Marc Lescarbot
His dramatic poem Théâtre de Neptune was performed at Port Royal as what the French claim was the first European theatrical production in North America outside of New Spain.
He had a classical education, learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and acquiring a wide knowledge of ancient and modern literatures.
Lescarbot lived in Paris, where he associated with men of letters, such as the scholars Frederic and Claude Morel, his first printers, and the poet Guillaume Colletet, who wrote a biography of him, since lost.
But he also travelled and maintained contact with his native Picardy, where he had relatives and friends such as the poets the Laroque brothers and he attracted law clients.
The following spring, they made a trip to the Saint John River and Île Sainte-Croix, where they encountered the Algonquian-speaking indigenous peoples called the Mi'kmaq and the Malécite.
Inspired by seeing parts of the New World, he wrote an extensive history of the French settlements in the Americas, the Histoire de la Nouvelle-France.
During his year at Port-Royal, he met the survivors of the short-lived settlement at Sainte-Croix; talked with François Gravé Du Pont, de Monts, and Champlain, the promoters and members of the earlier expeditions; and visited old fishing captains, who knew Newfoundland and the Acadian coasts.
In the successive editions of his Histoire, in 1611–12 and 1617–18, and in his complementary pamphlets, "La conversion des sauvages" (1610) and the "Relation derrière" (1612), Lescarbot reshaped and completed his account.
)[2] He added material on Poutrincourt's resettlement of the colony, as well as his and his son Charles de Biencourt's disputes with their competitors and the ruin of Acadia by Jesuits Biard, Massé and Du The, and Samuel Argall.
Keenly interested in the First Nations peoples, he frequently visited the Souriquois (Micmaq) chiefs and warriors while in La Nouvelle France.
[4] Lescarbot had strong opinions about the colonies, which he saw as a field of action for men of courage, an outlet for trade, a social benefit and a means for the mother country to extend its influence.
All the editions of the Histoire include, as an appendix, a short collection of poems, Les muses de la Nouvelle-France, which were also published separately.
Like his contemporary François de Malherbe, Lescarbot tended to write poetry as an occasional diversion and a means of pleasing the elite to acquire patronage.
He had a feeling for nature and a keen sensibility, and sometimes found agreeable rhythms and images; but his verse is considered clumsy and hastily wrought.
[citation needed] His Théâtre de Neptune, which is part of the Muses, was performed as a theatrical presentation at Port-Royal to celebrate Poutrincourt's return.
Although a Roman Catholic, Lescarbot was friends with Protestants; his attitude of independent judgment and free inquiry contributed to a reputation for unorthodoxy.
He is believed to have written several pamphlets, published anonymously or left in manuscript, including a Traité de la polygamie, which he had talked about.
A "radical deconstruction" entitled "Sinking Neptune" was performed as part of the 2006 Montreal Infringement Festival, despite the cancellation of the event it protested.
