This whole essay is essentially moot, since Alain Boublil &
Claude-Michel Schonberg rewrote their musical, but the recording is still out
there, so I’m still allowed to reflect upon it. J
The characters of the story of Martin Guerre are quite detestable,
overall, and it’s probably because of the historical conflict of the trial of
Martin Guerre. Since no one alive today
truly knows why Arnaud du Tihl
decided to claim someone else’s life & wife, all we can do is speculate and
recreate stories that will sell.
In the musical version, they did this by creating high drama and high
romance. They play on the idea that
Martin was needed, respected, and in many ways revered by his village, but was
taunted when he refused to sleep with his wife. He claimed that they were “both too young” for that kind of
action. Martin is portrayed as an
innocent who just isn’t interested in what his life has to offer. He is tormented by a boy (Guillaume) who despised
him, and by the priest and the villagers of Artigat. So he runs away, damning the village to hell and declaring that
he’ll come back a different man. He
goes to fight in the war. (I want to say it’s a war against Spain, but I think
that’s the actual history rather than
the plot of the show…)
·
Are his actions understandable?
Certainly. He is feeling like
his life is controlled by his uncle and the townspeople, and he wants to
control his own destiny. He is
ostracized by the village (“All the insults and the names/The kicks, the
tricks, the vicious games…”) and wants to be more than just the heir to the
Guerre family lands.
·
Was it right to leave without telling Bertrande? No. This was where I think Martin made a huge
mistake. His young wife was trying to have a happy marriage. She seemed to fancy herself in love with
him. And he abandoned her. Not cool.
·
Should he expect things to be better when he finally returns? No.
Certainly not. Especially since
it takes more than eight years for him to get back to her. (granted, running
away to war in the 1500s isn’t exactly like a year-long tour of the 20th
c. wars. Also, he was injured very
badly for at least one of those years…)
·
Does he learn? Yes. When he comes back, after all of the warring
he’s seen between Protestants and Catholics, he helps to bring the villagers
back together after the two sects turn against one another. He helps make the town realize that the land
and their dedication to it is what’s important, and that they need to set their
religious differences aside.
·
Does it work? No. The Protestants leave (despite the fact that
the Catholics are literally begging them to stay) and Betrande leaves with
them. (but at least the people give up their suspicions that the lack of a
Guerre-heir is what’s causing the bad crop!)
·
What about Arnaud? When he
discovers that his best war buddy is living with his wife, he displays little
anger. In fact, when the angry Catholic mob goes to fight the Protestants,
Martin goes to the jail in order to free Arnaud, realizing that Arnaud’s &
Bertrande’s love is strong, and that they genuinely believed him to be dead.
Bertrande is a sympathetic character to whom the audience can
relate. In the first scene she is
optimistically looking forward to her wedding to the young and handsome Martin,
wondering why he chose her. (Of course, she is
the most beautiful girl in the village, and her eventual child will inherit
a great amount of land that is in danger of going to her Protestant
relatives.) But when the poor, cruel
Guillaume offers his love to her, she spurns him (intensifying his hatred of
Martin, in fact). Yet overall she is a nice person, who treats Benoit (the
village idiot) nicely, and then suffers for eight years while Martin is
gone. When he suddenly reappears, she
knows it is not the real Martin. But
she has been “offerred” to Guillaume, and now that “Martin” has returned, she
won’t have to marry someone she despises.
So she begs him to stay, and inevitably falls in love with him.
·
Was it right for Bertrande to ask Arnaud to stay? Yes and no.
He witnessed Martin’s “death” and has no reason to think Martin is
coming back. Therefore, in the eyes of
God, Bertrande has no reason to refuse his affection. On the other hand, they are not married, and they are lying to
the entire village.
·
What about Betrande’s sudden change of faith? Well, it doesn’t seem to have any kind of impact on her
character… I mean, she still lies to the entire village. She had been completely ostracized during
Martin’s absence, blamed for the droughts and such because they had not given
the family an heir. So it’s quite
natural for her to leave the Church that supported this action. However, it doesn’t change her personality,
except that she is more judgemental in the end of the musical.
