Les liasons dangereuses (or why the French Revolution happened)
The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of radical political and social upheaval. The French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent wholesale change to a form of government based on the Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights.
The Ancien Régime’s approach to governing France was the primary cause of the Revolution. Widespread famine and malnutrition (caused, according to recent studies, by a disruption of El Nino, the beneficial sea current) and outbreaks of disease and death for the impoverished peasant class were the pricipal symptoms of economic breakdown.
This situation was exacerbated by the intentional starvation in the most destitute segments of the population in the months immediately before the Revolution, in large part to conserve state finances overstretched by an ill-fated support for the Americal Revolution and to recoup from the military mis-adventures of the previous Monarch, Louis XV.
By 1789 the French national debt amounted to almost two billion livres. The burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation and the deprivation it caused was in stark contrast to the conspicuous consumption of the nobility attending the lavish court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at Versailles.
Les liaisons dangereuses examines the indolent and lavish life of aristocrats whose lives are lived for sexual pleasure, where other people are pawns in a game of moral licence. As such, the play captures a moment in time where the balance tipped decisively against the Ancien Regine.
