Georges Feydeau

GeorgesLéonJulesMarie Feydeau 8 December 1862 5 June 1921 was a French playwright of the Belle Époque era remembered for his farces written between 1886 and 1914 Feydeau was born in Paris to middleclass parents and raised in an artistic and literary environment From an early age he was fascinated by the theatre and as a child he wrote plays and organised his schoolfellows into a drama group In his teens he wrote comic monologues and moved on to writing longer plays His first fulllength comedy Tailleur pour dames Ladies tailor was well received but was followed by a string of comparative failures He gave up writing for a time in the early 1890s and studied the methods of earlier masters of French comedy particularly Eugène Labiche Alfred Hennequin and Henri Meilhac With his technique honed and sometimes in collaboration with a coauthor he wrote seventeen fulllength plays between 1892 and 1914 many of which have become staples of the theatrical repertoire in France and abroad They include LHôtel du libre échange The Free Exchange Hotel 1894 La Dame de chez Maxim The lady from Maxims 1899 La Puce à loreille A flea in her ear 1907 and Occupetoi dAmélie Look after Amélie 1908 The plays of Feydeau are marked by closely observed characters with whom his audiences could identify plunged into fastmoving comic plots of mistaken identity attempted adultery splitsecond timing and a precariously happy ending After the great success they enjoyed in his lifetime they were neglected after his death until the 1940s and 1950s when productions by JeanLouis Barrault and the ComédieFrançaise led a revival of interest in his works at first in Paris and subsequently worldwide Feydeaus personal life was marred by depression unsuccessful gambling and divorce In 1919 his mental condition deteriorated sharply and he spent his final two years in a sanatorium at Rueil now RueilMalmaison near Paris He died there in 1921 at the age of fiftyeight Feydeau was born at his parents house in the Rue de Clichy Paris on 8 December 1862 His father ErnestAimé Feydeau 18211873 was a financier and a moderately wellknown writer whose first novel Fanny 1858 was a succès de scandale and earned him some notoriety It was condemned from the pulpit by the Archbishop of Paris and consequently sold in large numbers and had to be reprinted Ernest dedicated the new edition to the archbishop Feydeaus mother was Lodzia Bogaslawa née Zelewska 18381924 known as Léocadie When she married Ernest Feydeau in 1861 he was a fortyyearold childless widower and she was twentytwo She was a famous beauty and rumours spread that she was the mistress of the Duc de Morny or even the Emperor Napoleon III and that one of them was the father of Georges her first child In later life Léocadie commented How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that a boy as intelligent as Georges is the son of that idiotic emperor She was more equivocal about her relationship with the duke and Georges later said that people could think Morny his father if they wanted to Source Article Georges Feydeau from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA