1François Coppée’s Les Jacobites is a five-act drama that premiered at the Parisian Odéon theatre on November 21st, 1885. Despite Louis Ganderax’s negative review, the production was successful (Ganderax 693–705).

2The play-text kept in the French National Library (BnF) includes seven burin-engraved illustrations of the key scenes. They represent some of the actors/characters in costumes, some decors, as well as archetypal and symbolic props. Textual ekphrasis, hypotyposis and detailed stage directions prompt the readers’ mental images and visualisation of the setting and performance.

3The play was produced within the lively and complex political, artistic and literary contexts of the nineteenth century.

4François Coppée (1842–1908) was a Parnassian poet, a novelist and a playwright. He also set up artistic projects that were more dedicated to please and suit the tastes of large audiences. He was involved in a literary movement experimenting poetic technical forms which paralleled the trend towards realism in drama and novels of the late nineteenth century. In Les Jacobites, the free expression of genuine emotion developed by pre-romanticism transpires in the complex treatment of the character of seductive Dora Fingall. A similar apparent discordant effect lies in the Versailles aristocratic elegance, manners and ideals incarnated by prince Charles Edward Stuart, clashing with the Highlanders’ way of life, values, culture and social system. The historic insurrection at the core of Coppée’s dramatic and theatrical project is correlated to the idealisation of Scotland. Still, the harmony, order, rationality and balance of the world of Nature, supposedly represented by its countryside, its dwellers and its underlying Ossianism, are depicted and portrayed from a less Edenic standpoint. For the rebelling clans, the realities of war are first associated with divergence and argument, then with adulterous treason and dishonour. The myth of unbreakable collective unity and identity shows breaches. It is sometimes countered by the individual, subjective and ego-centred expression of the self, or by odd irrational decision-making regarding paramount matters such as life and death, and the nation’s survival. Emotions also tend to pervert the power and security process of the chief’s leadership.

• 2 Earlier, ‘Ossian cadet, ou Les guimbardes, parodie des Bardes, vaudeville en trois petits actes qui (...)

1814–1815 ne produit pas que des vaudevilles divertissants, détachés de toute actualité, dénués de toute urgence2 : avec ses quatre régimes différents, la période se caractérise par la multiplication des œuvres de circonstance en prise directe avec le présent immédiat, œuvres chargées non seulement d’accompagner les retours successifs des puissants, mais de renouer la chaîne brisée du temps et de transmuer les mouvances du réel en réalité stable et lisible. Loin de ne proposer que des plaisirs vaudevillesques, les théâtres enregistrent ou déplacent les faits politiques, rejouent ou tentent de réparer le présent bouleversé. (Bara 109–122)

6In that respect, the background of Coppée’s play offers food for thought since on August 14th, 1884, the constitutional revision of the 25th February 1875 old law included the following decision: ‘la forme républicaine du gouvernement ne peut faire l’objet d’une proposition de révision. . . . Les membres des familles ayant régné sur la France sont inéligibles à la présidence de la République’ (la révision constitutionnelle d’août 1884, Assemblée nationale, Histoire et Patrimoine). The threat of a possible return to monarchy was thus somehow eliminated. Historically, the fate of the French monarchy was sealed by the Third Republic (Droin 725–74). A mirrored image allusive transposition could well be part of the mental process attached to this entertaining allegedly exotic spectacle.

7The complexity of the play also lies in its poly-generic dimension. Bringing and working together tragedy and comedy, it also combines historic and heroic (melo)drama. Georges Zaragosa analyses the two specific genres in ‘L’Écosse sur la scène française (1800–1820)’: ‘La variation de l’un à l’autre des qualificatifs n’est pas sans intérêt, en ce qu’elle dit quelque chose de l’orientation que le dramaturge souhaite donner à son propos’ (Zaragosa 74). Coppée’s work is a crucible of aesthetic modes under diverse influences. The author refashions codes, genres and movements within a multi-cultural and multi-stylistic creation as if he played with and commented upon them throughout the history-based sequences building the core and telling of the story. He does not hesitate to relate and coalesce elements of clashing Neoclassicism, Parnassianism and Romanticism to emphasise their differences, usages and roles. Through his contrasting characterisations and discourses, he diverts the Parnassians’ codes. He (re)models their rejecting any excessive subjective and sentimental high-flown lyricism and their denying the social and political activism of some romantic authors. Consequently, echoing the far remote past, Ossianic lyricism has its own dominant voice. Coppée’s careful technical poetic rhetoric and stylistic composition somehow took into account the Parnassian pre-set rules such as the exotic and classical topics, the rigour, neutrality and emotional detachment, as well as the strict and careful verse and metre. Still, firm dispassion and impartiality were difficult to maintain in such a context. Coppée’s associations make the bardic and Highlanders’ nostalgia echo Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophical pessimism and the fabulous world of Ossian, made of poetic and epic branding war and love, reverberates the classic Homeric area.

