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The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org Michael J. Lueger Baroque and Classical in Jesuit Theatre In many ways, the Society of Jesus occupied an inherently conflicted position in the political and intellectual world of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The Jesuits would appear in practically every corner of the world, advancing the cause of humanism in the intellectual sphere and the style of the baroque in the visual arts. Yet in some respects theirs remained a backward-looking creed, dedicated to the reestablishment of the old religious (and to some degree political) order and the predominance of the language and culture of classical antiquity. This division also appears in their theatre, in which dazzling spectacle shared the stage with somewhat static displays of oratorical skill, all within the context of plays composed in Latin verse which nevertheless often violated the rigid unities and code of decorum which define neoclassicism in the narrowest sense. Reflections of many of these contradictory impulses appear in the plays written by the Jesuits’ students, Moliere and Corneille. Unfortunately, it is impossible to adequately and with any degree of certainty answer the question of how much influence the Jesuit theatre had in shaping the secular theatre of the era. Still, examining the uneasy coexistence of the baroque and the classical on the Jesuit stage may cast some additional light on the contemporary secular theatre. To begin with, it may be necessary to attempt to define what we are talking about when we use the words “baroque” and “classical.” This latter term is easier to define, most precisely in terms of adherence to the dramatic unities supposedly prescribed by Aristotle and the later rules established by the Academy after the controversy over Corneille’s Le Cid. However, in a wider sense classicism can also be understood to mean a preference for the philosophy and precepts of ancient Western civilization, along with a somewhat related sense that certain rules of propriety and decorum must be followed in any artistic work. [1] The baroque, by contrast, is a bit more slippery. Since many of its defining aspects coexisted comfortably with strongly classical elements in a single work of art, to define it as merely the antithesis of the classical would be both simplistic and inaccurate. The baroque might best be described an aesthetic that promotes “Art as pure form” (Wittkower 11), and at least a partial disregard for the clearly defined boundaries prescribed by classicism. This last important aspect of the baroque is Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #1 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org especially prevalent in the eye-popping decoration of Jesuit churches such as Sant’Ignazio in Rome, where the painted architectural details of the ceiling vault seem to make the building rise to Heaven while colorful and dynamic figures fill the composition. Indeed, it is in architecture especially that the Society was most closely identified as a major force in promoting the baroque. Whatever role the Jesuits may have played in advancing new forms in architecture and the visual arts, in many ways their educational system—of which their theatre was an important element—was firmly rooted in the past. The Ratio Studiorum of 1599, which laid out the guidelines governing the conduct of Jesuit schools across Europe, contains many injunctions against straying outside the bounds of acceptable discourse and proper thought, barring in-depth consideration of alternate religious views, potentially racy material, and even the writings of certain orthodox thinkers. However, the Jesuits somewhat ironically made explicit their desire to build their curriculum around the classical, pagan legacy of Aristotle—albeit within the context of the Scholastic tradition, which had fused this legacy with Christian thought, most notably in the work of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas loomed especially large in the Jesuit school: the Ratio explicitly states that “none are to be promoted to chairs of theology unless those who are well disposed towards St. Thomas; but those who are averse to him or not much devoted to him should be removed from the office of teaching” (Ball 124). With Aquinas, of course, went Aristotle, and when it comes to the curriculum that the Professor of Philosophy should adopt, the Ratio is quite clear: “In matters of any importance let him not depart from Aristotle unless something occurs which is foreign to the doctrine which academies everywhere approve of; much more if it is opposed to the orthodox faith” (168). Further, the professor was exhorted to “persuade his students that their philosophy will be but very partial and mutilated unless they highly esteem this study of the text [of Aristotle]” (171). Finally, nearly all the business of the school was to be conducted in Latin, and its use was to be “diligently preserved” even in the writing of letters from one student to another (139). Given this rigid set of rules, it is not surprising that the Jesuit theatre reflected the sometimes contradictory impulses of the “Christian humanism” the schools sought to instill in their students (McCabe 8). Certainly Corneille would be identified with this concept, “where humanity in the form of the hero benefits from the more optimistic assumptions on human nature Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #2 