Alain-René Lesage was born on 8 May 1668 at Sarzeau, near Vannes, in Brittany, and he retained many Breton characteristics, including a love of independence that led him to accept poverty rather than to forfeit his freedom of action and his integrity. He was the only son of Claude Lesage, barrister, solicitor, and recorder of the royal court of Rhuis, who died in 1682; since his mother, Damoiselle Jeanne Brenugat, had died in 1677, he was made the ward of two uncles, Gabriel Lesage and Blaise Brenugat. His mother was of an old Breton family, and his early childhood, unlike his later life, was spent in reasonable affluence. About 1686 he was sent to the Jesuit college of Vannes, where he received a good education, and developed his taste for the theatre. In 1690 he was sent to complete his education in Paris, where he studied first philosophy, then law, and was ultimately called to the Bar. He made the acquaintance of the poet and librettist Danchet, and the friendship which followed was to last sixty years.

In order to earn his living he became a notary's clerk and clerk to a financier and led a free and easy existence; he was well liked in the salons and frequented the Société du Temple, the home of the Vendôme family, and that of the duchesse de Bouillon. He met Dancourt, who befriended him and urged him to become a dramatist; it is believed that he had a liaison with a lady of quality, but soon became interested in a poor and beautiful girl, Marie-Elisabeth Huyard, the daughter of a carpenter, whom he married in 1694. He had three sons and one daughter, and is known to have enjoyed a happy family life. By 1695 Lesage lost interest in his legal career, and turned to writing. On Danchet's advice, he translated the Lettres galantes d'Aristénète (probably from a Latin version of the Greek original), from which he derived no financial profit. The abbé de Lyonne took him under his protection in 1698, securing for him an income of 600 livres. He advised Lesage to learn Spanish, and to seek inspiration in the picaresque novels, suggesting that he translate the plays of Calderón and Lope de Vega. In 1700 he published two five-act comedies under the title Théâtre espagnol, Le Traître puni (imitated from Rojas) and Don Felix de Mendoce (imitated from Lope de Vega). In February 1702, Lesage presented on the stage of the Théâtre Français Le Point d'honneur, a three-act play adapted from Rojas. This skit on duelling was not well received, and ran for only two nights. Lesage then published a free translation of Fernández de Avellaneda's continuation of Cervantes' work under the title Nouvelles Aventures de l'admirable Don Quichotte de la Manche (1704, 2 vols.). In 1707 he met at last with literary success. The Théâtre Français performed a five-act comedy, Don César des Ursins, an adaptation of a Calderón play, which proved a failure; but the performance included a one-act play, inspired by Hurtado de Mendoza's Los Empeños del mentir, with the title Crispin rival de son maître, which proved extremely popular outside court circles (15 March). In the same year he published his first great prose work, Le Diable boiteux, which he was subsequently to expand. This work is once more drawn from Spanish sources (Guevara's El Diavolo coivelo), but is in fact a satire aimed at Parisian society, only the framework being truly Spanish. We find in it anecdotes about Ninon de Lenclos, Dufresny, Baron, and other contemporaries. The character of the devil Asmodée has been transformed. In 1708-9, Lesage offered a one-act play, La Tontine, to the Théâtre Français, which declined to put it on, probably for political reasons, and it was only much later that it was performed at the Théâtre de la Foire, under the title Arlequin colonel, and later still, in 1732, on the stage of the Comédie Française. La Tontine was a public loan to which individuals subscribed according to their age group, in order to qualify for an annuity which increased as their numbers in the same age group died off. The second of these loans had been raised in 1696 and the whole scheme became the object of heated discussion in 1708. This accounts for Lesage's interest in the subject, and also for the criticism he evoked. With characteristic persistence, Lesage then offered a new one-act comedy, Les Etrennes, in 1708, which was again turned down by the Comédiens français. He expanded this play into five acts, but Turcaret ou Les Etrennes, as it was now called, did not fare any better. The traitants, a group of vulgar, newly rich financiers whom Lesage had satirised in his play, were successful in getting the play suppressed, largely through their connections with the actresses of the Théâtre Français.

