Eugène Scribe

in full
Augustin-Eugène Scribe
born Dec.
24, 1791, Paris, France
died Feb. 20, 1861, Paris
French
dramatist whose works dominated the Parisian
stage for more than 30 years.
Scribe began his career as a playwright by
resurrecting the vaudeville, an obsolete
form of short satirical comedy that used
rhymed and sung couplets and featured
musical interludes. He soon began replacing
its stock characters with ones drawn from
contemporary society and introducing
elements of the comedy of manners into his
plays. He eliminated the musical interludes
altogether and expanded the elements of
comic intrigue until his plays had become
genuine comedies. He went on to become one
of the great masters of the neatly plotted,
tightly constructed well-made play.
Although
mostly forgotten today, Scribe was a writer
of prodigious industry who also achieved
great popular success. He wrote almost 400
theatre pieces of every kind, often in
collaboration in what was virtually a
literary factory. His comedies, which
express the values and predilections of
bourgeois society and praise the virtues of
commerce and family life, were intended to
appeal to the material aspirations of a
middle-class audience whose capacity for
idealism was limited. Among his many
comedies are Une Nuit de la garde nationale
(1815; “A Night with the National Guard”),
Le Charlatanisme (1825), and Le Mariage
d’argent (1827; “Marriage for Money”).
Scribe is also remembered for such
historical plays as Le Verre d’eau (1840;
“The Glass of Water”), which derives great
historical events from a trivial incident,
and Bertrand et Raton (1833), a historical
comedy. His Adrienne Lecouvreur (1849), a
melodrama about an actress who loves a
nobleman, unaware of his high rank and true
identity, was favoured as a vehicle by such
notable actresses as Sarah Bernhardt and
Helena Modjeska. Scribe also wrote a ballet
and several opera libretti. He was elected
to the Académie Fra