Another Day, Another Book.

I thought we would make a gradual transmission into book number two, so today I will be talking about the history of Alexandre Dumas’ book The Three Musketeers. It was written in 1844 under the original title Les Trois Mousquetaires. The book itself takes place in the 1620s. One of the most interesting things about this book is that it is based on real people. The main character, D’artagnan, was based upon Charles de Batz-Castelmore. Numerous other characters in the play such as Athos, Porthos, Aramis, Cardinal Richelieu, and King Louis XIII.

One very interesting thing about The Three Musketeers is that Alexandre Dumas thought he was plagiarizing another story. He came across a manuscript in his studies and one just sparked his imagination. He did not believe what he had read and even wrote a preface about how it could be plagiarism.

Another interesting thing about The Three Musketeers is the number of times that it has been adapted into other mediums. The story itself has numerous sequels, but Hollywood, in particular, has always loved the Three Musketeers. Throughout the silver age, there have been twenty-four different interpretations of the story. This does not include television adaptions like the Musketeers and Banana Split’s The Four Musketeers. One very common factor in Three Musketeer movies is that the more they stray from the original story the less successful the movie is. The most successful interpretation is most likely the one from 1973 starring Charleton Heston. Disney also made a version which is very loved but did not receive the same type of reviews as the 1973 counterpart. There was one that also came out in the 90s titled The Musketeer which focused more on making The Matrix type fight scenes rather than the story. The most recent movie would be the 2011 version which tries to incorporate a more unpredictable story and tried to set up a sequel. Sadly, this film was not well received even though I thought it was very well done.