author
Joseph Patrat
1732–1801
An energetic figure of 18th-century French theater, he moved from acting on stage to writing a large body of plays for some of Paris’s best-known companies. His career stretched from Berlin and Brussels to Paris, where he became especially associated with comic and popular theater.
1 Audiobook
The Widow's Vow: A Farce, in Two Acts
by Mrs. Inchbald, Joseph Patrat
About the author
Born in Arles and active during the 1700s, Joseph Patrat was a French actor and playwright. Sources agree that he was the son of a stagehand, and that he began his stage career in Berlin before performing in the Austrian Netherlands, especially in Brussels with the Théâtre de la Monnaie.
He later worked in Marseille and Geneva, where he began writing plays as well as acting. He went on to produce around forty plays, and wrote for several important Paris theaters, including the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre Montansier, the Ambigu-Comique, the Comédie-Italienne, the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, the Théâtre Feydeau, and the Odéon.
One of his known works, L'Heureuse Erreur, was published in 1783 and later translated into English and adapted by Elizabeth Inchbald. Although some records list his birth year as 1732 and others as 1733, the main biographical sources consulted place his life in the late 18th century and note that he died in Paris in 1801.