Jean-François Ducis
| Jean-François Ducis | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
14 August 1733 Versailles |
| Died | 31 March 1816 (aged 82) Versailles |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Dramatist |
Jean-François Ducis (French: [dysi]; 22 August 1733 – 31 March 1816) was a French dramatist and adapter of Shakespeare.
Ducis was born in Versailles, one of ten children. His father, Pierre Ducis, originally from Savoy, was a linen draper at Versailles, and his mother, Maria-Thérèse Rappe, was the daughter of a porter of the Count of Toulouse and all through life he retained the simple tastes and straightforward independence fostered by his bourgeois education.
In 1768, he produced his first tragedy, Amélise. The failure of this first attempt was fully compensated by the success of his Hamlet (1769), and Roméo et Juliette (1772). Œdipe chez Admète, imitated partly from Euripides and partly from Sophocles, appeared in 1778, and secured him in the following year the chair in the Academy left vacant by the death of Voltaire. Equally successful was Le Roi Lear in 1783. Macbeth in 1784 did not take so well, and Jean sans terre in 1791 was almost a failure; but Othello in 1792, supported by the acting of Talma, obtained immense applause. Its vivid picturing of desert life secured for Abufar ou la Famille arabe (1795), an original drama, a flattering reception.
Ducis was noted for his translations of six of Shakespeare's plays and Ducis' adaptations, which frequently involved renaming characters and revising plots, became the basis for translations into Italian and the languages of Eastern Europe. As an example, Ducis version of Othello ended with the title character reconciling with Desdemona and pardoning a chastened Iago.
On the failure of a similar piece, Phédor et Waldamir, ou la famille de Sibérie (1801), Ducis ceased to write for the stage; and the rest of his life was spent in quiet retirement at Versailles. He had been named a member of the Council of the Ancients in 1798, but he never discharged the functions of the office; and when Napoleon offered him a post of honor under the empire, he refused. Amiable, religious and bucolic, he had little sympathy with the fierce, sceptical and tragic times in which his lot was cast. "Alas!" he said in the midst of the Revolution, "tragedy is abroad in the streets; if I step outside of my door, I have blood to my very ankles. I have too often seen Atreus in clogs, to venture to bring an Atreus on the stage."
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