So long and lovingly had Beaumarchais carried about with him this child of his esprit, that the two at last practically had become one. Gudin says, “The handsome, the gay, the amiable Figaro, daring and philosophical, making sport of his masters and not able to get on without them, murmuring under the yoke and yet bearing it with gaiety” is no other than Beaumarchais in person. “Welcomed in one city, imprisoned in another, and everywhere superior to events, praised by these, blamed by those, enduring evil, making fun of the stupid, braving the wicked, laughing at misery and shaving all the world, you see me at last in Seville.”
“Le Comte—‘Who gave thee so gay a philosophy?’
“Figaro—‘The habit of misfortune, I hasten to laugh at everything for fear of being obliged to weep.’ (‘Le Barbier de Séville,’ Act I, Scene II) or again—
“Le Comte—‘Do you write verses, Figaro?’
“Figaro—‘That is precisely my misfortune, your Excellency. When it became known to the ministers that I sent enigmas to the journals, that madrigals were afloat of my making, in a word that I had been printed alive, they took it tragically, and deprived me of my position under the pretext that the love of letters is incompatible with l’esprit des affaires.’”
When Figaro re-appears a few years later, we shall see all his characteristics intensified in proportion as the experiences and success of Beaumarchais had heightened his daring and address.
We must not make the mistake however of identifying
Beaumarchais with his creation, for to create Figaro required one greater than he. There is undoubtedly a strongly developed Figaro side to Beaumarchais’s nature and it is this which always had prevented him from being taken seriously, and which made him an unfathomable being even to those very persons who depended upon and profited most by his rare gifts.
With such limitless resources, such power of combination, such insight, incapable of taking offense at any injury, so generous, forgiving, laughing at misfortune, how could he be taken seriously? With Beaumarchais, as with Figaro, it is the very excess of his qualities and gifts which alarms. As one of his biographers has said, “What deceives is, that in seeing Figaro display so much esprit, so much daring, we involuntarily fear that he will abuse his powers in using them for evil; this fear is really a kind of homage; Figaro in the piece, like Beaumarchais in the world, gives a handle to calumny but never justifies it. The one and the other never interfere except for good, and if they love intrigue it is principally because it gives them occasion to use their esprit.”
The first conception of Figaro dates very far back in the history of Beaumarchais. Already before his return from Spain the character was beginning to take form in his mind. Its first appearance was in a farce produced at the Château d’Étioles. We have spoken already of its rejection by the Comédie des Italiens, after it had assumed the form of a comic opera. Made over into a drama, it had soon after been accepted by the Théâtre-Français.