Flers, Robert de (1872-1927), and Caillavet, Gaston Arman de (1869-1915). French playwrights who, in collaboration before World War I, were fashionable purveyors of brittle and sophisticated plays about high society. They were not farceurs, like their near contemporaries Courteline and Feydeau, but versatile makers of light comedies of manners. Their style varies from the smart and cynical, in Les Sentiers de la vertu (1903), to the sentimental L'Amour veille (1907). When they resort to satire, their tone is waspish and their targets rather grand: the Assemblée Nationale in Le Bois sacré (1911); the Académie Française in L'Habit vert (1913).
[S. Beynon John]
