The maître d’hôtel Rapinet (Polichenelle) offers to take Madame Flanchet and her daughter Margot, whom he wants to marry, to the fair. But Rudepogne reminds them that Margot is promised to his nephew Jacquot. He sends Jacquot, who threatens Rapinet and quarrels with Margot. Since it is already too late to go to the fair, Rapinet asks two Savoyards to perform curiosité shows for them. At the end of the play, the characters dance with “small Savoyard women”.

Rod and string marionette

Not specified

Carolet Denis

France

Paris

Printed

Curiosity

Lantern

Fairground Theatre

Rivalry in love

Unfaithfulness

Comical

L'Assemblée des poissardes, Soleinne collection, BnF

French

Polichinelle maître d'hôtel

Merchant (woman)

Polichinelle

Savoyard

Savoyard (woman)

Ballet

Argument

Comedy of language

Metadiscourse on puppet theatre

L'Assemblée des poissardes

The Meeting of the fishwives

After Polichinelle’s greeting to the public, the play starts with the entry of Aveugle (Blindman), who begs for money. Aveugle accidentally hits Polichinelle with his cane; the two of them quarrel and Polichinelle knocks Aveugle unconscious. La Femme de l’Aveugle (Blindman’s Wife) is furious; she attacks Polichinelle and bites his nose. He knocks her unconscious as well and throws them both out of the hand-puppet booth. Commissaire (Superintendent) arrives and wants to take Polichinelle in. He asks Chat (Cat) for help, but the cat scratches him. Commissaire makes Chat believe that the gallows are destined for someone else. Pretending not to know how to slide his head through the slipknot, Polichinelle asks Commissaire to show him how to do it and takes advantage of the opportunity to hang him. He leaves, carrying Chat under his arm.

Glove-puppet

Trained animal

Beggary

Clumsiness

Cruelty

Cunning

Trap

Disobedience

Cheekiness

Farcical

écrit sous sa dictée aux Champs-Élysées

Blind

Wife

Police Superintendant

Song

Address to the public

Blind character

Fight

Blow-with-a-stick

Character thrown out of the scene

Fight with an animal

Hanging scene

Drame du Polichinelle français

Drama of the French Polichinelle

Polichinelle enters and, with a stick, hits the director of a tavern who came to greet him. They fight and Polichinelle kills him. La Femme du Cabaretier (the tavern-keeper’s wife) asks Polichinelle where her husband is. He beats her as well, and she takes her husband’s corpse to the tavern. Le Commissaire (Superintendent) comes to get Polichinelle to throw him in prison, but Polichinelle beats him and runs away. Le Gendarme (Constable) also wants to arrest him. Polichinelle beats him as well, but other Gendarmes arrive and manage to get hold of him. Polichinelle is imprisoned. Le Bourreau (Executioner) wants to hang him, but Polichinelle pretends that he cannot put his head in the slipknot. He asks the Bourreau to show him how to do it, and hangs him in his stead. Le Diable (Devil) comes to take Polichinelle to Hell. They both fight, but the Diable wins and takes Polichinelle off the stage with him.

Young audiences

Attack

Wickedness

Punishment

Cabaret owner

Innkeeper

Constable

Executioner

Devil

Death on stage

Apparition of the Devil

A marquis with a suggestive name (the Marquis de Coquencu, literally Marquis of Rooster-in-ass) exposes his run of bad luck to the audience: him and the Marquise (Marchioness) cannot conceive a child. He uses different tricks, such as stimulating drugs or increasingly bizarre sexual games to finally have an heir. However, the Marquise’s moods change from one extreme to the other; she beats the Marquis, and feigns a feeling of faintness to have an affair with the Domestique (Servant). In the second act, two new characters hide in the bushes to defecate, leading to numerous scatological jokes, most notably when the Marquise, pregnant, assures that she enjoys the smell of excrement to the point of asking the Marquis to bring them back to their place and cook them. The play ends with another domestic quarrel.

Adults

Rolland Amédée

Jean Duboys (Jean-Charles Du Boys)

Eroticism

Pornography

Licentiousness

Sexuality

Adultery

Scatology

Servant

Couple

Pregnancy

Erotic

Le Théâtre érotique de la rue de la Santé (1866 edition). Anonymous illustration.

Toucher de la merde c’est signe d’argent

Erotic scene

Scene of copulation

Aria

Situation comedy

Defecation on stage

Seduction scene

Signe d'argent

Sign of money

The Étudiant (Student), waiting for the Grisette (Working girl), reads her letter over and over again. When she arrives, their reunion is passionate, and the couple immediately embraces. Their lovemaking, full of noises and exclamations, catches the attention of the neighbour, Monsieur Prudhomme. Intrigued, he enters the scene and starts giving advice. Annoyed by the intrusion, the Étudiant fiercely asks him to stop bothering them, and passionately goes back to his intimate moment with the Grisette.

Monnier Henry

Student

Young girl

Sexual intercourse

Neighbour (man)

Félicien Rops, frontispiece for Le Théâtre érotique de la rue de la Santé (1864).

