Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy

Pierre -Laurent de Belloy or Dormont Buirette De Belloy (* November 17, 1727 in Saint -Flour (Cantal ), † March 5, 1775 in Paris) was a French playwright and actor.

Buirette de Belloy was trained as a lawyer, but he gave up the legal profession to become an actor. As a member of a theater troupe, he appeared with some success on the North European courts, and particularly in Saint Petersburg. During this time he also began to write tragedies, which were characterized by strong theatrical effects and the audience were very well received on his return to France. His preoccupation with themes of French history ( one of the first French playwright ever) gave him the reputation of a " national poet ".

His most famous drama was Le siège de Calais ( The Siege of Calais, 1765 ), the heroic defenders of this northern French town during the Hundred Years War. Calais took him for an honorary citizen. Due to its popularity Buirette de Belloy was added in 1772 to the French Academy, where he took the 34th seat of Louis de Bourbon Condé. This choice met with some criticism, particularly by the representatives of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Jean Baptiste le Rond d' Alembert. Other works such as Gaston di Bayard (1771 ), Pedro le Cruel ( 1772) and Gabrielle de Vergy (1777, posthumously ) were no longer seen as Le siège de Calais the same success. The complete work was published in 1779, four years after his death in Paris as a six -volume edition.