George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, 1804-1876) was the most popular novelist of her time in Europe. She lived an unconventional life and was known for wearing men’s clothes and smoking in public. After separating from her husband, Casimir Dudavent, in 1835, she had multiple well-known love affairs with men and women, including composer Frédéric Chopin, actress Marie Dorval, and dramatist Alfred de Musset.

Shakespeare’s plays increased in popularity in France during the nineteenth century, as Romantic tastes gradually softened the neoclassical ideals that still influenced French theatre. Like many French writers of the time, Sand admired Shakespeare, and in her autobiography, she recalled feeling a particular affinity for the characters of Hamlet and Jacques (As You Like It) when she read the plays as a teenager. In 1849, she staged Beaucoup de bruit pour rien (Much Ado About Nothing) in the private theatre on her estate, Nohant.

Having established herself as a popular dramatist in the early 1850s, Sand’s adaptation of As You Like It, titled Comme il vous plaira, debuted at the Comédie Française in 1856, featuring Philibert Rouvière, Jeanne Plessy, and Hippolyte Fonta. It was only moderately well-received. Sand herself was unhappy with it, reporting to a correspondent that “the piece was very unsatisfactorily played by most of the actors. The scenery and costumes were splendid, the public very hostile, being composed of all those who were unfavourably disposed, whether connected with the house or out of doors. Success was nevertheless secured, nobody being able to display his ill-will, and Shakespeare was more triumphant than I expected” [13 April 1856].

Sand altered Shakespeare’s play to better fit the style of the Comédie Française, France’s national theatre. Sand also made a major change in the plot, foregrounding the melancholy Jacques and pairing him up with Celia, doing away with Shakespeare’s Act V match between Celia and Oliver. This page is an extract of dialogue between Celia and Jacques in Act II, Scene VII, seemingly original to Sand’s adaptation. The text shows multiple alterations, deletions, and insertions, but is fairly neat overall. Although the location of the rest of the manuscript is currently unknown, several archives, including the Folger, hold letters from Sand referring to the play’s production.

Although the page is undated, Sand presumably wrote Comme il vous plaira in 1855, leading up to its premiere in April 1856. The handwriting of this page seems consistent with Sand’s handwriting from 1855 onward. Prior to 1855, Sand’s handwriting slanted forward; after 1855, it is noticeably more upright, as seen in this example. Some attribute this change to the trauma caused by the tragic death of her granddaughter, Jeanne, known as Nini. Nini’s parents, Solange Dudevant-Sand and sculptor Auguste Clésinger, had been engaged in a vicious divorce and custody battle when, in 1854, Clésinger kidnapped Nini and kept her for a month. Sand and her daughter, Solange, had no idea of the girl’s whereabouts. When Clésinger finally reemerged, the court granted Sand, with whom Nini already lived for much of the year, full custody. Supposedly, Clésinger showed up one day for an unexpected visit, precipitously taking Nini, who was not adequately dressed for the winter cold, for a walk. Although Clésinger returned her to Sand, Nini became ill and died three weeks later.

Another woman author and rival of Sand, Louise Colet, was also involved in translating Shakespeare into French. In 1836-39, Colet and a team of writers produced Chefs-d’oeuvre de Shakespeare, which included Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. Sand owned a copy of Chefs-d’oeuvre, as well as famous French translations of Shakespeare by Guizot and Le Tourneur, and may have used it when writing Comme il vous plaira.

Dr. Molly G. Yarn