Early years Alfred Néoclès Hennequin was born in
Liège on 13 January 1842. He studied at the École des mines de Liege, and began his working career as an engineer for the
Belgian State Railways. In his spare time he wrote plays under a pen name. A two-act comedy, ''J'attends mon oncle'' (I'm Waiting for My Uncle) was produced at the
Théâtre Royal des Galeries in Brussels in 1869. The following year the same theatre presented his three-act comedy
Les Trois chapeaux (The Three Hats), which
Le Figaro described as "a play of astonishing comic verve". Hennequin moved to Paris, where
Les Trois chapeaux was produced at the
Théâtre du Vaudeville in 1871. There was a brief controversy before the first night: Hennequin, as a Belgian, was accused of having been insufficiently pro-French and anti-German during the recent
Franco-Prussian War, but the accusation was quickly withdrawn. The premiere went well. The critic
Jules Prével wrote that the audience laughed as much as the excessively hot weather allowed, and "Besides, M. Hennequin's play is funny … a misplaced hat, running from hand to hand, fluttering from head to head, produces quiproquos that are pretty comical, but too long to detail." The main roles were in the expert hands of star members of the Vaudeville company: Auguste Parade, Léopold Delannoy and
Saint-Germain, and the piece was a success. The authors of
Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique wrote: In
Le Figaro Auguste Vitu wrote, "M. Delacour and M. Hennequin won the Veauradieux Trial, with interest, damages and costs; we laughed for two hours, laughed as in the good old days of the Vaudeville, as at the best evenings of the Palais-Royal, we laughed like a herd of madmen".
Le Phoque (The Seal, 1878, with Delacour) at the
Théâtre du Palais-Royal and ''La Poudre d'escampette'' (The Quick Getaway, with Henri Bocage) at the
Théâtre des Variétés. Some of Hennequin's works, such as
Niniche (1878),
La Femme à papa (1879) and
Lili (1882), with music by composers such as
Raoul Pugno and
Hervé were among the last of the old genre of
musical vaudeville. In his non-musical works, Hennequin perfected the intricate plotting that later served as a model for
Georges Feydeau. The writer
Leonard Pronko describes Hennequin's plots as "endless mazes of crisscrossing couples, scurrying from door to door, room to room in every possible and impossible combination". For his innovative skill in this regard, Hennequin became known as "the father of the farce". Hennequin worked constantly, and by the early 1880s he was showing signs of mental strain. His condition grew worse, and in March 1886 he went into a nursing home in
Saint-Mande. He died a few months later at another nursing home
Épinay-sur-Seine, on 7 August 1887 at the age of 45. His body was found in the garden of the home, and suicide was at first suspected, but he had been in good spirits and it was concluded that he had accidentally fallen out of the window of his room. ==Plays by Hennequin==