Nitetis [ensemble] Le Favory [ensemble] Manlius [Œuvres complètes]

Before making her mark as a playwright, the lady of quality Marie-Catherine Desjardins first came to public attention through her poems, among them Jouissance. This more than suggestive title mirrors the life led by the young adventuress in the early 1660s: she had been living alone since before coming of age, a most uncommon situation for the time, and for two years had been openly consorting with Antoine de Boësset, sieur de Villedieu, whose name she would borrow in 1665, though no union before the Church ever took place. When she turned to playwriting, she drew on the Cornelian style and met with resounding success:

"'Manlius' remained in the repertoire for almost a month, it seems, before being replaced in June by Poisson's 'Le Baron de la Crasse': a respectable beginning, if not a resounding triumph. Eleven months later, in the midst of the controversy surrounding Pierre Corneille's 'Sophonisbe,' Paris saw the premiere of a second play from her hand, a tragedy steeped in Oriental exoticism, […]. Although 'Nitétis' was withdrawn after a few weeks, nothing suggested that the young playwright had just written her last tragic work, a fact that would irrevocably consign her to the ranks of the 'minores,' for the enthusiasm, or rather the curiosity, of the Parisian public for the phenomenon represented by 'the work of a Girl' remained very much alive. Her third play, 'Le Favory,' which ventured into the comic genre, was premiered by Molière a year later, on April 24, 1665. Unlike the two preceding plays, it was even revived before the King at Versailles in June 1665, and at the Palais-Royal in August-September of that same year, then again in March and August 1666."

Valérie Worth-Stylianou, "'C'est, pourtant, l'œuvre d'une Fille' : Mlle Desjardins à l'Hôtel de Bourgogne," Oxford Brookes University 

In the space of just three years, Marie-Catherine Desjardins secured a place among the foremost playwrights of her time, even before Jean Racine had made his mark. The audacity that characterized her in life was equally present in her art, which was never content with mere imitation of existing models. Her highly distinctive touch, which she would go on to defend in her later writings, was apparent from her very first theatrical attempt, Manlius:

"Attacked for its distortion of Roman history, the play in fact bears witness to the emergence of a new conception of History, one that the author would go on to articulate in the preface to her 'Annales Galantes' (1670), that Saint-Réal would theorize in 'De l'usage de l'histoire' (1671), and that is equally present in Saint-Évremond. By establishing amorous passion as the vital ingredient driving the intrigues of political history, she gives precedence to her heroines, as is further illustrated by 'Nitétis,' the most novelistic of her plays, which was performed in 1663 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne to modest success. Beneath the gallantry of the verse, a critique of absolutism emerges, pitting the autonomy of the individual against the absolute power of a tyrannical monarch."

Dossier Pédagogique, "Le Favori" de Madame de Villedieu, Prologue et Mis en scène Aurore Evain, création avril 2015

First editions of the recently rediscovered plays of Mme de Villedieu, who left her mark on French theatre and who managed, in an age where decorum and the rules of Classicism held absolute sway, to write in her own way, that is to say, "straight from the heart" (Writing Straight From the Heart, Roxanne Decker Lalande, 2000).