Young woman

Monsieur Prudhomme

Letter

Off-stage voice

La Grisette et l'Étudiant

The Working girl and the Student

Florestant – a young married man – left his wife in their house and went to see Urinette – a prostitute. However, neither Urinette’s touch nor his own imagination succeed in animating the young man. After several unsuccessful attempts, Urinette – desperate and furious – leaves Florestant alone and ashamed.

Lemercier de Neuville Louis

Vaudeville

Slang

Prostitution

Brothel

Félicien Rops, frontispiece for the Théâtre érotique de la rue de la Santé (1864).

Young man

Prostitute

Monologue

Sung scenes

Posture corporelle comique

Un caprice

A whim

Two families, the Gobards and the Courbemanches, are driving to visit the military camp in Saint-Maur. On the way, they notice an accident, which sparks their conversation. When they arrive, they meet a Zouave and start talking with him. Later, they go to the camp of the Turcos (African infantrymen) and meet the Tambour-major (Drum major). They are asked to go to dinner: everyone is there apart from Agathe, the servant. The voice of a man as well as laughter can be heard coming from the woods, which scares the family as they were about to start their meal. Agathe returns, but it starts raining and everyone ends up drenched, tired and starving. The Gobards and the Courbemanches call it a night and part ways. Agathe is the only one who seems to have enjoyed the trip.

Family

Bourgeoisie

Journey

Army

Colonial troupe

Algeria

Satirical

Lemercier de Neuville, I Pupazzi. Front cover of the first edition, 1866.

Husband

Daughter

Soldier

Zouave

Rifleman

Allusion to current political events

Comic distortion of language

Dinner scene

Amphigory

Le Camp de Saint-Maur

Saint-Maur Camp

The shepherd Tityre lives in the Arcadian mountains with his beloved, a Zither player named Lycoris. One day, Lycoris strays away from their home and is captured by Lycophon, a pirate who sells her to a slaveholder Flagellantus, then to the Emperor’s barber Pelliculus and finally to the senator Mamillarus. Tityre follows the pirate ship to save his beloved. In the meantime, Mamillarus and Titus are waiting for a feast to begin. Tityre decides to buy his beloved back, but he does not have enough money. Therefore, he decides to start serving Mamillarus and his wife Mamillara. However, it is discovered that Tityre is in fact Mamillarus’ legitimate son, who was kidnapped by bandits. At the end of the play, César Titus arrives and sings his goodness and his absence of pride, in the fashion of street “hits”. He gives Lycoris her freedom back and offers to pay for the wedding.

Maurice Sand (Maurice Sand)

Nohant

Ancient history

Love

Piracy

Slavery

Adventure

Emperor

Relationship between father and son

Wedding

Maurice Sand, hand-puppet (between 1850 and 1875).

Le Berger Tityre

Senator

Citizen

Shepherd

Lover

Barber

Pirate

Storyteller

Guard

Slave

Coryphaeus

Sheperherdess

Prologue

Allusion to the audience

Quote

La Clémence de Titus

The Clemency of Titus

A young alchemist, Émile, and his assistant Guignol are preparing for their final experiment—to create a man. Instead of a man, however, a Monstre (Monster) rises out of the cauldron, scaring the two men as well as Émile’s fiancée, Amélie, the daughter of Baron de Valbreuze. Émile and Guignol go to a cemetery, where they are advised by a Squelette (Skeleton) to question an old Alchimiste (Alchemist), who can teach them how to get rid of the Monstre. The Monstre is devoured by ghosts and disappears. Guignol and Émile go back to the Baron and to his daughter, and the young couple signs a marriage contract.

Vuillerme-Dunand Victor-Napoléon

Manuscript

Alchemy

Monster

Double

Cemetery

Fantastic

Le Monstre et l'alchimiste, censorship archives (first page of the text)

Le Monstre et l'alchimiste

Alchemist

Guignol

Skeleton

Undead

Dialect as a social marker

Aside

Pyrotechnics

Explosion

Apparition of a monster

False exit

Comical fall of a character

Fainting

Magical disappearance

Chase

Dead talking character

Apparition of a ghost

Final song

The Alchemist

The play is set in Orleans in 1867. Madame Pétenvert (a widow) and Mademoiselle Euphémie are accommodating two captains – Vachard and Chiclair – for three months. They quickly fall in love with their guests and would like to marry them. However, the two captains take advantage of the situation and spend their time talking, in a light-hearted manner, about politics, the army and, at the same, about women, billiards and their love of good food. One day, they are invited to dinner at the colonel’s house. The dinner ends with the two captains being drunk and getting the landladies’ houses mixed up. Thus, the two men being sick, captain Vachard spends the night with Mademoiselle Euphémie while captain Chiclair sleeps with Mademoiselle Pétenvert. The following day, after leaving the houses, they both accuse each other of having disrespected them, because of the state of their slippers and of the beds. However, this conversation about honour ends up being a commentary on the night they have just spent with the two women. The captains accuse the colonel of having treated them “too well” and the latter, in response, orders them to go back to their respective landladies and to marry them.

Politics

Dinner

Glutton

Entertainment

Eugène Lambert, George Sand, Maurice Sand : marionette de Madame Pétenvert.