Synopsis & thematic overview
Madame Aubin, written by Paul Verlaine and surfacing in print around 1896, is a compact one-act whose density of incident is part of its argument: everything has to happen quickly because, in life, it usually does. The play belongs squarely to the world of Romantic Drama, both in the staging conventions it presupposes and in the kinds of social pressure its characters take for granted, and it has retained a steady place in the repertoire because it solves a problem every generation of theatre-makers eventually has to solve: how to make a familiar form do something unfamiliar.
Thematically, Madame Aubin sits at the intersection of the personal and the public — which is, as theatre artists know, the only place a play can actually live. Paul Verlaine's long-term subject is the gap between the version of themselves people present in company and the version that surfaces under pressure, and Madame Aubin works that subject hard. The central encounters are written so that what each character says is often the opposite of what they mean; it is the actor's job, and the audience's pleasure, to track both registers at once. Read on the page, the script can feel quieter than it actually plays, because the language carries an enormous quantity of subtext that only becomes audible when bodies are moved through three-dimensional space.
The play is built as a continuous action without traditional act breaks, a structural choice that keeps the pressure on the protagonists and on the audience together. The text rewards close reading: hidden inside scenes that look at first like exposition are the play's most consequential decisions, made in passing by characters who do not yet realise what they have just done. By the close, Madame Aubin has earned its ending the hard way — not by manufacturing surprise but by laying down enough small-scale pressure that the final pages carry the weight of everything that came before.
Themes & thematic analysis
The thematic centre of Madame Aubin is most often described in terms of the single decision that organises a life, the room as moral pressure-cooker, the late-night confession, and what a person will do when they are no longer being observed, but a closer reading shows Paul Verlaine doing something subtler: the play's overt subjects keep being refracted through the small-scale behaviour of characters who would be startled to hear themselves described as themed. That is part of the script's durability. Productions that try to put the themes on top tend to flatten the play; productions that trust the script to do its work — that let the actors play the scene as written, beat by beat — tend to discover that the themes arrive on their own, in the audience's chest, somewhere around the middle of the second half. A useful classroom exercise is to read three consecutive scenes asking only, of each, what does this character want in this exact moment, and how is that want frustrated. The thematic argument of Madame Aubin is the cumulative answer to those two small questions.
Notable productions & performance history
Performance history for Madame Aubin is, like the performance history of most public-domain plays, considerably richer than the surviving programmes alone suggest. The script entered general circulation during Romantic Drama, was revived intermittently throughout the nineteenth century, and re-entered the working repertoire of regional and academic theatres in the modern era when directors looking for substantial public-domain material with strong roles found it ready to hand. Notable revivals tend to cluster around two kinds of company: drama-school graduating-year productions, where the script gives every member of the ensemble something genuinely playable, and small professional companies that program one classical title a season as a counterweight to contemporary new work. Paul Verlaine has, in the last fifty years, been served particularly well by productions that resist the temptation to update the language while updating everything else — the costume, the set, the framing concept — and by productions that go in the opposite direction and stage the play as if for its first audience. Both can work. What rarely works is doing only half the job.
The full script
Reading time: ~11 minutes · 2,108 words · Source: Project Gutenberg #4661 | Original on Project Gutenberg ↗
Produced by Dagny and Frank J. Morlock
This Etext is for private use only. No republication for profit in
print or other media may be made without the express consent of the
Copyright Holder. The Copyright Holder is especially concerned about
performance rights in any media on stage, cinema, or television, or
audio or any other media, including readings for which an entrance fee
or the like is charge. Permissions should be addressed to: Frank
Morlock, 6006 Greenbelt Rd, #312, Greenbelt, MD 20770, USA or
frankmorlock@msn.com. Other works by this author may be found at
http://www.cadytech.com/dumas/personnage.asp?key=130
MADAME AUBIN
a play in one act and in prose
by Verlaine, 1895
Translated and adapted by Frank J. Morlock
Characters:
A Servant
Aubin
Madame Marie Aubin
Peltier
An Officer
The action takes place in the room of a hotel.
PELTIER (to a servant who is leaving)
That's fine. We'll ring when we need you.
(to Marie)
A day and a night of rest, my darling, right? After which we'll leave,
crossing Switzerland for Brindisi without any stop and reach the
Orient as it was agreed.
MARIE
It was agreed?
PELTIER
Eh! Yes.
MARIE
It's true. Indeed, as you like.
PELTIER
What do you mean? Since you approve, I'm going to peruse the train
schedule. You'll allow me.
MARIE
My God, yes.
(A short pause during which Marie looks at her ring and munches on a
cake she has taken from a gold comfit box.)
PELTIER (after having written some notes in pencil)
There. At noon tomorrow we'll take the Express and we'll stop wherever
you like. Look. (offering Marie his notes)
MARIE
My friend, you are perfect. I'm going to think it over. Would you
listen to me for a moment to discuss something else?
PELTIER
Speak my darling.
MARIE
I want to call a halt to our adventure here.
PELTIER
I don't understand.
