I’m sure you have heard of the French aristocracy and the Court of Versailles. I don’t
know whether you have heard much about the poverty of the French people. But any
display of magnificence presupposes a display of power. It has often been said that
the political situation in the Baroque period was not unlike its art and architecture.
Baroque buildings were typified by a lot of ornate nooks and crannies. In a somewhat
similar fashion the political situation was typified by intrigue, plotting, and assassina-
tions.”
“Wasn’t a Swedish king shot in a theater?”
“You’re thinking of Gustav III, a good example of the sort of thing I mean. The
assassination of Gustav III wasn’t until 1792, but the circumstances were quite ba-
roque. He was murdered while attending a huge masked ball.”
“I thought he was at the theater.”
“The great masked ball was held at the Opera. We could say that the Baroque
period in Sweden came to an end with the murder of Gustav III. During his time there
had been a rule of ‘enlightened despotism,’ similar to that in the reign of Louis XIV
almost a hundred years earlier. Gustav III was also an extremely vain person who
adored all French ceremony and courtesies. He also loved the theater...”
“... and that was the death of him.”
“Yes, but the theater of the Baroque period was more than an art form. It was
the most commonly employed symbol of the time.”
“A symbol of what?”
“Of life, Sophie. I don’t know how many times during the seventeenth century
it was said that ‘Life is a theater.’ It was very often, anyway. The Baroque period
gave birth to modern theater—with all its forms of scenery and theatrical machinery.
In the theater one built up an illusion on stage—to expose ultimately that the stage
play was just an illusion. The theater thus became a reflection of human life in
general. The theater could show that ‘pride comes before a fall,’ and present a
merciless portrait of human frailty.”
“Did Shakespeare live in the Baroque period?”
“He wrote his greatest plays around the year 1600, so he stands with one foot in
the Renaissance and the other in the Baroque. Shakespeare’s work is full of passages
about life as a theater. Would you like to hear some of them?”
“Yes.”
“In As You Like It, he says:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have
their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.
“And in Macbeth, he says:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon
the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, Signifying nothing.”
“How very pessimistic.”
“He was preoccupied with the brevity of life. You must have heard
Shakespeare’s most famous line?”
“To be or not to be—that is the question.”
“Yes, spoken by Hamlet. One day we are walking around on the earth—and the
next day we are dead and gone.”
“Thanks, I got the message.”
“When they were not comparing life to a stage, the Baroque poets were
comparing life to a dream. Shakespeare says, for example: We are such stuff as
dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep...”