From Cleopatra to Cléopâtre

In the winter of 1553 Cleopatra first spoke French, at the Hôtel de Reims in Paris, in Étienne Jodelle's Cleopatre captive. Thus the queen of Egypt became the first heroine of French tragédie humaniste. The play was performed in the presence of Henri II and of the duke of Guisa. The occasion was the celebration of the victory of Metz, against Charles V, and the marriage of Diane d’Angoulême to Orazio Farnese. The event was praised by Ronsard and the other poètes de la Pléiade.3 Jodelle (1532-1573) was at the time an avant-garde twenty-year-old poet.

The shift from one country to another was not without consequence. P.R. Horne has summarised thus the formal differences between Italian and French dramas:

The translation also implied a passage from the shattered reality of the Italian signorie and republics to the wider horizons of national monarchies. The historical background was completely different, too. France was on the verge of its Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and Jodelle, who would later write anti-Protestant sonnets, in his play spares neither Roman Catholics nor Huguenots. The imminent storm induces him to an antireligious position which would have been unthinkable after 1562.