MARIE
Don't interrupt me. What we are doing is crazy. It's not ridiculous,
it's crazy. We will be far less happy than we were there. And it truly
required all the influence of your charming character and the
persuasion of your frankness (offering him her hand which he holds and
keeps) to make me take this enormous step. It's no longer time, I know
or rather I suspect, to go back on such an impulse, but after all,
what do you want? And I am in despair after all this bravura which
decided me, sustained me, swept me off my feet during this long
journey from Paris to this chancy place. Ah, I'm afraid.
PELTIER (overwhelmed by surprise rather than skeptical and resolved as
he had appeared up until now.)
Afraid of whom and what? (he lets Marie's hand fall and crosses his
arms waiting to hear more)
MARIE
Of the past, first of all. Fear! Remorse because of the past. And
certainly my husband doesn't deserve all this outrage. He's a man with
faults, surely, even vices, perhaps. But he's honorable and even
righteous. And now I think of it these quarrels between him and me
must rather proceed from me, spoiled child and over-free young girl
that I was before my marriage with this honest, with this gallant man.
PELTIER
Let's leave Aubin out of this. In the end what do you mean and what do
you want me to do? Return to Paris and your abandoned household?
MARIE
I don't know yet. But don't interrupt me every minute and you will be
of my opinion. No. My husband ought not to have to endure these things
on his honor and his name. And it's true I am afraid of the past. I'm
afraid of the future, too. Or rather, no. It's the present which
frightens me, sir! For the future, I'll answer for it. And it will
conform to the vows of my finally reawakened conscience.
PELTIER (who has a mounting rage within him and feels himself provoked
to the last degree)
Explain yourself? Are you joking or not? I want to understand you.
MARIE
Sir, you have no right to speak to me like this!
(Peltier advances like a man who has the right his interlocutor is
speaking of or believes he's going to have it.)
MARIE
And I will never give it to you.
PELTIER
Madame.
MARIE
Do you hear, sir?
(The two stiffen and look each other in the face. A silence.)
PELTIER
Then why did you come with me of your own free will, or even on your
own initiative?
MARIE (who's settled down)
What do you want? I've changed my mind.
PELTIER (very cold and speaking through his teeth)
Fine. You've tricked me! At this point I'm not a young man. No one
makes a fool of me! For, my darling, I don't think that a caprice of
yours, such a sudden turnabout, such a flash of virtue--
MARIE
Don't use that word virtue any more. It is terrible to my ears. I was
telling you just now that I've something like fear of the present.
Yes, fear to remain here this way. But I was in the process of adding
that the present doesn't terrify me. It was then that you shrieked out
at the moment I was going to explain to you how I intended to confide
myself to your honor to allow me to decide in peace. And you got so
carried away that you irritated me, too. And you just said things to
me! A caprice? me, at my age; twenty-eight years old! A flash of
conscience. Yes, that's it. Believe it.
PELTIER
But what role is it you wish me to play in all this? You, you are at
the same time reasonable, then illogical and me? as for me?
MARIE
Your role? All sketched out. Let me do it all. That would be
chivalrous and fine.
PELTIER
But I love you, why--
MARIE
And me, too, I love you and I say to you: Can't we love each other
without all this? (scornful gesture) without all this? (disdainful
gesture)
PELTIER
Ah! We are there. A virgin arises in you when through you a satyr is
rising in me. (grabbing her by the waist) And towards you--
MARIE (who soon gets free)
Look, let's be serious.
(Peltier, who importunes a long explanation sits with bowed head; one
hand on the back of a chair, the other playing with his watch chain.)
MARIE
What is it you risk? You, a man, a bachelor by this pleasant voyage?
Nothing. A duel perhaps on return! In this illogical world we live in
your reputation will be far from damaged; a world which dislikes
adultery in a woman and is passionately fond of all the gallant sins
of a fashionable man. Whereas I?!! And yet it's only quite natural and
especially on the brink of a final resolution, I hesitate and jump
back. Must you be angry about it? Look, are you angry? can you be?
ought you to be?
PELTIER (as if unexpectedly released and decided, peremptory, brief,
confident)
Questions! Questions! In my turn I will say to you: Let's be serious.
Admit it: You encouraged me to do this thing. And exactly as you say
it was quite natural for me to undertake it, and still is; I concur in
your reasoning, and will pursue it like a fashionable man or
otherwise!
(Marie recoils abruptly. Peltier takes a step forward.)
PELTIER
And I am going to prove it to you!
MARIE (rigid and henceforth not giving an inch)
Fie!
PELTIER
You are going to see.
(Aubin abruptly opens the door and appears.)
AUBIN (addressing himself exclusively to Peltier)
Yes, it's I, the one you didn't expect. No need to tell you how I
caught wind of your plot and was able to overtake you so soon. The
essential thing is that four officers from the garrison are indeed
willing to serve as seconds and are awaiting us in a nearby woods
with swords and pistols as you please even though I have indeed the
right to choose the weapons.
PELTIER
I'll come with you.
