amorous doctor

The anonymous French seventeenth-century play le Docteur Amoureux (1691) was written for theThéâtre Italien, the Italian troupe acting in Paris. It incorporated the techniques of both Old French farce and the commedia dell'arte into mainstream comic modes, in the manner of Moliáere but with some amusing twists. Le Docteur Amoureux remains a significant part of the French comic canon and the historical corpus of drama, yet it has never been translated into English. With prefatory commentary on the text and the period, the genres of stage performance, and the challenges involved in translating historical texts, this first translation of le Docteur Amoureux is intended to serve contemporary theater research into this rich and prolific period in the history of the French theater under Louis XIV.