Author of Improbable Patriot: The Secret History of Monsieur de Beaumarchais,
the French Playwright Who Saved the American Revolution
“You think you’re a genius,” the
young man thundered at the older gentleman. “With all your money, fame, and
influence, just what did you do to get so rich?
“You took the trouble to be born–nothing
else,” the growling youngster answered his own question. “You are nothing but an ordinary man!”
Although the words might well be
those of an “Occupy Wall Street” protester to a billionaire banker or
hedge-fund manager, they were actually sounded more than 230 years ago by a
simple barber–or at least, an actor playing a simple barber on a Paris stage.
But the words resounded across France and, though King Louis XVI tried to ban
them and jail the author, it was too late. The inflammatory language of Figaro,
the main character in The Barber of Seville and its sequel The
Marriage of Figaro, inspired millions of oppressed French commoners to rise
up and overthrow the monarchy and aristocracy.
The author of the barber's words was
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, arguably France’s greatest playwright. A
commoner by birth, Pierre Caron began his career as a brilliant teenaged
inventor, who produced the world’s first miniature time pieces–so small and
light that French Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI could wear them on
their wrists--and elevate Caron to world renown. Educated by his engineer
father and musically talented mother, Caron was a brilliant musician,
songwriter, poet and playwright, as well as inventor. Thwarted in every stab at
success as a commoner, he married a nobleman’s widow and assumed her noble name
of de Beaumarchais.and immediately soared to success, accumulating the
trappings of wealth, fame, and title.
