Piérard Poullet, Charite

[Machine translation] The first work staged and published by Piérard Poullet, the Charite tragedy (1595) constitutes - despite the obvious stylistic limitations - a remarkable text from the point of view of literary and theatrical history. In fact, it is the first French theatrical adaptation of the subject matter of Apuleius's Golden Donkey and, more generally, one of the first adaptations of a romantic episode to the tragic scene; it is also a tragedy that, making love the engine of tragic action, anticipates by a few years the fashion for love tragedies that will spread in the first decades of the seventeenth century; finally, it is a play that offers a synthesis of disparate poetic and dramaturgical models, bringing together typical scenes inspired by tragic, tragicomical models comedians, comedians and pastorals., This edition, conducted in accordance with the editorial rules of the Théâtre Français de la Renaissance series, provides the annotated text in modernized handwriting, preceded by an introduction that constitutes the first academic study specifically dedicated to the Charite and its author. Beyond the presentation of the play and its framing in the landscape of the late 17th century theater, this introduction presents the results of research on the identity of Piérard Poullet and his intellectual profile conducted through the study of literary, documentary and archival sources; it also presents a partial reconstruction, based on the examination of the internal captions and movements of the characters, the scenography and the props used during the performance held at the Collège de Justice in Paris around 1594.