Le Roi s'amuse

Le roi s'amuse; is a French play in five acts written by Victor Hugo. First performed on 22 November 1832 but banned by the government after one evening, the play was used for Giuseppe Verdi's 1851 opera Rigoletto. The action takes place in Paris in an unspecified year in the 1520s. The first act is set during a nocturnal party at the Louvre palace; the second in the deserted cul-de-sac Bussy; the third in an antechamber of the King at the Louvre, and the fourth and fifth acts on the banks of the river Seine by the Ch teau de la Tournelle.