An infant prodigy of French romanticism and much inspired by Shakespeare and Schiller, Alfred de Musset (b. 1810) wrote the first modern dramas in the French language. His best-known plays include Les Caprices de Marianne (1833), Lorenzaccio (1833 - often referred to as the French Hamlet), and Un Caprice. His plays are some of the best of French theatre in the nineteenth century, though he was also an esteemed poet and novelist. He received the Légion d'honneur on 24 April 1845, at the same time as Balzac, and was elected to the Académie française in 1852. He died in 1857. Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris. He was dramatist, poet, and novelist and after his graduation in medicine he became one of the first Romantic writers. Main works including: poems, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (1829), Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil (1832), Poésies completes (1840), Poésies nouvelles (1850); novels such as La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, 1836), Histoire d'un merle blanc (The White Blackbird, 1842) and plays : La Nuit vénitienne (1830), André del Sarto (1833), Lorenzaccio (1834), On ne badine pas avec l'amour (1834), Un Caprice (1837), Carmosine (1850), Bettine (1851). Musset also received the Légion d'honneur on 24 April 1845, at the same time as Balzac, and was elected to the Académie française in 1852. He died in 1857.
