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Updated: May 10, 2025
In the year after the novelist's death, the applauded representation of Mercadet, at the Gymnase, stimulated other managers of theatres to go on exploiting his Comedy.
G.H. Lewes was author of the version which, according to a popular story, was written and rehearsed between Saturday and Monday. The original, with the full title of Mercadet ou Le Faiseur was not acted till after the death of Balzac, when it was reduced to three acts by D'Ennery and given with success at Le Gymnase. Everybody knows that Browning wrote a number of plays.
Seventeen years elapsed before the Comedie Francaise at last placed Mercadet on its repertory and inaugurated the event by a special performance with Got as the Jobber. The hero of the piece is a financier who has very little cash, but innumerable projects for gaining money.
One of them, Mercadet, is still revived perennially; and we are of opinion that this play would prove attractive to-day upon an American stage. The action and plots of all these dramas are quite apart from the structure of the Comedie Humaine. Vautrin and his "pals" are the only characters borrowed from that series, but his part in the titular play is new beyond the initial situation.
At this time, however, Balzac had in his portfolio a play quite ready to be acted one which had several times changed its title, being called by its author successively "Mercadet," "Le Speculateur," and "Le Faiseur."
To the dramatist the fraudulent is the only interesting financier. He certainly is very fond of working on the Mercadet basis. He commonly confounds the stockbroker with the bucket-shop keeper, and invariably assumes that the company promoter is a thief.
This was in April, 1849, and, a few weeks later, Madame Dorval was dead. Only on the 23rd of August 1851, a year after his own death, did his executors meet with a director, Monsieur Montigny of the Gymnase, who undertook to stage Mercadet the Jobber.
'Any stick will do, even Adhémar of Limoges, he said, not suspecting Saint-Pol's finger in the dish; and told Mercadet to summon the knights, and the knights their array. Before he set out he sent two messengers more one to Rome, and one much further east. Then he began his warlike preparations with great heart.
Mercadet, first played by Geoffroy, who conceived Balzac's creation admirably, and at the Comedie Francaise less successfully by Got, is a second Figaro, with a strong likeness to Balzac himself. He is continually on the stage, and keeps the audience uninterruptedly amused by his wit, good-humour, hearty bursts of laughter, and ceaseless expedients for baffling his creditors.
He called for Gaston of Béarn, for the Dauphin of Auvergne, for Mercadet, for the devil. The Bishop of Salisbury came running in. 'Bishop, said King Richard, 'you must serve me to-day. You must take ship, my friend, with speed; you must go to Bordeaux, thence a-horseback to the moor above Angers. Pluck me a branch of the wild broom and return. I must have it, I tell you; so go. Haste, Bishop.
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