·
How does she treat Martin? She
is (understandably) not very sympathetic to his plight. She knows he’s dead, and yet when she falls
in love with Arnaud she treats the dead with little respect, describing Arnaud
as “a man who finds he’s brave enough to stay” in contrast to her dead
husband. And when Martin returns,
condemning Arnaud with his presence, she asks (accusatorily) “why did you have
to return to this place?” Arnaud, at
least, seems to feel shame and guilt for his façade, while Bertrande displays
only bitterness.
·
Does Bertrande redeem herself?
Not completely. But she doesn’t let her man suffer alone. When he tries to take all the blame, she
asks him “how many more lies do we tell?” and admits that she knew he wasn’t
Martin from the very beginning.
·
And when Arnaud is killed? He
dies saving Martin from Guillaume, the way Martin saved him from enemy
cannon-fire when they were in the war together. And how does Bertrande react?
More bitterness. Martin and the
Catholics have stolen her love (despite the fact that Martin was rescuing
Arnaud from his cell). And she leaves
the village to raise Arnaud’s child with the Protestants, saying that maybe
someday she’ll return, but probably not—because “the grief would remain/And the
sorrow would grow.” But with her child
and her faith, she might learn to
forgive.
And Guillaume? What of
him? From the beginning we learn that
he loves Bertrande. Before Martin &
Bertrande’s wedding, he declares that his love is real (unlike Martin, who doesn’t
seem to love Bertrande at all), and points out that if he had land or money, Bertrande would be his, and that Bertrande is
not just something to be given away like contracted land. When I first heard his lines, I thought he
was great. But then he (like the other
characters) gets twisted up in events and becomes a jerk.
·
Is his love for Bertrande de Rols real? I believe so. I don’t
think he loves her for her personality, though, seeing as how she is quite rude
(“Love Guillaume? I would rather I were dead!”). His clear dislike of Martin becomes absolute hatred because of
jealousy over Bertrande.
·
Does Guillaume deserve Bertrande?
In the beginning, Guillaume merely notes his love for Bertrande and his
lament that Guerre only gets her because he has money. But over the course of the next year, he
torments and taunts Martin in his hatred.
He judges him harshly and lambastes him for not producing an heir, and
in the next breath goes pleading to Betrande to love him (“Please Bertrande, if
you knew the tears I’ve shed/Why love him when you could love me
instead?”). He certainly doesn’t
deserve her after inflicting cruelty on Martin and Benoit.
·
Why Guillaume-the-rat? I think
he is more plot-device than anything else, since there is no historical
importance of an Artigat villager named Guillaume in the real history of Martin
Guerre. But in this case, Guillaume is
thrown out as an option for Bertrande to remarry after Martin abandons her, and
she refuses. Then, when “Martin” returns,
Guillaume is angered beyond compare, and he rats on them when he finds out that
they’re attending the Protestant services, thus bringing about the trial, when
Benoit shouts that it isn’t really Martin Guerre. (It’s worth noting, though, that in the actual legal records of
the case, he was brought to trial by Bertrande Guerre. The leading historian on
the subject, Natalie Zemon Davis, suspects that the Guerre & de Rols
families pressured her to do so)
·
Why isn’t Guillaume redeemed? I
honestly think this is the largest flaw of the whole story. Guillaume uses rabid Catholic partisanism to
rally others to war against the Protestants of Artigat when Arnaud is given a
light sentence. Then he uses the
advantages of chaos to seek out Arnaud du Tihl and Martin Guerre (one he hates
for marrying Bertrande, the other he hates for earning Bertrande’s love). He tries to kill Martin (who is Catholic,
mind you) and Arnaud jumps in the way and dies. And we never discover if Guillaume learns a “lesson” from all of
this. *sigh*
Perhaps the most important story in this version of Martin Guerre is
not Martin nor his wife, but Arnaud du Tihl.
In the show, Arnaud is a romantic hero (rather than the con-artist of
actual history). He comes to Artigat
to tell Bertrande of her husband’s death, but is mistaken for Martin. He falls in love with Bertrande, and (with
her permission, no—at her request)
stays in the village with his new identity.
He does seem guilty, at first, but she convinces him (“it’s just a
name!”). He eventually learns of her
religious conversion, and accepts it—he, in fact, converts with her. And then they are caught by Guillaume, and
things unravel. Arnaud, who (up till
now) is the most sympathetic character of all, begins to forcibly lie and cheat
in order to stay alive.
