The Shifting Stages of Sophie Gay’s Theater Career

Sophie Gay (1776–1852) is at once the most obvious and yet the most problematic of women writers of her time to treat in a study on humor and the French stage. Her career as a humorist and as a dramatist often garnered praise, but also evoked disdain and ire among critics and even politicians. Perhaps more than any other women treated in this study, she was both famous and notorious for her wit, which saturated her conversations at Parisian salons and other premier social gatherings.1 Indeed, wit was a desirable quality for a woman within the confines of a salon. She was allowed to demonstrate her intelligence within this limited environment, but was expected not to cross the threshold into the public sphere where her sharp intellect could upset the masculinist foundations of society. Yet Gay, like Bawr, transgressed, transposing her trademark salon wit into publicly staged comedy. She also gave considerable attention to the nature of humor itself as, to my knowledge, she is unique among women writers of her day in that she published a treatise on the nature of ridicule. This very aspect of humor would later emerge as central to the most iconic publications on humor of the century, namely, Charles Baudelaire’s De l’essence du rire (1855) and Henri Bergson’s Le rire (1900). In sum, no undertaking of her theatrical pursuits would be complete without a thorough discussion of her humor. However, displaying her sense of humor—both on stage and in her private life—on occasion, incurred harmful consequences.