But to return to Lintilhac: “We may see that Figaro, by the aid of two clever women and his own esprit has the opportunity to interest the public and to bring all to a happy ending.
“‘Be on your guard that day, M. Figaro! First put the clocks in advance so as to be a little surer of marrying. Get rid of Marceline who wants to marry you herself—take all the money and the presents, let the count have his way, in little things; drub Basil roundly,... (Act I, Scene II). And let us finish the programme which the fat doctor interrupts,—giving yourself full rein, invective politics, graft and those who live by it; ridicule censorship, and the law, as well as those who abuse both—banter privileges and the privileged and all that attaches itself to either, in a word—open the way for the men of genius who are preparing there below in the obscure crowd, and who wish to emerge.
“But the time to laugh, la folle journée commences. Quel imbroglio! Twenty times everything seems finished, and suddenly, an unexpected incident, but always arising out of the situation, throws forward in rapid movement that brilliant group of personages. They seek, they evade one another, group themselves in tableaux turn by turn, animated and gracious, laughing or grotesque....
“And the new song to the old music! And the scene which a moment ago framed these charming groups, suddenly fills with the noise of the crowd and the whole village which sings. Quel crescendo of gaiety!...
“Take the most ingenious comedy of Lope de Vega, or Calderon, add the gaiety of Regnard, the comique of George Dandin, the amusing of Vadé, and one will scarcely have in imagination the equivalent of the scene on the night which terminates the Mariage de Figaro.”
And his faithful friend Gudin says of it: “In this piece the parterre applauded not only scenes founded upon true comique—that of situations, new characters, like Cherubim and Bridoison—but also the courageous man who dared undertake to combat by ridicule the libertinage of the great lords, the ignorance of magistrates, the venality of officers and the unbecoming way of pleading of lawyers.
“Beaumarchais might perhaps consider himself more authorized in this than anyone else since he had been calumniated so outrageously by great lords, and injured by the insolent pleadings of lawyers, and blâmé by bad judges.... Let us dare to say what is true, that since Molière no author had better understood the human heart, or better painted the manners of his time.”
And his latest critic, Lintilhac, a hundred years after Gudin, corroborates his judgment. “By the creation of Figaro, Beaumarchais is the first comic French author after Molière, the incomparable painter of character.”
Of the famous monologue of the piece, Gudin says, “I remember that when the author composed it in a moment of enthusiasm, he was alarmed himself at its extent. We examined it together; I regarded it with severe attention. Everything seemed to me in its place; not a word could be omitted without regretting it. Every phrase had a moral or a useful object proper to cause the spectator to reflect either on human nature or on the abuses of society.”
Of its moral significance Beaumarchais has commented in his preface to the play: “An author has but one duty; to correct men in making them see themselves as they are, whether he moralizes in laughing or weeps in moralizing.”