.-P. Audet has characterized this tradition.1 When the Jesuits' College was forced to close in 1768, its rôle was assumed by the Séminaire de Québec, with the same pedagogic traditions. Theatre, in other words, remained suspect in that tradition, but the theatricality of good, intense debate was expressly cultivated.
This was in addition to the plays staged at various times during the academic year by various classes in the schools and collèges. Even during the long period of Plessis' ascendancy the performance, under strictly controlled conditions, of plays and extracts from plays seems to have continued to some extent. And as the system of collèges classiques took root and began to expand, this tradition of amateur theatricals expanded with them - all performances, it must be stressed, strictly supervised and not accessible to the public. There is no doubt that staff and students eagerly anticipated these presentations, making of them in many ways the highlight of the academic year.
Thus the entire class of educated adults had developed a taste for dramatic forms, a taste that could not be entirely suppressed. The Church might make it difficult for amateur companies to enact their plays, and impossible for those companies to perdure beyond a performance or two, but the natural or, more likely, the ingrained theatricality of the French Canadian had to express itself elsewhere, in some other fashion.
Only two years after the Treaty of Paris the first newspaper appeared in Québec. It and its successors exhibit, from their first editions, a strong leaning towards the dialogue form, particularly in cases where the topic is political, and thus potentially contentious, in nature. An obvious instance of this is a series of reports, English in one column, French translation in the other, purporting to be transcripts of the questions posed to Benjamin Franklin by a select committee of the British Parliament in 1766, on the subject of the infamous Stamp Act; with, of course, Franklin's responses to those questions. The dialogue appears on the front page of the Quebec Gazette/Gazette de Québec for Monday, 8 December 1766, and the sequels continue as first-page material for the next four issues (the Gazette, at this time, published once a week), terminating on 5 January 1767.2
The interrogation is interesting on intrinsically historical grounds, for the debate is presented in such a way as to ensure the readers' sympathies go unfailingly to Franklin and the cause he represents. But one must be careful not to imply that a dialogue like this one is, in any real sense, 'theatre'. At best, this is para-dramatic journalism. The format was doubtless chosen because it affords a livelier, more effective, and perhaps most important, a far safer means of communicating the controversial views of the great American advocate than any series of articles or editorials.
A somewhat different rationale appears to underlie the next example of this form of presentation. It is entitled 'La Liberté de la Presse: Débat en forme de dialogue,' and it appeared a dozen years later in Montréal's first francophone newspaper, La Gazette du commerce et littéraire pour la ville et district de Montréal. This dialogue too was topical to a greater degree than is first apparent, for debate on the subject of the Press and its liberties was then under way in Canada, a debate exacerbated by the role of that medium in the current revolt of the American Colonies. The subject, moreover, was of peculiar interest to the editor of that paper, Valentin Jautard, and its printer, Fleury Mesplet, since both had just experienced direct pressure (and were soon to experience a good deal more) from the British administration of the Province.
Mesplet, while a resident of Philadelphia, had printed the empassioned appeals addressed to the French Canadians by the Continental Congress in 1774 and 1775; Jautard was suspected, with good reason, as a supporter of the American cause. These factors no doubt underlay the order from Governor Carleton that they cease publication, and that both leave the country by 15 September of that year, although the 'official' reason given was that no formal permission had been sought for the establishment of their newspaper in 1778. At the moment this dialogue appeared, that order had been suspended by Carleton's successor, Haldimand; but its threat no doubt explains the otherwise uncharacteristically moderate stance adopted by the unknown author of our dialogue, which appeared on 21 October 1778.
