[2] The revolutionary leader Georges Danton said that the play "killed off the nobility";[3] in exile, Napoleon Bonaparte called it "the Revolution already put into action.

"[4] Thanks to the great popularity of its predecessor, The Marriage of Figaro opened to enormous success; it was said to have grossed 100,000 francs in the first twenty showings,[5] and the theatre was so packed that three people were reportedly crushed to death in the opening-night crowd.

[6] The play formed the basis for an opera with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte and music by Mozart, also called The Marriage of Figaro (1786).

In 1799, another opera based on the same play, La pazza giornata, ovvero Il matrimonio di Figaro, was produced in Venice with libretto by Gaetano Rossi and music by Marcos Portugal.

The Count looks to re-engage the act of primae noctis, in which he would consummate the marriage with the bride-to-be prior to Figaro's honeymoon.

Initially the text was approved, with minor changes, by the official censor, but at a private reading before the French court the play so shocked King Louis XVI that he forbade its public presentation.

[8] Beaumarchais revised the text, moving the action from France to Spain, and after further scrutiny by the censor the piece was played to an audience including members of the Royal Family in September 1783.

[10] The play was translated into English by Thomas Holcroft,[3] and under the title of The Follies of a Day – Or The Marriage of Figaro it was produced at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London in late 1784 and early 1785.

In 1984 BBC Radio 3 broadcast a production of Beaumarchais' play in John Wells's translation;[3] in December 2010 the same station transmitted a new version, adapted and directed by David Timson.

Beaumarchais said that in the original company, there were no boys available who were both the right age and who could understand all the subtleties of the role: most of the character's comic traits come from the view of an adult looking back on puberty with amusement.

[20] The ridiculous character of Don Guzman was a jab at a judge, Louis Valentin Goëzman, whom Beaumarchais had—in vain—tried to bribe once, offering jewels to his wife and money to his secretary.

Beaumarchais gained public acclaim for directly challenging the judge in a series of pamphlets collectively published as Mémoires dans l'affaire Goëzman.

[24] The play begins in a room in the Count's castle—the bedroom to be shared by Figaro and Suzanne after their wedding, which is set to occur later that day.

Bartholo relishes the news that Rosine is unhappy in her marriage, and they discuss the expectation that the Count will take Figaro's side in the lawsuit if Suzanne should submit to his advances.

Chérubin is forced to throw himself on top of the armchair so the Count will not find him, and Suzanne covers him with a dress so Bazile cannot see him.

The Count is afraid that Chérubin will reveal the earlier conversation in which he was propositioning Suzanne, and so decides to send him away at once as a soldier.

He leaves to get tools to break open the dressing room door, giving Chérubin enough time to escape through the window and Suzanne time to take his place in the dressing room; when the Count opens the door, it appears that Suzanne was inside there all along.

Just when it seems he calms down, the gardener Antonio runs in screaming that a half-dressed man just jumped from the Countess's window.

Together they write a note to him entitled "A New Song on the Breeze" (a reference to the Countess's old habit of communicating with the Count through sheet music dropped from her window), which tells him that she will meet him under the chestnut trees.

Later, the wedding is interrupted by Bazile, who had wished to marry Marceline himself; but once he learns that Figaro is her son he is so horrified that he abandons his plans.

After the ceremony, he notices Fanchette looking upset, and discovers that the cause is her having lost the pin that was used to seal the letter, which the Count had told her to give back to Suzanne.

Figaro is outraged, and goes to the woman he thinks is the Countess to complain; he realises that he is talking to his own wife Suzanne, who scolds him for his lack of confidence in her.

Whereas I, lost among the obscure crowd, have had to deploy more knowledge, more calculation and skill merely to survive than has sufficed to rule all the provinces of Spain for a century!

I fudge up a play about the manners of the Seraglio; a Spanish author, I imagined, could attack Mahomet without scruple; but immediately some envoy from goodness-knows-where complains that some of my lines offend the Sublime Porte, Persia, some part or other of the East Indies, the whole of Egypt, the kingdoms of Cyrenaica, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers and Morocco.

Behold my comedy scuppered to please a set of Mohammedan princes—not one of whom I believe can read—who habitually beat a tattoo on our shoulders to the tune of "Down with the Christian dogs!"