the comedy of national character: images of the english in early eighteenth-century french comedy

The Comedy of National Character: Images of theEnglish in Early Eighteenth-Century French Comedyjecs_283 335..356

RU S S E L L G O U L B O U R N E

Abstract: This article examines how various stereotypes of the English wereexpressed on the French comic stage in the first half of the eighteenthcentury. Focusing on the prolific and successful dramatist Louis de Boissy, fourof whose comedies, written over a period of more than twenty-five years,explore the comic potential of national stereotypes, the article demonstratesthat the comic theatre did not simply offer distorted perspectives on theEnglish for straightforwardly satirical effect; rather, it also offered possibilitiesfor a more complex exploration of the issues of cultural difference that werebeing discussed elsewhere in the period.

Keywords: comedy, theatre, national character, stereotypes, Louis de Boissy,France, England

French interest in the English in the first half of the eighteenth century wasfuelled in part by specialist journals and different kinds of travel writing.1

Journals such as the Bibliothèque Anglaise (1717-1728) and the BibliothèqueBritannique (1733-1747) and works such as Le Sage de la Colombière’sRemarques sur l’Angleterre faites par un voyageur (1715), Muralt’s Lettres sur lesanglais et les français (1725-1726), Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (1734),Moreau de Brazey’s Lettres sur l’Angleterre (1744) and Le Blanc’s Lettres d’unfrançais (1745) all did much to inform French readers about English customs,culture, society and politics. These publications in turn informed attemptsmade in the mid-century, in works as diverse as Montesquieu’s De L’Esprit deslois (1748), Voltaire’s Essai sur les mœurs (1756) and the Encyclopédie (1751-1772) to define national character.2

In his Encyclopédie article ‘Caractère des nations’ (1752) Jaucourt notes that‘le caractère des Français est la légèreté, la gaieté, la sociabilité, l’amour deleurs rois et de la monarchie même’;3 and in the article ‘Nation’ (1766) heobserves, more comparatively: ‘Chaque nation a son caractère particulier:c’est une espèce de proverbe que de dire, léger comme un Français, jalouxcomme un Italien, grave comme un Espagnol, méchant comme un Anglais,fier comme un Ecossais, ivrogne comme un Allemand, paresseux comme unIrlandais, fourbe comme un Grec, etc.’4 National traits are described, howeverproverbially, in relation to a foreign ‘Other’: defining the character of anothernation is inextricably bound up with defining the character of one’s own.

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 33 No. 3 (2010)

© 2010 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

This comparative approach is one that Jaucourt also adopts in hisEncyclopédie article ‘Comédie’ (1753), in which he argues that the forms ofcomedy in England result from the fact that all citizens pride themselves onthinking independently, which leads to the dominant vice of the country,namely being unsociable:

Un état où chaque citoyen se fait gloire de penser avec indépendance, a dûfournir un grand nombre d’originaux à peindre. L’affectation de ne ressemblerà personne fait souvent qu’on ne ressemble pas à soi-même, et qu’on outre sonpropre caractère, de peur de se plier au caractère d’autrui. Là ce ne sont pointdes ridicules courants; ce sont des singularités personnelles, qui donnent prise àla plaisanterie; et le vice dominant de la société est de n’être pas sociable. Telleest la source du comique anglais, d’ailleurs plus simple, plus naturel, plusphilosophique que les deux autres [i.e., Spanish comedy and Italian comedy], etdans lequel la vraisemblance est rigoureusement observée, aux dépens même dela pudeur.5

Jaucourt implicitly echoes here Voltaire’s argument about the culturalspecificity of English comedy in his discussion of Congreve, Vanbrugh andWycherley in the nineteenth of the Lettres philosophiques:

Si vous voulez connaître la comédie anglaise, il n’y a d’autre moyen pour celaque d’aller à Londres, d’y rester trois ans, d’apprendre bien l’anglais et de voir lacomédie tous les jours. [...] La bonne comédie est la peinture parlante desridicules d’une nation, et si vous ne connaissez pas la nation à fond, vous nepouvez guère juger de la peinture.6

What these texts prompt us to consider, then, is what Jaucourt calls the‘singularités personnelles’ of the English,7 or what Voltaire calls the ‘ridiculesd’une nation’, as they are depicted not on the English stage but in Frenchcomedies of the first half of the eighteenth century.8

What kind of expression was given to the various stereotypes of the Englishon the French comic stage at this time? We might expect comedies of theperiod, like stereotypes, to offer deliberately distorted perspectives on theEnglish for satirical effect. Fundamental to much comedy, of course, isthe laughter provoked by the abnormal and the anomalous, and in particularthe implicitly self-affirming laughter that is directed at ‘the Other’, as JeanDuvignaud notes: ‘Moquerie et raillerie servent à maintenir l’homogénéité dupetit groupe, et l’on se moque de celui qui, par son comportement, sedémarque de la norme.’9 But might not the comic theatre also offerpossibilities for a more complex exploration of those issues of culturaldifference that were being vigorously discussed in the period?

To answer these questions I shall focus primarily on the prolific andsuccessful dramatist Louis de Boissy (1694-1758), and in particular on four ofhis comedies, which, written over a period of more than twenty-five years,explore the comic potential of national stereotypes: two written for theThéâtre Italien, both of which are set in Paris and include visitors from

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© 2010 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

England, and two for the Comédie Française, both of which are set in Englandand include visitors from France.10 Significantly, it is precisely in one of theseplays that we find what appears to be the earliest recorded use in French of theterm that came to dominate French discourses about England in the secondhalf of the eighteenth century: ‘anglomanie’.11

The term occurs in Boissy’s last comedy, La Frivolité, a one-act allegoricalcomedy first performed on 23 January 1753 at the Théâtre Italien, where overthe next two and a half months it enjoyed a first run of thirty performances.12

The term is used by Fauster, a Swiss scholar, in his satirical description of thefickle French Marquis who has just abandoned his English lover in favour ofhis newly found love of Italian music (scene iv):

Son transport, l’autre jour, était l’anglomanie.Rien, sans l’habit anglais, ne pouvait réussir.Au-dessus de Corneille il mettait Sakespir.

Une nouvelle frénésieAujourd’hui vient de le saisir,

C’est la fureur des accords d’Italie.

In part, this use of the term ‘anglomanie’ is one of the many contemporaryreferences with which the play is peppered (others include the ‘Querelle desBouffons’, experiments with electricity, the success of Graffigny’s Cénie). But italso points to the comedy that Boissy creates by playing with nationalstereotypes. And the first stereotype he targets is a French one: frivolity.

In this allegorical comedy Frivolité herself appears on stage. In the openingscene she boasts of her reign in Paris, which even extends to foreign visitors:

J’ai pris mon sceptre en main, et je donne audienceA tous les étrangers qui viennent à Paris,Pour former leur maintien, pour polir leur scienceEt donner aux talents ce brillant coloris,Qui les met dans leur jour, et qu’on ne prend qu’en France.

French frivolity is presented here in unreservedly positive terms, as somethingto be aped by foreign visitors. It is subsequently contrasted with the stereotypeof English gravity, when Frivolité observes of the English (scene ii):

Et l’Anglais si profond, ou qui passe pour tel,Creuse dans le frivole, et tombe dans le vide.Le Français, qui tout haut s’honore de mes fers,

Est plus raisonnable et moins dupe;Son esprit léger ne s’occupe

Qu’à parer ses dehors, à varier ses jeux,Qu’à goûter le plaisir, sans rechercher sa cause,Et qu’à prendre, en passant, la fleur de chaque chose.

Par ce système avantageux,Il en est plus aimable, et cent fois plus heureux.13

The Comedy of National Character 337


The French are happier than the gloomy English because they are more givento frivolity, says Frivolité herself. But she makes the point in such anexaggerated way as to make it clear that Boissy is not taking frivolity entirelyseriously in this play.14

This playful treatment of national stereotypes continues in scene iii, withthe arrival of Miss Blar, an English actress who is about to leave Paris after athree-month stay there. Frivolité hopes that ‘l’air de Paris’ has helped cure hertypically English ‘esprit noir’. But Frivolité is surprised when Miss Blarcontends that the seemingly happy-go-lucky ‘grand monde’ of Paris isactually full of sadness. Fauster steps forward and tells Miss Blar that she isbeing too introspective:

Miledi pense trop; la pensée est mortelle:Elle fait haïr la clarté,C’est le poison de la santé.

