The Masons and the Mysteries in 18th Century Drama

Three Masonic Comedies: Pierre Clément, Les Fri-maçons; Carlo Goldoni, Le Donne Curiose; Francesco Griselini, I Liberi Muratori

Matthew Leigh

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783110676358
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The fathers of modern freemasonry sought a classical pedigree for their rituals and forms of association. This volume offers the first academic study of how freemasons writing in the first half of the 18th century deployed their knowledge of antiquity to bolster this claim and how the creative literature of the period reflected their ideas. The scholarly investigation of freemasonry is a relatively new phenomenon. The writings of active freemasons tend either to generate new masonic myths or to focus on the minutiae of insignia, rank, and ritual. Only in the last 50 years have non-masons given serious thought to freemasonry as a social practice and to its place within the intellectual and political life of Enlightenment Europe and beyond. Study of masonic elements in literary texts lags much further behind. This volume offers the first English translations of three mid-18th century comedies on female curiosity about this exclusively male order and shows how they reflect contemporary attempts to forge a link with ancient mystery cult. The theatrical aspect of masonic ritual and the ancient mysteries is examined in depth. This volume opens up important new ground in classical reception and 18th century theatre history.

1The Masons and the Mysteries in 18th Century Thought and Drama

1.1Introduction

The three plays translated in this volume were all composed between the years 1737 and 1754. Each engages either implicitly or explicitly with the institution of freemasonry and turns on the efforts of the female characters to penetrate an order from which they are excluded by reason of their sex. Throughout there is reference to the mysterious, the arcane, and the secret, and the passion driving the women forward is an intense curiosity. Taken together, therefore, these works offer a fascinating window onto the craze for freemasonry that spread from Britain across Europe and into the colonies in the years after the formation of the London Grand Lodge in 1717. Yet they also testify to the vitality of an ancient idea. For the language of mystery and secrecy calls to mind the ancient phenomenon of mystery cults, and the learned and imaginative writers of the period in which the plays were composed took pride in inventing a heritage for their order that reached right back to the mysteries of the Greco-Roman world and beyond. This introduction therefore seeks not only to discuss the three plays in relation to freemasonry, but also freemasonry in relation to the ancient mysteries. In doing so it will also consider how analogies can be drawn between freemasonry and the mysteries and will finally suggest how the study of 18th century masonic drama can contribute to our understanding of ancient tragedies centred on the mysteries.

The 18th century produced a rich variety of creative responses to freemasonry and its mysteries. The most famous example of this phenomenon is Mozart’s 1791 opera, The Magic Flute, but in 1762 Glück had already done much the same in his Orfeo ed Euridice.1 This volume turns instead to the comic stage and translates three works that may profitably be read as variations on a theme: Pierre Clément’s Les Fri-Maçons (1737), Carlo Goldoni’s Le Donne Curiose (1753), and Francesco Griselini’s I Liberi Muratori (1754).2

Of the three authors in this volume, Carlo Goldoni is comfortably the most famous as a dramatist. The great reformer of the Italian comic theatre, he contested the domination of the Commedia dell’arte and created a new mode centred around the lives of the mercantile class of Northern Italy in general and Venice in particular. As in Le Donne Curiose, many of his plays feature an interchange between characters speaking Italian and others speaking Venetian dialect.3 Goldoni’s enormous oeuvre is a staple of the stagione di prosa in Italian theatres and Le Donne Curiose is regularly revived. In Britain, by contrast, while plays such as The Servant of Two Masters and The Venetian Twins are regularly performed, and the former enjoyed huge success in the West End and on Broadway in the form of Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors, Le Donne Curiose has hitherto remained untranslated and largely unobserved.4 If it is known at all, it is as the inspiration for Wolf Ermanno Ferrari’s 1903 comic opera of the same title.

Goldoni composed Le Donne Curiose for the Medebach Company at the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice. Its first performance coincided with Carnival in 1753.5 The performance history of both Les Fri-Maçons and I Liberi Muratori is less than extensive. The frontispiece to the 1740 London edition of the former claims that it had been scheduled to be staged by actors of the Comédie Française in 1737 only for events of that year to make this impossible. The play did, however, form the basis of Friedrich Schröder’s Die Freymaurer, which enjoyed considerable success when first staged at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1784. The only known staging of I Liberi Muratori was in Vicenza in 1769.6 It would, however, be wrong to assume on this basis that either work is devoid of dramatic quality, let alone of singular interest as witnesses to a vibrant contemporary phenomenon.7 For the popularity of the theme, one may also note two other works of the period: the 1744 puppet-show Polichinelle, Maître Maçon and the 1755 parody Les Fra-maçonnes. Though both are relatively slight works, they testify to the obsession with female curiosity about the masonic mysteries, and Les Fra-maçonnes has been related to the emergence in France of masonic lodges in which women were admitted (loges d’adoption).8 Claims have also been made for the performance as early as 1728 of a further Italian play called I Franchi Muratori, but this turns out to be a phantom.9

The three plays translated here come across as variations on a theme. Before exploring the dimensions and significance of that theme, it will therefore be of value to offer a brief summary of the plot of each work.

