The Barber of Seville the Marriage of Figaro

B EAUMARCHAI S The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro Translated with an Introduction by JOHN WOOD PENGUIN BOOKS INTRODUCTION BEAUMARCHAIS is now remembered for his two great comedies and for them, in the English-speaking world at least, because they have won a second and more resounding fame as operas. His other works for the theatre are forgotten, and the vast product of his unflagging energy as a pamph- leteer, which gained him an international reputation in his own time, is known only to students. He said himself that he wrote plays par amusement — as others found diversion in hunt- ing, intrigue, or love-making. The statement, and any impli- cation that he abstained from the alternative activities men- tioned, need not be taken too literally. All the evidence is that he combined, in his work for the theatre, the zest of the amateur with an unremitting and meticulous toil which was wholly professional. Playwriting formed only a part of a life of protean activity, but it was near and dear to his heart, something that he had to do, an essential expression of his personality. He was also, at various times or simultaneously, artisan, courtier, musician, financier, diplomat, merchant and ship-owner, army contractor, secret agent, publisher, litigant, and controversialist on the grand scale: he knew the extremes of success and failure, wealth and poverty, popularity and neg- lect, the intense life of Paris and the frustrations of exile, the freedom of palaces, and the constraint of jails. At all times he was a man of ideas and one to whom ideas involved action. Glimpses, reflections, echoes of all his activities occur and re-occur in the plays; their enduring interest lies in the degree in which they mirror the age, the society of which and for which they were written, and evoke the love of life, restless energy, unflagging gaiety, audacity, resource, and resilience of their author. It was said of Beaumarchais that he had but one character — himself — and of Figaro that he epitomized _all _ the II INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION vices of the man who created him. There is truth in both in The Barber: in Figaro it is implicit, a continuing accompani- allegations, us w o read the plays now it is less a fault ment to the comic theme. It is a challenge that the agents of than a measure of his achievement. tyranny have rarely failed to detect. Louis XVI, after hearing Beaumarchais was at once a wit and a man of feeling, a lover a reading of Figaro, said that such a play could never be and a libertine, a paladin and an adventurer: he sounded the allowed to appear on the stage. He did not stand by his esti- clarion of liberty about the walls of the decadent society to mate, but then he was that type of man. Napoleon's grim which his work lent distinction, and when the time came he comment on Beaumarchais was that in his time such a fellow defied the powers he had helped to unloose to engulf him. An would have been clapped into jail. And presumably kept adventurer, a careerist, a man of no principle — so his enemies there! The restored Bourbons had their censors delete from described him; brave, warm-hearted, generous to a fault, in- the plays all reference to censorship. More recent censors defatigable in any cause he undertook to support — so he ap- have acknowledged in Figaro one who, when Speaking of peared to his friends; in good fortune and bad he ran true to Liberty, does not take that name in vain. form. Beaumarchais was born in 173z, the son of a master watch- A man so varied, one so much the epitome of his age, was maker named Caron, himself a most interesting man, a Cal- unlikely to reveal in his work profound truth, the inner vinist turned Catholic, a soldier turned artisan, a provincial realities of human nature. He had not the dimension of his settled in Paris, scientifically minded but a lover of music and forerunner, Moliere, or of his contemporary, Voltaire. The literature. Pierre Augustin was the seventh of ten children, the range of his creation was limited and it did not cut deep: in- only surviving son in a family of six daughters. He had only a deed, it has been said that his best works, the plays we are limited schooling, but the home life of this talented family was concerned with, were no more than pastiche. It is a super- an education in itself, and Beaumarchais, in youth and man- ficial estimate, but if it were true then what a pastiche! How hood, read widely in French, English, and Classical literature. skilled is the workmanship, how light the touch, how brilliant At the age of eighteen he ran away from paternal discipline, the finish, how precise the balance of feeling and wit! but returned at his mother's intercession and devoted himself That the two plays are now known to the English stage to mastering his craft. Thenceforward his relations with his only through Rossini and Mozart is our loss. The repertory father were close and affectionate. It was his qualities of in- of classic comedies does not contain so many works of a like telligence and inventiveness as applied to his craft, of audacity order that we can afford to ignore The Barber and Figaro. In and determination in the face of a threat to his achievement, the European theatre they still hold their place and they have that first brought the young man to public notice. He had in- something to say on issues which retain a contemporary inter- vented a new form of regulator for watches, but his discovery est. Beneath the fun and frivolity there is a quality which is not was claiined by one Lepaute, a master watchmaker and hor- to be confused with indifference. A man who must laugh at lager to the Court. It was the occasion of Beaumarclia is's first the world lest he should weep is a figure only the happier ages essay in polemics. Such was the thoroughness with which he of history can ignore. An ironic awareness of values other documented his protest, the skill and address with which he than those of conventional society is revealed only in flashes marshalled his case, that he convinced the Acadenaie des IZ INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Sciences of the justice of his claims. At the age of twenty-two time success had made him numerous enemies, as he was to he became not only master watchmaker but watchmaker to find as soon as there was a check to his fortunes. Such upstarts the King. Thus a career of vaulting ambition was launched. drew the fire of the less fortunate without securing recogni- Within a year the young artisan had become a Court function- tion on equal terms from the old nobility among whom they ary, having purchased an office in the Royal Household; mixed in Court circles. within two he had married the widow of his predecessor in In May 1764 Beaumarchais left his lieutenancy to be exer- his office and gained control of her considerable fortune. It cised by his principal and departed for Spain. His declared was at this stage that he took the name of Beaumarchais or purpose was to vindicate the honour of his sister, Marie Caron de Beaumarchais from a small property of his wife. The Louise, who had been jilted in Madrid by a writer named marriage was unhappily of short duration, and left a legacy of Clavijo. Beaumarchais was later to blow up this domestic tiresome litigation and the loss of all the fortune that marriage quarrel into a European sensation and make the name of the had brought him. unfortunate Clavijo a byword. Goethe in Weimar, Marsollier Nothing daunted, apparently, after the briefest of intervals in Paris, were to put versions of the story on the stage, and he was exploring another avenue to fortune, exploiting an- Beaumarchais himself used parts of it in his own play, other aspect of his outstanding ability. In 1759 he was teaching Eugenie. But this was in the future and, immediately, Beau- the harp to the daughters of Louis XV. He was soon much at marchais had other business in Spain. He was engineering, home in the inner circles of the Court, an indispensable organ- probably in partnership with Duverney, a vast project for the izer of gaiety, and turned his contacts to advantage by entering exploitation of the Spanish colony of Louisiana by importing into a close association with Paris Duverney, a financier who slaves and trading in tobacco. At the same time he was in- had been adviser to Madame de Pompadour and combined volved in schemes to supply the Spanish armies with muni- banking and farming of royal finance with speculation and tions and the heir to the Spanish throne with a French mistress, promotion of vast projects on his own account. Beaumarchais who was to be an instrument of French policy. Subsidiary quickly became rich, and in 1761 purchased one of the activities included establishing his brother-in-law in business secretaryships in the Royal Household, a sinecure which car- in Spain, collecting his father's debts, and beginning his cor- ried formal admission to the nobility. He next attempted to respondence with Voltaire. The major enterprises came to crown this career by obtaining the post of Grand Maitre des nothing, but the experience in Spain was to furnish the Eaux et Forets, but he had to content himself with the deputy Spanish local colour of his plays.

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