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Thomas Corneille (sometimes assisted by Donneau de Visé¹) had given five plays, in a variety of genres, to the company of the Hôtel Guénégaud during its first two seasons (the company had been founded in 1673): Le Comédien poète, La Mort d’Achille, Dom César d’Avalos, Circé, and L’Inconnu. Le Triomphe des dames, first performed at the Guénégaud on August 7, 1676, during its third season, would be the sixth.
It is hardly surprising that the company would have wanted to continue its association with Thomas: Circé was one of the greatest successes of the century (seventy-six performances in 1674–1675 and 1675–1676)², and L’Inconnu had enjoyed an almost equally spectacular success (thirty-two performances in 1675–1676), and it continued to be performed in 1676–1677 (three performances).
The production of Le Triomphe des dames, however, was not as successful, for reasons that we will examine, and this is probably why the play was never published. Thus, the only traces we have of it are the desseins, or livres de sujet (also sometimes called “booklets”), that were sold to accompany the performances, as was the case with every spectacular production.
The use of the plural is deliberate, because there are in fact two desseins of Le Triomphe des dames, slightly different from one another. This is due to the fact that the play was removed from the bill after the...
Marie-Christine Pioffet, Dictionnaire analytique des toponymes imaginaires dans la littérature narrative de langue française (1605-1711), Paris : Hermann, 2013.