Alexandre Hardy, France's first professional playwright and a pivotal figure in the transition from the Renaissance to the classical era, remains underappreciated today. Little is known with certainty about his life. Apart from a handful of statements made by Hardy himself in his published works, most of what is now known comes from archival documents, the majority of them unearthed by Sophie-Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer.

Hardy was born in Paris. No record of his birth has been found, but scholars have proposed dates ranging from 1560 to 1577. Deierkauf-Holsboer proposes 1572, based on a statement in a dedicatory epistle written in 1622, in which Hardy claims to have been writing plays for thirty years. (She assumes, plausibly enough, that he began his career at around age twenty.) Hardy came from a respectable bourgeois family, which included many magistrates. He must have received an excellent education, since several statements by friends attest to his erudition...