delegations. As depicted in Rabel’s drawings, each entrée showcased a small cluster of performers with one lead figure surrounded by an entourage of countrymen: Atabalipa, king of Cusco, led a group of Americans; Mahommet was accompanied by various “peoples of Asia”; the Great Turk ushered in the eunuchs and ladies of his harem; the “peoples of the North” entered behind two Bailiffs of Greenland and Friesland; the Grand Cacique took the stage along with African men and women. Only the “entrée of the Europeans”—a joyfully chaotic performance of Grenadine dancers and guitarists—diverged from the format. The configuration of the continental performances echoed the extraordinary embassies consisting of an official ambassador and several lesser envoys that would be sent to congratulate monarchs on political successes, marriages, or royal births.
The published description and verses for the entertainment further amplified the ballet’s resonances with diplomatic representation. It took as its central conceit that the ballet depicted a kind of courtly summit arranged by the Dowager in celebration of her love for her ridiculous suitor, Fanfan de Sotteville. As the opening pages of the libretto explain: “The rumors which carry on their wings the secrets of the smallest schools as well as the evil plots of the greatest Monarchs, spared not their diligence in spreading among the diverse parts of the World the merits of the DOWAGER of BILBAO; who in order to welcome the virtuous suit of FANFAN de SOTTEVILLE, assembles a great Ball in the manner of her Ancestors, to acknowledge the gestures of her Gallant, and to maintain order among the Foreigners who arrive from every coast.”26 The theme of international renown echoes throughout René Bordier’s libretto in both descriptive passages and verses. Foreign leaders trumpet their own ambition and might: “I make all the Earth tremble, / And constrain the Ocean to revere my Laws,” crows the Great Turk.27 “The earth which burns with passion for me / Gives carte blanche to my ambitions,” boasts the Cacique.28 Armed with hyperbole, they verbally spar for global prestige before praising the supreme merit of their host. While nominally honoring the Dowager, the characters exploit this world stage to enhance their own images and announce their imperial drives, much in the way that the pomp of an extraordinary embassy was designed to burnish the reputation of the monarch who sent it more than the prince who received its tribute.
Figure 2. Daniel Rabel, design for the entrée of the “Grand Can” and his entourage, from the Ballet du Grand bal de la Douairière de Billebahaut, 1626. BnF.
At the same time the ballet’s structure mocks diplomatic competition for prestige, it also satirizes the tradition of praise for the host sovereign. The delegates’ fawning addresses to the Dowager work as a parody of contemporary encomiastic ballets that vaunted the renown of the real French king. But the parody grows more complex when verses spoken in the foreign characters’ voices reference Louis XIII’s own glory. Verses written by Claude de l’Estoille for the Great Turk, for example, declare: “It’s only you, Louis the Great, whose weapons shall one day / Fell the Crescent.”29 Explicitly or implicitly, the parade of foreign princes pays homage to two addressees: the ridiculous figure of the Dowager and the real French sovereign, present in the audience. The entertainment simultaneously rehearses and derides the trope of ballets of nations that ventriloquized praise for the king through foreign personas. In this respect, the Grand bal fits Mark Franko’s characterization of burlesque ballet as “a purposive ideological distortion of court ballet’s traditional aims: glorification of the sovereign.”30 At the same time that it embellishes Louis XIII’s stature, it ridicules the forms through which that exaltation takes place.
If the Grand bal resembled a grotesque exaggeration of the competitive representation of prestige occasioned by international summits, the national ballet that formed part of the 1635 Ballet de la Marine (Ballet of the Navy) staged a more direct and profound critique of diplomatic representation. Most of its characters—all of the nationally marked ones—are identified as “ambassadors” in the libretto. The performances of these diplomatic figures bring complexity to an otherwise sycophantic entertainment as the ballet’s script unpacks the political pitfalls of delegation. As the opening pages of the libretto explain, the ballet took as its “subject” the king’s recent political triumphs including the squashing of Huguenot dissent, the clearing away of pirates from the coasts, and the reopening of maritime commerce. Although not explicitly referenced in the preface, France’s new transatlantic settlements in Québec and the Caribbean also helped reinforce France’s reputation for seafaring prowess in this year. This spectacle’s naval theme, moreover, called attention to the accomplishments of its patron, Cardinal Richelieu, who organized the reinforcement of the French fleet and prompted a renewed focus on maritime commerce, particularly in the Levant.31 It also signaled French expansionist ambitions to an international audience through the conduit of the ambassadors in attendance.32
It was France’s recent successes, the ballet text explains, that inspired its characters, in their role as foreign ambassadors, to come Paris to pay tribute to Louis XIII. A brief headnote to the ballet’s libretto explains how its content celebrates French triumph: “The opening of the first part is made up of a song by the Nereids and Marine Gods who come to announce to France the return of her glorious vessels, and the second [part] is drawn from the esteem of foreign Princes who, delighted by the marvels of the greatest Monarch of the world, send to his Majesty, via the mouth of their Ambassadors, assurances of an affection which they swear must be inviolable.”33 Repeating the tributary dynamics of the Grand bal in a serious register, the ballet redirects praise for the king through the foreign mouths of its fictional ambassadors. This intention is repeated in the “récit,” or song that opened the ballet’s second act, performed by the personification of Renommée (Reputation or Fame). Addressing Louis XIII, the figure sings:
Great King, marvel of the world,
I come from the ends of the Universe,
But in all the diverse climates
Of land and of the waves,
I never saw anything that could compare
To the grand actions that make you adored.34
The ten entrées that follow feature dancers playing the part of ambassadors and subjects from foreign nations: Muscovites, Laplanders, Persians, Chinese, and Moors, and at last, following a concert of lute music, pygmies, Giants, “Unknown People” (Incogneues), Amazons, and Americans (specifically, Topinambous, the Brazilian tribe allied with French settlers in Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century). Each ambassador in turn pays versified homage to the French king or to the ladies of the court. The ballet transparently discloses and follows through on its encomiastic design.
Despite its clichéd monarchal praise, the ballet takes a novel, sophisticated approach to presenting its foreign characters. The fact that the figures are identified as ambassadors (rather than simply as Russians, Laplanders, Persians, or Chinese) marks them not as direct embodiments of national characters but as mediators and representatives of political authority. This indirect, and potentially unfaithful, mode of representation comes into focus thanks to the reuse of particular dancers in multiple roles throughout the ballet. The comte de Brion, for example, had already danced as a sailor and as a fisherman when he took the stage as a member of the Moorish delegation. His verses playfully refer to this fact:
O gods! What a sudden change,
What a miracle! What an adventure!
Against the order of nature
I become a Moor in but a moment.35
Similarly, Monsieur de la Trousse, representing a Moor after his prior performances as a sailor and a cannoneer, suggests his newly darkened skin “is but smoke” caused by the flames of love.36