8Such influential elements underlie Coppée’s tragic historic and heroic (melo)drama—tinged with epic tones—set in the Scottish Highlands, chosen as the outlandish glamorous off- and on-stage context. Incursions of flourishing romanticism, lyricism and emotional outbursts break what could have been the uniformity and continuity of a tragedy-modelled drama. Yet, despite the Scottish Highlanders’ heroism, the tragic 1745 Jacobite insurrection ends on the deaths of many of them, including the casualties of Lady Dora Fingall and of chaste Marie. The former represents the highly romantic archetype of a would-be female hero, systematically on the verge of caricature. The latter personifies and embodies Scotland. She symbolises iconic virgin Mary too. The message is laden with alarming warnings. The overwhelming royal figure of Mary Stuart is reincarnated into emblematic Marie, reviving the memories of the 1587 decapitation of the Catholic martyr queen and the 1649 execution of her grand-son Charles I. Set outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, his beheading surely was the climactic moment of the Puritan Revolution. These veiled historiographic landmarks complete the fable of the play. Two oxymoronic love-affairs unfold within its main dramatic framework. Key elements of the romance, they are supported by stylistic combinations and confrontations.

9Coppée’s work is fuelled with prior information and works issuing from diverse fields and domains. The effect of Sir Walter Scott’s works, including Waverley, on Les Jacobites is obvious. With Lord Byron, the Scottish author had achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe. In their works, they both exploited the fascinating, violent and dramatic intensity of Scotland’s historical past, places and landscapes, which were reinforced by the power of legends and tales. MacPherson’s alleged discovery of the mythic hypo-textual Ossian Cycles amplified the phenomenon:

En 1761, le jeune poète James MacPherson publie Fingal, une épopée qui, selon lui, a été composée par Ossian, barde écossais du iii^e siècle de notre ère. . . . Bien que des controverses éclatent rapidement sur l’authenticité de l’épopée, une vague d’‘ossianophilie’ déferle sur toute l’Europe. L’univers ossianesque est un grand motif d’inspiration pour les écrivains et les peintres à l’aube du romantisme. . . . Fingal et l’épopée Temora publiée par MacPherson en 1763 sont présentées comme une Iliade et une Odyssée calédoniennes, et le barde aveugle Ossian qui s’accompagne d’une harpe celtique comme un Homère nordique. Ces épopées ne chantent pas seulement les exploits guerriers de héros valeureux: on y trouve aussi une exaltation des paysages embrumés et des ciels tourmentés, une expression du sentiment amoureux qui s’accordent à la sensibilité du xviii^e siècle finissant et annoncent le romantisme. . . . Comme Werther [Goethe], la jeunesse européenne se prend de passion pour les épopées ossianesques. L’un des plus grands ossianophiles est Napoléon Bonaparte. Il commande plusieurs tableaux sur les thèmes des épopées à Gérard, Girodet et Ingres pour décorer ses appartements ou ceux de Joséphine . . . . (Thiesse n. p.)

10Within such environments beaming with change and experiments, creators and performers produced imaginative and cultural art forms. The following study aims to show how François Coppée’s choice of a Scottish setting and historic topic for Les Jacobites suited the general atmosphere of late nineteenth century Europe and France and how its characters, figures, images, allegories, icons and emblems reflect their influences. The focus will be on the playwright’s allusions and references to hypo-texts, to real events and to underlying myths and symbols which demonstrate he had a fair knowledge of the topics with which he dealt. His efforts to render idiosyncrasies and characteristic styles in his portraits, poetry, prose, verse and his diegetic development, reveal that his then very popular dramatic work goes beyond the contemporary trend. Spectacular, entertaining and didactic, it also relies on aesthetic qualities to softly deliver a national and international political message and an intra- and extra-contextual warning.

11The following study comprehends a first part about the French and European atmosphere, mood and tone revealing an ever-refreshing air of Scottophilia, Celtophilia and Ossianophilia. The general political and cultural environment, Coppée’s heritage and cultural legacy, and the enchanting, picturesque and sublime Scotland in representation are analysed. The second part deals with the dramatic and theatrical production of Les Jacobites and how, from page to stage, the context-saturated historic and heroic (melo)drama was constructed. Its fable, situation and diegesis are first examined. Its staging showing symbolic markers of the past is then considered. Coppée’s dramatization and theatricalization of a key Scottish historic event is finally investigated. The third part about the construction of the theatrical imaginary process closes the study with a general conclusion.

12F. Coppée’s Les Jacobites (1885) fits into a series of French and European extra-contextual historical political and cultural episodes that are embedded within a large fashionable network of Scottophilia, Ossianophilia and Celtophilia, developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The 1850–1912 period encompasses the third wave. The French Revolution and Napoleonic eras fundamentally altered French society, promoting centralisation, administrative uniformity and a standardised legal code. Intellectual, literary and artistic movements mirrored these societal transformations, reformations and adaptations, contributing to the nation’s progress and rich legacy. The cultural climate was marked by a current called positivism, inciting the post-1848 generation to look down upon what was then sometimes regarded as the excesses and bad taste of the preceding romantic era. Derived from the cultural and scientific achievements following the Second Empire, a new trend of realism developed in philosophy, literature and the arts.

