The Three Musketeers
The
Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires [le
tʁwɑ muskətɛːʁ]) is a historical adventure
novel written in 1844 by French author Alexandre
Dumas. It is in the swashbuckler genre, which has heroic, chivalrous swordsmen who fight for
justice.
Set
between 1625 and 1628, it recounts the adventures of a young man named
d'Artagnan (a character based on Charles de
Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan) after he
leaves home to travel to Paris, hoping to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although d'Artagnan is not able to join this elite corps
immediately, he is befriended by the three most formidable musketeers of the
age – Athos, Porthos
and Aramis, "the three inseparables"– and becomes involved
in affairs of state and at court.
The
Three Musketeers is primarily a historical and
adventure novel. However, Dumas frequently portrays various injustices, abuses,
and absurdities of the Ancien
Régime, giving the novel an additional
political significance at the time of its publication, a time when the debate
in France between republicans
and monarchists was still fierce. The story was first serialised from March
to July 1844, during the July
Monarchy, four years before the French Revolution of 1848 violently established the Second Republic.
The
story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of
Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.
Origin
Dumas
presents his novel as one of a series of recovered manuscripts, turning the
origins of his romance into a little drama of its own. In the Preface, he tells
of being inspired by a scene in Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan (1700),
a historical novel by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, printed by Pierre Rouge in Amsterdam, which Dumas
discovered during his research for his history of Louis XIV.[1] According to Dumas, the incident where d'Artagnan tells of
his first visit to M. de Tréville, captain of the Musketeers, and how, in the
antechamber, he encountered three young Béarnese with the names Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, made such an
impression on him that he continued to investigate. That much is true—the rest
is fiction: He finally found the names of the three musketeers in a manuscript
titled Mémoire de M. le comte de la Fère, etc. Dumas “requested
permission” to reprint the manuscript; permission was granted:
Now,
this is the first part of this precious manuscript which we offer to our
readers, restoring it to the title which belongs to it, and entering into an
engagement that if (of which we have no doubt) this first part should obtain
the success it merits, we will publish the second immediately.
In
the meanwhile, since godfathers are second fathers, as it were, we beg the
reader to lay to our account, and not to that of the Comte de la Fère, the
pleasure or the ennui he may experience.
The Three Musketeers was written in collaboration with Auguste Maquet, who also worked with Dumas on its sequels (Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later), as well as The Count of Monte Cristo. Maquet would suggest plot outlines after doing historical research; Dumas then expanded the plot, removing some characters, including new ones, and imbuing the story with his unmistakable style.
The
Three Musketeers was first published in serial
form in the newspaper Le
Siècle between March and July 1844.
Plot summary
In
1625 France, d'Artagnan (a poor young nobleman) leaves his family in Gascony and travels to Paris to join the Musketeers of the Guard. At a house in Meung-sur-Loire, an older man derides d'Artagnan's horse. Insulted,
d'Artagnan demands a duel. But the older man's companions instead beat
d'Artagnan unconscious with a cooking pot and a metal tong that breaks his
sword. His letter of introduction to Monsieur
de Tréville, the commander of the Musketeers,
is also stolen. D'Artagnan resolves to avenge himself upon the older man, who
is later revealed to be the Comte de Rochefort,
an agent of Cardinal Richelieu,
who is passing orders from the Cardinal to his spy, Lady de Winter, usually
called Milady de Winter
or simply "Milady".
In
Paris, d'Artagnan visits Monsieur de Tréville at the headquarters of the
Musketeers, but without the letter, Tréville politely refuses his application.
He does, however, write a letter of introduction to an academy for young
gentlemen which may prepare his visitor for recruitment at a later time. From
Tréville's window, d'Artagnan sees Rochefort passing in the street below and
rushes out of the building to confront him, but in doing so he offends three
Musketeers, Athos, Porthos,
and Aramis, who each demand satisfaction; d'Artagnan must fight a duel
with all of them that afternoon.