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org which are part of the Jesuit view of man in relation to the possibility of salvation” (Phillips 59). However, this certainly did not mean that Jesuit teaching and theatre essentially constituted a sort of spiritual cheerleading meant to drown out the more dire pronouncements of the Calvinists and others; the Ratio indicates just how narrowly prescriptive the lessons the Society imparted could be. The Jesuit theatre was heavily didactic, and the characters and situations of the plays featured on its stage offered straightforward and starkly contrasting examples of virtuous and vicious conduct. The French Jesuit Charles Porée summed up the attitude of many of the members of the Society towards the didactic potential of the theatre, asking: “Is there any duty, whether of a private or public, of a domestic or civil nature, which the theatric Muse does not inculcate? … Is there any species of virtue she does not recommend [?] … Is there any kind of vice from which she does not deter us?” (Porée, “An Oration”). Vice, of course, always met with punishment in the end, while the virtuous found their ultimate heavenly reward in spite of any temporal suffering their strict observance of the moral code might have caused them. The Jesuits’ attempts to mold their students’ religious and moral outlook was aided by the heavy emphasis the schools placed on emulation and competition. For the student, this meant above all the attainment of visible signs of distinction in comparison with his peers; as Virginia Scott notes, “In practice, what ‘emulation’ meant was that school was a constant series of contests: boy against boy, class against class” (Scott 19). The students were also competing to see who could follow most closely the “prescriptions for performance in everyday life” given to them by their teachers (McCarthy 29). The theatre represented an important extension of this program, as it presented in especially appealing and clear-cut terms the sort of behavior the students should imitate and the sort they should avoid. Of course, the students’ success in achieving these prescriptions was on display in front of an audience. Whether that audience was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of sitting through a performance with such a strongly didactic goal is not clear, but at the very least they seem to have been willing to tolerate the heavily moralistic tone in order to enjoy the other aspects of the productions. Porèe surely had in mind his experience with audiences for the Jesuit productions when he spoke of the wider potential of theatre in general to promote morality. Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #3 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org The primary goal of the Jesuit theatre was to train the students in the art of rhetoric. This fit in with the immediate historical circumstances that were the background to the rise of the Society; with the Catholic Church under continuing attack from the heirs of the Reformation, it needed a new breed of highly educated men who were fully capable of serving as the intellectual shock troops of the Counter-Reformation. This meant, among other things, that the ability to successfully engage in public disputation was more important than ever in convincing people to stay on the side of orthodoxy. The Ratio is clear on this point, declaring that “none of our students shall pass on to philosophy until he has spent two years in rhetoric” (Ball 126). While those two years of rhetoric may have been seen by the faculty partly as a precursor to other subjects, for many students they constituted the primary portion of their education, and practical considerations ensured that they would leave without trying to reach those higher disciplines. Both student and teacher saw the attainment of a certain degree of competency in rhetoric as a perfectly worthy end in itself. As we shall see later, the strong link between rhetoric and Jesuit theatre is especially important for considering the style of the productions themselves. The guidelines for the Professor of Rhetoric are especially revealing: rhetoric “instructs to perfect eloquence, which embraces the two highest faculties, oratory and poetry (of these two, however, the preference is always given to oratory); nor does it serve only for usefulness, but also nourishes culture” (208) Furthermore, this all-important skill should be taught first and foremost by relying upon the three great authorities of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. This quote is especially interesting in its indication of the preference for oratory over poetry (the category under which the drama would presumably fall) and in the direct connection it draws to the sort of training in decorum for which the Jesuit schools were so famed. The fact that the Jesuit school’s (and, by extension, its theatre’s) priorities lay first and foremost in improving the student’s oratorical skills would seem to accord with the close—and perhaps questionable—association between rhetoric and acting styles asserted by many theatre historians. Further, the fact that the Ratio champions Quintilian (amongst others), who had been the dominant authority on the subject for centuries (Roach 29), indicates a further preference on the part of the Society for a theatrical style that leaned towards the classical, rhetorically-based conception. Indeed, some Jesuits felt that even this went too far; Père Binet, the Provincial for the College