undoubtedly; and some element of farce, perhaps, entered to qualify
nearly every comedy that flowed from his pen. But it is not for his
farce that Moliere is rated one of the few greatest producers of
literature. Moliere's comedy constitutes to Moliere the patent that it
does, of high degree in genius, not because it provokes laughter, but
because, amid laughter provoked, it not seldom reveals, as if with
flashes of lightning--lightning playful, indeed, but lightning that
might have been deadly--the "secrets of the nethermost abyss" of human
nature. Not human manners merely, those of a time, or a race, but human
attributes, those of all times, and of all races, are the things with
which, in his higher comedies, Moliere deals. Some transient whim of
fashion may in these supply to him the mould of form that he uses, but
it is human nature itself that supplies to Moliere the substance of his
dramatic creations. Now and again, if you read Moliere wisely and
deeply, you find your laughter at comedy fairly frozen in your throat,
by a gelid horror seizing you, to feel that these follies or these
crimes displayed belong to that human nature, one and the same
everywhere and always, of which also you yourself partake. Comedy,
Dante, too, called his poem, which included the _Inferno_. And a
Dantesque quality, not of method, but of power, is to be felt in
Moliere.
This character in Moliere the writer accords with the character of the
man Moliere. It might not have seemed natural to say of Moliere, as was
said of Dante, "There goes the man that has been in hell." But Moliere
was melancholy enough in temper and in mien to have well inspired an
exclamation such as, "There goes the man that has seen the human heart."
A poet as well as a dramatist, his own fellow-countrymen, at least,
feel Moliere to be. In Victor Hugo's list of the eight greatest poets of
all time, two are Hebrews (Job and Isaiah), two Greeks (Homer and
AEschylus), one is a Roman (Lucretius), one an Italian (Dante), one an
Englishman (Shakespeare)--seven. The eighth could hardly fail to be a
Frenchman, and that Frenchman is Moliere. Mr. Swinburne might perhaps
make the list nine, but he would certainly include Victor Hugo himself.
Curiously enough, Moliere is not this great writer's real name. It is a
stage name. It was assumed by the bearer when he was about twenty-four
years of age, on occasion of his becoming one in a strolling band of
players--in 1646 or thereabout. This band, originally composed of
amateurs, developed into a professional dramatic company, which passed
through various transformations, until, from being at first
grandiloquently self-styled, L'Illustre Theatre, it was, twenty years
after, recognized by the national title of Theatre Francais. Moliere's
real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin.
Young Poquelin's bent, early encouraged by seeing plays and ballets, was
strongly toward the stage. The drama, under the quickening patronage of
Louis XIII.'s lordly minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was a great public
interest of those times in Paris. Moliere's evil star, too, it was
perhaps in part that brought him back to Paris, from Orleans. He admired
a certain actress in the capital. She became the companion--probably not
innocent companion--of his wandering life as actor. A sister of this
actress--a sister young enough to be daughter, instead of
sister--Moliere finally married. She led her jealous husband a wretched
conjugal life. A peculiarly dark tradition of shame, connected with
Moliere's marriage, has lately been to a good degree dispelled. But it
is not possible to redeem this great man's fame to chastity and honor.
He paid heavily, in like misery of his own, for whatever pangs of
jealousy he inflicted. There was sometimes true tragedy for himself
hidden within the comedy that he acted for others. (Moliere, to the very
end of his life, acted in the comedies that he wrote.) When some play of
his represented the torments of jealousy in the heart of a husband, it
was probably not so much acting, as it was real life, that the
spectators saw proceeding on the stage between Moliere and his wife,
confronted with each other in performing the piece.
Despite his faults, Moliere was cast in a noble, generous mold, of
character as well as of genius. Expostulated with for persisting to
appear on the stage when his health was such that he put his life at
stake in so doing, he replied that the men and women of his company
depended for their bread on the play's going through, and appear he
would. He actually died an hour or so after playing the part of the
Imaginary Invalid in his comedy of that name. That piece was the last
work of his pen.
Moliere produced in all some thirty dramatic pieces, from among which we
select a few of the most celebrated for brief description and
illustration.
The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" ("Shopkeeper turned Gentleman") partakes of
the nature of the farce quite as much as it does of the comedy. But it
is farce such as only a man of genius could produce. In it Moliere
ridicules the airs and affectations of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to
figure in a social rank too exalted for his birth, his breeding, or his
merit. Jourdain is the name under which Moliere satirizes such a
character. We give a fragment from one of the scenes. M. Jourdain is in
process of fitting himself for that higher position in society to which
he aspires. He will equip himself with the necessary knowledge. To this
end he employs a professor of philosophy to come and give him lessons at
his house:
_M. Jourdain._ I have the greatest desire in the world to be learned;
and it vexes me more than I can tell, that my father and mother did
not make me learn thoroughly all the sciences when I was young.