Lesage read his play in the salons to rouse interest in it, and the circulation of a story that financiers had offered him 10,000 francs to keep the play off the stage proved to be excellent publicity. Turcaret was eventually put on at the Théâtre Français, thanks to the intervention of Monsieur, but it was withdrawn after seven performances (14 February 1709), as a result of which Lesage became involved in a quarrel with the Comédiens.

His abortive experience with La Tontine and Les Etrennes led him to turn away from the Théâtre Français and towards the more popular, if less exalted, Théâtre de la Foire. The winter fair of Saint-Germain and the summer fair of Saint-Laurent attracted mountebanks and strolling players, supplemented after the expulsion of the Italian players from Paris in 1697 by companies performing so-called commedia dell'arte scenarii in the Italian manner and others containing lesser players from the expelled company who fled to the fair booths rather than return to Italy or tour the provinces. From these bastardised forms of Italian comedy a genre including acrobatics and dancing, to fit the requirements of players and audience, evolved with great rapidity and popular success. These forains were further stimulated by a lively and continued struggle waged with the Théâtre Français, which continued until the Revolution broke out. Throughout the century the Comédiens du Roi strove to exert their own monopoly and to deprive the forains of their right perform, by any means which came to hand, fearing a rivalry that might, and did, rob them of their audiences. Throughout the century, the forains evaded every edict, and avoided destruction; they continued to evolve a form of theatre based upon Italian comedy, and which developed despite all the stresses imposed upon it by the Comédiens. They enjoyed an increasing popularity, drawing their patrons from among the workers, the bourgeoisie, and the aristocracy. Their struggle for survival made them alert and adaptable, revolutionised stage technique, and as time went on offered the possibility of satiric drama of a direct, ebullient, and often virulent kind.

From 1712 until 1734 Lesage wrote for this theatre, which offered better financial reward as well as greater artistic freedom. Eighty-eight of his plays are to be found in the Théâtre de la Foire (10 vols., 1737).

Twenty-nine of the plays appear under the name of Lesage alone, twenty-three in collaboration with d'Orneval, thirty-two with d'Orneval and Fuzelier, one with d'Orneval and Autreau, one with d'Orneval and Piron, and one with Lafont and Fromaget. His first are: Arlequin empereur dans la lune and Arlequin baron allemand, ou Le Triomphe de la folie (in three acts with vaudevilles and écriteaux), in collaboration with Fuzelier and Dominique….

[Lesage's] considerable [dramatic] output is in addition to the ill-fated La Tontine (one act), given without success at the Théâtre Français in February 1732, and the following novels: Le Diable boiteux (1707); Gil Blas de Santillane (Books I-VI of which appeared in 1715, Books VII-IX in 1724, and Books X-XII in 1736); Roland amoureux, a novel in verse, taken from the Italian Boïardo (1717-1721, two vols.); Entretiens des cheminées de Madrid, added to the third edition of Le Diable boiteux (1726); Histoire d'Estevanille Gonzalès and a dialogue entitled Une Journée des Pargues (1734); and La Valise trouvée (1740). Finally there is the Mélange amusant de saillies d'esprit et de traits historiques des plus frappants (1743).

Lesage is one of the most prolific writers of comédies-vaudevilles or comédies mêlées d'ariettes, genres considered to be the forerunners of comic opera. The form of these plays resulted from the prohibition of dialogue and singing on all stages except that of the Théâtre Français and that of the Opéra, imposed by the Comédiens and circumvented by the forains.

