Het Testament

Het Testament ("The will") is a Dutch one act play adapted "from the French" by an anonymous translator.

Also found as Het Testament, of De Erfgename

The play is ascribed to a "P. van de Velde" by F.C.L. Bosman (1980).

The original text

The origins of the play are somewhat obscure, but there are two 19th century French plays called Le Testament, and though this play may be a translation and/or adaptation of either (see Le Testament), the Van der Velde work is more likely to be a Dutch version of L'Héritière (1834), a "comédie-vaudeville" by Augustin Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne.

See L'Héritière

A more unlikely source for this play is the five act melodrama Het Testament, of De Geheimen van Udolpho (1801), a Dutch version of Montoni, ou Le Chateau d'Udolphe (Radcliffe/Duval).

Performance history in South Africa

1870: According to Bosman (1980), a one act play called Het Testament (by a "P. van der Velde") was performed in Dutch in the Germania Hall, Cape Town, by Aurora II on 9 August, with Twee Emmers Water (Anon.).

1910: According to Bosman (1980), it again was performed in Dutch in the ANV Saal, Cape Town, by Aurora III on 3 March.