The SQM actors were given free rein in this scene to make the French soldiers as ridiculous as they pleased. They all adopted risible French accents, as the text implies they should, and developed comic business around the soldiers’ game of dice and their love of clothes and radishes. This scene is another great example of how the dramaturgy of Queen’s Men plays is performative rather than textual. Our commitment to making these French soldiers ridiculous was part of our overall strategy to respect McMillin and MacLean’s understanding of the Queen’s Men as a tool of nationalistic propaganda. For this scene, the actors drew heavily on the clown skills they had developed over the course of the rehearsal process.

We imagined that the stereotypical representation of the proud and ridiculous French soldiers would have worked to incite their patriotism and make them anticipate the French fall all the more eagerly. In our 21st century Canadian production, the audience’s laughter had a sense of irony colored by the awareness of the nationalistic agenda of the play and, I presume, a desire to distance themselves from it. As the company performed the play to multiple audiences the ironic quality of their reactions gradually resulted in a more ironic tone in the performance—the actors betrayed an awareness that they were playing stereotypes. Fortunately, we were able to record this one scene of the play in front of a live audience, so their fascinating responses can be studied on video. The production annotations for this scene document the specific creative choices the actors made in response to the text.