We do not forget that Corneille wrote comedies before Molière; and indeed there is no doubt that the younger of the two dramatists owed something, even in comedy, to the older.
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Time: 1643-1673
Place: France
We do not forget that Corneille wrote comedies before Molière; and indeed there is no doubt that the younger of the two dramatists owed something, even in comedy, to the older. Molière began by adapting from and imitating the Italian and Spanish comedy-writers, upon whom many of his first farces were founded and it is not at all unlikely that he even remodelled some of the earlier sotties. It was perhaps due to Corneille’s influence as much as to anything else that his genius at last discovered its true level. He confessed to Boileau his great indebtedness to Le Menteur. “When it was first performed,” he says, “I had already a wish to write but was in doubt as to what it should be. My ideas were still confused but this piece determined them. In short, but for the appearance of Le Menteur, though I should no doubt have written comedies of intrigue, like L’Etourdi, or Le Dépit Amoureux, I should perhaps never have written the Misanthrope.” Eliminate the generosity from this confession and no doubt the truth remains that Molière did form his best style of comedy upon the master of French tragedy.
Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who subsequently assumed the name of Molière, was born in the year that François de Sales died, one year after the birth of La Fontaine, four years before the birth of his friend Chapelle and of Madame de Sévigné. When Le Cid was first performed he was fourteen years old and twenty-two at the time of the first representation of Le Menteur. The son of a valet-de-chambre tapissier of Louis XIII, he succeeded in due course to the emoluments and honors, such as they were, of his father; but he had early conceived a passion for the stage and in 1643 he attached himself to the Illustre Théâtre of Madeleine Béjart, a woman four years his senior. With her were already associated her brother Joseph, her sister Geneviève, about two years younger than Molière and eight others, most of whom had dropped out of the company before its final settlement in Paris.
For a year or two the Illustre Théâtre tempted fortune in the capital without success and in 1646 they commenced a tour through the provinces which was destined to continue for twelve years. The debts which they had incurred weighed upon them during the whole of this time and principally upon Molière, who was once imprisoned and several times arrested at the suit of the company’s creditors. No doubt these latter had discovered that the young actor had friends who would rescue him from durance, which was done on several occasions but as late as 1660 we read of Molière’s discharging probably the last of the debts for which at this period he made himself responsible.
The plays first acted by Molière and his friends were, of course, the farces then most in vogue; among others the comedies of Scarron and the yet inferior productions of Denis Beys and Desfontaines. The former had written a ridiculous piece called L’Hôpital des Fous. The latter was the author of Eurymédon ou l’Illustre Pirate, l’Illustre Comédien ou le Martyre de Saint-Genes and of several other inflated pieces. It would be difficult to fix the exact date at which Molière’s earliest plays were produced but it is probable that he began to write for his company as soon as he had enlisted in it. He seems, like Shakespeare, to have, in part at least, adapted the plays of others; but in 1653, if not earlier, he had produced L’Etourdi and in 1656 Le Dépit Amoureux.
The Illustre Théâtre is heard of at Nantes, Limoges, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Narbonne and Lyons, where Molière produced his first serious attempt at high comedy in verse, L’Etourdi. In 1653 they played by invitation at the country seat of the Prince de Conti, the schoolfellow of Molière. Three years later they played the Dépit Amoureux at Béziers during the meeting in that town of the Parliament of Languedoc. At Grenoble, in 1658, the painter Mignard, with other of his admirers, persuaded him to take his company — for he was joint manager with Madeleine Béjart — to Paris; and this he did, after a concluding trip to Rouen. In Paris they began by playing before Philippe, Duke of Anjou, the brother of Louis XIV, who took them under his protection and introduced them to the court.
At this time the company was considerably stronger, as well as richer, than when it left Paris. There were now four ladies, Madeleine Béjart, Geneviève Béjart, Duparc and Debrie; the two brothers Béjart — the youngest, Louis, had joined at Lyons — Duparc, Debrie, Dufresne and Croisac making, with Molière himself, eleven persons. It may be concluded that their tour, or, at all events, that part of it which dated from Lyons, had been very successful; for we find that Joseph Béjart, who died early in 1659, left behind him a fortune of twenty-four thousand golden crowns. So at least we are told by the physician Guy-Patin in a letter dated May 27, 1659; and he adds, “Is it not enough to make one believe that Peru is no longer in America but in Paris?”
The condition of the drama in Paris at the time when Molière returned to the capital was anything but satisfactory. There were in 1658 five theatres in Paris: One at the Hôtel de Bourgogne; one at the Marais; one under the patronage of Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orléans; a Spanish company; and an Italian company at the Petit Bourbon, under the managership of Torelli. It was with the first and last of these that Molière came chiefly into conflict; and it is probable that the other three were of no great account, at all events as competitors for the favor of the general public. Torelli soon found that the newcomer commanded his hundreds where he himself could only count by scores and he gave up the Petit Bourbon to Molière in 1659.
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