in the pit twopence-halfpenny was the charge. The doors
were opened at one o’clock, the curtain rose at two.
The nominal director of the Théâtre Illustre in the provinces was Du Fresne; the most noted actors were Molière, the Béjards, and Du Parc, called Gros René. It is extremely difficult to follow exactly the line of march of the company. They played at Bordeaux, for example, but the date of this performance, when Molière (according to Montesquieu) failed in tragedy and was pelted, is variously given as 1644–1645 (Trallage), 1647 (Loiseleur), 1648–1658 (Lacroix). Perhaps the theatre prospered better elsewhere than in Paris, where the streets were barricaded in these early days of the war of the Fronde. We find Molière at Nantes in 1648, at Fontenay-la-Compte, and in the spring of 1649 at Agen, Toulouse, and probably at Angouléme and Limoges. In January 1650 they played at Narbonne, and between 1650 and 1653 Lyons was the headquarters of the troupe. In January 1653, or perhaps 1655, Molière gave L’Étourdi at Lyons, the first of his finished pieces, as contrasted with the slight farces with which he generally diverted a country audience. It would be interesting to have the precise date of this piece, but La Grange (1682) says that “in 1653 Molière went to Lyons, where he gave his first comedy, L’Étourdi,” while in his Registre La Grange enters the year as 1655. At Lyons de Brie and his wife, the famous Mlle de Brie, entered the troupe, and du Parc married the “marquise” de Gorla, better known as Mlle du Parc. The libellous author of La Fameuse comédienne reports that Molière’s heart was the shuttlecock of the beautiful du Parc and de Brie, and the tradition has a persistent life. Molière’s own opinion of the ladies and men of his company may be read between the lines of his Impromptu de Versailles. In 1653 Prince de Conti, after many political adventures, was residing at La Grange, near Pézénas, in Languedoc, and chance brought him into relations with his old schoolfellow Molière. Conti had for first gentleman of his bed-chamber the abbé Daniel de Cosnac, whose memoirs now throw light for a moment on the fortunes of the wandering troupe. Cosnac engaged the company “of Molière and of La Béjart”; but another company, that of Cormier, nearly intercepted the favour of the prince. Thanks to the resolution of Cosnac, Molière was given one chance of appearing on the private theatre of La Grange. The excellence of his acting, the splendour of the costumes, and the insistence of Cosnac, and of Sarrasin, Conti’s secretary, gained the day for Molière, and a pension was assigned to his company (Cosnac, Mémoires, i. 128; Paris, 1852). As Cosnac proposed to pay Molière a thousand crowns of his own money to recompense him in case he was supplanted by Cormier, it is obvious that his profession had become sufficiently lucrative. In 1654, during the session of the estates of Languedoc, Molière and his company played at Montpellier. Here Molière danced in a ballet (Le Ballet des incompatibles) in which a number of men of rank took part, according to the fashion of the time. Molière’s own rôles were those of the Poet and the Fishwife. The sport of the little piece is to introduce opposite characters, dancing and singing together. Silence dances with six women, Truth with four courtiers, Money with a poet, and so forth. Whether the ballet, or any parts of it, are by Molière, is still disputed (La Jeunesse de Molière, suivie du ballet des incompatibles, P. L. Jacob, Paris, 1858). In April 1655 it is certain that the troupe was at Lyons, where they met and hospitably entertained a profligate buffoon, Charles d’Assoucy, who informs the ages that Molière kept open house, and “une table bien garnie." November 1655 found Molière at Pézénas, where the estates of Languedoc were convened, and Where local tradition points out the barber’s chair in which the poet used to sit and study character. The longest of Molière’s extant autographs is a receipt, dated at Pézénas, on the 4th of February 1656, for 6000 livres, granted by the estates of Languedoc. This year was notable for the earliest representation, at Béziers, of Molière’s second finished comedy, the Dépit amoureux. Conti now (1656) began to “make his soul.” Almost his first act of penitence was to discard Molière’s troupe (1657), which consequently found that the liberality of the estates of Languedoc was dried up for ever. Conti’s relations with Molière must have definitively closed long before 1666, when the now pious prince wrote a treatise against the stage, and especially charged his old schoolfellow with keeping a new school, a school of atheism (Traité de la comédie, p. 24; Paris, 1666). Molière was now (1657) independent of princes and their favour. He went on a new circuit to Nismes, Orange and Avignon, where he met another old class-mate, Chapelle, and also encountered the friend of his later life, the painter Mignard. After a later stay at Lyons, ending with a piece given for the benefit of the poor on the 27th of February 1658, Molière passed to Grenoble, returned to Lyons, and is next found in Rouen, where, we should have said, the Théâtre Illustre had played in 1643 (F. Bouquet, La Troupe de Molière à Rouen, p. 90; Paris, 1880). At Rouen Molière must have made or renewed the acquaintance of Pierre and Thomas Corneille. His company had played pieces by Corneille at Lyons and elsewhere. The real business of the comedian in Rouen was to prepare his return to Paris. “After several secret journeys thither he was fortunate enough to secure the patronage of Monsieur, the king’s only brother, who granted him his protection, and permitted the company to take his name, presenting them as his servants to the king and the queen mother” (Preface to La Grange’s edition of 1682). The troupe appeared for the first time before Louis XIV. in a theatre arranged in the old Louvre (Oct. 24, 1658).
Molière was now thirty-six years of age. He had gained all the experience that fifteen years of practice could give. He had seen men and cities, and noted all the humours of rural and civic France. He was at the head of a company which, as La Grange, his friend and comrade, says, “sincerely loved him.” He had the unlucrative patronage of a great prince to back him, and the jealousy of all playwrights, and of the old theatres of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and the Marais, to contend against. In this struggle we can follow him by aid of the Registre of La Grange (a brief diary of receipts and payments), and by the help of notices in the rhymed chronicles of Loret.
The first appearance of Molière before the king was all but a failure. Nicomède, by the elder Corneille, was the piece, and we may believe that the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, who were present, found much to criticize. When the play was over, Molière came forward and asked the king’s permission to act “one of the little pieces with which he had been used to regale the provinces.” The Docteur amoureux, one of several slight comedies admitting of much “gag,” was then performed, and “diverted as much as it surprised the audience.” The king commanded that the troupe should establish itself in Paris (Preface, ed. 1682). The theatre assigned to the company was a salle in the Petit Bourbon, in a line with the present Rue du Louvre. Some Italian players already occupied the house on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays; the company of Molière played on the other days. The first piece played in the new house (Nov. 3, 1658) was L’Étourdi. La Grange says the comedy had a great success, producing seventy pistoles for each actor. The success is admitted even by the spiteful author of Élomire hypochondre (Paris, 1670):—
“Je jouai l’Étourdi, qui fut une merveille.”
The success, however, is attributed to the farcical element in the play and the acting—the cuckoo-cry of Molière’s detractors. The original of L’Étourdi is the Italian comedy (1629) L’Inavvertito, by Nicolò Barbieri detto Beltrame; Molière pushed rather far his right to “take his own wherever he found it.” Had he written nothing more original, the contemporary critic of the Festin de Pierre might have said, not untruly, that he only excelled in stealing pieces from the Italians. The piece is conventional: the stock characters of the prodigal son, the impudent valet, the old father occupy the stage. But the dialogue has amazing rapidity, and the vivacity of M. Coquelin to Mascarille made L’Étourdi a favourite on the modern stage, though it cannot be read with very much pleasure. The next piece, new in Paris, though not in the provinces, was the Dépit amoureux (first acted at Béziers, 1656). The play was not
