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François Ponsard (June 1, 1814 - July 7, 1867), was a French dramatist.
He was born at Vienne, in the département of Isere. Trained as a lawyer, his first literary work was a translation of Manfred (1837). His play, Lucrèce,, was performed at the Thêâtre Français on April 1, 1843. This date is notable in literature and dramatic history, because it marked a reaction against the romantic style of Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo.
In 1845, Ponsard received the prize awarded by the Académie Française for a tragedy "to oppose a dike to the waves of romanticism." Ponsard adopted the liberty of the romantics with regard to the unities of time and place, but reverted to the more sober style of earlier French drama. The tastes and capacities of the greatest tragic actress of the day, Rachel, suited his methods, and this contributed greatly to his own popularity.
He followed up Lucrèce with Agnès de Méranie (1846), Charlotte Corday (1850), and others. Ponsard accepted the Second French Empire with no very great enthusiasm, and was given the post of librarian to the senate; however, he soon resigned, and fought a bloodless duel with a journalist on the subject. L'Honneur et l'argent, one of his most successful plays, was acted in 1853, and he became an Academician in 1855.
For some years he was inactive, but in 1866 he repeated his earlier success with Le Lion amoureux, another play dealing with the revolutionary epoch. His Galilee, which excited great opposition in the clerical camp, was produced early in 1867. He died in Paris in the same year, soon after his nomination to the commandership of the Legion of Honor. Most of Ponsard's plays hold a certain steady level of literary and dramatic ability, but his popularity is in the main due to the fact that his appearance coincided with a certain public weariness of the extravagant and unequal style of 1830.
His Œuvres completes were published in Paris (3 vols., 1865-1876).
| Preceded by: Louis-Pierre-Marie-François Baour-Lormian | Seat 9 Académie française | Succeeded by: Joseph Autran |