Osman: Tragédie

by Tristan L'Hermite, Edmond Girard

Cette pièce de théâtre classique raconte l'histoire tragique de la vie du sultan Osman, qui doit faire face à la rébellion de son peuple et à la trahison de ses proches. Un incontournable pour les amateurs de drame historique. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

122 pages, Paperback

Published July 18, 2023

About the author

François L'Hermite du Solier, called Tristan L'Hermite, was a French nobleman and writer: dramatist, poet, and novelist.

Reviews

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is interesting to me that the themes in Osman are so similar to the themes in La Mort de Sénèque, i.e. the overthrow of an all-powerful emperor and the emperor's response to the complaints of his people. I am fascinated by thinking of both of these plays as responses to the absolute monarchy in France.

Osman is not well plotted (as Lacy Lockert and others have pointed out), but it has some really great sequences, especially 4.2, with the Janissaries on the deck and the emperor on (maybe?) a balcony.

One also can't help comparing this (at least a little bit) to Racine's Bajazet, since the source material is the same. Osman does partially have the structure of a Racinean tragedy—where the person with the power is also the person who loves someone who does not love him/her in return—but it lacks almost everything else that is central to Racinean tragedy. This is a surprising play in that it lacks the claustrophobia of Racine's dramas and it lacks the tension that Racine creates so finely. It also never manages to convince us to care about the Mufti's daughter (the female protagonist), though the tragedy seems invested in her death in act five as an emotional event. Still Osman has its virtues: it's invested in politics in a way that Racine's tragedies never are, and it has at least one sparkling cliffhanger (as does La Mort de Sénèque).

PS I read this in English, not in the original French, despite what I entered into GoodReads.