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Rehearsing the Future: Madame De Maintenon's Proverbes dramatiques for the demoiselles at Saint-Cyr

IN A LECTURE AT OXFORD IN 1961, later also published in French as 'Le Phenomene theatral', the theatre director and actor Jean-Louis Barrault spoke of the centrality of 'play' to the behaviour of all living creatures, describing it as not a purposelesss activity, but as a training for life. Play, he said, involves a temporary innoculation of danger or distress that allows us to experience vicariously the hazardous circumstances of life so that we can conduct ourselves better when the dangerous circumstances are real.! The art of the theatre, he had already argued in Comment Ie theatre nait en nous, has always been a 'conduite de defense et non un divertissement vicieux et gratuit' , and, as a collective phenomenon, may act as a 'serum bienfaiteur' that helps performers and audience alike, through indulging in the 'pas vrai' and the experience of 'une vie blanchie', in the struggle against the anguish of existence? Mme de Maintenon also understood very well the importance of play as both leisure activity and as a training for life. The use of amusements and games to develop the pupils' reason is explicitly signalled in the original prospectus for Saint-Cyr and she defends the many benefits of all kinds of 'jeux d'esprit', including recitation and role play exercises, in her 'Instruction a la classe verte' in 1705.3 From her many Entretiens with her teachers, so faithfully recorded by the Dames de Saint Louis, it is clear that a range of what might loosely be termed dramatic activities, including, initially, the short plays on religious topics by Mme de Brinon, were a significant part of the school curriculum. Some two hundred and sixty years before Barrault's lecture, Madame de Maintenon, after visiting the classe bleue (the oldest girls) at Saint-Cyr and discussing with them their anticipation of future pleasures, expressed the view that they needed also to recognize the likelihood of future suffering and advised that 'rien n'est plus capable d'adoucir la mauvaise fortune, qui