Le roi s'amuse

Blanche is pleased to receive a visit from her father but does not tell him that she has fallen in love with an unknown man who has seen her in church.

Hearing noises in the street Triboulet rushes out to investigate, at which point the king enters the house in disguise; he and Blanche profess their love.

When the monarch goes to sleep, Saltabadil plans to deal the fatal blow, but Maguelonne asks him to spare the man who has charmed her and instead to kill a random stranger and give that body to the jester.

Triboulet returns to collect his prize in a sack and refuses Saltabadil's offer to help him throw it in the river, but just as he is about to do so, he hears the king's voice singing and realizes he has been duped.

")[2] While it depicts the escapades of Francis I of France, censors of the time believed that the play also contained insulting references to King Louis-Philippe and a ministerial decree banned it after one performance in 1832.

[3] The lawsuit that Hugo brought to permit further performances of the play propelled him into celebrity as a defender of freedom of speech in France, which had been liberalized by the 'Charte-Vérité' of 1830.

The second performance of Le roi s'amuse took place in 1882 at the Comédie-Française on the play's 50th anniversary, with Mounet-Sully as François 1er, Got as Triboulet and Julia Bartet as his daughter Blanche.

[5] Léo Delibes wrote incidental music for these performances, consisting of dance music for orchestra in the first act ('Six airs de danse dans le style ancien'), and an old song with mandolin accompaniment ('Quand Bourbon vit Marseille') for De Pienne and Triboulet in the third act.

[7] Giuseppe Verdi's 1851 opera Rigoletto is based on Hugo's play, which the librettist Piave followed closely in his Italian translation.

The 1941 film Il re si diverte is also an adaptation of Hugo's play, and starred Michel Simon as the jester.

[9] A simplified version of the plot is used by Damon Runyon to grisly effect in his story "Sense of Humour" (from the collection Furthermore (1938).