The English stand accused, once again, of being too serious. But Miss Blar isnot convinced by Fauster’s claim that the best thing to do in life is‘déraisonner beaucoup’, ‘rire sans cause’ and, lastly, ‘frivoliser’ – a wittyneologism that again highlights the playful treatment of national stereotypes.Miss Blar’s seriousness is comically unshakable, as she echoes the hyperbolicstyle of Frivolité: ‘Rien ne m’amuse, et tout m’ennuie’, before making a directcomparison between London and Paris:

Eh! je n’ai pas le sens communDepuis que j’ai quitté le sein de ma patrie:

C’est un mauvais contrepoison.J’étais malade à Londres à force de raison,Et je meurs à Paris d’un excès de folie.

Life in London is too serious; life in Paris is too frivolous. Both the French andthe English, according to Miss Blar, are given to extremes of behaviour, andeach seems, in different ways, to be as bad as the other.

However, Miss Blar goes on to imply that England is superior to France inone particular – and particularly polemical – respect. This comes at the pointwhen Fauster advises her that the surest route to happiness is to take a lover.She explains that she has already suffered at the hands of her fickle Frenchlover, attentive one day, cold the next. Frivolité claims that Miss Blar’s mistakewas to form ‘le sot lien d’un tendre attachement’, whereas she should haveopted simply for ‘un nœud léger’. But Miss Blar disagrees, and in defendingher morals she also offers a defence of the acting profession:

Notre profession à Londres est glorieuse.Le défaut de mérite est seul déshonorant.Une actrice de nom, quand elle est vertueuse,Peut aspirer chez nous au parti le plus grand.On y rougit du vice, et non pas du talent.



The ‘chez nous’ suggests a contrast with France, where the low standing ofmembers of the acting profession is implicitly deemed to be illogical. Even inthis playful treatment of England there is scope for a potentially serious point.Like Voltaire in the twenty-third of the Lettres philosophiques,15 Boissy, throughthe character of Miss Blar, seems to be implying that in this respect, at least,the French have something to learn from the English.

But Boissy dwells only momentarily on this potentially serious point, andthe rest of the comedy is given over to a ludic treatment of the ongoing‘Querelle des Bouffons’, as the comically unpredictable Marquis, who hasnow dropped Shakespeare’s theatre in favour of Italian music, joins Frivolitéin singing explicitly identified parodies of Italian music. Following thearrival of Arlequin, ‘déguisé en maître de musique’, the play ends with amusical divertissement in noisy celebration of the faddishness of Frenchfrivolity.

This playful, even parodic treatment of national stereotypes alsocharacterises La Surprise de la haine, the first comedy for the Théâtre Italien inwhich Boissy depicts an English character in France, although the parody ismore far-reaching in the earlier comedy than in the later one. First performedon 10 February 1734,16 nearly twenty years before La Frivolité, La Surprisede la haine, a three-act comedy in verse, self-consciously subverts theconventions of comic drama. Set in Paris, the action begins, seemingly quitepredictably, with the imminent marriage of Lisidor and Lucile; but the twoquickly fall out as they realise that they are completely opposedtemperamentally: unlike the husband who refuses to display conjugalaffection in La Chaussée’s Le Préjugé à la mode, first performed at the ComédieFrançaise the following year, the austere Lisidor promises to be an attentivehusband, much to the worldly Lucile’s dismay. The play ends not happily butwith Lisidor and Lucile, and their respective families, swearing undyinghatred for each other. And just as the conventions of comic drama areparodied, so too national stereotypes are caricatured through the character ofa wealthy English gentleman, appropriately called Milord Guinée.

Guinée is satirised, first, for writing and speaking bad French, and second,for being blunt and taking a no-nonsense approach to love.17 Guinée has seenLucile in the Tuileries gardens and has immediately fallen in love with her,although he wrongly believes she is called Constance, which is actually thename of Lucile’s sister, to whom he writes a love letter. It is precisely inGuinée’s role as a hapless lover that Boissy situates his parody of all thingsEnglish. In Act I, scene vii, for example, Lucile reads the letter Guinée has sentConstance, which is littered with grammatical errors (Guinée has difficultyconjugating verbs and often simply uses infinitives instead), and shecomments: ‘Cette façon d’écrire est très particulière.’ Significantly, in his letterhe apologises for not understanding ‘le cérémonial de votre pays’ and refers tonational stereotypes concerning love: ‘Tout cela vous dit, Madame, que vousêtes Française, c’est-à-dire, faite pour faire naître d’un coup d’œil la passion laplus rapide, et que je suis Anglais, c’est-à-dire, extrême, et né pour sentir plus



fortement qu’un autre, et pour agir en conséquence’; and he concludes byassuring her, quite bluntly, that he is very wealthy.

Similarly, in Act I, scene ix, when Guinée is alone on stage with Lucile, heapologises for his language and makes it clear that ‘tourner un complimentn’est pas l’art d’un Anglais’. In a parody of popular conceptions of Englishliberty he promises her a life of luxury and marital freedom in London, whichinstantly appeals to Lucile, who remarks in an aside: ‘Ah! l’agréable vie, et quelaimable Anglais! / Il pense là-dessus aussi bien qu’un Français.’ With comicbluntness and self-obsession he presses her to marry him that evening,whereupon she decides it is time to tell him the truth; but in his excitement herefuses to listen and leaves to make the arrangements.

When Guinée reappears in Act III, scene v, eager to start rehearsing theballet for his supposedly imminent wedding celebration, he boldly invitesLisidor to join him, while Arlequin imitates his bad French:

MILORDJe donne le bon jour à Monsieur Lisidor.Vous venir, s’il vous plaît, figurer tout à l’heure,Dans un balet de moi, fort charmant, ou je meure.

ARLEQUIN, contrefaisant MilordLui, prendre bien son temps pour le faire danser.

MILORDVous répète avec moi.

LISIDORDaignez m’en dispenser.

Part of the fun here derives from the straightforward satire of a foreigner’slanguage. But Boissy derives further comic effect from Guinée’s exaggeratedbluntness too. Lisidor’s refusal to dance leads into a discussion about thebenefits of marriage: where Lisidor says he looks for ‘douceur’ and ‘esprit’ ina wife, Guinée replies candidly that without a good-looking spouse marriagewould be boring: ‘Pardonnez-moi, pardonne, / N’épouse point l’esprit,j’épouse la personne.’ Significantly, Guinée himself crudely sees theircontrasting attitudes in terms of national habits, when he says, in reply toLisidor’s argument that the greatest pleasure of marriage is being able to‘converser ensemble’, that the English do things differently: ‘Nous penserautrement; et quand nous épouser, / C’est pour avoir lignée, et non pas pourcauser.’ When the confusion is finally cleared up at the end of the play, it isGuinée who invites everyone to join him in his ‘Ballet de la haine’, whichforms the divertissement ending the play: parody of dramatic conventions andparody of national character go hand in hand. At the Théâtre Italien, itseems, national stereotypes lend themselves to deliberately ludic treatment.18

From parody we turn to tempered praise, or at least a partially more positiveportrayal, of the English in two of Boissy’s comedies for the ComédieFrançaise. The first I shall discuss here is chronologically midway between LaSurprise de la haine and La Frivolité: L’Epoux par supercherie, a two-act comedy



in verse, first performed on 9 March 1744.19 Unlike the plays for the ThéâtreItalien, L’Epoux par supercherie is set in the English countryside and ends withthe happy union between members of the two countries. Three of the fivecharacters are English, although, unlike Milord Guinée in La Surprise de lahaine, they speak impeccable French, while the other two are French. TheMarquis d’Orville has been in England for some time, but his valet, La Fleur,has just joined him. La Fleur begins by commenting on the Marquis’s health,to which his master replies:

LE MARQUISJe me porte assez bien depuis sept ou huit jours,A quelques vapeurs près, qui me livrent la guerre.

LA FLEURC’est l’effet du brouillard qui règne en Angleterre:J’en ai senti l’atteinte, en arrivant ici:Une de ces vapeurs, ce matin, m’a saisi.

