In 1795, Lemercier's masterpiece Agamemnon, called by Charles Lafitte the last great antique tragedy in French literature, was produced.

It was a great success, but was violently attacked later by Julien Louis Geoffroy who stigmatized it as a bad caricature of Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon.

[1] In 1803, he earned a severe disappointment on the première of his tragedy Isule et Orovèse which was widely ridiculed and hooted by the public; consequently, at the beginning of the third act Lemercier withdrew his manuscript.

His Christophe Colomb (1809), advertised on the play-bill as a comédie shakespérienne [sic], represented the interior of a ship, and showed no respect for the classical unities.

Lemercier wrote four long and ambitious epic poems: Homère, Alexandre (1801), L'Atlantiade ou la théogonie newtonienne (1812) and Moïse (1823), as well as an extraordinary Panhypocrisiade (1819–1832), a distinctly romantic production in sixteen cantos, which has the sub-title Spectacle infernal du XVIe siècle.