The Stage Against the Scaffold: French Adaptations of George Lillo’s London Merchant

Abstract

This article considers French theatrical adaptations of George Lillo’s 1731 tragedy, The London Merchant, or, The History of George Barnwell. It asks how authors engaged with concepts of crime and punishment in the process of translation across cultures, genres and theatrical traditions. Following analysis of Lillo’s play, itself adapted from a seventeenth-century ballad, the article focuses on French rewritings of the George Barnwell story in the years following Diderot’s theorization of the drame. I suggest that by the 1760s and 1770s, the more French playwrights attempted to humanize Barnwell’s crime, the harder it became to preserve the meaning of the executions that conclude Lillo’s play. The ways in which the meanings of the scaffold shifted in these theatrical adaptations suggest broader changes in discourses of punishment in 1760s and 1770s France.

KEYWORDS:

• George Lillo
• popular ballads in drama
• public executions
• eighteenth-century drama
• domestic tragedy
• French adaptations of English drama
• capital punishment in drama

Biographical note

Annelle Curulla is Assistant Professor of French Studies at Scripps College. Her research focuses on theatre, aesthetics, and culture in eighteenth-century France. She is author of Gender and Religious Life in French Revolutionary Drama (2018).

Notes

1 Christian Biet, ‘Naissance sur l’échafaud, ou la tragédie du début du XVII^e siècle,’ Intermédialités, 1 (Spring 2003), 75–105 (93). See also Christian Biet et al., ‘L’écriture du crime dans le théâtre de la cruauté et les récits sanglants français de la fin du XVI^e au début du XVII^e siècle,’ Littératures classiques, 67.3 (2008), 231–45. doi:10.3917/licla.067.0231 [accessed July 16, 2020].

2 Biet, ‘Naissance sur l’échafaud,’ 103. For the eighteenth-century context, see especially Yann Robert, Dramatic Justice: Trial by Theatre in the Age of the French Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

3 There is a long critical tradition of this play, but my reading of The London Merchant is particularly indebted to Catherine Ingrassia, ‘Money and Sexuality in the Enlightenment: George Lillo’s The London Merchant,’ Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 31.1 (Spring 2005), 93–115; David Mazella, ‘“Justly to Fall Unpitied and Abhorr’d”: Sensibility, Punishment and Morality in Lillo’s The London Merchant,’ ELH, 68.4 (Winter, 2001), 795–830.

4 See Una McIlvenn, ‘Execution Ballads’ (website). Transcription of ‘An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel,’ British Library – Roxburghe, C.20.f.9.26–27. <https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/execution-ballads/items/show/954> [accessed September 1, 2020].

5 George Lillo, ‘Prologue,’ The London Merchant or, The History of George Barnwell, in British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan, ed. by George Nettleton and Arthur Case (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), pp. 595–624 (p. 599).

6 See John D. Lyons, ed., The Dark Thread: From Tragical Histories to Gothic Tales (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2019).

7 See, for example, see Lawrence Marsden Price, ‘George Barnwell abroad,’ Comparative Literature, 2.2 (1950), 126–56; Ralph Cohen, ‘Literary History and the Ballad of George Barnwel’, in Augustan Studies: Essays in Honor of Irvin Ehrenpreis, ed. by Irvin Ehrenpreis, Douglas Lane Patey, and Timothy Keegan (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1985), pp. 13–31; Johnathan Culler, ‘Lyric, History and Genre,’ NLH, 40.4 (Autumn 2009), 877–99.

8 Lillo, IV. 2, p. 615.

9 Ingrassia, ‘Money and Sexuality.’

10 Lillo, I. 2, p. 603.

11 Lillo, IV. 2, p. 618.

12 Lillo, IV. 2, p. 618.

13 Lillo, V. 2, p. 619.

14 Lillo, V. 3, p. 623.

15 Ingrassia, ‘Money and Sexuality,’ p. 104.

16 Lillo, V. 2, p. 620.

17 Lillo, V. 2, p. 620.

18 Lillo, V. 2, p. 622.

19 Lillo, V. 2, p. 622.

20 Lillo, V. 2, pp. 621–22.

21 Lillo, V. 2, p. 623.

22 Lillo, V. 2, p. 623.

23 ‘The scene added […] is, with some variation, in the original copy, but by the advice of some friends it was left out in representation, and is now published by the advice of others: which are in the right I shall not pretend to determine’. Lillo, ‘Advertisement’, The London Merchant, p. 508.

