Par permission de monsieur le maire. Spectacle extraordinaire et pour la première et unique fois en cette ville. Les artistes sous la direction de M. Frédérick Lemetheyer … donneront aujourd’hui Jeudi 19 Décembre 1816 … un representation de Roméo et Juliette, opéra en trois actes, à grand spectacle, de Ségur jeune et Steibeilt [sic]. Le spectacle sera terminé par [les exercises de] l’Academie des Singes Savan[t]s, dansant[s] sur la corde roide et voltigeant[s] sur la corde lâche …

Calais, 1816.

1 broadside; 54 x 43 cm

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From dealer's description: "[SHAKESPEARE.] Par permission de monsieur le maire. Spectacle extraordinaire et pour la première et unique fois en cette ville. Les artistes sous la direction de M. Frédérick Lemetheyer … donneront aujourd’hui Jeudi 19 Décembre 1816 … un representation de Roméo et Juliette, opéra en trois actes, à grand spectacle, de Ségur jeune et Steibeilt [sic]. Le spectacle sera terminé par l’Academie des Singes Savan[t]s, dansant[s] sur la corde roide et voltigeant sur la corde lâche … Calais, 1816. Folio playbill, the text within a broad woodcut border, the upper half comprising two commedia dell’arte figures and a decorative headpiece (cropped), the lower half with 11 vignette scenes of the performing monkeys; some wear to edges; manuscript corrections in eight places. $2100 A delightful unrecorded illustrated playbill, evidently a proof copy, with typographical errors corrected, for a performance of the Shakespearean opéra comique Roméo et Juliette by Segur and Stiebelt, with an afterpiece of acrobatic monkeys. Roméo et Juliette premièred in Paris in 1793 and was incredibly successful, still regularly performed 30 years later. Frédéric Lemetheyer led the resident company of the Spectacle de Calais; he was later notable for directing Le Vampire (1820) – the stage adaptation by Nodier of Polidori’s Vampyre. On 19 December 1816, the main show was followed by a performance by the trained dancing monkeys of M. Janssens, ‘the same that the proprietor had the honour to have dance in the presence of her royal highness the Duchess of Angoulême [Marie-Thérèse, daughter of Louis XVI] at Saint-Cloud; and before the Allied Sovereigns at Paris in the Tivoli Gardens’ (trans). There were two monkeys, one who performs on the tightrope, walking backwards, dancing blindfold, and carrying a ‘pyramide chinoise’ of 9 lit candles in its mouth; Monkey Two, ‘surnommé le Petit Diable’, vaults onto a horse and then performs on the slackline, performing the ‘grand tourbillon’ and ‘moulinet’ with a rapidity without equal." [...] Ordered from Bernard Quaritch, D9786, 2024-11-15, email quote

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