DESTOUCHES, PHILIPPE (168o-1754)

This article appears in Volume V08, Page 104 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DEM-DIO

DESTOUCHES, PHILIPPE (168o-1754) , French dramatist, whose real name was Nericault, was born at Tours in

April

APRIL

1680. When he was nineteen years of age he became secretary to M. de Puysieux, the French

ambassador

AMBASSADOR (also EMBASSADOR, the form sometimes still used in America; from the Fr. ambassadeur, with which compare Ital. ambasciatore and Span. embajador, all variants of the Med. Lat. ambassiator, ambassiator, ambasator, &c., derived from Med. Lat. amba

in Switzerland. In 1716 he was attached to the French

embassy

EMBASSY

in London, where he remained for six years under the abbe

Dubois

DUBOIS
DUBOIS, FRANCOIS CLEMENT THEODORE (1837– )
DUBOIS, GUILLAUME (1656–1723)
DUBOIS,
JEAN
- JEAN
ANTOINE (1765-1848)
DUBOIS, PAUL (1829-1905)
DUBOIS, PIERRE (c. 1250-c. 1312)

. He contracted with a Lancashire lady, Dorothea Johnston, a

marriage

MARRIAGE

which was not avowed for some years. He drew a picture later of his own domestic circumstances in Le Philosophe marie (1726). On his return to France (1723) he was elected to the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

, and in 1727 he acquired considerable estates, the possession of which conferred the privileges of

nobility

NOBILITY

. He spent his later years at his chateau of Fortoiseau near Melun, dying on the 4th of July 1754. His early comedies were: Le Curieux Impertinent (1710), L'Ingrat (1712), L'Irresolu (1713) and Le Medisant (1715). The best, of these is L'Irresolu, in which Dorante, after hesitating throughout the play between Julie and Celimene, marries Julie, but concludes the play with the reflection:
" J'aurais mieux fait, je crois, d'epouser Celimene."
After eleven years of diplomatic service

Destouches

DESTOUCHES, PHILIPPE (168o-1754)

returned to the stage with the Philosophe marie (1727), followed in 1732 by his masterpiece Le Glorieux, a picture of the struggle then beginning between the old

nobility

NOBILITY

and the wealthy parvenus who found their opportunity in the poverty of France.

Destouches

DESTOUCHES, PHILIPPE (168o-1754)

wished to revive the comedy of character as understood by Moliere, but he thought it desirable that the moral should be directly expressed. This moralizing tendency spoilt his later comedies. Among them may be mentioned: Le

Tambour

TAMBOUR (Fr. for " drum " )

nocturne (1736), La Force du naturel (1750) and Le Dissipaleur
(1736).
His works were issued in collected form in 1755, 1757, 1811 and, in a limited edition (6 vols.), 1822.

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