La France Sauvée ou le Tyran Détrôné

La France Sauvée ou le Tyran Détrôné (France Preserved or the Tyrant Dethroned) is an unfinished play by Olympe de Gouges, written between 1792 and 1973. It dramatizes a fictionalized meeting between Gouges and Marie Antoinette in 1792 after the Flight to Varennes but before the attack on the Tuileries that forced Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to flee for their lives to the Assembly. In the play, Gouges reproves Marie Antoinette for her behavior and lectures her on her duties to the people of France. Despite the tone of the play, in 1793 Gouges was arrested for sedition and attempting to overthrow the Revolutionary government. Along with her pamphlet, “Les Trois Urnes” (The Three Urns), La France Sauvée was used as evidence of her guilt.

Annotations have been added to the play using Hypothesis (https://web.hypothes.is/start) and are publicly accessible. In order to view the annotations, you must add Hypothesis to your browser by either downloading the Chrome extension or the bookmarklet.

The text of the play presented here (with minor edits) was translated by Clarissa Palmer.