One of the best plays of cult author Mishima Yukio is Madame de Sade (Sado Koshaku Fujin, 1965), based on the life of Renée de Sade, the wife of the notorious Marquis de Sade ("Alphonse" in the play). It details the struggles of Renée, her family, and acquaintances during the various periods of incarceration of the marquis. Madame de Sade has an all-female cast. Mishima employed the Racinian convention of the tirade to express the conflicting personalities of the characters, each embodying an aspect of French society of the late 18th c.
[Marquise de Sade]
Mishima was motivated to write the piece when he read De Sades' biography
and wondered why Renée waited to leave him until her husband was
finally released from prison. He gave his own interpretation of her motivation in the present play. Another inspiration was his friend Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, who translated De Sade's novel Juliette into
Japanese in 1960 and wrote a biography about De Sade in 1964. Shibusawa's explicit translation became the focus of a high-profile court
case known as "The Sade Case", which was decided in
1969 in Shibusawa's disadvantage.
According to Mishima, each of the six characters is symbolic of a type
of human nature:
- Renée, protagonist and wife of the Marquis de Sade: she represents (extreme) conjugal devotion.
- Madame de Montreuil, Renée's mother: she represents the law, society and morality.
- Anne, Renée's younger sister: she represents feminine innocence and lack of principle.
- Baroness de Simiane: she represents religion.
- Countess de Saint-Fond: she represents instincts and lust for the flesh.
- Charlotte, housekeeper of Madame de Montreuil: she represents the common people.
A few words about the historical Renée de Sade (1741-1810), born de Montreuil. The marriage with De Sade came about as an agreement between both families. Renée de Montreuil was the oldest daughter of a recently ennobled judge in Paris, who in this way forged a connection with the higher aristocracy and royalty. She turned out to be tenaciously loyal, despite constant
provocations from her husband. But what the marriage brought De Sade, above
all else, was a very formidable mother-in-law, who much influenced the future course of his life.
Renée would follow her husband through the different jails in which he was
locked up. In 1763, only a few months after the wedding ceremony, De Sade was arrested
in Paris and thrown into prison at the fortress of Vincennes; Mme. de Montreuil got him released after just 15 days in prison.
In 1772, De Sade traveled to Marseilles where he committed various forbidden acts with four prostitutes and his manservant, Latour. The prostitutes accused him of poisoning (he had given them candy containing an aphrodisiac). The two men were sentenced to death in absentia. They fled to Italy, Sade taking his wife's sister with him. Renée remained in Marseilles, taking charge of his defense. She also paid
the women to withdraw their complaint; her father gave her money to
cover the expenses. Sade and Latour were caught and imprisoned at the Fortress of Miolans in French Savoy in late 1772, but escaped four months later.
Renée also remained with her husband during the long confinement in the
Keep of Vincennes (1778-1788) and in La Bastille (1789), and only separated from him once
he gained his freedom in after the Revolution in 1789. (After that, the Sade would again be locked up from 1803 until his death in 1814, but by then the marriage was over).
In the play, three of the characters, except Renée, her mother and sister, are fictional. The most important personality, Marquis de Sade, does not
appear physically in the play.
The play takes place in three acts:
- The first act takes place in the autumn of 1772.
- The second act six years later, in September 1778.
- The final act twelve years later, in April 1790.
In each of the three acts, the stage is a literary salon in the
residence of Madame de Montreuil in Paris. As history
progresses, the decorations and trinkets in the salon become rarer. This
can mainly be explained by the French Revolution and the gradual dispossession of the nobility.
It is clear that in the first two acts of this play De Sade is regarded as a role model by Mishima. Mishima applauded the fact that the marquis bridged the gap between passive intellectualism and action. De Sade had been brave enough to carry out his fantasies - fantasies we also find in Mishima's work, starting with Confessions of a Mask. But in prison, De Sade can only write about his fantasies, he can not act them out anymore. So he degenerates into his counterpoint, and therefore Renée eventually rejects her husband. Instead of dying a hero's death, he has been unsuccesful in fulfilling his fucntion and therefore must be punished.
Madame de Sade was a huge success internationally and is still performed
all over the world, especially in France.
Although perhaps mainly famous as novelist, especially outside Japan, Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was one of the greatest 20th c. Japanese playwrights. He wrote a total of 62 plays in such diverse genres as shingeki (Western-style psychological drama, like the present one), kabuki and noh. He wrote tragedies, comedies and dance drama, his language ranging from classical Japanese to the modern vernacular. For more information, see my post about Mishima on Stage, a collection of his (other) plays. Also see my post about Mishima's greatest novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade, translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene (Tuttle Books, 1971, reprinted several times )
Ingmar Bergman staged the play at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1989 with Stina Ekblad as the main character Renée, Marie Richardson as her sister and Anita Björk as their mother. The director made a TV-version of the setting in 1992.