Turcaret (Absolute Classics)

Fraud, theft, extortion and sexual corruption: a society which sells off and farms out the power of taxation into private hands reaps its own harvest. Not a future nightmare but classic eighteenth century French comedy. In an age when the Sun King's coffers were empty and the state machinery colluded with its tax gatherers to defraud itself, financiers made tremendous fortunes. Turcaret is one of these men - fingers in all monetary pies, legitimate and illegitimate, speculating wildly to increase his fortunes, loaning money at usurious rates, at the same time aspiring towards respectability through marriage and nobility. To such men a myriad of rogues attach themselves. This translation by John Norman received its British premiere at The Gate Theatre, in London 1988.