Fabre d'Églantine

Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine, commonly known as Fabre d'Églantine (28 July 1750 - 15 April 1794), French dramatist and revolutionist, was born at Carcassonne. His real surname was simply "Fabre", the "d'Églantine " being added in commemoration of his receiving the golden eglantine[?] of Clémence Isaure[?] from the academy of the floral games[?] (jeux Floraux) at Toulouse.

After travelling through the provinces as an actor, he came to Paris, and produced an unsuccessful comedy entitled Les Gens de lettres, ou le provincial à Paris (1787). A tragedy, Augusta, produced at the Théâtre Français[?], also proved a failure. One only of his plays, Philinte, ou la suite du Misanthrope (1790), still preserves its reputation. It professes to be a continuation of Molière's Misanthrope, but the hero of the piece is of a different character from the nominal prototype - an impersonation, indeed, of pure and simple egotism. On its publication the play was introduced by a preface, in which the author mercilessly satirises the Optimiste of his rival Jean François Collin d'Harleville[?], whose Chateaux en Espagne had gained the applause which Fabre's Présomptueux (1789) had failed to win. The character of Philinte had much political significance. Alceste received the highest praise, and evidently represents the citizen patriot, while Philinte is a dangerous aristocrat in disguise.

Fabre served as president and secretary of the club of the Cordeliers, and belonged also to the Jacobin Club. Danton chose Fabre as his private secretary, and he sat in the National Convention of 1792 - 1795. He voted for the death of King Louis XVI, supporting the maximum and the law of the suspected, and he was a bitter enemy of the Girondins.

After the death of Marat (13 July 1793) Fabre published a Portrait de l'Ami du Peuple. On the abolition of the Gregorian Calendar in France he sat on the committee entrusted with the formation of the republican French Revolutionary Calendar, and contributed a large part of the new nomenclature, with its poetic Prairial and Floreal, its prosaic Primidi and Duodi. The report which he made on the subject, on 24 October 1793, has some scientific value.

On 12 January 1794 Fabre was arrested by order of the Committee of Public Safety on a charge of malversation and forgery in connection with the affairs of the French East India Company. (Documents still existing prove that the charge was altogether groundless.) During his trial Fabre showed the greatest calmness and sang his own well-known song:

pleut, il pleut, bergère,

rentre tes blancs moutons.

Fabre died under the guillotine on 5 April 1794. On his way to the scaffold he distributed his manuscript poems to the people.

A posthumous play, Les Précepteurs, steeped with the doctrines of Rousseau's Émile, was performed on 17 September 1794, and met with an enthusiastic reception. Among Fabre's other plays are the gay and successful Convalescent de qualité (1791), and L'lntrigue épistolaire (1791). In the latter play Fabre is supposed to have drawn a portrait of the painter Jean Baptiste Greuze.

The author's OEuvres melées et posthumes were published at Paris in 1802 in 2 volumes.

See Albert Maurin, Galerie hist, de la Révolution française, tome n; Jules Janin, Histoire de la littérature dramatique; Chenier, Tableau de la litt, française; F. A. Aulard in the Nouvelle Revue (July 1885).

Original text from 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica