Notes
Got: Edmond Got (1822–1901), doyen of the Comédie-Française for fifty years, celebrated for comic roles. Marie's disappointment is pointed: he was the most distinguished actor available for the role, and she finds him inadequate. ↩
Coquelin: Benoît-Constant Coquelin (1841–1909), known as Coquelin aîné, generally considered the finest French comic actor of his generation and later the originator of Cyrano de Bergerac (1897). Marie's suggestion that he would have made a perfect Triboulet shows her theatrical discernment. ↩
Saint-Vallier: in Hugo's play, the Comte de Saint-Vallier, whose daughter Blanche has been dishonoured by King François I. His solemn public curse upon the jester Triboulet who helped arrange the seduction is the pivot of the plot. ↩
A bock: a glass of bock beer — the quintessential offhand order at a Paris café, requiring no emotion, no urgency. Marie's comparison is devastatingly precise. ↩
Les Mères ennemies (Enemy Mothers): a play by Catulle Mendès, staged at the Odéon in 1882. Sarah: Sarah Bernhardt, whose Parisian first nights were social events of the first magnitude. ↩