7.48 Beaumarchais — Le Mariage de Figaro — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the first two scenes of Beaumarchais's Le Mariage de Figaro and the great monologue of the fifth act. Follow a quick comic dialogue in prose, with its interruptions, its half-sentences and its stage directions. Understand why a comedy about a servant and his master was felt, in 1784, as an attack on the privileges of the nobility. Hear the rhythm of a long speech built from short clauses, questions and exclamations. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Voilà madame éveillée ; elle m’a bien recommandé d’être la première à lui parler le matin de mes noces. That's madam awake; she made me promise to be the first to speak to her on my wedding morning. de le faire donner dans un bon piège, to make him fall into a good trap, Est-il rien de plus bizarre que ma destinée ! Is there anything stranger than my destiny! Mais souvenez-vous aussi que l’homme qu’on sait timide est dans la dépendance de tous les fripons. But remember too that a man known to be timid is at the mercy of every rogue. Parce que vous êtes un grand seigneur, vous vous croyez un grand génie !… Because you are a great lord, you think you are a great genius!… je puis tout imprimer librement, sous l’inspection de deux ou trois censeurs. I may print anything freely, under the inspection of two or three censors. Prerequisites : 7.47 — this reading follows 7.47 Reading . The theatre terms of 5.23 Vocabulary , especially la tirade , le monologue and l'aparté , and the rhetoric of 5.24 Vocabulary will help with the monologue. About this text Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–1799) was a watchmaker, a courtier, a secret agent, an arms dealer for the American rebels, a publisher of Voltaire and a playwright. Le Mariage de Figaro , written around 1778, was kept off the stage for several years because Louis XVI judged it dangerous; it was finally performed at the Comédie-Française in 1784 and was an enormous success. It continues Le Barbier de Séville (1775), in which Figaro, a barber, helped Count Almaviva marry Rosine. Now Figaro is the Count's valet and is about to marry Suzanne, the Countess's maid, and the Count wants Suzanne for himself. Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro (1786) is based on the play. This lesson gives about 2,500 words: the first two scenes of Act I, and scenes two and three of Act V. Between them, much happens: Figaro discovers that the housekeeper Marceline, who wanted to marry him, is his mother, and the doctor Bartholo his father; and during the wedding ceremony he sees the Count reading a note that arranges a meeting in the garden at night. He believes Suzanne has betrayed him. The text is that of the Œuvres complètes of Beaumarchais edited by Édouard Fournier and published in Paris by Laplace, Sanchez and Co. in 1876, as transcribed in French Wikisource. Each speech is printed as one paragraph, with the speaker's name on its own line. Reading Beaumarchais Speed. The first scene moves fast. Many speeches are two or three words long: Pourquoi ? — Je n'en veux point. — Mais encore ? The sentences are often broken off with dots, because the other speaker has understood, or interrupts, or because the end is too improper to say. Read the dialogue aloud, at speed, like a rally at tennis. Sound effects. Figaro and Suzanne describe the room with little noises: zeste , crac . When Suzanne repeats his own words back to him, with the Count in his place, the joke turns against him. The play is full of such repetitions that change meaning. The servant and the master. The Count has abolished an old feudal right, the right of the lord over his servants' brides, and now regrets it. Figaro's answer is not revolt but intrigue: he will trick the Count, keep the dowry and protect his bride. The comedy is old, the servant cleverer than his master, but the tone is new: Figaro speaks of the Count's privileges with open contempt. The monologue. Alone in the dark garden in Act V, Figaro tells his whole life: an unknown birth, studies, a play banned for offending a foreign power, prison for writing about money, a newspaper suppressed, a post given to a dancer instead of an accountant. The play is set in Spain, but the audience recognised France: its censorship, its prisons and its favouritism. The most famous line is a reproach to the Count: vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus . At the end the speech turns from society to the self: who is this moi that changes with fortune? Reading it a second time, part by part The room. On their wedding morning Figaro measures the room the Count has given them; Suzanne refuses it. The reason. The room lies between the Count's and the Countess's apartments. Suzanne explains that the Count wants to use the closeness to court her, and that Basile, her music teacher, speaks for him. The dowry. The dowry the Count promises is the price of a secret quarter of an hour, the old right he abolished. Figaro wants to trap him and keep the money. The bells. The Countess rings; Suzanne leaves, after a kiss. Figaro alone. He understands why the Count wants to take him to London as a courier, and sets out his plan for the day. The gathering. In Act V, at night, Figaro hides his friends in the garden under the chestnut trees, to witness the Count's meeting with Suzanne. Bartholo advises prudence with the great; Figaro answers with spirit. The monologue. Figaro, jealous, reflects on women, on the Count's privileges, on his own adventures, and on the strangeness of being himself. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. The Marriage of Figaro ACT ONE The stage shows a half-emptied room; a large invalid's armchair stands in the middle. Figaro, with a measuring rod, is measuring the floor. Suzanne, in front of a mirror, is fast