Balthazar Beaujoyeulx is credited with being the inventor and choreographer of Le Balet Comique de la Reine. His plan for the ballet is very ambitious when compared to his earlier contributions to the court festivals, and necessitated a collaborative effort with several esteemed artists of the Valois court.
Beaujoyeulx appears to have been quite concerned with maintaining full credit for the subject, ideas and inventions employed in the production. In the introduction of the libretto, he states that, Lord de la Chesnaye was requested to compose the poems "upon subjects which I would give to him", and Beaulieu composed music "upon the ideas which I would communicate to him."(MacClintock,p.36) In the preface to his libretto, Beaujoyeulx is careful to acknowledge and praise most of his collaborators, but his reason for doing so is to squelch any hint of plagiarism. Plagiarism may well have been a sensitive issue for Beaujoyeulx.
It is possible that the real author of Le Balet Comique de la Reine was Agrippa D'Aubigné, not Balthazar Beaujoyeulx. D'Aubigné was a Huguenot writer in the entourage of Henri de Navarre, and was imprisoned with him during the years 1572 to 1576, just following the massacre of St.Bartholomew. D'Aubigné stated that he invented the plan for a Circe ballet some five or six years before Le Balet Comique de la Reine was performed, but the Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici, thinking it too expensive, would not consent to execute it. Supposedly, Henri III, having recalled hearing of D'Aubigné's ballet, decided to use it for the Joyeuse wedding celebration, and sent to Gascony, (the site of D'Aubigné's internment), for the manuscript of the ballet, or D'Aubigné, or perhaps both (Yates,1947,pp.257-8).
If this scenario is accurate,then Beaujoyeulx simply made alterations to D'Aubigné's original dramatic scheme. In support of this theory, is the fact that Queen Louise did not decide to offer her entertainment (Le Balet Comique de la Reine), until all the other wedding festivities were well under way. Therefore it would have been very convenient if a pre-existing plan had been available (MacClintock,p.12,note 10).
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