Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Anne Dreze
and the PG Online Distributed Proofreaders
De L'Académie Française
Because Le Voyage de M. Perrichon is a delightful comedy andparticularly suitable for use in the class room, it does not followthat the place of its author in the literature of France should beunduly magnified.
Eugène Labiche's chief claim to fame is that, as a distinguishedcritic said of him, «for forty years he kept his contemporaries inlaughter.» From 1838, when he wrote his first play, till 1876, whenhe voluntarily retired, he produced, generally in collaboration withwriters known mainly through their association with him, over onehundred and fifty comedies, in each of which is heard the samedominant note of fun and merriment. But of these plays only a verysmall number possess the qualities that alone make for durability;neither their form—in most cases photographically true tothe looseness of the most familiar conversation—nor theirsubstance—often grotesquely impossible adventures, situationssupremely laughable because colossally absurd—is calculated to embalmhis plays against the ravages of time. He thought so himself, anddeclined for a long time to have them collected into a completeedition; and when, in 1880, he was proposed for a vacant seat in theAcadémie Française, he doubted whether he would have voted for hisown admission into that illustrious company.
Thus Labiche must stand simply as the most prolific and genial of thefun-makers for France during almost half a century. This praise wouldhave satisfied the modest man that he was. Born in Paris in 1815, hehad been destined to the bar; but, preferring literature, early betookhimself to the newspaper and the drama. Here he «found himself,» andfrom the age of twenty-three until he was over sixty filled the comicstage with his light and laughable productions. After his retirementin 1876 the distinctions that were bestowed upon him with no grudginghand brought him as much surprise as pleasure. His published ThéâtreComplet was received by the public with altogether unexpectedenthusiasm; he was elected to the Academy, and his speech on hisreception into that body made a marked sensation. He died in 1888at his country-place in Sologne, full of years and of wonder at thegratitude of his contemporaries for the amusement he had so longafforded them.
Had more of his comedies possessed the qualities of Le Voyage de M.Perrichon, this high esteem would not have been restricted to hiscontemporaries. For, underlying the humorous dialogue, there is inthis work a shrewd observation, an analysis of character, that lift itfar above mere farce. Its insight into the ungrateful heart of man,—acheerful and reformative, not a gloomy or hopeless, insight,—itslifelike delineation of the parvenu, the self-made man who worshipshis maker, and who, because he has been successful in business, thinksall things are his, culture included: these raise Le Voyage de M.Perrichon to the plane of true comedy.
Like all Labiche's plays, this one deals with the middle-class, thebourgeois element in French life, where natural foibles are notvarnished over with the gloss of education and conventionality, b