As
d'Artagnan prepares himself for the first duel, he realizes that Athos's seconds
are Porthos and Aramis, who are astonished that the young Gascon intends to
duel them all. As d'Artagnan and Athos begin, Cardinal Richelieu's
guards appear and attempt to arrest d'Artagnan and the three Musketeers for
illegal dueling. Although they are outnumbered four to five, the four men win
the battle. D'Artagnan seriously wounds Jussac, one of the Cardinal's officers
and a renowned fighter. After learning of this, King Louis XIII
appoints d'Artagnan to Des Essart's company of the King's Guards and gives him
forty pistoles.
D'Artagnan
hires a servant named Planchet, finds lodgings, and reports to Monsieur des
Essart, whose company is a less prestigious regiment in which he will have to
serve for two years before being considered for the Musketeers. Shortly after,
his landlord speaks to him about the kidnapping of his wife, Constance
Bonacieux. When she is presently released, d'Artagnan falls in love at first sight
with her. She works for Queen
Anne of France, who is secretly conducting an
affair with the English Duke of Buckingham. The King, Louis XIII, gave the Queen a gift of diamond
studs, but she gives them to her lover as a keepsake. Cardinal Richelieu, who
wants war between France and England, plans to expose the tryst and persuades
the King to demand the Queen wear the diamonds to a soirée that the Cardinal is
sponsoring.
Constance
tries to send her husband to London to fetch the diamonds from Buckingham, but
the man is instead manipulated by Richelieu and thus does not go, so d'Artagnan
and his friends intercede. En route to England, the Cardinal's henchmen
repeatedly attack them and only d'Artagnan and Planchet reach London. Before
arriving, d'Artagnan is compelled to assault, and nearly to kill, the Comte de
Wardes, a friend of the Cardinal, cousin of Rochefort and Milady's lover.
Although Milady stole two of the diamond studs, the Duke of Buckingham provides
replacements while delaying the thief's return to Paris. D'Artagnan is thus
able to return a complete set of jewels to Queen Anne just in time to save her
honour. In gratitude, she gives him a beautiful ring.
Shortly
afterwards, d'Artagnan begins an affair with Madame Bonacieux. Arriving for an
assignation, he sees signs of a struggle and discovers that Rochefort and M.
Bonacieux, acting under the orders of the Cardinal, have assaulted and
imprisoned her. D'Artagnan and his friends, now recovered from their injuries,
return to Paris. D'Artagnan meets Milady
de Winter officially, and recognizes her as
one of the Cardinal's agents, but becomes infatuated with her until her maid
reveals that Milady is indifferent toward him. Entering her quarters in the
dark, he pretends to be the Comte de Wardes and trysts with her. He finds a fleur-de-lis branded on Milady's shoulder, marking her as a felon. Discovering
his identity, Milady attempts to kill him but d'Artagnan eludes her. He is
ordered to the Siege of La Rochelle.
He
is informed that the Queen has rescued Constance from prison. In an inn, the
musketeers overhear the Cardinal asking Milady to murder the Duke of
Buckingham, a supporter of the Protestant rebels at La Rochelle who has sent
troops to assist them. Richelieu gives her a letter that excuses her actions as
under orders from the Cardinal himself, but Athos takes it. The next morning,
Athos bets that he, d'Artagnan, Porthos, and Aramis, and their servants can
hold the recaptured St. Gervais bastion against the rebels for an hour, for the
purpose of discussing their next course of action. They resist for an hour and
a half before retreating, killing 22 Rochellese in total; d'Artagnan is made a
Musketeer as a result of this feat.
They
warn Lord de Winter and the Duke of Buckingham. Milady is imprisoned on arrival
in England, but she seduces her guard, Felton (a fictionalization of the real John Felton),
and persuades him to allow her escape and to kill Buckingham himself. On her
return to France, Milady hides in a convent where Constance is also staying.
The naïve Constance clings to Milady, who sees a chance for revenge on
d'Artagnan, and fatally poisons Constance before d'Artagnan can rescue her. The
Musketeers arrest Milady before she reaches Cardinal Richelieu. They bring an
official executioner, put her on trial and sentence her to death.
After
her execution, the four friends return to the Siege of La Rochelle. The Comte
de Rochefort arrests d'Artagnan and takes him to the Cardinal. When questioned
about Milady's execution, d'Artagnan presents her letter of pardon as his own.
