DUCIS, Jean François (August 22, 1733-March 31, 1816), a French dramatic poet, famous more especially for his adaptations of Shakespeare to the Parisian stage of the 18th century. He was born and brought up at Versailles, where his father, originally from Savoy, held the position of a respectable linen-draper; and all through life he retained the simple tastes and straightforward independence fostered by his bourgeois education. The friendship of Marshal Belleisle procured him an appointment as clerk, and even after he ceased to discharge the duties of his post secured the continuance of his salary. In 1768 the passion for the theatre which had been growing within him during the previous years found vent in the tragedy of Amelise; and the failure of this first attempt was fully compensated by the success of his Hamlet in 1767, and of Romeo and Juliette in 1772. Oedipe chez Admète, imitated partly from Euripides and partly from Sophocles, appeared in 1778, and secured him in the following year the chair in the Academy left vacant by the death of Voltaire. Equally successful was Le Roi Lear in 1783, at the representation of which the author received what was then the rare honour of being called before the curtain. Macbeth in 1783 did not take so well, and Jean sans Peur in 1791 was almost a failure; but Othello in 1792, supported by the acting of Talma, obtained immense applause. The next appearance of the author was no longer as an adapter or imitator of foreign models, but as a dramatist with a plot and characters of his own contrivance.and invention; and though his contrivance produced nothing more original than the old story of unlawful love between brother and sister ultimately obtaining sanction by their supposed kinship being disproved, the poetic charm of the ...