Thermidor (play)

Thermidor is a four-act dramatic play by the 19th-century French playwright Victorien Sardou.

The play is set during the French Revolution and is one of seven Sardou plays set in that period. The plot follows a young actor, Labussière (based on a historical person), who infiltrates the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety and saves its potential victims by destroying their files. This plot is set against the revolt of 27 July 1794 known as the Thermidorian Reaction.

It was first staged on January 24, 1891 at the Comédie-Française with sets and costumes designed by the author, and executed by Eugène Carpezat, Philippe Chaperon, and others. In the next performance, on the 26th, radical Republican members of the audience took offense at Sardou's criticism of Maximilien Robespierre. They became threatening to the point of riot, with noise, confusion, shouted threats to Sardou's life, and police finally called to clear the crowd away. The government of President Carnot prohibited the production from all state-funded venues. It would reopen years later, March 3, 1896, at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, again starring Benoît-Constant Coquelin.

The play is named for the eleventh month of the French Republican Calendar. The dish lobster thermidor is named in honour of the play.

Act I

It is the era of the French Revolution, just before the fall of Robespierre. It is five in the morning, the month July (Thermidor), and on the banks of the River Seine in Paris, between the Isle Louvier and the Arsenal, the washerwomen come to rinse and beetle soiled linen. Citizen Labussière, a former actor who has been appointed Registering Clerk to the Committee of Public Safety, comes to the banks of the Seine, accompanied by Lupin, for a purpose which requires the utmost secrecy. They meet an amateur fisherman who has come out at that early hour to avoid the reproaches of his wife. She is enraged at his conduct at the theatre the evening before when he applauded the hero of the play. The hero had denounced his wife because she pitied the victims of the guillotine. Labussière sends up the fisherman by leading him to complain about those who keep up the fashion of wearing powder in their hair while flour is so scarce that famine is imminent, and by reminding him that Robespierre himself always goes powdered. The fisherman is alarmed, and Lupin advises him to make himself scarce at once, which he does hastily.

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