24 Paul Friedland, Seeing Justice Done: The Age of Spectacular Capital Punishment in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 164. For a broader reflection on pain and spectatorship in the early modern period, see Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven, and Karel Vanhaesebrouck, eds., The Hurt(ful) Body: Performing and Beholding Pain, 1600–1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).

25 See Félix Gaiffe, Le Drame en France au XVIII^e siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970 [1910]); see also Sophie Marchand, ‘Les Lumières et la nostalgie des grands crimes. À propos de quelques adaptations françaises de la domestic tragedy,’ Littératures classiques, 67.3 (2008), 187–200.

26 Sophie Marchand, ‘Les Lumières,’ p. 187. Earlier translations, adaptations, or imitations include Pierre Clément, Le Marchand de Londres ([n.p.,] 1748); Louis Anseaume (lib.) and Egidio Duni (mus.), L’École de la jeunesse, ou Le Barnevelt français (Paris: Duchêne, 1765); Adrien-Michel-Hyacinthe Blin de Sainmore, Orphanis (Paris: Bernard, Year VIII [1773]); Claude-Joseph Dorat, Lettre de Barnevelt, dans sa prison, à Truman (Paris: Jorry, 1764).

27 Letter to Mademoiselle de Clairon, 16 October 1760. <https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Correspondance_de_Voltaire/1760/Lettre_4297> [accessed July 30, 2020].

28 Denis Diderot, Letter to Voltaire, 28 November 1760 in Œuvres complètes de Diderot (Paris: Bouquins, 1997), vol. 5, p. 332.

29 Diderot, Salon de 1767, in Œuvres (Paris: Bouquins, 1996), vol. 4, pp. 517–819 (p. 609).

30 Diderot, Salon de 1767, p. 609.

31 Diderot, Discours sur la poésie dramatique, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Club français du livre, 1970), vol. 3, pp. 402–508 (p. 476).

32 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, ‘Acteurs,’ Jenneval, ou le Barnveldt français, in Théâtre complet, vol. 1, pp. 3–123 (p. 12).

33 Mercier, II. 4, pp. 48–49.

34 Mercier, ‘Préface,’ Jenneval, p. 4.

35 Mercier, V. 4, p. 117.

36 Mercier, ‘Préface,’ Jenneval, p. 5.

37 Scott Bryson, The Chastised Stage: Bourgeois Drama and the Exercise of Power (Stanford, CA: Amna Libri, 1991).

38 Cesare di Beccaria, Jeremy Parzen, Voltaire, and Aaron A. Thomas. On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2008) <http://search.ebscohost.com.ccl.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=nlebk&AN=682682&site=ehost-live&scope=site> [accessed October 2, 2020], pp. 19–20. See also Philippe Audegean and Luigi Delia, eds., Le Moment Beccaria. Naissance du droit pénal moderne (1764–1810) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018).

39 Cesare di Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings. <http://search.ebscohost.com.ccl.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=nlebk&AN=682682&site=ehost-live&scope=site> [accessed October 2, 2020].

40 Bryson, The Chastised Stage, p. 28.

41 Pascal Bastien, L’Éxécution publique à Paris au XVIII^e siècle. Une histoire des rituels (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2006) p. 230.

42 Jean-François de La Harpe, ‘Préface,’ Barneveldt, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Verdière, 1820), vol. 2, p. 7–109 (p. 18).

43 La Harpe, ‘Préface,’ Barneveldt, p. 18.

44 La Harpe, ‘Préface,’ Barneveldt, p. 19.

45 There is a critical tradition of viewing this scene as an imitation of Lillo beginning with the Kehl edition of Voltaire’s works in the eighteenth century.

46 La Harpe, IV. 4, p. 98.

47 La Harpe, V. 2, p. 104.

48 Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d; or, A Plot discovered [1682], in British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan, ed. by George Nettleton and Arthur Case (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), pp. 114–47 (p. 146).