de Clermont, complained that “Exercises in speaking Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #4 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org are transformed to veritable plays to the detriment of study…Oratory is neglected in favor of tragedy” (qtd. in McCarthy 25). It is surely significant that the Jesuits who inculcated the preference for oratory over poetry were in many cases practitioners of theatre as well as teachers. They could expect that, if their students wanted to receive further praise and merit, they would for the most part have had to adhere to the acting style prescribed by their Jesuit teachers if they wanted to be chosen to take a prominent role in the school productions. It is perhaps impossible to ever fully determine whether acting theory affected actual practice in early modern France, but in the case of the Jesuit theatre it seems reasonably clear that there was a direct link between the theory taught in the classroom and the style and nature of the students’ acting in the school productions. Of course, the students’ display of their progress in rhetoric shared the stage with oftentimes spectacular visual effects. There were large processions stemming from the medieval and Renaissance royal triumphs, dazzling dance interludes that anticipated Moliere’s comedyballets, and impressive stage machinery capable of lowering angels on clouds. Such features of the Jesuit theatre were not late developments; as early as 1560 Rome was sending orders to the Spanish Jesuits to scale back their expenditures for the technical aspects of their productions (McCabe 62). Viewed from the standpoint of the Jesuits’ wider mission to promote the ideas of the Counter-Reformation, such displays were important for making their theatre more accessible to their audience, since many would not have understood the Latin verse that the students were speaking. The near-miraculous appearance of heavenly beings from aloft would therefore have served to impart at least some religious message, even if the nuances of the text were lost upon those who heard it declaimed. The move to make the Jesuit theatre more accessible to its audience fit in with the trend the Society was leading in reconfiguring church architecture in order to draw in attendees at Mass. “The altar,” notes Kenneth Nugent, “had to be placed so that the whole congregation would participate visually in the Mass and hear the decrees and doctrines of the Catholic Church expounded from the pulpit unhampered by structural considerations” (Nugent 90). The emphasis on visual participation in the church clearly parallels the strategy employed by the typical Jesuit director, or choragus, in his productions. Further, Mass became a far more frequent event, and Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #5 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org this “made obsolete the kind of church that, prior to 1530, had served the majority of the congregation only once or twice a year. Now, many altars were required so that Mass could be said at more than one place at once.” In addition, “Because year-round preaching was seen as the most effective instrument of public reform, and because the previously empty churches began to be filled with crowds of worshippers, the nave also had to become an assembly hall” (Wittkower 19). The Jesuit theatre seems a natural outgrowth of this attempt to make worship more frequent and accessible. Further, the move in the Jesuit drama towards ever greater spectacle fit in with the wider drive towards making potentially dry and incomprehensible theological and moral teachings easier for the congregation or audience to both understand and even enjoy. One other important aspect of the baroque Jesuit theatre was its use of dance. However, here once again the Society’s insistence on imbuing its theatrical productions with a rigorous and classically-oriented sense of decorum and morality made itself felt. Indeed, Claude Francois Menestrier, the most significant Jesuit theorist on the dance, confidently asserted that the schools’ use of the ballet established a direct link to the ancient Greeks. In the Christian world of his time, however, he could state that “[we] no longer dance as part of our religious practice… We content ourselves with creating honest theatrical presentations that form the body to noble action and decorum” (Rock 19). The emphasis on “noble action and decorum” was key to the Jesuit ballet, and achieving these goals was considered far more important than teaching any great degree of technical proficiency. Menestrier’s fellow French Jesuit LeJay further explained that, “It is not sufficient that these movements and these gestures [of the dance] are composed, elegant, harmonious, agreeable to the eye; if they have not a determined sense, a precise meaning, they will offer only a vain and futile dance, and will not deserve the name of dramatic ballet, whose end is imitation” (qtd. in McCarthy 28). The “meaning” of which LeJay spoke pertained to the delineation of character – for instance, a drunkard’s movements must be disordered in order to reflect his unbalanced state of mind. Achieving technical proficiency in dance, while certainly useful from the standpoint of training young men in the skills they would need to succeed in society, was a secondary concern next to the importance of using that proficiency to impart a clear message. The Jesuit ballet was therefore in some sense more directly accessible as a vehicle for presenting moral