Labiche, Eugène (1815-88). Master of farce under the Second Empire. Of about 173 plays written with collaborators between 1837 and 1877, the earliest reflect the loose, improvisatory techniques of the popular vaudeville. Later plays pay more attention to individual characterization and the comedy of manners, mocking bourgeois attitudes to money, property, and marriage. In the free-wheeling invention evident in farces like Un chapeau de paille d'Italie (1851), Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon (1860), and La Station Champbaudet (1862), scheming lovers, pompous fathers, and purblind husbands are propelled at dizzying speed through the hoops of deceit, dowry-hunting, and marital infidelity.
[S. Beynon John]
