The drama of our past : major plays from nineteenth-century Quebec /

Of some 175 surviving 19th-century Quebecoise plays written in French, only half a dozen have been translated into English. So although one can read about this drama in English--e.g., in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre, ed. by Eugene Benson and L. W. Conoly (CH, Jul'90), in Doucette's Theatre in French Canada: Laying the Foundations, 1606-1867 (1984), and in Jonathan Weiss's French-Canadian Theater (CH, Oct'86), which devotes precious few pages to what Weiss calls the "birth of theater"--access to the texts themselves has not been possible for those lacking a sound knowledge of French and the services of a major library. The plays presented here may not be dramatically exciting, but they are among the most important of the 19th century and will interest literary scholars, historians, and political scientists. Doucette's translations successfully capture the colloquial, often slangy language of the characters, and for each play he provides an excellent introductory essay situating the work in the social, historical, and political context in which it was written and performed. Includes notes and suggestions for further reading. Graduate and research collections. S. R. Schulman; Central Connecticut State University