Pour Lucèrce is Giraudoux’ last play, published posthumously in 1951, produced by the Madeleine Renaud—Jean-Louis Barrault company in Paris in 1953, and slated for Broadway production in an English adaptation by Christopher Fry.

On the face of it, the theme of outraged chastity, hallowed though it is by time, seems an odd dish to set before today’s theatregoers. Rape is not unknown on our stage; but chastity is rarely mentioned nowadays and Tarquin’s ravishing strides had quite subsided when Giraudoux came along with his Lucrèce. It should be noted, however, that he has given with one hand only to take away with the other.