Impressed with d'Artagnan's wilfulness and secretly glad to be rid of Milady,
the Cardinal destroys the letter and writes a new order, giving the bearer a
promotion to lieutenant in the Tréville company of Musketeers, leaving the name
blank. D'Artagnan offers the letter to Athos, Porthos, and Aramis in turn but
each refuses it; Athos because it is below him, Porthos because he is retiring
to marry his wealthy mistress, and Aramis because he is joining the priesthood.
D'Artagnan, though heartbroken and full of regrets, finally receives the
promotion he had coveted.
Characters
Musketeers
- Athos – Comte de la Fère: he has never recovered from his marriage to Milady and seeks solace in wine. He becomes a father figure to d'Artagnan.
- Aramis – René d'Herblay, a handsome young man who hesitates between his religious calling and his fondness for women and scheming.
- Porthos – M. du Vallon: a dandy, fond of fashionable clothes and keen to make a fortune for himself. The least cerebral of the quartet, he compensates with his homeric strength of body and character.
- D'Artagnan – Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan: a young, foolhardy, brave and clever man seeking to become a musketeer in France.
Musketeers' servants
- Planchet – a young man from Picardy, he is seen by Porthos on the Pont de la Tournelle spitting into the river below. Porthos takes this as a sign of good character and hires him on the spot to serve d'Artagnan. He turns out to be a brave, intelligent and loyal servant.
- Grimaud – a Breton. Athos is a strict master, and only permits his servant to speak in emergencies; he mostly communicates through sign language.
- Mousqueton – originally a Norman named Boniface; Porthos, however, changes his name to one that sounds better. He is a would-be dandy, just as vain as his master. In lieu of pay, he is clothed and lodged in a manner superior to that usual for servants, dressing grandly in his master's old clothes.
- Bazin – from the province of Berry, Bazin is a pious man who waits for the day his master (Aramis) will join the church, as he has always dreamed of serving a priest.
Others
- Milady de Winter – a beautiful and evil spy of the Cardinal, she is also Athos's ex-wife. D'Artagnan impersonates a rival to spend a night with her, attracting her deadly hatred.
- Rochefort is a more conventional agent of the Cardinal. Following their duel on the road to Paris, d'Artagnan swears to have his revenge. He loses several opportunities, but their paths finally cross again towards the end of the novel.
- Constance Bonacieux – the Queen's seamstress and confidante. After d'Artagnan rescues her from the Cardinal's guard, he immediately falls in love with her. She appreciates his protection, but the relationship is never consummated.
- Monsieur Bonacieux – Constance's husband. He initially enlists d'Artagnan's help to rescue his wife from the Cardinal's guards, but when he himself is arrested, he and the Cardinal discover they have an understanding. Richelieu turns Monsieur Bonacieux against his wife, and he goes on to play a role in her abduction.
- Kitty – a servant of Milady de Winter. She dislikes her mistress and adores d'Artagnan.
- Lord Winter - brother of Milady's second husband, who died of a mysterious disease (apparently poisoned by Milady). He imprisoned Milady upon her arrival in England and decided to send her overseas in exile. Later, he took part in Milady's trial.
Historical characters
- King Louis XIII of France: presented by Dumas as a fairly weak monarch often manipulated by his chief minister.
- Queen Anne of Austria – the unhappy Queen of France.
- Cardinal Richelieu: Armand Jean du Plessis, the King's chief minister, who plots against the Queen in resentment at having his advances rebuffed. Dumas describes him as being "36 or 37" though in 1625 Richelieu was 40.
- M. de Tréville – captain of The Musketeers, and something of a mentor to d'Artagnan, though he has only a minor role.
- George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham - a handsome and charismatic man used to getting his way: he thinks nothing of starting a war between England and France for his personal convenience. His courtship of Anne of Austria gets her in trouble.
- John Felton – a puritan officer assigned to guard Milady and warned about her ways, he is nonetheless seduced and fooled by her in a matter of days and assassinates Buckingham at her request.
