Samuel Chappuzeau (16 June 1625, Paris – 31 August 1701) was a French scholar, author, poet and playwright whose best-known work today is Le Théâtre François, a description of French Theatre in the seventeenth century.
Chappuzeau's play Le Cercle des Femmes is widely regarded as one of the main sources for Molière's masterpiece Les Précieuses Ridicules, but his influence on the "Golden Age of French Drama" has in the past been seriously underestimated. Among other things, Chappuzeau played a substantial part in "discovering" Molière when he gave his travelling troupe a glowing review in his book Lyon dans son lustre in 1656.
Chappuzeau is credited with a number of "firsts," including being the first writer to introduce satire to French farce, and the first to set a play in China.
Later, he composed Tavernier's famous travel guides from notes and dictation, though this task seems to have been forced upon him, much against his will, by the King (Louis XIV).
Chappuzeau also wrote sermons, odes, dictionaries, and geographical books, and was still working on his Nouveau Dictionaire almost up to his death.
Early life
Though his family originated in Poitiers, where his grandfather François was a 'procureur' and owned hemp fields and a vineyard, Chappuzeau was born in Paris, where his father Charles was a lawyer and member of the Noblesse de Robe. The youngest of six, or possibly seven, children, he was educated in the Calvinist school in Châtillon-sur-Loing (now known as Châtillon-Coligny) and in Geneva. In 1643, he went to Montauban to study Theology.
After a period in which he accompanied a young nobleman on journeys to Scotland and England, he traveled to the Netherlands in 1648 and spent some time in the Hague, where he was friends with some of the leading scholars of the day, among them Comenius, Claude Saumaise, and Constantijn Huygens.
Career
He then spent two years in Kassel as private secretary to Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg, who was a granddaughter of William I of Orange-Nassau, (also known as William the Silent). After her death in 1651, and the consequent loss of his post, he decided that his future was as an author. He had published his first and only novel Ladice in 1650, and a number of books and plays followed during the 1650s. Working for a time as a proof-reader in Lyon no doubt left him with a good understanding of the publishing business.
Here, he also married his first wife, Maria de la Sarraz, originally from La Sarraz, Cossonay, whose ancestors were said by Chappuzeau to have included David le Boiteux, Principal of the college in Geneva. This statement to the Geneva Council now seems to have been false, as is the often-posted claim that she was from the Salteur de la Serraz family - she was too early for that. Their first child, Laurent Chappuzeau, was born in Lyon before 1655. (Laurent later became horologer, or clockmaker, to the Elector of Hanover)
In 1656 he returned to Amsterdam to live, where his second son Christophe was born, and in 1659, he was appointed tutor to the young Prince William III of Orange, who later became King of England. During this happy period, two more children were born, and Chappuzeau witnessed the festivities on the event of the Restoration of the English Monarchy, addressing an ode to the new King on board the Royal Charles. Unfortunately, this appointment came to an end after the death of Mary Stuart, Princess of Orange, William's mother.
Return to France
He then moved back to Charenton, near Paris and set up a small school there. At this time, several of his plays were presented at Paris theatres, including one by Molière's troupe as thanks for his promotion of their troupe in his book. However, he was soon caught up, through no fault of his own, in a controversy surrounding his friend, the preacher Alexander Morus and John Milton, and had to leave Paris when parents removed their sons from his school. Around the same time, in August 1662, his wife died soon after the birth of their fifth child, leaving him to remark "Un malheur vient rarement seul." He married again to Marie Trichot (daughter of Louis Trichot of Sedan, Ardennes), and took refuge in Geneva, his new wife's home town, where he was granted citizenship in 1666.