Business is business
Author	Octave Mirbeau
Original title	'Les affaires sont les affaires'
Country	France
Language	French
Genre(s)	comedy
Publisher	Fasquelle
Publication date	April 1903

Business is business (French: Les affaires sont les affaires) is a french comedy in three acts, by the novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, performed in April 1903 on the stage of Comédie-Française, in Paris, and worldwide acclaimed, especially in Russia, Germany and United States.

An English-language adaption by Sydney Grundy was produced in London in 1905.

[edit] Comedy of manners

That work is a classical comedy of manners, with characters, in the tradition of Molière, where Mirbeau criticizes the French society of the Third Republic and the world of business, legal kind of gangsterism. When the play was presented in Paris during the 1994-5 season (400 performances), comments were that business and scandals are no different today than they were 100 years ago.

[edit] Main character

The fable is built around the main character, symbolically named Isidore Lechat. He is a predator without any scruples, predecessor of the modern masters of business intrigue, a « brasseur d'affaires » and money-grubber, who is a product of the new world, a figure who makes money from everything and spreads his tentacles out over the world. He sacrifices his children in his obsession to get more and more money and power : Lechat insists upon purchasing an aristocratic husband for his daughter Germaine, and upon making his corrupted son Xavier the leader of Parisian society, paying for him fabulous gambling debts. Can there be anything that money won't buy?

Business is business, Comédie-Française, April 1903

But allmighty Lechat, in spite of his 50 millions francs, is powerless in front of death (his son is killed in a motor-car accident), as well as in front of love (his daughter Germaine rejects a "beautiful" marriage he just arranged and runs away with her moneyless lover, Lucien Garraud). Lechat, in a shakespearian final scene, is overwhelmed by the shattering of his plans, but overwhelmed especially by the mortal blow to his vanity.

[edit] External links

• (French) Octave Mirbeau, Les affaires sont les affaires.
• (French) Pierre Michel's foreword.

This article on a play from the 1900s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e