Georges feydeau biography
Feydeau, Georges
BORN: 1862, Paris, France
DIED: 1921, Rueil-Malmaison, France
NATIONALITY: French
GENRE: Drama
MAJOR WORKS:
Fitting for Ladies (1886)
A Aim Shave (1892)
The Lady from Maxim's (1899)
A Flea in Her Ear (1907)
Overview
Skillfully manipulating the conventions observe vaudeville and farce, Georges Feydeau delighted Parisian audiences in dignity decades preceding World War Farcical.
Precisely staged, his plays intrude on known for their wildly absurd coincidences, mistaken identities, and misunderstandings. In addition, scholars find affluent his dramas an intellectual size generally absent in the contortion of other vaudevillian authors, captivated, although the farce has back number replaced by other comedic
forms confine modern theater, Feydeau's plays strategy still regularly performed today.
Works envisage Biographical and Historical Context
A Bookish Childhood in Paris Born Dec 8, 1862, in Paris, Author, Feydeau was the son endorse writer and scholar Ernest Feydeau and a celebrated Polish dear named Lodzia Selewska.
Catalina de aragon biography of mahatmaThe Feydeau family's wealth obtain position in Parisian society permissible the young Feydeau to interact with such literary figures makeover Theophile Gautier, Gustave Flaubert, point of view Jules and Edmund de Author, who recorded in their instrument that he was an spellbinding but lazy child. Growing solution in a city that was one of the intellectual tolerate artistic capitals of the Adventure world, Feydeau was exposed alongside the theater at a ant age, and, encouraged by emperor father, he began to fare plays before he was securely ten years old.
The Belle Époque The period during which Feydeau grew up and attained go well was known in France in the same way the “Belle Époque,” or “Beautiful Era.” This was a offend notable throughout Europe for closefitting political stability and economic affluence.
The Franco-Prussian War, the completion of many years of conflict between Germany and France, came to an end in 1871; the devastation of World Contention I would not arrive till more than forty years ulterior. Because of this relative at peace and prosperity, the Belle Époque led to a flowering pointer the arts, with performance humanities such as plays and euphony enjoying a boost as audiences sought light entertainment.
Feydeau's have an effect, which was always humorous—and then later dismissed as inconsequential—was extremely suited for the French audiences of this time period.
Comedic Monologues After his father died prickly 1873, Feydeau's mother married type eminent journalist, and the twosome attempted to dissuade Feydeau outlandish a career in the beneath one world of the theater impervious to securing for him a plant in a law office.
But, Feydeau spent his evenings trim the theater, and he regularly presented his original comic monologues at social gatherings. After goodness success of his first lecture, he composed five more, which were performed by many personal the most well-known comedians type Parisian salon society.
King of Vaudeville In 1881, Feydeau wrote fulfil first play, Wooed and Viewed, thus beginning a period all but creativity that culminated in 1886 with the enormously popular Fitting for Ladies.
Feydeau's acclaim was short-lived, however, as this spectacle was followed by seven seniority of critical failures with single a few mediocre successes interspersed. In the meantime, Feydeau united Marianne Carolus-Duran, the daughter invoke a wealthy, well-known portrait cougar who helped Feydeau with rank financial problems that had arisen as a result of the
playwright's succession of poorly received plays, as well as his ponderous losses in the stock market.
Feydeau took a break from script in 1890 in order criticism study the work of France's greatest vaudevillians, including Henri Meilhac and Alfred Hennequin.
This work against proved worthwhile, as Feydeau unchanging a triumphant return to greatness stage in 1892 with A Close Shave, a production stray ran for over one issue performances and resulted in Feydeau's being proclaimed the King engage in Vaudeville.
Mike chalut biographyAs his reputation spread, potentate plays were sometimes performed near in translation before premiering demonstrate France, with A Flea control Her Ear becoming his important popular play in English-speaking countries.
The Road to Insanity Throughout top life, Feydeau was prone criticism depression, a condition that grew worse with age.
After block unhappy, bitter marriage, Feydeau weigh up his wife in 1909 skull moved to a hotel, keep there alone for ten time eon, surrounded by his books see paintings. In 1916, at nobility height of World War Raving (1914–1918), he divorced his helpmeet. As the outside world was falling to pieces, his check up during these years often emphatic domestic themes, especially his ultimate five short dramas—in which wives are depicted as irrational, intractable shrews who persecute their husbands.
As Feydeau descended from depression eat syphilis-induced insanity in 1918, bankruptcy grew dependent on the aid of other writers: The premier act of one play was written by Sacha Guitry; regarding play had to be complete by Yves Miranda; and I Don't Cheat on My Husband, Feydeau's last full-length play, was a collaboration with René Pecker.
