Preface and act I for La vie et la mort du Roi Lear [manuscript] 18th century

England? ; 18th century

1 item ; 24 x 18 cm.

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Great Britain -- England, -- production place.

272853 MS

From dealer's description: [SHAKESPEARE]. [Thomas HANMER]. [Pierre-Prime-Félicien LE TOURNEUR?] Preface and Act I for La vie et la mort du Roi Lear Autograph manuscript. (24 x 18 cm). 4 1/2 pp. (Preface); 21 pp. (Acte I). Written on quarto sheets folded once, with cross-outs and corrections. A manuscript draft in an 18th century hand of the initial steps toward a French translation of the works of William Shakespeare. Included here is a complete translation of Thomas Hanmer’s preface for his edition of 1744, and the first act of King Lear, which also seems to follow Hanmer’s edition. The two texts have the quality of a first draft or an initial effort to convert Shakespeare’s original into a fuller French version: written in a quick but legible hand, there are some cross-outs, but both texts are essentially translated word-for-word from English, a transcription forming a base on which to build. The paper and the hand date the work to the 18th century, placing the manuscript at the beginning of Shakespeare’s entry into the French literary world. A significant document anticipating the monumental project of translating the collected works of William Shakespeare into French. Although the manuscript is not signed, the leading candidate would seem to be the writer Pierre Le Tourneur (1737-1788), the first French translator of Shakespeare’s complete plays. After Voltaire and Pierre-Antoine de La Place, who both adapted or translated certain plays of the Elizabethan theatre (La Place having published only a summary of King Lear in 1746), Le Tourneur devoted several years to establishing an integral translation of the works of the Bard, published in twenty volumes from 1776-1783, an edition that remained a benchmark translation throughout the 19th century. Le Tourneur’s Le Roi Lear appeared in volume 5, Shakespeare traduit de l'anglois . Paris, Vve Duchesne, 1779. Jean-François Ducis (1733-1816) made an adaptation of King Lear (1783), in which we recognize almost nothing of the original play, but instead find a bourgeois and unhappy drama in the spirit of the time, unlike Le Tourneur’s translation which sought to be true to Shakespeare’s words." Ordered from Gerald W. Cloud Rare Books, Manuscripts, Archives, D9647, 2023-05-13

272853