Ruy Blas

At the end of this seventeenth century, there is something rotten in the kingdom of Spain.

This takes place under the reign of Charles II, an absent king, afflicted with all the flaws of inbreeding.

His shadow looms over the play. Victor Hugo, in his preface, tells us: "The illness of the State is in the head; the nobility, who touches it, is its first victim."

It will take a Ruy Blas, a man of the people who has become 1st minister, to denounce the depravities of the grandees.

The drama unfolds in a decaying kingdom: Don Salluste, a grandee of Spain, seeks revenge on the Queen. Ruy Blas, recently become Don Salluste's valet, madly loves the Queen. Don César, Don Salluste's cousin, lives a bohemian life under the name Zafari; it is under this name that Ruy Blas knows him and that they previously forged a fraternal friendship. The Queen is bored, confined in her palace, neglected by an incompetent king who spends his time hunting. The scheming Don Salluste will use Ruy Blas as a pawn to attack the Queen; this mad Don César, having disappeared, reappears in act IV... All this tangles and intertwines until the inevitable conclusion.