Even this long list of works is incomplete, for in the year in which he brought out the first part of Gil Blas, Lesage also wrote the adventures of Marie Petit, who kept a Paris gaming-house in the early years of the century, and in 1703 M. Fabre, 'envoyé extraordinaire de Louis XIV en Perse', a work which he later abandoned. He also undertook adaptations and translations. His Histoire de Guzman d'Alfarache nouvelement traduite et purgée des moralités superflues (1732) is an abridged version of Mateo Alemán's romance, which had also inspired Chapelain (1621), Gabriel de Brémon (1696), and others. Les Aventures de Monsieur Robert Chevalier, dit de Beauchêne, which has been held to be an authentic autobiographical document, is from the work of Vicentio Espinella. Le Bachelier de Salamanque ou Les Mémoires de don Chérubin de la Ronda (1736-38), is also based on a Spanish manuscript. Lesage in the course of his work in the theatre developed a strong dislike of all actors, and bitterly resented his own sons' desire to go on the stage. His eldest son, René-André, became an actor of repute under the name of Montménil, and on 28 May 1726 he played Mascarille in Molière's L'Etourdi with great success; he then toured the provinces, returning two years later to Paris, acting the part of Hector in Regnard's Le Foueur, of Davos in Terence's Andria, and of La Branche in Crispin rival de son maître, and finally Turcaret. But his father remained unreconciled and the news that his third son was to take up a stage career in Germany, under the name of Pittence (1730), only added to his grief and anger. This third son eventually returned to Paris, where he put on two comic operas, Le Testament de la Foire and Le Miroir véridique, at the Foire Saint-Germain. The second son, the Abbé Julien-François Lesage, who lived at Boulogne-sur-Mer, was successful in arranging a temporary rapprochement between his father and his brothers, but only after Lesage had been induced to see Montménil's performance in the role of Turcaret; and his last years were saddened by the death of his eldest son in 1743. Too old to work, extremely deaf, and quite poor in spite of his prodigious output, he went to Boulogne with his wife and daughter, Marie-Elisabeth, to live in the home of the abbé, his second son. He dined almost every day with the Abbé Voisenon, who wrote of his kindly wit. He had quiet obstinacy and the independence of the Breton. His deafness at the age of forty obliged him to use an ear trumpet, which he referred to as his 'bienfaiteur'.

Two plays and two novels stand out from this vast output. Crispin rival de son maître is generally considered to be one of the best-constructed one-act plays ever to be staged. The plot is unoriginal, borrowed from a Spanish play by Hurtado de Mendoza, in which an adventurer tries to marry the sister of a man whose life he has saved by posing as her fiancé. Professor T. E. Lawrenson has reminded us that there is in fact a close resemblance between Mendoza's play and the adventure of Jérôme de Moyadas in Gil Blas. The play provides a social document of interest. It heralds the regency and the new social confusion, underlined by the language spoken by both servants and masters, and also the rise of men of intrigue. The milieu is bourgeois; M. Oronte, father of Angélique, is a tax-farmer, and Valère a chevalier d'industrie (an adventurer or card-sharp). Lesage gives to his valets exuberance of temperament and speech and the ability to cope with situations, before Beaumarchais ever created Figaro. He has what Lintilhac called le mot qui ramasse, an ability to use telling short-cuts. His style of writing owes nothing to the preciosity of the salons. Lawrenson rightly speaks of its drama of the outspoken, as opposed to the drama of half-statements which characterises the theatre of Marivaux. Minor scenes lead naturally and logically into major ones. There is great dramatic economy, and the structure of the play allows for rapid movement, which creates a sense of speed and suspense, and the possibilities of discovery are piled on at an increasing rate as the play reaches its finale.

Crispin is a brilliant comedy of intrigue, to be compared in this respect with the plays of Regnard. Lesage developed his technical skill by learning how to modify the action of Spanish dramas to suit French taste. By cutting out monologues and tirades, he speeded up the action and promoted a new liveliness on the stage. Crispin himself is interesting from another point of view, for he belongs to a long line of valets de comédie bearing that name (1654-1853). Lawrenson has traced him from Scarron's L'Escolier de Salamanque through plays by Poisson, Hauteroche, Champmeslé, Montfleury fils, La Thuillerie, Lesage's own Crispin in Le Point d'honneur (1702), Lafont, Regnard, Delon, Mayet, Pessey, and Leclercq. He was incarnated by three generations of actors belonging to the same family, the Poissons, which partly accounts for the surprising degree of consistency in playing the part of this cunning and very self-confident valet. Lesage changed a popular stock character into a Crispin unique in that he becomes his master's rival, and in this he is clearly differentiated from the valets who preceded him, the Mascarilles, the Jodelets, the Scapins, the Frontins, and from his Italian counterpart Arlequin, who was dominating the Théâtre de la Foire at that time. The full story of the valet de comédie is as long as that of comedy itself. Comedy was born in a society based on slavery, and the servus of Plautus and Terence (whose Andria Lesage had translated) survived the passing of time, albeit in a new guise. The servant-master relationship changed with evolving social patterns, but ultimately became conventional in the theatre, the servant always concerned with his freedom or his wages first and the interest of his master second. With Lesage he is for the first time solely concerned with his self-advancement and usurps the function of the master. The bold title of this short and often acted play was to resound throughout the century, for the spectators were able to witness the rise of a servant in a society now primarily concerned with money, and no longer with aristocracy of birth. Crispin rival de son maître is essentially a comedy of intrigue, with a character title, a plot, and some repartees that were to gain in significance with the passing years. Certain slogans taken out of their context, such as 'La justice est une si belle chose qu'on ne saurait trop l'acheter', and individual expressions of opinion, such as Crispin's 'Que je suis las d'être valet! … je devrais présentement briller dans la finance', presage Beaumarchais, but Crispin himself belongs to a world that still hopes for reform and does not foresee revolution. Crispin is less dangerous than Frontin in Turcaret.

