Editing Marcel Achard (section)

==Themes and variations within a philosophical outlook==
A native of the [[Rhône (département)|Rhône département]]'s [[Urban Community of Lyon]], France's second largest metropolitan area, '''Marcel-Auguste Ferréol''' was born in [[Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon]], one of the city's suburbs, and adopted his [[pen name]] at the start of his writing career in the early 1920s. Able to absorb knowledge quickly, he became, in 1916, in the midst of [[World War I]], a village schoolteacher at the age of 17. In 1919, a few months after the end of the war, the 20-year-old aspiring writer arrived in [[Paris]] and found jobs as a prompter at the [[Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier]] and as a journalist for various publications, including the major daily newspaper, ''[[Le Figaro]]''.

Marcel Achard wrote his first play in 1922 and had a major success the following year when renowned actor-director [[Charles Dullin]] staged his play ''Voulez-vous jouer avec moâ?'' [''Would You Like to Play with Me?''], a sensitively delicate comedy about circus and its clowns, casting the playwright in a small part, as one of the clowns. The production set a pattern for the remainder of his theatrical output, most of which can be considered as 20th century reworkings of [[stock character]]s and situations from the Italian traditional [[Commedia dell'arte]]. The personages of [[Pierrot]] and [[Columbina|Columbine]] are transported into modern-day settings and inserted into an occasionally mawkish or nostalgic love plot with equal doses of laughter mingled with pain and regret.

These themes were expanded upon in two of his most popular plays of the period&mdash;1929's ''Jean de la Lune'' [''John of the Moon'' a/k/a ''The Dreamer''] and 1932's ''Domino''. ''Jean'' showed how the unwavering trust of Jef, the faithful [[Pierrot]] prototype, transforms his scandalously adulterous wife into his idealized image of her, while ''Domino'' presented another unfaithful wife who pays a gigolo to make a pretense of courting her so as to distract her husband from her real lover, but the gigolo manages to act his character with such pretend sincerity that she winds up falling in love with this fictional persona.

The distinctive quality of Achard's plays was their dreamlike mood of sentimental melancholy, underscored by the very titles which were primarily taken from popular bittersweet songs of the day. 1924's ''Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre'' [''[[John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough|Marlborough]] Gets Himself Off to War''], 1935's ''Noix de coco'' [''Coconuts''], 1946's ''[[Auprès de ma blonde]]'' [''Close to My Girlfriend''] and ''Savez-vous planter les choux?'' [''Do You Know How to Plant Cabbage?''] and 1948's ''Nous irons à Valparaiso'' [''We're Going to [[Valparaiso]]''] are among some examples of this specific style.