The Three Musketeers: Where History Meets Fantasy - Presented at Main Street Green September 8th

Montana Shakespeare in the Parks will present Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers at the Main Street Green on Friday, September 8, 2023, at 5:30 PM.

Few works of fiction have made their way more noticeably into popular culture than Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers. The very phrase "three musketeers" has become a mainstay in conversations, references, and even brand names, while the cry of "all for one, and one for all" remains both memorable and useful. Unlike some literary works, this novel was an immediate success; it appeared in the French serial publication Le Siècle in 1844, and readers devoured the story as eagerly as Dumas wrote it.

Alexandre Dumas was an extraordinarily prolific writer, churning out hundreds of books, including his other famous work, The Count of Monte Cristo.

He had a veritable army of assistants to help with the research, and sometimes even the writing, and his formulaic approach hit the market of readers exactly right. Dumas himself was larger than life-outspoken, hot-headed, passionate, and one who had a tendency to fall in and out of love. In other words, he was much like the protagonist of The Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan.

D'Artagnan and his three mates-Athos, Porthos, and Aramis-are prime examples of swashbucklers. The word means a swaggering braggart, but it's derived from the noise that such men made with their weapons: clashing their swords (=swashing) against small round shields (=bucklers). Fiction about such swashbucklers featured them in frequent fights, demonstrating their skill with weapons and standing up for what they deemed to be right.

As a writer of historical fiction, Dumas chose the seventeenth century as his setting. In order to tell this story, Dumas played very fast and loose with historical facts, mixing actual events with fictional ones, basing some characters on historical individuals, and inventing others to fuel his narrative. The story begins in 1627 (only eleven years after Shakespeare died), and it is set during the reign of Louis XIII. D'Artagnan dreams of becoming a musketeer because that is the role in which a brave man could serve as a member of the royal household troupes, thus protecting the king and country.

In The Three Musketeers, the main threats to France come in the form of religion, foreign influence, and evil women. Across Europe, the seventeenth century was marked by religiously motivated wars and rebellions, including the Thirty Years War in central Europe (1618-48) and the English Civil War (1642-51). A significant percentage of the French population was lost in the French religious wars at the end of the sixteenth century, as these conflicts erupted again in the seventeenth century as the Protestant Huguenots rebelled against the King at the Siege of la Rochelle, which is depicted in Three Musketeers. Louis XIII's forces were led to victory by the powerful Cardinal Richelieu, but this did not make the Catholic church and its leader in France heroes to everyone. In The Three Musketeers, in fact, although the sentiments are decidedly against the Huguenots, the chief villain is the power-hungry Cardinal Richelieu, who is not loyal to the king but instead uses his position to further his personal ambitions.

The nationalism of The Three Musketeers is accompanied by suspicion of foreigners, and in this story, the outsider in question is England's Duke of Buckingham. As Dumas represented him, this statesman had ambitions that were both personal (a love affair with Louis's queen, Anne) and political (initiating a war with France). Dumas's portrayal of Buckingham, however, is mixed, thus sometimes the musketeers find themselves helping the Englishman in order to protect their country.

Rushing to England and back to return some missing diamonds, the heroes show undaunted bravery, disregarding their own safety in order to protect the queen's reputation and reduce Richelieu's influence.

In this otherwise male-dominated world, some brave women manage to take center stage, such as Constance (D'Artagnan's love interest), and even his mother, who sends him to Paris to seek honor. No woman is more powerful, however than Milady de Winter, the Cardinal's chief spy, who is equally adept at sword fighting, eavesdropping, and seducing men. Her machinations bring about the death of Buckingham and almost cause the downfall of D'Artagnan himself. Dumas took the Milady character not from history but from other fiction he had read. Dumas's vividly painted villainess became the inspiration for many subsequent femme fatale characters.

Against this historical and pseudo-historical background, the main emphasis is on the friendship of the musketeers themselves. Throughout the novel young D'Artagnan learns about life, love, faith, friendship, and much more from the three musketeers, Aramis, Porthos, and Athos. All four men are lovingly portrayed as flawed individuals-not always that bright, lacking in consistency, and given to excessive emotions. Their redeeming characteristic, of course, is their loyalty. Their "all for one, one for all" mentality ensures that they will always work together to protect one another and thus their king. Dumas was a dedicated royalist in his own time, for like many in nineteenth-century France, he had an intense desire for the stability that a strong monarchy could provide. By setting the fantasy story in a historical period when acts of bravery and loyalty could save the monarchy, Dumas struck a chord with his audiences.

Dumas always loved theatre, and he wrote plays as well. Soon after The Three Musketeers was printed, it was turned into an opera, and in subsequent musical and non-musical renditions, this story was popular on nineteenth-century stages. Since that time, Dumas's most famous novel has inspired countless films and stage versions. Given that The Three Musketeers' characters seem to leap off the page with their swordsmanship, bravado, and boasting language, it is most gratifying to see these swashbucklers embodied in live performance.