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Here are three French plays from the Enlightenment Period dealing
with the subject of slavery. ISLE OF SLAVES, by Pierre de Marivaux,
is the longest and most challenging of the three. It postulates an
island in the ancient Greek world where the slaves have revolted
and seized power, killing all of their former masters and declaring
their independence. Now, any "masters" shipwrecked on their island
are forced to live as slaves of their own slaves to impress upon
them the wrongs they've committed. THE MERCHANT OF SMYRNA, by
Nicolas Chamfort, and THE BEAUTIFUL SLAVE, by Antoine-Jean
Dumaniant, both deal with the pain that Christian and Muslim lovers
experience when one (or both) of them are captured and sold into
slavery--and then are fortuitously freed by their new owners or
through their own efforts. These dramas represent early moral
judgments in the late eighteenth century on the evils of slavery,
and as such, are important milestones in the history of European
drama.
In The Game of Love and Chance, a pair of prospective lovers each
swap places with their servants, while their relatives, fully
apprised of both deceptions, look on in amusement. Neil Bartlett's
adaptation, first performed at the Lyric Hammersmith, finds
incentive modern equivalents for Marivaux's ludic theatricality and
its roots in the Commedia dell'Arte.
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