FLEURY (ABRAHAM JOSEPH BENARD) (I 750-1822), French actor, was born at Chartres on Oct. 26, 175o, and began his stage apprenticeship at Nancy, where his father was an actor at the court of King Stanislaus. He came to Paris in 1778, and almost immediately was made societaire at the Comedie Francaise, al though the public was slow to recognize him as the greatest comedian of his time. In 1793 Fleury was arrested in consequence of the presentation of Laya's L'Ami des Lois, and, when liberated, appeared at various theatres until, in 1799, he rejoined the re habilitated Comedie Francaise. He retired in 1818 and died on March 3, 182 2.
See J. P. B. Lafitte, Memoires de Fleury, de la Comedie Francaise (6 vols. 1836-38) ; The French Stage and the French People, as illus trated in the Memoirs of M. Fleury (ed. Theodore Hooke, 2 vols. 1841) ; J. de Bourgogue, Un comedian d'autrefois (1914)•