BEAUMARCHAIS

There are few figures in literature whose career has been as varied as that of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), few who have experienced as many vicissitudes of fortune and have achieved such success through sheer courage and indomitable ambition and energy. He was born in Paris, January 24, 1732, the son of André-Charles Caron, a master watchmaker. His education consisted of a few years at a kind of trade school at Alfort; then he was set to learning his father's trade. At the age of twenty he invented a watch escapement which attracted public attention to him and brought him orders from the Court. Soon he was appointed horloger du roi. This was the first step in his remarkable career. He did not fail to take advantage of whatever influence he could gain. His ability as a harp player won for him. the position of music teacher to the king's daughters. In 1757 he married the widow of a court official and assumed without warrant the title de Beaumarchais which he took from the name of one of her estates. Through his court connections he was brought into relations with the financier, Paris-Duverney, associated with him in various enterprises, learned to speculate, and gradually acquired a considerable fortune. He purchased several offices, including a magistracy, and developed into a man of many interests. From this time, and throughout most of his life, he always had on foot a number of love-affairs, schemes and intrigues. In the spring of 1764 he made a trip to Spain to try to force Clavijo, who had jilted his sister, to marry her, and succeeded in bringing him into disgrace. He also availed himself of his stay in Spain to try secretly to arrange some bold financial enterprises; but in this he failed. Upon his return to France he undertook to supplement his education by extensive reading. He determined to take up his pen to aid in making his fortune. The result was a series of polemical tracts and plays. Beaumarchais was the kind of man who through his independence, his energetic and scheming nature, made many enemies. His writings served to increase their number. He became involved in law-suits, which through the corruptness of the courts turned out badly for him and left him with the loss of much of his fortune as well as of his civil rights. But his spirit was unbroken and he immediately undertook to rehabilitate himself. To do this he was forced to become a secret agent of the king; the success of several secret missions to England finally lead to the restoration of his rights in 1776. While in England he organized an enterprise to furnish munitions to the American colonies, and with the aid of the French and Spanish governments carried on operations on a large scale. He continued to be involved in legal and financial difficulties, and his enemies aroused public opinion against him, so that during the Revolution he fared rather badly, although he carefully endeavored to avoid antagonisms. He barely escaped the guillotine, and was forced to live in exile until 1796. When he returned to France he was a fairly old man. His fortune was nearly gone, yet he set to work with his characteristic energy and succeeded in amassing

considerable wealth before death overtook him, May 18, 1799. Watchmaker, music teacher, financier, courtier, dramatist, secret agent, exile, Beaumarchais experienced the pleasures of fame, success, and wealth, the humiliations of financial ruin and loss of public esteem. Yet through all these varying fortunes his innate jovial temperament, his amazing vitality and energy of purpose never permitted him to lose courage. In many respects he is the most representative Frenchman of his time, embodying all the good and bad qualities of the period.

The writing of plays is only one of the episodes in Beaumarchais' manysided career. While other accomplishments attracted equal or more attention from his contemporaries, it is as a playwright that his fame persists today. As has been noted, it was upon his return from Spain in 1765 that he began to give some attention to literary pursuits. He decided to make a venture in the drama, as the quickest way to success, and began by writing parades for private theatres. Then, largely under the inspiration of the novels of Richardson and the dramatic theories of Diderot, he turned to the drame and with Eugénie (1767) made his first public appearance upon the stage. This play, which has the distinction of being the first to be entitled drame, is considerably superior to Diderot's efforts with the same type. Yet it is by no means a masterpiece. It is probably the first French play to give long, detailed descriptions of the costumes of the actors, a device which Beaumarchais again. employed in his comedies. This is a development of one of Diderot's theories and presages the Romantic dramatists' efforts at local color. To this play Beaumarchais prefixed a long Essai sur le genre dramatique sérieux, in which he offered a clear presentation of the theories of the drame as he interpreted them. Charged with plagiarizing Diderot in this play, Beaumarchais wrote a second drame, les Deux amis (1770), to prove his originality. It is superior to Eugénie in style and dialogue, but suffers from a trivial plot.

Realizing that the serious play was not his forte, Beaumarchais turned to comedy and produced le Barbier de Séville. This play is a development of one of his parades. He first wrote it in the form of a comic opera, but unable to have it produced, he changed it into a regular comedy. Permission to perform it was granted in 1773, but it was not produced at the Comédie-Française until February 23, 1775, the delay being due to the legal and financial entanglements in which the author was involved. This comedy of manners was a great success. The Spanish setting and the songs reflect Beaumarchais' visit. to Spain and his interest in. Spanish music. The great popularity of the play resulted from the piquancy and sparkle of the dialogue, the skilful plot, and above all from the character of the hero, Figaro.