examples; the audience might have no clue Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #6 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org as to what was being said by the Latin-speaking actors, but they could easily grasp that the movements of the dancers reflected either positive or negative moral attributes and they could understand the lesson that was being presented to them. To a large extent, these ballet interludes were thematically integrated into the overall production. Gerry McCarthy proposes that Moliere’s comedy-ballets “adopted a principle which probably only the Jesuits had considered, namely that there should be a degree of integration of the different elements of acting, music, and dance" (McCarthy 89). This latter aspect of the Jesuit theatre certainly seems to place it more within the context of the baroque drive to integrate the various artistic aspects of the theatre, from set design to acting to music. However, this can also be viewed from a classical angle. Menestrier dismissed the need for unity of action, but he insisted vehemently on the importance of unity in terms of the subject of the dance (Rock 22). The Jesuits’ use of ballet interludes were therefore ultimately aimed (in theory if perhaps not always in practice) at giving a greater degree of unity to their dramatic presentations, and in such a way that any potentially obscure aspects of the main drama might be more clearly illustrated for an audience that could potentially lack the ability to understand Latin. The juxtaposition of rhetorical displays, spectacular stage effects, and dance interludes that looked both forwards and backwards leads to two important questions: What were the plays that held the Jesuit stage like? And, beyond considering the educational emphasis placed on rhetoric, what kind of conclusions, if any, can we draw about acting in the Jesuit theatre? In both cases, at least glancing at these questions may help to further illuminate the extent to which the Society’s school drama incorporated both baroque and classical elements. The Ratio Studiorum has this to say about the plays to be presented by the Jesuits’ students: “The subject of tragedies and comedies which must not be given except in Latin and on very rare occasions, ought to be sacred and pious, and nothing should be introduced between the acts which is not in Latin and is not becoming; nor is a feminine role nor feminine attire to be introduced” (Ball 140). This is the most explicit comment made in the Ratio about the nature of the school dramas, and its insistence on adherence to strict rules and a rigid sense of decorum certainly offers support for a more classically-oriented view of Jesuit theatre. Such rules Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #7 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org probably account for the decision of at least one Jesuit to refer to the published version of his prose tragedy as an Actio Oratoria rather than a play, despite the fact that it was published along with his other tragedies (Misrahi 239). Certainly the ban on portraying or even dressing like women restricted the nature of the plays one could expect to see at a Jesuit production. Of course, the rule regarding the nature of the interludes is vaguely worded, and nothing is said about the use of the dazzling costumes and spectacular machinery for which the Jesuits were already known by 1599, when the final edition of the Ratio appeared. There was certainly no shortage of classical models in the school libraries for prospective playwrights to draw upon, and Seneca seems to have been particularly prominent in a number of syllabi from individual schools (McCabe 33). [2] The requirement that the verse be entirely in Latin obviously lent itself to the portrayal of classical subjects, and the prominent place accorded to Aristotle in the curriculum of the school and the general philosophy of the Society would have provided further incentive towards employing classical dramatic models. Despite all this, the testimony of the plays and the men who wrote them indicate that, in many if not most cases, the Jesuit theatre’s offerings did not adhere strictly to the rules that would eventually come to define neoclassicism in its narrowest sense. The German Jesuit Franz Lang’s Dissertatio de actione scenica was posthumously published in 1727, at a time when neoclassicism had established a firm hold over theatre both in France and the courts of the German principalities, and yet the author’s lengthy experience leads him to express a skeptical attitude towards the supposedly unimpeachable authority of the neoclassical rules. Although he recommends Aristotle (specifically the Rhetoric) as essential reading material for any would-be playwright, Lang rejects any attempt to force playwrights to conform to a single standard: In point of fact, there is no art or science which is so prone to disputation as is human letters, particularly playwriting…Nearly everyone has an opinion about artistic matters; it is in one’s very nature to do so. Whoever thinks he has found the perfect method in art also discovers something which does not fit into his system. He thereupon must label that which lies outside his well-regulated program as unnatural, a distortion of art. And so there develops so much contradictory advice, conflicting opinion, calumny, arbitrary pronouncements, insults and derision. (33-34) Ultimately, Lang rejects as false the choice between the neoclassical rules and any sort of contemporary