The Dog of Montarges

Pixerecourt published Le Chien de Montargis in 1814, less than twenty years after the end of the French Revolution. An event of this magnitude comes with extreme cultural implications. The French Revolution is notable historically for its unprecedented, widespread, and extreme violence, and because of this the French culture adopted a new value for justice, law, and stability in the years following. Prominent themes in French culture in these following years were “the search for both stability and legitimacy through adopting the rule of law and the centrality of exceptional measures that violated the rule of law in order to defend and impose the republic” (Brown 11). Ironically, a new love for the law became a great ideal and rallying point of the revolution. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas heavily influenced the French Revolution, stated that “everything depended fundamentally on politics,” seeming to claim that “politics, rather than custom, morals, or religion, was the root of social life” (Hunt 1). This was a common ideal throughout the revolution, and part of the reason for the intense violence. People rallied behind this idea of equality and justice through law. They would no longer stand for what sociologist Max Weber would call Traditional Authority, in which they accepted orders from a king who claimed power from God and the oppressions of a class structure they could never escape simply because that was how it had always been done (Edles and Appelrouth). The logic and reason of the enlightenment prevailed and told them that the world functions through rules and laws, and they wanted these rules and laws to apply to everyone. This new culture that valued law, order, and justice was a perfect stage for melodramas. The people loved the idea that justice would always prevail, as well as the common plotpoint of physical and undeniable evidence being what condemns the villain figure. It is easy to see the reason for the success of melodramas following the French Revolution, as they almost always included “incessant struggle against enemies, without and within, branded as villains, suborners of morality, who must be confronted and expunged, over and over, to assure the triumph of virtue” (Brooks 15). The values of melodrama that grew out of enlightenment ideals ended up flourishing in the new French culture and contributed greatly to Pixerecourt’s tremendous success.

The plot is based on a legend from the 14th century, that survived in a letter from Julius Caesar Scaliger. According to the legend:

"A French courtier of King Charles V (1338–80), Aubry de Montdidier, was murdered c. 1371 in the forest of Bondy, north of Paris. The only witness to De Montdidier’s murder was his dog, which pursued the perpetrator until he was captured; the murderer was Robert Macaire. The king ordered that Macaire, armed with a stick, and the dog should fight a duel, which took place on the Isle de Notre Dame. The dog won: Macaire confessed and was hanged." (Pickeral 134)

The best-known version, allegedly by Michel de Montaigne, was recorded as a handwritten note in a copy of his Essais (Apology for Raimond de Sebond, livre II/12, where Plutarch quoted a story about the dog); but this is certainly a forgery.[4] Pixérécourt gives eight sources for its dramatisation, including Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye and Philippe-Auguste de Sainte-Foix.[5]

A statue of the fight is a landmark in the French community of Montargis.

The Dog of Montarges tells the story of a falsely accused mute and his acquittal. The play is part of a dramatic tradition known as melodrama, a genre that aims to connect with an audience at an emotional, visceral and sentimental level. A play in this tradition strives to show human emotions, and is therefore not given to subtlety in language or hidden ironies. It is also largely dependent on theatrical gestures that convey emotions that words cannot.

In the play, Dame Gertrude oversees an inn at which Eloi, Ursula and Bertrand work. They must entertain a group of soldiers (members of a higher class than that of the inn keepers) who have returned from battle. Upon the arrival of these soldiers, Colonel Gontram, Captain Aubri and the Lieutenants Macaire and Landry, the audience quickly learns that Aubri has been promoted to Captain and given the hand of the general's daughter in marriage. Macaire and Landry are jealous, and plot his downfall.

That night, in the Forest of Bondy, through which Aubri with his dog, Dragon, is passing to deliver a packet on behalf of the Colonel, Macaire and Landry attack and murder Aubri. They bury his body, confident that nobody witnessed the crime. Dragon runs away and Macaire and Landry flee the scene.

The next morning, Eloi, the mute worker at the inn who is betrothed to Ursula, is accused of the murder of Aubri because he (Eloi) is found with a pocketbook full of gold that belonged to Aubri. Aubri had, in fact, given this gold to Eloi so that Eloi could deliver it to Aubri's mother in Paris in the event that anything were to happen to Aubri during his dangerous night journey through Bondy. The circumstantial evidence is taken to prove Eloi's guilt, and Eloi, mute and unable to defend himself, is condemned to death.

