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Search - Eugenia: Eugénie

Eugenia Eugnie
Author: Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

EUGENIA is the Latin form of a name derived from the Greek eugenes meaning â€œwell born.â€ As Greek was part of a regular gentlemanâ€™s education in the 18th century, this would not have been lost on the audience of de Beaumarchais. The whole theme of his play is really that of good breeding and high birth: the Earl is favored by Dame Murer and... more » hated by the Baronet for being well born, Clarendonâ€™s own troubles with Eugenia are brought on by her relatively high birth (for a lower-class girl could have been easily drafted into his plan without fear of it being pursued), and the fact that the Earl and Eugenia have taken up a bit of breeding of their own, between them. Finally the Earlâ€™s closing argument for winning her forgiveness is to cite the cruelty it would be to deprive their child of the natural rights offered by his noble paternity. At the same time, the Earl himself is not â€œwell bredâ€ in the sense of naturally inclining to good behavior â€“ instead he encompasses the Age of Enlightenmentâ€™s new idea that a person can learn from mistakes and change for the better. He is essentially born-again after â€œthat monster which had produced the outrage against virtueâ€¦painfully at your feet, has died.â€ The play EugÃ©nie (as itâ€™s called in French) premiered in Paris in 1767 and had â€œacquired acclaim for itself before it had even graced the stage.â€ It was the first feature play of author Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, who already was well known for his literary accomplishments; heâ€™d gotten his start arguing his rights to a patent through publicly published letters, and had made a splash internationally with his account of his adventures in Spain while he was attempting to force an unfaithful lover of his sisterâ€™s to do right by her; this story was adapted into a play in his own lifetime, by none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Beaumarchais had written some theater as well, but prior to EugÃ©nie all of his scripts had either been rejected by the theaters, or else were simple one-act comedies (parades) intended for performance at private functions. EugÃ©nie was his first serious play, but it was a success. The genre is known now as drame bourgeois, and was seen at the time as a halfway point between comedy and tragedy. William Howarth, in this book Beaumarchais and the Theater, indicates that the playwright had originally set his story in Brittany, and developed the English setting at a later point for uncertain reasons â€“ perhaps to play off the mood of fashionable sentimental English stories such as those by Samuel Richardson, which were extremely popular at the time. The new setting did, however, create some problems: as Englishwoman Elizabeth Griffiths wrote in the introduction to her contemporary adaptation The School for Rakes, she found Beaumarchais had â€œunluckily adopted Spanish mannersâ€ for his English characters and did not demonstrate a familiarity with local laws and customs, and in her case she realized the troubles caused by the cultural mismatch to be so numerous that she had to resort to merely adapting the play rather than translating. To my knowledge, this book which you hold in your hands is the first ever direct English translation of EugÃ©nie to have seen print. After the initial premier, EugÃ©nie was extremely well-received, and even moreso after Beaumarchais made some cuts to the playâ€™s copious running time (which changes were reflected in the printed editions.) It found itself being one of the first plays known to be performed in New Orleans in the French colony of Louisiana, and early printings of The Barber of Seville were always certain to announce on the title page that the play was â€œfrom the author of EugÃ©nie.â€

ISBN-13: 9781461061922
ISBN-10: 146106192X
Publication Date: 4/25/2011
Pages: 132
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: CreateSpace
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Literature & Fiction >> Classics

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