Rape, Incest, Murder! the Marquis de Sade on Stage Volume One

"When numerous critics have all pointed to the stunning mastery of dialogue
evinced in [Sade's] novels, to say nothing of the truly theatrical
disposition of many of the scenes¿erotic or otherwise¿this would seem to be
linked to the theatrical obsession that persisted so disturbingly throughout
his tempestuous existence. Shouldn't we therefore look more closely at this
theatre...?"
- Annie Le Brun
In commemoration of the two hundred years that have passed since the death
of the Marquis de Sade in 1814, the three-volume series, Rape, Incest,
Murder! The Marquis de Sade on Stage, offers English translations of all of
Sade's writings, for and about the theatre, with introductions that contextualize Sade's work within the theatrical climate of eighteenth-century France.
Volume 1 presents Sade's earliest theatrical efforts, ranging from occasional verse, written to accompany the plays of other authors, to his first attempts at comedy and a newly developing bourgeois tragedy called the drame. The violence and eroticism of Sade's infamous novels are present in the plays, though in a lower dosage, obviously to render them accessible to public performance rather than private reading.
"[I]t is at the theatre rather than somewhere else that we must revive the
almost extinguished flame of the love that every Frenchman owes his country;
there is where he'll be convinced of the dangers that would exist for him
should he fall back into the hands of tyranny. He'll carry home the
enthusiasm and teach it to his family and its effects will be so much more
durable, so much more passionate than the momentary inspirations of a
newspaper article or proclamation because at the theatre, he learns the
lesson by example, and he remembers it."
- The Marquis de Sade