About the work
Les Plaideurs is Racine's only comedy, a play in three acts and verse first performed in November 1668 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris, written in answer to Molière's L'Impromptu de Versailles. Racine drew on Aristophanes' ancient comedy The Wasps, but shifted the subject from Athenian litigiousness to one man's private obsession: a judge who wants to pass judgment at any cost.
Plot
Judge Perrin Dandin wants to dispense justice day and night, so his son locks him inside the house to keep him from judging. To keep him occupied, the servants stage a mock trial: a dog is accused of stealing a capon and solemnly convicted with full legal ceremony. The grotesque courtroom farce also resolves the love story of Dandin's daughter Isabelle.
Cultural significance
The first Paris performances apparently disappointed some lawyers who felt mocked; in December 1668, however, the company performed it successfully before the court at Versailles. Into the nineteenth century, Les Plaideurs, with some 1,224 performances, was Racine's most frequently staged play at the Comédie-Française, before nearly vanishing from the repertoire after 1950.