WIBCI we learned from LITERATURE?
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French playwright and diplomat of the Age of Enlightenment. He wrote the play, Day of Madness, or more commonly known, The Marriage of Figaro. Quick synopsis: Count Almaviva is a conniving, overpowering, womanizer. As revenge for an earlier wrong, Count Almaviva hires Figaro as a servant, in the hopes to exercise droit du seigneur or his right to bed a new (servant) bride on her wedding night. Figaro, his bride and the countess come together to devise a plan to expose and embarrass the count. Although the practice of droit du seigneur had ended, when the play was first written it was banned due to the harsh criticism of the nobility. When it was allowed to run (above ground) years later its popularity showed the depth of critical public opinion in the 1780’s France (pre-French Revolution….). Here is a soliloquy from this play where Figaro is going after the hierarchy present at the time:
Because you are a great nobleman, you think you are a great genius… Nobility, fortune, rank, position! How proud they make a man feel! What have you done to deserve such advantages? Whereas I, lost among the obscure crowd, have had to deploy more knowledge, more calculation and skill merely to survive than has sufficed to rule all the provinces of Spain for a century!
Replace ‘nobleman’ with ‘billionaire’ or ‘leader’ and ‘Spain’ with ‘United States’.
Do YOU agree with Beaumarchais?
Last Updated on 09/15/2025 by Death of Hypatia Inc.
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