Marie Françoise Dumesnil (January 2, 1713 – February 20, 1803), original name Marie-Françoise Marchand, was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 actress.

She was born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, daughter of a poor nobleman, and began her stage career in the provinces, whence she was summoned in 1737 to make her debut at the Comédie-Française

Comédie-Française

The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....

 as Clytemnestre

Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra or Clytaemnestra , in ancient Greek legend, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess...

 in Racine's

Jean Racine

Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

 Iphigénie en Aulide

Iphigénie en Aulide

Iphigénie en Aulide is an opera in three acts by Christoph Willibald Gluck, the first work he wrote for the Paris stage. The libretto was written by Leblanc du Roullet and was based on Jean Racine's tragedy Iphigénie...

. She at once came into the front rank, playing Cléopâtre, Phèdre

Phèdre

Phèdre is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.-Composition and premiere:...

, Athalie

Athalie

Athalie is the final tragedy of Jean Racine, and has been described as the masterpiece of 'one of the greatest literary artists known' and the 'ripest work' of Racine's genius...

 and Hermione (tragic roles created by contemporary French playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

s) with great effect, and when she created Merope

Merope

Merope was originally the name of several, probably unrelated, characters in Greek mythology. The name may refer to:-Greek mythology:* Merope , one of the Heliades, daughter of Helios and Clymene...

 (1743) Voltaire says that she kept the audience in tears for three successive acts. She retired from the stage in 1776, but lived until 1803. Her rival La Clairon

La Clairon

La Clairon , French actress, whose real name was Clair Josèphe Hippolyte Leris, was born at Condé-sur-l'Escaut, Hainaut, the daughter of an army sergeant....

having spoken ill of her, she authorized the publication of a Mémoire de Marie Françoise Dumesnil, en réponse aux mémoires d'Hippolyte Clairon (1800).