Jean-François Ducis, born August 22, 17331 in Versailles and died in the same city on Mars 31, 18162, is a French writer, playwright and poet.

Born into a modest family, originally from Hauteluce en Beaufortain, in the Duchy of Savoie3, he is the son of Pierre Ducis, canvas merchant, and Marie-Thérèse Rappe4, and the uncle of the history painter Jean-Louis Ducis5: 229.

Jean-François Ducis received a careful religious education and studied first in a small pension in Clamart, then at the college of Versailles6. At eighteen, he joined the Marshal of Belle-Isle as a secretary, who took him on his tours of inspection of strongholds, then placed him as an expeditionary in the offices of the Ministry of War when he was there. named6:46. But, shortly after, his protector authorized him to leave this job, while retaining the salary, in order to devote himself to the theater6:48. His uncle Louis Le Dreux de La Châtre, architect to the king, architect of the Château de Compiègne, also helped him for many years.

In 1768, he had his tragedy of Amélise performed at the Comédie-Française which, according to Charles Collé, “was booed from one end to the other”7, but he took his revenge with his Hamlet, approximately imitated from Shakespeare , played September 30, 17695:26-65. There he had found the vein that would make him famous: bringing the plays of the English playwright up to date and in line with French tastes. Not understanding English and never having bothered to learn it, he worked from the French translations of Pierre-Antoine de La Place or Pierre Letourneur, themselves quite unfaithful8. However, even thus watered down, Shakespeare's plays offended more than one spectator; thus Lekain refused the role of Hamlet, which Molé on the other hand had the happy inspiration to accept6:16-7.

In line with this first success, he produced, in 1772, Romeo and Juliet, removing some of the most famous scenes – the balcony scene, the verses about the song of the lark and the nightingale… – but in adding the episode of Ugolino, taken from Dante5:421.

In 1775, as secretary to the Count of Provence, he accompanied the latter when he returned to Chambéry, Clotilde de France, the Count's sister, engaged to Prince Charles-Emmanuel of Piedmont5:212.

In 1778, he played Oedipus in Admetus, a bizarre assemblage of Euripides' Alcestis and Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, but which did not lack pathos. It was a success and the author was elected to the French Academy the same year, in the chair of Voltaire5:186. His reception speech – which evil tongues have attributed to his close friend the poet Antoine Léonard Thomas, who only reread it and suggested cuts9 – was widely applauded. He begins with this famous sentence: “Gentlemen, there are great men who are succeeded and whom no one replaces10. »

In 1783, he gave a new imitation of Shakespeare, King Lear, in which we recognize almost nothing of the original play, which had become a bourgeois and tearful drama very much in the spirit of the time and which, for this reason, knew a huge success. Carried in triumph, the author is brought on stage to receive ovations from the public.

In 1784, Macbeth, although very watered down, was less successful6:260-1; Jean-sans-Terre, in 17915:252-3, no success11; but Othello, in 1792, with Talma in the title role, once again unleashed enthusiasm. We applaud the tirades of this Moorish captain who establishes himself thanks to his virtues alone within the aristocracy and who proclaims:

They did not, all these great ones, lack intelligence,
By consecrating between them the rights of birth
As they are everything through her, she is everything in their eyes.
What would they have left if they had no ancestors?
But I, son of the desert, I, son of nature,
Who owes everything to myself and nothing to imposture,
Without fear, without remorse, with simplicity,
I walk in my strength and in my freedom.

In 1785, while he went to Moûtiers to settle the estate of his uncle, the homonymous canon Jean-François Ducis, he was, during the return trip, seriously injured while crossing the Épine chain, from Chambéry to the town of Échelles, the horses having run away6:170-1.

Abandoning imitations of Shakespeare5:164, he then composed an original tragedy, Abufar, or the Arab family, represented on April 13, 1795, a picture of patriarchal morals6:423 in which, says Sainte-Beuve, "the feeling of the desert and the The immensity of the flight across the sands is quite well rendered; burning air circulates there12”. The plot, however, lacks strength: a brother believes he is in love with his sister and vice versa, but we end up learning that it is only an adopted sister so that the moral is saved5:180. The knowledge