by Luke A. Iantoro (Original)
“While you observe from a distance the great drama which is acting in France, I am a spectator of the representation. I am placed near enough the scene to discern every look and every gesture of the actors, and every passion excited in the minds of the audience.”
Helen Maria Williams, Letters from France, Volume 3.
Helen Maria Williams arrived in France on 13 July 1790 to participate in the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille the next day. The Fête de la Fédération, as Williams describes it in her 1790 epistolary non-fiction novel Letters Written in France: in the summer of 1790, to a friend in England: containing various anecdotes relative to the French revolution; and the memoirs of Mons. And Madame du F– is exhilarating: “The most sublime spectacle … ever represented on the theatre of this earth” (1.1.63). Williams describes the events of 14 July 1790 as one act within a comprehensive play of the universal human drama. Echoing Miranda in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Williams encounters a brave new world, one where Williams, both as author and as character, chronicles the transformation of France through gameplay (5.1.283–6). As the public play in Revolutionary France developed, Williams documented its volatile and apocalyptic paroxysms, while writing herself into that public drama as both spectator and player.
