Alexandre Dumas's Kean: An Adaptation by Jean-Paul Sartre

On August 31, 1836, Alexandre Dumas brought to the Paris theatergoer Kean, a play based on the life of his contemporary, the celebrated British actor Edmund Kean. Just over a century later the title Kean would reappear in Paris. This time it would be on the playbill of the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Jean-Paul Sartre's adaptation of the Dumas text. The date is now November 14, 1953 Confronted by these two dates and texts, one asks what drew Sartre to this particular Dumas piece? Sartre had, after all , already established his genius for writing for the stage: Huis Clos, Le Diable el Ie bon Dieu and La PUlain respeclueuse had preceded Kean; Les Sequestres d' Allona would follow. Why would Sartre then (not unlike Camus, Brecht, and Faulkner, for that matter) submit to the constraints inherent in adaptations — to plots previously defined, to characters already playing out their lives?