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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781454939801 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Union Square Kids |
| Publication date: | 05/05/2020 |
| Series: | Sterling Graphic Classics Series , #12 |
| Pages: | 64 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d) |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Alexandre Dumas, who lived a life as dramatic as any depicted in his more than three hundred volumes of plays, novels, travel books, and memoirs, was born on July 24, 1802, in the town of Villers-Cotterêts, some fifty miles from Paris. He was the third child of Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie (who took the name of Dumas), a nobleman who distinguished himself as one of Napoleon's most brilliant generals, and Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret. Following General Dumas's death in 1806 the family faced precarious financial circumstances, yet Mme. Dumas scrimped to pay for her son's private schooling. Unfortunately he proved an indifferent student who excelled in but one subject: penmanship. In 1816, at the age of fourteen, Dumas found employment as a clerk with a local notary to help support the family. A growing interest in theater brought him to Paris in 1822, where he met François-Joseph Talma, the great French tragedian, and resolved to become a playwright. Meanwhile the passionate Dumas fell in love with Catherine Labay, a seamstress by whom he had a son. (Though he had numerous mistresses in his lifetime Dumas married only once, but the union did not last.) While working as a scribe for the duc d'Orléans (later King Louis-Philippe) Dumas collaborated on a one-act vaudeville, La Chasse et l'amour ( The Chase and Love, 1825). But it was not until 1827, after attending a British performance of Hamlet, that Dumas discovered a direction for his dramas. 'For the first time in the theater I was seeing true passions motivating men and women of flesh and blood,' he recalled. 'From this time on, but only then, did I have an idea of what the theater could be.'
Dumas achieved instant fame on February 11, 1829, with the triumphant opening of Henri III et sa cour (Henry III and His Court). An innovative and influential play generally regarded as the first French drama of the Romantic movement, it broke with the staid precepts of Neoclassicism that had been imposed on the Paris stage for more than a century. Briefly involved as a republican partisan in the July Revolution of 1830, Dumas soon resumed playwriting and over the next decade turned out a number of historical melodramas that electrified audiences. Two of these works—Antony (1831) and La Tour de Nesle (The Tower of Nesle, 1832)—stand out as milestones in the history of nineteenth-century French theater. In disfavor with the new monarch, Louis-Philippe, because of his republican sympathies, Dumas left France for a time. In 1832 he set out on a tour of Switzerland, chronicling his adventures in Impressions de voyage: En Suisse ( Travels in Switzerland, 1834-1837); over the years he produced many travelogues about subsequent journeys through France, Italy, Russia, and other countries.
Around 1840 Dumas embarked upon a series of historical romances inspired by both his love of French history and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. In collaboration with Auguste Maquet, he serialized Le Chevalier d'Harmental in the newspaper Le Siècle in 1842. Part history, intrigue, adventure, and romance, it is widely regarded as the first of Dumas's great novels. The two subsequently worked together on a steady stream of books, most of which were published serially in Parisian tabloids and eagerly read by the public. He is best known for the celebrated d'Artagnan trilogy—Les trois mousquetaires ( The Three Musketeers, 1844), Vingt ans après (Twenty Years After, 1845) and Dix ans plus tarde ou le Vicomte de Bragelonne ( Ten Years Later; or The Viscount of Bragelonne, 1848-1850)—and the so-called Valois romances—La Reine Margot (Queen Margot, 1845), La Dame de Monsoreau ( The Lady of Monsoreau, 1846), and Les Quarante-cinc ( The Forty-Five Guardsmen, 1848). Yet perhaps his greatest success was Le Comte de Monte Cristo ( The Count of Monte Cristo), which appeared in installments in Le Journal des debats from 1844 to 1845. A final tetralogy marked the end of their partnership: Mmoires d'un medecin: Joseph Balsamo ( Memoirs of a Physician, 1846-1848), Le Collier de la reine ( The Queen's Necklace, 1849-1850), Ange Pitou ( Taking the Bastille, 1853), and La Comtesse de Charny ( The Countess de Charny, 1852-1855).
In 1847, at the height of his fame, Dumas assumed the role of impresario. Hoping to reap huge profits, he inaugurated the new Theatre Historique as a vehicle for staging dramatizations of his historical novels. The same year he completed construction of a lavish residence in the quiet hamlet of Marly-le-Roi. Called Le Château de Monte Cristo, it was home to a menagerie of exotic pets and a parade of freeloaders until 1850, when Dumas's theater failed and he faced bankruptcy. Fleeing temporarily to Belgium in order to avoid creditors, Dumas returned to Paris in 1853, shortly after the appearance of the initial volumes of Mes Memoires ( My Memoirs, 1852). Over the next years he founded the newspaper Le Mousquetaire, for which he wrote much of the copy, as well as the literary weekly Le Monte Cristo, but his finances never recovered. In 1858 he traveled to Russia, eventually publishing two new episodes of Impressions de voyage: Le Caucase (Adventures in the Caucasus, 1859) and En Russie (Travels in Russia, 1865).
The final decade of Dumas's life began with customary high adventure. In 1860 he met Garibaldi and was swept up into the cause of Italian independence. After four years in Naples publishing the bilingual paper L'Independant/L'Indipendente, Dumas returned to Paris in 1864. In 1867 he began a flamboyant liaison with Ada Menken, a young American actress who dubbed him 'the king of romance.' The same year marked the appearance of a last novel, La Terreur Prussiene (The Prussian Terror). Dumas's final play, Les Blancs et les Bleus (The Whites and the Blues), opened in Paris in 1869.
Alexandre Dumas died penniless but cheerful on December 5, 1870, saying of death: 'I shall tell her a story, and she will be kind to me.' One hundred years later his biographer Andre Maurois paid him this tribute: 'Dumas was a hero out of Dumas. As strong as Porthos, as adroit as d'Artagnan, as generous as Edmond Dantes, this superb giant strode across the nineteenth century breaking down doors with his shoulder, sweeping women away in his arms, and earning fortunes only to squander them promptly in dissipation. For forty years he filled the newspapers with his prose, the stage with his dramas, the world with his clamor. Never did he know a moment of doubt or an instant of despair. He turned his own existence into the finest of his novels.'
Read an Excerpt
The three gifts of monsieur d'artagnan the elder
On the first Monday of April, 1625, the market town of Meting, birthplace of the author of the Roman de Ia Rose, seemed to be in as great a turmoil as if the Huguenots had come to turn it into a second La Rochelle. A number of townsmen, seeing women running in the direction of the main street and hearing children shouting on doorsteps, hastened to put on their breastplates and, steadying their rather uncertain self-assurance with a musket or a halberd, made their way toward the inn, the Hotellerie du Franc Meunier, in front of which a noisy, dense, and curious throng was growing larger by the minute.
Panics were frequent in those times, and few days went by when an event of this kind was not recorded in the archives of one town or another. Noblemen fought among themselves; the king was at war with the cardinal; the Spanish were at war with the king. And then, besides all this secret or open warfare, there were robbers, beggars, Huguenots, wolves, and lackeys, who were at war with everyone. The townsmen always took up arms against robbers, wolves, and lackeys, often against noblemen and Huguenots, sometimes against the king, but never against the cardinal or the Spanish. It was because of these habits that the townsmen, on that first Monday of April, 1625, bearing a commotion and seeing neither a red and yellow Spanish flag nor the livery of Cardinal Richelieu, hurried toward the Franc Meunier inn.
When they arrived there, they were able to see the cause of the tumult.
A young man ... Let us sketch a rapid portrait of him. Imagine Don Quixote at eighteen, a Don Quixotewithout chain mail or thigh pieces, wearing a woolen doublet whose original blue had been transformed into an elusive shade between purple and azure. He had a long, dark face with prominent cheekbones, a mark of shrewdness; his jaw muscles were heavily developed, an infallible sign by which one can recognize a Gascon, even without a beret, and our young man wore a beret adorned with some sort of feather. His eyes were frank and intelligent; his nose was hooked, but finely drawn; he was too big for an adolescent and too small for a full-grown man. An untrained eye might have taken him for a farmer's son on a journey if it had not been for the sword that bung from a shoulder belt, slapping against his calves when he walked, and against his shaggy horse when he rode.
For the young man had a mount, one that could not fail to attract attention: a small Bearn horse twelve to fourteen years old, with a yellowish coat, an almost hairless tail and sores on his legs. He walked with his head lower than his knees, which made a martingale unnecessary, but he could still do twenty miles a day. Unfortunately his good qualities were hidden by his strange color and his outlandish gait. He had come into Meting a quarter of an hour earlier through the Beaugency gate, and since in those days everyone was a practiced judge of horses, his appearance had caused a sensation that cast disfavor on his rider.
This was all the more painful to young d'Artagnan (such was the name of the Don Quixote astride that other Rosinante) because he was well aware of how ridiculous his horse made him seem, even though he was an excellent rider. That was why he had sighed when he had accepted the horse as a gift from his father. He knew that such an animal was worth at least twenty livres; the words that had accompanied the gift, however, were priceless.
"My son," the Gascon nobleman had said in the Bearn accent that Henry IV never succeeded in losing, "this horse was born on my estate nearly thirteen years ago and has never left it. That should be enough to make you love him. Never sell him, let him die peacefully and honorably of old age, and if you go to war with him, treat him with consideration, as you would treat an old servant. At court, if you have the honor to go there, an honor to which our ancient nobility entitles you, be worthy of your noble name, worthily borne by your ancestors for over five hundred years. For yourself, your relatives, and your friends, never tolerate the slightest affront from anyone except the cardinal or the king. Remember this: it's by courage, and courage alone, that a nobleman makes his way nowadays. Anyone who trembles for even one second may lose the chance that fortune offered him precisely at that second. You're young, and you must be brave for two reasons: first, you're a Gascon; and second, you're my son. Don't be afraid of opportunities, and seek out adventures. I've taught you to use a sword. You have iron legs and a steel wrist. Fight duels at the drop of a hat, especially since duels are forbidden: that means it takes twice as much courage to fight one.
"My son, all I have to give you is fifteen ecus, my horse, and the advice You've just heard. Your mother will give you the recipe for an ointment that a Gypsy woman taught her how to make: it miraculously heals any wound that doesn't reach the heart. Make the most of all these gifts, and have a long, happy life.
"I have only one more thing to add: an example for you to follow. It's not MY own, because I've never appeared at court and I've fought only in the wars of religion as a volunteer. I'm speaking of Monsieur de Treville, who used to be my neighbor and had the honor of playing with our King Louis XIII—may God preserve him!—when they were both children. Sometimes their games turned into fights, and the king didn't always win them. The drubbings be got from Monsieur de Treville made him feel great respect and . . .
Table of Contents
Introdction xi
Author's Preface xxi
I The Three Presents of Monsieur d'Artagnam the Elder 3
II The Antechamber of Monsieur de Tréville 20
III The Audience 31
IV The Shoulder of Athos, the Baldric of Porthos, and the Handkerchief of Aramis 43
V The King's Musketeers and the Cardinal's Guards 52
VI His Majesty King Louis XIII 64
VII The Domestic Life of the Musketeers 85
VIII A Court Intrigue 95
IX D'Artagnan Begins to Show Himself 104
X A Seventeenth-Century Mousetrap 114
XI The Plot Thickens 126
XII George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham 145
XIII Monsieur Bonacieux 154
XIV The Man of Meung 164
XV Men of the Robe and Men of the Sword 176
XVI In Which Séguier, the Keeper of the Seals, Looks More Than Once for the Bell He Used to Ring 186
XVII In the Bonacieux Household 199
XVIII The Lover and the Husband 214
XIX Plan of Campaign 222
XX The Journey 232
XXI The Comtesse de Winter 245
XXII The Ballet of La Merlaison 257
XXIII The Rendezvous 265
XXIV The Pavilion 277
XXV The Mistress of Porthos 288
XXVI The Thesis of Aramis 308
XXVII The Wife of Athos 327
XXVIII The Return 348
XXIX The Hunt for Equipment 364
XXX Milady 374
XXXI English and French 384
XXXII Dinner at the Prosecutor's 392
XXXIII Mistress and Maid 402
XXXIV Concernig the Equipment of Aramis and Porthos 413
XXXV At Night All Cats Are Gray 422
XXXVI Dreams of Vengeance 430
XXXVII Milady's Secret 439
XXXVIII How Athos, Without Inconveniencing Himself, Acquired His Equipment 446
XXXIX An Apparition 456
XL The Cardinal 466
XLI The Siege of La Rochelle 476
XLII The Anjou Wine 490
XLIII The Inn at Colombire-Rouge 499
XLIV On the Utility of Stovepipes 509
XLV A Conjugal Scene 518
XLVI The Bastion of Saint-Gervais 525
XLVII The Council of the Musketeers 534
XLVIII A Family Affair 554
XLIX The Hand of Fate 571
L A Conversation Between Brother and Sister 580
LI "Officer!" 588
LII The First Day of Captivity 600
LIII The Second Day of Captivity 608
LIV The Third Day of Captivity 616
LV The Fourth Day of Captivity 626
LVI The Fifth Day of Captivity 635
LVII A Scene from Classical Tragedy 652
LVIII Escape 660
LIX What Happened at Portsmouth on 23 August 1628 670
LX In France 683
LXI The Carmelite Convent at Béthune 689
LXII Two Varieties of Demon 703
LXIII A Drop of Water 711
LXIV The Man in the Red Cloak 727
LXL Judgment 733
LXVI Execution 743
LXVII Conclusion 749
Epilogue 759
Dramatis Personae: Historical Characters 761
Notes on the Text of The Three Musketeers 772
Acknowledgments 791
What People are Saying About This
"Rollicking."
— Independent
"Dumas is a master of ripping yarns full of fearless heroes, poisonous ladies and swashbuckling adventurers."
— Guardian
"The Napoleon of storytellers."
— Washington Post
Reading Group Guide
1. Discuss Dumas's use of historical events in the novel. Do you think a knowledge of history is necessary or unnecessary in order to enjoy the novel? Discuss the ways in which Dumas alters or takes liberties with real events in order to suit the story. Is his view of history sanitized in any way?
2. Dumas is thought of as the chief popularizer of French Romantic drama. In considering The Three Musketeers, do you think this reputation is an accurate one? How does Dumas use dramatic effect in the novel?
3. Contemporary critics were offended by the scenes depicting vice and violence in the novel. Do you find these scenes arbitrary or not?
4. Many critics have described the musketeers as well-developed stereotypes, but are there ways in which the musketeers transcend these stereotypes? Are there other, perhaps more complex ways of interpreting the four protagonists?
5. Discuss Dumas's female characters, in particular Milady. What is her role in the novel, and what does this reveal about Dumas's views of women, if anything? Does Dumas depict a war between the sexes?
6. How do the chapter endings contribute to Dumas's masterly maintenance of pace? How does this kind of device recall a play, and how does this speak to Dumas's strengths stylistically?
7. In what ways is The Three Musketeers a bildungsroman? Would you characterize the work as a youthful novel?