Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 13.djvu/765

* MOLIEKE. 68T MOLIERE. work <)f Moli^rc Uio bom dramatist from that of Molifere tlio tlicatriual mauaycr and purveyor of Court entertainments. He wrote very much in the hitler eapacily that he would not liave written in the former. The financial success and ]iriis|M'rity of his company were also an ohlifja- lion not to he neglected. To satisfy this he wrote conventional comedies and extravagant farces, and to please the royal taste he comjiosed for festivals at Versailles some thirteen semi-operatic come<lies, in which the text was only a pretext for dancing and singing, wherein high dignitaries of the Court sometimes took ])arl. He was dis- tracted, too, hy hitter attacks which he conde- scended occasionally to answer in his farces, though such controversy seems to have spurred him to his greatest efl'orts and lent a keener edge to his attacks on hypocrisy and pharisaisin. Les fdcheux (The Bores), a comedy-ballet in three acts, acted at Vaux (August, IfldI), for Kouipiet on the eve of his downfall, illustrates this diversion of genius, and is interesting because Louis XIV. suggesteil one of its scenes; iiVco/e rfe.s fctni}i(s, vhi<;h follows (December, 1G02), is an exhibition of .Mcdi&re's mature art as a satirist aiming at social and moral reformation, and l.a critique de I'ccole des femmes with L'impruinplu de Versailles, which immediately follow this in 1603, are answers to the criticism that it evoked — c)iticisni imbittercd by Moli^I■e's sviecess and given a handle by his marriage ( February, 1002 ) to Arniande H^'jart. She was probably the sister of an old meinbcr of his company, her.self an actress, and lier indiscretions were a source of constant vexation and jealousy to Moli&re. L'ecole dfs fcmincs is the first of Moli&re's great comedies, the first great serious comedy ot French literature. It deals with the part of woman in society and her proper preparation for it, and treats both in a spirit more liberal than the France of to-day wholly approves. This alone would have insured violent criticism, but to it was added a bold and contemptuous satire on the prevalent materialistic views of future punishment. The play was denounced, not merely as vulgar and obscene, but as impious — for in- stance, by Boursatilt in his Portruil du peintre. Boursault was answered by name in the merciless Impromplu de Versailles, where, too, the rival company of the Hotel de Bourgogne were parodied and ridiculed. This controversy had by no means subsided when Molifre, after the trivial Mariar;c force (1064) and La prinrcssc d'elide (100-1), two comedy-ballets, j)rovoked redoubled fury by two attacks on hypocrisy, Tarlufe and Don Juun, or I.r festin de Pierre. Of the former three acts only were presented in 1604. Jesuits and Jan- senists alike winced at it. and five years of persistent ellort barely extorted permission to present the masterpiece as a whole. Don Juan appeared in February. 100.5. and in August the King significantly adopted Jbdi^re's troupe as his own. But even his sympathy had its limits, and this ai)pointm<'nt was perhaps in the nature of a considation for the suppression of Don .liian in the midst of a prosperous run. The full text of this play is preserved to us onlv in a copy kept hy the chief of police. While awaiting permission to act Tarlufe in its entirety, with Don Juan forbidden, MoliJre wrote L'lunour medec-in (106.5), a clever attack on the medical practitioners of his day, and Le misanthrope (July, 1060), in which his rivals and critics rightly discerned "a new style of com- edy,' wherein the constant motive forces of universal human nature are shown modified by the highest relinemcnt to which civilization had yet attained. The easy optimist is set oil against the noble iiessimi.it, and a .social school for scandal sup[)lies the lighter comedy and offers a pillory for fops and poetasters. About this time Alolitre's health .seems to have begun to fail. Cold and fatigue brought on a disease of the lungs, and what he says of the distracted and pedantic doctors of his day, when su])erstilion and tradition were struggling with one another and with half understood fragments of science, lent sad ])oint to the Mcdeein malgrd lui, the second of his noteworthy attacks on the quackery of that time. Then follows a period of relaxed activity with only three comedy- ballets, Mcliccrle (1000), Le pastoral eomique (1007), and Le Hicilicn (1007), followed by the comparatively insignificant Amphitryon (1668), a coarse yet «itty adaptation from Plautus. In July of 1008 jMoli&re shows his old self again in Gcoryc Dandin, an immortal type of the man who marries above his social station and suffers the consequences with rueful .self-accusation. The story is at least as old as Boccaccio, but Moli6re's squirarchic Sotenvilles are his creation and an abiding delight. This little master stroke was followed in Septem- ber, 1068, by a masterpiece, L'avare, who.se cen- tral figure, the caricatural Harpagon, is one of Moliere's greatest studies of vitiated character. Several lighter pieces followed, first II. de Pour- ceaiiynac, a comedy-ballet with much raillery at the physicians; then Les aniants niaftnifiques (1070), a persiflage of astrological extrava- gances ; then that excellently comic farce, Le houri/rois geniilhonime (1670); then Psi/che (1071), a tragedy-ballet, written in coll.aboration with Corneille and t^uinault. The music was by Lulli. Then followed the lively Fourheries de ^capin ( 1671 ) ; and finally the Comtesse d'Escar- hagnas, a .study of provincial manners and an attack on financiers, heralding thus Lesage's Turcaret. Much greater than any of these are the last legacies to French eomedy of the dying Moliere, Les femrncs sarantes (1672), and Le malade imar/inaire (1673). The former recurs to the subject of the Precienses ridicules and with ripest power attacks the admirers of j)edantry and the affectations of learning. The latter, pri- marily a last gibe at physicians, is important for its widening of satiric comedy to include the per- version of childhood. Le malade imar/inaire was first acted February 10, 1073. On the 17th Moli^re undertook the part of the hypochondriac invalid, though suffering from what he called a 'fluxion. ' In a fit of cougir ing lie burst a blood-vessel on the stage and died al his house a half hour later. His enemies pur- sued him in death. He was buried half clandes- tinely. The Archbishop of Paris, thinking Mo- lifre's ethics irreconcilable with Christianity, for- bade public ceremony, but the command was evaded. The body was laid in Saint Joseph's churchyard, but the site of the gi-ave is uncer- tain. Xo dramatist, save perhaps Shakespeare and Aristophanes, ever joined so much wit to so much seriousness as did Moliere. There is often I