A series of events then clears Eloi's name. A sash is found by the dog Dragon near Aubri's body in the Forest of Bondy that belongs to a member of the visiting regiment. Urusula concludes that whoever does not have a sash is the murderer. However, Macaire, to whom the sash belongs, takes another sash from the body of Aubri and uses it to feign his innocence. Finally, Ursula sees the sword in Macaire's scabbard. She takes it out and says that she gave the knot of thread tied around the sword to Aubri. Macaire, succumbing to his conscience, admits his guilt and is condemned to death. He incriminates Landry, who tries to escape, but is chased and mauled by Dragon.

The success of the theatrical version resulted from a trained dog with a silent role, which allowed a pantomime actor to portray the silent servant Eloi accused of murdering his master Aubry. He can defend himself, but due to his disability does not.[6]

In the end he needs help from Aubry's dog Dragon, which is also mute. The dramatisation does not end in a fight like the legend; the mythical narrative is replaced by a search for clues like a modern detective story. The dog is killed by Aubry's foes, but the murderer is recognized by using a belt with which he had tied the dog on the scene.

The name for the breed, Briard, is sometimes called Chien d'Aubry, so it is suggested that a trained Briard may have been used in the role of the dog in Pixérécourt's version.

For the first German performances, a Viennese actor named Karsten with his trained poodles was used.

This is the first instance in which we see a dog having a significant role in a play.

The dog playing the role of Dragon would be trained to ring a bell, go to certain areas of the stage on command, and perform other tricks that would please the audience and satisfy the plot.

This is an early indication of a shared discomfort of an innocent dog being killed, and interest in prevention of animal cruelty. New laws and royal decrees against animal cruelty were being passed, and by 1835, bullbaiting was outlawed. These patterns that begun with Pixerecourt’s play have continued throughout time.

From this show came the true domestication of dogs, and later other animals, holding people to a higher standard with their treatment of animals.

These revised versions often held variations of the title, “The Forrest of Bondy.”

Carl Friedrich Zelter wanted to offer the Berlin premiere something positive. At the instigation of actress Karoline Jagemann, the melodrama was performed at the Weimar court theatre of the Grand Duke Charles Augustus, in April 1817. Because Goethe's opposition to this performance was unsuccessful, he asked to be dismissed from the theatre.

The aristocratic fondness for dogs and horses stood in direct competition with civic education aspirations since the 18th century. The piece was parodied by Joachim Perinet (Dragon, der Hund des Aubry oder: Der Wienerwald, 1816) and Pius Alexander Wolff (Der Hund des Aubry. Posse in einem Aufzug, 1818). Goethe's departure from the theatre was in turn dramatised as Der Hund des Aubri. Ein Zeitbild (1869) by Albert Lindner.

1909 a silent movie was made by Georges Monca for Pathé after a script by Romain Coolus.

In 1943, a lecture by Gustaf Gründgens in front of the Nazi National Association of Artists promoted a nationalist, particularly anti-French, condemnation of the piece.

Adaptations of the play emerged in England in the 19th century due to Victorian society having a "shared discomfort with the idea of an innocent dog being killed." (Recarte)

• Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. 1976. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1995.
• Brown, Howard G. Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression From the Terror to Napoleon. University of Virginia Press, 2006.
• Edles, Laura Desfor, and Scott Appelrouth. “Max Weber’s Types of Traditional Authority.” Sociological Theory in the Classical Era, Third Edition.
• Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. University of California Press, 1984.
• Pickeral, Tamsin. The Spirit of the Dog an Illustrated History. Barron’s, 2012.
• Recarte, Claudia Alonso. "Canine Actors and Melodramatic Effects: The Dog of Montargis Arrives on the English Stage." Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 86 Automne (2017). https://journals.openedition.org/cve/3345#quotation.

Translator's note: These are in French and German.

• René de Pixérécourt: Le Chien de Montargis ou La Forêt de Bondy, Paris: Barba 1814
• Gustaf Gründgens: „Der Hund des Aubry“, in: Ders., Wirklichkeit des Theaters, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1953, S. 82–110
• Harald Wentzlaff-Eggebert: „Le Chien de Montargis“, in: Klaus Manger (Hrsg.): Goethe und die Weltkultur. Heidelberg: Winter 2003, S. 403–424. ISBN 3-8253-1499-5

• Samantha Hardy: The Text of Muteness in Personal Injury Litigation

Translator's note: These are in French.