Jacques Marie Boutet (25 March 1745 – 13 February 1812) was a French actor and comic playwright from Lunéville.
After some years of apprenticeship in the provinces, he made his debut in 1770 at the Comédie-Française in Merope and Zenaide; he was received sociétaire in 1772.
At the French Revolution he returned to Paris, embraced its principles with ardour, and joined the theatre in the rue Richelieu (the rival of the Comédie-Française), which, under Talma, with Dugazon, his sister Mme Vestris, Grandmesnil (1737–1816) and Mme Desgarcins, was soon to become the Théatre de la République.
He wrote six plays (four of them performed at the Comédie-Française), two comedies, and fifteen libretti for comic operas, seven with music by N. Dezde (1740–1792)[citation needed], eight by Nicolas Dalayrac (1753–1809).
[1] In the 1780s Monvel fled France and went into a brief exile in Sweden after he was caught making sexual assignations with men in the gardens of the Tuileries.