Le changement de mains (play)

Overview

A short stage piece (form and length unknown; Marie calls it only "une pièce"), set at the court of the Russian Empress Elisabeth, about a morganatic marriage "de la main gauche". The title has the sense "a change of hands" (right hand for a marriage of equals, left hand for a morganatic one). The play could not be identified: neither the author, the date nor a printed text turned up in searches of the BnF, Internet Archive and the web (an unrelated one-act comedy of a similar title, Changement de main by André Barde, dates from 1909).

Marie and this work

• 13 September 1873, Nice. At the opening of the season at the Théâtre-Français, the bill is "Le changement de mains" and "Les jocrisses de l'amour" (009.0162). Marie, in a white dress she hates, sits in M. Lewin's box on the right. She then summarises the plot (009.0163-0166): Empress Elisabeth visits the prison of the Duke of Courland to learn his intentions, but speaks instead with a lieutenant who, unknowing, has let the duke escape (arranged by the major's daughter, who believed she loved him but was to marry a cousin). To save the major, who answers for the prisoner, the lieutenant takes the duke's place. He pays court to the empress without knowing who she is; she is charmed and has him taken to a palace as a prisoner. He had been in the fortress for courting Countess Chouvaloff, whose husband had him jailed. When the major's daughter brings a letter for the "real" duke, Elisabeth discovers the deception, forgives the lieutenant and marries him "de la main gauche au lieu de la main droite": "Ce n'est qu'un changement de mains", the last line.
• An RSR note in the source observes that the morganatic marriage resonates with Marie's own dream of a duke (Hamilton).

Sources

• Marie's own plot summary, 009.0162-0166, is the only source; the setting evokes Elizabeth Petrovna (r. 1741-1762) and the Shuvalov family (Wikipedia, "Elizabeth of Russia"), but the play is fictional.