St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre - Cultural References

Cultural References

The Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe knew the story well from the Huguenot literature translated into English, and probably from French refugees who had sought refuge in his native Canterbury. He wrote a strongly anti-Catholic and anti-French play based on the events entitled 'The Massacre at Paris'. Also, in his biography The World of Christopher Marlowe, David Riggs claims the incident remained with the playwright, and massacres are incorporated into the final acts of three of his early plays, 1 and 2 Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta - see above for Marlowe and Machiavellism.

The story was also taken up in 1772 by Louis-Sébastien Mercier in his play Jean Hennuyer, Bishop of Lizieux. This play was translated into English, with some adaptations, by actress and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald in 1792. Whilst Inchbald kept the historical setting, it was clear that The Massacre was also a reference to the recent September Massacres of the French Revolution.

Joseph Chénier's play Charles IX was a huge success during the French Revolution, drawing strongly anti-monarchical and anti-religious lessons from the massacre. Chenier was able to put his principles into practice as a politician, voting for the execution of Louis XVI and many others, perhaps including his brother André Chénier. However, before the collapse of the Revolution he became suspected of moderation, and in some danger himself.

The story was fictionalised by Prosper Mérimée in his Chronique du règne de Charles IX (1829), and by Alexandre Dumas, père in La Reine Margot, an 1845 novel that fills in the history as it was then seen with romance and adventure. That novel has been translated into English and was made into a commercially successful French film in 1994 as La Reine Margot (later as Queen Margot, and subtitled, in English-language markets), starring Isabelle Adjani.

Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Les Huguenots (1836), very loosely based on the events of the massacre, was one of the most popular and spectacular examples of French grand opera.

The Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais managed to create a sentimental moment in the massacre in his painting A Huguenot on St. Bartholomew's Day (1852), which depicts a Catholic woman attempting to convince her Huguenot lover to wear the white scarf badge of the Catholics and protect himself. The man, true to his beliefs, gently refuses her. Millais was inspired to create the painting after seeing Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots.

The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the events surrounding it were incorporated into D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916). The film follows Catherine de' Medici (Josephine Crowell) plotting the massacre, coercing her son King Charles IX (Frank Bennett) to sanction it. Incidental characters include Henri of Navarre, Marguerite de Valois (Constance Talmadge), Admiral Coligny (Joseph Henabery) and the Duke of Anjou, who is portrayed as homosexual. These historic scenes are depicted alongside a fictional plot in which a Huguenot family is caught among the events.

A 1966 serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who officially entitled The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, but often referred to by fans simply as The Massacre, is set during the events leading up to the Paris massacre. Leonard Sachs appeared as Admiral Coligny and Joan Young played Catherine de Medici. This serial is missing from the BBC archives and survives only in audio form.