Gillet de La Tessonerie’s tragi-comedy is an unusual example in French seventeenth-century theatre of a ‘play within a play’. In fact, there are five plays contained within the story of a young man’s visit to a magician to find a cure for the passions which torment him: vainglory, ambition, sex, jealousy, hate. The play has not been reprinted since 1645 and is an important example of diversity in early French classical theatre.This is a volume in the Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.
