It will perhaps be remembered that following the frightful adventure with the duc de Chaulnes, Beaumarchais had spent the evening of that same day in reading his play to a circle of friends. It had at that time passed the censor and
had been approved. Permission for its presentation had been signed by M. de Sartine, then lieutenant of police, and it was advertised for the thirteenth of February of that year, 1773. The affair with the Duke happened on the 11th, two days before the piece was to be performed. The difficulties which immediately followed were of a nature to cause the performance to be postponed indefinitely.
A year later, however, when the great success of the memoirs of Beaumarchais had made him so famous, “the comedians,” says Loménie, “wished to profit by the circumstance. They solicited permission to play the Barbier de Séville.”
But the police, fearing to find in it satirical allusions to the suit then in progress, caused a new censorship to be appointed, before permission could be obtained. Their report was, “The play has been censored with the greatest rigor but not a single word has been found which applies to the present situation.”
The representation was announced for Saturday, the 12th of February, 1774. Two days before this date, however, came an order from the authorities which prohibited the presentation. The noise had gone abroad that the piece had been altered and that it was full of allusions to the suit. Beaumarchais denied this rumor in a notice which terminates thus:
“I implore the court to be so good as to order that the manuscript of my piece, as it was consigned to the police a year ago, and as it was to be performed, be presented; I submit myself to all the rigor of the ordinances if in the context, or in the style of the work, anything be found which has the faintest allusion to the unhappy suit which M. Goëzman has raised against me and which would be contrary
to the profound respect which I profess for the parliament.
“Caron de Beaumarchais”
The prohibition was not removed and the piece was not presented until after the return of the author from Vienna in December, 1774.
“He then obtained permission,” says Loménie, “to have his Barbier played. Between the obtaining of the permission and the presentation he put himself at his ease; his comedy had been prohibited because of pretended allusions which did not exist; he compensated himself for this unjust prohibition by inserting precisely all the allusions which the authorities feared to find in it and which were not there. He reinforced it with a great number of satirical generalities, with a host of more or less audacious puns. He added a good many lengthy passages, increased it by an act and overcharged it so completely that it fell flat the day of its first appearance before the public.”