Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Chronology
- Introduction
- PART I THE AUDIENCES
- PART II THE ACTING PROFESSION
- 9 A pariah profession
- 10 Social origins
- 11 Training for the stage
- 12 Salaries and contracts
- 13 The difficult life of the actress
- 14 Acting standards
- PART III THE PROFESSION OF PLAYWRIGHT
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Guide to further reading
- Index
13 - The difficult life of the actress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Chronology
- Introduction
- PART I THE AUDIENCES
- PART II THE ACTING PROFESSION
- 9 A pariah profession
- 10 Social origins
- 11 Training for the stage
- 12 Salaries and contracts
- 13 The difficult life of the actress
- 14 Acting standards
- PART III THE PROFESSION OF PLAYWRIGHT
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Summary
Insouciant her life might appear to be, but it was anything but a bed of roses, as Théophile Gautier observed when enumerating all the demands made on the average actress every day as a matter of course.
To stay on good terms with the director, the stage manager, the costumier, the prompter, the callboy, and apart from these, not counting her protector, with boyfriends past, present, and to come, with playwrights, choreographers, composers, critics and the claque! To exchange a few words with one, smile at another, be charming to everyone and never upset anyone, for that might result in a prolonged hiss coming from a darkened box or the black waves of a hostile cabal surging from a corner of the pit; and in addition to have to change ten or a dozen times in an evening, to recite her part faultlessly, to sing in tune, to make the right gestures, graceful or bored, to cause her bosom to heave at the appropriate moment and to sink to earth dishevelled at the end, taking care not to mark her dress …
Gautier's reference to boyfriends and protectors needs clarification today. The stage provided, as much in the nineteenth as in the previous century, one of the very few careers open to single women in which they could compete with men on equal terms.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth-Century France , pp. 199 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993