‘Why,’ says Almaviva to Figaro, ‘is there always something louche about everything you do?’

David Coward

  • The Figaro Plays by Pierre de Beaumarchais, translated by John Wells
    Dent, 290 pp, £20.00, December 1997, ISBN 0 460 87923 5

Was the creator of Figaro on the side of the angels or simply president of Beaumarchais Enterprises? In his lifetime, he was an upstart in the eyes of the great and the good, and governments suspected his motives. The middle classes envied his wealth and rejoiced at his failures, but saw him as the embodiment of successful enterprise and the defender of their cause. Popular opinion, which he manipulated expertly, hailed him as a hero, at least until 1789, when the adoring crowd spotted feet of clay and turned on him.

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