L'illustre Olympie ou le St Alexis; tragedie

by Nicolas-Marc Desfontaines (Nicolas Mary)

Paris: Pierre Lamy, 1661

[8], 80 p. | 8vo | pi4 A-K^4 | 143 x 92 mm

An early edition of this dramatized hagiography of Saint Alexius of Rome. The 1645 edition is typically considered the first, though the Bibliothèque nationale does report a 1644. Others appeared at least in 1649, 1653, and 1658; another 1661 edition appeared at Troyes; and several more followed through at least 1692. The prolific French playwright might best be known for his sequel to Corneille’s Le Cid. His dramatization here follows the traditional Greek legend of the saint, whom he betroths to one Olympie. After receiving a call from the Virgin Mary, Alexis abandons Olympie on their wedding night to pursue a life of Christian devotion. He returns a beggar, remaining incognito even to Olympie. His true identity is discovered only after his death, Olympie joining him shortly thereafter. ¶ The play takes some leaps of logic, which seem to have little bothered the author. “Desfontaines was concerned above all to exploit the sensational possibilities of his material: act III includes a shipwreck, and act V presents a flight of angels. The play is irregular: it requires several locations, and the time, despite the author’s careful silence, must exceed twenty-four hours, while some characters are superfluous to the action. Desfontaines packed all he could into his play to provide the maximum of spectacles and emotions, without great concern for their congruence” (Street). Despite the play’s patriarchal source, Olympie dominates the action. This may help explain the author’s dedication to Madame de Talmant—Elisabeth de Rambouillet, wife of French writer Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux?—here carried over from the first edition. ¶ All editions are rare, and we trace no other copies of the present. We find a single auction record for any edition, a copy of the 1645 first that sold in 2009.

PROVENANCE: Early ownership signature on title page (Jacque Derien?). A single textual change on p. 20, with scattered crosses inked in the margin throughout.

CONDITION: Stab-sewn and covered in later plain blue wrappers, lined with waste from a late 18th-century edition of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s “Histoire de Mademoiselle de Remilies.” An abysmally printed little thing, with no shortage of crooked lines and making use of some foul upper cases. ¶ Some heavy worming at the inner margin, affecting text; a few tatty corners; first and last couple of leaves a bit soiled and dusty. Some splitting to the paper covering the spine.

REFERENCES: J.S. Street, French Sacred Drama from Bèze to Corneille (Cambridge University, 1983), p. 195 (“Olympie rather than Alexis is the centre of interest in all acts but the fourth”); Ana Fonseca Conboy, “Awakening Imagination: Glimpses of Ignatian Spirituality in Seventeenth-Century French Hagiographic Theatre,” Performance Matters 3.1 (2017), p. 71 (“the author chooses to focus on the viewpoint of Olympie, Alexis’s wife, and the turbulent relationship with her contenders in the absence of her husband”)

Item #406