Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

French dramatist

• Born: January 24, 1732
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: May 18, 1799
• Place of death: Paris, France

Beaumarchais was an inventor, political agent, musician, and writer whose place in history was most firmly established by two dramatic works, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. The plays highlight central issues of the French political climate in the late 1700’s by poking fun at the aristocracy and enunciating a middle-class point of view.

Early Life

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (pee-ehr-aw-goo-sta kah-rohn duh boh-mahr-shay) was one of ten children of André-Charles Caron and the former Louise-Nichole Pichon. An artistic child, Pierre exhibited his creativity early and in a number of ways. He learned to play the flute, violin, and harp. Having learned the clock maker trade from his father, at twenty-one years of age, Pierre invented a new watch escapement mechanism, for which he was awarded a patent in 1754 from the French Academy of Sciences. He was known at court for having made a watch for Mme Pompadour and was subsequently contracted to make a watch for King Louis XV. He was also appointed music teacher to the king’s daughters. In 1756, he married a wealthy widow, Madeleine Francquet. She died only a year later, leaving Pierre her property, from which he then took the name “Beaumarchais.”

Beaumarchais was a handsome, shrewd individual with strong social ambitions. Unable to resist the temptation of politics and its intrigues, he was sent on a mission to England by Joseph Pâris-Duverney, the financial adviser to Mme Pompadour, to negotiate for a monopoly of the slave trade. Although unsuccessful in his efforts, he accumulated business skills and began amassing a fortune of his own as Pâris-Duverney’s associate. In 1761, he purchased the office of secretary to the king.

Life’s Work

In 1764, Beaumarchais traveled to Spain for commercial ventures and to seek revenge for his family on José Clavijo y Farjardo, keeper of the Spanish royal archives, who had twice pledged to marry Beaumarchais’s sister Marie but had broken his promises. Although not a tragic encounter, the German romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe later used Beaumarchais’s account of the event in his Mémoires (1773-1774) as inspiration for his tragic drama, Clavigo (pr., pb. 1774; English translation, 1798, 1897). Beaumarchais himself used the incident as the basis for Eugénie (pr., pb. 1767; The School of Rakes, 1795), his first drama. The play had only modest success, as did Les Deux Amis: Ou, Le Négotiant de Lyon (pr., pb. 1770; The Two Friends: Or, The Liverpool Merchant, 1800), but these two works and his experiences in Spain marked the beginning of one of the most distinguished careers in French dramatic history.

In 1768, Beaumarchais married Geneviève-Madeleine Wetterbled Lévěque. Mme de Beaumarchais died in 1770 amid unfounded rumors that her husband had poisoned her. In this period, he continued to write short, witty stage works called parades. He also wrote pamphlets and memoirs concerning legal cases in which he was involved as an agent for the king and to defend himself from problems arising from sexual liaisons. His Mémoires were a product of these essays, and with them he began to gain true acclaim as a writer. Unsurpassed for their humorous satirical style, they were said to have been the envy of Voltaire, whose books had been banned from publication. After Voltaire’s death, Beaumarchais opened a printing business in Kehl to escape French censors and made available the first complete set of Voltaire’s works, in seventy volumes (1784-1790). Unfortunately, the edition was a financial disaster.

Beaumarchais was preoccupied by the plight of the social classes and their treatment by the court. He addressed these issues in his writing. Paradoxically, he was pleading the case for the lower classes against the nobility of which he had become a member; however, his status informed him of the issues from the viewpoints of both the court and the public. In 1772, Beaumarchais wrote the first of the two dramatic works (part of a trilogy) that were to bring him lasting literary fame. Le Barbier de Séville: Ou, La Précaution inutile (pr., pb. 1775; The Barber of Seville: Or, The Useless Precaution, 1776) was rejected by the Théâtre Italien. Although in 1773 and 1774 the Comédie-Française accepted the play for production, Beaumarchais’s questionable political involvements brought recriminations from the court, and the play was prohibited from opening. In 1775, after he was finally granted royal permission to premier The Barber of Seville, the opening was a complete failure. In three days, Beaumarchais cut the play from five acts to four, and it was produced the second time to great applause.

