[In the following essay, Howarth addresses Beaumarchais's creative process by comparing versions of The Marriage of Figaro.]

It is a critical commonplace to describe Le Mariage de Figaro as a brilliant synthesis of all that is best in the comic writing of its century. Comédie d'intrigue, comédie larmoyante, satire, social and political polemic: each of these is represented in Beaumarchais's masterpiece by its own peculiar literary style, and it is the swift transition from one style to another, and the successful achievement of diversity in unity, that constitute one of the most distinctive features of this fascinating play.

However, for the scholar who, not content with the appreciation of the finished work as read in the published editions and enjoyed in the theatre for the last two hundred years, wishes to examine the way in which that text came into being, the study of Beaumarchais must surely offer the bonus of a richer source-material than that of any other major French dramatist of the past. The genesis of Le Mariage de Figaro is a particularly fertile subject for study, since there exist three complete manuscript versions, differing quite substantially from each other, while a fourth manuscript presents an even earlier fragment. These manuscripts have often been described, and their description is familiar to Beaumarchais specialists; but it may be useful to begin with a summary recapitulation. Using the conventionally accepted sigla, then, the three may be listed as follows:

(BN) This MS, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, contains numerous corrections, apparently in Beaumarchais's hand.

(F) Belonging to the Beaumarchais family archives, this MS was used for the author's ‘lectures de société’ while the play was banned.

(CF) Probably a prompt copy used in rehearsals, this MS belongs to the Comédie-Française.

In addition, the MS fragment (X), which antedates the three complete versions, gives an early draft of Figaro's act V soliloquy.¹

The interest of Beaumarchais's variants does not stop with publication of the play in 1785 (in two virtually identical editions, published respectively in Paris and at Kehl). On the one hand, whereas the author can elsewhere be seen to have responded to the reactions of his cast at rehearsals by making definitive changes to his text, in one celebrated passage in act III, while bowing to the comédiens' judgment by deleting Marceline's feminist tirades from the acting version, he nevertheless insisted on retaining them in the published text. This provides perhaps the most striking example of the juxtaposition of different stylistic registers; and Beaumarchais's explanation of the deletion (which his actors had demanded, he tells us, ‘craignant qu'un morceau si sévère n'obscurcît la gaieté de l'action’²) is convincing proof, if proof were needed, that the immediately preceding sequence, the recognition-scene of III,xvi, should be read as light-hearted parody of the sentimental reconnaissance, and not as an attempt at genuine sentiment—as well as evidence of his determination not to sacrifice a passage of moral earnestness, expressed with considerable rhetorical force.³

On the other hand, we know that Beaumarchais was alert for any opportunity of adapting his text to introduce a topical reference. For instance, the final couplet de vaudeville, sung by Brid'oison, was later replaced by a ‘version révolutionnaire’:

Or messieurs s'te comédie
Qui n'est plus qu'un passe-temps
Sauf respect peignait la vie
De c'bon peuple en d'autres temps.
Pour tromper sa maladie,
Il chantait tout l'opéra;
Dame! …
Il n'sait plus qu'ce p'tit air-là
ça ira, ça ira! …(4)

And in act III scene xiii, when the play was revived in 1792, Figaro came on stage, not ‘en se frottant les mains’ but playing with an émigrette (‘sorte de yo-yo qui était en vogue chez les émigrés’⁵), and the following exchange was inserted:

Brid'oison On—on n'est pas plus idiot que ça.

Figaro, riant Idiot, moi? Je fais pourtant très bien descendre et monter l'émigrette. (Il roule.)

Brid'oison, étonné A—à quoi c'est-il bon, l'émigrette?

Bartholo, brusquement C'est un noble jeu, qui dispense de la fatigue de penser.

Brid'oison Ba-ah! Moi, c'te fatigue-là ne me fatigue pas du tout.

Figaro, en riant Jeu favori du peuple libre! Qu'il mêle à tout avec succès!

Bartholo, brusquement Émigrette et Constitution! Le beau mélange qu'ils font là!

Brid'oison, à Figaro Je pourrais pen-endant les référés …

Figaro Référé, spectacle, assemblée, nos gens d'esprit ne la quittent nulle part. Et monsieur a tout ce qu'il faut pour en jouer supérieurement. (Il la lui présente).⁶

However, if this ‘variante peu connue’,⁷ with its satirical dig at the émigrés, is a good example of a continuing readiness on the playwright's part to adapt his published text—in this case to demonstrate his political orthodoxy—it was the considered opinion of Félix Gaiffe that a study of the manuscript variants, and of the emergence of the published text, suggested that: ‘Beaumarchais est pamphlétaire de premier jet, mais de second jet homme de théâtre’; and this critic concludes:

… le premier jet du Mariage de Figaro a été surtout un travail d'auteur satirique, et progressivement l'homme de théâtre, dont on admire peut-être avec excès la dextérité, s'est formé au contact des réalités scéniques. Cette pièce, qui nous donne l'illusion d'une intrigue savamment conduite, a été surtout, sous sa première forme, un ouvrage de satire sociale, qui n'était pas toujours de très bon goût.⁸

It is not too difficult to substantiate Gaiffe's charge of ‘mauvais goût’, and we can assume that one effect of the ‘lectures mondaines’ may well have been to draw the author's attention to passages which gave offence. Act I provides several instances of dubious taste. In Figaro's facetious greeting addressed to Bartholo at the beginning of scene iii (‘Hé bonjour, cher Docteur de mon cœur’) the phrase originally read ‘… de mon cœur, de mon âme et autres viscères’; the author's reluctance to sacrifice this earthy touch is shown by the fact that although it is crossed out in BN, it appears in F, and is crossed out again, only to reappear in CF, where it is finally deleted. Scene iv (much longer in the MS versions) contains two similar passages in the BN text. In the first, Bartholo imagines a dead Rosine being eaten by worms:

Marceline Elle ne prend plus de nourriture.

Bartholo Elle en servira donc bientôt. Point de milieu dans l'ordre universel. Telle est la loi: manger ou se résoudre à l'être.

And further on, Bartholo rejects Marceline's suggestion that they marry with the assertion (BN, F, CF) that he is too old for physical lovemaking:

J'irais, grison apoplectique, agacer risiblement la mort avec les jeux printaniers qui donnent la vie! Vous me prenez pour un Français!

As a final example (from act III scene v), when Figaro comments on his master's relationship with the Countess: ‘Sait-on gré du superflu, à qui nous prive du nécessaire?’, the MS text carried on at this point: ‘A sa place, moi, je ne dis pas ce que je ferais’; however, encouraged by the Count to speak his mind, Figaro continued (BN, F, CF):

Instruite de vos faits et gestes, et prenant conseil de l'exemple, je vous solderais, moi, vos petits bâtards paysans d'un bon gros enfant légitime, et puis … cherche.

It is tempting to explain these lapses into what prospective audiences at the Comédie-Française might possibly have regarded as bad taste as a case of the author harking back to the earthiness of the parades in which he had made his debut as a playwright. But far from it: if such examples do remind us of the suggestive subject-matter of the parades, the manner is quite different; and the racy verve of Jean-Bête à la foire and the other early sketches has here given way to a laboured search for literary effect. One of the principal results of the evolution from manuscript to published text is the progressive elimination of this over-literary ‘fine writing’; at the very least, one might say, its confinement to passages in which stylistic embellishment can be held to serve a positive end in terms of characterisation and dramatic context. Indeed, the tightening-up of the text on stylistic grounds, making it less diffuse and more appropriate to theatrical dialogue, seems to have been as important a consideration for Beaumarchais as the toning-down of the ‘pamphlétaire’ element identified by Gaiffe.

Let us examine some examples of incongruous ‘fine writing’ in which the subject-matter raises no question either of bad taste or of political pamphleteering. The most egregious case of this sort of authorial self-indulgence is surely the passage in the original opening scene in which, Chérubin having sung a romance in which Suzanne is compared to a diamond, Figaro develops a thoroughly pedantic analysis of the comparison:

Comment Suzanne est-elle un diamant? Il est très dur, elle est fort tendre; il est inaltérable, elle peut changer demain. A Chérubin: N'es-tu donc aussi, toi, qu'un enfileur de mots rimés? Quand on compare, on montre les rapports, on les développe, on les suit. Si tu disais: les belles femmes sont comme les pierres précieuses que la nature nous offre plus ou moins parfaites. L'éducation est le lapidaire qui les taille à notre goût; notre imagination est la feuille qui les brillante; l'amour est le metteur en œuvre qui les enchâsse au fond des cœurs. Enfin, l'hymen est le brocanteur qui les pousse dans le commerce et les vend le plus cher qu'il peut: on voit ce que c'est, cela marche et se gradue. A l'application si tu veux. Il récite: Mais de tous ces diamants qu'on nomme femmes, ou de toutes ces femmes diamants, Suzanne est le seul à qui je permettrai d'orner ma tête, ou dont je me ferai une bague au doigt. Pif, paf, rapidement on sent l' idée, on voit le but …

(BN)

It could be argued, I suppose, that in this instance Figaro, as Beaumarchais's mouthpiece, is voicing his creator's critique of an over-ornate style, which is attributed by implication to Chérubin. On the other hand, MS variants show numerous examples of similar embellishments, placed in the mouths of a wide range of characters:⁹

(I,vii) Chérubin: [Ah! Suzon, qu'elle est noble et belle! mais qu'elle est imposante!] (BN, F, CF) aussi fière que le soleil, elle ne souffre pas qu'on la regarde en face!¹⁰

(I,vii) Chérubin: [… depuis quelque temps je sens ma poitrine agitée; mon cœur] (BN, F, CF) est comme un ouragan, il [palpite au seul aspect d'une femme …].

(I,xi) Figaro: (BN, F, CF) Dans les cas épineux, mon galant, / (BN) il faut imiter les cordiers, / (F) imitons l'adroit filandier. / (CF) (il faut imiter) (imitons) (les cordiers) (l'adroit filandier). / (BN, F, CF) C'est en reculant qu'ils avancent / il avance. [Il faut ruser. point de murmure à ton départ …].

(II,i) Suzanne: [… c'était un lion; ses yeux brillaient] (BN, F, CF) comme votre belle bague …

(II,ii) Figaro: [… on les mène où l'on veut, par le nez, dans le Guadalquivir.] (BN, F, CF) Monsieur le Comte étant de sa nature libertin comme un Français et jaloux comme un Espagnol, opposons le furieux orgueil de l'époux aux feux guillerets de l'amant.

(II,xxi) Antonio: [… qui s'est enfui, jarni, courant] (BN, F, CF) comme les petits chevaux de ces messieurs qui escamotent l'argent des autres à la plaine.

(II,xxiv) Suzanne: [… si vous aviez vu votre visage! il s'est terni tout à coup] (BN, F, CF) comme un diamant où l'on a jeté l'haleine; [mais …].

(III,viii) Le Comte: [… il vous serre, vous enveloppe] (BN, F) et vous touche de partout / (CF) et vous touche de toutes parts (BN, F, CF) comme un habit trop juste.

(IV,xiii) Figaro: (BN, F, CF) Sans être le Nestor du siècle, [je puis défier la plus rusée …].

(V,vii) Le Comte: [Comment! je ne pourrai faire un pas …] (BN) Ce page est mon Euménide: en honneur, il me poursuit. Toujours sur moi comme un réverbère. / (F, CF) Il est sur moi comme un réverbère! il me poursuit! il est mon Euménide. [Mais laissons …].

(V,viii) Figaro: [… que la peste eût étouffé en naissant] (BN, F) le père et la mère du chafouin de tabellion qui fit le (BN) contrat de mariage du / (F) contrat du / (CF) le (BN, F, CF) matou cornu d'imbécile qui épousa la première chatte miauleuse de femme […].

(V, viii) Figaro: [Pour faire la conquête de sa femme!] (BN, F, CF) Voilà nos étourneaux d'intrigue croyant tous rouler en avant; ils sont taillés en boules de Siam!

The general conclusion to be drawn from a study of these examples is that in the manuscripts, figures of speech such as simile, metaphor and antonomasia are too widespread to be acceptable as a means of characterising the speech-patterns of particular characters. The author's own ‘démon de l'analogie’ was responsible for much of the inappropriate ‘fine writing’, and it is interesting to note how nearly all of the examples quoted survive right through to the last stage of the evolution of the text, appearing in CF before being struck out at the eleventh hour. But whatever the reasons for the final changes—comments from the salon audiences to whom Beaumarchais read the play, criticisms from his cast at rehearsals, or his own realisation that certain features were not really appropriate to stage dialogue—the effect was undoubtedly to produce a crisper, more economical text, much better able to passer la rampe.

‘Tout ce qui n'est pas nécessaire est de trop’: we can certainly interpret Beaumarchais's comment¹¹ in terms of the functional effectiveness of his text on stage, and not merely of the decorative aspect of his style judged by purely literary criteria. It seems to have been at the final stage of revision that the majority of cases of a character breaking off in the middle of a sentence were introduced; the resulting points de suspension, which are such a characteristic feature of the text of Le Mariage on the printed page, provide a graphic indication of a dialogue much more rapid and incisive than that of the MS versions. A single example of this will perhaps suffice. At the end of Figaro's celebrated farewell to the newly-commissioned Chérubin in act I scene x (the original of Mozart's stirring ‘Non più andrai’), the definitive text shows Suzanne interrupting her fiancé in the full flow of his imagination:

                                        … à moins qu'un bon coup
de feu …
Suzanne: Fi donc! l'horreur!
La Comtesse: Quel pronostic!

In the three MS versions, on the other hand, Figaro's sentence is completed as follows: ‘… à moins qu'un bon coup de feu ne te fasse prendre avec le corps, la mesure de ton dernier habit’.

Where the occasional extended metaphor, simile or other figurative device has survived the final hurdle to reappear in the definitive text, it is often possible to observe how this text has nevertheless been pruned in the interests of theatrical viability. In act IV scene i, when Figaro's comment on the action: ‘Le hasard a mieux fait que nous tous, ma petite …’ has served as lead-in to a philosophical disquisition on the subject of chance, symbolised by the ‘aveugle qui se laisse mener par son chien’, this in turn leads to his somewhat contrived plea to be allowed to act as guide-dog and bring l'Amour to Suzanne's door:

[Permets donc que, prenant l'emploi de la folie, je sois le bon chien qui le mène à ta jolie mignonne porte]; (BN, F, CF) et disons (prenant un ton piteux): Faites la charité, belle dame, au pauvre aveugle, et n'oubliez pas le bon chien. Le ton féminin: Entrez, bonhomme Amour, entre aussi, bon Toutou, entre. [Et nous voilà logés pour la vie].

We may find the sentimentality here attributed to Figaro somewhat overdone (even in the final text, considerably pruned for theatrical effect); but at least it is possible to accept his sentimental rhetoric as being in character, alongside the more robust imagination shown in the ‘goddam’ tirade or the brilliant definition of ‘la politique’. Similarly—though the stylistic register could not be more different—in the case of an emendation which I have always personally regretted, Figaro's description of Suzanne at the beginning of act I scene ii originally read (BN):

[La charmante fille!] La jolie petite Suzanne à désuzanniser! [Toujours riante, verdissante], fleurissante, [pleine de gaieté, d'esprit, d'amour et de délices! mais sage!].

The mildly suggestive neologism désuzanniser may possibly have been expunged (misguidedly?) on grounds of taste, but the inventive use of fleurissante, so original in its application to a young girl, can only have been rejected for stylistic reasons, because it was felt to detract from the rhythmical impact of the sentence—and therefore of the soliloquy as a whole, which must surely stand as one of the most brilliantly successful passages in the play, from both a theatrical and a literary point of view.

In the Preface to Le Mariage, Beaumarchais, defending himself against the suggestion that all his dialogue should be judged on how it measures up to the notion of a uniform ‘style d'auteur’, writes as follows:

Lorsque mon sujet me saisit, j'évoque tous mes personnages et les mets en situation … Ce qu'ils diront, je n'en sais rien; c'est ce qu'ils feront qui m'occupe. Puis, quand ils sont bien animés, j'écris sous leur dictée rapide, sûr qu'ils ne me tromperont pas … Chacun y parle son langage: eh! que le Dieu du naturel les préserve d'en parler d'autre!

We can hardly be expected to take this account of the creative process literally; but the playwright's essential proposition, that each of his characters ‘parle son langage’, is certainly truer of the final text than it had been of the MS versions. I have attempted to show that the ‘fine writing’ to be found in the early states of the text was a feature that Beaumarchais attributed more or less indiscriminately to his characters; however, there can be no doubt that their speech is much more successfully differentiated in the final text.

As a first illustration of this, we have seen that Antonio's réplique containing a rather elaborate simile in the MSS was reduced in the published text to ‘… qui s'est enfui, jarni, courant …’. On the other hand, there survive into the definitive text of act II scene xxi, as features which help to establish the naïve thought-processes of this simple character, the malapropism: ‘Voilà comme on fait des jugements … ténébreux’; the coq-à-l'âne:

J'ai bien voulu courir après; mais je me suis donné contre la grille une si fière gourde à la main, que je ne peux plus remuer ni pied ni patte de ce doigt-là,

and the irrelevant proverb which (although apparently of Beaumarchais's own invention) so successfully expresses traditional peasant wisdom:

Boire sans soif et faire l'amour en tout temps, Madame, il n'y a que cela qui nous distingue des autres bêtes.

Similarly, whereas Figaro's over-elaborate sentence in the closing exchanges of act I (‘Dans les cas épineux …’) is rightly rejected, Bazile's homely proverb a few lines later, with its idiosyncratic adaptation, highly suggestive in its context: ‘Tant va la cruche à l'eau … (qu'à la fin) elle s'emplit’, is retained as being thoroughly in keeping with the presentation of this character who had declared in Le Barbier de Séville: ‘J'ai arrangé comme cela plusieurs petits proverbes avec des variations’.¹²

And if Beaumarchais was right to cut out certain incongruous classical allusions, such as those by Figaro to Nestor, or by the Count to the Eumenides, quoted above, it seems entirely appropriate, on the other hand, that he should have retained the following passage in Bartholo's pedantic address to the judges in the court scene:

Messieurs … jamais cause plus intéressante ne fut soumise au jugement de la Cour! et depuis Alexandre le Grand, qui promit marriage à la belle Thalestris …

As a final example, there is surely no need to elaborate on the difference in theatrical effectiveness (and in characterisation) between the two similes attributed to Suzanne at the beginning of act II scene xxiv: on the one hand ‘[votre visage s'est terni tout à coup] comme un diamant où l'on a jeté l'haleine’ (rejected); on the other, in her next réplique: ‘Sans hésiter, le charmant enfant! Léger … comme une abeille’.