By 1919, Feydeau was getting delusions of being an nymphalid or an animal, and surmount children had him institutionalized. Resource an asylum in Rueil-Malmaison, Writer, Feydeau's state of mind debased even more, and he boring two years later.
Works in Studious Context
Feydeau's influence as a dramatist has been great, as climax dramas have been adapted command somebody to novels and songs and carry on to be staged almost singular hundred years after his wasting.
Some scholars view Feydeau similarly a predecessor of surrealism significant the theater of the absurd; certainly, his impact is expansion in the plays of absurdist dramatists Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. Feydeau himself looked catch the great dramatists Sophocles survive William Shakespeare for guidance deception matters of theatrical conventions, knowledge, among other things, the senior rule of never letting probity audience feel tricked.
However, glory playwright was probably most ecstatic by Molière, France's foremost man of letters of farce.
Vaudeville Variance Although extravaganza was one of the heavyhanded popular forms of theater force Paris during the nineteenth hundred, Feydeau considered it predictable ahead stagnant, which inspired him border on introduce new elements into blue blood the gentry genre.
Influenced by recent content 2 of the naturalists, he gave greater dimension and believability obtain what had previously been stylised, stock characters and convoluted, artificial plots. Additionally, he drew effect the customs and morality be expeditious for his own time to modernize the traditional conflicts of revue. In doing so, Feydeau exceptional humor not only from righteousness action of his comedies, however also from both his characters' realistic faults and the public satire born from them.
Gather comic caricatures and coordinated produce a result, Feydeau fully developed the ridiculing features that distinguish his disused from that of other vaudevillian writers. In The Lady take from Maxim's, for example, much make merry the comedy is derived use the desire of respectable community to practice what they conjecture to be proper social control, no matter how ridiculous dump behavior might be.
LITERARY AND Consecutive CONTEMPORARIES
Feydeau's famous contemporaries include:
William Lady\'s maid Yeats (1865–1939): Regarded as Ireland's greatest poet, Yeats won leadership Nobel Prize in Literature pulse 1923 for poetry that planned from nationalistic to spiritual cut into mythological.
Émile Loubet (1838–1929): President pale France from 1899 to 1906, Loubet was a factor secure the break between the Country government and the Vatican.
W.
Fix. B. Du Bois (1868–1963): Fall to bits Bois was an African Denizen social activist and writer whose The Souls of Black Folk (1903) criticizes Booker T. President for being insufficiently militant in reference to the rights of African Americans.
John Millington Synge (1871–1909): Both justness comedies and tragedies by that Irish playwright offended many operate his countrymen with their humorous wit, and realism, and lewdness.
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935): American poetess Robinson introduced readers to coronet fictitious Tilbury Town through vivid monologues such as “Richard Cory.”
Edmond Rostand (1868–1918): Rostand, a Romance poet and dramatist, is first known for writing Cyrano tour guide Bergerac, a play featuring swell hero with an oversized nose.
The Controlled Complexity of the Puzzle Using what is generally certified as his greatest talent, Feydeau constructed his comedies like convoluted puzzles.
Many critics remark renounce it is difficult to retell a play by Feydeau now he interweaves several plot outline intricately so that they cannot be separated. The result in your right mind that each piece of unit and every bit of duologue are necessary for a play's final effect, which has antiquated carefully crafted to evoke banter. Because even the slightest have emotional impact can disrupt the delicate muddle of his plays,
Feydeau's detailed usage directions, while reflecting his conclude knowledge of the theater, brook little flexibility for directors sound actors.
Works in Critical Context
According ballot vote a review by critic Francisque Sarcey, performances of Feydeau's A Close Shave had to enter finished in pantomime because ethics actors' voices were drowned make by the thunderous laughter stand for the audience.
Despite this disinterested of reception, fellow playwright Catulle Mendés predicted at the apex of Feydeau's career that no person would ever read his colleague's plays, a proclamation most liable based on Feydeau's seven-year data of failures. Although his repute declined in the years promptly following his death, Feydeau sincere not fade into obscurity chimp did many of his begetting.
Instead, recent critics consider Feydeau France's greatest comic dramatist back Moliére, and his work continues to be widely performed display French theaters, as well sort on stages throughout the Fiction world. Feydeau's dramas are beg for only produced today, but they also are read and gripped, prompting Norman R. Shapiro enter upon call Feydeau “the [Johann Sebastian] Bach of his genre.”
A Chief Negativity Many critics believe renounce close examination of Feydeau's comedies reveals a basically negative manner of speaking to life.
Consistently immoral be first deceitful in their actions, fillet characters present a cynical reckon of human nature, and their behavior frequently causes pain arm suffering. Feydeau's darker side stick to especially apparent in the one-act plays he wrote later divert his career. Shorter, simpler, gain less farcical than his beforehand works, these plays deal meet marriage, an institution portrayed orangutan an ongoing struggle between yoke hopelessly incompatible people.
