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 mould, 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.
PROP. 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 are 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 genteel manner, and turned
prettily.
PROF. PHIL. Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your heart to
ashes; that you suffer day and night for her, tortures--
M. JOUR. No, no, no, I don't any of that. I simply wish for 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 that 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, _whate'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.
PHIL. _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 everybody?
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.
PER. The malice of evil-disposed persons is very great.
ORG. You would make me swear, mother! I tell you that I saw his
audacious attempt with my own eyes.
PER. Evil tongues have always some venom to pour forth; and here
below, there is nothing proof against them.
ORG. You are maintaining a very senseless argument. I saw it, I
tell you,--saw it with my own eyes! what you can call s-a-w, saw!
Must I din it over and over into your ears, and shout as loud as
half a dozen people?
PER. Gracious goodness! appearances often deceive us! We must not
always judge by what we see.
ORG. I shall go mad!
PER. We are by nature prone to judge wrongly, and good is often
mistaken for evil.
ORG. I ought to look upon his desire of seducing my wife as
charitable?
PER. You ought to have good reasons before you accuse another, and
you should have waited till you were quite sure of the fact.
ORG. Heaven save the mark! how could I be more sure? I suppose,
mother, I ought to have waited till--you will make me say something
foolish.
PER. In short, his soul is possessed with too pure a zeal; and I
cannot possibly conceive that he would think of attempting what you
accuse him of.
ORG. If you were not my mother, I really don't know what I might
now say to you, you make me so savage.
The short remainder of the scene has for its important idea, the
suggestion that under the existing circumstances some sort of peace
ought to be patched up between Orgon and Tartuffe. Meantime one LOYAL is
observed coming, whereupon the fourth scene of act fifth opens:--
LOY. (to DORINE _at the farther part of the stage_). Good-day, my
dear sister; pray let me speak to your master.
DOR. He is with friends, and I do not think he can see any one just
now.
LOY. I would not be intrusive. I feel sure that he will find
nothing unpleasant in my visit: in fact, I come for something which
will be very gratifying to him.
DOR. What is your name?
LOY. Only tell him that I come from Mr. Tartuffe, for his benefit.
DOR. (to ORGON). It is a man who comes in a civil way from Mr.
Tartuffe, on some business which will make you glad, he says.
CLE. (to ORGON). You must see who it is, and what the man wants.
ORG. (to CLEANTE). He is coming, perhaps, to settle matters between
us in a friendly way. How, in this case, ought I to behave to him?
CLE. Don't show any resentment, and, if he speaks of an agreement,
listen to him.
LOY. (to ORGON). Your servant, sir! May heaven punish whoever
wrongs you! and may it be as favorable to you, sir, as I wish!
ORG. (_aside to_ CLEANTE). This pleasant beginning agrees with my
conjectures, and argues some sort of reconciliation.
LOY. All your family was always dear to me, and I served your
father.
ORG. Sir, I am sorry and ashamed to say that I do not know who you
are, neither do I remember your name.
LOY. My name is Loyal; I was born in Normandy, and am a royal
bailiff in spite of envy. For the last forty years I have had the
good fortune to fill the office, thanks to Heaven, with great
credit; and I come, sir, with your leave, to serve you the writ of
a certain order.
ORG. What! you are here--
LOY. Gently, sir, I beg. It is merely a summons,--a notice for you
to leave this place, you and yours; to take away all your goods and
chattels, and make room for others, without delay or adjournment,
as hereby decreed.
ORG. I! leave this place?