An Italian Straw Hat E-Book

Eugène Labiche

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are accurate and above all actable. The editions of English-language plays include a glossary of unusual words and phrases to aid understanding. An Italian Straw Hat is a classic farce from 1851. Fadinard is on the way to his wedding when his horse eats a straw hat hanging on a bush. The owner of the hat is a former girlfriend who insists that Fadinard buys her a new hat instantly. He sets off to find a replacement hat, followed by his fiancée and all their guests. The play develops into a delirious chase as Fadinard hunts the hat and the guests hunt Fadinard and comic misunderstandings litter every scene. Translated and introduced by Kenneth McLeish.

Leseprobe

DRAMA CLASSICS

AN ITALIANSTRAW HAT

byEugène Labiche and Marc-Michel

translated and introduced by

Kenneth McLeish

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Labiche: Key Dates

Characters

An Italian Straw Hat

Music Numbers

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Eugène-Marin Labiche (1815-88)

Labiche’s father manufactured glucose syrup, which was widely used both for cooking and as a drink (diluted with fruit-juice or water: the ‘sugar-water’ which people in An Italian Straw Hat drink so enthusiastically). The family was well-to-do without being rich and belonged precisely to the comfortable middle-class Labiche was later to satirise so uproariously. The boy was conventionally educated – his only intellectual gift, he later claimed, was a photographic memory which allowed him to pass exams by quoting textbooks verbatim – and he followed his parents’ wishes so far as to enrol for a law degree. But from the age of 18 he had begun to write, and after a few false starts (travel journalism, a novel, theatre criticism), he delivered his first play in 1837, and his career was set.

In the next 38 years Labiche wrote so many plays, scenes and sketches that he himself found it hard to remember them all. The ‘Complete Works: Series One’ he published in ten volumes in 1878-9 (as part of a campaign to be the first farce-writer given France’s highest literary honour, election to the Académie française) contains 57 plays, and scholars have tracked down another 107 (usually of less worth) to which his name can be definitely assigned. Following the custom of the time, he generally worked with at least one collaborator, and rewrote and revised during rehearsals and even – when plays were successful – during the runs themselves.