Le Sage

Le Sage, Alain Rene (1668-1747), the author of Gil Bias, was born at Sarzeau, near the Breton coast, a few miles S. of Vannes. He was educated by the Jesuits, called to the Parisian bar in 1692, and he married two years later a poor but beautiful girl, Marie Huyard. The turning-point in his life was when the Abbe de Lyonne placed his large Spanish library at the young man's disposal and added a pension to support his literary efforts. In the early years of the 18th century Le Sage translated plays of Rojas, Lope de Vega, and Avellaneda's continuation of Don Quixote, in 1705 his adaptation of Calderon's Bon Cesar Ursin was acted at the Court with success; but it was his Crispin Rival de son Maitre, a farce produced in 1707, which laid the foundation of his reputation. In the latter year also Le Sage's second greatest and his most popular work, Le Diable Boiteux, was published. In 1735 he revised it, and left it in its present form. His best play, Turcaret, which was a retouching and enlargement of a rejected trifle called Les Etrennes, appeared in 1709. It was a satire on contemporary financiers, who met it with an organised opposition. Soon after this Le Sage transferred his services from the Theatre Francais to the Theatre de la Foire, for which he wrote numerous light comic pieces and operettas. Meanwhile he was also at work upon his masterpiece, the first two parts of which were published in 1715; a third part appeared in 1724, and the concluding one in 1735. Le Sage spent the last seven years of his life at Boulogne.