Scarcely had le Barbier de Séville appeared upon the boards, when Beaumarchais began work on its continuation, la Folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro. Begun in 1775, finished in 1778, accepted at the Comédie-Française in 1781, it was not performed there until April 27, 1784. The nature of the satire it contained caused the authorities to forbid its performance time and again when it seemed to be about to make its public appearance. During this long delay the author carried on a recruiting campaign for his play in high circles. He created such a body of favorable opinion that the performance finally had to be allowed. On account of the advertising which it had received,

its first performance was one of the greatest triumphs in the history of the French stage. Sixty-eight consecutive performances attest its popularity with its contemporaries.

This second comedy is a little more serious in tone than its predecessor and contains a far larger dosage of social satire. It employs the same principal characters as the Barbier, but presents them in quite a different and more original plot. In the earlier comedy Figaro is only an agent and instrument of Almaviva, aiding him by his surprising resourcefulness to win the hand of Rosine. In the Mariage the tables are turned. Now it is the valet who is to be married, and he finds a rival in his master. From this situation develops the struggle in which Figaro has to call upon all his wit and ingenuity to get the better of his antagonist. Beaumarchais has the task of creating sympathy for a lower-class character at the expense of one of high rank. In this he succeeds admirably. The scene of the play was originally laid in Paris, but the author had to shift it to Spain in order to avoid the opposition of the authorities. The Spanish coloring therefore is only on the surface. The time and conditions pictured are clearly those of contemporary France. It was this timeliness which accounted in a large degree for the play's popular success.

It is not difficult to detect in this play, as in the Barbier, many reminiscences of earlier comedies, of Molière's especially. In fact it may be called an epitome of the best elements of various dramatic traditions of the French stage: the social satire of Molière, Italian intrigue, drame bourgeois, comic opera. Yet there is a remarkable originality in the comedies of Beaumarchais, for they are composed largely out of a combination of the author's own experiences and the ideas of his time. His borrowings are merely excellent means of presenting these experiences and ideas in a skilfully combined plot. It is because the author "breathes his own life" into his characters that they are so real and full of vitality. Thus in the Mariage de Figaro, "the precocious, amorous watchmaker's apprentice of thirteen lives again as Chérubin; De Beaumarchais, the handsome courtier, appears as Almaviva; his experiences as magistrate and as litigant give life to the court scene; but above all, his whole checkered career and his whole character-with some differences, to be sure-are summed up in Figaro, who comes before us as one of the most real, extraordinary, and fascinating characters that the history of comedy has produced" (Langley). Figaro's lineage has been traced back through the valets of French comedy to Rabelais' Panurge. He is the greatest representative of his type, the valet of all valets. As Brunetière justly states, Figaro's famous monologue in Act V, Scene III, is an essential element in the play. It is that which lends distinction to his character, makes him more than a common valet, makes him a herald of the approaching Revolution.

Twice again did Beaumarchais try his hand at dramatic composition. In 1787 he produced an opera, Tarare, which had only a succès de curiosité. Then he reverted once more to the drame with l'Autre Tartuffe, ou la Mère coupable (1792), his last and least successful play. Here the chief characters of his two comedies again appear, but in a very different situation. In this combination of Diderot and Molière Beaumarchais declared that his idea was to "faire étouffer de sanglots avec les mêmes personnages qui nous firent rire aux éclats."

Such were the dramatic contributions of the French Aristophanes. He has left us two comedies which are fit to rank with those of Molière, he produced perhaps the best example of social satire that the French stage has seen, and he had his share in paving the way for Scribe, Augier, and Dumas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Théâtre de Beaumarchais. Réimpression des éditions princeps avec les variantes des mss originaux, par D'HEYLLI et MARESCOT, 4 vols., Paris, 1869–71. E. F. LANGLEY: Le Mariage de Figaro, par M. de Beaumarchais. Annotated edition, New York, 1917. L. DE LOMÉNIE: Beaumarchais et son temps, 2 vols., Paris, 1856. E. LINTILHAC: Beaumarchais et ses œuvres, Paris, 1887. GUDIN DE LA BRENELLERIE: Histoire de Beaumarchais, Paris, 1888. A. HALLAYS: Beaumarchais, Paris, 1897. J. RIVERS: Figaro, The Life of Beaumarchais, New York, 1923. C. LENIENT: La Comédie en France au XVIII° siècle, Paris, 1888, Vol. II. J. LEMAÎTRE: Impressions de théâtre, 3 série. F. BRUNETIÈRE: Les Époques du théâtre français, Paris, 1892. E. LINTILHAC: Histoire générale du théâtre en France, Vol. IV. F. FUNCK-BRENTANO and P. D'ESTRÉE: Figaro et ses devanciers, Paris, 1909.

La scène est au château d'Aguas-Frescas, à trois lieues de Séville.

1 Text of 1785 edition.

2 corregidor, magistrate.

3 camériste, lady-in-waiting.

4 femme de charge, housekeeper.

5 lieutenant du siège, assistant magistrate.

6 huissier audiencier, court usher.