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Le mémoire de Mahelot: Mémoire pour la décoration des pièces qui se représentent par les Comédiens du Roi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2006

David G. Muller
Affiliation:
École des Hautes Études Commerciales

Abstract

The previously available edition of this important source of evidence that documents scenic practice in the public theatres of seventeenth-century France was prepared by Henry Carrington Lancaster in 1920 as Le Mémoire de Mahelot, Laurent et d'autres décorateurs de l'Hôtel de Bourgogne et de la Comédie Française au XVIIesiècle. If only for supplanting Lancaster's with one that will be more widely available for purchase and consultation, Pierre Pasquier's new critical edition would be an excellent resource for theatre scholarship, continuing the transmission of documentary evidence and disciplinary knowledge to future generations. However, in the eighty-six years since Lancaster's edition, the discoveries, methods, and aims of theatre scholarship have changed dramatically, and Pasquier's significant introduction, which encompasses more pages than the presentation of the Mémoire itself, is also an excellent contextual synthesis of historical work that relies on this vital manuscript (BNF, ms. 24330).

Type
Book Review
Copyright
© 2006 The American Society for Theatre Research, Inc.

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