Marc-Antoine Legrand or Le Grand (30 January 1673, Paris – 7 January 1728) was a 17th–18th-century French actor and playwright.
Biography
The son of a surgeon at the
Hôtel des Invalides
The Hôtel des Invalides ( en, "house of invalids"), commonly called Les Invalides (), is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as ...
, Legrand started very early his acting career, first in
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...
in 1692 in the company of
Marshall de Villeroy and made a first attempt at the
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française () or Théâtre-Français () is one of the few state theatres in France. Founded in 1680, it is the oldest active theatre company in the world. Established as a French state-controlled entity in 1995, it is the only state ...
19 March 1694 but was not received. After a stay in Warsaw at the court of
John III Sobieski, he returned to the Comédie-Française 21 March 1702 and was received 18 October.
Disgraced by nature, he one day harangued the audience by throwing "Gentlemen, it is easier for you to accustom yourself to my face, that for me to change it."
If he never gave up the stage (he even played the role of Maître Robert in his last play ''Les Amazones modernes'' in 1727, written in collaboration with
Louis Fuzelier Louis Fuzelier (also ''Fuselier'', ''Fusellier'', ''Fusillier'', ''Fuzellier''; 1672 or 1674 ), he devoted part of his time to writing theater plays (forty in all), sometimes to the Comédie française, sometimes to the
Comedie Italienne, and once even for a
Théâtre de la foire Théâtre de la foire is the collective name given to the theatre put on at the annual fairs at Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent (and for a time, at Saint-Ovide) in Paris.
Foire Saint-Germain
The earliest references to the annual fair date to 11 ...
, the
opéra comique, ''Les Animaux raisonnables'', 1717. ''Le Roi de Cocagne'' (1718) is usually considered to be his masterpiece.
While he was composing the play ''
Cartouche
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the f ...
ou les voleurs'' (1721), he pushed the sake of realism as far as visiting in prison the famous brigand to document the argot.
Claudine Nédélec, "Marc-Antoine Legrand : Cartouche, ou les Voleurs (1721) : analyse et étude de l’argot", in ''Les dossiers du Grihl''
/ref>
References
Bibliography
Studies on Legrand
* Burnet, Mary Scott, ''Marc-Antoine Legrand, acteur et auteur comique'', Paris, Droz, 1938.
* Lauro, Carlo, Foire' et utopia nel teatro di M.-A. Legrand'', Schena editore, 1985.
Plays by Legrand
* ''Œuvres de Le Grand, comédien du roi'', Paris, Libraires associés, 1770 (4 vol.)
* ''Œdipe travesti'' et ''Agnès de Chaillot'' (en collaboration avec Pierre-François Biancolelli, dit Dominique) dans ''Parodies du nouveau Théâtre-Italien'', Paris, Briasson, 1738 (vol. 1).
External links
Marc-Antione Legrand
on data.bnf.fr
List of his plays
o
CÉSAR
biographical notice
in '' Dictionnaire portatif historique et littéraire des théâtres'' by Antoine de Léris
Antoine de Léris ( Mont-Louis, Roussillon, 28 February 1723 — 1795) was a French journalist and drama critic of the 18th century and a historian of the French theatre, author of the ''Dictionnaire portatif historique et littéraire des théâtr ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Legrand, Marc-Antoine
18th-century French male actors
French male stage actors
18th-century French dramatists and playwrights
Sociétaires of the Comédie-Française
Male actors from Paris
1673 births
1728 deaths