dramatic system, saying that, “it is as unfortunate for experts to say that unless a Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #8 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org play is constructed according to certain forms it is inexpertly constructed, as it is for those who wish to toss away Aristotle and the basic notions of the ancients and to declare that just because a play conforms to the rules it is boring and uninteresting” (44). Lang’s was a sentiment echoed by many of the most notable Jesuit playwrights. It suggests that adherence to classical rules need not go hand in hand with the Latin verse and narrow range of themes prescribed by the Ratio. Of course, it can be dangerous to make too many assumptions about the uniformity of Jesuit practice across national borders. Sarah Beam sees Jesuit theatre in France as fully “conform[ing] to contemporary secular standards of the classical tragedy” by the middle of the seventeenth century (Beam 318). However, Lang bolsters his argument by citing the very French Jesuits (LeJay and Jouvency) who were seen as the staunchest proponents within the Society of the neoclassical rules. Of course, this tactic only goes so far: he is only able to cite them as authorities supporting him in his promotion of tragicomedy, which was not especially controversial. However, he makes an intriguing and insightful comparison between the definitions of tragedy given by Jouvancy and Aristotle, pointing out that the former “ignores the emotional concomitants of tragedy and is satisfied to have it be concerned only with the actions of an illustrious person” (Lang 48). He further notes that even the classical playwrights were at the very least guilty of subtly violating the unity of time they were supposedly bound to observe. Lang provides an intriguing case study illustrating the balance that Jesuit practitioners of theatre had to strike between the classically-oriented rules and the practical elements that would please their audiences. The Dissertatio de actione scenica sums up his experience as a choragus over the last quarter of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth. In terms of chronology and geography, Lang’s work is far removed from the immediate circumstances in which Corneille and Moliere received their education. However, the difficulty he had in getting the Dissertatio published and the extent to which it subtly challenges some of the neoclassical orthodoxies championed in part by men like Jouvency and LeJay indicates the strength of those orthodoxies’ hold over the Jesuit as well as the secular theatre. In addition, it suggests that the Society’s emphasis on centralized control in matters both large and small and their suspicion of Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #9 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org new ideas ensured that a certain degree of uniformity in the Jesuits’ theatrical practices prevailed across both time and political boundaries. Given Lang’s uneasy attempt to accommodate himself to the prevailing neoclassical norms while espousing some of the more pragmatic lessons he had learned in his experience with the stage, it is perhaps surprising that his practical advice to the actor frequently entails repeating specific admonitions drawn straight from Quintilian. Indeed, Lang insists that the Jesuit teacher of oratory must follow “the appropriate, decorous bodily movement which Cicero and Quintilian have identified,” and he goes so far as to include a list of hand gestures specifically recommended by the latter (Lang 13, 15-16). From this standpoint, Lang certainly seems to uphold the tradition of the actor as orator that the Society’s theatre had promoted, in theory if not always in practice; it is especially worth noting that his choice of words tends to blur somewhat the distinction between “orator” and “actor,” which indicates that the official emphasis on the didactic nature of the Jesuit theatre remained strong (xv). Elsewhere, Lang’s Dissertatio paints a more varied picture of the reality of practice on the Jesuit stage. Much of what he prescribes still seems to fit with our standard image of the neoclassical actor as a practitioner of rhetoric as much as acting who uses a codified system of gesture to underscore the text. Lang describes acting as “nothing else but the representation of customary behavior of characters conceived by a play-maker [choragus] for exhibition in a theatre,” and he emphasizes elsewhere the importance of remaining true to the playwright’s conception and the verse as it is given to the actor (3). Movement should be limited—any steps taken beyond those prescribed are “extraneous, wasteful and incorrect because [they] are not conducive to the purpose of artful, natural action” (8). In dialogue scenes, “the face and entire chest should always be turned in the direction of the audience, for it is only proper that the actor be open to their gaze if the performance is for the audience’s benefit” (19-20). [3] Of course, all of these carefully considered movements must be conducted in such as way so as not to violate decorum. Clearly, the students of Lang and other Jesuits generally were taught to move about the stage in a manner that we would view as incredibly stilted and formal. And yet this Jesuit’s Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #10 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org productions—and presumably those of many other teachers—were not just dry and static displays