The story is of a clever servant (Figaro, the barber) who impertinently spoils the marriage plans of Dr. Bartholo, Rosine’s elderly guardian, in order to advance a love affair between Rosine and a Spanish nobleman, Count Almaviva. Clear glimpses of the growing revolutionary sentiment among the middle class in France are revealed, as the servant is cast as superior in wit and cunning to the nobility whom he serves. In 1778, Beaumarchais continued his crafty assault on the upper classes in La Folle Journée: Ou, Le Mariage de Figaro (wr. 1775-1778, pr. 1784, pb. 1785; The Marriage of Figaro, 1784), in which the barber himself seeks permission to marry the countess’s maidservant. Unfortunately, the philandering count also has designs on Susanna, and it is up to the servants again to outwit the nobility. Beaumarchais’s less than subtle attacks on French nobility did not escape the notice of King Louis XVI, and the play was banned for a number of years. It was performed in a private home in 1783, and, finally, in 1784, it received its first public performance. The third play in the trilogy, L’Autre Tartuffe: Ou, La Mère Coupable (pr. 1792, pb. 1797; Frailty and Hypocrisy, 1804) was not as strong a work as its earlier counterparts and has never been widely acclaimed.

American independence was another major issue that occupied Beaumarchais. In 1776, as France was struggling with the disruption of its class system, the American colonies were fighting England. Beaumarchais began correspondence in 1775 with Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister. Vergennes gave Beaumarchais one million livres in 1776 to finance ships and munitions for the American colonies. Beaumarchais remained a main director of France’s activity in support of the American Revolution. In 1779, a letter from the American Congress declared their debt to him, which, despite reminders, was never repaid. His revolutionary activities extended to his being a secret agent and gunrunner for France during the French Revolution. In 1792, a deal to purchase guns from Holland for France won him prison time and inclusion on a list of émigrés.

In 1786, Beaumarchais had married Marie-Thérèse Willermanulas, and he moved his family to Hamburg until 1796, when they were finally allowed to reenter Paris. The government continued to investigate him for his political involvements and his financial situation deteriorated. In 1799, he died of apoplexy in Paris.

Significance

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a multifaceted human being with many professional accomplishments. A man of the Enlightenment, he was an inventor, musician, politician, secret agent, revolutionary, and literary figure. The human social values promoted in his stage works represent the cornerstone of Beaumarchais’s beliefs. They reflect the changing times in which he lived, when the Western world was experiencing revolution and significant turbulence within the established social classes. Although he bought himself membership in the nobility, he believed strongly in each person’s right to make the choices that brought happiness. That same spirit provoked his involvement in American and French politics when, at great personal risk, he aggressively assisted the cause of independence.

It was his two major dramatic masterpieces–The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro—however, that left his mark on the world. In these works, Beaumarchais expressed his love of freedom and passion for the liberated human soul. The plays were influential beyond France and became the basis for opera librettos for two famous composers. In 1786, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used the The Marriage of Figaro as the basis for his opera of the same title, produced in Vienna. In 1816, Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) wrote his operatic version of The Barber of Seville, which was produced in Rome. The operatic stories are somewhat altered and have lives of their own, but they have done much to help keep the spirit of Beaumarchais’s writing alive.

Bibliography

Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron de. The Figaro Trilogy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Includes all three plays in a new English translation by David Coward, whose introduction gives helpful historical context and chronology of Beaumarchais’s life and work.

Frischauer, Paul. Beaumarchais: Adventurer in the Century of Women. New York: Viking Press, 1935. Interesting account of Beaumarchais’s life as it was affected by the important women of his time: Countess du Barry, Mme Pompadour, and Marie-Antoinette. Good for historical perspective.

Howarth, W. D. Beaumarchais and the Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1995. Provides an excellent discussion of prevailing scholarship on Beaumarchais and French theater, some of which was not previously available in English translation.

Morton, Brian N., and Donald C. Spinelli. Beaumarchais and the American Revolution. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Detailed historical account of Beaumarchais’s revolutionary activities in France and America.

Ratermanis, J. B., and W. R. Irwin. The Comic Style of Beaumarchais. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1961. Analyzes Beaumarchais’s style in the context of eighteenth century French theater and his use of literary comic conventions to make aesthetic points. Figaro and Barber are discussed in detail, but introduction and conclusion chapters provide succinct point summaries.

Tallentyre, S. G. The Friends of Voltaire. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907. Chapter on Beaumarchais is an easily readable account of his life with attention to the literary works as well as the author’s political and revolutionary activity.