LEMERCIER, NEPOMUCENE French poet and dramatist, was born in Paris on April 21, 1771. His father had been intendant successively to the duc de Penthievre, the comte de Toulouse and the unfortunate princesse de Lamballe, who was the boy's godmother. Lemercier wrote his tragedy of Meleagre, produced at the Theatre Francais, before he was 16. Le Tartufe revolutionnaire, a parody full of the most audacious political allusions, was suppressed after the fifth representation. In 1795 appeared Lemercier's masterpiece Agamemnon, called by Charles Labitte the last great antique tragedy in French litera ture.
It was violently attacked later by Geoffroy, who stigmatized it as a bad caricature of Crebillon. Quatre metamorphoses (1799) was written to prove that the most indecent subjects might be treated without offence. The Pinto (1800) was the re sult of a wager that no further dramatic innovations were possi ble after the comedies of Beaumarchais. It is a historical comedy on the subject of the Portuguese revolution of 1640. This play was construed as casting reflections on the first consul, who had hitherto been a firm friend of Lemercier. His extreme freedom of speech finally offended Napoleon, and the quarrel proved disas trous to Lemercier's fortune for the time. None of his subse
quent work fulfilled the expectations raised by Agamemnon, with the exception perhaps of Fredegonde et Brunehaut (1821). In 1810 he was elected to the Academy, where he consistently op posed the romanticists, refusing to give his vote to Victor Hugo. In spite of this, he has some pretensions to be considered the earliest of the romantic school. Indeed his Christophe Colomb (1809), advertised on the playbill as a comedie shakespirienne (sic), showed no respect for the unities. Its numerous innova tions provoked such violent disturbances in the audience that one person was killed and future representations had to be guarded by the police. Lemercier wrote four long and ambitious epic poems: Homere, Alexandre (1801), L'Atlantiade, ou la theo gonie newtonienne (1812) and Moise (1823), as well as an ex traordinary Panhypocrisiade, a romantic production in 20 cantos, which has the sub-title Spectacle infernal du XVIe du siecle. The first 16 cantos appeared in 1819; the last four in 1832. In it 16th-century history, with Charles V. and Francis I. as principal personages, is played out on an imaginary stage by demons in the intervals of their sufferings. Lemercier died on June 7, 1840 in Paris.