13Emerging from such a fruitful background, these phenomena contribute to explaining the dramatic construction and interpretative modes belonging to Coppée’s play. They radiate with components deriving from real facts and events, tales and myths, novels, poems and other art forms, as well as from the evolution of the theatrical domain. The text-and-context relationships are the backbones of both the fable (dramatic sense) and the playwright’s work itself.

14F. Coppée was an intellectual, lettered and professional author, aware of the evolution of the trends and movements supporting Scotland-, Celts- and Ossian-related phenomena as well as of his heritage and cultural legacy appertaining to the area. In Ossian en France (1917), Paul Van Tieghem presents their importance after MacPherson’s alleged discoveries of the Ossian Fragments. He describes and deciphers their origins, ways, customs and codes. He says he was impressed and influenced by German philologist Ludwig Christian Stern’s research in Celtic studies. He explains his intentions and the objectives of his study (Van Tieghem vol. I, 16). Then extending the scope of his own research to the very roots of romanticism, he adds: ‘Elle [son étude] voudrait apporter une contribution modeste, mais précise et sûre à la difficile question des origines du romantisme français’ (Van Tieghem vol. I, 1). He meant to provide his readers with different, realistic, instructive and illuminating sources and information, a new gateway to knowledge (Van Tieghem vol. I, 24). Although his work was published after the creation of Les Jacobites, the content of his two volumes including an impressive bibliography (Van Tieghem vol. II, 475–519) shows the extent of previous research and publications on Ossian and the Celts on both sides of the Channel—a legacy Coppée surely had access to thanks to his intellectual curiosity and professional activities.

15Between 1870 and 1885, Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville published his Revue celtique (1870) and his Cours de littérature celtique—about four hundred pages of classes given at the Collège de France (ed. E. Thorin & A. Fontemoing 1882–1902). The latter encompasses important information about bards and druids, about their historic and social roles. It concerns music, medicine, education and justice as well as their beliefs and occupations as magicians and priests. In Scotland, Donald Mackinnon (1839–1914) edited The Celtic Review. In 1882, he became the first Professor of Celtic at Edinburgh University. He published The Reading Book for the Use of Students of the Gaelic Class at Edinburgh University (1883) and On the Dialects of Scottish Gaelic. In 1876, the Scottish expert in philology, John Stuart Blackie (1809–1895), had written The Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands.

16The following reflections on Coppée’s play-text focus on his dramatization and theatricalization of key historic events. His choices do not only derive from cultural and historic facts and figures, but also from fascinating representations of Scotland. Reality is enhanced by legendary narratives, by passionate travel-stories, and by literary and dramatic works. Many were dedicated to depicting the Scottish nation’s beauties and devoted to retelling or rewriting her/its inspiring myths, thus influencing European literature. Among enthusiasts, Charles Nodier celebrated the nation’s appeal with fervour and lyricism in Promenade de Dieppe aux montagnes d’Écosse (1821):

CALEDONIAM ! Caledoniam ! Que de souvenirs, que d’impressions dans le nom de la première contrée poétique dont la direction de mes études m’ait permis d’apprendre les brillantes inspirations ! Ici tout est naturel, grand, sublime; tout porte le caractère d’une antiquité solennelle et inaltérable.’ (Nodier 1821, 175–76)

17In his introduction to Cahiers d’études nodiéristes. L’Écosse des Romantiques, Sébastien Vacelet recalls that Nodier was one of the main French promoters of European Celtomania: ‘qui voit dans l’antique Calédonia, c’est-à-dire l’ancienne et mythique Écosse, son épicentre et en Walter Scott le nouveau messie du temps présent’ (Vacelet 2017a, 11). In fact, the landmark was Ruthven-born James MacPherson’s alleged discovery of the Ossian Fragments (manuscripts) triggering an avalanche of debates, controversies, translations and adaptations. Serious reflections developed thanks to intellectuals like Diderot, Suard, etc. (Van Tieghem vol. I, vi-i).

18The 1890s saw the number of publications on Scottish History, culture, folklore and customs expand in several languages, among which Rev. J. G. Campbell’s Popular Tales and Traditions in the Western Highlands (Campbell 1895), Turgot’s ‘Fragments d’aucunes poésies’ and ‘Le Journal des poésies erses’ in Journal étranger (Dulac 787). Through translations and adaptations, inter-textual and inter-semiotic networks, a large public had access to them. From the early eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, the large palette of literary and artistic pieces served transmission provided by agents such as Le Sueur, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, Ary Scheffer, Augustin Franquelin, and Nicolai Abildgaard, not to forget Napoleon himself. The performing arts were under similar influences. Some productions involved music and songs, such as Jean-François Le Sueur’s (1760–1837) Ossian ou les bardes, an opera in five acts (1804) (Vacelet 2017b, 151–76 and Guérimand 177 & seq.). Light opera—or comic opera—consisted in musical plays with light subject matter, happy endings and a spoken dialogue. The French opéra-comique originated as comic opera, but it then dealt with serious issues. Antoine Arnault’s Oscar ou le fils d’Ossian was a tragedy in five acts (‘an IV’) and Jean-Baptiste Cuvelier’s Le Chef écossais ou la caverne d’Ossian, was a pantomime in two acts, with a prologue. Ossian cadet, ou Les guimbardes was a parody of Ossian ou les bardes advertised as a ‘vaudeville en trois petits actes qui n’en font qu’un’ (Dupaty, Chazet and Moreau). It premiered at the Parisian théâtre du Vaudeville (‘11 thermidor, an XII’, July 1804).

19For his production of Les Jacobites, F. Coppée transposed his textual picturing of the Scottish scenery and the romanced tragic history of the 1745 Jacobite insurrection through the scenography displaying a showy fashion. The setting had to look and sound enchanting. The visual and aural rendering, acoustics, spoken text and body language, the music, decor and props had to match the spectators’ expectations, often guided by a mixture of real and made-up pre-set mental representations. The public was interested in myths and legends, in the customs and creeds of the earliest dwellers in Scotland, such as the druids, the bards, the commoners, the clans, their powers, statuses and functions. Alexander Campbell provided such information (‘The Clans and their Septs’ (A. Campbell 49); ‘The chief; the fiery cross (A. Campbell 29 et seq.) and in The Romance of the Islands (A. Campbell): ‘The Highland chief was the principal man of his clan. In him was embodied all that was great and good. . . .  In the piping times of peace he was the judge of his people’s wrongs. He was their advocate and the arbiter in all their differences’ (A. Campbell 30). In Les Jacobites, chief Lord Fingall’s prerogatives are realistically dramatized. His final decisions have to be obeyed. His honour cannot be tarnished or questioned. As in real life, ‘[his] bravery, his wisdom and his might were the boast of his clansmen’ (A. Campbell 30). The vassal was related to his master through his ‘whole-hearted fidelity’ (A. Campbell 31). Fingall’s clansmen are loyal to him and they respect the codes of their clan. On her side, Marie saves his honour by lying about the affair his adulterous wife Dora has with Prince Charles, pretending she herself was his mistress. She thought the honour of the clan surpassed her own. The aftermath of the intrusion of romance is balanced by values correlated to morality, dignity and repute. A. Campbell also insists on customary hospitality, generosity and cordiality: ‘Around his board were gathered his friends and the stranger within his gate. His table was spread for whoever desired to call and partake of his hospitality. It was his pride and his boast that none left his house hungry, so he kept open his table in his banqueting hall’ (A. Campbell 30). The theme is illustrated by drawings and a short poem: ‘In that mansion used to be, / Freehearted hospitality / His great fires up the chimney roared / The stranger feasted at his board’ (A. Campbell 30). In Les Jacobites, Coppée replicates the customary process and philosophy through the generous welcome blind beggar Angus receives on his arrival on the clan’s premises (Coppée 1886, 264–67).

20In the literary domain, Coppée was inspired by Walter Scott’s earlier fictions, such as The Waverley Novels, a series of over two dozen historical novels published between 1814 and 1832, and The Legend of Montrose. Scott’s novels had a paramount influence on later authors including Coppée, all the more so as Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s figure is ghosting the Waverley narrative and is central to Les Jacobites. W. Scott’s Waverley was translated and adapted several times. Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret published his French version in the 1830s with a re-edition in 1883, the same year as Édouard Scheffter’s. These works were close to Coppée’s project.

21The Caledonophile fashion developed in waves; the readers’ and audiences’ positive receptions followed. Coppée’s Les Jacobites shows the author’s planned combination of chiselled, kneaded and sometimes warped intertwining iconic structuring components: from his Parnassianism remains the pessimism of some characters evolving in the romanticised tragic drama.

Scottish history and royal figures have always interested and inspired European authors among whom Antoine de Montchrétien (La Reine écossaise, 1604) and Pierre-Antoine Lebrun (Marie Stuart [1853] after Friedrich von Schiller’s 1800 play), just to mention two works on Mary Queen of Scots, celebrated by La Pléiade poets and other authors. The trans-textual network is important. (Soubigou 197–216)

