Le Marquis de Villemer

Overview

Le Marquis de Villemer is a comedy in four acts and in prose by George Sand, adapted by her from her own novel of the same name (serialised in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1860; Wikisource fr). The BnF-derived catalogue record and a British Library manuscript record give its first performance as 29 February 1864 at the Odéon, Paris, where it was a great popular success; one bookseller's description says it was stormed by students and that thousands were turned away (secondary report, not verified). A Sand scholar's note says she made the adaptation with the help of Alexandre Dumas fils (reported in a search result, not checked at source). It was one of Sand's most successful plays and entered the repertoire of the Comédie-Française (the date of that entry was not established in this research).

Marie and this work

Marie knows the work only from the stage.

• 1877-07-31 (073.0243, 073.0245): "Nous avons passé une bonne soirée au Français. On donnait «Le marquis de Villemer» de Georges Sand." In the paragraph that follows she urges a correspondent ("vous") to go and see it, and see it again, and above all to watch the duke ("c'est Alexandre tout entier ... de seize années plus âgé"), "le plus sympathique rôle"; "Delaunay jouait comme s'il ne jouait pas". Delaunay is the Comédie-Française actor Louis-Arsène Delaunay (1826-1903).
• 1880-10-09 (090.0082): she is reading Sand's Valentine, which she finds the best of what she has read of Sand, and adds: "«Le marquis de Villemer» que je ne connais qu'au théâtre doit être bien aussi, je crois qu'il n'y a pas de palefrenier, amant de la comtesse." (She has not read the novel.)

Sources

• Wikisource fr, "Le Marquis de Villemer" (novel, 1860; play pages).
• BnF data record (via web search): comedy in four acts, Odéon, 29 February 1864; British Library manuscript record, same date.

Supersedes

Old auto-stub `people/mentioned/MARQUIS_DE_VILLEMER.md` (person-type stub; the title character is fictional).