The Figaro Trilogy The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, The Guilty Mother

by Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron de; Coward, David

• ISBN13: 9780192804136
• ISBN10: 0192804138
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Eighteenth-century France produced only one truly international theater star, Beaumarchais, and only one name, Figaro, to combine with Don Quixote and D'Artagnan in the ranks of popular myth. But who was Figaro? He was quickly appropriated by Mozart and Rossini who tamed the original impertinent, bustling servant for their own purposes. On the eve of the French Revolution Figaro was seen as a threat to the establishment and Louis XIV even banned The Marriage of Figaro. Was the barber of Seville really a threat to aristocratic heads, or a bourgeois individualist like his creator? The three plays in which he plots and schemes chronicle the slide of the ancien regime into revolution but they also chart the growth of Beaumarchais' humanitarianism. They are exuberant theatrical entertainments, masterpieces of skill, invention, and social satire which helped shape the direction of French theater for a hundred years. This lively new translation catches all the zest and energy of the most famous valet in French literature.

Author Biography

David Coward is the author of studies of Marivaux, Marguerite Duras, Marcel Pagnol and Restif de le Bretonne, and of A History of French Literature. For OWC he has edited eight novels by Alexandre Dumas and translated Dumas fils' La Dame aux camelias', two selections of Maupassant short stories, Sade's Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales and Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist. He reviews regularly for the TLS and the London Review of Books.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Note on the Text	xxix
Select Bibliography	xxx
A Chronology of Beaumarchais	xxxii
THE BARBER OF SEVILLE	1	(78)
THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO	79	(138)
THE GUILTY MOTHER	217	(83)
Explanatory Notes	300