Eugène Labiclie and the Second Empire

Abstract

Eugene Labiche was born in Paris on 6 May 1815, the son of a well-to-do manufacturer. His birthdate and his genealogy place him firmly in the centre of the most bourgeois of centuries, and indeed he was to make his mark as the ‘king of vaudeville’, purveyor of entertainment to the wealthy middle class, by showing the folly and vanity of the bourgeois. Born during Napoleon’s brief hundred-day effort to retain his lost throne, little Eugene grew up in the conservative air of the Restoration and matured during the lacklustre reign of Louis-Philippe.