LE MARQUISVa, dans tous les climats on ressent leur puissance.Les plus folles souvent font leur séjour en France;Et les sages en sont attaqués les premiers.20

La Fleur is quick to fall back on a national stereotype: that the English climateis blighted by fogs that make people ill.21 But to the comedy of appealing to anational stereotype Boissy adds the comedy of confounding it, as the Marquisdismisses La Fleur’s superstition and creates instead a kind of parallelbetween England and France rather than a contrast.

This exchange effectively sets the tone for a play that paints an essentiallypositive picture of the English. Boissy exploits in particular the Englishreputation for faithful friendship, generosity and selflessness.22 It emerges thatthe Marquis is the eponymous ‘époux par supercherie’: four days earlier hesecretly married an Englishwoman called Emilie, secretly because, as he putsit, ‘aux mains d’un étranger, la mère d’Emilie / Ne livrera jamais une fillechérie’ (Act I, scene i). He was able to marry her secretly because of hisEnglish friend Milord Belfort, in whose home the action of the play is set:Belfort himself was due to marry Emilie, but when he realised that his friendloved her much more, he selflessly agreed to forgo her. He went through withthe wedding ceremony, having first bribed the lawyer to put the Marquis’sname on the contract instead of his own. Indeed, the secret is a purely maleone, for not even Emilie knows: on the wedding night, we learn, Belfort slippedout of the nuptial bed and allowed the Marquis to take his place in thedarkness, since when, much to Emilie’s distress, her supposed husband has infact kept his distance from her. Still in his conversation with La Fleur theMarquis is unsurprisingly full of praise for the magnanimity of his Englishfriend, who correctly diagnosed the Marquis’s lovesickness and prescribed theperfect cure. La Fleur, however, is not convinced that the Marquis has in factdone the right thing, and he promptly tries to persuade him to leave England



and return to Provence or the Languedoc ‘pour chasser l’humeur noire où vossens sont plongés’. The best cure for the English blues, it seems, is the blueskies of the south of France. The Marquis, however, disagrees and decideswith Belfort to tell Emilie the truth, which in turn will allow Belfort to marryEmilie’s cousin Constance, whom he really loves.

Confusion reigns, however, as neither Belfort nor the Marquis ever quitemanages to spell out the truth to Emilie and Constance. The situation finallycomes to a head in Act II, scene xii, when Belfort is conveniently called awayto Parliament, playfully evoking another common image of England,cherished in particular by Voltaire, namely that of a proudly democraticcountry: ‘Une affaire d’Etat demande ma présence’, Belfort tells the Marquisand Constance, comically echoing Tartuffe’s attempt to wriggle out of hisawkward conversation with Cléante in Molière’s play (Act IV, scene i). Aboutto leave, Belfort tells the Marquis to sort everything out and to take good careof the ladies, appealing now to a stereotype of the Frenchman: ‘Le talent d’unFrançais est d’amuser les femmes’ (Act II, scene xii). In the final scene,however, Emilie appears, preventing Belfort’s exit, and tells him that sheintends to accompany him to London, while Constance is to marry MilordFauster and the Marquis is to return to France. Realising that he must act tosave the day, La Fleur steps forward and explains all about the secret marriage.Once the secret is out, the three men all quickly fall to their knees beforeEmilie, who, at first confused, eventually forgives them and accepts theMarquis as her husband, declaring: ‘Ce qu’a fait l’amitié, l’amour le ratifie.’The play ends with Belfort assuring Constance of his love – ‘Quand on est amitendre, on est mari parfait’ (Act II, scene xiii) – thus providing the kind ofcross-Channel union that is denied in La Surprise de la haine and La Frivolité,where both of the English characters flee France in horror. And we find amore positive portrayal of the English than in the earlier plays too.

The same could be said of the last of Boissy’s plays that I shall discuss,which is actually the first in which he represents England and Englishcharacters: Le Français à Londres, a one-act comedy in prose, first performed atthe Comédie Française on 3 July 1727, a year after the publication of Muralt’sLettres sur les anglais et les français.23 Like L’Epoux par supercherie, the play is setin England, this time specifically in London, and, like the later play, it endswith the marriage of a Frenchman and an English woman. However, beforethat denouement Boissy exploits to the full the comedy of stereotypedcontrasts in complex ways, not only between the French and the English butalso within those nationalities.

The two contrasting French characters are the Marquis and the Baronde Polinville, the one ridiculously xenophobic, the other remarkablycosmopolitan. Part of the comedy derives from the excessive Anglophobia ofthe affected Marquis on a visit to his elder cousin the Baron, who has beenliving happily in London for three years. The tone is set by the opening lines ofthe play, spoken by the young Marquis: ‘Ce n’était pas la peine de me fairequitter Paris, le centre du beau monde et de la politesse; et je me serais bien



passé de voir une ville aussi triste et mal élevée que Londres’ (scene i). Thedistinction between polite France and dour England seems conventional, butthe Marquis’s complaints about the English are ridiculous: the English arestrange, they speak French badly and they cannot make conversation, hesays;24 but worst of all, they are simply not like the French:

[Les Anglais] n’ont pas l’air qu’il faut avoir; cet air libre, ouvert, empressé,prévenant, grâcieux, l’air par excellence: en un mot, l’air que nous avons, nousautres Français. [...] Comme il n’y a qu’un bon goût, il n’y a aussi qu’un bon air,et c’est sans contredit le nôtre.25

The Baron comically counters the Marquis’s cultural absolutism: the Frenchspeak French badly too, he says, and, crucially, the conversation of theEnglish is ‘pleine de bon sens’ and ‘les Anglais ne sont pas brilliants, mais ilssont profonds’; he also mocks the Marquis’s reasoning through cutting irony:‘Il est vrai, messieurs les Anglais ont tort d’avoir l’air anglais chez eux; ilsdevraient avoir à Londres l’air que nous avons à Paris.’ The Baron warns hiscousin that he is becoming an object of ridicule, but his argument that theMarquis needs to learn to adapt falls, unsurprisingly, on deaf ears. TheBaron’s sensitivity to a foreign culture contrasts sharply with the Marquis’sridiculous short-sightedness.

The Marquis combines extreme Anglophobia with affected Frenchpréciosité, or what the Baron refers to as ‘l’amour aveugle que tu as pour lesmanières françaises’ (scene i). The Marquis’s preference for ‘le beau monde’becomes a ludicrous obsession, echoing that of the eponymous protagonistsof Molière’s Les Précieuses ridicules. Like the stereotypical petit maître, too, heboasts of his attractiveness to women and claims that he has been turningheads ever since he set foot in England, a boast that the Baron sees as thetypical ‘maladie de nos Français qui voyagent’.

This issue comes to a head over the young widow Eliante, with whom the twocousins have both fallen in love. She appears in scene ii, and the contrastingcharacters of the cousins are immediately evident in their attitudes towardsher: the Baron is politely reticent, the Marquis comically self-confident. Shetakes exception to the Marquis’s indiscretion, and she establishes a satiricalcontrast between French and English conceptions of love:

Oui, en France, où l’on n’aime que par air, où l’on n’aspire à être aimé que pouravoir la vanité de le dire, où l’amour n’est qu’un simple badinage, qu’unetromperie continuelle, et où celui qui trompe le mieux passe toujours pour leplus habile. Mais ce n’est pas ici de même. Nous sommes de meilleure foi; nousn’aimons uniquement que pour avoir le plaisir d’aimer: nous nous en faisonsune affaire sérieuse, et la tendresse, parmi nous, est un commerce desentiments, et non pas un trafic de paroles.26

The contrast is lost on the Marquis, who simply contends that he is behavingas any romantic hero would. Alone with the Baron in scene iii, however,



Eliante assures him that she realises that all Frenchmen are not the same andexpresses her ‘estime’ for him. But he fears that she loves his indiscreet cousinnevertheless, and, left alone in scene iv, she reflects on her dilemma: ‘Oh! Jem’en corrigerai, je m’en corrigerai. Je suis femme, et j’ai pu me laisser éblouirpar les grâces et par le faux brillant d’un mérite superficiel; mais je suisAnglaise en même temps, par conséquent capable de me servir de toute maraison.’ The contrast now is between gender and national character. Later,however, she agrees to give the Marquis another chance, as long as he learnsto be discreet and thereby succeeds in winning over her father (scene xii). Shetells the Marquis to be more like his cousin: ‘Monsieur, je veux que vous ayezl’air raisonnable, et que vous preniez Monsieur le baron pour modèle.’ TheMarquis’s reply – ‘Moi, je ne copie personne, Madame; je me pique d’êtreoriginal’ – plays on a national stereotype; it also echoes Molière’s Alceste (‘Jeveux qu’on me distingue’, Le Misanthrope, Act I, scene i) and thus highlightsonce again his comic self-delusion.

Just as there are different kinds of Frenchmen, so Boissy also presentscontrasting English characters. One type is embodied by Eliante’s brother,the foppish Lord Houzey, who is obsessed with all things French, a charactertype satirised in English comedy since the second half of the seventeenthcentury, notably in George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676), a comedyabout the absurd Sir Fopling Flutter, who arrives ‘piping hot from Paris’.27

Houzey is fixated with the Marquis, as he tells his sister in unashamedlyexaggerated terms: ‘Je ne compte savoir vivre que du jour que je leconnais’ (scene vi). The Marquis’s influence is immediately evident asHouzey boasts of his attractiveness to women; it is also seen in his newfondness for French food, ‘servi à petits plats, mais délicats’. He is similarlyeuphoric the first time we see him and the Marquis together on stage: ‘Jecompte pour perdus tous les moments que je n’ai pas le bonheur d’être avecvous, vos conversations sont autant de leçons pour moi. Plus je vous vois, etplus je sens la supériorité que vous avez sur nous’ (scene xiv). Houzey’scontrast between ‘nous’ (the English) and ‘vous’ (the French) shows justhow far he has fallen under the ridiculous Marquis’s spell. In this and thefollowing scene the Marquis responds to Houzey’s request to learn about the‘je ne sais quoi qui nous manque’: Boissy satirises French affectationthrough the Marquis’s verbal excesses, as he gives lengthy and exaggerateddescriptions of what supposedly constitutes French ‘airs’, ‘manières’ and‘façons’, all of which rely on display and affectation, including ‘le don dementir aisément’; and Boissy satirises English susceptibility to Frenchfashions through the spectacle of ludicrous imitation, as Houzey copieseverything the Marquis does. The men’s shared obsession with socialniceties, for instance, becomes laughable when the Marquis says:‘Permettez-moi de vous dire que vous mettez votre chapeau en garçonmarchand. Regardez-moi. C’est ainsi qu’on le porte à la cour de France. (LeLord Houzey place son chapeau de la même manière que le Marquis.) Oui, commecela’ (scene xiv).



In contrast to the Frenchified Houzey, there is the austere JacquesRosbif, whose name alludes to the traditional image of the English as a beef-eating people, an image found as early as Shakespeare’s Henry V, forinstance, and which became particularly popular on both sides of theChannel in the eighteenth century.28 He is, more importantly still, amerchant, an emblematic figure in images of the English, who are, in LeBlanc’s words, ‘un peuple raisonnable et commerçant, qui ne cherche qu’às’enrichir’.29 He also has the English characteristic of being odd, as othersare quick to point out: Eliante’s father, Lord Craff, wants his daughter tomarry Rosbif, whom he describes as ‘un riche négociant, fort honnêtehomme, et qui n’est pas moins raisonnable pour être un peu singulier’; andaccording to Finette, Eliante’s French maid, he is ‘l’Anglais le plusdisgrâcieux, le plus taciturne, le plus bizarre, le plus impoli que je connaisse’(scene v). Rosbif appears in scene viii and, unlike his compatriot LordHouzey and anticipating the Quaker in the first of Voltaire’s Lettresphilosophiques,30 he is immediately dismissive of French social rituals, notonly by telling Finette to stop curtseying but also by replying to her withseemingly characteristic English bluntness: ‘Verbiage encore inutile. Venonsau fait.’

Boissy brings the two extremes of national character – the Marquis andRosbif – together on stage in scene x. Rosbif is characteristically terse and tothe point, and once again neglects social niceties, promptly sitting down andleaving the Marquis standing. There is a comic contrast between Rosbif ’seven-tempered near-silence and the Marquis’s verbal excess as he warns theEnglishman, in a virtuoso display of fantaisie verbale, that he has met hismatch: ‘Quand ma cervelle est une fois échauffée, vous diriez d’un feud’artifice: ce ne sont que fusées, ce ne sont que petards [...] Bz! Pif ! Paf ! Pouf!Un coup n’attend pas l’autre. Eh quoi! Vous avez déjà peur? Vous avez perdula parole?’ Disconcerted by Rosbif’s failure to respond, the Marquis parodieswhat he calls ‘une conversation à l’anglaise’, as the stage directionindicates: ‘Il va s’asseoir vis-à-vis Rosbif, le regardant longtemps sans rien dire;ensuite il interrompt son silence de trois ou quatre how do you do, qu’il luiadresse en le saluant.’ Rosbif soon gets up and leaves, his moral authorityintact, denouncing the impertinence of the Marquis.

The characters in the middle, of course, are Eliante, who is initiallyundecided between the Baron and the Marquis, and Lord Craff, herfather, who wants her to marry Rosbif, much to her dismay and to that ofher French maidservant Finette, who urges her to marry a Frenchmaninstead (scene v):

Considérez, Madame, que c’est la meilleure pâte de maris qu’il y ait au monde;qu’ils doivent servir de modèle aux autres nations, et qu’un Français a cent foisplus de politesse et de complaisance pour sa femme, qu’un Anglais n’en a poursa maîtresse. [...] Les maris de ce pays-ci ne sont pas faits pour rendre une femmeheureuse.31



As we have seen, in an attempt to avoid having to marry Rosbif, Eliante urgesthe Marquis to win over her father by being sensible and discreet when hemeets him (scene xii).

The comic irony is that the Marquis succeeds only in alienating Lord Craff,and he does so, crucially, through his exaggerated reliance on nationalstereotypes. Apparently not realising who he is, the Marquis responds withcharacteristic pomposity as Craff tries to insist, in seemingly typical Englishfashion, on the importance of ‘bon sens’ (scene xvi):

Non, Monsieur, je ne suis pas si sot de confondre l’esprit avec le bon sens. Le bonsens n’est autre chose que ce sens commun qui court les rues, et qui est de tousles pays. Mais l’esprit ne vient qu’en France: c’est, pour ainsi dire, son terroir, etnous en fournissons tous les peuples de l’Europe.

His cultural imperialism even prompts him to describe the typical Frenchmanas ‘un homme aimable, vif, léger, enjoué, amusant’ and the typicalEnglishman as ‘un homme lourd, pédant, mélancolique, taciturne,ennuyeux’: he may be speaking the language of conventional nationalstereotypes, but in the dramatic context – a ridiculous character who isunwittingly making a good job of offending the very man he needs to win over– the Marquis ends up making a fool of himself. All the more so, in fact, when,irritated by Craff’s mocking refusal to agree with him, he draws his sword asif to challenge him to a duel. He is saved only by the timely entrance of theBaron, who snatches the sword from him, pointing out that ‘à Londres il estdéfendu de tirer l’épée’ (scene xvii).32

In contrast, the Baron represents the best of French reasonableness andenlightened cosmopolitanism. He apologises to Lord Craff, although withoutrealising that he is Eliante’s father, for his cousin’s behaviour. Craff isimmediately struck by the fact that the Baron confounds his expectations of aFrenchman: ‘En vérité, Monsieur, vous m’étonnez. [...] Vous êtes français etvous êtes raisonnable?’ The Baron is quick to point out in reply that ‘chaquenation a ses travers, chaque pays a ses originaux’ (scene xviii), offeringthereby, in distinction to his cousin’s cultural absolutism, an argument basedon relativism. And in the end Craff chooses him to be his daughter’s husband:to the Marquis he explains: ‘Vous êtes un fort joli cavalier. [...] Mais vous faitestrop peu de cas de la raison, et c’est la chose dont on a plus de besoin dans unétat aussi sérieux que celui du mariage’; to Rosbif he observes: ‘Monsieur,vous avez un fonds de raison admirable: mais vous négligez trop la politesse, etelle est nécessaire pour rendre un mariage heureux’; and so he chooses theBaron, a man who combines ‘raison’ and ‘politesse’ in a cosmopolitan way(scene xxiv).