·
Is lying and cheating okay when people are after you as a means of
religious persecution? Well, I
personally think it’s a little bit more acceptable, but what does his faith say
about lying or having a sexual relationship out of wedlock?
·
Is he a nice guy? Yes. He is
nice to Benoit, he is nice to Martin. He gets along well with everyone until
they accuse him of not being Martin. But most importantly, he loves and
respects Bertrande, and protects her when she is questioned and berated by
others.
·
What of his friendship with Martin?
When Martin returns, Bertrande reacts with anger, while Arnaud reacts
with sadness. He sings “and the mask
that I’ve stolen is torn from my face…” like a resigned sigh—it’s karma. Since he’s in love with Bertrande and
possibly will be condemned to death, he’s certainly not pleased to see his old
friend alive after all, but he’s not angered because he knows it’s his own fault to begin with.
·
Where does he stand, in relation to the rest of the cast? I personally
think that Arnaud it the noblest of the bunch.
His weakness was that he fell in love with someone, and took advantage
of the villagers’ misunderstanding in order to play out the life he’s always
dreamed of. But when he loses it all,
he still tries to protect Bertrande, saying that she didn’t know.
So what to we have overall?
Martin starts off in the wrong, abandoning his wife, but when he comes
back he honestly has changed his opinion of Artigat, and he has returned with
an apology, hoping to start his life over on the right foot. “We must never forget/We must always
forgive/In the land of our fathers, we will learn how to grow.” He forgives his friend and his wife—knowing
that he had not been a good mate for Bertrande, and that she truly loved Arnaud. He goes against his family and church and
government in order to free his friend.
Arnaud, on the other hand, is the noblest of the characters. Yet he spends a good part of the musical
fluctuating between doing what is right and doing what he wants. His reasons for lying to everyone (including
the courts!) are just in the long run—he wants to protect his friend’s wife, he
wants to protect the woman he loves—but he’s still lying. He goes to extremes, calling other villagers liars when he knows them
to tell the truth (like in the case of the shoe-maker who points out that his
feet are smaller than Martin’s were: “That swindler always made shoes
overlarge/That’s why Galoche could always overcharge”).
Bertrande and Guillaume, meanwhile, become worse and worse characters.
Innocent, naïve Bertrande understandably grows bitter with persecution, fear,
abandonment—and in the face of adversity she lies and schemes so she won’t be
forced to marry another unsuitable man.
She asks a man to lie for her, and goes against the rules of her faith
for love (and she is someone driven by faith, mind you). Her saving moment is when she stands up and
admits that she lied as well, but then she slides down that slippery slope to
unlikeableness when she proves unable to forgive Martin for his return, and the
village for discovering her charade.
Guillaume, meanwhile, starts off as the character with the most
potential as a suitor for Bertrande, but ends up destroying everything she
loves. He goes from anti-hero to villian
within two songs.
Yet somehow—perhaps because of the realism of the characters and the
ability to understand their motivations—this show is quite good. When Boublil & Schonberg rewrote it over
the following years, they removed some of the key elements that made the
characters understandable, if not enjoyable.
(yet, to their credit, they paid more attention to the persecution of
Martin and Betrande—something crucial to the development of these characters.) Guillaume becomes absolutely unlikeable, and
Martin is more childish, and his return is less impressive. Bertrande becomes completely bi-polar, being
a pillar of strength one moment and completely wishy-washy the next, and
perhaps the worst of all is Lovesick-Arnaud, who churns out the new and improved
musical theme “Live With Somebody You Love.”
Listening to the original soundtrack unleashes fury at the characters
and their motivations. I nearly weep every time I hear the final sequence when
Martin vocalizes the fact that he had to go away in order to fall in love with
the home and people of his youth. I feel bitter when Betrande forces everyone
to realize that they will never be the same because there is blood on every
hand. My mind races trying to analyze
the changes in history that were made for dramatic plot-purposes. (the new one,
in comparison, leaves me snorting in disbelief and outraged when I try to find any similarities to history… my only way
of maintaining sanity is to mentally slash the Arnaud/Martin relationship!)
It’s an amazing story of amazing flaws, and I encourage everyone to try
and find the 1996 recording of “Martin Guerre,” and embrace these very human
(and very detestable) characters that are so important in the history of
property law and identity-mysteries. J
April, 2003