Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Vieillard et ses trois filles and Timon d’Athènes
Two Shakespeare Adaptations

Edited by Joseph Harris

Cover of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, <i>Le Vieillard et ses trois filles</i> and <i>Timon d’Athènes</i>

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Critical Texts 82

Modern Humanities Research Association

  13 March 2023

ISBN: 978-1-839542-33-6 (paperback)  •  RRP £16.99, $19.99, €19.99

ISBN: 978-1-839542-34-3 (JSTOR ebook)

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EnlightenmentFrenchDrama

Over the course of his prolific life, the playwright Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) wrote four plays based on works by Shakespeare. This volume brings together two very different adaptations of Shakespearean tragedies, written within two years of each other. Le Vieillard et ses trois filles (1792), in line with eighteenth-century French aesthetic and political tastes, strips the masterpiece King Lear of all its regal trappings and complex subplots to produce a pared-down three-act bourgeois ‘drame’ about a father who foolishly surrenders his fortune to his mercenary daughters, before an unexpected (and un-Shakespearean) happy ending. Timon d’Athènes (1794), conversely, follows the plot of Timon of Athens rather more closely, tracing its protagonist’s shift from profligate socialite to bitter, misanthropic outcast; Mercier, however, accentuates the political dimension of Timon’s bankruptcy, exile, and eventual suicide as an implicit critique of the violence and abuses of the post-Revolutionary Reign of Terror. What both plays have in common is a narrative arc leading from generosity exploited, via disillusionment and despair, to a misanthropic attempt to escape from civilisation altogether. This edition offers explanatory footnotes comparing the texts with the Shakespearean originals, and an introduction outlining Mercier’s complex contributions to eighteenth-century Shakespeare reception in France.

Joseph Harris is Professor of Early Modern French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway University of London.

Reviews:

  • ‘Mercier was a highly experienced playwright, and his adaptations offer readers a chance both to see Shakespeare through Mercier’s eyes and to appreciate Mercier’s own understanding of national culture, dramatic heroes, stagecraft, and the French Revolution. It is all the easier for readers to do this in Harris’s edition, which includes a wealth of helpful footnotes and a well-judged introduction that touches upon many important points without overwhelming the reader.’ — James Harriman-Smith, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.3, 2023, 311-97 (full text online)
  • ‘In the Introduction, Harris locates the two plays within the author’s career, and associates them with the cultural, literary, and political issues of late eighteenth-century France. The Notes register in detail the numerous parallels as well as the differences between Shakespeare’s and Mercier’s plays, thus inviting and generously anticipating the comparative study of both... It is to be hoped that with this new edition of a moving and politically interesting play, Mercier’s Timon d’Athènes, hitherto largely ignored, will re-enter the collective memory of French and English readers.’ — Ina Schabert, Translation and Literature 32, 2023, 379-83 (full text online)

Contents:

1-18
Introduction
Joseph Harris
doi:10.2307/jj.982965.3
Cite
19-64
Le Vieillard Et Ses Trois Filles: Pièce En Trois Actes, En Prose
Louis-Sébastien Mercier
doi:10.2307/jj.982965.4
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65-153
Timon D’athènes en Cinq Actes en Prose: Imitation de Shakespéare
Louis-Sébastien Mercier
doi:10.2307/jj.982965.5
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154-158
Bibliography
Joseph Harris
doi:10.2307/jj.982965.6
Cite

Bibliography entry:

Harris, Joseph (ed.), Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Vieillard et ses trois filles and Timon d’Athènes: Two Shakespeare Adaptations, Critical Texts, 82 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2023)

First footnote reference: 35 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Vieillard et ses trois filles and Timon d’Athènes: Two Shakespeare Adaptations, ed. by Joseph Harris, Critical Texts, 82 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2023), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Harris, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Harris, Joseph (ed.). 2023. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Vieillard et ses trois filles and Timon d’Athènes: Two Shakespeare Adaptations, Critical Texts, 82 (Cambridge: MHRA)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Harris 2023: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Harris 2023: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

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