Jeanne Quinault

Jeanne Quinault (born and baptized 13 October 1699 in Strasbourg, died 18 January 1783 in Paris), was a French actress, playwright and salon hostess.

She was usually called Mlle Quinault la cadette (the younger), to distinguish her from her older sister, Marie-Anne-Catherine Quinault, also an actress. She herself thought her name was Jeanne-Françoise Quinault until 1726, when she obtained a copy of her baptismal record and discovered her legal name, but most references to her use the two given names.

She made her début at the Comédie-Française on 14 June 1718 and was accepted into the company in December 1718, becoming the sixth member of the Quinault family to be admitted. She gave her first performance in the title role of Racine's Phèdre and five days later played Chimène in Pierre Corneille's Le Cid. The choices are rather surprising, because she became famous in soubrette and comic character roles.

In 1727 Jeanne Quinault created the role of Céliante in Le Philosophe marié by Philippe Néricault Destouches. It was an ideal role for her, a strange, proud, moody and capricious woman, who was nonetheless vivacious, appealing and entertaining. This hugely popular play established her as one of the stars of the troupe.

Over a period of several months beginning in December 1731, Jeanne joined with a group of seven other friends to meet regularly and produce light-hearted, often parodic and satirical, theatrical entertainments, which they called lazzis, a term from the Commedia dell'arte meaning comic pantomime. The other Lazzistes included Jeanne's sister-in-law, formerly Mlle de Seine; her cousin Mlle Balicourt, who had joined the Comédie-Française in 1727; the poet and playwright Alexis Piron; the Comte de Caylus; Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas; and Charles-Alexandre Salley. The Lazzistes were not the only such group that Jeanne Quinault frequented in this period, but it stands out, both because the men continued to play an important part in her life for years afterward, and because they kept a record of their activities, which has recently been rediscovered and published. This document shows Jeanne to have been the driving spirit in the group.

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