_Professor of Philosophy._ This is a praiseworthy feeling. _Nam sine
doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago._ You understand this, and you
have, no doubt, a knowledge of Latin?
_M. Jour._ Yes; but act as if I had none. Explain to me the meaning of
it--
_Prof. Phil._ The meaning of it is, that, without science, life is an
image of death.
_M. Jour._ That Latin is quite right.
_Prof. Phil._ Have you any principles, any rudiments, of science?
_M. Jour._ Oh, yes! I can read and write.
_Prof. Phil._ With what would you like to begin? Shall I teach you
logic?
_M. Jour._ And what may this logic be?
_Prof. Phil._ It is that which teaches us the three operations of the
mind.
_M. Jour._ What are they--these three operations of the mind?
_Prof. Phil._ The first, the second, and the third. The first is to
conceive well by means of universals; the second, to judge well by
means of categories; and the third, to draw a conclusion aright by
means of the figures Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton, etc.
_M. Jour._ Pooh! what repulsive words! This logic does not by any
means suit me. Teach me something more enlivening.
_Prof. Phil._ Will you learn moral philosophy?
_M. Jour._ Moral philosophy?
_Prof. Phil._ Yes.
_M. Jour._ What does it say, this moral philosophy?
_Prof. Phil._ It treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate their
passions, and--
_M. Jour._ No, none of that. I am devilishly hot-tempered, and,
morality or no morality, I like to give full vent to my anger whenever
I have a mind to it.
_Prof. Phil._ Would you like to learn physics?
_M. Jour._ And what have physics to say for themselves?
_Prof. Phil._ Physics is that science which explains the principles of
natural things and the properties of bodies; which discourses of the
nature of the elements, of metals, minerals, stones, plants, and
animals; which teaches us the cause of all the meteors, the rainbow,
the _ignis fatuus_, comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain,
snow, hail, and whirlwinds.
_M. Jour._ There is too much hullaballoo in all that, too much riot
and rumpus.
_Prof. Phil._ Very good.
_M. Jour._ And now I want to intrust you with a great secret. I am in
love with a lady of quality; and I should be glad if you would help me
to write something to her in a short letter which I mean to drop at
her feet.
_Prof. Phil._ Very well.
_M. Jour._ That will be gallant, will it not?
_Prof. Phil._ Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write to her?
_M. Jour._ Oh, no! not verse.
_Prof. Phil._ You only wish prose?
_M. Jour._ No. I wish for neither verse nor prose.
_Prof. Phil._ It must be one or the other.
_M. Jour._ Why?
_Prof. Phil._ Because, sir, there is nothing by which we can express
ourselves except prose or verse.
_M. Jour._ There is nothing but prose or verse?
_Prof. Phil._ No, sir. Whatever is not prose, is verse; and whatever
is not verse, is prose.
_M. Jour._ And when we speak, what is that, then?
_Prof. Phil._ Prose.
_M. Jour._ What! when I say, "Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give
me my nightcap," is that prose?
_Prof. Phil._ Yes, sir.
_M. Jour._ Upon my word, I have been speaking prose these forty years
without being aware of it; and I am under the greatest obligation to
you for informing me of it. Well, then, I wish to write to her in a
letter, "Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love";
but I would have this worded in a gallant manner, turned genteelly.
_Prof. Phil._ Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your heart to
ashes; that you suffer day and night for her the torments of a--
_M. Jour._ No, no, no, I don't wish any of that. I simply wish what I
tell you--"Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love."
_Prof. Phil._ Still, you might amplify the thing a little.
_M. Jour._ No, I tell you, I will have nothing but these very words in
the letter; but they must be put in a fashionable way, and arranged as
they should be. Pray show me a little, so that I may see the different
ways in which they can be put.
_Prof. Phil._ They may be put first of all, as you have said, "Fair
Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love;" or else, "Of
love die make me, fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes;" or, "Your
beautiful eyes of love make me, fair Marchioness, die;" or, "Die of
love your beautiful eyes, fair Marchioness, make me;" or else, "Me
make your beautiful eyes die, fair Marchioness, of love."
_M. Jour._ But of all these ways, which is the best?
