A Scribe Chronology
1791 Eugène Scribe born. Son of a silk merchant.
1792 French Revolution.
1807 Scribe's mother dies when he is aged 15. He is educated at College de Sainte-Barbe and is destined for the Law as his profession. He turns instead to play-writing and works in collaboration with others, rising to work at five, but at first his plays meet with little success.
1814 Napoleon captured and sent to Elba. In the same year Une Nuit de la Garde Nationale, Scribe's first successful play is produced.
In Paris the Restoration of the Bourbons. Louis XVIII becomes King and signs Charter that restores parliamentary government in the light of the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity principles of the Revolution. But anti-democratic element resurgent.
1815 March Napoloeon escapes and takes command of the army. It rallies to him as does the populace. The Hundred Days.
18 June: The battle of Waterloo. Napoleon imprisoned on St Helena. Louis XVIII resumes as King.
1824 Charles X suceeds him.
1825 Scribe, now an established playwright, writes libretto for Adrien Boildieu' s opera La Dame Blanche based on two novels by Scott, Guy Mannering and The Monastery. (Scott’s novels highly popular in France at this period. See in G.Opps Olivier’s paintings based on Ivanhoe.)
1827 Le Mariage d’Argent - now in English as Golden Opportunities - produced at the Théâtre-Francaise.
1826-9 Scribe has run of successes and becomes a rich man lives in style in a mansion on the rue Olivier-St Georges
1828 Rossini's Le Comte Ory with libretto by Scribe
1830 Auber's Fra Diavolo with libretto by Scribe
1830 July Revolution after which Louis Philippe, a cousin of Charles X, and a member of the Orleans branch of the Bourbon family, heads a new constitutional monarchy.
1831 Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable with libretto by Scribe.
1832 Napoleon's son, Napoleon II (unofficially, i.e. never crowned as such) dies in exile in Austria. (In 1900 Edmond Rostand writes L'Aiglon - the Eaglet - based on this unfortunate young man, a rousing melodrama, in which he was played by the 62-year old Sarah Bernhardt)
1835 Halévy's La Juive with libretto by Scribe.
1836 Scribe elected a member of the Académie Francaise
1838 Scribe marries, widow of a wine merchant Bollay.
1840 Le Verre d’Eau - A Glass of Water - Scribe's play about Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill.
1841 Une Chaîne one of Sribe's great successes translated by AC as Bondage
1848 Worker's uprising in Paris. Louis-Philippe abdicates. Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) elected President.
1849 Adrienne Lecouvreur Scribe's tragicomedy (written in collaboration with Ernest Legouve) about 18th century actress of Comédie Francaise mysteriously murdered. Translated by AC as Adrienne's Amour (Holland Park Theatre reading).
1852 Louis Napoleon becomes Emperor Napoleon III. The period of the Second Empire, a time of great splendour, opulence, war (in the Crimea) and reconstruction (Baron Haussmann's Paris boulevards). Victor Hugo accuses Emperor of violating the Constituion and becomes his sworn enemy and is sent into exile.
1853 Louis Napoleon marries Spanish beauty Eugenie di Montjo who takes title of Empress.
1861 Scribe dies.
1870 Napoleon III defeated in war with Prussia under Bismarck and flees with Eugénie to England where they live at Chislehurst in Kent.