The central character of Les Fri-Maçons is Lucile, ‘an extremely curious young widow’, and the object of her curiosity is the freemasons’ secret. Through the course of the play Lucile is courted by Mondor, who, though he became a freemason but a few days before, has already been elected Grand-Master of his lodge, and the foolish Clitandre, who seeks to become a Mason in order to be able to reveal the secret to Lucile and thus win her hand.10 Unlike his manservant, L’Eveillé, Clitandre is markedly unsuccessful in this effort. More enterprising is Lucile’s servant, Mariane, who comes very close to entering the lodge disguised as a young man aspiring to initiation. Before her disguise is penetrated, she receives admirable advice from Mondor on how to behave towards women; when Léandre reveals that she is indeed a woman, Mondor treats her with considerable generosity and exacts no punishment. Impressed by the determination with which he guards his secret and by his good conduct towards her maidservant, Lucile finally reveals a secret of her own: that she has chosen to accept Mondor’s offer of marriage. The play closes with a chorus of Masons singing of their good qualities and eligibility as husbands.

Though there is no evidence that Goldoni was familiar with Clément’s play, his comedy follows a very similar dramatic arc. Set in Bologna it concerns the determination of a group of women to penetrate the secrets of an all-male club frequented by their various husbands and fiancés and owned by the Venetian merchant Signor Pantalone de’ Bisognosi. The play opens inside the club: two members play draughts, but not for stakes; one reads; one just sits there. In the course of the drama we discover that they come there to enjoy good conversation, to philosophise, to eat, and to escape the women in their lives.11 Yet by their refusal to open up what goes on behind closed doors they allow the women to feed on anxiety: Beatrice is convinced that they are gambling; Eleonora that they are engaged in alchemy; Rosaura that they are passing their time with other women; and Corallina the maid that there is treasure buried within. When finally the women are let into the building by Brighella, the servant of the proprietor, and are allowed to look through the keyhole at the inner room in which the men are meeting, they all press so hard against the door that it bursts open. For all their fears, they discover that the men are doing no more than enjoying a good meal together. Only at this point are the two sexes reconciled and the women able to accept that their fears are without grounds.

The plot of Francesco Griselini’s I Liberi Muratori contains many of the same key elements as the plays of Clément and Goldoni. The central figure is Procopio, who is both the newly elected Grand-Master of a masonic lodge and the father of two highly inquisitive daughters, Bellisa and Lucilla. As the play begins, the former is in conversation with her maid, Marinetta, who reports how, the night before, she overheard Procopio in conversation in his study and, impelled by curiosity, went up to the door and listened in. Now she knows that he is a freemason and on the verge of being installed as Grand-Master of his lodge. Another member of the lodge is Erasto, suitor of Lucilla, and Marinetta reveals in the same scene that Lucilla is putting her lover under pressure to expose the masonic secret to her. There ensues an intense rivalry between the two sisters with Marinetta siding now with the one, now the other. The lodge itself is next door to the family house and joined by a connecting wall, and the action of the play takes place in these two buildings and in the street outside. Bellisa’s first idea is to make a hole in the wall and to spy on the men as they meet, but Marinetta discourages this plan. As the play develops, Lucilla continues to seek information on the masons first from Erasto, then from his rival, Dorante, while Bellisa must endure the advances of the buffoonish Conte di Poltronico, who promises to provide the enlightenment that she seeks. Neither sister, however, is satisfied in her desires: Erasto is a mason but declines to reveal the secret; Dorante has himself admitted to the order alongside his servant, Sganarello, but is humiliated to discover that the only secret is that there is none, and that the best that he can do is to join his fellow masons in deceiving others and thus getting them to pay for the costs of dinner; the Conte di Poltronico falsely proclaims himself a mason and is exposed as a liar. It is finally down to the resourceful maid, Marinetta, to acquire a copy of the key to the lodge and to ensure that the women and the Count gain entry. When they are discovered, the Count receives the standard punishment inflicted on those who infiltrate the order, while Erasto offers both to marry Lucilla and to take both sisters away to live with him in Venice. Procopio accepts this resolution, which is both clement towards his daughters and rescues the order from profanation; as a matter of security, however, he arranges to change the location of the lodge.

It should be apparent from these summaries quite how much these plays have in common in terms of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface to Three Masonic Comedies
• Contents
• Abbreviations for Texts and Sources
• 1 The Masons and the Mysteries in 18th Century Thought and Drama
• 2 Pierre Clément, Les Fri-Maçons
• 3 Carlo Goldoni, Le Donne Curiose
• 4 Francesco Griselini, I Liberi Muratori
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index for Three Masonic Comedies