Ferdinand Dugué

Ferdinand Dugué (18 February 1816 – 5 December 1913) was a 19th-century French poet and playwright. He wrote poetry and both comic and dramatic plays, some of them in collaboration. He also authored studies about historic personalities such as Mathurin Régnier and Salvator Rosa. Dugué was born in Chartres, the son of Pierre-Joseph Dugué de La Fauconnerie, a lawyer, and Barbe Victoire Thérèse Feron. On 20 November 1840, he married Henriette Joséphine Béguin, daughter of a naval officer, with whom he would celebrate their 70th anniversary of marriage in 1910. The bridal blessing took place in the chapel of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, rue du Bac. The politician Henri-Joseph Dugué de La Fauconnerie was his nephew. He grew up in a house in the cloister Notre-Dame à Chartres. After attending college in that city, he continued his studies in Paris, hosted by the Pension Landry, where he earned a mention at the Concours général in 1830. The City of Chartres held a ceremony in his honor at the Hotel de Ville on 12 September 1830 in the presence of mayor Adelphe Chasles, who crowned him with golden crown of oak, and the College of Chartres principal, abbot Calluet. One of Dugué's best known works was his romantic drama about the Italian painter Salvator Rosa; this was well-received when performed at the Théâtre de Porte-Saint-Martin in 1851 and was revived several times. Another work was his 1857 play about William Shakespeare; drawing on the rather meagre historical facts available, this play brought the playwright to life, creating an easily believable portrait of what he might have been like. Dugué was vice-president of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. In 1870, he was appointed chief patriot of the National Defence for the north canton of Chartres. Born the year after the Battle of Waterloo and died the year before the beginning of World War I, Duguée's life spanned a major part of the history of France since he also witnessed the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.