Pierre du Ryer (c.1606 – 6 November 1658) was a French

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

Life and works

Du Ryer was born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

in about 1606. His early comedies are loosely modelled on those of

Alexandre Hardy Alexandre Hardy (c. 1570/1572 – 1632) was a French dramatist, one of the most prolific of all time. He claimed to have written some six hundred plays, but only thirty-four are extant. He was born in Paris, and seems to have been connected mo ...

, but after the production of the ''Cid'' (1636) he became an imitator of Pierre Corneille; this was the period when he produced his masterpiece ''Scévole'', probably in 1644 (the date generally given is 1646). ''Alcione'' (1638) was so popular that the abbé d'Aubignac knew it by heart, and Queen

Christina of Sweden Christina ( sv, Kristina, 18 December ( New Style) 1626 – 19 April 1689), a member of the House of Vasa, was Queen of Sweden in her own right from 1632 until her abdication in 1654. She succeeded her father Gustavus Adolphus upon his death ...

is said to have had it read to her three times in one day. Du Ryer was a prolific dramatist. Among his other works were ''Saül'' (printed 1642), and a comedy, ''Les Vendanges de Suresnes'' (1635 or 1636). He died in Paris in 1658.

References

* Lancaster, Henry Carrington (1912
''Pierre Du Ryer, dramatist''
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.], * Gaines, James F. (1988) ''Pierre Du Ryer and his tragedies: from envy to liberation'' Libr. Droz, Geneva, , being volume 257 of the ''Histoire des idées et critique littéraire'' series

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Du Ryer, Pierre 1606 births 1658 deaths Writers from Paris Members of the Académie Française 17th-century French dramatists and playwrights 17th-century French male writers