You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (July 2016) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Grandmesnil (acteur)]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Grandmesnil (acteur)}} to the talk page.
Jean-Baptiste Fauchard (19 March 1737, Paris – 24 May 1816, Paris), stage name Grandmesnil or Grand-Ménil), was a French actor and playwright.
Life
At first a lawyer in the parliament of Paris, then a counsellor in the Admiralty, he spoke out against the Parlement Maupeou and left France in 1771. Taking refuge in Brussels, he gave himself over the theatrical interests he had always had and appeared in several servant roles. Returning to France some years later, he acted in Marseille and then in Bordeaux, where he played financiers and "rôles à manteau".
On 31 August 1790, he made his début at the Comédie-Française (becoming a societaire of it in 1792), from which he retired on 21 March 1811. Grandmesnil was noted as one of the best interpreters of Molière and particularly excelled in the rôles of Arnolphe and Harpagon. The distinction of his manners and the constant regularity of his lifestyle were highly valued and in 1796 he was summoned to the Académie des Beaux-Arts de l'Institut de France on its formation, in the Literature and Fine Arts classe.
Works
Grandmesnil wrote two plays, although they may have never been performed in his lifetime.
Le Savetier joyeux (1759)
Tant pis pour elles, tant pis pour eux et tant mieux pour eux, tant mieux pour elles, ou le Voyage impromptu (1760)
Sources
Gustave Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des littératures, Paris, Hachette, 1876, p. 923
