Giles in Love

Potocki, Jan (aka Count Jan Potocki, Polish playwright, ethnologist, aeronaut, political intriguist, occultist and historian, 1761-1815),

“Giles in Love,” translated by Daniel Gerould,

a __-minute parade in English, in one act and in prose, set in front of Zerzabelle’s house, in a village, France, 1700s,

1m1f

• in Gallant and Libertine, 18th Century French Divertissements and Parades, edited, translated, and introduced by Daniel Gerould, (aka Daniel C. Gerould) (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983), ISBN 0933826486, ISBN 0933826494, LCCN 83-61194, 152 pp., SF 3989, containing “Giles in Love”; “The Blind One-Armed Deaf-Mute,” a comedy, 3m; “Cassander, Man of Letters,” a comedy, 3m1f; “Cassander Supports the Revolution,” a comedy, 3m1f; “Cassander’s Trip to the Indies,” a comedy, 3m1f; and “The Two Doubles or the Surprising Surprise,” a comedy, 1m1f;

• script/rights available from Samuel French, Inc., 45 West 45th Street New York, New York 10010-2751, U.S.A., telephone 212-206-8990, fax 212-206-1429, http://www.samuelfrench.com; Samuel French, Inc. 7623 Sunset Boulevard, Dept. W, Hollywood, California 90046-2785, U.S.A., telephone 213-876-0570; fax 323-876-6822; Samuel French, Inc. 11963 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, California 91604, U.S.A., telephone 818-762-0535; Samuel French (Canada) Ltd. 100 Lombard Street, Dept. W, Toronto, Ontario M5C 1M3, Canada, telephone 416-363-3536, fax 416 363-1108; Samuel French, Ltd. 52 Fitzroy Street-Dept. W, London W1P 6JR, England, telephone (44207) 387-9373, fax (44207) 387-2161, http://www.samuelfrench-london.co.uk/sf/Pages/acted/sfactingeds.html; unlisted in Samuel French’s 1997 Basic Catalog of Plays and Musicals.

• Cited in Play Index, 1983-1987: An Index to 3,964 Plays, edited by Juliette Yaakov (____-____) and John Greenfieldt (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1988), ISSN 0554-3037, LCCN 64-1054, 522 pp.

Dramatis Personae

Zerzabelle (f), discretely [sic] dressed in a morning negligee; Giles (m), coquettishly got up.

Synopsis

“Servant refuses to confess love, forcing lady to confess her feelings first.”—Yaakov and Greenfieldt, p. 297.

Comment

• Romantic comedy.

• “. . . [Jan Potocki] was fluent in many languages. He studied in Geneva and Lausanne, and served time in the army. Traveling widely, he has been credited as a pioneering ethnologist, treating the cultures and people he studied with respect and an open mind, unlike many, later ethnologists. His travels lead him through The Balkans, the Caucsus, China, and the Mediterranean. And also, into the air. He was on of the first people to rise in a hot air balloon, ascending with the ballonist Blanchard over the city of Warsaw. Somehow, he also found time to be a ‘Novice-King of Malta’ The Knight Templars people can research that one. . . . Jan Potocki He married twice, and had five children. Forced by ill-health, perhaps syphillis, he returned to his estates in 1812. In 1815 he killed himself with a bullet to the head. Apparantely he’d smelted a silver bullet from his mothers sugar-bowl and blessed by the chaplain of the castle.”—biography and bibliography for author jan potocki jan potoc, http://www.postpoppulp.org/author/display/40.html, accessed July 5, 2002.

• As Daniel Gerould states, “A type of farce with characters derived from commedia, the parade flourished in early eighteenth-century France as a popular fairground entertainment presented gratis on a raised platform or balcony outside the theatre and designed to entice spectators to pay to see the show inside. Its origins lay in burlesque scenes presented by clowns and acrobats . . . towards the end of the sixteenth century. Purveying low buffoonery . . . [for] the common people, the parade quickly became a craze with the upper classes . . . In . . . Diderot’s Encyclopedia (1765), the components of the genre are given as its popular roots, fashionable standing, low humor, and four recurring stereotyped characters. . . . [and] familiar characters going through their traditional paces. Unlike commedia dell ’arte scenarios, the texts of the parades contain fully written out dialogue, but in the stage directions scope is left the actors for improvisation and the creation of lanai and gags. The language of the parades, as stylized and artificial as its characters and plots, is a riotous jumble of obscenity, error, and illogic. Normal speech is deformed by mispronunciations, grammatical blunders, malapropisms, and indecent double meanings. . . . With its outrageous titles, absurd stories, erotic and scatological jokes about virginity, pregnancy, bodily parts and functions, the often gross and always irreverent parades violate the taboos of polite conversation and behavior . . . . [T]he parades enjoyed a vogue . . . from the 1730s until . . . the Revolution. Famous professional actors from Paris . . . were often hired to appear in . . . clandestine performances. . . . The three outstanding practitioners of the eighteenth-century parade . . . were Gueullette, Beaumarchais, and Potocki.”—Gallant and Libertine, 18th Century French Divertissements and Parades (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983), pp. 20-21.“The French parade tradition flourished in the late 1600s to the dawn of the Revolution. It was a direct descendant of the Commedia dell'Arte, brought to France by the Italians a century earlier. The parades were literary versions of the outdoor playlets of the fairgrounds, where the Italian stock characters became increasingly blended with the French ones. Giles is a very French derivation of Pedrolino/Pierrot--an innocent, sometimes impish servant who exists to eat and sleep. Gueullette (whose name comes from the colloquial "mug") was a lawyer who, enchanted with Giles, began writing his own parades. Watteau was to base his famous painting of Giles on one of Gueullette's parades. Jacques Copeau rediscovered Gueullette in the 1920s, staging his works as part of the new revival of the Commedia dell'Arte in [the twentieth] century.”—MandM, http://www.antaeus.org/antaeus/classic/MandM.html#Mayhem, accessed March 27, 2006.

• Image from FantasticFiction Company, email webmaster@fantasticfiction.co.uk, , accessed August 13, 2006.

Themes

confession, dominance-submission, love, mistress-servant relationship.