Philippe Poisson (actor)

Philippe Poisson (8 February 1682 - 4 August 1743) was a French actor and playwright.

Antoine Watteau, detail of Actors of the Comédie-Française (The Coquettes), 1710s, believed to be a depiction of Poisson. Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

Life

He, the actor François-Arnoul Poisson de Roinville and the novelist and playwright Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez were all children of the actor Paul Poisson. Born in Paris, Philippe made his début in 1700 in a tragedy, playing secondary rôles with some success and also appearing in high comedy. Retiring with his father in 1711, he returned to the stage in 1715 before leaving it for good in 1722. He died in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Like those of his grandfather Raymond Poisson, his plays lack invention - their style is less trivial but still lacks elegance, though their dialogue is naturalistic. The two most notable ones are le Procureur arbitre (1728) and l’Impromptu de campagne (1733), whilst the others are la Boite de Pandore (1729), Alcibiade (1731), le Réveil d’Épiménide (1736), le Mariage par lettres de change (1735), les Ruses d’amour (1736) and l’Actrice nouvelle (a comedy, never performed after Adrienne Lecouvreur wrote a satire mocking it).

Sources

Lancaster, Henry Carrington (1945). Sunset: A History of Parisian Drama in the Last Years of Louis XIV, 1701–1715. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Press. OCLC 1151320593 – via the Internet Archive.
Vapereau, Gustave (1876). Dictionnaire universel des littératures. Paris: Hachette. pp. 1621–1622 – via the Internet Archive.

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