Light comedy (theater)

History

The light comedy draws its origin and its name of the songs Normans which had course, for several centuries, in Valley-of-Has transfered, and that the poet fuller, Olivier Basselin, had brought back to drinking songs, remained the type of the kind. With time, Be worth-of-Transfers them became light comedies, or songs which runs by the City, whose air is easy to sing, and whose words are usually made on some adventure, on some event of the day. Another explanation gives the word light comedy appearing about the years 1500 in the titles of collections of songs, it indicates a song, vaul city, voice of city.

The definition of the light comedy evolved/moved during time. At the 17th century, the word indicated a part intersected with merry songs or ballets. As from the 19th century, the word changes direction to indicate a Comédie popular light, full with bounces. Among the means most employed, one can note the Quiproquo and the situations Grivois be caused by multiples and complex love affairs or pecuniary.

The light comedy was a long time only one song satirical of circumstance, being sung on an easy air which helped with its popularity. It is in the sense that Boileau attaches it to the satire, like an eminently French kind.

Of a feature of this poem in witty remarks so fertile,

the French, born malignant, formed the light comedy:

indiscreet Agréable, which, led by the song,

Master key of mouth in mouth and increases one going.

The light comedy is not thus, with, that a way of chansonner people and the things which give taken to the contemporary malignity. In spite of the bacchic turn that their Olivier Basselin gave, be worth them transfers or light comedies took again soon the character of railleuse mischievousness that Boileau assigns to them, because, to, Vauquelin of Fresnaye also says, in their preserving their name of origin, in its poetic Art , of are worth transfers:

be worth Them transfers

Which, feeling good time, still makes us laugh.

Sometimes a certain science of rate/rhythm gave to these merry and malignant poetries the movement of a Ronde. the song on the Seat of Transfers , of Basselin gives a good sample of it. It is also like “monuments of joke and malignity” that Voltaire mentions, in Siècle of Louis XIV , “the light comedies which were sung on all sides around Anne of Austria, and which seemed to have to perpetuate the “doubt where one affected to be of his virtue. ”

After the Sling, the reigns of Louis XIV, Louis XV and even of Louis XVI gave place to as well light comedies, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau could write, in the Confessions : “A collection of all the light comedies of the court and Paris, since more than fifty years, where many anecdotes were found that one would have unnecessarily sought elsewhere: here are memories for the French history which one would hardly warn oneself at any other nation. ” (liv. X )

With the Theater, the light comedy appeared only at the beginning of. It was initially only one small scenic composition, all in Couplet S, where the Dialog even was sung. Fuzelier, D' Orneval, Alexis Piron, Lesage, etc, drew from the light comedies of this kind for the Théâtre of the fair, from where they passed to the Italian Comédie, sometimes merging with the Op3era Comique.

The light comedy remained long enough light the Mise in scene of a Anecdote or the sharp form of the Parodie. Thus the spirit and the liveliness of Désaugiers treated it. Later, it took extension and was transformed into Comédie or even into drama, keeping as distinctive sign only its verses sung on known airs which did not affect any musical claim being able to bring them closer to the lyric drama.

The light comedy had all dimensions, since a act up to five; it took all tons them; he travelled of the Bouffon nery to sentimentality; he gave career to all the smoothnesses of the spirit and the jokes of Gallic liveliness. In Paris, it has, under the Restauration, occupied with a half-dozen of scenes called scenes of light comedy and causing around Scribe and of its workshop of collaboration a whole generation of writers of vaudevilles. The light comedy has then, while seeking before a whole extraordinary title, adapting to the person and the tics of a Acteur in vogue, and piling up in an inextricable imbroglio the Quiproquo S the burlesques and situations most risked, turned to the eccentricity.

The verse mixed with the dialog ends up more not being tolerated that in the buffoon kind, and was banished middle-class comedy, as an improbability which the fashion alone had been able to make accept. Remainder, in the good weather of the light comedy, the verse, which was always run away by the feature, was sung as little as possible and on airs as simple as known. It was hardly but one given rhythm declamation which gave more emotion to the feeling and more the corrosive one with the spirit.

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