Program Notes

It is important for the audience to note that the events in “Quills” are not historically accurate, while the Marquis de Sade did indeed reside at Charenton Asylum under care of the Abbe de Coulmier, the graphic torture in the play did not actually take place in real life. The fact that the playwright, has taken a creative license with history is no matter since “Quills” is not meant as an accurate portrayal of the Marquis time at Charenton Asylum, but rather is a portrayal of the injustices of censorship. The Marquis persecution by the controlling regime is not simply due to the sexually explicit subject matter of his novels but more so the depiction of corruption within the clergy, the legal system, and conjointly those in positions of power. The Marquis propagated his ideas on the subjectivity of virtue and vice through his novels, focusing on the evils of absolutism whether for good or evil. A true libertine the Marquis rejected traditional views, preferring passion over consequence and viewing nature as the only true ruler of man.

Historically the Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat and salacious author but there are few historical difference from the play. First of all by 1807, the year the play takes place, Renee Pelagie and the Marquis had already divorced and the Marquis had re married an actress who was allowed to live with him at Charenton Asylum during his second incarceration in 1803. The only harsh treatment of the Marquis at Charenton on record was under the Abbe de Coulmier, who was forced to put the Marquis in solitary confinement in 1809 as well as deny him parchment paper and quills, due to an police order that had been issued. Napoleon, who had gained control of the government by means of coup d’état becoming a militaristic dictator and eventually crowned himself emperor in 1804. Had risen to power through the coup of 18 and established the consulate which he ruled till restoration of the Bourbons’ in 1814. He enforced strict censorship, forcing all printers and booksellers to swear an oath of allegiance to him and all newspapers fell under his control. This display of Napoleons’ tight control of all reading materials and information available to the French people makes the Marquis defiance all the more notorious. Napoleon ordered the immediate arrest for the author of “Justine” which was published anonymously in 1803, the Marquis had boldly addressed a copy of the novel to Napoleon, further provoking his wrath. Thus giving insight to Napoleons’ motivation to keep the Marquis confined to Charenton Asylum in order to extinguish his writing as well as means of punishment for his insubordination.

The questions raised by “Quills” on censorship are just as much of an hot issue today as they were in the Marquis time. We are left to contemplate who is indeed responsible for Madeline Leclerc’s demise, the Lunatic who physically committed the act or the Marquis, whose words incited the riot? No less riveting is the blurred lines between good and evil, as the Marquis moves from purveyor of depravity to unlikely martyr, and the Abbe from irreproachably pure to radically violent. The extreme lengths the Doctor Royer Collard and the Abbe de Coulmier go to suppress the Marquis only serves as a dark warning on the treacherousness of inflicting radical procedures in the name of the greater good. The irony of the self righteous Doctor Royer-Collard ordering the Abbe de Coulmier to execute the gross atrocities that befall the Marquis simply because of his writing is hypocritical to say the least. Especially when one considers that the Marquis is being persecuted for putting ideas on paper and that his persecutors are actively inflicting forms of punishment that are depraved in nature, the very same offense (depravity) they see in the Marquis writing. Even more disparaging is the Doctors lack of accountability when his actions finally catch up with him, he manages to slither out of blame unscathed, simply washing his hands of the matter and citing the dispirited Abbe whose realization of his own actions has left him shaken to the core. The play is intended to leave the audience with questions on the supposed roles of good and evil and the roles censorship plays within our society. Simply put, who is more evil, those who purvey immoral ideas or those who attempt to censor those ideas at all cost?