of rhetorical skill. Lang identifies the excitation of emotion as the primary aim of his theatre, and he views the actor’s bodily instrument as “such a marvelous force for exciting the emotions that the choragus who himself is skilled in bodily action, or who knows how to instruct others in the art, can bend an audience to his will” (1). Furthermore, while Lang directs his actors to take the unnatural (from our point of view) step of directing dialogue out to the audience rather than the actor to whom they are speaking, he then stresses the absolute importance of turning their gaze to the other person in the scene and maintaining their character while that person speaks. After all, “Unless acting is sustained it becomes silly” (19). In the time before the Society’s suppression, the Jesuit theatre appeared in almost every corner of Europe and saw countless productions over the course of more than two centuries. Much about the nature of Jesuit theatre remains unclear, and in the absence of any specific evidence, the precise extent of the influence it may have had on Moliere and Corneille (amongst many others) must unfortunately remain a subject for speculation. It is equally impossible to determine with any certainty whether the prevalence of Jesuit theatre over such a wide range geographic range for such an extended period of time led to any widespread change in the attitudes and expectations of the audience for these secular playwrights. However, the fact that Jesuit theatre could for the most part reconcile the impulse for baroque splendor with the classical framework prescribed by the Society’s intellectual background and the dramatic rules to which secular playwrights were supposed to adhere suggests that further studies might be able to show how it reflected and, perhaps, influenced the wider artistic world of which it was a part. Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #11 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org Works Cited Ball, Asher Raymond, trans., “The Ratio Studiorum.” In St. Ignatius and the Ratio Studiorum, edited by Edward A. Fitzpatrick, 119-254. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933. Beam, Sarah. “Farcical Theatre and Reformation of Manners in France, 1500-1650.” Diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1999. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1999. Lang, Franz. An Essay on Stage Performance: A Translation of Franz Lang’s Dissertatio de Actione Scenica (1727). Translated by Alfred Simeon Golding. New York: Theatre Library Association, 1984. McCabe, William H. An Introduction to the Jesuit Theater: A Posthumous Work. Edited by Louis J. Oldani. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1983. McCarthy, Gerry. The Theatres of Moliere. New York: Routledge, 2002. Misrahi, Jean. “The Beginnings of the Jesuit Theatre in France.” The French Review 16.3 (1943): 239-247. Nugent, Kenneth E.T. “The Jesuit Influence on Early Baroque.” The Month (1960): 89-104. Phillips, Henry. Church and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. Porée, Charles. An oration, in which an enquiry is made whether the stage is, or can be made a school for forming the mind to virtue; And proving the Superiority of Theatric Instruction over those of History and Moral Philosophy. With reflections on operas. Spoke March 13, 1733, in the Jesuits College at Paris, in Presence of the Cardinals de Polignac and de Bissy, the Pope's Nuncio, and several other Persons of the highest Distinction by Charles Porée of the Society of Jesus, translated into English by J. Lockman. London, 1734. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. BLC Tufts University. Accessed 20 Dec. 2009. Roach, Joseph R. The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1985. Rock, Judith. Terpsichore at Louis-le-Grand: Baroque Dance on a Jesuit Stage in Paris. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996. Scott, Virginia. Moliere: A Theatrical Life. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Wittkower, Rudolf, and Irma B. Jaffe. Baroque Art: The Jesuit Contribution. New York: Fordham UP, 1972. Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #12 The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2010 This article: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_9/no_1/lueger.html http://www.rtjournal.org Endnotes 1. The definition of “propriety” and “decorum” might vary somewhat depending on who was defining it; some of the action in Jesuit drama would probably be considered inappropriate by the standards of the Academy. At the same time, the Society’s rules barring the representation of women onstage set much stricter bounds of propriety than those the secular theatre was supposed to observe. 2. Elsewhere, with regards to drama in the syllabi of the schools, McCabe draws from a rule in the Ratio showing a skeptical if not entirely prohibitory attitude towards comedy to note that “Seneca was not too heavy for the Jesuit but much of Plautus was too light.” The Ratio gives a specific injunction to let students read Terence only if the edition used is heavily expurgated, if at all. 3. In an additional observation that would render Lang persona non grata with Diderot and many modern directors and theorists, he opines that to conduct a scene in an entirely realistic manner would not only present practical difficulties for the audience from a visual and aural standpoint, but would also be simply rude. Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Lueger PDF File Page #13