Summaries

Synopsis

Marquise is a dancer and a prostitute. When a friend of the playwright Moliere, Gros-Rene, sees her dance, he offers to marry her and buys her from her pimp/father. She wants to be an actress, but has stage-fright during her first role and can't speak. Rene covers for her, but she feels like a failure. During a performance, they send her on stage to dance to keep the audience entertained, and she upstages the play. She throws a diva tantrum because she wants to act, not dance. She meets the playwright Racine who persuades her to relent. Performing for King Louis XIV, they hurry Marquise onstage, unfortunately without her undergarments. She does a cartwheel the King can't forget. Racine wants her to perform the lead in his tragedy, Andromaque, saying she is the only actress for the role, but she and her husband work for Moliere, whose troupe perform comedy, the wrong style for tragedy. She won't leave her husband. Wanting to separate her from the troupe, Racine gives her poisoned chocolates intended for Rene, though he dies without eating them. Free to go to Racine, she is a success as Andromaque. She also becomes pregnant with his child. The king takes a bath in a fountain while the court looks on, Racine providing poetry for Marquise to read to him. When the King can't hear her, she strips to her undergarments and joins him in the water, later becoming ill and passing out during a performance of Andromaque. She has no understudy but her servant knows the part and goes on, acting even more successfully than Marquise. Four days later when she wakes, she is upset to learn her maid is performing the "role only she could play." Finding the poisoned chocolates, she eats them, killing herself and her unborn baby on stage in front of her replacement and Racine.