Néricault Destouches

Philippe Néricault Destouches (9 April 1680 – 4 July 1754) was a French playwright who wrote 22 plays.

Biography

Destouches was born at Tours, Touraine (in today's department of Indre-et-Loire).

When he was nineteen years of age, he became secretary to M. de Puysieux, the French ambassador to Switzerland. In 1716 he was attached to the French embassy in London, where he remained for six years under abbé Dubois.

He later contracted a marriage with Dorothea Johnston, Lancashire lady; however, the marriage was not avowed for some years. In 1727 he portrayed his domestic circumstances in Le Philosophe Marié (The Married Philosopher).

Upon returning to France in 1723, he was elected to the Académie française. In 1727 he acquired considerable estates, the possession of which conferred the privileges of nobility.

He spent his later years at Fortoiseau, his chateau near Melun, and died July 4, 1754.

Destouches wished to revive the comedy of character as understood by Molière, but he thought it desirable that the moral should be directly expressed.

His early comedies were:

Le Curieux Impertinent (1710)

L'Ingrat (1712)

L'Irrésolu (1713)

Le Médisant (1715)

La Fausse Veuve (1715)

Le Triple Mariage (1716)

L'Obstacle Imprévu (1717)

The most highly regarded of these is L'Irrésolu (The Irresolute Man), in which Dorante, after vacillating throughout the play between Julie and Climène, marries Julie, but concludes the play with the reflection, "J'aurais mieux fait, je crois, d'épouser Climène" ("I would have done better, I think, to marry Climène").