Background
He was born in Paris, France on May 5, 1815. He was born into a bourgeois family.
He was born in Paris, France on May 5, 1815. He was born into a bourgeois family.
Between 1838 and 1876 Labiche wrote more than 150 comedies with many collaborators, of whom Edouard Martin (1824 - 1866) was most successful. A master of technique, Labiche depends on situation rather than on character. Swift movement, robust humor, and broad wit have kept alive a few of his works, notably Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon (1860), a satire on ingratitude, and La Poudre aux yeux (1861), a burlesque of social rivalry. Innumerable elementary classroom texts of these works have made Labiche widely known in America. His Le Chapeau de paille d'Italie (1851) was made into a successful motion picture in 1927 by RenéRene Clair; it was also adapted by Edwin Denby and Orson Welles as Horse Eats Hat and produced in New York by the Federal Theatre Project in 1936.
Due to this reevaluation of Labiche's writing, he was elected to the Académie française in 1880.