Toussaint Louverture: Paris, 1850

It is a little-known fact that the leader of the Haitian slave revolt of 1791, Toussaint Louverture, was the hero of two plays written and produced in Paris in 1850. The first, written by Lamartine, in five acts and alexandrines, was performed in April, 1850 at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. Lamartine, a signer of the proclamation emancipating the slaves in 1848, was understandably interested in this historical character. Three weeks later, Eugène Labiche and one of his collaborators, Charles Varin wrote a most amusing parody, Traversin et Couverture, Parodie de Toussaint Louverture en quatre actes mêlés de vers et de beaucoup de prose, making fun of Lamartine's over melodramatic play. But, we must remember that these plays, written by 19th-century French writers, were done almost 100 years before Aimé Césaire, Langston Hughes and the negritude movement took a more profound approach to the early Haitian leaders. (REH)