Turcaret is the second play under review, and the social background it reflects needs to be borne in mind if the work is to be properly understood.

France was enduring military defeat from all quarters. In 1708 the British and their allies took Lille and in 1709 the French were seriously defeated at Malplaquet. Court life had long since lost its golden glitter. The ageing Louis XIV and Mme de Maintenon had turned to religion, the cost of living had gone up, and the nobility were in a changed position, one in which it was increasingly difficult to cut a figure in Paris and at the same time maintain their estates in the provinces. At Versailles and in Paris fortunes were lost by the nobles at the gaming tables. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, was growing in power; the prevailing mood was a desire to enjoy life to the full. Tragedy had become unpopular and comedy, especially farce, was welcome, provided that it had vitality and movement. Perhaps the most peculiar social change at that date was the rise of the financier, also called commis, agent de change, sous-fermier, fermier, traitant, partisan, and maltôtier. These were in fact tax-collectors, and went back to the time of Colbert who, in 1681, had established a Compagnie de quarante financiers, required collectively to pay the government 670,000 livres per annum, but entitled to recoup themselves by levying customs, traites, aides (on drink), and gabelle (on salt). The lease or traite (hence the word traitant) to collect certain taxes in specified areas was ceded for six years to a financier embodied by Lesage in Turcaret, who received 4,000 livres per annum for his services. A whole world of directeurs, inspecteurs, contrôleurs, ambulants, vérificateurs, and commis buralistes gravitated around them, exempt from paying taxes and hoping for preferment to the nobility. Around them flocked agioteurs, or speculators, and usurers. All these men were disliked by the nobility, for they amassed enormous fortunes as the aristocracy were losing them. Some set themselves up as patrons of the arts, as did Crozat, who helped Watteau, and others later became publishers, who favoured the philosophes. The peasants, like the aristocrats, hated them and generally held them to be responsible for the bad state of the country. In his play Turcaret Lesage drew on contemporary conditions and on libelles, or satirical pamphlets, as also on varied works such as Les Agioteurs by Dancourt, and Factum de la France (1707) by Boisguillebert; on Giton in La Bruyère's Les Caractères, Harpagon in Molière's L'Avare, Dorante in his Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and La Rapinière in Jacques Robbe's play of that name (1682), in which there is a scene similar to that between Rafle and Turcaret; on Le Mercure galant by Boursault (1683) and Esope à la cour, Esope à la ville, and La Coquette, by Baron; and on L'Eté des coquettes by Dancourt, Le Banqueroutier by N. de Fatouville (1687), to be found in Gherardi's collection of Italian plays, La Foire de Besons (1695), and La Foire Saint-Germain (1696). The name Turcaret has been linked with that of the lackey Cascaret, to be found in the commedia dell'arte and in Dancourt. In Gherardi's collection, Lesage could find Regnard's Arlequin, homme à bonne fortune, and could also draw on his Le Foueur and his Critique du 'Légataire universel' (1708). Lesage borrowed from Dancourt's Le Chevalier à la mode, La Folle Enchère (1690), Les Fonds perdus (1686); also from Dufresny's Les Bourgeoises à la mode (1692); and finally from his own Diable boiteux and Crispin rival de son maître. But these varied and general sources merely add to the contemporary relevance of the play. Turcaret himself stands out as a character and his name has become a byword.

