Les rustres

Written in 1760 Carlo Goldonis comedy has never been performed at the ComédieFrançaise perhaps overshadowed by the famousHoliday Trilogy A satire of the Venetian merchant class embodied by narrowminded complaining and intolerant men whose mistrust of the fairer sex borders on the absurd The Boors perfectly illustrates Goldonis theatre a theatre of life with a real content characters observed in reality and a natural expression Thus a theatre in which the man Voltaire described as natures son and painter scrutinises his contemporaries their relationships and their social behaviour His work served to entertain while providing posterity with an acute testimony of the morals of his time Indeed JeanLouis Benoit warns against reducing the author to a simple photographer of reality