Les Plaideurs
- Dandin, Judge
- Léandre, son of Dandin
- Chicanneau, citizens
- Isabelle, daughter of Chicanneau
- The Duchess
- Petitjean, Concierge
- Intimate Secretary
- A prompter
Les Plaideurs ( the litigants ) is the only comedy of French poet Jean Racine tragedy. The premiere took place in November 1668 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. The piece is based on the comedy The Wasps of the Greek poet Aristophanes, without, however, whose own political implications. It contains three acts and, like the rest of the stage works of Racine written in pairs rhymed Alexandrine verses.
Action
Act 1
The play takes place in a town in the lower Normandy. Petitjean ("Little Hans " ), porter of the judge Perrin Dandin, reports that he has to supervise his master, because it constantly wants to lead meaningless processes. Léandre, son of the judge is assisted by his secretary called intimate, from the doorman in an effort to dissuade the judge from his addiction process. He tries to escape from his captors by jumping through the window. With the help of the secretary Léandre also wants to build a relationship with Isabelle. However, your father Chicanneau ( derived from the word for chicanery ) is basically only interested in the traffic with lawyers and therefore set against this connection. The first act ends with a dispute between Chicanneau and Duchess of Pimbesche before Judge Dandin, to be replaced with the insults.
Act 2
Since Chicanneau only servants of the law may occur to Dandin's secretary dressed as bailiffs and Isabelle plays a love letter to Leandre. As Chicanneau occurs, it gives him a reminder on behalf of the Duchess, which required it to withdraw his previously expressed insults. Léandre can Chicanneau sign a protocol issued as a document that is a promise of marriage in truth. The appearance of the Duchess leads to a general confusion. At the end of the act proclaimed Petit Jean, the house dog had eaten a capon, which triggers another process.
Act 3
The third act is mainly dedicated to the burlesque lawsuit against the dog Citron. Petitjean and the Secretary officiate as advocates of the two contending parties and outdo each other in scholarly citations incorrectly formulated without any reference to the current situation that have a soporific effect on the judge. The plea of the secretary for mercy for the fatherless young dog wakes Dandin, who initially sentenced Citron to the galleys. When his son handed him the signed Chicanneau of marriage vows, he remembers but a better one, agrees to the marriage, pardoned the dog and looks forward to further processes.
Style and literary allusions
In the notation, this comedy is different both from Racine's tragedies and comedies by his contemporaries and rivals Molière. In contrast to his tragedies, Racine used here often colloquial expressions and also will not hesitate to rudeness back, "See our tears " in the third act pissing young dogs come to language, what with is commented. In contrast to Molière Racine writes no character study, but wants to excel in his comedy only by word joke. The persons appearing barely have life of their own and are only outlined a puppet.
In the preface " To the Reader " the author mentions first The wasps of Aristophanes as his source of inspiration, and concludes with the remark: "I am a little proud that I wrote it without me one of these dirty misunderstandings and this dishonest jokes has cost so easily go now most of our writers out of hand. "This is an allusion to Molière's comedy the School for Wives, which had been six years earlier with great success and triggered a fierce debate over their literary and moral value had.
The play itself contains numerous allusions to classical and contemporary authors, Cicero plea Pro Quinctio on Ovid's Metamorphoses and Pausanias up to Pierre Corneille. The famous tragedy Le Cid rival is parodied in some places the comedy, to which Corneille should have responded very irritated.
Effect story
The piece was characterized over the centuries of very varying degrees of success.
The first performance in November 1668 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne achieved an extremely low echo. Les Plaideurs was given only twice and soon replaced by a comedy by Thomas Corneille. Since the founding of the Comédie- Française in 1680, the piece will become an integral part of the repertoire was. Until 1900, Les Plaideurs the most played piece of Racine with a total of 1224 performances, compared to 987 performances of Phèdre and 859 of Andromaque.
During the 20th century, the piece fell into oblivion and holds since 1951 the last rank of the Racine performances, with the exception of the first two pictures La Thébaïde and Alexandre le Grand.