François Joseph Lagrange-Chancel
François Joseph Lagrange-Chancel (January 1, 1677 – December 26, 1758) was a French playwright and satirist. Biography He was an extremely precocious boy, and at Bordeaux, where he was educated, he produced a play when he was nine years old. Five years later his mother took him to Paris, where he found a patron. in the princesse de Conti, to whom he dedicated his tragedy of Jugurtha or, as it was called later, Adherbal (1694). Racine had given him advice and was present at the first performance, although he had long lived in complete retirement. Other plays followed: Oreste et Pylade (1697), Méleagre (1699), Amasis (1701), and Ino et Mélicerte (1715). Lagrange hardly realized the high hopes raised by his precocity, although his only serious rival on the tragic stage was Campistron, but he obtained high favour at court, becoming maître d'hôtel to the duchess of Orléans. This prosperity ended with the publication in 1720 of his Philippiques, odes accusing the regent, Philip, duke of Orléans, of the most odious crimes, such as committing incest with his eldest daughter, Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, Duchess of Berry, a debauched young widow rumored to have hidden several pregnancies by her father and