DANCOURT, Florent Carton (1661-1725), French dramatist and actor, was born at Fontainebleau on the 1st November 1661. He belonged to a family of rank, and his parents intrusted his education to Father De la Rue, a Jesuit, who made earnest but fruitless efforts to induce him to join the order. Preserving his freedom he studied law, became an advocate, and engaged for a short time in the practice of his profession. His marriage to the daughter of the celebrated comedian La Thorilliere led him to adopt the career of an actor, and in 1685, in spite of the strong opposition of his family, he appeared on the stage of the Theatre Français. His power of facial expression, vivacity of manner, and fluency of utterance gave him immediate and marked success, both with the public and with his fellow actors. The latter chose him for their spokesman on occasions of state, and in this capacity he frequently appeared before Louis XIV., who treated him with great favour. As a dramatic author Dancourt was exceedingly prolific, and as an almost necessary consequence somewhat unequal. His first play, Le Notaire obligeant, produced in 1685, was so well received as to lead its author speedily to repeat the experiment. La Desolation des Jouenses (1686) was still more successful; and Le Chevalier a la Mode (1687) is generally regarded as his best work, though his claim to original authorship in this and some other cases has been disputed. These were followed by others in constant succession till 1718, when he terminated his career both as an actor and as an author. Retiring to a chateau at Courcelles le Roi, in Berry, he employed himself in making a poetical translation of the psalms and in writing a sacred tragedy. He died on the 6th December 1725, and was buried in a tomb he had caused to be constructed during his lifetime in the chapel of his château. The plays of Daucourt are true in the main to nature. The characters have a vraisemblance that has led to his being styled the Teniers of comedy. He is most successful in his delineation of low life, and especially of the peasantry. The dialogue is sparkling, witty, and natural. Many of the incidents of his plots were derived from actual occurrences in the " fast " and scandalous life of the period, and several of his characters were drawn from well-known personage of the day. Most of the plays incline to the type of farce rather than of pure comedy.
The complete works of Dancourt were published in 1760 (12 vols. 12mo). An edition of his Œuvres Choisies in 5 vols. appeared in 1810.
DANDELION (Taraxacum Dens Leonis}, a perennial herb belonging to the sub-order Cichoraceoe, of the natural order Composite. The plant has a wide range, being found in Europe, Central Asia, North America, and the Arctic regions. The leaves are smooth, of a bright shining green, sessile, and tapering downwards. The name dandelion is derived from the French dent-de-lion, an appellation given on account of the tooth-like lobes of the leaves. The long tap-root has a simple or many-headed rhizome; it is black externally, and is very difficult of extirpation. The flower-stalks are smooth, brittle, leafless, hollow, and very numerous. The flowers bloom from April till August, and remain open from 5 or 6 in the morning to 8 or 9 at night. The flower-heads are of a golden yellow, and 1| inches in width; the florets are strap-shaped, and longer than the phyllaries. The achenes are olive or dull yellow in colour, and are each surmounted by a long beak; on this rests a pappus of white and delicate hairs, which occasions the ready dispersal of the seed by the wind. The globes formed by the plumed seeds are nearly 2 inches in diameter The involucre consists of an outer spreading (or reflexed) and an inner and erect row of bracts. In all parts of the plant a milky juice is contained, the principle of which, taraxacin, has diuretic properties. On exposure to the air the juice coagulates, deposits caoutchouc, and turns of a violet-brown colour. The leaves are bitter, but when blanched are sometimes eaten as a salad; they serve as food for silkworms when mulberry leaves are not to be had. The root is roasted as a substitute for coffee, and its infusion, decoction, and extract are employed medicinally as a tonic and aperient, especially in disorders of the digestive organs and liver. Several varieties of the dandelion are recognized by botanists, in the commonest of which the leaves are broad and ruucinate, and the outer bracts of the involucre have a downward flexure. The variety T. palustre, which affects boggy situations, and flowers in late summer and autumn, has nearly entire leaves, and the outer bracts of its involucre are erect.
DANDOLO is the name of one of the most illustrious patrician families of Venice. But the first doge of the name, Enrico Dandolo, who ruled the republic from 1192 to 1205, occupies the largest space in history of any of the name. He is the “blind old Dandolo” of Byron, whose passing mention of the well-nigh forgotten hero, in Childe Harold, has rendered the old name familiar to a larger number of ears than it ever was, even in the day when the prowess of the octogenarian doge changed the face of Europe. Enrico Dandolo was born of a family already illustrious, which had ruled in Galiipoli, Andros, Riva, and other places in Greece; and his uncle was patriarch of Grado. The story goes that he lost his sight from having been subjected by Manuel, the emperor of Constantinople, to whom he had been sent by Venice as ambassador, to the ancient punishment of "abbasination," to adopt a foreign word for a thing which, happily, is nameless in our language. This torture consisted in compelling the victim to gaze into a polished metal basin, which concentrated the rays of the sun till the excess of light destroyed the eye. Some of the Venetian historians, however, deny this story, and represent his blindness as having resulted from a wound received in fight. When he was elected doge, at the age of seventy-two, Venice was involved in a war with Pisa, which he brought in two naval battles to a successful conclusion. But the events which have made his name a marked one in history occurred yet nearer to the end of his long career. In 1201 the chivalry of Christendom was about to embark in the 4th crusade, by some historians reckoned the 5th, and a request was made to Venice to give the crusaders passage, and furnish them with vessels for transport. Dandolo received the messengers who came with those demands favourably. There is reason to think that the Venetian was not moved by any great degree of crusading enthusiasm; but Zara had thrown off the yoke of Venice; and, as Venetian writers add, the old doge had not forgiven the infamous treatment he had received at the
