Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/90

 68 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS more deserving of ridicule than the selfish timidity of the hypochondriac, who, ungrateful for the store of good health with which nature has endowed him, as- sumes the habitual precautions of an infirm patient. Moliere has added much to the humor of the piece by assigning to the Ma- lade Imaginaire a strain of frugality along with his love of medicine, which leads him to take every mode that may diminish the expense of his supposed in- disposition. The expenses of a sick-bed are often talked of, but it is only the imaginary valetudinarian who thinks of carrying economy into that department ; the real patient has other things to think of. Argan, therefore, is discovered taxing his apothecary's bill, at once delighting his ear with the flowery language of the pharmacopoeia, and gratifying his frugal disposition by clipping off some items and reducing others, and arriving at the double conclusion, first, that if his apothecary does not become more reasonable, he cannot afford to be a sick man any longer ; and secondly, that as he has swallowed fewer drugs by one-third this month than he had done the last, it was no wonder that he was not so well. The inference, "Je le dirai h Monsieur Purgon, ajin qiiil niette ordre h cela" is irre- sistibly comic. As the Malade Imaginaire was the last character in which Moliere ap- peared, it is here necessary to say a few words upon his capacity as an actor. He bore, according to one contemporary, and with justice, the first rank among the performers of his line. He was a comedian from top to toe. He seemed to possess more voices than one ; besides which, every limb had its expression a step in advance or retreat, a wink, a smile, a nod, expressed more in his action, than the greatest talker could explain in words in the course of an hour. He was, says another contemporary, neither corpulent nor otherwise, rather above the middle size, with a noble carriage and well-formed limbs ; he walked with dignity, had a very serious aspect, the nose and mouth rather large, with full lips, a dark complexion, the eyebrows black and strongly marked, and a command of countenance which rendered his. physiognomy formed to express comedy. A less friendly pen (that of the author of " L'Inpromptu de l'Hdtel de Condd") has caricatured Moliere as coming on the stage with his head thrown habitually back, his nose turned up into the air, his hands on his sides with an affectation of negligence^ and (what would seem in England a gross affectation, but which was tolerated in Paris as an expression of the superbia qucesita meritis) his peruke always environed by a crown of laurels. But the only real defect in his perform- ance arose from an habitual hoquet, or slight hiccough, which he had acquired by attempting to render himself master of an extreme volubility of enunciation, but which his exquisite art contrived on almost all occasions successfully to disguise. Thus externally fitted for his art, there can be no doubt that he who pos- sessed so much comedy in his conceptions of character, must have had equal judgment and taste in the theatrical expression, and that only the poet himself could fully convey what he alone could have composed. He performed the principal character in almost all his own pieces, and adhered to the stage even when many motives occurred to authorize his retirement.