Fabre d'églantine, Philippe-François-Nazaire (1755-94). Modestly successful French playwright who was especially known for Le Philinte de Molière (1790), but who became much better known, then and now, as an enthusiastic Revolutionary: founder member of the Cordeliers, member of the Paris Commune, the Convention, and the original Comité de Salut Public, and author of the Revolutionary calendar. A faithful friend of Danton and supporter of indulgence, he perished along with the other Dantonistes. Fabre is the author of the much-loved ‘II pleut, il pleut bergère’. He called himself Fabre d'Églantine because he had won a gold églantine (a well-known poetry prize) at the Jeux Floraux de Toulouse.
[John Renwick]