Editions
Les
Trois Mousquetaires was translated into three English
versions by 1846. One of these, by William Barrow (1817–1877), is still in
print and fairly faithful to the original, available in the Oxford World's
Classics 1999 edition. To conform to 19th-century English standards, all of the
explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality were removed,
adversely affecting the readability of several scenes, such as the scenes
between d'Artagnan and Milady.
One
recent English translation is by Richard
Pevear (2006), who, though applauding
Barrow's work, states that most of the modern translations available today are
"textbook examples of bad translation practices" which "give
their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas' writing".[3]
Adaptations
Film
Main article: The Three Musketeers in film
- The Three Musketeers, a 1948 adaptation starring Van Heflin, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Angela Lansbury, and Gene Kelly [4]
- The Three Musketeers, a 1993 Disney adaptation starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt and Chris O'Donnell.[5]
Television
The
novel has been adapted also for television in live-action and animation.
Live-action
The
BBC has adapted the novel on three occasions.
- The Three Musketeers, a 1954 BBC adaptation in six 30-minute episodes, starring Laurence Payne, Roger Delgado, Paul Whitsun-Jones and Paul Hansard
- The Three Musketeers, a 1966 BBC adaptation in ten 25-minute episodes, directed by Peter Hammond and starring Jeremy Brett, Jeremy Young, and Brian Blessed
- The Musketeers, a 2014 series by Adrian Hodges, is the newest BBC adaptation[6] starring Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles and Luke Pasqualino as the titular musketeers.
The
Young
Blades is an American/Canadian television
series that aired on PAX on 2005. It's a sequel to the novels, centered on the son
of d'Artagnan, played by Tobias
Mehler.
Animation
Walt Disney Productions produced a Silly
Symphony cartoon called, Three Blind Mouseketeers, which is loosely based on the novel in 1936, in which the
characters are depicted as anthropomorphic animals.
Dogtanian and the
Three Muskehounds is a 1981 Spanish–Japanese anime adaptation, where the characters are anthropomorphic dogs. A sequel, The Return of Dogtanian, was
released in 1989 by BRB
Internacional, Thames
Television and Wang Film Productions. Set 10 years after of the original, it's loosely based on
the novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne. A key difference between the two Dogtanian
adaptions and Dumas' novel is that the character traits of Athos and Porthos
were interchanged, making Athos the extrovert and Porthos the secretive noble
of the group.
In
1989, Gakken produced a new anime adaptation called The Three Musketeers Anime, this time with human characters, which features several
departures from the original.
The Three Musketeers was a series of animated shorts produced by Hanna-Barbera's as part of The
Banana Splits Comedy-Adventure Hour and The Banana Splits & Friends show.
Albert the Fifth Musketeer is a 1994 French animated series featuring a new musketeer,
the titular Albert.
Mickey, Donald,
Goofy: The Three Musketeers,
a direct-to-video animated movie produced by Walt Disney Pictures and the Australian office of DisneyToon Studios,
directed by Donovan Cook,
and released on August 17, 2004.
Stage
The
first stage production was in Dumas' own lifetime as the opera Les Trois
Mousquetaires with a libretto
by Dumas himself and music by Albert
Visetti.
The Three Musketeers is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire, lyrics by Clifford Grey and P.
G. Wodehouse, and music by Rudolf
Friml. The original 1928 production ran
on Broadway for 318 performances. A 1984 revival ran for 15 previews and 9
performances.
In
2003, a Dutch musical 3
Musketiers with a book by André Breedland and
music & lyrics by Rob & Ferdi Bolland premiered, which went on to open
in Germany (both the Dutch and German production starring Pia
Douwes as Milady De Winter) and Hungary.
Playwright
Peter Raby, composer George Stiles and lyricist Paul Leigh have written another
adaptation titled "The 3 Musketeers, One Musical For All",
originally produced by the now defunct American Musical
Theatre of San Jose.
In
2006, an adaptation by Ken Ludwig
premiered at the Bristol Old Vic.[7] In this version, d'Artagnan's sister Sabine, "the
quintessential tomboy," poses as a young man and participates in her
brother's adventures.
In
2018 The Dukes
performed an outdoor promenade production in Williamson Park, Lancaster, adapted by Hattie Naylor: in this version d'Artagnan was a
young woman aspiring to be a musketeer.[8][9]
Video games and board games
1995
saw the release by publisher U.S.
