François Datelin, called Fanchon Brioché, was a famous 17th-century French puppeteer.
The son of
Jean Brioché
Pierre Datelin, dit Jean Brioché, (1567 – 1671) was a famous French puppeteer.
First a tooth-puller, Brioche opened in Paris in 1650, the first puppet theaters at foires Saint-Laurent et Saint-Germain,
The gaiety and verve of his speeches he ...
, he took over his father's puppets theatre at
foires Saint-Laurent and Saint-Germain when the latter died. According to Brossette, he even surpassed his father in the art of making his puppets act and speak pleasantly.
In 1677,
Boileau immortalized Brioché's son in his sixth epistle to
Racine
Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditio ...
: "And not far from the place where Brioché chairs…".
It was he whose monkey Fagotin was killed with a sword by
Cyrano de Bergerac
Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac ( , ; 6 March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian, and duelist.
A bold and innovative author, his work was part of the libertine literature of the first half of the 17th cen ...
who had mistaken him for a servant who was making wince to him and gave rise, on the part of his former lover
d'Assoucy, to a curious literary work entitled ''Combat de Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché au bout du Pont-Neuf''. The name and part of Fagotin, who died in the so uneven duel against Cyrano, survived him and Fagotin was, until the last years of the seventeenth, the obligatory companion of every good puppet manipulator.
Sources
*
Gustave Vapereau
Louis Gustave Vapereau (4 April 1819 – 18 April 1906) was a French writer and lexicographer famous primarily for his dictionaries, the ''Dictionnaire universel des contemporains'' and the ''Dictionnaire universel des littérateurs''.
Biography
...
, ''Dictionnaire universel des littératures'', Paris, Hachette, 1876, (p. 326)
*
Charles Magnin Charles Magnin (born in Paris, 4 November 1793; died there,7 October 1862) was a French author.
Biography
He received a brilliant education, and in 1813 became assistant in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, imperial library, and in 1832 one o ...
''Histoire des marionnettes en Europe depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours'' Paris, Michel Lévy frères, 1852, (p. 135-42).
''Une famille d'opérateurs-marionnettistes les Brioché''
External links
''Combat de Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché au bout du Pont-Neuf''on Wikisource
Quand Cyrano de Bergerac se bat en duel avec… un singe!
{{DEFAULTSORT:Datelin, Francois
17th-century French male actors
French male stage actors
French puppeteers