Théophile Marion Dumersan

With his colleague Théodore-Edme Mionnet, future member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, he perfected a new system for classifying medals into geographical and chronological order, and protected the collection from dispersal by the allies after Napoleon's defeat.

At the age of 18, he put on his first play, titled Arlequin perruquier, ou Les Têtes à la Titus, a critique of the fashions and mores of the day, and soon began supplying the théâtres de boulevard.

The others were the result of a collaboration with better Parisian vaudevillistes, including Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, Nicolas Brazier, Pierre-Frédéric-Adolphe Carmouche, Marc-Antoine Désaugiers, Mélesville and Eugène Scribe.

His greatest success was Les Saltimbanques, written with Charles Varin, a "farce désopilante" according to the Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, put on at the Théâtre des Variétés in 1838.

Amidst all these productions, Dumersan also found time to write works on numismatics and the history of the theatre, including the Manuel des coulisses, a lexicon of theatrical expressions and actors' slang.