The Follies of a Day; Or, The Marriage of Figaro

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Beaumarchais's Le Mariage de Figaro (1784) is the most politically explosive comedy of the Enlightenment: the servant Figaro outmaneuvers his count at every turn, and the play's demonstration that wit and intelligence are not the property of the aristocracy was read as revolutionary — Napoleon called it 'the revolution already in action.' Louis XVI tried to suppress it for three years before it was performed to rapturous success. Mozart's opera Le Nozze di Figaro (1786) made it permanently famous. Holcroft's English translation, used here, was itself an unauthorized adaptation that added to the play's notoriety.