Frédérick

Frédérick [ Antoine-Louis-Prosper Lemaître] (1800–76), French actor, who embodied all the glory and excesses of the Romantic drama, many of whose heroes he created. He never appeared at the Comédie-Française, but spent most of his career in the theatres on the boulevard du Temple, having made his first appearance there as the lion in a pantomime, Pyrame et Thisbé, at the age of 15. He then went to the Funambules, where he was a contemporary of the great mime Deburau, and also attended classes at the Conservatoire. In 1820 he became a member of the company at the Odéon but, finding the audiences apathetic and opportunities for sustained acting too few, returned thankfully to the popular stage. In 1823 he made his first appearance as Robert Macaire in L'Auberge des Adrets, a part ever after associated with him. The play had been written as a serious melodrama, but Frédérick carried it to success by burlesquing it. He was equally successful in a sequel, Robert Macaire (1834), much of which he wrote himself, and which had political repercussions; it was said to have contributed to the downfall of Louis-Philippe. At the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1827, Frédérick had made a tremendous impression in Trente Ans; ou, La Vie d'un joueur, a play on the evils of gambling which he took to London on his first visit in 1828. Among his later successes were Othello, in Ducis's translation, and several leading roles in the plays of the elder Dumas, notably the title-role in Kean; ou, Désordre et génie (1836), which was specially written for him, as was Balzac's Vautrin (1840). In 1838 he gave an electrifying performance in Hugo's Ruy Blas. His last years were unhappy, for the taste of the public changed and he could find only trivial or unsuitable plays to appear in; but he left his mark on the theatre, and when Bateman first saw Irving he could bestow no higher praise than to say that his acting was equal to that of Frédérick.