The play is often said to be gloomy. It is not realistic in the modern sense, for the décor is virtually non-existent. It is not as well constructed as Crispin rival de son maître. The tempo is fast, especially in the last two acts, and owes something to the movement of commedia dell'arte. This prevents the mood from becoming too serious. The technique has much in common with the narrative technique utilised in Gil Blas, which is essentially a picaresque novel. We find a similar discontinuity in the episodes of the play, and we move from comic scene to comic scene. 'Le jeu de l'argent et de la surprise' has been suggested as a sub-title.

The plot revolves around the question of whether the financier will succeed in marrying the young widow, but the fifth act vindicates arbitrary justice, rather than providing a solution. The return of Mme Turcaret, and the intervention of the king's justice, which bring the play to an end, are external factors; and the demise of Turcaret is a kind of dénouement postiche, or contrived ending, which has been likened to that of Tartuffe. The final triumph of the servant Frontin is full of irony. Frontin summed up very adequately the subject of the play in the following words: 'Nous plumons une coquette; la coquette mange un homme d'affaires; l'homme d'affaires en pille d'autres: cela fait un ricochet de fourberies le plus plaisant du monde.' Over the years we see that critics have questioned the comic element in the play. Today, however, through a better understanding of commedia dell'arte, and a close examination of other plays of the time, it has been possible to present a gayer interpretation of a comedy which has lazzi, or gags, and fantasy as well as realism, though the characters should be taken seriously; even when highly stylised they belong to professions which have determined their nature and their actions. The Chevalier is a melancholic yet passionate gamester, full of vanity; Turcaret is bold, careless, libidinous; the Baronne, a widow and a coquette, is clearly a stock character; Frontin is in the tradition of Arlequin, Scapin, or Crispin; and Lisette is a variant of Colombine. Lesage extends sympathy to none of them. His cold detachment, his quick wit, and his feeling for sharp repartees and well-timed ripostes, coupled with his unfailing ability to construct a scene, would have sufficed to establish his claim to distinction among French dramatists. It is, however, his satire of the world of finance and money, and his presentation of a vast and corrupt society unredeemed by a single example of a good man, which have won him a special place in the history of the theatre. If Turcaret was not the first financier to be put on the stage, he was the first character of the kind to be studied in depth against his social background, in his relations with others, and especially as he had evolved through the exercise of his profession. There are therefore serious undertones to this comedy which leave a sour taste in the mouth—a fact which enhances Lesage's moral condemnation of the characters. Turcaret, although now judged more comic than has hitherto been thought, does nevertheless serve as a pointer to the drames of the latter half of the eighteenth century, and contains many biting remarks that are worthy of Voltaire's pen in their sophisticated wit.

Frontin now belongs to the same social class as his master; he has grown in power since Crispin, who had merely confined himself to hopes of a great financial future. Frontin has a better technique, an abler assistant, and more real power, and the triumph of this valet de comédie heralds that of Figaro. The closing lines of the play show a mastery of nuance and a felicity of language which all alert spectators will relish, and which has only been equalled by Voltaire:

Lisette: Et nous, Frontin, quel parti prendrons-nous?

Frontin: J'en ai un à te proposer. Vive l'esprit, mon enfant! Je viens de payer d'audace: je n'ai point été fouillé.

Lisette: Tu as les billets?

Frontin: J'en ai déjà touché l'argent; il est en sûreté; j'ai quarante mille francs. Si ton ambition veut se borner à cette petite fortune, nous allons faire souche d'honnêtes gens.

Lisette: J'y consens.

Frontin: Voilà le règne de M. Turcaret fini; le mien va commencer.

The proposal of marriage is unusual in its form and the real implications are clear. Love for the likes of Frontin and Lisette is a very special thing, as their choice of words and form of persuasion reveal. Lesage can say all in a few words, and with crystal clarity, by compression and implication. A rascally financier as the essential theme of a play will be found in Balzac's Mercadet (1851), O. Mirbeau's Les Affaires sont les affaires (1903), E. Fabre's Les Ventres dorés (1905), and especially H. Becque's Les Corbeaux (1882).

