Fabre d'Églantine
Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine (28 July 1750 – 5 April 1794), commonly known as Fabre d'Églantine (French pronunciation: [fabʁ deɡlɑ̃tin]), was a French actor, dramatist, poet, and politician of the French Revolution.
He was born in Carcassonne, Aude. His surname was Fabre, the d'Églantine being added in commemoration of his receiving a silver wild rose (French: églantine) from Clémence Isaure from the Academy of the Jeux Floraux at Toulouse. He married Marie Strasbourg Nicole Godin on 9 November 1778. His earliest works included the poem Étude de la nature, "The Study of Nature", in 1783. After travelling in the provinces as an actor, he came to Paris, where he produced an unsuccessful comedy entitled Les Gens de lettres, ou Le provincial à Paris (1787).
A tragedy, Augusta, produced at the Théâtre Français, also proved a failure. Many of his plays were popular and he is remarked as one of the most important playwrights during the French Revolution. His most popular play was: Philinte, ou La suite du Misanthrope (1790), supposed to be a continuation of Molière's Le Misanthrope, but the hero of the piece is a different character from the nominal prototype —a pure and simple egotist. On its publication, the play was introduced by a preface, in which the author satirises L'Optimiste of his rival Jean François Collin d'Harleville, whose Châteaux en Espagne had gained the applause which Fabre's Présomptueux (1789) had failed to win. The character of Philinte had much political significance. The play's character Alceste received the highest praise, and stands for the patriot citizen, while Philinte is a dangerous in disguise. Fabre constructed the play to represent what he envisioned as the new relationship between theater and society. Not only did Fabre believe that Old Regime society was bankrupt, Old Regime comedy was viewed by the budding playwright as equally without value. Fabre d’Eglantine believed that he could fashion a place for theater in revolutionary culture and redeem French drama by developing a new form of theater that would promote the new social order of equality and fraternity. He found his justification and framework in Rousseaus’s critique of theatricality and advocated transparency as the critical transformative element that could generate theater worthy of and in keeping with revolutionary culture. As envisioned by Fabre, evolutionary political institutions would not shape theater; rather, a regenerated revolutionary theatrical culture would redeem the work of art, generating a new, revolutionary society.
...
Wikipedia