LECOUVREUR, ADRIENNE, 1690-1730; h. Champagne, France; one of the most gifted and versatile of all the women who have made the French stage alike celebrated for the exquisite truth of nature in its impersonations, and the life of love and passion, romance and tragedy, of which its votaries became the exemplars.. She was daughter of a hatter, who went to Paris to better his trade. Located near the theater of the Comedie-Faanaaise, Adrienne, then a grown girl, a laundress, found her genius throbbing for expression in the drama. She organized a little private theater among the neighbors, which was so successful as to draw 'from the comedians of the Royal theatera com plaint against it as an unauthorized theater. The amateur performances thus closed, Adrienne was taken by a kind prior to the actor Legrand, who was struck with her talent and and gave her lessons in elocution. She secured an engagement in
and after sonic years of provincial successes was called at the age of 27 to enter the Coma? ie-Francaise. She at once assumed the first place among French actors. Her force of character and high spirit, her noble beauty—intellectual, passionate, but not gross—gave all her persouations the stamp of her individuality. She became the lion of Paris, and for 13 years her real life, like her acting, was a stormy elysium, filled with the loves and gallantries of the most eminent men of her time. Voltaire ranked himself among her lovers by some of the tenderest lines in memoriam that ever came front his pen. She was poisoned in Paris by some mysterious means employed by a rival of noble family and ignoble character, Francoise de Lorraine, duchesse the Bouillon.