22For F. Coppée, Prince Charles Edward Stuart who had initiated the 1745 Jacobite Rising was an ideal romantic hero. The young pretender was fascinating to many. In the preface of his Histoire de Charles-Edouard, dernier prince de la maison de Stuart (1830), historian Amédée Pichot lays the emphasis on the large number of sources dealing with the prince. Contrarily to Coppée, A. Pichot mentions the real names of the leading clansmen involved in the uprising. He relates its main circumstances and milestones. Though a serious historian, he admitted he was not fully objective because of his fascination for the magnetic prince. Five years earlier, Pichot had written Voyage historique et littéraire en Angleterre et en Écosse (1825) and in 1860 he published L’Écolier de Walter Scott. Contes biographiques. He praised Scott’s novels, more particularly Waverley (1814). Both authors inspired F. Coppée, who benefited from a wide range of sources. Inter-/trans-textuality and literary influences enriched the Scottophile network, including Alexandre Duval’s Edouard en Écosse ou la nuit d’un proscrit (1802 and 1814). It is worth noting that, after the Jacobite disastrous insurrection, Coppée uses the word ‘proscrit’ (Coppée 1886, 372) to refer to the princely fugitive (Coppée 1886, 377). In his play-text, as in real life, the April 1746 Culloden defeat is a turning point. Yet the battle remains off-stage, related through hypotyposis: different characters deliver their viewpoints on the catastrophe and its aftermaths.

23In the 1880s, F. Coppée’s Scottish-context-saturated play certainly suited the current trend and satisfied his contemporary theatregoers’ expectations. Still, their deceptively idealising minds clashed with the reality of the post-Jacobite insurrection society. The Culloden defeat is a landmark in the Scottish national History. By (re)actualising it artificially, fiction cloaks the characters with anachronistic past values and customs. Symbolically, the play ends with the death of the Marian emblematic figure of Scotland, enshrouded in the bullet-pierced Stuart red flag. She symbolises the suffering and endangered lineage of the Stuarts. In his flight to exile—a lamentable form of desertion—the young pretender realises he will never be king. In Waverley, Scott admits the destructive effects of the 1745 insurrection on his nation compared to the evolution of Europe (Scott 1883, 340). As a decisive and pivotal milestone, it rendered any travelling back and recovering what was lost impossible. Scott means that looking back triggers nostalgia and foolish dreams while conceding it profoundly changed politics, traditions, social codes, customs and new perspectives.

24Coppée’s play is no authentic historic or journalistic report. From page to stage, it is meant to be a spectacular show. It is a complex tragic-historic and heroic (melo)drama. In ‘“Helpless and Unfriended”: Nineteenth-Century Domestic Melodrama’, Martha Vicinus explains that melodrama which was once,

exclusively defined as a type of theatrical production, is now a familiar label for much Victorian literature. It refers pejoratively to an excess of emotion, disproportionate to the object, excessively simplified characters who appeal to each other and the audience by means of exaggerated expressions of right or wrong, and many remarkable and improbable coincidences, spectacular effects, and plot complications. (Vicinus 127)

25Coppée sometimes exploits similar hyperbolic eccentricities, dramatic strategies and theatrical devices to feature his complex characters and situations. Dora’s independence, exuberance and frivolity contrast with Marie’s amplified remoteness, purity and humility. Both personæ are dissimilar and complementary. The dramatist refashioned the criteria of the medieval moralities. They are diverted and perverted by the new genre which somehow (re)presents the encounter of virtue and vice, of tragedies, moralities and restoration comedies or comedies of manners in an innovative way. The author’s efforts at rendering idiosyncrasies in his portraits (including powerless victimised heroine protagonists), at refining his poetry and diegetic development, show that the popular success of Les Jacobites did not only derive from the contemporaneous Scottophile trend but from its rich dramatic and stylistic palette, tinged with an opening unto satire.

26The circular structure of the play is determined by the young pretender’s arrival on the Scottish soil and his near departure after the Culloden defeat. It is a framed play in so far as Old Enoch, Duncan and Robin deliver a prologue-like opening, laden with information about the political situation and the prince’s intentions. In the final tableau, Marie dies in Angus’s arms believing that Charles Edward is safe; in fact, he is turning into a fugitive. Angus declares he himself is ready to die and join Marie. The venture was a catastrophe. The curtain drops. The loop is looped with Duncan’s conclusion closing the princely episode (Coppée 1886, 290–91).

27Within the structure of the Odeon theatron, the play unfolds its classic (Greek) tragic framework. For Aristotle,

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separated parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. (Aristotle 1449 b 23)

28Coppée embedded diverse genres within the general tragic structure. The prologue and the parodos-like exposition of the situation are provided by a triad (chorus) and by Angus, the voice of/from the past. On his arrival, he is invited to speak: ‘Duncan : . . .  Ah! celui-ci, du moins, va, mieux que moi / leur parler chaudement de l’Écosse et du Roi’ (Coppée 1886, 263). Symbolically, Robin, Duncan and Old Enoch (the hunter, the shepherd and the ancient clansman) open the play. They set the action to come. The episode is launched. Prince Charles Edward Stuart has landed; the news is spreading. Due to his Stuart lineage, his intention is manifold, including to liberate Scotland and its people from George II’s English Hanoverian domination. The prince is perceived as a saviour—the impression of a holy apparition is over-emphasised by the witnesses’ description of his arrival. He is said to be walking on the sea water, on his landing. The Highlanders, chiefs and military are spellbound and devoted to the saint-like newcomer:

Ils venaient pour blâmer le jeune téméraire ;
Mais, à son seul aspect, il paraît qu’au contraire,
Au cœur de tous les chefs à tout à coup monté
Un flot de loyalisme et de fidélité.

Devant ce fils de roi, jeune, charmant et brave,
Que la mer semblait leur rendre comme une épave
Et qui leur souriait, l’air confiant et doux,
Criant « Vive le Roi ! » tombant tous à genoux,
Ils ont baigné ses mains de leurs larmes de joie. (Coppée 1886, 58)

29Through the stasimon-like sequence, emotions and comments on certain episodes are provided. The exodus (exodos) is defined by the prince’s departure: out of breath, ‘Duncan, entrant rapidement par la droite. Monseigneur ! Monseigneur ! La fuite est assurée… / J’ai trouvé vos amis…Une barque est parée… / À vingt pas…Le vaisseau français est arrivé… / Prince, venez bien vite, et vous êtes sauvé!’ (Coppée 1886, 391).

30Like the chorus delivering the final moral of the play, disheartened, bardic Old Enoch sums up the Highlands’ current socio-political situation—times are hard and the future bleak. Nonetheless, romance intrudes upon the formal frame.

32Through the theatrical imaginary process and the construction of scenic spaces, readers and spectators are gradually introduced into the Highlanders’ universe. Coppée’s (re)created community is composed of several clans. The playwright mentions chiefs Donald de Glenmoriston and Gordon de Glencoe, whereas in his own work, historian A. Pichot mentions all the rebels. From the beginning onwards, Coppée associates the chief of the leading clan to Ossian through the reference to his father’s name and story; he calls him Fingall. The general extension to the cycles and their components opens straight away. The playwright exploits referential markers for readers and audiences to identify Ossianism and Scottishness immediately. Through language, style and clichés, the decor (complementary sonorous and visual stage-setting) and the situation are instantly set and imagination ready to decode them.

33The clans’ chiefs discuss Prince Charles Edward’s unprepared expedition and object to his improvisational adventure. Reason and experience do not incite them to engage into what appears to them as a future disaster. Wise Old Enoch warns: ‘Vous courez, insensés, / Vers la défaite et vers les échafauds dressés, / Pour un drapeau fantôme et pour un discours vide’ (Coppée 1886, 284). The arrival of Ossian- and Homer-like blind beggar Angus and his ‘grand-daughter’ Marie creates a coup de théâtre and generates a reversal of situation. Their apparition also relates Coppée’s play to the Shakespearean King Lear tragedy. Several domains combine into a larger field of literary and cultural referential meaning, intertwining Renaissance, (neo)classic and Ossianic sources. Angus also incarnates the deeply rooted (pre) Scottish identity including the Pictish world and myths. Amalgamating times, customs, creeds and faiths, Coppée added a multifaceted persona through Marie. He created her as the Christian symbolic figure of the Saviour’s virgin mother, as the reincarnation of the nation’s emblematic Mary Queen of Scots and as the embodiment of Scotland herself. The key allegories, impresa-like signs and ensigns (like the Stuart red flag) are united to define and display the nation’s identity/-ties. On show, the past, present and future times, the pillars of a religion(s)-supported community, including the druids’, the bards’, and the Christians’, are exhibited through figuration and characterisation.

34Whether material or deceptively illusory, the scenic space has to be constructed through an encoded reproduction of what is supposed to be or to imitate reality. Didascalia and stage-directions stir the imagination and both mental and physical visualisation are made possible. The scenery, the environment and surroundings are indicated and identified. They give an idea of the set. Perspective plays both with an intimate focus on the Highlanders’ houses and encampment, and a larger natural environmental scope. The lighting is also mentioned, emphasising the technical process and visual effects. Given the French BnF engravings picturing chosen key scenes, the interrelationship between linguistics and semiotics supplies viewers with forms of hypotyposis, ekphrasis and energeia. The poetic lexicon, rhythm, and lyrical moments create the general atmosphere.

35Marie’s reserve is made audible through her speech and intonation. It is visible on the pictures, photos and engravings. Stressing the textual support, the contrasting body language and voicing parts also differentiate the two women. Dora’s voluptuous and lyrical flourishes accord with her over-emphasised gesturing. Portrayed Shakespearean actor Garrick comes to mind. At the time, melodramatic performance was characterised by vigorous, spirited and exaggerated delivery of speech and motion, the actors’ whole bodies displaying feelings (from foot stamping to eye-rolling), while prominence was also accorded to highly emotional articulation, postures and gestures.

36A theatrical performance provides spectators with visual, sonorous and musical decor and scenography. Productions help audiences visualise and hear the passage from text to stage, in situ. The stage directions help readers imagine background, staging and interpretation. Coppée’s didascalia are numerous, precise and clear. Moreover, since engravings of the key sequences were made, the links that linguistics and semiotics entertain enhance their complementary picturing and transmission. Ekphrasis, hypotyposis and mirroring effects render a coherent theatrical (re)production of the historical episode. They are complemented by stereotypes or commonplace markers of Scottishness given through music, costumes and props. The description of the rebels’ camp is precise. The linguistic image of what the stage-set was like is accurate (Coppée 1886, 289). The town of Edinburgh is in the background (maybe on the backdrop), perceptible through a low-angle shot. Perspective magnifies its domineering walls from the camp down below to the castle, and to the moon-lit sky higher up. In the foreground, the open set allows the visualisation of the military high commandment.

37The key indicators of war are present in a minimum of space (maps, drums, weapons). The lights from the temporary encampment fires are necessary from a technical point of view, but they also indicate a certain atmosphere. Their colour effects must have been warmer and the presence of soldiers around them is suggested.

39Fact, play-text and picture combine to show ekphrastic forms of exchange amplifying the tableaux. Wise Angus’s knowledge covers centuries of Scottish History. He incarnates the poetic voice of the Scottish past (Coppée 1886, 281–82) and his visionary revelations for the future impress his fellows. In his opening speech, he celebrates the beauty of Scotland and the respect due to the old laws and to the chiefs. Through hypotyposis, Angus delivers the fable and depicts the scenery. He thus sets the visual, sonorous and musical décor, providing readers and spectators with the elements they need for their imaginary representation. His celebration of faithful Nature and the harmonious relationship between man and nature recalls Ossianism. Onomastics firmly link the play to Ossian Mac Fingal (Macpherson). The etching portraying him on his arrival, brandishing his flag recalls Nicolai Abildgaard’s 1782 Ossian singing his Swan Song. Through the clan’s identifying name, there are many elements that feed their dialogical associations, such as the description of Scotland’s topological features and beauties and the elements of nature (Coppée 1886, 281) that can be found in Fragments, in Ossian’s poems, and the Scots’ archetypal idiosyncrasies, all these embedded in the dialogues, poems and songs composing the play-text. The stage direction emphasises the character’s emotion and the actor’s performance: (‘avec exaltation’). This form of elation, euphoria and feverish condition could be regarded as senility or madness from the beggar who is clad in rags like King Lear. But it is not. Moved by the bardic and druidic beggar’s speech (Campbell 67 et seq.), the Highlanders fall on their knees at the feet of chief Lord Fingall and they immediately accept to fight, a turning point in the story (Coppée 1886, 283–84). Despite the general enthusiasm triggered by Angus’s arguments and aura, Old Enoch’s pessimism and realism counter his urgings (Coppée 1886, 281). Angus is accompanied and aided by his ‘grand-daughter’ Marie. Her highly praised innocence, purity and virginity picture her as a good Christian, a Catholic icon. She sings old traditional songs that recall Ossian’s through their topics and their magnetic and moving power. They allude to landscapes with stags and heather, tempestuous seas and ragged cliffs, pibrochs and claymores, etc. Their symbols, their elements of picturesque and sublime, their evocations of heroism convey feelings of nostalgia and pride towards the past and its lost glory and grandeur. They all belong to the Ossianic synoptic overview.

40The characters’ costumes, signs, ensigns and props are significant visual markers helping audiences to construct the theatrical imaginary process. They identify the extras’ and the characters’ statuses, functions, and symbolism. Their clashing natures and (in)appropriateness are meaningful. On his arrival, Prince Charles is accoutred as a ‘poudré’ Versailles courtier. He then changes for more appropriate habits. Act II, scene 2, the stage direction indicates: ‘Le Prince porte le costume des montagnards, avec l’écharpe et la cocarde blanches. Il est suivi d’une escorte. Lord Fingall est en tenue de colonel’ (Coppée 1886, 294). Then, the prince describes his outfit and the readers’ visual imagination can be activated (Coppée 1886, 296).

41Dora’s accoutrement is depicted when she decides to join the Highlanders’ army. She is satirised, featured frivolous but brave when equipped with the typical heroic female warrior’s outfit. Onstage, her elegant, but inappropriate ridiculous carnivalesque gear clashes with the reality of war. It becomes both her dramatic romanesque role and her imaginary romance-like tragic part for a meta-dramatic and meta-theatrical play-within-the-play. Among other etchings evoking the Jacobite prince’s venture exhibited in the Edinburgh National portrait gallery of Scotland, one is dedicated to her Culloden participation.