_Prof. Phil._ The one you said--"Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes
make me die of love."
_M. Jour._ Yet I have never studied, and I did all right off at the
first shot.
The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" is a very amusing comedy throughout.
From "Les Femmes Savantes" ("The Learned Women")--"The Blue-Stockings,"
we might perhaps freely render the title--we present one scene to
indicate the nature of the comedy. There had grown to be a fashion in
Paris, among certain women high in social rank, of pretending to the
distinction of skill in literary criticism, and of proficiency in
science. It was the Hotel de Rambouillet reduced to absurdity. That
fashionable affectation Moliere made the subject of his comedy, "The
Learned Women."
In the following extracts, Moliere satirizes, under the name of
Trissotin, a contemporary writer, one Cotin. The poem which Trissotin
reads, for the learned women to criticise and admire, is an actual
production of this gentleman. Imagine the domestic _coterie_ assembled,
and Trissotin, the poet, their guest. He is present, prepared to regale
them with what he calls his sonnet. We need to explain that the original
poem is thus inscribed: "To Mademoiselle de Longueville, now Duchess of
Namur, on her Quartan Fever." The conceit of the sonneteer is that the
fever is an enemy luxuriously lodged in the lovely person of its victim,
and there insidiously plotting against her life:
_Trissotin._ Sonnet to the Princess Urania on her Fever.
Your prudence sure is fast asleep,
That thus luxuriously you keep
And lodge magnificently so
Your very hardest-hearted foe.
_Belise._ Ah! what a pretty beginning!
_Armande._ What a charming turn it has!
_Philaminte._ He alone possesses the talent of making easy verses.
_Arm._ We must yield to _prudence fast asleep_.
_Bel._ _Lodge one's very hardest-hearted foe_ is full of charms for
me.
_Phil._ I like _luxuriously_ and _magnificently_: these two adverbs
joined together sound admirably.
_Bel._ Let us hear the rest.
_Triss._ Your prudence sure is fast asleep,
That thus luxuriously you keep
And lodge magnificently so
Your very hardest-hearted foe.
_Arm._ _Prudence fast asleep._
_Bel._ _To lodge one's foe._
_Phil._ _Luxuriously_ and _magnificently_.
_Triss._ Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,
From out your chamber, decked so gay,
Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife,
Bold she assails your lovely life.
_Bel._ Ah! gently. Allow me to breathe, I beseech you.
_Arm._ Give us time to admire, I beg.
_Phil._ One feels, at hearing these verses, an indescribable something
which goes through one's inmost soul, and makes one feel quite faint.
_Arm._ Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,
From out your chamber, decked so gay--
How prettily _chamber, decked so gay_, is said here! And with what wit
the metaphor is introduced!
_Phil._ Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say.
Ah! in what an admirable taste that _whate'er men say_ is! To my mind,
the passage is invaluable.
_Arm._ My heart is also in love with _whate'er men say_.
_Bel._ I am of your opinion: _whate'er men say_ is a happy expression.
_Arm._ I wish I had written it.
_Bel._ It is worth a whole poem.
_Phil._ But do you, like me, thoroughly understand the wit of it?
_Arm. and Bel._ Oh! Oh!
_Phil._ Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say.
Although another should take the fever's part, pay no attention; laugh
at the gossips.
Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,
Whate'er men say, whate'er men say.
This _whate'er men say_, says a great deal more than it seems. I do
not know if every one is like me, but I discover in it a hundred
meanings.
_Bel._ It is true that it says more than its size seems to imply.
_Phil._ (_to Trissotin._) But when you wrote this charming _whate'er
men say_, did you yourself understand all its energy? Did you realize
all it tells us? And did you then think that you were writing
something so witty?
_Triss._ Ah! ah!
_Arm._ I have likewise the _ingrate_ in my head--this ungrateful,
unjust, uncivil fever that ill-treats people who entertain her.
_Phil._ In short, both the stanzas are admirable. Let us come quickly
to the triplets, I pray.
_Arm._ Ah! once more, _what'er men say_, I beg.
_Triss._ Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say--
_Phil., Arm., and Bel._ _Whate'er men say!_
_Triss._ From out your chamber, decked so gay--
_Phil., Arm. and Bel._ _Chamber decked so gay!_
_Triss._ Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife--
_Phil., Arm., and Bel._ That _ingrate_ fever!
_Triss._ Bold she assails your lovely life.
_Triss._ _Your lovely life!_
_Arm. and Bel._ Ah!
_Triss._ What! reckless of your ladyhood,
Still fiercely seeks to shed your blood--
_Phil., Arm. and Bel._ Ah!
