Editing Eugène Labiche (section)

==Career==
Labiche tried his hand at dramatic criticism in the ''Revue des théâtres'' and in 1838, wrote and premiered two plays.
The small ''Théâtre du Pantheon'' produced, to some popular success, his drama ''L'Avocat Loubet'', while a [[Comédie en vaudeville|vaudeville]], ''Monsieur de Coyllin, ou l'homme infiniment poli'' (written in collaboration with [[Marc-Michel]] and performed at the Palais Royal) introduced a provincial actor who was to become and to remain a great Parisian favourite, the famous comedian [[Grassot]].{{sfn|Filon|1911|p=5}}

[[File:Eugène Labiche A.jpg|thumb|right|Statue in [[Souvigny-en-Sologne]], France]]In the same year,  Labiche, still doubtful about his true vocation, published a romance called ''La Clé des champs''.  According to [[Léon Halévy]], Labiche's publisher went bankrupt soon after the novel was out: "A lucky misadventure, for this timely warning of Destiny sent him back to the stage, where a career of success was awaiting him." There was yet another obstacle in the way. When he married, Labiche solemnly promised his wife's parents that he would renounce a profession then considered incompatible with moral regularity and domestic happiness. A year later, his wife released him from his vow, and Labiche recalled the incident when he dedicated the first edition of his complete works to her.{{sfn|Filon|1911|p=5}}

In conjunction with [[Charles Varin]], [[Marc-Michel]], [[Clairville (Louis-François Nicolaïe)|Louis François Clairville]], [[Dumanoir|Philippe François Dumanoir]], and others, he contributed comic plays interspersed with couplets to various Paris theatres.  He was considered a successful but undistinguished vaudevillist, until he paired with [[Marc-Michel]] to create the five-act [[farce]], ''[[Un chapeau de paille d'Italie (play)|Un Chapeau de paille d'Italie]]'' (''The Italian Straw Hat''), which turned out to be a major success upon its opening in August 1851. It is an accomplished specimen of the French [[imbroglio]]-style play, in which someone is in search of something, but does not find it till five minutes before the curtain falls.  For the next twenty-five years, he continued to write successful comedies and vaudevilles, all basically constructed on the same plan and containing a dose of comic observation and good sense.
"Of all the subjects," he said, "which offered themselves to me, I have selected the bourgeois. Essentially mediocre in his vices and in his virtues, he stands half-way between the hero and the scoundrel, between the saint and the profligate."{{sfn|Filon|1911|p=5}}

During the second period of his career Labiche collaborated with [[Alfred Delacour]], [[Adolphe Choler]], and others. Emile Augier said: "The distinctive qualities which secured a lasting vogue for the plays of Labiche are to be found in all the comedies written by him with different collaborators, and are conspicuously absent from those which they wrote without him."  Even more important was his professional relationship with actor [[:fr:Jean Marie Geoffroy|Jean Marie Geoffroy]], who specialized in Labiche's pompous and fussy bourgeois characters.  Many of Labiche's roles were written specifically for Geoffroy.  ''Célimare le bien-aimé'' (1863), ''Le Voyage de M. Perrichon'' (1860), ''La Grammaire'', ''Un Pied dans le crime'', ''La Cagnotte'' (1864), were some of Labiche's most important plays.{{sfn|Filon|1911|p=5}}