Le Français à Londres is, then, a comedy of contrasts: as Maupoint observes,‘le contraste des caractères des Français et des Anglais y est touché avecvivacité’.33 But it is more than that. If this is a comedy of extremes, it is also acomedy that ultimately celebrates the golden mean, summed up by theclosing lines (scene xxiv):



LE BARON, au Lord CraffVous venez, Monsieur, de me convaincre que rien n’est au-dessus d’un Anglaispoli.

LE LORD CRAFFEt vous m’avez fait connaître, Monsieur, que rien n’approche d’un Françaisraisonnable.

In equally making fun of both the French and the English, the play offers, inthe end, a vision of cosmopolitanism that anticipates the double ironies ofVoltaire’s Lettres philosophiques: neither France nor England is superior orinferior to the other, but rather each has strengths as well as weaknesses, andeach has something to learn from the other. The play deals in the differencesbetween the two nations, but also in the similarities, as La Porte and Chamfortsuggest in their Dictionnaire dramatique: ‘Le but de cette agréable comédie estde montrer que la France et l’Angleterre peuvent produire également des genssensés, et des personnages ridicules.’34 Satirising ‘the Other’ can also providea means of satirising the self.

Of course, Boissy intended the double ironies of his comedy for a Frenchaudience only, unlike Voltaire, who intended the double-edged satire of hisLettres philosophiques to be appreciated by both French and English readers,given his decision to have the text published in both languages and in bothcountries. However, Boissy’s play nevertheless went on to enjoy a certainnotoriety in England too. More than seven years after it was first performed inParis, but only a few months after the publication of Voltaire’s Lettresphilosophiques, Le Français à Londres was performed in London in French bya troupe of French actors, led by Francisque Moylin (known simply asFrancisque), at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket eight times between 29

November 1734 and 24 February 1735.35 Francisque, who made his name asan actor in the fairground theatres of Paris in 1715, first formed a troupe ofFrench actors, many of them his own relatives, and brought them to Londonin 1718; there they were engaged by John Rich, manager of Lincoln’s InnFields theatre, to perform, among other works, plays from the repertoire of theComédie Française, which, as fairground actors, they would not have beenallowed to perform in Paris. In London again from October 1734 to June 1735,they were in residence at the Little Haymarket, where, for the performances ofBoissy’s play, the role of the Marquis was played by Charles Lesage, the Baronby his younger brother Jean-Baptiste Lesage, Lord Craff by Louis-François-Joseph de Verneuil, Lord Houzey by Michel Cochois (Francisque’s brother-in-law), Jacques Rosbif by Dessessars, the pantaloon of the troupe, Eliante byMimi Forcade (Verneuil’s daughter), and Finette, Eliante’s servant, by MmeVerneuil (Verneuil’s wife).36

How was Boissy’s play received in London? At least some members of theaudience seem to have been well disposed towards it. For example, the Anglo-Irish politician John Perceval, Earl of Egmont, records in his diary that he sawthe final performance of Le Français à Londres, on 24 February 1735, and



found it ‘very diverting and well acted’.37 However, there was a much strongercurrent of negative feeling towards the French actors in general, and towardsLe Français à Londres in particular. Writing on 24 December 1734 in histheatrical newspaper The Prompter, Aaron Hill, who had describedFrancisque’s troupe as ‘French vermin’ in 1721,38 presents him as ‘a newEnemy, that has invaded our Country this winter, and continues his Attacksfour times a week, with very great Success’. Hill then calls on English writersto ‘fight this assuming Foreigner with his own Weapons’ by translating intoEnglish the French plays currently enjoying such success, since these offer ‘alarge Field for Plunder’. He ends with a stirring rallying cry: ‘Thus the Edge ofCuriosity once worn off, and Harlequin WELL TRANSLATED, our Theatres willbe protected from Foreign Invasion, and the English still maintain their Rightof diverting an English audience.’39 Three days later Hill responds to Boissy’scomedy in particular, criticising ‘the Presumption of those Malapert FrenchDappers in the Haymarket, who have not blushed to ridicule (in England, andunder an English Character, call’d ROAST BEEF,) the Nerves, and Genius of ourCountry’.40

Possibly in response to this largely negative reaction to Le Français à Londres,on 27 December 1734 Francisque’s troupe revived at the Little Haymarket aplay that had not been performed in London for fifteen years: Arlequin balourd,a five-act comedy in prose by the doctor-cum-dramatist Michel Procope-Couteaux, son of the Sicilian founder of the famous Café Procope.41

Procope-Couteaux had written Arlequin balourd during his stay in London in1718-1719, specifically for Francisque’s troupe, who in February 1719 movedfrom Lincoln’s Inn Fields to the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, where theyperformed the play four times between 16 and 26 February.42 During this firstrun it enjoyed significant success, with King George I attending the thirdperformance, and his son, the future George II, attending the last; two monthslater, in April 1719, the play was published in London, with a dedication tothe King’s granddaughter, Princess Anne, by Henri Ribotteau, one of theHuguenot booksellers in the Strand.43

With its revival for six performances between 27 December 1734 and 15

May 1735,44 Arlequin balourd coincided once, on 28 December, with Le Françaisà Londres. Four of Francisque’s actors performed in both plays: Charles Lesageplayed the role of the Marquis in Boissy’s play and Léandre, the love-struckhero, in Procope-Couteaux’s; Verneuil played Lord Craff and Géronte,Léandre’s interfering father; Cochois played Lord Houzey and Scaramouche,one of Léandre’s servants; and Dessessars played Jacques Rosbif and theDoctor, the obstreperous uncle of Léandre’s beloved Isabelle. Dessessars’spairing of roles in particular points to the possibility that, if Le Français àLondres upset English audiences, Arlequin balourd was intended to reassurethem: the English took exception to the character of Jacques Rosbif, but inProcope-Couteaux’s play, which is set in London but in which all but one ofthe characters are French, the most satisfyingly ridiculous character is theDoctor, the stock character of the aged fool who tries to determine his young



niece’s choice of husband and who complains, in typically jargon-riddenterms, that she has changed for the worse since she has been in England: ‘Lacontagion de la liberté l’a déjà gâtée’ (Act III, scene vi). Moreover, despiteoccasional references to the dreadful English weather and the characteristicboorishness of Englishmen, the play offers a largely positive and comfortinglyrecognisable vision of England for the home audience: there are approvingreferences to the Royal Exchange and Drury Lane, for instance, and the oneEnglish character, a newspaper seller, comes to embody, together with hiswares, all that is good about England – a country of freedom, and in particularfreedom of information – with special praise reserved for cheap newspapers,the ‘half-penny posts’, which are popular with all ranks of people.

The praise of England in Arlequin balourd notwithstanding, what seems tohave struck English audiences most forcefully is the satire of English mannersin Boissy’s Le Français à Londres. This, at least, is the view of the play recordedback in France, where Prévost, for example, observes in Le Pour et contre in1735: ‘Le Français à Londres, comédie de M. de Boissy, avait extrêmementchoqué les Anglais. Il y avait surtout un Sir Roastbeef qu’on ne pouvait nouspardonner.’45 Similarly, the entry on Boissy’s play in the Dictionnairedramatique notes the English audiences’ displeasure:

Quoique les Français soient les plus maltraités dans cette pièce, ils ont été lespremiers à rire des défauts qu’on leur impute. Les Anglais se sont plaints qu’onavait outré leur caractère. Il serait à souhaiter que leurs auteurs dramatiquesobservassent, aussi exactement que nous, les règles de l’équité et de labienséance, lorsqu’ils entreprennent de ridiculiser les mœurs de notre nation.46

The English seem to have suffered from a lack of sense of humour, to say theleast.

