LA MORT DE MITRIDATE - University of Liverpool

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Acknowledgements Thanks are due to the Committee of the Liverpool Online Series for accepting my proposal to publish an edition of this play. I would like to thank particularly my longstanding colleagues Glyn Burgess, Alan Howe and Richard Waller for their years of support and encouragement. Help and advice have been solicited, graciously given and gratefully received from far and wide. I owe thanks to colleagues in the Arts Faculty of the University of Liverpool: Harold Braun, Alan Greaves and Bruce Gibson, who allowed me to plunder their expertise. To colleagues at other universities in Britain: Bill Brooks, Russell Goulbourne and Roger Mettam for so helpfully answering queries. To my French colleague, Alain Riffaud, for his invaluable help with questions about the printing of seventeenthcentury French plays. To Henry Phillips for his patience in reading and rereading the manuscript and his insightful advice. To Dennis Hartley and Lynn Farthman for their technical support. To Rob Dolan for his forbearance over the years. Liverpool, December 2007 Guy Snaith 6
Introduction LA CALPRENÈDE’s LITERARY CAREER BEGAN AUSPICIOUSLY IN 1636 with the success of his first play La Mort de Mitridate. The waspish Tallemant des Réaux had begrudgingly to concede: ‘elle fut estimée’, before adding: ‘il n’y en avoit pas tant de bonnes alors qu’il y en a eu depuis’. 1 In the following year, Guérin de Bouscal included it in a list of contemporary tragedies favoured by Richelieu which, as Lancaster commented, must have been ‘among the most highly esteemed plays of the day’. 2 Eclipsed by Racine’s version of essentially the same subject matter in 1673, La Mort de Mitridate was, by the end of the nineteenth century, at least being read again, if only as background to the first critical editions of Racine’s tragedy. Bernardin, although still comparing it unfavourably with Racine’s Mithridate, could nevertheless describe it as a ‘tragédie, qui ne manque pas de beautés’ and Lanson could find ‘quelques beaux morceaux et […] quelques situations pathéthiques’. 3 During the twentieth century, La Mort de Mitridate continued its climb back to occupy a place in critical esteem. Lancaster wrote that ‘with the exception of Sophonisbe and Mariane, there is no better classical play than this before the Cid’. 4 Antoine Adam cites it with Du Ryer’s Lucrèce and Tristan’s Mariane as three plays ‘que leur qualité et leur succès mirent hors de pair’. 5 In the 1980s Jacques Scherer and Jacques Truchet brought it to the attention of a wider audience by including it as one of the two plays representing La Calprenède’s theatre in the second volume of their Théâtre du 1 2 3 4 5 Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, ed. by Antoine Adam, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1960-61), II, 584. Henry Carrington Lancaster, ‘Leading French Tragedies Just Before the Cid’, Modern Philology, 22 (1924-25), 357-78 (p. 377). Jean Racine, Mithridate, ed. by N.M. Bernardin (Paris: Delagrave, 1882), p. 6; another edition, by Gustave Lanson (Paris: Hachette, 1888), p. 20. A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century, 5 parts in 9 vols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1929-42; repr. New York: Gordian Press, 1966), Part II: The Period of Corneille 1635-1651, vol. 1 (p. 64). Happily, Lancaster’s judgement was favourable, because for much of the century it found itself repeated. In the 1960s Pierre Sage wrote, for example: ‘On peut dire qu’après la Sophonisbe de Mairet et la Mariamne de Tristan, la pièce de La Calprenède est la meilleure tragédie de celles qui ont précédé le Cid’, in Le Préclassicisme (Paris: Del Duca, 1962), p. 263. Histoire de la littérature française au XVII e siècle, 5 vols (Paris: Domat- Montchrestien, 1948-56), I, 545.
Page 1 and 2: GAUTIER DE COSTES DE LA CALPRENEDE
Page 3 and 4: Gautier de Costes de La Calprenède
Page 5: Contents Acknowledgements..........