Gold of Touché:
The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer
by video game developers Clipper Software, a classic point-and-click adventure
game.[10] In 2005, Swedish developer Legendo
Entertainment published the side-scrolling platform game
The Three Musketeers for Windows
XP and Windows
Vista. In July 2009, a version of the
game was released for WiiWare
in North America and Europe under the title The Three
Musketeers: One for All!.[11]
In 2009, Canadian developer Dingo Games self-published The
Three Musketeers: The Game
for Windows and Mac OS X.
It is the first game to be truly based on the novel (in that it closely follows
the novel's story).[12] 2009 also saw the publication of the asymmetric team board
game The Three Musketeers "The
Queen's Pendants" (Настольная игра "Три мушкетера")
from French designer Pascal Bernard[13] by the Russian publisher Zvezda.[14] In 2010 a co-operative game called "Mousquetaires du
Roy" was released by Ystari and Rio Grande.[15] The alternative spelling of "Roy" was taken from
the old French and is rumoured to be preferred over the regular spelling
because the publishers desire to have a letter "Y" in the name of the
games they publish.[16] Designed by François Combe and Gilles Lehmann for 1-5
players, the medium heavy game depicts the quest to retrieve the Queen's diamonds,
while at the same time fending off disasters back in Paris. A sixth player
expansion, called "Treville" was also made available in 2010.[17]
In
2010, Anuman Interactive
launched The Three Musketeers, a hidden object game
on PC and MAC. Players follow d'Artagnan in his quest to become a king's
musketeer.[18]
Web Series
In
2016, KindaTV launched a web series based on the story of The Three
Musketeers, called "All For One".[19] It follows a group of college students, mainly Dorothy
Castlemore, and is centred around a sorority- Mu Sigma Theta (MST). The
majority of characters have been gender-swapped from the original story and
most character names are based on the original characters.
It
covers several themes including the LGBT community, mental health, long
distance relationships and college life.
Other
Publisher
Albert Lewis Kanter (1897–1973), created Classic
Comics for Elliot Publishing Company in 1941 with its debut issues being The Three Musketeers.
The Three Mouseketeers was the title of two series produced by DC
Comics; the first series
was a loose parody of The Three Musketeers.
In
1939, American author Tiffany
Thayer published a book titled Three
Musketeers (Thayer, 1939). This is a re-telling of the story in Thayer's
words, true to the original plot but told in a different order and with
different points of view and emphasis from the original. The Khaavren
Romances by Steven
Brust are fantasy (or science-fiction)
novels heavily influenced by The Three Musketeers and its sequels; the
characters and social background are closer to Dumas's than the plots.
Sarah
Hoyt wrote a series of Historical Murder mysteries with the Musketeers as the protagonists. (Hoyt wrote the
novels under the name Sarah d'Almeida.)
Tansy Rayner Roberts wrote Musketeer Space, a space
opera retelling of the original book in
which almost all characters have a different gender, as a weekly serialized
novel from 2014–2016.
In popular culture
Literature
In
the book The Assault,
The Three Musketeers is quoted in the Prologue as the protagonist had the story
read to him by Mr. Beumer, a lawyer who later becomes senile and in morbidity.
Film
and television
In
the movie The Man in the Iron
Mask the aging musketeers come out of
retirement and reunite to save France from the spoiled, cruel young king Louis
XIV (played by Leonardo DiCaprio).
The movie features Jeremy Irons
as Aramis, John Malkovich
as Athos, Gerard Depardieu
as Porthos, and Gabriel Byrne
as D’Artagnon.
In
Slumdog Millionaire Jamal Malik's final question was to correctly identify the
name of the third musketeer- which was Aramis. Jamal did so and won twenty
million rupees.
In
the movie Django Unchained
one of the slaves, owned by Calvin Candie, Leonardo
Dicaprio, is named D'Artangonn.
Video Games
In
Pokémon Black and White, the Pokémon Terrakion, Cobalion,
and Virizion are based on the Three Musketeers. Cobalion represents
Athos, Terrakion represents Porthos, and Verizion represents Aramis.[20]
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