The two interlocutors in the text are the Admirateur and the Censeur, and they hew pretty closely to the arguments one would expect, given those titles. The Admirateur is soon reduced to playing the part of 'straight man' in this discussion, for the Censeur has most of the better lines and the last word. The conclusion reached is that the few 'dangerous' authors must be restrained, for the good of society. There seems no basis for speculating, as Jean-Paul de Lagrave has done recently, that in this Dialogue, 'sous le pseudonyme de l'Admirateur, Mesplet émet son opinion sur la liberté de la presse,' or that 'l'idéal de Mesplet est la liberté de presse absolue, tel (le) que la France la connaîtra aux premiers jours de la Révolution.' 3 First of all, Mesplet himself had little or nothing to do with what actually went into his paper: surviving correspondence demonstrates that he had neither the education nor the commitment for such a task. Secondly, his editor, Jautard, had almost certainly borrowed - without credit, as was frequently the case - from a French source.4
Jautard had a decided preference for the dialogue form, and returned to it frequently during the brief life of this first newspaper in Montréal. Thus the issue for 11 November 1778 features a 'Dialogue entre un Raisonneur moderne & un Novice Capucin,' in which the Raisonneur interrogates the neophyte at length as to his reasons for entering a religious order at such an early age. Their exchange lasts almost two full pages (of the normal four in each edition), at the end of which the Novice appears to win out. It is, however, a Pyrrhic victory, in that many of the questions raised by the Raisonneur have resonances going far beyond the answers the Novice can assemble. But one knows the strategy: had it not been perfected by Voltaire himself, by this time?
Except to the extent (historically, a considerable one) that religion is politics in French Canada, this is not a 'political' dialogue, nor are the others appearing in Lower Canadian newspapers, in general, before the advent of the first paper established, owned and directed by French Canadians, in 1806. For the intervening years, the next examples we shall adduce were printed separately and circulated in pamphlet form, in the 1790s.
Two of them survive from 1792: a Conversation au sujet de l'élection de Charlesbourg, written by Michel-Amable Berthelot d'Artigny (Québec: Samuel Nelson), and an anonymous pamphlet entitled Dialogue sur l'intérêt du jour, entre plusieurs candidats et un électeur libre et indépendent de la Cité de Québec (Québec: Wm. Moore. For full bibliographic descriptions of both see Marie Tremaine, A Biblio. of Canadian Imprints, nos. 761 and 767.) The first of these is, of all the similar pieces we shall consider, the only one to provide its author's real name, and may have served as a model for later ventures of the sort. Its intention is blatantly political: the author, a French-Canadian lawyer who had been an unsuccessful candidate in the elections of spring, 1792, ascribes his defeat, in this dramatized dialogue between two well-informed electors, to patent irregularities which had been allowed to take place, particularly at the poll in Charlesbourg, north of Québec City. The text comprises ten pages, and the number of copies printed is unknown. It is fair to say that the author displays no great literary gifts, but perhaps his persuasiveness is suggested by the fact that one of his successful rivals soon resigned, and Berthelot d'Artigny was then elected in his stead, by acclamation.
The second text from 1792 presents a conversation among six individuals obviously chosen to represent the body politic: on the one hand a candidate in the imminent elections of the spring of 1792, and on the other a seigneur, a lawyer, a merchant, a mechanic and a farmer. The views it espouses are stoutly patriotic, pro-British, and supportive of the new Constitution. What is highly significant about the pamphlet, from our point of view, is neither its form nor its prosaic content, but rather the fact that, according to its title-page, it was originally intended to be read aloud at the regular fortnightly meeting of the Constitutional Club, on Saturday, 19 May 1792, by one of that Club's members. Other members arranged the printing of the three-page text, 'qu'un accident imprevue a empechéz d'être lû,' says the suspect French on the title-page.
If, in fact, the reading (by one person, or by more, one wonders?) in dramatized fashion of these dialogues was a normal or even occasional occurrence, an entirely different light is obviously cast upon their 'theatrical' qualities. With that consideration in mind, let us examine, this time in more detail, a third example of a pamphlet from the 1790s, with a broader context than the two which precede.
We know a good deal more about the background and genesis of this third text, Le Canadien et sa femme, which appeared in 1794.5 Its publication was elicited by the political and military situation in that year: with England and France formally at war, relations between the British colonies and the United States were strained. A good deal of revolutionary propaganda of American origin had begun to circulate in Canada, and the British administration there was understandably nervous. A new law governing the formation of militia units had been passed at the end of May 1794, based on the concept of universal male draft, with actual manpower decided by the drawing of lots. But Lord Dorchester's agents encountered serious problems in their attempt to enforce this draft, and the situation appeared, for a time, precarious if any real threat were to emerge from the south.
