Pierre-René Lemmonier: Édition critique par Ling-Ling Sheu. (Exeter Textes Littéraires, 4). University of Exeter Press, 2003. xii+116 pp. Pb £16.99. Lemmonier's La Matrone chinoise; ou, l'épreuve ridicule (1765) is an entertaining comedy in two acts written for the Théâtre Italien. Although billed on the title page as a comédie ballet, it in fact includes only one dance interlude introduced by a song, and has a vaudeville finale. One of its most interesting aspects, and the main focus of this edition by Ling-Ling Sheu, is the fact that Lemmonier based it on a genuine Chinese tale, which, as well as being adapted by Voltaire in an episode in Zadig, also has distinct similarities with Petronius' story of the Widow of Ephesus, the usual French name for this episode, ‘La Matrone d'Éphèse’, being echoed in Lemmonier's title. Lemmonier found the Chinese version in a translation by the Jesuit Père d'Entrecolles published by the Père Du Halde, and Sheu makes interesting comparisons of this version with the Chinese original and the works by Petronius, Voltaire and Lemmonier himself. An appendix gives more or less complete texts of Petronius' tale and all the French works along with two indications of passages where d'Entrecolles's translation diverges from the Chinese source text. Also included are Fréron's enthusiastic review of the story and a selection of relevant extracts from the works of the philosopher Zhuang Zi, fictionalized as the central character of the Chinese tale. There is much of interest here, although at times it is difficult to avoid the impression that the treatment is a little cursory. For instance, more could have been made of the fact that the translation omits the revelation in the Chinese original that the ‘widow’'s husband, her lover and the lover's servant are the same person; particularly in view of the fact that, intriguingly, although Lemmonier presumably did not know the original Chinese text, that detail corresponds closely to the dénouement of La Matrone chinoise. The contentions that Du Halde retouched d'Entrecolles's translation to make it more accessible to a French public and that the translation modified the original ‘pour sauvegarder l'image favorable de la Chine’ (p. 12) are other examples of issues that are tantalizingly mentioned in passing without being illustrated or explained. The Introduction also includes details of Lemmonier's other plays, a note on the modernization of the spelling and an impressively detailed examination of patterns in the metre and rhyme of the free verse in which the play is written, although the absence of any real analysis of the data leaves it unclear what conclusions we should draw from this. This edition is the fourth in the new generation of Exeter French texts, now under the general editorship of David Cowling. Whilst opinions will differ over the fact that the policy of using original spelling seems to have been dropped, it is good to see that the tradition of Keith Cameron's original series in making available to modern readers interesting but rare works is being carried on.