Lemierre, Antoine Marin
LEMIERRE, ANTOINE MARIN (1733-1793), French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris on the 12th of January 1733. His parents were poor, hut Lemierre found a patron in the collector-general of taxes, Dupin, whose secretary he became. Lemierre gained his first success on the stage with Hypermnestre (1758); Teree (1761) and Idomenee (1764) failed on account of the subjects. Artaxerce, modelled on Metastasio, and Guillaume Tell were produced in 1766; other successful tragedies were La Veuve de Malabar (1770) and Barnavell (1784). Lemierre revived Guillaume Tell in 1786 with enormous success. After the Revolution he professed great remorse for the production of a play inculcating revolutionary principles, and there is no doubt that the horror of the excesses he witnessed hastened his death, which took place on the 4th of July 1793. He had been admitted to the Academy in 1781. Lemierre published La Peinture (1769), based on a Latin poem by the abbe de Marsy, and a poem in six cantos, Les Pastes, ou les usages de I'annee (1779), an unsatisfactory imitation of Ovid's Fasti, His (Euvres (1810) contain a notice of Lemierre by R. Perrin. and his (Euvres choisies (1811) one by F. Fayolle.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
