Beamarchais Essay, Research Paper

Beaumarchais lived a marvelous, enriched life, arguably one of the most intriguing of the eighteenth century. His was ?a career that began in the most obscure of bourgeois existence (Perla 32).? He was born in a lower-class Protestant family, gaining his titles through hard work rather than winning them by birth alone. He noted in the preface to Tarare that ?not all men are advantageously placed to carry out great things: we are born who we are and we become what we can be (24).? This theme, which he echoed through his whole life, is found in many of his written works.

He was a genius with immeasurable vigor and ambition, having held several positions of distinction in his life. Over his sixty seven years he was an accomplished musician and songwriter, a master clock maker, a jurist, a businessman, an editor, a tradesman, a ship owner, a secret agent, diplomat, architect, an engineer- but he was first and foremost a thinker, and a great intellectual to emerge at France?s Enlightenment.

He was a man of intense profound thought- he was a true philosophe. Beaumarchais was a well known pamphleteer, essayist and literary scholar, coveting the power of the literature and its ability to change society. It is interesting to note that John Wood affirms playwrighting, this paper?s focus, to have been only a ?protean activity? for Beaumarchais, but still ?an essential expression of his personality (2).?

This is not to say that Beaumarchais thought lightly of writing for the theatre. One could not take lightly an art form of such power and influence that it always met with violent opposition from the establishment. Beaumarchais knew the theatre to be the most potent realm to present his platform. He defiantly brought ideas to France that challenged those in power without apology. Louis XVI, showing he was no great fool, recognized the danger of the poet?s words and enforced everything in his power from censorship to imprisonment to keep Beaumarchais?s works from being presented for the public.

The American Revolution became a cause for Beaumarchais, where he could serve France and the great notion of liberty, in the spirit of the Enlightenment. His commitment to America?s cause was true and just. It is his influence with the French Revolution that we question. Although his writing reflected the sentiment of the American Revolution and the famous Tennis Court Oath, it is questionable whether Beaumarchais consciously contributed to Republican sentiment.

This paper will question the role of Beaumarchais in the French Revolution. It will explore Beaumarchais as a champion of ideas rather than people. Peoples, as we shall see, are wont to corrupt the lofty notion of ideas and Beaumarchais often put himself in a dangerous position in asserting that.

This paper will show how Beaumarchais used Tarare, one of his controversial final works, as an example of how he practiced political self-preservation at the hilt of the Terror. This paper will show that Beaumarchais, although a champion of freedom in his early writing and involvement with the War of Independence, was a political vacillator who, at the time of the French Revolution, held fast to his own ideals rather than acting as a true revolutionary and would compromise for expediency. It will show that he did not intend for his writing to serve as a catalyst to the anarchy.

Beaumarchais?s theories on literature were influenced by the innovations of thought that embodied France?s Enlightenment. His was the sort of ?bourgeois drama? that was popular at the time. He and his dramatic contemporaries ?insisted on plays written in prose and containing moral and civic instruction for the masses (Lloyd 167).? He believed in the happiness of all by use of reason and the possible improvement of society through literature. With his plays he sought to provoke thought among the population and make them aware of the undesirable situation.

From 1716 to 1750, the pit, containing bourgeois, artisans, students and the occasional aristocrat, accounted for the larger part of the audience (Lloyd 170). Theatres in France were experiencing a disparity in upper and lower class patron. Beaumarchais?s bourgeois drama was well suited to this new and he was very well received by this often unruly, inattentive crowd. He played to the vigorous nature of this audience, manipulating it to be hungry for his plays.

When the King declared that the Bastille would have to fall before Figaro could be given, Beaumarchais quickly retorted. Lemaitre quotes Beaumarchais as announcing in public: ?The King does not want Le Mariage de Figaro to be played–therefore, it shall be played.? Lemaitre calls this statement ?a true prelude to the revolution (275).? Of course, Beaumarchais was not encouraging revolution, for ? he was a rebel against privelege…[but] that is not to say that he was a full blown revolutionary of the type so soon to become familiar (Cox 144).? This declaration was simply ingenious publicity that ensured Figaro would enjoy a hungry audience, therefore serving France with his wit. His first aim, of course, was not to preach but to amuse and enlighten (144).

He proceeded to do readings of Figaro in private homes, circulated rumors and created a scandal in France- so great that it turned members of the royal family against one another (Carlson 4). His machinations proved successful, for on the afternoon of April 27, 1784, thousands upon thousands of commoners, valets and aristocrats gathered to see the performance of this controversial play ?so suited to their sympathies (4).? The competition for tickets ?was the keenest that had ever been known (Rivers 235). Even the ?nation?s proudest aristocracy? had been reduced to begging for tickets for this play. Beaumarchais had formed an immense scandal and intrigue, allowing Figaro?s ideals to be delivered to the masses. Figaro?s themes applied to all of society and the larger the audience, the better for Beaumarchais?s platform.

Beaumarchais?s commitment to the American War of Independence followed the sentiment of the enlightenment and theory. It concerned championing freedom as he did in his plays. The sentiment of Figaro and The Barber were carried in the dreams of the people of the colonies, and Beaumarchais became a key player and is often championed as a great fighter in the war of independence.

He saw the rebellion of the colonies to be a struggle of the underdog, a fight of the servant against the intolerant master. America was his Figaro, and Britain was his Almaviva. He did a double service, both to his philosophy and to his nation. In aiding America, he was hurting England, who had shamed France in the Seven Years War (Cox 103). Working as a secret agent and a master of manipulation, he was able to collect two hundred cannon, twenty-five thousand guns, thirty brass mortars, two-hundred thousand pounds of gunpowder and enough clothing and tents for twenty-five thousand men (113). He incurred serious debts which were only partially repaid after his death in 1799 (Cox 122). His commitment to liberty was great and his self-sacrifice was key in the victory of the colonies.

Tarare was first presented in 1787, immediately following the successful production of Figaro in Vienna. It was based on a Persian tale called Sadak and Kalasrade. Tarare, the hero, was a new incarnation of the character Figaro, where a man of relative humble birth succeeds in rising to power through strength of character, wit and determination once again ?representing the triumph of worth and intelligence over the gifts of birth and chance (Cox 154)?. Tarare, like Figaro, was a servant of a tyrant whose title was won by birth and whose status was undeserved. It was yet another strike at the ?imperfections and the injustices of the old regime (Chaudhuri 242).?

It was infused with the philosophy and natural sciences popular at the time- especially with heady philosophes like Beaumarchais. Rivers points out that it was a very weak piece, in fact ?a monstrous and indigestible composition in second-rate verse.? He attacks the piece for its weakness:

It contains a little philosophy, physics, metaphysics, physical science, freethought, a new mythology–a little of everything, in short, except the quenchless wit an humour which we find everywhere else in the work of Beaumarchais (287).

The 1787 version ended in the evil ruler committing suicide and Tarare, the virtuous hero, assuming the throne. Beaumarchais drew on his own philosophy in writing Tarare to express that France?s problems should not be blamed on the of the monarchy, but by the mistakes and the incompetence of a single monarch, like the evil King Atar in his piece. Beaumarchais, conscious of political unrest, was trying to convince his audience that France need not abolish the monarchy, but find a ruler better suited to be King.

At the time the play was given, mobs of hungry, angry people were gathering and were planting ?the seed of fear in the hearts of wealthy bourgeois like Beaumarchais (Chaudhuri 243).? This is likely why he so boldly enforced the value of the established monarchy, trying to preserve his position and his life. Tarare was met with ?considerable success? and was remounted five times (Rivers 287). The overthrow of a tyrannical ruler was an appealing idea, but his support of the monarchy came as somewhat of a surprise to the revolutionaries, who had assumed him to be more liberal (Cox 156).

In 1788, Beaumarchais was hoping to retire and drop out of the public eye. He had encountered many scandals and battles for his reputation and had been imprisoned far too many times to maintain his very vocal and visible position in society. His popularity had been waning, having been affected by recent lawsuits and accusations on his character. He was becoming in fact ?the target of popular jealousy, hared and mistrust (Chaudhuri 243).

He showed his ignorance to the political climate and the danger of revolution with his next move. When the Bastille was stormed on that fateful July 14, Beaumarchais was ?at the height of financial prosperity, engaged in building himself a sumptuous mansion in the very centre of unrest, facing the Bastille, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine (Rivers 292).? How could the playwright, who had put himself in the most precarious and ridiculously ignorant of positions, have consciously contributed to the Revolution? It is yet further proof that Beaumarchais was simply an intellectual and ?a revolutionist by instinct rather than conviction (Rivers 292).?

Beaumarchais was caught completely off guard on when the Bastille was stormed. He, like many other aristocrats, had hoped that the taking Tennis Court Oath by members of the Third Estate on June 20th of that year was a positive sign. He had hoped for France to ?achieve a smooth transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and establish civil liberty (Chaudhuri 243).? He praised the Third Estate when the swore the famous oath to establish a constitution, but began to lose hope as the situation, for him, took a turn for the worse. The revolutionaries were becoming more powerful, and Beaumarchais could see he was in a position of danger.

In 1790, he revived Tarare, changing the ending so that instead of an absolute monarch, Tarare became a constitutional monarch. The play still contained the ?controversial line? which emphasized ?one?s duty to be respectful toward the King?, but to be expedient, he abandoned the Prologue which contained his precious philosophy. Even with the changes, it became evident that Tarare would not be accepted by the patriots as it was in 1787 as they now believed in the constitution, not the King, and that the King himself should obey the constitution. Beaumarchais?s theories were not in compliance with those of the revolutionaries, and holding on to his theories was putting him in a very dangerous position indeed (Chaudhuri, 244).

At this point, Beaumarchais knew that he would never have the dream of a peaceful retirement. His house was continually being ransacked by angry patriots as rumors of his loyalty kept him under perpetual suspicion (Rivers, 296). In spite of the danger to his family and his freedom he would not let go of the ideals of the Enlightenment. He was aghast when he saw the stage being used as a political platform for extremist patriots (admittedly somewhat hypocritical as he did the same, only substituting politics for philosophy). He showed himself to be against the methods and the unsound practices of the revolutionaries, speaking out boldly against an extremist production of Charles IX, and at the same time criticizing the leaders of the National assembly praised by the play, including Mirabeau and Danton (Chaudhuri 243).

By 1792 all hopes for a constitutional monarchy had been lost. The Republic was established in September of that year, and Beaumarchais was forced to spend the remainder of his life in mild to extreme self preservation, trying to keep his family and his freedom. He became involved in yet another gun deal, ?an undertaking that was to dominate the rest of his life (Perla 37).? The gun deal put him into exile and he spent the remaining years of his life salvaging his fortune and his family, long abandoning any hope of preserving the ideals of the Enlightenment within what had become utter terror and anarchy.

Was Beaumarchais a true revolutionary? When examining the development of his early writing, it might seem so, but in our analysis of his later works, the answer can only be no. His was a revolution of the mind, not of action. He knew the power of literature and even then he compromised his writing to suit expediency, suggesting that he had fallen to political vacillation.

He was a true philosophe, not a republican. His involvement in the American revolution suited his ideals, and that is why he became a patron of their cause. He did not become involved because he was a champion of freedom by any means, he favored their ?orderly? revolution which involved the establishment of a constitution.

When he saw that France was losing her head and the high ideas of the Enlightenment were being abandoned, he could never support the republic. He felt they were fighting for nothing, fighting to destroy rather that establish a better society. Even though he was the first to defiantly attack the old regime with vigor and eloquence in his writing, he would never have wanted his plays to support the madness of the French Revolution. A philosophe of his hopes and ideals would never support a revolution that would become the end of civility and the entrance into utter terror and chaos.