Alexandre Hardy

Alexandre Hardy (* around 1570 in Paris ; † 1632 ) was a French playwright . As a contested predecessor of French classical music, he is hardly known any more, although, according to his own statements, he was one of the most fertile and most popular dramatists in literary history with more than 600 plays.

While William Shakespeare in England and Lope de Vega in Spain were able to lead a theatrical tradition with late medieval roots and humanistic impulses to a final climax in the time of the incipient nationalism , Hardy saw himself in France an increasing state-controlled discipline and regulation of the theater opposite, which culminated in the French classic.

Life and work

Production conditions

Alexandre Hardy wrote most of his tragedies , tragicomedies and pastorals from 1593 for the troupe around the actor Valleran Le Conte , who performed in the hall of the Parisian Hôtel de Bourgogne , but also roamed the provinces. His audience was not only the educated circles of the nobility and bourgeoisie, but also uneducated spectators, for example at the Paris fairs . The fact that he wrote exclusively for certain performances is certainly the reason why he usually left his pieces unprinted. After printing, they would have been free and could have been performed by competing troops.

Fabrics

As usual, Hardy drew his material from Classical-Antique and Late Antique, but also from more recent French, Italian and Spanish literature. Written templates for theater texts were difficult to obtain and were used whenever possible. He often worked on older and newer pieces according to his ideas and those of his actors. But he also dramatized narrative works and, for example, converted the famous love and adventure novel Theagenes and Chariklea by Heliodor (3rd / 4th century), which had been translated by Jacques Amyot in France since 1548 , into a series of eight Consequences.

Naturally, the composition and style of his quickly written pieces often seem fleeting, but he was an experienced practitioner who knew how to captivate his audience with action-packed acts, exciting, sometimes brutal scenes and lively characters.

Aftermath

When, after Lecomte's death, he no longer worked for just one troupe (albeit mostly for that of the Parisian Théâtre du Marais ), Hardy published a selection of 34 pieces in 6 volumes from 1624–28 (reprint in 5 volumes., Marburg 1883–84 ). Only these pieces have survived.

The authors and critics of the next generation, for example Jean Chapelain or Jean Mairet , who developed the rules and ideas of classical French theater around 1635, did so not least in direct reaction to Hardy, whom they accused of irregularity, lack of taste and rawness. It had already damaged his image that the Parisian literary guru François de Malherbe declared his style illegible.

Works (according to the French wiki)

tragedies

• Didon se sacrifiant
• Scédase ou l'Hospitalité violée
• Panthee
• Méléagre
• La Mort d'Achille
• Corolian
• Marianne
• La Mort de Daire
• La Mort d ' Alexandre
• Timoclée ou la Juste vengeance
• Lucrèce (after Lope de Vega )
• Alcméon ou la vengeance féminine

Tragic comedies

• Arsacome
• Dorise
• Frégonde
• Elmire ou l'Heureuse bigamy
• Gésippe (after Boccaccio )
• Phraarte
• Cornélie
• La Force you sang
• Félismène
• La Belle Egyptienne
• Les chastes et loyales amours de Théagène et Chariclée
• Le Ravissement de Proserpine par Pluton
• La Gigantomachie

Pastoral

• Alphée, ou la justice d'amour (the best of his shepherd games)
• Alcée
• Corinne
• Le Triomphe de l'Amour
• L'Amour victorieux ou vengé

literature

• Eugène Rigal: Alexandre Hardy et le théâtre français, Hachette, Paris 1889.
• Michael G. Paulson, Tamara Alvarez-Detrell: Alexandre Hardy. A Critical Bibliography, in: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, Biblio 17, No. 24, Paris 1985.

Web links

• Gert Pinkernell, "Names, Titles, and Dates of French Literature, I." (Main source)
• Le théâtre d'Alexandre Hardy Rouen: D. Du Petit-Val, 1624 - 1628 .
• ses pièces et leurs représentations sur le site CÉSAR