Gillet de la Tessonerie – författare

L’Art de Régner is a tragi-comedy by Gillet de La Tessonerie, first published in 1645. It is unusual in that structurally each of its five acts is a separate playlet. The sub-title, Le Sage Gouverneur, refers to the role of a royal tutor, probably meant to be the duc de Bassompierre, to whom the play is dedicated. Each playlet is prefaced by a lesson from the tutor, and the complete play is concluded by the young prince’s words of gratitude for his dramatic education.

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.