SOURCE: Araujo, Norman. “The Language of Business and the Business of Language in Becque's Les Corbeaux.” The French Review 63, no. 1 (Oct 1989): 72-79.

In the following essay, Araujo delivers an in-depth discussion of The Vultures, which opened with mixed reviews.

Henry Becque's Les Corbeaux was presented for the first time on 14 September 1882, at the Comédie-Française. The work of a bookkeeper's son whose earlier plays had been little noticed, Les Corbeaux opened to mixed reviews, but would later be generally acclaimed as Becque's masterpiece and one of the finest and most original plays of the late nineteenth century.¹

The plot, stark and simple, turns on the tragic vicissitudes of the Vigneron family, suddenly rendered vulnerable to the machinations of unscrupulous businessmen by the untimely death of Vigneron himself, a manufacturer. Act I begins with a description of the Vigneron family preparing for a dinner party to celebrate the...