Le Songe d'une nuit d'été / Les Joyeuses commères de Windsor / Le Soir des Rois

by William Shakespeare, François-Victor Hugo (Translator), Richard Marienstras (Editor)

À l'heure où les elfes s'éveillent, les humains s'endorment, et il est demandé au spectateur, victime consentante, de croire à la communication improbable de ces deux mondes. Les uns habitent la cité, régie par une loi anti-naturelle et imposée ; les autres demeurent au plus profond des bois, lieu où les lois irrationnelles de l'amour ont libre cours. Thésée juge les amoureux, Obéron les réconcilie grâce à un philtre d'amour qui, tel une encre magique, engendre dans le coeur des amants, comme dans l'intrigue, des bouleversements baroques.

La forêt, lieu de révélation où les convenances sont inversées, lieu où les reflets se reproduisent à l'infini, se fait la scène d'une surenchère incessante du surnaturel. À la lumière de la lune, Puck a fait le tour de la Terre, Obéron s'est réconcilié avec Titania, Bottom a retrouvé forme humaine et les artisans ont pu se croire des artistes... Comédie féerique à la temporalité figée, festin verbal où la rhétorique sert d'arme aux amoureux, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été est un hymne au pouvoir de l'imagination et aux aberrations du coeur. --Sana Tang-Léopold Wauters

Genres: Theatre

314 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 4, 1994

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Tolsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je note simplement les idées qui me sont venues à la lecture de ces trois comédies.

Le songe d'une nuit d'été : les puissants n'ont pas de vrais sentiments, et de moquent de ceux qui ont la naïveté d'y croire encore.

Les joyeuses commères de Windsor : les trompeurs finissent par être trompés à leur tour. Mais finalement, rien n'est grave.

Le soir des rois : ce qu'on croit vouloir n'est pas ce qu'on veut vraiment. On s'entête, et le vrai objet de notre désir ne se révèle que quand l'occasion de le posséder se présente à nous.

[Laure · Rating 5 out of 5]

J'ai lu plusieurs pièces de Shakespeare, mais Le songe d'une nuit d'été était absent de ma bibliothèque... Quel sacrilège ! J'ai adoré cette pièce qui est pleine de couleurs, de fantaisie et de bouffonnerie. Un lutin étourdi, une fée amoureuse d'un âne, des comédiens balourds, toute une ribambelle de personnages charmants et pittoresques nous proposent une féerie sortie de la plume de l'inénarrable Shakespeare. Et quelle plume ! Elle nous berce de ses mots pour nous transporter dans l'onirisme. Je n'ai plus qu'une envie : assister à une représentation de cette pièce. Entre passion amoureuse, comique et magie, il y a de quoi s'émerveiller !