It was at this juncture that Le Canadien et sa femme was circulated, in some 500 copies. As John E. Hare has pointed out in the excellent introduction to his re-edition of the text, we cannot be sure who the author was, but there are good reasons for believing it may have been François Baby, principal French-Canadian adviser to Dorchester. If it was not Baby, it was someone in a position analogous to his, for as Hare points out, 'il semble certain que la brochure fut écrite par quelqu'un du gouvernement, puisque c'est le bureau du gouverneur qui en assumait les frais d'impression'.
The dialogue is between André, the Canadien, and his wife, Brigitte, with their son, Joseph, appearing for one brief remark at the end. This time also the subject is highly political, and specifically Canadian. André is a very well informed citizen indeed, and is at no loss to explain, in condescending terms, how sensible and how essential the whole idea of a defensive militia is. Brigitte, on the other hand, has obviously been influenced by the anti-military propaganda emanating from the States and circulating via the coureurs de côte: all the objections and reservations she voices are based on rumours she has heard. As to the Yankees or 'Bostonnais', she reports, 'on dit pourtant que ce sont de bonnes Gens, et qu'ils ne veulent pas nous faire de Mal.' Furthermore, she points out, 'ils disent qu'ils veulent venir se battre pour nous rendre plus heureux,' and 'ils nous font dire par des coureurs de côte, que nous ne sommes pas Libres,' and so on. Her husband replies fully and patiently to each point raised, expatiating particularly on the topic so much in the air on both continents, the question of Liberty:
Libres, nous le sommes je t'assure - Quoique nous soions en Milice comme eux [les Américains], nous n'attaquons pas les autres chez eux. Nous nous marions quand nous voulons; nous labourons nos terres sur le sens qui nous fait plaisir; nous les vendons ou échangeons, ainsi que nos denrées, aussi chères que nous pouvons. Nous envoyons de notre Bled vendre aux Etrangers hors de notre pays, nous ne sommes pas forcés comme eux de prendre en payernent de la Monnoie de papier, et nous allons à l'Eglise qui nous plaît.
André, the simple habitant, is quite at home in even more abstract discourse on the nature of Happiness and Justice, and all of it in impeccable French. Brigitte, by the eighteenth page, is fully persuaded:
BRIGITTE: Tu as bien raison, mon cher mari, et je suis d'avis que notre fils Joseph dise au Capitaine de Milice que dans quatre jours il sera prêt à partir au premier avis.
ANDRE: C'est le mieux, ma chère petite femme; tiens voilà Joseph, voyons ce qu'il va dire. - Hé bien! que dis-tu notre fils?
JOSEPH: Je vous ai entendu: Je veux obéir et servir Dieu, mon Roi et mon Païs. Je ferai mon devoir comme vous mon père; vous et bien d'autres en sont bien revenus.
Thus ends Le Canadien et sa femme,
with
no attempt at burnout or at breathing life and credibility into the personages
who woodenly mouth their lines. Professor Hare wonders how effective such
'theatrical' propaganda could have been, since it is reliably estimated
that only some 3% of the francophone population of Canada could read about
this time. But may we not speculate, on the example of the second text
from 1792 which wound up being printed only
because an accident
prevented its being read aloud to an assembled audience, that the form
of this text and others like it is not at all gratuitous? That these texts,
in other words, were intended to be read aloud, dramatically, by
one or more of the favoured 3%, for a group?
The third and last type of para-dramatic literature which we shall identify, before the Comédies du statu quo, was published, with minor exceptions, in the pages of the newspaper, Le Canadien. Within a year after its establishment in 1806, this journal had adopted a strongly adversarial tone, heightened with each passing election, and leading inevitably to its suppression by civil authorities in 1810, for a period of seven years. The first example we shall consider accompanies the issue of 29 August 1807, and is entitled Veillée d'un candidat avec sa belle amie. With such a title, in a society whose public morals were as closely supervised as this one, one knows how the 'candidate' in question will be treated!