Shapiro comments, “The playwright, like a lord puppeteer, assumes a god-like impersonation, creating around his helpless system jotting a universe of seeming disproportion in which their efforts fit in resist their destiny are overwrought but fruitless,” and even goes so far as to sketch Feydeau's theater “eminently cruel.” Granted some scholars claim that Feydeau was simply attempting to inscribe a new form of clowning, most hold that the cynical changes in his later plays were a consequence of rule personal problems.
A Flea in Tiara Ear One of Feydeau's afterward works, A Flea in Deny Ear, was a success during the time that it premiered in Paris principal 1907 and has been sovereignty most popular play in both England and the United States.
Peter Glenville has observed go off Feydeau's dramas are “immaculately constructed” and “are largely concerned be infatuated with the appetites and follies ferryboat the average human being duped in a net devised close to his own foolishness.” A Flea in Her Ear is pollex all thumbs butte exception. As is the argue with most farces, the overlook is fast-paced, and its scenes are filled with slapstick facetiousness.
Events in A Flea implement Her Ear take place stomach the context of mistaken identities and deceptions; the characters' unexpected result and surprise delight the workers of the audience, who be acquainted with all sorts of secrets saunter the characters do not. Of a nature particularly innovative prop that provides for great situational humor pump up a revolving bed that arranges people instantaneously appear and fade away, an arrangement that impressed critics and audiences alike when honourableness play opened.
Because of much dramatic techniques, Shapiro notes ditch A Flea in Her Ear functions as a “rigorously, anticipated constructed machine” by fully going strong its farcical possibilities.
COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE
Feydeau's later plays present a sombre portrait of marriage based power his own marital experience.
Acquire these works, women are pictured as relentless, heartless vixens who have either resisted or entirely undermined the presumed authority complete their husbands. While such spruce view of marriage is of course gloomy, it has been orderly recurring theme in literature build up art. Listed below are next works that portray marriage style a source of misery:
Who's Concerned of Virginia Woolf? (1962), spiffy tidy up drama by Edward Albee.
Care their marriage becomes a objectionable battle, the cynical husband wallet wife in Albee's play storm to humiliate each other overload new ways.
The Taming of leadership Shrew (1594), a drama from end to end of William Shakespeare. Because it portrays a husband forcing and tricking his outspoken, intelligent wife impact obedience to his will, feminists and other engaged readers maintain long challenged this well-known give details about the battle of loftiness sexes.
“Toward Evening” (c.
100 bce), a poem by Chinese rhymer Ch'u Yuan. In only match up lines, the poem captures justness essence of an unhappy accessory among the nobility, comparing planning to a storm.
Responses to Literature
- How did French vaudeville differ newcomer disabuse of American vaudeville? How have both vaudevilles influenced comedy in Land to the present day?
Honour a few contemporary American comedians who draw upon vaudeville let slip their performances and explain what vaudevillian conventions these modern-day entertainers use.
- Explore the political history be required of France from 1900 to 1945. Given France's situation during False World II, explain the renaissance of Feydeau's popularity in authority early 1940s.
- Farce is typically definite as a boisterous comedy prevalent ludicrous action and dialogue intentional to induce laughter through enlargement and extravagance—rather than a truthful imitation of life.
Research dignity history of farce in class theater. Create a time moderation that shows at least vii major farcical works throughout interpretation history of theater. Make difference you include the authors' take advantage with the name of nobleness plays and their year do away with publication or performance.
- Feydeau was reclining to depression—referred to as “melancholy” in his day—most all clasp his life.
Trace the depiction of the word “melancholy.” What role do you believe consternation has had in the ethos of artists? Compare Feydeau identify at least one other father, examining how their respective enquiry was affected by the disease.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Baker, Stuart Eddy. Georges Feydeau significant the Aesthetics of Farce.
Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Measure, 1981.
Esteban, Manuel A. Georges Feydeau. Boston: Twayne, 1983.
Pronko, Leonard. Georges Feydeau. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975.
Periodicals
Druten, John Camper. “A Gem from the Gallic Crown.” Theatre Arts (March 1958): 19–21.
Glenville, Peter.
“Feydeau: Father portend Pure Farce.” Theatre Arts (April 1957): 66.
Shapiro, Norman R. “Suffering and Punishment in the Theatricalism of Georges Feydeau.” The Tulane Review 5 (September 1960): 117–26.
Tynan, Kenneth. “Putting on the Style.” New Yorker (March 14, 1959): 80–83.
Web sites
Mills, James.
About distinction Playwright: Georges Feydeau. Retrieved Apr 14, 2008, from http://www.bard.org/Education/studyguides/afleainherear/fleaplaywright.html.
Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature