Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette: Modern Interpretations

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Marie-Antoinette: Modern Interpretations

The legend of the Queen of Glamor and Tragedy is manifested differently in every generation.

A costume from the 1938 production, HERE. Share

1 comment:

lara77 said...: The 1938 production may have had outfits way over the top from a historic viewpoint; yet the story was closer to fact(EXCEPT for depicting Louis XVI as an idiot!) The Kirsten Dunst Marie Antoinette I found to be a disaster. The clothes may have been truer to actual 18th century designs but the story line is insulting to historians. The story line and the acting are both so disastrous it defies comment.; June 16, 2011 at 1:36:00 PM EDT