Outrageous Women

These four short plays taken from the French run the gamut from tragedy to satire, from highly artificial comedy to Naturalism, and present Eve, the Eternal Woman, in a variety of postures, none of them very flattering. In Lady MacBeth, by Julius Le Sire, we have a guilt-ridden heroine who is nonetheless driven to rule. In Zubiri, by Georges de Porto Riche (based on a tale by Victor Hugo), we are presented with a dancer-courtesan who torments her lover mercilessly by flirting in front of him shamelessly with his friends and likely successors to her charms, in one of the steamiest short pieces on record. In Théophile Gautier's A False Conversation, Celinda, another dancer-courtesan, gives up the bright lights of Paris to follow a sham philosopher into a bucolic, Rousseau-like fantasy existence, only to discover that her sage is himself false. And in Henri Becque's Widow!, Clotilde is comforted by her very discreet lover over the death of her unsuspecting husband.