A special case, in which the evolution from MSS to text cannot be divorced from the question of consistency of characterisation, is that of Marceline's transformation from adversary of Figaro and Suzanne to their ally and protector. My own reading of act III scene xvi is that the sequence containing the actual recognition—the point at which this transformation takes place—can only be interpreted as a lighthearted parody of the sentimental literature of the day.¹³ The transition from this to the elevated rhetoric of the feminist tirades (to which the comédiens evidently took exception) is certainly the most striking of the play's sudden changes of stylistic register; but it is a transition that the reader takes in his stride, and which it is perfectly possible to achieve in the theatre without sacrificing plausibility of characterisation. In other words Marceline, who has until this scene forfeited the audience's sympathy, and who during the recognition sequence is the object of our good-humoured laughter, has now no great difficulty in making a serious appeal to our emotional sympathy and in persuading us of the justice of her case. This would have been less easy, in my view, in the MS versions of this series of scenes, where the actual discovery of the relationship between Figaro and Marceline is followed by an autobiographical ‘confession’ on the latter's part:

J'étais fille en condition chez un gros chanoine andalou; lui, jeune frater et major chez un chirurgien bayonnais; je tombai malade, il me saigna; cela me rendit faible, il en abusa; je pleurai longtemps, il me consola. Tu vis le jour; le prébendier me chassa: on allait arrêter ton père, il te fit cette marque et se sauva. Ce qui m'avait perdue servit à me consoler; tu me restais, mon fils! On te vola. Je courus en pleurs chez le juge; j'étais jolie, il m'emprisonna. Longtemps à l'école du malheur, mon esprit se forma. Depuis ton père est devenu riche, il m'a fait sa servante et me voilà.

(BN)

This speech, with the jaunty rhythms that we associate with Figaro,¹⁴ could hardly have offered a very satisfactory basis for the genuine appeal to the audience's indignation, based on the same episode in the character's life (‘Hommes plus qu'ingrats, qui flétrissez par le mépris les jouets de vos passions, vos victimes!’). The sequence of scenes following on from the recognition provides possibly the most complicated picture of MS variants: not only was much of this material the subject of constant revision, as indicated by the presence, in the case of both BN and F, of further passages of text on ‘feuilles détachées’ and ‘feuilles collées’, but there is evidence in BN that Beaumarchais originally hesitated between acts III and IV as the most suitable context for the feminist tirades. At all events, there can be little doubt that here again, the definitive text has gained both in stylistic coherence and in dramatic impact.

Let us turn finally to the question of the politically subversive nature of Beaumarchais's play—an aspect which has often been over-emphasised by literary historians and critics, but which needs to be taken into account, if only because of the censor's action in holding up the public performance of the play until 1784. Potentially subversive references to sensitive contemporary issues can perhaps best be treated under three heads: (i) class-distinction and aristocratic privilege—the subject of a number of provocative comments, chiefly by Figaro; (ii) the administration of justice, satirised in the court-scenes of act III; and (iii) the more specific references to topics such as economic policy, censorship and arbitrary imprisonment contained in the long act V soliloquy. Each of these will be considered in turn, in an attempt to judge how far the ‘revolutionary’ character of the text may have been modified in the progress from manuscript to published work.

The MS variants contain virtually no examples of provocative boutades rejected from the final text. Figaro's retort to the Count's ‘Les domestiques ici sont plus longs à s'habiller que les maîtres’: ‘C'est qu'ils n'ont point de valets pour les y aider’ (III,ii); his celebrated entrée en matière in the great act V soliloquy:

Parce que vous êtes un grand seigneur, vous vous croyez un grand génie! Noblesse, fortune, un rang, des places; tout cela rend si fier. Qu'avez-vous fait pour tant de biens? Vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus! du reste homme assez ordinaire! tandis que moi, morbleu! …

(V, iii)

two outspoken remarks addressed to the Count: ‘Vous commandez à tout ici, hors à vous-même’ and ‘Sommes-nous des soldats qui tuent et se font tuer, pour des raisons qu'ils ignorent?’ (both V, xii) remain unchanged throughout. The only significant réplique of this nature that disappears is that which follows Figaro's comment on the law ‘Indulgente aux grands, dure aux petits’:

(BN,F) Voilà toujours ma chanson de soldat qui me revient …
Soldat qui vole un bracelet
Est pendu sans rémission;
Mais pour la contribution
Qu'un général met en sa poche,
C'est une noble action.

(III, v)

Indeed, perhaps the most important deletion in this category is a fragment that takes the form of a stage-direction:

(BN, F, CF) Tous les paysans l'un après l'autre d'un ton bas, et comme un murmure général: Il a raison, bien fait, c'est juste, il a raison etc. etc.

(V, xv)¹⁵

The force of the satire directed against the judiciary, and judicial procedure, depends perhaps more on the name of Brid'oison (Don Gusman throughout the manuscripts) and on the fact of his bégayement than on the detail of what he is given to say; it is well known that this character was a crude caricature of Beaumarchais's enemy the magistrate Goezman, who suffered from a similar impediment of speech. References in the text to the magistrate's wife and secretary make the allusion more pointed; and if we add the association with Rabelais's judge Brid'oie (who settled cases by throwing dice), it can be seen that this character must have appeared to contemporaries not only as a lampoon on Goezman the individual, but also as a fiercely satirical attack on the Parlement de Paris to which he belonged. To take one small example of a textual emendation which reinforces the picture of an incompetent and venal judge, the sublime naïvety of Brid'oison's response to Marceline's: ‘C'est un grand abus que de les vendre [sc. les charges]’ is entirely lost in the original draft:

[Oui, l'on-on ferait mieux de nous les donner pour rine.] (BN) Le mérite alors tiendrait lieu d'argent …

(III,xii)

A happy case of inspired second thoughts!

In the following scene, a rather laboured development by Figaro on Brid'oison's reverence for ‘les formes’ is rightly rejected after BN; and the other principal difference between MSS and edition in the courtscenes is a reduction in the number of cases brought before the magistrates before we come to the one involving Figaro and Marceline. Reduced from three to two, these no longer include in the final text the case concerning the demoiselle Sein-tendre and her suitors, the elderly neighbour Desayeux and the wealthy Or-en-sac—the lady herself having disappeared with her cousin Des Soupirs. The names, and the relationships, indicate a misplaced attempt at literary parody based on rather tired clichés, and Beaumarchais was surely well advised to suppress this passage (which had been retained from BN through to CF). The same scene originally contained a somewhat fuller justification on Figaro's part of his intention to act as his own advocate (BN); and in a further variant, surviving to CF, his speech beginning ‘Point du tout …’, supporting the reading of ‘ou’ in the sense of ‘ou bien’, had contained a different series of examples:

… vous chanterez telle ariette de Gluck ou telle autre de Piccini; [ou la maladie vous tuera ou ce sera le médecin, ou bien le médecin; cela est encore incontestable]. Je parerai de fleurs l'autel de votre hymen, ou vous prendrez ce soin vous-même. Toujours ou bien: [Ainsi je la paierai dans ce château, virgule, ou je l'épouserai] …

For once, we may perhaps prefer the MS reading here to the definitive version—though the fact that the original edition of the play contained a misprint at this point (perpetuated by nearly all modern editors) may have something to do with such a preference.¹⁶

Examination of the variant readings provided by the manuscript versions of the soliloquy in act V scene iii must of necessity be selective, in view of the substantial nature of the passages involved. From the MS fragment X it is clear that the action of the play was originally conceived as taking place in France, not in Spain; and this version contains a reference en toutes lettres to ‘la Bastille’, compared with the less provocative ‘un château fort’ of the printed text. However, it is this earliest fragment that provides the fullest justification of Gaiffe's term ‘pamphlétaire’ applied to Beaumarchais; and it must be said that it contains lengthy passages of minimal theatrical impact. Indeed the famous soliloquy, far from being a brilliant tour de force which an actor can carry off on the sheer verve and exuberance of Beaumarchais's writing, would in its original version—quite apart from lasting a good deal longer¹⁷—have been more than a little tedious by virtue of its subject-matter and style. Two examples will suffice. Figaro originally recounted a second adventure in the theatre (after a lengthier version of his persecution by the envoys of the Islamic states):

… ma pièce ne fut pas jouée. Pour me consoler, et surtout pour vivre, je m'amusai à en composer une autre, où je dépeignis de mon mieux la destruction du culte des Bardes et Druides et de leurs vaines cérémonies. Il n'y a point d'envoyés de ces nations, qui n'existent plus, me dis-je, et pour le coup ma pièce n'aura rien à démêler avec le ministère et les comédiens la joueront, et j'aurai de l'argent, car le neuvième de la recette m'appartient; mais je n'avais pas aperçu le venin caché dans mon ouvrage, et les allusions qu'on pouvait faire des erreurs d'un culte faux aux vérités révélées d'une religion véritable. Un officer d'église, à hausse-col de linon, s'en aperçut fort bien pour moi, me dénonça comme impie, eut un prieuré, et ma pièce fut arrêtée à la troisième représentation par le bishop diocésan; et les comédiens, en faisant mon décompte, trouvèrent au résultat que, pour mon neuvième de profit, je redevais cent douze livres à la troupe, à prendre sur la première pièce que je donnerais et que le bishop laisserait jouer.

The second passage presents a laboured account of Figaro's experience as a journalist, writing on the ‘question sur la nature des richesses’:

… je me mis à écrire sur la valeur réelle de l'argent. Les uns disaient un écu est un écu, mille écus font mille écus et la cherté des denrées est la preuve des richesses; car plus il faut d'argent pour payer du pain, plus l'émulation augmente chez les peuples qui vivent avec du pain, et leurs travaux accumulés amènent l'abondance dans toutes les parties, et plus les denrées abondantes sont chères, plus le peuple est riche, car le produit net etc., etc. Et l'on écrivait beaucoup, et le peuple murmurait, car ce n'est point des livres, c'est des vivres qu'il lui faut et je me mis à écrire, non pour le peuple mais pour moi qui sentais fort bien qu'un écu ne vaut réellement que ce qu'on peut se procurer en denrées avec lui, de façon que le peuple qui avait 20 millions il y a 20 ans et payait le pain 2 sous, était aussi riche qu'il l'est avec 40 millions s'il paie le pain 4 sous. Il est vrai qu'il a 2 écus dans sa poche au lieu d'un, mais il est aussi vrai que ses écus ne valent que 30 sols, puisqu'il lui en faut deux pour avoir 300 livres de pain qu'il pouvait se procurer avec un seul; donc la cherté n'est point richesse, donc la doctrine du produit net etc. Reste en pure perte pour la nation la peine qu'elle s'est donnée à doubler ses fonds. Mon livre ne se vendit point, fut arrêté et, pendant qu'on fermait la porte de mon libraire, on m'ouvrit celle de la Bastille, où je fus fort bien reçu en faveur de la recommandation qui m'y attirait. J'y fus logé, nourri pendant six mois, sans payer auberge ni loyer, avec une grande épargne de mes habits et, à le bien prendre, cette retraite économique est le produit le plus net que m'ait valu la littérature.

The last two sentences alone exhibit any of the wit and irony which so well sustain the long soliloquy in its final version; for the rest, it would be difficult to conceive a kind of writing less appropriate to the requirements of the theatrical medium.

On the other hand, there is a rejected reading (BN, F, CF) which calls for a brief mention precisely because it does demonstrate the qualities of poetic imagination which give such a distinctive character to the philosophical coda to the soliloquy, to the extent of earning it the epithet ‘Shakespearean’. The analogy with the ‘seven ages of man’ speech from act II of As You Like It is no doubt fortuitous; but it is an analogy that is considerably strengthened if one considers the MS version, in which after tracing the upward progress of human life (‘[un assemblage informe … un chétif être imbécile … un petit animal folâtre … un jeune homme ardent au plaisir …]’), the text continues:

Vais-je enfin être un homme? Un homme? Il descend comme il est monté … se traînant où il a couru, … puis les dégoûts, les maladies, une vieille et débile poupée … une froide momie … un squelette … une vile poussière et puis rien!

One can only assume that this imaginative development was sacrificed on grounds of overall economy, and not because of any intrinsic inadequacy.

Restriction on space has prevented anything like an exhaustive analysis of the MS variants of Beaumarchais's play. There are many examples not quoted, in which changes from the manuscripts to the definitive text seem to have been determined neither by considerations of taste, nor by stylistic criteria, nor by the appropriateness of the expression of satirical or subversive material, but by a more general sense of economy and pace which must gradually have crystallised during the course of the readings and the rehearsals. One thing is certain: that the breathing space provided by the censor's ban was absolutely vital to the character and the quality of the text performed in April 1784 and published in April 1785. It is difficult to imagine the text presented in BN—or even that text as modified in F and CF—being hailed with the same conviction, either by contemporaries or by posterity, as the undoubted dramatic masterpiece of its century. Not all playwrights have the good fortune to be offered this kind of priceless opportunity for the revision and improvement of their text—but few playwrights, presented with that opportunity, could have made such splendid use of it, and produced at the end of this maturing period a work in which form is so perfectly matched to substance, the challenging and provocative theme of the ‘mariage de Figaro’ to the brilliantly entertaining plot of the ‘folle journée’.

