French Literature Reviews - 2026

W. Brooks, Philippe Quinault, Dramatist
Theatre and Performance

BROOKS, William, Philippe Quinault, Dramatist, Oxford, Bern / Berlin / Brussels / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Vienna, Peter Lang (Medieval and Early Modern French Studies), 2009, 512 pp.

ISBN 9783039115334

SUMMARY

Much work has been done in recent years on Quinault's librettos, but no major study of his spoken plays has appeared since the monumental thesis by Etienne Gros, published in 1926. Moreover, he has never been the subject of a monograph in English. There is a need to re-assess the influence of his life on his plays, and to re-evaluate Gros's findings in the light of eighty years' research into seventeenth-century French theatre in general. This book rejects the deterministic approach that sees his plays as apprentice pieces for the greater achievement that is his corpus of librettos, as well as the implicit comparative approach that pigeon-holes his work, in passing, by borrowing from the pithy judgements of Boileau. To what extent does Quinault's steady move away from comedy and light tragi-comedy to tragedies that combine love and menace go hand in hand with his search for greater integrity, better characterisation, and ever more credible plotting? How did he come to create and retain a tremendously faithful audience that even the withering mockery of Boileau failed to discourage? And is there any purpose in retaining the time-worn comparison between the author of Andromaque and the author of Astrate?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents: A Brief History of Quinault Criticism - Characters: Heroes and Villains - Social and Political Themes - Plot and Artifice - The Transmission of Information - False and Mistaken Identity - Visual Action and Music - Genre and Tone - Quinault's art poétique - Quinault, his Audience, and his Critics - Quinault and Racine.

BIOGRAPHY

William Brooks is Professor of French at the University of Bath, UK. He has published extensively in seventeenth-century French studies, notably the theatre and especially Quinault, early baroque opera librettos, and the life and writings of Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans. He is co-editor, with Rainer Zaiser, of Religion, Ethics, and History in the French Long Seventeenth Century and Theatre, Fiction, and Poetry in the French Long Seventeenth Century, two volumes of papers from a major conference of French early modern scholars, published by Peter Lang in 2007.

Studies of seventeenth-century French theatre have frequently focused on the major tragedies of the classical period, sometimes leaving contemporary practitioners in the shadow of their peers. Philippe Quinault worked during a dynamic era of theatrical innovation under the Ancien Régime, when playwrights navigated shifting theatrical tastes, court patronage, and the artistic rules codified by contemporary critics. Within the broader context of early modern literary studies, re-evaluating dramatists who bridged the gap between popular success and critical debate offers insight into the period's complex performance culture.

William Brooks examines the spoken plays of Philippe Quinault, addressing the dramatist's evolution from comedy and light tragi-comedy to tragedy. The study considers characterisation, plotting, social and political themes, and the relationship between the playwright, his audience, and his critics, including Boileau and Racine. Readers interested in early modern French drama and the history of theatre criticism may find this monograph relevant.