Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/201

MOLIERE AND HIS WORLD.

Louis the Fourteenth asked Boileau, who was the greatest genius that had adorned his reign, the poet replied, "Molière;" the king seems to have doubted the accuracy of this judgment, but posterity has confirmed it. Corneille and Racine are little appreciated by foreigners, since they reflect only the fashion of an epoch; but the whole world agrees upon the merits of the great comic writer who, while reflecting his age with marvellous fidelity, has, like Shakespeare, drawn those eternal types of human nature which are independent of time, country, or manners, and which are as true to-day as in the hour in which they were embodied, or as they will be a thousand years hence. The Tartuffes, the Sganarelles, the Dandins, the Agnès, the Orgons, the Jourdains, the Harpagons, will endure while humanity exists.

One of the first points that must strike a student of these comedies, is the extreme narrowness of the world they represent; the same personages, or rather varieties of the same, are constantly reappearing in different plays; and, with the exception of such individual types as Tartuffe and Harpagon, of which the reproduction was scarcely possible, the marquis, the valet, the bourgeois, the ingénue, and the intriguante form the whole of their dramatis personæ. The fact is, the elements of the society in which he lived were then as simple as those of a Greek tragedy, when compared with the complexities and multiform aspects of our modern civilization. His world was broadly divided into two parts, the noble and the bourgeois, the grade below was non-existent in an artistic point of view, its individualisms were too coarse for the purposes of the stage. These two great divisions were, however, capable of several sub-divisions; there was the courtier, the provincial noble, and the plain gentleman; in the second division there were the gens de robe, the men of law and medicine, the merchant, and the shopkeeper.

It has been a matter of surprise that Molière should have had the hardihood to ridicule the courtier so mercilessly as he has done in the "marquis." But the whole policy of Louis the Fourteenth was to abase the pride and lower the consequence of the noblesse, and all which tended to that object gave him pleasure, indeed it has been said that more than one character of this kind was suggested by himself. The "marquis" has always been a favorite subject of ridicule with French dramatists from Molière to Lecocq.

In directing La Grange (the actor) how to support this rôle, he says:—

"You know how to come on, as I have told you, with that air which is called le bel air, combing your perruque and humming a song between your teeth, la, la, la, la, la, la. Make room there you others, two marquises must have some ground, they are not the people to content themselves with a small space."

Do you believe [he says, speaking in his own person] that Molière has exhausted all that is ridiculous in mankind? Without quitting the court has he not twenty characters he has not touched? Has he not, for example, those who profess the greatest friendship in the world, and who, their backs being turned, make it their business to revile one another? Are there not those extravagant adulators, those insipid flatterers, who do not season with any salt the praises they give, and whose flatteries have a nauseous sweetness which sickens the heart that listens to them? Are there not those sordid courtiers of favor, those perfidious adorers of fortune, who burn incense before you in prosperity and crush you in disgrace? Are there not those who are always the discontents of the court, those useless followers, those assiduous nuisances, those people, I say, who can count no services but importunities, and who desire to be recompensed for besieging the prince for ten years? Are there not those who caress all