But perhaps there was more to it than that. For La Porte and Chamfort’sreference in 1776 to English depictions of the French alludes to a wholecurrent of Francophobia in eighteenth-century England, where hating theFrench became an essential part of identifying oneself as English.47 ThisFrancophobia found a voice in the theatre, as Le Blanc noted in 1745:‘L’erreur grossière où sont à notre égard les Anglais qui ne sont pas sortis deleur île, leur est inspirée par leurs auteurs. Ceux de théâtre ont une attentioncontinuelle à nous y peindre méprisables.’48 Interestingly, the followingdecade saw the successful performance at Covent Garden of two plays bySamuel Foote: The Englishman in Paris, first performed on 24 March 1753 andintended as a (belated) response to Boissy’s play, and its sequel, The EnglishmanReturn’d from Paris, first performed on 3 February 1756.49 The success ofFoote’s plays derives from their ridiculing of national characteristics: theydepict the transformation of young Buck from a rough English rustic to aFrenchified fop, who, secure in his French refinement, returns to Londonspeaking a bizarre mixture of French and English and accusing the English ofbeing ruffians. Foote’s plays were written, of course, in the context of growinganti-French feeling in England as hostilities between the two nations



mounted. They also frame the publication in March 1755 of an anonymousEnglish translation of Boissy’s Le Français à Londres, entitled The Frenchman inLondon and dedicated to none other than Samuel Foote; indeed it was thesuccess of the latter’s Englishman in Paris that occasioned the translation.Significantly, the Monthly Review interprets the translated play first andforemost as a satire of a certain kind of Englishman: ‘An entertaining,satirical farce, (not a comedy) intended to expose the folly of such of the Englishas copy the light and frothy airs, and tinsel dress, of French fops, in order torender themselves fine gentlemen. It is ill translated.’50 Taken together, then,Foote’s plays and the negative trend in the reception of Boissy’s play inEngland suggest on the part of the English a rejection of the kind ofcosmopolitanism found in Le Français à Londres in favour of virulentFrancophobia.51

In conclusion, the four comedies by Boissy considered here give somesense of the variety of possible French responses to the English in comicdrama of the first half of the eighteenth century, ranging from parody topraise. At their crudest, such as the comedies for the Théâtre Italien, theydeploy pre-existing national stereotypes for satirical effect. But the satiricalmanipulation of such stereotypes may also imply a witty awareness of theirlimitations, their injustice and even their inaccuracy. This is seen both inBoissy’s comedies for the Comédie Française and in those for the ThéâtreItalien, where Boissy takes the stereotypes to such extremes that theythemselves become laughable. Boissy deals in double-edged satire: inattacking England, he can also attack France. And, crucially, comparisonwith English theatrical culture sheds new light on the significance of LeFrançais à Londres as a play that, like Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques,transports the French audience to England and shows them the relativism ofcharacter and customs. In this comedy in particular, so popular in France,so unpopular in England, we have a foretaste of the kind of relativism andcosmopolitanism that will become more common in France in the secondhalf of the eighteenth century.

NOTESI am grateful to Cassandra Berman and William Davis at the Folger Shakespeare Library,Washington, DC, as well as to John Dunkley, Yaël Ehrenfreund, Gilles Plante, Nathalie Rizzoniand Neil Younger for their help during the writing of this article.

1. See Gabriel Bonno, La Culture et la civilisation britanniques devant l’opinion française de la paixd’Utrecht aux ‘Lettres philosophiques’ (1713-1734) (Philadelphia, PA: American PhilosophicalSociety, 1948); Minnie M. Miller, ‘The English People as Portrayed in Certain French Journals,1700-1760’, Modern Philology 34 (1937), p.365-76; Anne-Marie Chouillet and Madeleine Fabre,‘Diffusion et réception des nouvelles et ouvrages britanniques par la presse spécialisée de languefrançaise’, in La Diffusion et la lecture des journaux de langue française sous l’Ancien Régime, ed. H.Bots (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1988), p.177-201.

2. See Henry Vyverberg, Human Nature, Cultural Diversity, and the French Enlightenment(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Pauline Kra, ‘The Concept of National Character inEighteenth-Century France’, Cromohs 7 (2002), p.1-6; and Elizabeth Rechniewski, ‘References to“National Character” in the Encyclopédie’, SVEC 2003:12, p.221-37.



3. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and Denis Diderot (ed.), Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné dessciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, 28 vols (Paris: Briasson, Davidl’ainé, Le Breton, Durand, 1751-72), vol. II.666.

4. D’Alembert and Diderot, Encyclopédie, vol. XI.36.5. ‘A state in which each citizen prides himself on thinking independently must have

provided a large number of odd characters to depict. The affectation of not resembling anyoneelse often means that one does not resemble oneself and that one exaggerates one’s owncharacter, for fear of complying with someone else’s character. These are not common follies;they are personal oddities which lend themselves to being joked about; and the predominantvice of the society is to be unsociable. Such is the source of English comedy, which is, moreover,simpler, more natural and more philosophical than the other two [Spanish comedy and Italiancomedy], and in which verisimilitude is rigorously observed, even at the expense of decency.’D’Alembert and Diderot, Encyclopédie, vol.III.668.

6. ‘If you wish to understand English comedy, the only way to do it is to go to London, staythere for three years, learn English well and see a comedy every day. [...] Good comedy is thespeaking picture of the follies of a nation, and if you do not know the nation very well, you willhardly be able to judge the painting.’ Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, ed. F. Deloffre (Paris:Gallimard, 1986), p.133.

7. Jaucourt’s term recalls Le Blanc’s description of the English: ‘L’Angleterre est sanscontredit le pays du monde où l’on trouve le plus d’homme singuliers, et peut-être n’est-il pasdifficile d’en donner la raison: les Anglais se font sinon une vertu, du moins un mérite de cettesingularité’. Lettres d’un français, 3 vols (The Hague: Neaulme, 1745), vol. I.84.

8. An appropriate terminus ad quem is 1756 and the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War,although it is true that France and Britain were also formally at war between 1744 and 1748, aspart of the War of the Austrian Succession. See Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies:Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (London: Duckworth, 1986).

9. Jean Duvignaud, Le Propre de l’homme: histoires du comique et de la dérision (Paris: Hachette,1985), p.22.

10. All quotations are from Louis de Boissy, Œuvres de théâtre, 9 vols (Paris: Veuve Duchesne,1766). On Boissy, see Charles F. Zeek, Louis de Boissy, auteur comique (1694-1758) (Grenoble:Allier, 1914).

11. See Josephine Grieder, Anglomania in France, 1740-1789: Fact, Fiction, and PoliticalDiscourse (Geneva: Droz, 1985).

12. See Clarence D. Brenner, The Théâtre Italien: Its Repertory, 1716-1793 (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 1961), p.191-3. See also the Mercure de France (February 1753),p.181; (March 1753), p.179-94. See also Desboulmiers, who observes of the play: ‘La frivolité,qui en est le sujet et le fond du caractère des Français, ne pouvait être mieux traitée que parun homme qui connaissait si bien le goût de sa nation.’ Histoire anecdotique et raisonnée duThéâtre-Italien, 7 vols (Paris: Lacombe, 1769), vol. VI.81. On the vogue for allegorical comediesin the eighteenth century, see Nathalie Rizzoni, ‘Quand l’Absence apparaît L’allégorieau théâtre au dix-huitième siècle’, SVEC 2003:07, p.429-43.

13. ‘And the Englishman so profound, or who appears to be, / Digs down into frivolity andtumbles into the void. / The Frenchman, who loudly boasts about my chains, / Is wiser andless of a dupe; / His airy mind is only interested in / Embellishing his appearance, playing hisgames, / Tasting pleasure, heedless of its source, / And plucking, as he goes, the flower fromeach thing. / By this valuable system / He makes himself more attractive and a hundred timeshappier.’

14. Le Blanc, too, censures the English for being too serious: ‘Rien n’est si rare parmi lesAnglais que cette douceur d’esprit et cette gaieté d’humeur, qui font le charme de la société, etils y perdent beaucoup; ils seraient plus heureux, s’ils étaient plus sociables. Sans leur faire tort,on peut assurer qu’ils ne savent pas si bien jouir de la vie que les Français. [...] Cette gaieté quicaractérise notre nation, passe presque aux yeux des Anglais pour folie; mais leur tristesseest-elle plus sage?’ Lettres d’un Français, vol. I.173-4. On the perceived frivolity of the French, seeClaire Garry-Boussel, ‘La frivolité vue par les gens de lettres du dix-huitième siècle’, SVEC2004:07, p.111-22.

