SOURCE: Collington, Tara L. and Philip D. Collington. “Adulteration or Adaptation? Nathaniel Lee's Princess of Cleve and Its Sources.” Modern Philology 100, no. 2 (November 2002): 196-226.

In the following essay, the critics examine Lee's adaptation of Madame de La Fayette's novel La Princesse de Clèves, declaring that Lee's Princess of Cleve is “a pioneering exercise in practical literary criticism of La Fayette's novel.”

Nathaniel Lee's 1681 theatrical adaptation of Madame de La Fayette's 1678 novel La Princesse de Clèves has met with near-universal condemnation in English and French criticism. Harry Ashton dismisses the play as a vulgar desecration of a delicate French pearl, thrown before the playgoing swine of Restoration England: “On était en pleine licence à cette époque et si Lee a emprunté le sujet pour le mettre au théâtre c'est dans une pièce ignoble qui n'est qu'une indigne caricature de la Princesse et qui montre combien l'original...