Jean-François Ducis

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Jean-François Ducis

Jean-François Ducis (born August 22, 1733 in Versailles ; † March 31, 1816 there ) was a French poet and playwright . He wrote the stage adaptations of six plays by Shakespeare .

life and work

Jean-François Ducis was a son of the linen dealer Pierre Ducis from Savoy and Marie-Thérèse Rappe. He became secretary to the Marshal of Belle-Isle , but after his appointment as Minister of War (1758) released from any activity, where he could continue to receive his salary in full.

In 1768 Ducis wrote his first tragedy, Amélise . The failure of this first literary attempt was offset by the success of his Hamlet (1769) and Roméo et Juliette (1772), translations of the two Shakespearean dramas Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet . He drew the material of his work ezdipe chez Admète , published in 1778, from pieces by the ancient Greek tragedians Euripides and Sophocles ; it secured him in 1779 the vacant seat in the Académie française after Voltaire's death . With Le roi Lear (1783) and Macbeth (1784) he translated two other plays by Shakespeare ( King Lear and Macbeth ) into French, but only the first work was enthusiastically received.

Ducis, the private secretary of the Comte de Provence, later King Louis XVIII. , then showed himself to be very receptive to slogans of freedom, but took no part in the French Revolution . In 1791 he published his little popular Jean sans terre and in the following year his sixth and last translation of a Shakespeare tragedy, Othello . With the latter work he was able to reap great applause , not least due to the art of his friend, his actor François-Joseph Talma . His 1795 drama Abufar, ou la famille arabe , which was also very successful, came entirely from his own invention , while its counterpart, Phédor et Waldamir, ou la famille de Sibérie (1801), failed completely. He then stopped writing plays.

Initially, Ducis had now become a follower of Napoleon , but reluctantly withdrew to Versailles when Bonaparte accepted the title of emperor and refused the annually 40,000 francs entry of senator and knight of the Legion of Honor . After the return of the Bourbons (1814) he was already an old man of Louis XVIII. warmly received and accepted the order which he had spurned from Napoleon. He died in 1816 at the age of 82 and was buried in the Saint-Louis de Versailles cemetery.

Ducis was the first to bring Shakespeare's plays to the French stage. Since he was unable to speak the English language, he had to use the translations of Pierre Letourneur (1737–1788) and Pierre-Antoine de la Place (1707–1793). His transfers of works by the great English poet contain drastic changes compared to the originals, suppress Shakespeare's realism and character representation and merely reproduce the plot. Ducis adapted this to the classicistic and sensitive taste of his time. "His own pieces are colorless", as judged in the lexicon of world literature .

Other works by Ducis are Le Banquet de l'amitié , a poem in four songs (1771), Au roi de Sardaigne, sur le mariage du prince de Piémont avec Mme Clotilde de France (1775), Discours de réception à l ' académie française (1779), Épître à l'amitié (1786) and a Recueil de poésies (1809). His oeuvres appeared in four volumes in 1819–26; Oeuvres posthumous gave Vincent Campenon 1,826 out; Lettres de Jean François Ducis were published by P. Albert in 1879.

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Gero von Wilpert, Lexikon der Weltliteratur , 3rd edition, p. 397.
personal data
SURNAME Ducis, Jean-François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French lyric poet and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1733
PLACE OF BIRTH Versailles
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1816
Place of death Versailles