Two Shakespeare Adaptations

<p><span style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)>Over the course of his prolific life the playwright Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740-1814) wrote several plays based on works by Shakespeare. This volume brings together two very different adaptations of Shakespearean tragedies written within two years of each other. </span><em style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)>Le Vieillard et ses trois filles</em><span style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)> (1792) in line with eighteenth-century French aesthetic and political tastes strips the masterpiece </span><em style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)>King Lear</em><span style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)> 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. </span><em style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)>Timon d'Athènes</em><span style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)> (1794) conversely follows the plot of </span><em style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)>Timon of Athens</em><span style=color: rgba(63 63 63 1)> 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.</span></p>