MOLIERE AND HIS WORLD.
From Temple Bar.
MOLIERE AND HIS WORLD.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "MIRABEAU," ETC.
When 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.
"Always the marquises!" exclaims Madame Molière in "L'Impromptu de Versailles."
"Yes, always the marquises," replies her husband, "what the devil would you have me take as an amusing character for the stage? The marquis of the day is the buffoon of comedy; and as in all the ancient comedies we find a comic servant who affords laughter to the audience, so in all our pieces we must have a ridiculous marquis to divert the company."
In directing La Grange (the actor) how to support this rôle, he says:—
