First performed the day after Marie-Antoinette’s beheading, Le Jugement dernier des rois stages the burlesque trial of the remaining kings and queens of Europe—paraded in chains like animals, made to brawl over a barrel of crackers, and finally obliterated by a spectacular volcanic eruption. Such is the shocking context—at once tragic and farcical—of the most infamous play of the French Revolution, familiar to all specialists of the period. Until now, however, no standalone critical edition or English translation of this historic play existed. This bilingual edition revives Maréchal’s play and reveals its centrality to scholarly debates about Revolutionary notions of justice, religion, commemoration, comedy, and propaganda. Provocative, written in accessible prose, and short—perfect for students in a French or history seminar—Le Jugement dernier des rois offers an ideal introduction to the most important and contentious questions of the Revolutionary period.

Joué pour la première fois le lendemain de l’exécution de Marie-Antoinette, Le Jugement dernier des rois met en scène le procès burlesque des autres rois et reines d’Europe : exhibés et enchaînés tels des animaux, contraints de se battre pour un tonneau de biscuits, et finalement anéantis par l’éruption spectaculaire d’un volcan. Tel est le contexte scandaleux—tragédie et farce à la fois—de la pièce la plus célèbre de la Révolution française, bien connue de tous les spécialistes de cette période. Jusqu’à maintenant, pourtant, il n’existait ni édition critique ni traduction anglaise de cet ouvrage historique. Notre édition bilingue fait revivre la pièce de Maréchal et la replace au centre des plus grands débats chez les historiens de la Révolution, traitant de justice, religion, commémoration, comédie, et propagande. Provocateur, facile à lire, et concis—parfaitement adapté aux étudiants d’un cours de français ou d’histoire—Le Jugement dernier des rois propose ainsi une introduction idéale à la période révolutionnaire et à ses principales controverses.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Collecting diverse critical perspectives on the topic of play—from dolls, bilboquets, and lotteries, to writing itself—this volume offers new insights into how play was used to represent and reimagine the world in eighteenth-century France. In documenting various modes of play, contributors theorize its relation to law, religion, politics, and economics. Equally important was the role of “play” in plays, and the function of theatrical performance in mirroring, and often contesting, our place in the universe. These essays remind us that the spirit of play was very much alive during the “Age of Reason,” providing ways for its practitioners to consider more “serious” themes such as free will and determinism, illusions and equivocations, or chance and inequality. Standing at the intersection of multiple intellectual avenues, this is the first comprehensive study in English devoted to the different guises of play in Enlightenment France, certain to interest curious readers across disciplinary backgrounds.