Clair de Lune

About

Michael Strange was the pen name of Blanche Oelrichs, a socialite poet who became one of John Barrymore's wives and wrote this verse play as a vehicle for her own theatrical ambitions. Clair de Lune (1921) draws loosely on the love between Victor Hugo's daughter Adèle and the French romantic tradition more broadly, using a moonlit, aestheticized frame to dramatize romantic longing. It is primarily of biographical and period interest — a document of the artistic aspirations of a certain kind of wealthy Gilded Age woman — but its verse has genuine moments of beauty and its historical strangeness recommends it to adventurous readers.