French fiction -- Translations into English; Paris (France) -- Fiction
The grateful poet has destined the principal role for Jocquelet, who has
made a successful debut in the 'Fourberies de Scapin', and who, since
then, has won success after success. Jocquelet, like all comic actors,
aspires to play also in drama. He can do so in reality, but under
particular conditions; for in spite of his grotesque nose, he has strong
and spirited qualities, and recites verses very well. He is to represent
an old mechanic, in his friend's work, a sort of faubourg Nestor, and
this type will accommodate itself very well to the not very aristocratic
face of Jocquelet, who more and more proves his cleverness at "making-
up." However, at first the actor was not satisfied with his part. He
fondles the not well defined dream of all actors, he wishes, like all the
others, the "leading part." They do not exactly know what they mean by
it, but in their dreams is vaguely visible a wonderful Almanzor, who
makes his first entrance in an open barouche drawn by four horses
harnessed a la Daumont, and descends from it dressed in tight-fitting
gray clothes, tasselled boots, and decorations. This personage is as
attractive as Don Juan, brave as Murat, a poet like Shakespeare, and as
charitable as St. Vincent de Paul. He should have, before the end of the
first act, crushed with love by one single glance, the young leading
actress; dispersed a dozen assassins with his sword; addressed to the
stars--that is to say, the spectators in the upper gallery--a long speech
of eighty or a hundred lines, and gathered up two lost children under the
folds of his cloak.
A "fine leading part" should also, during the rest of the piece,
accomplish a certain number of sublime acts, address the multitude from
the top of a staircase, insult a powerful monarch to his face, dash into
the midst of a conflagration--always in the long-topped boots. The ideal
part would be for him to discover America, like Christopher Columbus; win
pitched battles, like Bonaparte, or some other equally senseless thing;
but the essential point is, never to leave the stage and to talk all the
time--the work, in reality, should be a monologue in five acts.
This role of an old workman, offered to Jocquelet by Amedee, obtained
only a grimace of displeasure from the actor. However, it ended by his
being reconciled to the part, studying it, and, to use his own
expression, "racking his brains over it," until one day he ran to
Violette's, all excited, exclaiming:
"I have the right idea of my old man now! I will dress him in a tricot
waistcoat with ragged sleeves and dirty blue overalls. He is an
apprentice, is he not? A fellow with a beard! Very well! in the great
scene where they tell him that his son is a thief and he defies the whole
of the workmen, he struggles and his clothes are torn open, showing a
hairy chest. I am not hairy, but I will make myself so--does that fill
the bill? You will see the effect."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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