Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/657

Rh MOLIERE 629 and French stages. Moliere made it a new thing : terrible and romantic in its portrait of un grand seigneur mauvais homme, modern in its suggested substitution of la humanite for religion, comic, even among his comedies, by the mirth ful character of Sganarelle. The piece filled the theatre, but was stopped, probably by authority, after Easter. It was not printed by Moliere, and even in 1682 the publi cation of the full text was not permitted. Happily the copy of Do la Kegnie, the chief of the police, escaped obliterations, and gave us the full scene of Don Juan and the Beggar. The piece provoked a virulent criticism (Observations sur le Festin de Pierre, 1665). It is allowed that Moliere has some farcical talent, and is not unskilled as a plagiarist, but he &quot; attacks the interests of Heaven,&quot; &quot;keeps a school of infidelity,&quot; &quot;insults the king,&quot; &quot;cor rupts virtue,&quot; &quot;offends the queen-mother,&quot; and so forth. Two replies were published, one of which is by some critics believed to show traces of the hand of Moliere. The king s reply, as has been shown, was to adopt Moliere s company as his servants, and to pension them. L Amour Medecin, a light comedy, appeared 22d September 1665. In this piece Moliere, for the second time, attacked physicians. In December there was a quarrel with Racine about his play of Alexandre, which he treacherously transferred to the Hotel de Bourgogne. June 4, 1666 saw the first repre sentation of that famous play, Le Misanthrope (ou L Atra- liliaire Amoureux, as the original second title ran). This piece, perhaps the masterpiece of Moliere, was more suc cessful with the critics, with the court, and with posterity than with the public. The rival comedians called it &quot; a new style of comedy,&quot; and so it was. The eternal passions and sentiments of human nature, modified by the influence of the utmost refinement of civilization, were the matter of the piece. The school for scandal kept by Celimene, with its hasty judgments on all characters, gave the artist a wide canvas. The perpetual strife between the sensible optimism of a kindly man of the world (Philinte) and the sxva indignatio of a noble nature soured (Alceste) sup plies the intellectual action. The humours of the joyously severe Celimene and of her court, especially of that death less minor poet Oronte, supply the lighter comedy. Boileau, Lessing, Goethe have combined to give this piece the highest rank even among the comedies of Moliere. As to the &quot; keys &quot; to the characters, and the guesses about the original from whom Alceste was drawn, they are as value less as other contemporary tattle. A briefer summary must be given of the remaining years of the life of Moliere. The attractions of Le Misanthrope were reinforced (6th August) by those of the Medecin Malgre Lui, an amusing farce founded on an old fabliau. In December the court and the comedians went to Saint Germain, where, among other diversions, the pieces called Melicerte, La Pastorale Comique (of which Moliere is said to have destroyed the MS.), and the charming little piece Le Sicilien, were performed. A cold and fatigue seem to have injured the health of Moliere, and we now hear of the consumptive tendency which was cruelly ridiculed in filomire Hypockondre. Moliere was doubtless obliged to see too much of the distracted or pedantic physicians of an age when medicine was the battlefield of tradition, super stition, and nascent chemical science. On 17th April 1667 Robinet, the rhyming gazetteer, says that the life of Moliere was thought to be in danger. On the 10th of June, however, he played in Le Sicilien before the town. In the earlier months of 1667 Louis XIV. was with the army in Flanders. There were embassies sent from the comedy to the camp, and on 5th August it was apparent that Moliere had overcome the royal scruples. Tartuffe was played, but Lamoignon stopped it after the first night. La Grange and La Torilliere hastened to the camp, and got the king s promise that he would reconsider the matter on his return. Moliere s next piece (13th January 1668) was Amphitryon, a free a very free adaptation from Plautus, who then seems to have engaged his attention, for not long afterwards he again borrowed from the ancient writer in L Avare. There is a controversy as to whether Amphitryon was meant to ridicule M. de Montespan, the husband of the new mistress of Louis XIV. Michelet has a kind of romance based on this probably groundless hypo thesis. The king still saw the piece occasionally, after he had purged himself and forsworn sack under Madame de Maintenon, and probably neither he nor that devout lady detected any personal references in the coarse and witty comedy. As usual, Moliere was accused of plagiarizing, this time from Rotrou, who had also imitated Plautus. The next play was the immortal George Dandin (10th July), first played at a festival at Versailles. Probably the piece was a rapid palimpsest on the ground of one of his old farces, but the addition of these typical members of a county family, the De Sotenville, raises the work from farce to satiric comedy. The story is borrowed from Boccaccio, but is of unknown age, and always new, Adolphus Crosbie in The Small House at Allington being a kind of modern George Dandin. Though the sad fortunes of this peasant with social ambition do not fail to make us pity him some what, it is being too refined to regard George Dandin as a comedy with a concealed tragic intention. Moliere must have been at work on L Avare before George Dandin appeared, for the new comedy after Plautus was first acted on 9th September. There is a tradition that the piece almost failed ; but, if unpopular in the first year of its pro duction, it certainly gained favour before the death of its author. M, de Pourceaugnac (17th September 1669) was first acted at Chambord, for the amusement of the king. It is a rattling farce. The physicians, as usual, bore the brunt of Moliere s raillery, some of which is still applicable. Earlier in 1669 (5th February) Tartuffe was played at last, with extraordinary success. Les Amants Magniftques, a comedy-ballet, was acted first at Saint Germain (10th February 1670). The king might have been expected to dance in the ballet, but from Racine s Britannicus (13th December 1669) the majestical monarch learned that Nero was blamed for exhibitions of this kind, and he did not wish to out-Nero Nero. Astrology this time took the place of medicine as a butt, but the satire has become obsolete, except, perhaps, in Turkey, where astrology is still a power. The Bourgeois Gentilhomme, too familiar to require analysis, was first played on 23d October 1770. The lively Fourberies de Scapin &quot; saw the footlights &quot; (if footlights there were) on 24th May 1671, and on 7th May we read in La Grange, &quot; les Repetitions de Spsyche ont commance.&quot; La Grange says the theatre was newly decorated and fitted with machines. A &quot; concert of twelve violins&quot; was also provided, the company being resolute to have everything handsome about them. New singers were introduced, who did not refuse to sing un masked on the stage. Quinault composed the words for the music, which was by Lulli ; Moliere and Pierre Corneille collaborated in the dialogue of this magnificent opera, the name of which (Psyche) La Grange eventually learned how to spell. The Comtesse d Escarbagnas (2d February 1672) was another piece for the amusement of the court, and made part of an entertainment called Le Ballet des Ballets. In this play, a study of provincial manners, Moliere attacked the financiers of the time in the person of M. Harpin. The comedy has little importance compared with Les Femmes Savantes (llth February), a severer Pre- cieuses, in which are satirized the vanity and affectation of sciolists, pedants, and the women who admire them. The satire is never out of date, and finds its modern form in