The same qualities of style are to be found in Lesage's Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane, which is a long comdy of manners presented in the form of a picaresque novel. Voltaire thought that Lesage had borrowed his episodes from Vicente Martinez Espinel, whose partly autobiographical novel Relacions de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón was published in 1618 and soon translated into French, under the title Relation de la vie de l'écuyer Marcos Obregon; in fact Lesage did borrow ten passages from this work. The Jesuit priest P. Isla thought that Lesage had translated a Spanish manuscript since lost, so he retranslated Gil Blas into Castilian with some success. An academic controversy over Lesage's originality ensued. It must be obvious that Lesage, like Molière, borrowed from all sundry, but that the essence of Gil Blas, its style and tone, its realism and fantasy and satire, is original. The Spanish setting mainly lends piquancy to an unmistakably French scene, and contemporaries of Lesage had the added pleasure of experiencing a slight if somewhat bogus sense of dépaysement, such as was exploited, among others, by Montesquieu in the Lettres persanes, and Beaumarchais in the Barbier de Séville. In Gil Blas Lesage shows his ability to portray characters which seem to have the authenticity of the theatre rather than that of ordinary life, and offers a wealth of realistic details which lead us to accept inconsistencies in the plot. The work abounds in brilliant scenes and stylised dialogue which call for production on the stage. The same rapid movement carries all before it and the structure of each episode—but not of the work as a whole—is as taut as in his plays.

We witness a series of tableaux owing something to the literary technique of La Bruyère, conjuring up haphazardly a whole world of people of all ranks and characters, with their peculiar manners, tastes, and foibles. There are petty thieves and canons, doctors and writers, prelates and actors; there are old men in love with young girls of dubious morals laying snares for the old and rich; there are Ministers, dukes, and servants. Dr Sangrado with his hopeless remedies, Fabrice the poet, Raphaël and Laméla, who, weary of their role of penitents, abscond with the monastery funds, and many other characters stand out in one's memory. They come and go and reappear in very different moods. Both Smollett (who translated Gil Blas) and Walter Scott were filled with admiration at the richness and vitality of Lesage's comédie humaine.

The hero, Gil Blas, is on the high road at the age of seventeen. He is gay and full of illusions, and is bent on social advancement, financial success, and, above all, personal happiness. He moves through life without any strong moral principle, concerned mainly with personal advancement and survival in the jungle of society. He is an arriviste who only succeeds late in penetrating into high society. He becomes intendant of Don Alphonse, and then secretary to the duc de Lerme. But his success leads to his corruption. A further twist of fortune leads him to end his days at home, in the role of the good father. Gil Blas is Everyman, neither more nor less moral than most ordinary men, whose behaviour and standards are determined by events. He is neither vicious nor moral, but natural, somewhat naïve, and disarming. He is without prejudice and humorously self-centred. He grows in maturity with the author himself who worked on the novel over a period of more than twenty years. He may be likened to Candide; Lesage's rapier thrusts, anti-clerical wit, and use of irony bring home the similarity.

Lesage, like all the novelists of the period, who were constantly being attacked for immorality or uselessness, is at pains to stress the moral benefit to be derived from his tale, as well as the enjoyment. He can be placed in the moralist tradition of La Bruyére. In fact it is his restraint in the use of moral lectures that commends the book to us today; and nineteenth-century criticism, centred on an attempt at moral justification for the novel, leaves present-day readers indifferent. His fictional technique is of greater consequence. Lesage lacked the creative power and the penetration of Cervantes, who incarnated in Don Quixote and Sancho Panza two opposite yet complementary aspects of mankind. We have to wait for the dialogue between Jacques le Fataliste and his master in Diderot's last novel to rediscover, in a very different setting and intellectual climate, something of the dichotomy of man and his mind. But Lesage recorded faithfully and in a straightforward, incisive manner his own more limited experience; the picture of his times which he gives us may be over-dramatised, yet it strikes one as exceptionally vivid, illuminating, basically accurate, and often penetrating.