The comedy of The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife was written, or at least begun, merely to entertain the members of the "Society of Rabelaisian Studies" at one of their meetings. But it succeeded so well that it was at once taken up by a regular theatre, the Porte-Saint-Martin, in the spring of 1912, and again at the Theatre de la Renaissance in the autumn. Anatole France won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921 - a noted man of letters, he was a leading figure of French literary life.