Abstract: Beaumarchais transformed comedy by letting it play out on a dramatic background. Symmetrically, La Mère coupable was born from a comedic plot. However, the interaction between drama and comedy is not hugely fertile in La Mère coupable. The striking comic success can be explained in terms of the revolution constituted by the invention of the l’archiethos spirituel. This article proposes this term in order to make sense of the faculty given to all comic characters to be, at least momentarily, spiritual.
