The names of few French writers are as synonymous with their genres as is Georges Feydeau with his. Perhaps his only serious rival in this regard is the incomparable Jean de La Fontaine, whose name, for three hundred years, has virtually meant "the French verse fable." Feydeau's name, over the past five decades since his "rediscovery," has similarly meant "French farce." While dozens of his contemporaries in the genre have disappeared quietly back into the card files and databases of academic libraries, Feydeau continues actively to enjoy a reputation he would not have imagined possible in his lifetime. His work is now widely produced in France and wherever Western theater is staged; it is read and, indeed, seriously studied. All this has happened despite the prognostication of his elder colleague, poet-playwright Catulle Mendès, who predicted at the height of Feydeau's career that no one would ever...