Although not specifically identified, he appears to be Pierre-Amable de Bonne, the sitting Member for Québec County at that time, having previously represented the constituencies of York and of Trois-Rivières. In these four pages his private morals and his public principles are mercilessly exposed, not without humour and skill. De Bonne, Judge, Member of the Executive Council, one of the chief spokesmen and 'pork-barrelers' for the Château Clique (and founder of the rival newspaper, Le Courier de Québec) is made to paint his own character, in his responses to the astute questions posed by his mistress one evening. He is easily made to appear a thorough scoundrel, scornful of the credulity and ignorance of the Canadien electors whom he represents. The dialogue is direct and lively at times:
- Tout cela ira bien ma chère: J'ai les Canadiens pour moi: 'Les Canadiens sont des lurons, biribi,' ah ah ah!
- Quoi! les Canadiens que vous aves tant joué? (sic)
- Ne te fache pas, ma chère: je connois les Canadiens, je suis sûr d'eux.
- Quoi! apres leur avoir joué tous les tours que vous prenez souvent plaisir à me conter, vous croyez qu'ils n'en auront pas de ressentiment?
- Tu ne connois pas les Canadiens, ma chère: on peut les jouer tant qu'on veut et les ramener ensuite quand on veut; on n'a qu'à leur faire quelques couplets de chanson; leur dire qu'ils sont des Lurons, biribi, et d'autres fadaises, on est sûr d'en faire ce qu'on veut, quelque saluts les amadouent, quelques mots contre les Anglois les montent: j'en ferai bien mon affaire.
Judge De Bonne quickly became the favourite
target of Le Canadien and its four French-Canadian founders. Thus
the issue of 14 May 1808 provides a very similar dialogue, included this
time in the regular columns of the newspaper, untitled and anonymous. Again
the timing is important: just before the elections to be held in the summer
of that year. In it De Bonne is again made to appear ridiculous and vain,
proud of a speech he has just delivered at Beauport, for example, in which
the keynote had been 'la comparaison de mes souffrances avec celles de
Notre-Seigneur et quelques autres comme cela.' And when he spoke at Charlesbourg,
there were many who compared him with Saint Augustine. What worked in the
countryside will surely be good enough for urban electors, for do they
not all belong to the group he scorns?
C'est sur le nombre et non sur la qualité des Electeurs que je dirige mes opérations, le vote d'un coquin vaut celui d'un honnête homme; c'est le grand nombre qui fait une élection. Dieu merci, ce n'est pas du côté de ce qu'on appelle les honnêtes gens que se trouve ce nombre!
His nameless interlocutor, who appears
to be the judge's secretary, poses the same kind of leading questions as
had his Belle Amie the year before, but this time the text is totally devoid
of humour, as a question comprising up to 350 words elicits a response
just as tediously long. It is difficult to see how it could have been effective,
whether read aloud or silently. De Bonne, in any case, continued to be
re-elected with ease for the next few years. And it was because of libels
of this nature that Le Canadien was suppressed and its printer and
owners imprisoned some two years later. On 26 March of that year (1808),
for example, there had appeared a brief, untitled dialogue between 'La
Redingotte' (representing the British Party) and the 'Ventre Plat' (the
Canadiens) on the subject of the latters' problems with the existing legal
system. In this one De Bonne is not mentioned directly, but 'Le Ventre
Plat', speaking of the courts, observes that 'la plupart de ceux qui y
siègent, n'ont pas la moindre teinture de Jurisprudence, ils n'en
ont jamais fait aucune étude', an accusation frequently levelled
at him in Le Canadien. The campaign had come to a climax of sorts
on 21 May, when the same paper published a detailed analysis of the judge's
voting record in the Assembly, followed by a solid list of 'Raisons pour
lesquelles on ne doit pas voter pour Mr le Juge De Bonne'. The campaign
was perhaps too strident to have been successful.
Despite its apparent ineffectiveness, this is the type of political dialogue which served as direct ancestor to the better-developed, livelier form of the Comédies du statu quo. With the temporary suppression of Le Canadien, principal organ of the Canadien and Patriote causes before 1837 (the Patriotes were not organized until 1826), this vigorous form of journalistic literature practically disappeared for a generation in Lower Canada. Apart from two highly tendentious dialogues apparently borrowed from foreign journals and dealing with the international situation (the anti-Napoleonic verse-dialogue, 'Bonaparte & son Mamluck' which appeared in the Quebec Gazette/Gazette de Québec on 18 August 1814; the fanciful 'Dialogue: Saint-Juste et Machiavel', in Montréal's l'Aurore, 26 September 1818), one of the rare exceptions is a short piece in the renascent Canadien on 20 March 1822, dealing with the inextricable interconnections between religion, education and politics in Lower Canada, and entitled 'Dialogue entre un Curé et un Habitant'.
The brief exchange is labelled a 'Communication', and is remarkable for its directness and concision, as well as the fact that, for the first time in this sort of production in Canada, a realistic attempt is made to characterize the interlocutors by their level of speech. It begins:
LE CURE - Eh bien, Pierre, quelles nouvelles?
L'HABITANT - J'en ai pas, Mesieu.
LE CURE - Tu n'as pas donné d'argent pour la société d'éducation?
L'HABITANT - Non Mesieu. Je n'suis pas riche; et pis quand même je serois aussi riche que vous, j'en aurois pas donne!
The reason Pierre has not contributed
to the campaign for establishing a comprehensive primary educational system
(one of the goals of Bishop Plessis) is that he has learned no school would
be built in his own parish, but only in the towns. Thus, he concludes,
'si j'avions donné note argent, je nous serions trouvés ben
campés, nous autes, qu'avons tant de peine à vivre'. He will
contribute nothing to 'faire induquer les pauvres d'la ville', for he has
enough trouble scraping by on his own. Here, in a quarter-column, a politico-social
problem is posed, two sides neatly identified, and a strategy proposed
for the rural francophone majority. No sympathy at all accrues, in this
sketch, to the Curé or the cause he represents: indeed, the indirect
cut in Pierre's second remark ('quand même je serois aussi riche
que vous') is a telling one, in this context.
By no coincidence, Bishop Plessis soon lost patience with Le Canadien (which, incidentally, he had himself helped to re-establish), and managed to have the paper suspended that same year. The contentious journal would not again become an important factor in French-Canadian politics until after its resuscitation by a group led by Etienne Parent, in 1831. And it was this group that found itself in the thick of the verbal fray represented by the Comédies du statu quo: themselves a natural culmination of long-smouldering animosities, as to their content; a natural evolution, as to their form, of the dramatized debates, pamphlets and libels we have here encountered.
Notes"LES COMEDIES DU STATU QUO" (1834): POLITICAL THEATRE AND PARA-THEATRE IN FRENCH CANADA - PART I: DRAMATIZED DIALOGUES BEFORE 1834
L. E. Doucette
*
Part II of this article will appear in Vol 3 no 1, Spring 1982.
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1 LOUIS-PHILIPPE AUDET,
Histoire de l'enseignement au Québec, 1608-1840 Montréal
and Toronto: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971, 2 vols, 1, 187
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2 BAUDOUIN BURGER, in L'Activité
théâtrale au Québec (1765 -1825) Montréal:
Parti pris, 1974, p 228, is mistaken in his affirmation that the Gazette
carries, in these same issues, a dialogue entitled 'Méthode
pour recueillir les Grains dans les années pluvieuses, et les empêcher
de germer.' The only similar sequence I have found is in Le Canadien,
9 May to 20 June 1834, where six such 'conversations' on agricultural
topics appear.
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3 JEAN-PAUL DE LAGRAVE,
Les Origines de la presse au Québec (1760-1791) Montréal:
Editions de Lagrave, 1975, p 55
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4 For example, the basis
of the economic argument used by l'Admirateur: 'Le talent de convertir
des lambeaux de linge en de gros volumes de prose & de vets fait circuler
en France [my italics] l'argent des étrangers.
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5 JOHN E. HARE, 'Le
Canadien et sa femme: une brochure de propagande politique (1794)',
in
Cahiers de la Société Bibliographique du Canada II
(1963), pp 57-73. He reproduces the original text, pp 64-73. Baudouin
Burger, in the work mentioned in Note 2 above, seems to believe there are
two such dialogues, the second entitled 'Dialogue entre André et
Brigitte' (his p 229). But the latter is merely the title assigned to the
work by Marie Tremaine in her
Bibliography of Canadian Imprints, 1751-1800
Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1952, no 874, before a copy of the work
had actually been located by Professor Hare.
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