42Clothes are markers of class difference, poverty and wealth. Onstage, being clad in rags either suggests humility or decadence. Angus’s rags befit his identification as a poor virtuous beggar raising from the dead and the limbo of pre-Scottish eras, whereas, at the end, the prince’s shabby uniform highlights his shameful fiasco, his debasing situation and degraded social position. In contrast, the native Highlanders’ garments represent several groups: the commoners wear their everyday attires to proceed to their rural activities. Their checkered and coloured tartans identify their belonging to a clan. Contrastingly, the English soldiers in red uniforms are immediately recognised as the enemies of the Scots and of the Jacobites. The heraldic Saint Andrew’s cross shining in the sun on the prince’s chest (Coppée 1886, 268), and Fingall swearing ‘Par saint André’ (Coppée 1886, 278), are signs of their Scottish identities, faith and nationalism. The blue thistle (Coppée 1886, 268), the red flag, the pibrochs, the traditional songs, the claymores are definite markers too.

43Also called ‘Scotland’, Marie is its effigy and mythopoetic incarnation. The final tableau epitomises and symbolises the historical death of the free traditional nation. With Angus, they represent an idealised Scotland with her/its allegedly perfect traditions, immaculate nature, pure prospects and motivations. Her name recalls the saviour’s mother, and virgin Mary Queen of Scots symbolising Christian patience. This iconic representation of the former consort of France could easily be deciphered by French people having long considered her as a wrongly accused, deposed, condemned, and beheaded martyr.

45The very last print of Les Jacobites shows the dejected prince pondering over his ill fate and gloomy future. Higher up, the tiny figure of Duncan is standing on top of a rocky promontory. This could be interpreted as a reversed allusion to the 1818 Caspar David Friedrich Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Nearer the sky, Duncan is pondering on the prince’s doom. As he introduced the drama, he concludes it, looping the loop by closing its mythos, ethos, dianoia, lexis, melos, and opsis. His vision is turned towards an uncertain future: ‘Pendant que le prince se parle à lui-même, Duncan, après un geste de commisération, est monté sur un rocher et il regarde au loin en mettant la main devant les yeux. Il en descend au moment où le Prince finit ses réflexions’ (Coppée 1886, 378).

46Duncan’s textual and graphic reflections conclude François Coppée’s tragedy. The Aristotelian model triggers cathartic liberation and Duncan’s pity is an emotional sign of the process. Also considered as a metaphor to describe the effects of the genre on spectators and readers, purgation or purification may transform excess of emotions into virtuous dispositions, or have healthy and humanizing effects through identification with the tragic hero or protagonist. This general conclusion applies the concept to Coppée’s Les Jacobites.

47The printed pages and staged show suited Coppée’s French contemporaries’ idealised Scotland. However, Les Jacobites can be deciphered from another perspectival angle that would highlight France’s vain political strategy and spoilt benefit to the Scottish nation and its people during the 1745 expedition. Hope remained a fleeting moment and the Highlanders were right to doubt before engaging into another insurrection. Nevertheless, they were all spellbound and conquered by the prince’s hero-like image and they followed him into what amounted to their fatal defeat. To free them from George II’s Hanoverian domination and power was a matter of realpolitik and not of a dream-like unprepared adventure. Coppée’s dramatizing and theatricalising the whole venture tends to highlight why it was bound to fail and why it was some gross error from the start. War is no foolish courtly game. Even in real life, Prince Charles E. Stuart had neither military, nor professional knowledge and abilities. These dimensions are over-emphasised by the dramatist throughout his play. As in classic (Greek) tragedies, the hero’s hybris and hamartia led to a catastrophic outcome and to the anagnorisis. The aftermath related his downfall and the clans’. To a larger extent, allegorised through Marie, Scotland was deeply affected too. At the end, Ossian’s people was shattered. Its heroic warriors were vanquished. Having defied moral boundaries and the natural order of the territory, Charles E. Stuart triggered off and precipitated its end.

48In the nineteenth century Odéon theatron, the support to the Third Republic decision to prevent such-like royal or princely figures from attaining power again is artistically demonstrated and it is somehow declared right and reasonable. The political statement underlies the dramatic and theatrical proposal that also echoes Walter Scott’s post-scriptum—which ‘should have been a prefatory chapter’ (Scott 1986, 340)—affirming that Scotland has changed and on its way to a new era since 1745—a definite turning point. Years later, F. Coppée recalls the storytelling in combined inter-semiotic and -linguistic-based book and show. Through generic and aesthetic associations, Coppée fashioned his creation wishing to satisfy audiences’ expectations, still fed by Scottophilia, Ossiannophilia and Celtophilia. The entertaining poly-generic drama delivered didactic and cathartic messages at a time when France experienced several waves of political and social changes. G. Soubigou’s reflection on A. Duval’s 1802 Édouard en Écosse, ou la nuit d’un proscrit, ‘Et cette pièce de Korzebue était conçue comme un manifeste antirévolutionnaire et antinapoléonien’ (Soubigou 209), tempts us to think that Les Jacobites could well be a manifesto of another kind, a whistle blower at another time. As eye and conscience openers, both Coppée’s show and publication extended their cultural and entertaining functions.