Page 9 and 10: Introduction of the 1630s on La Pin
Page 11 and 12: Introduction Calprenède for his Mo
Page 13 and 14: Introduction the end its principal
Page 15 and 16: Introduction carving out its empire
Page 17 and 18: Introduction Mitridate as a family
Page 19 and 20: Introduction Invention, adaptation
Page 21 and 22: Introduction tragédie qui respecte
Page 23 and 24: Introduction defence in both cases,
Page 25 and 26: Introduction power (1624) and 18 wh
Page 27 and 28: Introduction Plutarch, Mithradates
Page 29 and 30: Introduction he once was. 93 Althou
Page 31 and 32: Introduction done in the past and a
Page 33 and 34: Introduction As it is, Pharnace’s
Page 35 and 36: Introduction without honour. She di
Page 37 and 38: Introduction de Mitridate depicts a
Page 39 and 40: Introduction C’est donc un grand
Page 41 and 42: Introduction ‘cette mesme amitié
Page 43 and 44: Introduction Going on to talk of
Page 45 and 46: Introduction the greatest influence
Page 47 and 48: Introduction Moreover, perfect love
Page 49 and 50: Introduction ‘action insuffisante
Page 51 and 52: Introduction for their sortie, scen
Page 53 and 54: Introduction et les bizarrerries po
Page 55 and 56: Introduction forcefulness of the ev
Page 57 and 58:
Introduction enters, apparently in
Page 59 and 60:
Introduction A minimum number of ch
Page 61 and 62:
Introduction Mitridate, par l’Abb
Page 63 and 64:
Introduction • Text with cartons
Page 65 and 66:
Introduction preferred to modernize
Page 67 and 68:
Select Bibliography La Calprenède
Page 69 and 70:
Select Bibliography Dictionnaire an
Page 71:
Select Bibliography Language Dictio
Page 75 and 76:
A LA REYNE. MADAME, Ce miserable Ro
Page 77 and 78:
AU LECTEUR. En toutes façons, Lect
Page 79 and 80:
convenable à la generosité qu’o
Page 81 and 82:
LE LIBRAIRE AU LECTEUR. Cher Lecteu
Page 83 and 84:
LA MORT DE MITRIDATE. TRAGEDIE. ACT
Page 85 and 86:
Act I Si le seul interest ne fist v
Page 87 and 88:
Act I C’est en vain qu’il s’o
Page 89 and 90:
Act I Et ce qu’il tient de moy le
Page 91 and 92:
Act I MITRIDATE. Ah ! c’est cette
Page 93 and 94:
Act I SCENE IIII. MITRIDATE. MENAND
Page 95 and 96:
ACTE II. [p.16] SCENE PREMIERE. MIT
Page 97 and 98:
Act II SCENE II. MITRIDATIE. NISE.
Page 99 and 100:
Act II MITRIDATIE. Jamais ma sœur,
Page 101 and 102:
Act II SCENE IIII. PHARNACE. EMILE.
Page 103 and 104:
Act II Qui sert à mon chagrin d’
Page 105 and 106:
Act II Pour s’armer de fureur con
Page 107 and 108:
Act II 620 Aujourd’huy se soumet
Page 109 and 110:
Act III Et voir par une lâche & no
Page 111 and 112:
Act III 690 Aujourd’huy sa vertu
Page 113 and 114:
Act III Et de tant de travaux mon p
Page 115 and 116:
Act III SCENE III. PHARNACE. BERENI
Page 117 and 118:
Act III Mais j’ay, par ce moyen,
Page 119 and 120:
Act III Que tu sois souverain sur t
Page 121 and 122:
Act III Adieu je ne puis plus souff
Page 123 and 124:
Act IV Par sa main meurtriere il le
Page 125 and 126:
Act IV PHARNACE. Emile du moins per
Page 127 and 128:
Act IV Que l’on voit usurper à c
Page 129 and 130:
Act IV Flacce, Cotta, Fimbrie, & Tr
Page 131 and 132:
Act IV Ne t’ay-je pas toy seul au
Page 133 and 134:
Act IV NISE. 1310 Nous vous en conj
Page 135 and 136:
ACTE V. [p.67] SCENE PREMIERE. MITR
Page 137 and 138:
Act V Appreuvez le secours qu’il
Page 139 and 140:
Act V Il prend la couppe. 15 [p.72]
Page 141 and 142:
Act V MITRIDATE. Parce qu’en vous
Page 143 and 144:
Act V Elle prend le poison qu’ell
Page 145 and 146:
Act V Par ces beaux yeux mourans qu
Page 147 and 148:
Act V MITRIDATE. Menandre malgré m
Page 149 and 150:
Act V Il n’en faut plus douter, m
Page 151 and 152:
Act V Quand nous verrons la vostre
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LA MORT DE MITRIDATE - University of Liverpool

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