Molière Creates Modern Comedy – 4

Today’s installment concludes Molière Creates Modern Comedy,
our selection by Henri Van Laun.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of four thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in Molière Creates Modern Comedy.

Time: 1643-1673
Place: France

Early in 1662 he had married Armande Béjart, the youngest sister of Madeleine Béjart, who was about twenty years younger than her husband. It was apparently a marriage of mutual affection but it can hardly be said to have been a fortunate one for either. Armande loved admiration from whatever source and indulged in pleasures which her husband could not share. The breach between them gradually widened and it was not till 1671 that their friends brought about a better understanding between them. Meanwhile, in September, 1665, appeared L’Amour Médecin, a comedy in three acts, in which a lover appears disguised as a physician, to cure the object of his love, pretends to be dumb and in which Molière makes his first serious attack against the doctors.

It was acted only a few times when the theatre had to be closed on account of the author’s illness; and the death of Anne of Austria, in the spring of 1666, delayed its reopening until June of that year. It was then that the Misanthrope was introduced to the public — a play which has been ranked as high in comedy as Athalie is ranked in French tragedy. The circumstances under which it was written were such as might almost warrant us in calling it a tragedy; for the great satirist, who had spent his life in copying the eccentricities of others, had now employed the season of his illness to commit to paper a drama in which he was himself the principal actor. The misanthrope Alceste loves the coquette Célimène, almost against his will; and we can imagine the feelings with which Molière himself took the rôle of Alceste to his wife’s Célimène.

In 1669 the King, growing more independent of his advisers, sanctioned the production of Tartuffe; but this strengthening of his repertory did not prevent Molière producing Monsieur de Pourceaudnac, a farcical comedy in three acts, in which there is a masterly and not exaggerated sketch of a consultation of doctors in Molière’s time; and, in 1670, the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in which the folly of aping noblemen is delineated, as well as the Amants Magnifiques, a comedy-ballet for the particular behoof of the court. In 1671 he combined with Corneille and Quinault in the production of Psyche, a tragedy-ballet and wrote, or rather, perhaps, remodelled from among his earlier efforts, the Fourberies de Scapin and the Comtesse d’Escarbagnas.

His two last works were among the highest and happiest creations of his genius — the Femmes Savantes, a sort of sequel to the Précieuses Ridicules, though of a more general application — and the Malade Imaginaire. In the latter, he insisted on playing the part of Argan upon the first representation, February 10, 1673; but it was the crowning act of his energetic mind. He became ill during the fourth representation of the play and died that same evening, February 17th, exactly one year after Madeleine Béjart, with whom, seven-and-twenty years ago, he had set out from Paris with little more ambition than that of earning a livelihood by the pursuit of a congenial career.

Molière placed upon the stage nearly all human passions which lend themselves to comedy or farce. Sordid avarice, lavish prodigality, shameless vice, womanly resignation, artless coquetry, greed for money, downright hypocrisy, would-be gentility, self-sufficient vanity, fashionable swindling, misanthropy, heartlessness, plain common-sense, knowledge of the world, coarse jealousy, irresolution, impudence, pride of birth, egotism, self-conceit, pusillanimity, ingenuity, roguery, affectations, homeliness, thoughtlessness, pedantry, arrogance and many more faults and vices, find their representatives. The language which they employ is always natural to them and is neither too gross nor over-refined. His verse has none of the stiffness of the ordinary French rhyme and becomes in his hands, as well as his prose, a delightful medium for sparkling sallies, bitter sarcasms and well-sustained and sprightly conversations.

And how remarkable and delicate is the nuance between his different characters, though they may represent the same profession or an identical personage. None of his doctors are alike; his male and female scholars are all dissimilar. Mascarille is not Gros-Réné, Scapin is not Sbrigani, Don Juan is not Dorante, Alceste is not Philinte, Isabelle is not Agnes, Sganarelle is not always the same, Ariste is not Béralde nor Chrysalde; while even his servants, Nicole, Dorine, Martine, Marotte, Toinette, Claudine and Lisette; his boobies, such as Alain and Lubin and his intriguants in petticoats, such as Nérine, Lucette, Frosine, vary in character, expression and conduct. They exemplify the saying, “Like master, like man.”

A remarkable characteristic of Molière is that he does not exaggerate; his fools are never overwitty, his buffoons too grotesque, his men of wit too anxious to display their smartness, nor his fine gentlemen too fond of immodest and ribald talk. His satire is always kept within bounds, his repartees are never out of place, his plots are but seldom intricate and the moral of his plays is not obtruded but follows as a natural consequence of the whole. He rarely rises to those lofty realms of poetry where Shakespeare so often soars, for he wrote not idealistic, but character, comedies; which is, perhaps, the reason that some of his would-be admirers consider him rather commonplace. His claim to distinction is based only on strong common-sense, good manners, sound morality, real wit, true humor, a great, facile and accurate command of language and a photographic delineation of nature.

It cannot be denied that there is little action in his plays but there is a great deal of natural conversation; his personages show that he was a most attentive observer of men, even at court, where a certain varnish of over-refinement conceals nearly all individual features. He generally makes vice appear in its most ridiculous aspect, in order to let his audience laugh and despise it; his aim is to correct the follies of the age by exposing them to ridicule.

This ends our series of passages on Molière Creates Modern Comedy by Henri Van Laun. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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