that the shift away from targeting public officials had culminated in the timid theater of the seventeenth century, filled with “languid moral tirades” and “tedious aphorisms,”53 others stuck to the classical view that the disappearance of political satires had purified the theater, turning it into a more aesthetically pleasing and morally edifying art form.54 Nevertheless, the very fact that they centered their debates on Aristophanes as a private censor of the government, rather than as the government censor favored by Palissot, is quite telling, especially when read side by side with their praise for the British vision of satire. Together, they reveal a desire to open the government to greater supervision and control by the wisest of citizens—men of letters.
Even as they remained mostly torn about Aristophanes, the philosophes thus called attention to a more liberal function for judicial theater. This inspired some of the more politically progressive among them, notably Mercier, to formulate in explicit terms a proposal for the revival of satirical plays modeled on those of the third Aristophanes. At first glance, Mercier may appear just as ambivalent as the others. Scattered in his voluminous oeuvre, one finds frequent attacks against satire, most quite typical: it irritates instead of amends,55 it transforms the republic of letters into a factious arena, bursting with inflated egos and petty vendettas,56 and it distracts authors from addressing serious matters by engaging them in superficial squabbles.57 Yet for Mercier, these flaws are not inherent in satire but are the result of its cooption and corruption by the government. Indeed, he believes, not without reason,58 that the shallow, divisive satire common in his time received covert protection and financial support from the state, which feared that a united republic of letters might otherwise have the time and freedom to examine the conduct and expose the crimes of public officials.59 Rather than prohibit satire and risk becoming its prey, the government neutralized it by turning it against its own authors, ensuring that they tore each other apart, like Palissot and the philosophes, instead of investigating and exposing their rulers’ transgressions. In response, Mercier reaches the bold and perhaps unprecedented conclusion that “the government must not concern itself with poetics.”60 Men of letters must be entirely free from governmental meddling, whether through censorship or patronage, for satire to attain its purest, most disinterested form, of genuine benefit to society.
To this condition, Mercier adds another: “It is only permissible to wield the stylus of satire against those the laws cannot reach, that is, against those public figures who, having everything, honors, wealth, authority, power, would be too dangerous if they did not at least fear the mirror of truth. But to target a private individual, who has no influence on public affairs, is to avenge one’s vanity, to only see oneself, and to divert from its function a divine weapon.”61 Satire must not only be free of interference from the rich and powerful, it must choose them as its sole target. A “divine weapon,” it must spare private citizens but hang like the sword of Damocles above the heads of public figures. The plays of the third Aristophanes fulfill these conditions, and it is therefore not surprising to find Mercier calling for the rebirth of such a “salutary institution.” Were the judicial theater of antiquity revived in France, as Mercier believed it already had been in Britain, thanks to “the English Aristophanes,” Samuel Foote, “the essence of comedy would be to carry the torch of truth into the shadowy lair where evil men plot their crimes, to break through opulence and majesty to reach the would-be tyrant, and to drag him trembling into the light.”62 The exclusive targeting of criminals from the rarefied world beyond the reach of the law allows Mercier to sidestep the authoritarian implications of Palissot’s theater and defend the right to privacy of ordinary citizens (including the philosophes).
Crucially, it also guarantees that Mercier’s judicial theater operates within the rule of law, in contrast with Palissot’s extralegal vision. For Mercier, satirical plays serve as an extension to the justice system, not as an alternative to it. As a result, he assigns an innovative and remarkably ambitious mission to playwrights, whose role is no longer to entertain but rather to ensure that the laws apply to everyone, even those who, due to their social status, have long been able to commit crimes with impunity: “The poet will feel the need for all individuals to become once more equal before the laws.”63 This is why Mercier tends to depict satirical plays as trials and not, like Palissot, as punishments ordered by a supreme authority above the law. For instance, he calls judicial theater “a sovereign court”—a tribunal with jurisdiction over everyone, regardless of rank.64 This sovereign court, Mercier explains, would open up a space where private citizens could come together, reveal and discuss purported abuses of power, and reach a verdict for or against their rulers.65 It is not surprising that Mercier would locate this space in the theater. A unique site of assembly and direct participation—to quote Mercier, “a playhouse is our only meeting point where men can assemble and their voices rise together”66—the theater was particularly well suited to endowing the people with the task of a sovereign judge, accepting or rejecting accusations leveled against the rich and powerful.
Judicial theater thus entailed a new mode of audience involvement. That the eighteenth century’s vision of dramatic judgment was changing, and how, can be seen in a fascinating campaign against applause. While it is possible to find a few condemnations of clapping in the first half of the eighteenth century, Diderot started an unprecedented movement against applause when he wrote in 1758: “the true applause you should seek to obtain is not the clapping that can suddenly be heard after a resounding verse, but the profound sigh that comes from the soul.”67 The exact same argument was subsequently reprised by Mercier, Rétif, the celebrated actor Jean Mauduit-Larive, and countless others,68 becoming so ordinary, in fact, that by 1785, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard could state: “The question has often been raised whether it would be useful to eliminate applause and ovations from our spectacles.”69 The reasons behind this aversion to applause (an unusual sentiment among actors and playwrights!) are diverse, but fall, I contend, under three categories, each associated with a different fear of fragmentation.
First, applause fragments the play. Hasty and loud, it interrupts poignant moments and speeches, breaking them into pieces before they have reached their full impact.70 What’s more, clapping often highlights a single aspect of the performance, such as the acting of a given performer or a particularly witty line. In so doing, Louis Charpentier argues, applause divides the theatrical experience into a series of discrete reactions to isolated, formal elements.71 This fragmentation not only reveals an overly analytical relationship to the stage, it also cultivates it. Understanding a performance as a succession of elements to be applauded or hissed according to preexisting notions and rules inspires the spectators to engage in puerile debates about “the art of moving a spectator,” with the ironic result that none is actually moved.72 The same reasoning even leads Grimm to conclude that praise or applause for specific verses in a play constitutes in reality an involuntary critique of its overall emotional impact, since it shows that the performance failed to move the audience enough for it to abandon its fragmented and fragmenting vision of the theater.73
Second, applause fragments the theatrical space, separating the audience from the stage. As Mercier explains, “it is when a deep and somber silence reigns in the auditorium, when the spectator, broken-hearted and teary-eyed, has neither the idea nor the strength to applaud that, immersed in a victorious illusion, he forgets the actor and the art.”74 Applause is incompatible with the mode of reception praised in Le Fils naturel, in which the spectator forgets the theater and experiences the fiction on stage as a real, spontaneous event, for two reasons—first, as we saw earlier, because it directs the audience’s attention to the formal, artistic qualities of the performance, and second, because it is an arbitrary expression of a purely aesthetic response, which reminds neighboring spectators that they too are watching a dramatic production. By making it difficult, if not impossible, to forget the theater, applause prevents Diderot’s self-projection into the fiction: “The spectator, having given himself fully to the illusion, sees with displeasure that an unexpected sound pulls him out of Athens or Rome and coldly puts him back in his place.”75 The poor neighbor of the serial clapper is expelled
