Later Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

[109] Mémoires secrets.

[110] He was the author of a highly successful comedy, called Le Séducteur, produced at the Comédie-Française, November 8, 1783.

[111] For further information concerning this unpleasant subject, into which we naturally do not care to enter, see Edmond de Goncourt’s Maison d’un artiste, ii. 60, and the same writer’s Sophie Arnould, p. 86. A similar charge was brought against Sophie Arnould, though, apparently, with less reason.

[112] Correspondance littéraire, ii. 282.

[113] The expelled actress may have derived some little consolation from perusing the following criticism of her successor in the Nouvelles à la main: “July 9.—Mlle. Sainval the younger made her first appearance yesterday, in Zaïre, on her return to the Comédie. She is ugly, and particularly hideous when she weeps, ungraceful, flat-breasted, and has a doleful and monotonous voice.”

[114] Campardon, Les Comédiens du Roi de la Troupe française, p. 251.

[115] Ibid. p. 255.

[116] La Harpe, Correspondance littéraire, ii. 415.

[117] Hawkins, “The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century,” ii. 250 et seq.

[118] La Harpe, Correspondance littéraire, iii. 3 et seq.