15. See Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, p.148.16. La Surprise de la haine was, according to Léris, ‘reçue très favorablement’: see Dictionnaire

portatif historique et littéraire des théâtres (Paris: Jombert, 1763), p.414. By contrast, La Porte andChamfort suggest that the subject of the play is ‘peu théâtral’ and ludicrously implausible: see



Dictionnaire dramatique, 3 vols (Paris: Lacombe, 1776), vol. II.198. See also the Mercure de France(March 1734), p.560-64.

17. This second characteristic is also found in Le Blanc’s account of the English: ‘Les Anglais,qui la plupart se donnent pour philosophes, trouvent ces soins et cette complaisance, que le sexeexige, au-dessous d’eux. [...] Les Français sont souvent galants sans être amoureux; les Anglaissont toujours amoureux sans être galants.’ Lettres d’un français, vol. I.297-8.

18. This is also the case, for instance, in Romagnesi’s L’Amant protée, a three-act comedy firstperformed at the Théâtre Italien on 5 March 1739, in which, like Guinée in Boissy’s La Surprisede la haine, an Englishman in France is satirised for speaking bad French and for taking ano-nonsense approach to love (Act I, scene v; Act II, scene x). There is a further echo of Boissy’splay when Valère, like Boissy’s Arlequin, imitates the Englishman, though this imitation extendsto dressing like him as well as trying to speak like him (Act III, scenes iv and vii).

19. L’Epoux par supercherie had a first run of only six performances, ending on 21 March,compared to an average of ten performances for other comedies at the Comédie Française in thefirst half of the eighteenth century: see Henri Lagrave, Le Théâtre et le public à Paris de 1715 à 1750(Paris: Klincksieck, 1972), p.585. According to Léris, ‘les représentations de cette pièce ne furentpas nombreuses, mais brillantes, et l’auteur la retira à cause de la saison’ (Dictionnaire portatifhistorique et littéraire des théâtres, p.169). Clément and La Porte offer another explanation for theplay’s failure: ‘Quoi de plus absurde, qu’une femme mariée sans le savoir, à un homme qu’elle aépousé, croyant en épouser un autre? [...] C’est trop abuser de la liberté de feindre. Il estimpossible de souffrir au théâtre de pareilles fictions; à peine seraient-elles permises dans unroman’: Anecdotes dramatiques, 3 vols (Paris: Veuve Duchesne, 1775), vol. I.310.

20. ‘LE MARQUIS: I’ve been feeling quite well for the last week or so, / Apart from a fewvapours I’ve been fighting off. / LA FLEUR: That’s because of the fog that you find everywhere inEngland. / I felt it getting at me as soon as I arrived here: / One of those vapours brought me lowthis morning. / LE MARQUIS: Nonsense, their power is felt in every climate. / The craziestexamples are often to be found in France, / And it is the wise whom they attack first.’

21. English melancholy was often explained with reference to the weather: according to LeBlanc, for instance, ‘c’est aux brouillards dont leur île est presque toujours couverte, que lesAnglais doivent et la richesse de leurs pâturages, et l’affection mélancolique de leurtempérament’ (Lettres d’un français, vol.I.6-7); see also Muralt, Lettres sur les afnglais et les françaiset sur les voyages, ed. C. Gould and C. Oldham (Paris: Champion, 1933), p.160.

22. Similarly Muralt argues that, despite their gruff exterior, the English make faithful friends:‘On a avec eux l’avantage ordinaire qu’on trouve avec les gens froids, et qui récompensesuffisamment ceux qui les recherchent: c’est qu’on peut faire fond sur leur amitié, quand unefois on l’a gagnée, bien plus que sur celle de ces gens faciles et caressants, qui se rendent d’abord,et qui même vont au-devant de qui ne les recherche pas’ (Lettres sur les anglais et les français,p.143). Le Blanc, too, notes that the English are not as fierce as they first appear: ‘Ils [the English]ont dans leur extérieur je ne sais quoi de dur, que les esprits prévenus prennent pour férocité;mais si l’enveloppe qui couvre leurs vertus est vicieuse, elle n’en change pas la nature. Avec cettedureté apparente, aucun peuple n’a plus d’humanité; ils en donnent l’exemple à leurs ennemismême’ (Lettres d’un français, vol.I.15).

23. Le Français à Londres was Boissy’s most popular play in the eighteenth century, with 213

performances between 1727 and 1790; in its first run, between 3 July and 13 August 1727, it wasperformed no fewer than 16 times. Lagrave notes that it remained in the repertory in the firsthalf of the eighteenth century, being performed every year between 1727 and 1750, and thatonly 39 out of 266 new plays in the period enjoyed this kind of success (Le Théâtre et le public àParis de 1715 à 1750, p.595-6).

24. The Marquis’s complaint – ‘Leur conversation? Ils n’en ont point du tout. Ils sont uneheure sans parler, et n’ont autre chose à vous dire que how do you do, comment vous portez-vous?’ (scene i) – echoes Le Blanc, who refers satirically to ‘un Anglais qui toutes les fois qu’onveut le forcer à rompre le silence, a coutume de répondre que, parler c’est gâter la conversation’(Lettres d’un français, vol. II.108); for Muralt, by contrast, ‘une autre preuve de bon sens dans leurconversation, c’est le silence dont ils l’entremêlent, et je pense même qu’il ne serait pas difficilede justifier leur How d’ye do? réitéré de temps en temps, dont les Français se moquent et qu’ilsregardent comme un manque d’esprit pour soutenir la conversation’ (Lettres sur les anglais et lesfrançais, p.142). Similar remarks about English taciturnity are made in a number of Englishworks of the period too, including Addison’s Spectator (no. 135, 4 August 1711), ThomasWilson’s The Many Advantages of a Good Language to Any Nation (1724) and John Constable’s The



Conversation of Gentlemen (1738): see Michèle Cohen, ‘Manliness, Effeminacy and the French:Gender and the Construction of National Character in Eighteenth-Century England’, in EnglishMasculinities, 1660-1800, ed. T. Hitchcock and M. Cohen (London: Longman, 1999), p.44-61

(especially p.48-9).25. ‘[The English] do not have the air that they should have; that free, open, zealous, obliging,

charming air, the air par excellence: in a word, the air that we have, we Frenchmen. [...] Just asthere is only one good taste, so too there is only one good air, and that is without question ours.’

26. ‘Yes, in France, where one loves only for appearances’ sake, where one aspires to be lovedonly for the vanity of being able to talk about it, where love is nothing but simple banter, acontinual deceit, and where the man who deceives the best is counted the most accomplished.But things are not the same here. We are of a people of better integrity; we love solely for thepleasure of loving: we are serious about it, and tenderness among us is an exchange of feelings,not a traffic of words.’

27. George Etherege, The Man of Mode, ed. J. Barnard (London: Benn, 1979), p.25. Also ofinterest here is James Smythe’s comedy The Rival Modes, first performed at Drury Lane on 27

January 1727, some six months before Boissy’s play was first performed in Paris, which satirisesunthinking preference for French fashion through the characters of the Earl of Late Airs and hisson Lord Toupet. Significantly, eighteenth-century English attacks on the French sometimesidentify French manners with a corrupt English aristocracy: see Gerald Newman, The Rise ofEnglish Nationalism: A Cultural History, 1740-1830 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), p.63-80.On the perceived link between Frenchness and effeminacy in eighteenth-century England, seeCohen, ‘Manliness, Effeminacy and the French’, p.51.

28. See Ben Rogers, Beef and Liberty: Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation (London:Chatto & Windus, 2003).

29. Le Blanc, Lettres d’un français, vol. III.306. Le Blanc notes in the previous letter:‘Parmi nous, il faut qu’un homme qui veut faire sa fortune, s’étudie à plaire; ici, celui quicherche à plaire, doit commencer par faire sa fortune’ (vol. III.295). Boissy’s play pre-dates bysome four years Lillo’s London Merchant (1731), which was partially translated into French inPrévost’s Le Pour et contre in 1734 and subsequently translated in full by Pierre Clément in1748.

30. On this link, see Yaël Ehrenfreund, ‘Le Lord, le bon Quaker et le petit marquis français: lesreprésentations de l’Anglais, entre comédie et drame’, in Interfaces artistiques et littérairesdans l’Europe des Lumières, ed. E. Détis (Montpellier: Université Paul-Valéry, 2000), p.187-206, who focuses for the most part, however, on plays from the second half of the eighteenthcentury.

