Alfred Hennequin

Hennequin, with his intricate plotting and frenetic exits and entrances through various doors, is known as the originator of the bedroom farce and a model for a later master of the genre, Georges Feydeau.

In addition to his farces, Hennequin wrote some of the last of the old genre of musical vaudevilles, in collaboration with composers including Hervé and Raoul Pugno.

He studied at the École des mines de Liege, and began his working career as an engineer for the Belgian State Railways.

The following year the same theatre presented his three-act comedy Les Trois chapeaux (The Three Hats), which Le Figaro described as "a play of astonishing comic verve".

"[5] The main roles were in the expert hands of star members of the Vaudeville company: Auguste Parade, Léopold Delannoy and Saint-Germain, and the piece was a success.

The Vaudeville was officially closed for the customary summer break, and Paris was in the middle of a heatwave, but the members of the theatre's company decided to stage the play regardless of their management.

[2] Although Hennequin is credited with creating what became the familiar genre of French farce, he also worked within the older tradition of vaudeville – a genre that originated in the Middle Ages as a satirical song, evolved into a play in verse with music, and by the late 19th century was splitting into two branches: opérettes, such as those by Offenbach, and, in the words of the writer Peter Meyer, "the vaudeville itself ... akin to what we would call slapstick farce, where movement was more important than character".

[15] His body was found in the garden of the home, and suicide was at first suspected, but he had been in good spirits and it was concluded that he had accidentally fallen out of the window of his room.

[22] At the Criterion Theatre, Charles Wyndham and his company made a speciality of French farces, including Hennequin's Le Procès Veauradieux, Les Dominos roses, Bébé and La Femme à papa, as The Great Divorce Case (1876), The Pink Dominos (1877), Betsey (1879) and Little Miss Muffet (1882), the second and third of these running for 555 and 408 performances respectively: very considerable runs for the period.