_Triss._ And day and night to work you harm.
When to the baths sometime you've brought her,
No more ado, with your own arm
Whelm her and drown her in the water.
_Phil._ Ah! It is quite overpowering.
_Bel._ I faint.
_Arm._ I die from pleasure.
_Phil._ A thousand sweet thrills seize one.
_Arm._ _When to the baths sometime you've brought her._
_Bel._ _No more ado, with your own arm._
_Phil._ _Whelm her and drown her in the water._
With your own arm, drown her there in the baths.
_Arm._ In your verses we meet at each step with charming beauty.
_Bel._ One promenades through them with rapture.
_Phil._ One treads on fine things only.
_Arm._ They are little lanes all strewn with roses.
_Triss._ Then, the sonnet seems to you--
_Phil._ Admirable, new; and never did any one make any thing more
beautiful.
_Bel._ (_to Henriette_). What! my niece, you listen to what has been
read without emotion! You play there but a sorry part!
_Hen._ We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt; and to be a
wit does not depend on our will.
_Triss._ My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you.
_Hen._ No. I do not listen.
_Phil._ Ah! Let us hear the epigram.
But our readers, we think, will consent to spare the epigram. They will
relish, however, a fragment taken from a subsequent part of the same
protracted scene. The conversation has made the transition from literary
criticism to philosophy, in Moliere's time a fashionable study, rendered
such by the contemporary genius and fame of Descartes. Armande resents
the limitations imposed upon her sex:
_Arm._ It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our intelligence
to the power of judging of a skirt, of the make of a garment, of the
beauties of lace, or of a new brocade.
_Bel._ We must rise above this shameful condition, and bravely
proclaim our emancipation.
_Triss._ Every one knows my respect for the fairer sex, and that, if I
render homage to the brightness of their eyes, I also honor the
splendor of their intellect.
_Phil._ And our sex does you justice in this respect; but we will show
to certain minds who treat us with proud contempt, that women also
have knowledge; that, like men, they can hold learned
meetings--regulated, too, by better rules; that they wish to unite
what elsewhere is kept apart, join noble language to deep learning,
reveal nature's laws by a thousand experiments; and, on all questions
proposed, admit every party, and ally themselves to none.
_Triss._ For order, I prefer peripateticism.
_Phil._ For abstractions, I love platonism.
_Arm._ Epicurus pleases me, for his tenets are solid.
_Bel._ I agree with the doctrine of atoms; but I find it difficult to
understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter.
_Triss._ I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism.
_Arm._ I like his vortices.
_Phil._ And I, his falling worlds.
_Arm._ I long to see our assembly opened, and to distinguish ourselves
by some great discovery.
_Triss._ Much is expected from your enlightened knowledge, for nature
has hidden few things from you.
_Phil._ For my part, I have, without boasting, already made one
discovery; I have plainly seen men in the moon.
_Bel._ I have not, I believe as yet, quite distinguished men, but I
have seen steeples as plainly as I see you.
_Arm._ In addition to natural philosophy, we will dive into grammar,
history, verse, ethics, and politics.
_Phil._ I find in ethics charms which delight my heart; it was
formerly the admiration of great geniuses; but I give the preference
to the Stoics, and I think nothing so grand as their founder.
"Les Precieuses Ridicules" is an earlier and lighter treatment of the
same theme. The object of ridicule in both these pieces was a lapsed and
degenerate form of what originally was a thing worthy of respect, and
even of praise. At the Hotel de Rambouillet, conversation was cultivated
as a fine art. There was, no doubt, something overstrained in the
standards which the ladies of that circle enforced. Their mutual
communication was all conducted in a peculiar style of language, the
natural deterioration of which was into a kind of euphuism, such as
English readers will remember to have seen exemplified in Walter Scott's
Sir Piercie Shafton. These ladies called each other, with demonstrative
fondness, "Ma precieuse." Hence at last the term _precieuse_ as a
designation of ridicule. Madame de Sevigne was a _precieuse_. But she,
with many of her peers, was too rich in sarcastic common sense to be a
_precieuse ridicule_. Moliere himself, thrifty master of policy that he
was, took pains to explain that he did not satirize the real thing, but
only the affectation.
"Tartuffe, or the Impostor," is perhaps the most celebrated of all
Moliere's plays. Scarcely comedy, scarcely tragedy, it partakes of both
characters. Like tragedy, serious in purpose, it has a happy ending like
comedy. Pity and terror are absent; or, if not quite absent, these
sentiments are present raised only to a pitch distinctly below the
tragic. Indignation is the chief passion excited, or detestation,
perhaps, rather than indignation. This feeling is provided at last with
its full satisfaction in the condign punishment visited on the impostor.
The original "Tartuffe," like the most of Moliere's comedies, is written
in rhymed verse. We could not, with any effort, make the English-reading
student of Moliere sufficiently feel how much is lost when the form is
lost which the creations of this great genius took, in their native
French, under his own master hand. A satisfactory metrical rendering is
out of the question. The sense, at least, if not the incommunicable
spirit, of the original, is very well given in Mr. C. H. Wall's version,
which we use.
The story of "Tartuffe" is briefly this: Tartuffe, the hero, is a pure
villain. He mixes no adulteration of good in his composition. He is
hypocrisy itself, the strictly genuine article. Tartuffe has completely
imposed upon one Orgon, a man of wealth and standing. Orgon, with his
wife, and with his mother, in fact, believes in him absolutely. These
people have received the canting rascal into their house, and are about
to bestow upon him their daughter in marriage. The following scene from
act first shows the skill with which Moliere could exhibit, in a few
strokes of bold exaggeration, the infatuation of Orgon's regard for
Tartuffe. Orgon has been absent from home. He returns, and meets
Cleante, his brother, whom, in his eagerness, he begs to excuse his not
answering a question just addressed to him:
_Orgon (to Cleante)._ Brother, pray excuse me: you will kindly allow
me to allay my anxiety by asking news of the family. (_To Dorine, a
maid-servant._) Has every thing gone on well these last two days? What
has happened? How is every body?
_Dor._ The day before yesterday our mistress was very feverish from
morning to night, and suffered from a most extraordinary headache.
_Org._ And Tartuffe?
_Dor._ Tartuffe! He is wonderfully well, stout, and fat with blooming
cheeks and ruddy lips.
_Org._ Poor man!
_Dor._ In the evening she felt very faint, and the pain in her head
was so great that she could not touch any thing at supper.
_Org._ And Tartuffe?
_Dor._ He ate his supper by himself before her, and very devoutly
devoured a brace of partridges and half a leg of mutton hashed.
_Org._ Poor man!
_Dor._ She spent the whole of the night without getting one wink of
sleep: she was very feverish, and we had to sit up with her until the
morning.
_Org._ And Tartuffe?
_Dor._ Overcome by a pleasant sleepiness, he passed from the table to
his room and got at once into his warmed bed, where he slept
comfortably till the next morning.
_Org._ Poor man!
_Dor._ At last, yielding to our persuasions, she consented to be bled,
and immediately felt relieved.
_Org._ And Tartuffe?
_Dor._ He took heart right valiantly, and fortifying his soul against
all evils, to make up for the blood which our lady had lost, drank at
breakfast four large bumpers of wine.
_Org._ Poor man!
_Dor._ Now, at last, they are both well: and I will go and tell our
lady how glad you are to hear of her recovery.
Tartuffe repays the trust and love of his benefactor by making improper
advances to that benefactor's wife. Orgon's son, who does not share his
father's confidence in Tartuffe, happens to be an unseen witness of the
man's infamous conduct. He exposes the hypocrite to Orgon, with the
result of being himself expelled from the house for his pains; while
Tartuffe, in recompense for the injury done to his feelings, is
presented with a gift-deed of Orgon's estate. But now Orgon's wife
contrives to let her husband see and hear for himself the vileness of
Tartuffe. This done, Orgon confronts the villain, and, with just
indignation, orders him out of his house. Tartuffe reminds Orgon that
the shoe is on the other foot; that he is himself now owner there, and
that it is Orgon, instead of Tartuffe, who must go. Orgon has an
interview with his mother, who is exasperatingly sure still that
Tartuffe is a maligned good man:
_Madame Pernelle._ I can never believe, my son, that he would commit
so base an action.
_Org._ What?
_Per._ Good people are always subject to envy.
_Org._ What do you mean, mother?
_Per._ That you live after a strange sort here, and that I am but too
well aware of the ill-will they all bear him.
_Org._ What has this ill-will to do with what I have just told you?
_Per._ I have told it you a hundred times when you were young, that in
this world virtue is ever liable to persecution, and that, although
the envious die, envy never dies.
_Org._ But what has this to do with what has happened to-day?
_Per._ They have concocted a hundred foolish stories against him.
_Org._ I have already told you that I saw it all myself.