[6] “A star is lost and appears not in the sky; in thy face it has set itself; on thy brow it shines.”
DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON (1661-1725), French dramatist and actor, was born at Fontainebleau on the 1st of November 1661. He belonged to a family of rank, and his parents entrusted his education to Père de la Rue, a Jesuit, who made earnest efforts to induce him to join the order. But he had no religious vocation and proceeded to study law. He practised at the bar for some time, but his marriage to the daughter of the comedian François Lenoir de la Thorillière led him to become an actor, and in 1685, in spite of the strong opposition of his family, he appeared at the Théâtre Français. His gifts as a comedian gave him immediate and marked success, both with the public and with his fellow actors. He was the spokesman of his company on occasions of state, and in this capacity he frequently appeared before Louis XIV., who treated him with great favour. One of his most famous impersonations was Alceste in the Misanthrope of Molière. His first play, Le Notaire obligeant, produced in 1685, was well received. La Désolation des joueuses (1687) was still more successful. Le Chevalier à la mode (1687) is generally regarded as his best work, though his claim to original authorship in this and some other cases has been disputed. In Le Chevalier à la mode appears the bourgeoise infatuated with the desire to be an aristocrat. The type is developed in Les Bourgeoises à la mode (1692) and Les Bourgeoises de qualité (1700). Dancourt was a prolific author, and produced some sixty plays in all. Some years before his death he terminated his career both as an actor and as an author by retiring to his château at Courcelles le Roi, in Berry, where he employed himself in making a poetical translation of the Psalms and in writing a sacred tragedy. He died on the 7th of December 1725. The plays of Dancourt are faithful descriptions of the manners of the time, and as such have real historical value. The characters are drawn with a realistic touch that led to his being styled by Charles Palissot the Teniers of comedy. He is very successful in his delineation of low life, and especially of the peasantry. The dialogue is sparkling, witty and natural. Many of the incidents of his plots were derived from actual occurrences in the “fast” and scandalous life of the period, and several of his characters were drawn from well-known personages of the day. Most of the plays incline to the type of farce rather than of pure comedy. Voltaire defined his talent in the words: “Ce que Regnard était à l’égard de Molière dans la haute comédie, le comédien Dancourt l’était dans la farce.”
His two daughters, Manon and Marie Anne (Mimi), both obtained success on the stage of the Théâtre Français.
The complete works of Dancourt were published in 1760 (12 vols. 12mo). An edition of his Théâtre choisi, with a preface by F. Sarcey, appeared in 1884.
DANDELION (Taraxacum officinale), a perennial herb belonging to the natural order Compositae. The plant has a wide range, being found in Europe, Central Asia, North America, and the Arctic regions, and also in the south temperate zone. The leaves form a spreading rosette on the very short stem; they are smooth, of a bright shining green, sessile, and tapering downwards. The name dandelion is derived from the French dent-de-lion, an appellation given on account of the tooth-like lobes of the leaves. The long tap-root has a simple or many-headed rhizome; it is black externally, and is very difficult of extirpation. The flower-stalks are smooth, brittle, leafless, hollow, and very numerous. The flowers bloom from April till August, and remain open from five or six in the morning to eight or nine at night. The flower-heads are of a golden yellow, and reach 1½ to 2 in. in width; the florets are all strap-shaped. The fruits are olive or dull yellow in colour, and are each surmounted by a long beak, on which rests a pappus of delicate white hairs, which occasions the ready dispersal of the fruit by the wind; each fruit contains one seed. The globes formed by the plumed fruits are nearly two inches in diameter. The involucre consists of an outer spreading (or reflexed) and an inner and erect row of bracts. In all parts of the plant a milky juice is contained, which has a somewhat complex composition. The chief constituent is taraxacin, a neutral principle. In addition the juice contains taraxacerin (derived from the former), asparagin, inulin, resins and salts. An extract (dose 5-15 grains), a liquid extract (dose ½-1 drachm) and a succus (dose 1-2 drachms) of the root are all used medicinally. For the purposes formerly recognized taraxacum is now never used, but it has been shown to possess definite cholagogue properties, and may therefore be prescribed along with ammonium chloride in cases of hepatic constipation, which it very constantly relieves. The root—which is the medicinal product—is most bitter from March to July, but the milky juice it contains is less abundant in the summer than in the autumn. For this reason, the extract and succus are usually prepared during the months of September and October. After a frost a change takes place in the root, which loses its bitterness to a large extent. In the dried state the root will not keep well, being quickly attacked by insects. Externally it is brown and wrinkled, internally white, with a yellow centre and concentric paler rings. It is two inches to a foot long, and about a quarter to half an inch in diameter. The leaves are bitter, but are sometimes eaten as a salad; they serve as food for silkworms when mulberry leaves are not to be had. The root is roasted as a substitute for coffee. Several varieties of the dandelion are recognized by botanists; they differ in the degree and mode of cutting of the leaf-margin and the erect or spreading character of the outer series of bracts. The variety palustre, which affects boggy situations, and flowers in late summer and autumn, has nearly entire leaves, and the outer bracts of its involucre are erect.
| Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). |
| 1, Unopened head; 2, ripe head from which all the fruits except two have been removed; 3, one floret, enlarged; 4, one fruit. |
DANDOLO, the name of one of the most illustrious patrician families of Venice, of which the earliest recorded member was one of the electors of the first doge (A.D. 697). The Dandolo gave to Venice four doges; of these the first and most famous was Enrico Dandolo (c. 1120-1205), elected on the 1st of January 1193 (more Veneto, 1192). He had distinguished himself in various military enterprises and diplomatic negotiations in the course of an active career, and although over seventy years old and of very weak sight (the story that he had been made blind by the emperor Manuel Comnenus while he was at Constantinople is a legend), he proved a most energetic and capable ruler. His first care was to re-establish Venetian authority over the Dalmatians who had rebelled with the king of Hungary’s protection, but he failed to capture Zara, owing to the arrival of the Pisan fleet, and although the latter was defeated by the Venetians, the undertaking was suspended. In the meanwhile the situation in the East was becoming critical. The Eastern emperor Isaac II. Angelus had been deposed, imprisoned, and blinded by his brother Alexius, who usurped the throne. The new emperor proved unfriendly to the Venetians and made difficulties about renewing their privileges. In the West a new crusade to the Holy Land was in preparation, and the crusaders sent ambassadors, one of whom was Villehardouin, the historian of the expedition, to ask the Venetians to give them passage and means of transport (1201). After much deliberation the republic agreed to transport 4500 horse and 29,000 foot to Palestine with provisions for one year, for a sum of 85,000 marks; in addition 50 Venetian galleys would be provided free of charge, while Venice was to receive half the conquests made by the crusaders. But as the time agreed upon for the departure approached, it appeared that the crusaders had not the money to pay the stipulated advance. Dandolo then proposed that if they helped him to reduce Zara payment might be deferred. Some of the crusaders disapproved of this attack on a Christian city, but the majority, only too glad of an opportunity for plunder, willingly agreed. The expedition sailed on the 8th of October 1202, three hundred sail in all, with the aged Dandolo himself in command. Zara was taken and pillaged, for which the Venetians were severely reprimanded by the pope. But new possibilities of conquest were now opened up at the suggestion of Alexius, the son of the deposed emperor Isaac. He promised the crusaders that if they went first to Constantinople and re-instated Isaac, the latter would maintain them for a year, contribute 10,000 men and 200,000 marks for the expedition to Egypt, and subject the Eastern to the Western Church. The proposal was accepted, largely owing to the influence of Dandolo, who saw in it a means for further extending the dominions and commerce of the Venetians. After wintering at Zara the fleet set sail on the 7th of April 1203, and on the 23rd of June anchored in the Bosporus. After long parleys the city was attacked by land and sea on the 17th of July (the fleet being commanded by Dandolo) and taken by storm. The emperor Alexius fled, and Isaac reoccupied the throne, but, although grateful to the crusaders, he was not disposed to fulfil the promises made by his son. Tumults between crusaders and Greeks arose, and the people of the city, excited by a certain Alexis Murzuphlus, murmured at the new taxes which were imposed on them. A revolt broke out, and an officer named Nicholas Canabus was placed on the throne; Prince Alexius was strangled by order of Murzuphlus, Isaac died of the shock, Murzuphlus imprisoned Canabus and made himself emperor (Alexius V.). The crusaders thereupon attacked Constantinople a second time (12th of April 1204), and after a desperate struggle captured the city, which they subjected to hideous carnage. Immense booty was secured, the Venetians obtaining among other treasures the four bronze horses which adorn the façade of St Mark’s. The Eastern empire was abolished, and a feudal Latin empire erected in its stead. The leaders of the crusaders then met to elect an emperor. Dandolo was one of the candidates, but Count Baldwin of Flanders was elected and crowned on the 23rd of May. The Venetians were given Crete and several other islands and ports in the Levant, which formed an uninterrupted chain from Venice to the Black Sea, a large part of Constantinople (whence the doge assumed the title of “lord of a quarter and a half of Romania”), and many valuable privileges. But hardly had the new state been established when various provinces rose in rebellion and the Bulgarians invaded Thrace. A Latin army was defeated by them at Adrianople (April 1205), and the emperor himself was captured and killed, the fragments of the force being saved only by Dandolo’s prowess. But he was now old and ill, and on the 23rd of June 1205 he died. He certainly consolidated Venice’s dominion in the East and increased its commercial prosperity to a very high degree. But the policy he pursued in turning the crusaders against Constantinople, in order to promote the interests of the republic, while serving to break up the Greek empire, created in its place a Latin state that was far too feeble to withstand the onslaught of Greek national feeling and Orthodox fanaticism; at the same time the Greeks were greatly weakened and their power of resisting the Turks consequently lessened. This paved the way for the Turkish invasion of Europe, which proved an unmixed calamity for all Christendom, Venice included.