Vouloir C'est Pouvoir

Vouloir C'est Pouvoir ("To wish is to do") is a musical comedy (burletta) in two acts by Ancelot and Alexis de Decomberousse.

The original text

Performed for the first time at the Théâtre de Vaudeville, Paris, on 24 June, 1837.

Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady is a comedietta in one act by James Robinson Planché (1796-1880)[].

Translations and adaptations

Using the French play as starting point, R.J. Planché wrote a one act English version called Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady, which was first performed at the Olympic Theatre, London, on the last Thursday of October, 1839 and in published by Samuel French (French's Standard Drama no LXVIII) in 1840(?).

Performance history in South Africa

1859: Performed in Planché's English version as Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady by Sefton Parry and his company in the Cape Town Theatre, on 7 November, with A Dead Shot (Buckstone), A Dreadful Deed (Dubois) and a "Tambourine Dance" by Lizzie Powell.

Sources

Facsimile version of the original French text, Gallica BNF[1]

Facsimile version of the original 1840 text by Planché, Hathi Trust Digital Library [2]

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p. 77

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