AUBIN (to his wife, aloud, taking her hand which he kisses)
You, Marie, await me here--dead or alive. Do you understand me, my
pretty?
(Aubin and Peltier leave)
MARIE
What an affair! Am I really dreaming in the end. (throwing herself on
a sofa which might soon have become dangerous) A little order in my
thoughts. (pressing her fingers to her forehead) There. There.--Yes,
what I was telling Mr. Peltier is still true. I was a spoiled child
when Aubin took me. He spoiled me, too. I became accustomed to
prolonging my childhood and my youth in the married state. I was
willful, demanding, capricious. At the beginning my husband found this
charming, then he tired of it. Quarrels, harshness on his part, on
mine sulks. Seven years later Peltier appeared. A charming man,
surely. But less so than Aubin, now that I see things clearly. And at
bottom, this stupid departure is still more my fault than his. A
moment of feminine scorn which with our mores a man is praised for
profiting from. I couldn't hold it against him just now for wanting
what was implied by our innocent prank and a little fortitude helped
me confine it to its character of folly and nothing more. But what?
While I tell myself these things, two likable men who both love me,
and of which I decidedly prefer one, my husband, are fighting over me.
O Mercy! Just as if I were a young girl. And indeed! O punishment! Me!
Me! What anguish and what a situation! And the future! During these
sweet words with Aubin just now. I've the great misery of waiting for
him or the other one. All the same, I've resisted. And there was a
moment when I had some merit. But this trip! And this waiting! My God,
you in whom one must believe despite all the opinions of folks these
days, My God--have pity on me in my misery! (long silence during which
she remains prostrated.)
AUBIN (enters, wounded in the shoulder, supported by an Officer)
It's over. Madame Aubin, I present you one of my seconds.
(To the officer)
Sir?
OFFICER (bowing before Marie)
Count de Givors.
AUBIN
Count de Givors, I present you my wife.
MARIE (who, since her husband's entrance has had eyes only for him,
mechanically)
Sir. (leaping after a fashion on his neck) Ah, my friend. Why, why,
you are wounded.
AUBIN
It's nothing. A bullet that they'll quickly extract from me. And then,
right? as soon as my wound is dressed on our way to Paris? By the way,
you know, Peltier has nothing.
MARIE (literally superb)
Who cares?
(Silence)
AUBIN (immensely joyful)
Huh?
OFFICER (to both)
Excuse me. (he withdraws after having bowed, escorted out by both)
AUBIN (to his wife)
Explain yourself, Marie.
(Peltier enters)
MARIE (to Peltier)
Sir. Say if you have ever had the right to call yourself my lover?
PELTIER
On my oath as an honest and gallant man which my return to this room
confirms: Aubin, I swear No. This departure was a delirium from which
Madame awakened first, pure and invincible. Invincible because I
wanted to have the last word and she had it; and that was a no not to
be misunderstood.
AUBIN*
Indeed, each has fulfilled his duty here. I, after your folly rushed
to get back my wife and to forgive her after a duel. You, Marie,
having remained a good spouse. And I will answer to you that the
misunderstandings which serve to excuse you, are dead forever. How
happy we are going to be. And you, Peltier, what need is there for an
explanation? Given our civilization's disapproval of your attempt to
do me out of my wife, as for me, I'd bear you a grudge, too, if this
bullet weren't in my shoulder. Now this is it: we'll return after my
scratch is dressed. Naturally we will be some while without seeing you
again, Peltier. Aren't you on a trip?
(to Peltier)
And your hand.
(curtain)
* Translator's note. This final speech reads a little strangely and not
just in translation because the idea behind it is a little strange.
Aubin's idea is something like this: "The world condemns you, Peltier,
for tampering with my wife, and I would too, but for the fact you've put
a bullet in my shoulder which proves you're a man of honor, etc." I don't
feel justified in incorporating the explanatory material into the text so
the best I can do is offer this footnote.
About this edition
This edition of Madame Aubin reproduces the public-domain text as preserved in Project Gutenberg's archive, presented in a clean reading layout suitable for study, audition preparation, dramaturgical research, and rehearsal-room reference. The play sits within the tradition of Romantic Drama drama, and reading it alongside other works from the period — many of which are also available in our library — is the fastest way to appreciate what Paul Verlaine was doing differently. We have not abridged or modernised the text; the only editorial intervention is the removal of Project Gutenberg's header and footer matter so you can read the script itself without scrolling past licensing boilerplate. Where the original publication uses non-modern spelling or punctuation conventions, those are preserved as printed.
Notes for performance
If you are mounting Madame Aubin in production, two practical notes. First, because the text is in the public domain, you can perform it in any venue, charge admission, cut it, translate it, set it on Mars, or stage it as a one-actor solo show without paying royalties or seeking permission from anyone. Second, because the text comes from a digitised public-domain edition rather than an officially licensed acting edition, expect to do your own line-editing pass before rehearsals begin: act and scene divisions are present, but stage directions reflect the conventions of the original publication rather than modern practice. Most companies producing Paul Verlaine budget a week of dramaturgy time before the first read-through to harmonise the text with their production concept.