In the brilliant preface already alluded to, which Beaumarchais published with the play after its success was established, he allowed himself the pleasure of mocking, not only at the journalists and critics, but at the public itself. “You should have seen,” he wrote, “the feeble friends of the Barbier, dispersing themselves, hiding their faces, or disappearing; the women, always so brave when they protect, burying themselves in hoods, and lowering their confused eyes; the men running to make honorable amends for the good they had said of my piece and throwing the pleasure which they had taken in it upon my execrable manner of reading things. Some gazing fixedly to the right when they felt me pass to the left, feigned not to see me, others more courageous, but looking about to assure themselves that no one saw them, drew me into a corner to ask, ‘Eh? how did you produce such an illusion? Because you must admit my friend that you have produced the greatest platitude in the world.’”
Beaumarchais could afford to indulge in such pleasantries, for his piece was not only continuing to draw vast crowds, but it had begun already a triumphant progress over Europe. In St. Petersburg alone it went through fifty representations.
But the revenge of Beaumarchais did not stop here; most of the cuttings which he had been forced to make in the play, the witticisms, jests and tirades were far too good to be lost. He saved them for future use and made the public laugh over and applaud what it first hissed. When Figaro made his second appearance, on the mad day of his marriage, he used them nearly all. Beaumarchais’s revenge then was complete. But while waiting for this, he had the audacity to make the comedians themselves mock at their own playing, as we shall see presently.
The story of the Barbier de Séville is of the simplest: “Never,” says Lintilhac, “did any one make a better thing out of nothing.”
A young nobleman, the count Almaviva, tired of the conquests which interest, convention, and vanity make so easy, has left Madrid to follow to Seville a charming, sweet, and fresh young girl Rosine, with whom he has never been able to exchange a word owing to the constant oversight of her guardian, the Doctor Bartholo, who is on the point of marrying her and securing to himself her fortune. In the words of Figaro, the doctor is a “beautiful, fat, short, young, old man, slightly gray, cunning, sharp, cloyed, who watches, ferrets, scolds and grumbles all at the same time and so naturally inspires only aversion in the charming Rosine.” The count, on the contrary, is a sympathetic figure, who, although disguised as a student and only seen from afar, has already won the heart of the young girl.
Figaro, the gay and resourceful barber to Bartholo has long ago succeeded in making himself indispensable to the latter and to his whole household, while at the same time taking advantage of the avarice and cunning of the doctor and turning them to his own account. It is he who recognizes the disguise of the student, his old master, the count Almaviva, loitering under Rosine’s window, and offers his services in outwitting the doctor whose arrangements are made for the consummation of his marriage on that self-same day.
It is no easy matter which he here undertakes, for with all his resourcefulness, Figaro has to deal with a suspicious old man, subtle and cunning, who is almost as resourceful as himself.
The count obtains entrance to the house as a music teacher sent by Rosine’s usual instructor whom the count
announces as ill.
A most amusing scene ensues when Basile, the true instructor, appears, unconscious that he has a substitute and where, by the quick wit of the others, even the old doctor is made to laugh him out of the house, before the situation is spoiled. Basile goes, utterly mystified by the whole proceeding, but carrying with him “one of the irresistible arguments with which the count’s pockets are always filled.”