Étienne Arnal was a French actor.

Arnal was born at Meulan

Meulan

Meulan-en-Yvelines is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It hosted part of the sailing events for the 1900 Summer Olympics held in neighboring Paris, and would do so again twenty-four years later.-People:*Mbaye Niang footballer*Ibrahim Sacko...

, Yvelines

Yvelines

Yvelines is a French department in the region of Île-de-France.-History:Yvelines was created from the western part of the defunct department of Seine-et-Oise on 1 January 1968 in accordance with a law passed on 10 January 1964 and a décret d'application from 26 February 1965.It gained the...

, on the 1st of February 1794. After serving in the army, and working in a button factory, he took to the stage. His first appearance (1815) was in tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

, and for some time he was unsuccessful; it was not until 1827 that he showed his real ability in comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 parts, especially in plays by Felix August Duvert (1795–1876) and Augustin Theodore Lauzanne (1805–1877), whose Cabinets particuliers (1832), Le Mari de la dame de châteurs (1837), Passe minuit, L'Homme blast (1843), La Clef dans le dos (1848), etc., contained parts written for him. He was twenty years at the Vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, and completed at the various Parisian theatres a stage career of nearly half a century. Arnal was the author of Épître à bouffe (1840), which is reprinted in his volume of poetry, Boutades en vers (1861).

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