- Antoine Jacob
Antoine Jacob de Montfleury (
1640 -1685 ), known as Montfleury, was a Frenchactor andplaywright who was a chief rival ofMolière .He was the son of
Zacharie Jacob , who was the first to adopt Montfleury as astage name , and had achieved great fame as an actor and playwright himself. Both were associated with theHôtel de Bourgogne theatre troupe, an institution supported by King Louis XIV.Antoine worked as a
lawyer at first. His first notable play, "The Impromptu of the Hôtel de Condé", was written as a tit-for-tat response to one Molière had staged mocking his father Zacharie. The latter would subsequently deepen the feud, shortly before his own death, by accusing Molière ofincest .Antoine made his name as a playwright with "La Femme juge et partie", which ran simultaneously with "
Tartuffe " and was accorded the respect of an equal work by contemporaries. But Montfleury remained committed to Spanish theatre styles afterLope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca, while Molière was recreating the Italiancomedy of manners in a French mold.Montfleury was also a rival of
Cyrano de Bergerac , who once insulted Montfleury's girth in a letter, an incident which was dramatized byEdmond Rostand in his play "Cyrano de Bergerac".References
* [http://www.scr.org/season/03-04season/programs/lovers.pdf Antoine Jacob de Montfleury] - reportory theatre magazine
External links
* [http://www.crht.org/ressources/bibliotheque-dramatique/montfleury-antoine-jacob-le-gentilhomme-de-beauce-ed-elodie-benard/introduction/ Montfleury et le genre comique: La carrière d’Antoine-Jacob Montfleury] from the "Centre Recherche pour l'Histoire de Théâtre" at the
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