The epitome of this happy alliance of the serious and the lighthearted, the thought-provoking and the purely ludic, is surely to be seen in the Vaudeville with which Beaumarchais has chosen to close his play. Itself an example of the refining process of the author's self-criticism, the Vaudeville was reduced from twelve to ten couplets; and it must be said that neither of the rejected verses added anything essential, either thematically or in terms of imaginative expression. (Both were placed between the present stanzas 6 and 7):

Bartholo: Quand le mal
n'est pas extrême,
Fermons l'œil de la rigueur
Sur les torts de qui nous aime,
Et disons dans notre coeur:
Si chacun rentre en lui-même,
Nul mortel de bonne foi
N'est homme de bien pour soi.
Fanchette: Robin dit, Robin
répète:
Si l'amour t'était connu
Que ton sein, jeune Fanchette,
De désir serait ému!
Dans tous nos yeux il te guette.
Je l'ai donc vu, cher Robin,
Dans les yeux de Chérubin.

(BN, F, CF)

Otherwise, the Vaudeville was subject to comparatively little revision: the only point of interest is that the manuscripts show a certain hesitation over the eulogy to Voltaire at the end of stanza 7. For the rest, such trouvailles as Bazile's doctored proverb ‘Gaudeant bene nanti’; the semi-serious feminism of Suzanne's ‘Les plus forts ont fait la loi’; the provocative theme of Figaro's stanza on ‘le sort de la naissance’; and Chérubin's charming ‘Sexe aimé, sexe volage’ are all there from the beginning. So, too, are the two concluding couplets, Suzanne's apologia for the play's peculiar blend of ‘fond’ and ‘forme’:

Si ce gai, ce fol ouvrage
Renfermait quelque leçon,
En faveur du badinage
Faites grâce à la raison …

and Brid'oison's wholly un-revolutionary championing of comedy as an effective safety-valve for the victims of oppression:

Or, Messieurs, la co—omédie,
Que l'on juge en c—et instant,
Sauf erreur, nous pein—eint la vie
Du bon peuple qui l'entend.
Qu'on l'opprime, il peste, il crie;
Il s'agite en cent fa—açons;
Tout fini-it par des chansons.

Notes

1. The fullest presentation of the variant readings of Le Mariage de Figaro is to be found in the edition by J. B. Ratermanis (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, LXIII), Geneva, Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1968. See also, for a more selective treatment of the variants, the editions by J.-P. de Beaumarchais in Théâtre de Beaumarchais, Paris, Garnier, 1982; and by P. Larthomas in Beaumarchais, Œuvres (Pléiade), Paris, Gallimard, 1988.

2. Preface.

3. See W. D. Howarth, ‘The Recognition-scene in Le Mariage de Figaro’, The Modern Language Review, LXIV, 1969, pp.301-311.

4. See J.-P. de Beaumarchais, ed. cit., p.472.

5. P. Larthomas, ed. cit., p.1402.

6. See J.-P. de Beaumarchais, ed. cit., p.468; and P. Larthomas, ed. cit., p.1402.

7. J.-P. de Beaumarchais, ed. cit., p.468.

8. Beaumarchais: Le Mariage de Figaro (‘Les Cours de Sorbonne’), Paris, Centre de Documentation Universitaire, n.d., pp.51, 70.

9. Where appropriate, passages of text common to the MSS and the first edition are quoted in square brackets.

10. It is interesting to note that Chérubin's simile is quoted verbatim by Suzanne in II.i (BN, F, CF) when she is giving the Countess an account of her conversation with him in act I.

11. Notes et réflexions, ed. G. Bauër, Paris, Hachette, 1961, p.132.

12. Le Barbier de Séville, act IV, scene i.

13. See Howarth, art. cit.

14. This passage is described as a ‘bout-rimé autobiographique’ by J.-P. de Beaumarchais, ed. cit., p.468.

15. Cf. E. Lintilhac: ‘Il nous semble que ce murmure général, cet etc. etc., étaient la plus grande audace de la pièce. C'était une révolte, presque une révolution en miniature …’, Beaumarchais et ses æuvres, Paris, Hachette, 1887, pp.270-1.

16. E. J. Arnould, in his edition of the play (Oxford, Blackwell, 1952) adopts the reading: ‘… ou vous n'écrirez rien qui plaise, ou les sots vous dénigreront; ou bien les sots: le sens est clair; ou les méchants vous dénigreront, ou bien les méchants vous dénigreront: car, audit cas, sots et méchants sont le substantif qui gouverne …’. He comments as follows: ‘Une ligne a dû être omise par accident. Nous avons préféré le texte tout à fait satisfaisant des manuscrits et de certaines éditions non authentiques …’ (p.163); however, it does not appear that the MS variants as reproduced by Ratermanis justify such a reading.

17. A word-count reveals that if the text of X were incorporated into that of BN, the soliloquy would be over sixty per cent longer than in its published form. In other words, if we suppose that the speech in its definitive version lasts a good ten minutes, its earliest draft would have taken well over a quarter of an hour to deliver.