After his death, Moliere was gradually recognized in France as that country's most important dramatist. Along with this realization came a desire to write plays ABOUT the writer, his life on the stage, and his interaction with the other dramatists of his age, and also with King Louis XIV. Even Alexandre Dumas featured Moliere as a character in his historical play, The Young Louis XIV. Moliere himself was such a large, dynamic figure in real ...
Here are three French plays from the Enlightenment Period dealing with the subject of slavery. ISLE OF SLAVES, by Pierre de Marivaux, is the longest and most challenging of the three. It postulates an island in the ancient Greek world where the slaves have revolted and seized power, killing all of their former masters and declaring their independence. Now, any «masters» shipwrecked on their island are forced to live as slaves of their own slaves ...
This powerful, eloquent play moves like a Greek tragedy to its inevitable conclusion. Dumas's drama is based on an actual event–the assassination of Duke Alexander of Medici in 1537 by his cousin, Lorenzo. Lorenzino lures his relative to a trap under the pretext of providing him with a woman. He gets close to the Duke by pandering to his lusts, just so that he'll have the opportunity to kill him. His plan ultimately works, but results ...
Based on the classic novel by Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary tells the tale of Emma Bovary, who is romantic by nature, and believes herself the equal of the heroines depicted in the romantic novels she reads. When she moves to a rural town in France, she finds herself utterly bored by country and small-town life. Although her husband is a good man, Emma has no respect for him. Eventually she takes a lover, and wants him to give up everything fo ...
Based on the novel by Stendhal (Henri Beyle, 1783-1842), The Red and the Black tells the story of Julien Sorel, a talented and ambitious young peasant. Sorel manages to cynically and hypocritically manipulate those around him to gain a position as a secretary with a prominent Marquis–and to seduce his employer's beautiful daughter, Mathilde. But he doesn't love Mathilde–doesn't love anyone, really–and when he murders another woman ...
Based on the novel by Russian writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1867-1941), Morlock's dramatic adaptation tells the tragic story of Russian Tsar Peter the Great's conflict with his only surviving son and heir, Tsarevitch Alexis. Peter, an autocrat who was determined to modernize Russia at all costs, dealt brutally with any opposition–but found his most stubborn and potent resistance in his own home in the person of Alexis. This was a battle ...
Based on the Marquis de Sade's infamous novel of the same name, this new dramatic version of JUSTINE closely follows the original story, both in spirit and in action. De Sade, with his relentless logic, attempts to prove that «virtue» as practiced by most people actually contradicts nature. The innocent maiden Justine suffers one humiliation and setback after another in her futile quest to preserve her virtue and her virginity. No one–not t ...
Voltaire's The Death of Caesar (Mort de Cesar, 1735) is often erroneously described as a reworking of the first three acts of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Instead, Voltaire rewrote the text in its entirety, using a different approach that focuses on the act of tyrannicide, with the complication that Caesar has revealed to Brutus that the latter is actually his son. Brutus is an ardent republican whom Caesar wants to convert to ...
Based on a novel by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), «Under Western Eyes» tells the story of Razumov, a Russian student indirectly involved in the assassination of a Tsarist minister. Haldin, the man who committed the murder, seeks asylum with Razumov–and his assistance in escaping Russia. Razumov has no sympathy for his friend and gives him up to the Okhrana (the secret police). Reluctantly, Razumov is then recruited as an agent and sent to Switzerla ...