31. ‘Consider, Madame, that they make the best husbands in the world, that they may serveas models to other nations, and that a Frenchmen is a hundred times more polite and obligingwith his wife than an Englishman is with his mistress. [...] Husbands in this country are notmade to make women happy.’

32. As Muralt notes of the English, ‘leur bravoure ne dégénère pas non plus en duels: onn’entend guère parler ici de cette sorte de combats’, adding later: ‘Il est certain qu’ils abhorrentles actions cruelles: les duels, les assassinats, et généralement toute sorte de violences sont raresici [...]. Le plus souvent quand un Anglais entre en fureur, c’est contre soi-même’ (Lettres sur lesanglais et les français, p.105, 150).

33. Maupoint, Bibliothèque des théâtres (Paris: Prault, 1733), p.148.34. La Porte and Chamfort, Dictionnaire dramatique, vol. I.525.35. See W. van Lennep et al. (eds), The London Stage, 1660-1800: A Calendar of Plays,

Entertainments and Afterpieces, Together with Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960-68), vol. III, part 1, p.436, 438, 440,445, 449, 461, 463. On the French actors in London, see: Emmett L. Avery, ‘Foreign Performersin the London Theatres in the Early Eighteenth Century’, Philological Quarterly 16:2 (1937),p.105-23; Sybil Rosenfeld, Foreign Theatrical Companies in Great Britain in the 17th and 18thCenturies (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1955); and William J. Burling and Robert D.Hume, ‘Theatrical Companies at the Little Haymarket, 1720-1737’, Essays in Theatre 4:2 (1986),p.98-118.

36. For further information on these performers, see P. H. Highfill, K. A. Burnim and E. A.Langhams, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and OtherStage Personnel in London, 1660-1800, 16 vols (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,1973-1993).



37. R. A. Roberts (ed.), Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, 3 vols (London: HMSO, 1920-23),vol.II.154.

38. The Works of the Late Aaron Hill, 2nd ed., 4 vols (London: n.p., 1754), vol. I.37 (letter toJohn Rich, 9 September 1721).

39. The Prompter (24 December 1734), p.[2]. However, Hill’s suggestion was deemedunacceptable by the vehemently anti-French ‘True Briton’, writing to The Grub-Street Journal on13 March 1735: ‘This proposal, instead of an antidote, is an additional poison’ (p.[1]). It is worthnoting, though, that an editorial footnote to this hostile account of the French troupe andits repertory observes: ‘Tho’ this gentleman’s zeal against foreign strollers may be verycommendable, yet his censure seems too general; from which it is thought, by good judges, thatMessieurs FRANCISQUE and DESSESSARS, with one or two of the actresses, ought to beexcepted.’ See also the earlier criticism of Francisque’s troupe in The Grub-Street Journal of 7

November 1734, penned by ‘Patriophilus’ in response to a performance the day before ofMolière’s L’Avare at the Little Haymarket (p.[1]). The French actors are also satirised in JohnKelly’s ballad opera The Plot, first performed at Drury Lane on 22 January 1735, while Le Françaisà Londres was still being staged at the Little Haymarket. As Jeremy Black notes, hostility to theemployment of continental artists, especially French actors, was one sign of a robustxenophobic reaction to foreign culture in eighteenth-century England: see A Subject for Taste:Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Hambledon and London, 2005), p.217.

40. The Prompter (27 December 1734), p.[1].41. Procope-Couteaux apparently drew inspiration for Arlequin balourd from an old Italian

canevas, Li Sdegni, which was later performed in French as Les Amants brouillés par Arlequinmessager balourd at the Théâtre Italien on 19 July 1719: see Desboulmiers, Histoire anecdotique etraisonnée du Théâtre Italien, vol. VII.224-5.

42. See The London Stage, 1660-1800, vol. II, part 2, p.528-9. Procope-Couteaux explains inthe preface to the play that he wrote it ‘en qualité de médecin dans la seule vue de me guérird’une maladie très dangereuse dont j’étais attaqué’, namely ‘une vapeur hypocondriaque qu’onappelle ici le Spleen’: Arlequin balourd (London, Ribotteau, 1719), p.[i]. He was a noted Freemasonand may have been in London to foster links with the Grand Lodge there, which had beenorganised in 1717 and which in 1719 elected as its first Grand-Master his compatriot theHuguenot Jean-Théophile Desaguliers.

43. Ribotteau is perhaps best known for publishing Jean-François Bion’s Relation destourments qu’on fait souffrir aux Protestants sur les galères de France in 1708: see Katherine Swift,‘“The French Booksellers in the Strand”: Huguenots in the London Book Trade, 1685-1730’,Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland 25:2 (1989-93), p.123-39.

44. See The London Stage, 1660-1800, vol. III, part 1, p.445, 447, 461, 474, 492. It is worthnoting that five of the children of George II attended three of these six performances – PrincessesMary and Louise on 27 December, Princesses Amelia and Caroline on 2 January and Frederick,Prince of Wales, on 14 February – but not when Arlequin balourd shared the bill with Boissy’splay.

45. Prévost, Le Pour et contre, 20 vols (Paris: Didot, 1733-40), vol. VI.107.46. ‘Although the French come off worst in this play, they were the first to laugh at the failings

attributed to them. The English complained that their character had been exaggerated. If onlytheir dramatists observed as precisely as we do the rules of fairness and propriety when theyundertake to ridicule the customs of our nation.’ La Porte and Chamfort, Dictionnairedramatique, vol. I.525.

47. See Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1992).

48. Le Blanc, Lettres d’un français, vol. III.65.49. See Michel Berveiller, ‘Anglais et Français de comédie chez Louis de Boissy et Samuel

Foote’, Comparative Literature Studies 2 (1965), p.259-69.50. Monthly Review (May 1755), p.384. See also the account in the Gentleman’s Magazine:

‘This is said to be translated from the French of one De Boissy, and called a comedy, but it isnothing more than a dissertation on dress and behaviour, by way of dialogue, tending to provethat no character is superior to that of a polite Englishman’ (March 1755, p.142). TheGentleman’s Magazine then reproduces an extract from the Marquis’s description of ‘a genteelman’ in scene xv to serve as ‘an useful admonition to the fops and fools of our own nation’(p.142-3). On 16 September 1756 The Frenchman in London, with its ‘character of arough Englishman, who is represented as quite unskilled in the graces of conversation’, is the



starting-point for a series of reflections on the art of conversation in George Colman and BonnellThornton’s weekly magazine The Connoisseur (The Connoisseur, 2 vols, London: R. Baldwin,1755-6, vol. II.829).

51. The French response to Foote’s plays is also revealing. Writing about The Englishman inParis, the Journal Etranger saw nothing to be offended by: ‘Son plan [i.e., Foote’s] ne lui a pasfourni les occasions de nous avilir, en introduisant des Français odieux ou ridicules. Quoique lascène soit en France, tous ses personnages sont Anglais; et sa comédie est plutôt la satire desmœurs de Londres, que des travers de Paris’ ( Journal Etranger, April 1754, p.153). Its attitude toThe Englishman Return’d from Paris, however, was quite different: ‘Nos lecteurs trouverontdans cet ouvrage plus d’épigrammes et d’antipathie contre notre nation, que de saillies etd’agréments. Faire rire à nos dépens la plus vile populace, ou l’animer sans cesse contre nous parde pitoyables déclamations; c’est se couvrir de beaucoup plus de ridicule que de nous ensupposer. Voilà malheureusement depuis longtemps la pitoyable occupation des plumesbritanniques’ ( Journal Etranger, August 1756, p.52). Significantly, even the Critical Reviewwondered if Foote had gone too far in The Englishman Return’d from Paris: ‘Is not the author toonational in his sarcasms upon the French? Are not such reflections so many sacrifices made tothe galleries, at the expense of politeness and common justice?’ (Critical Review, February 1756,p.83).

russell goulbourne is Professor of Early Modern French Literature at the University of Leeds.His publications include Voltaire: Comic Dramatist (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006) and atranslation of Diderot’s La Religieuse in the Oxford World’s Classics series (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2005). He is currently working on a book on the reception of the ancientRoman poet Horace in eighteenth-century France and a new translation of Rousseau’s Rêveriesdu promeneur solitaire for Oxford World’s Classics.



the comedy of national character: images of the english in early eighteenth-century french comedy

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