Mariage de Figaro, ou la Folle Journée, Le. Beaumarchais's dynamic, fast-moving sequel to Le Barbier de Séville. Three years have passed. Almaviva is married to Rosine and, though jealous of her fidelity, freely indulges his own sensuality. The gracious comtesse still loves her husband, though—suffering cruel neglect—she is stirred by vague ‘romantic’ longings. Figaro, now the caretaker of the castle and the comte's valet de chambre, loves Suzanne, the comtesse's chambermaid. The comte has agreed to their mariage and has promised them a fine bedroom between his own and the comtesse's. Suzanne knows, however, that the generosity hides ulterior motives. The plot concerns, therefore, these rival claimants for the vivacious Suzanne: on the one hand, Figaro with his native wit and intelligence; on the other, the comte with all the advantages of birth and authority but who is—for our greater amusement—constantly thwarted; the young page Chérubin (fast becoming an embryonic Almaviva) is in love with the comtesse and further complicates the general situation by making the comte jealous. The denouement comes when the comtesse, masquerading as Suzanne, meets the comte after dark at the trysting-place her maid had arranged with him: the comte is exposed to the ultimate but emotionally useful indignity of courting his own wife. Unmasked, he can no longer hinder the marriage of Figaro.
The comedy, completed in 1781, was performed (with immense success) only in 1784, not because of Beaumarchais's incessant rewriting but because Louis XVI, shocked by the play's constant disrespect for authority, blocked its performance, thereby giving it exaggerated (retrospective) claims to revolutionary subversiveness, which it does not really have. Figaro the ‘frondeur’ is probably less interested in destroying the established order than in becoming part of it.
— John Renwick
