Their general character is extravagance of resources in the plot, extravagance of conception in the characters. Yet in both intrigue and characters there is a certain monotony. The same incidents, romantic and humorous, are variously mingled to produce the imbroglio; the same typical characters—the braggart, the parasite, the pedant, the extravagant poet, the amorous old man, the designing woman, the knavish valet, the garrulous nurse—play their mirthful parts. If the types are studied from real life rather than adopted from Italian or Spanish models, they are exaggerated to absurdity. Corneille alone is distinguished by delicacy of imagination and the finer touch of a dexterous artist.
JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN, who, when connected with the stage, named himself MOLIÈRE, was born in January 1622, in Paris, the son of a prosperous upholsterer, Jean Poquelin, and Marie Cressé, his wife. Educated at the Collège de Clermont, he had among his fellow-pupils the Prince de Conti, Chapelle, the future poet Hesnault, the future traveller Bernier. There seems to be no sufficient reason to doubt that he and some of his friends afterwards received lessons in philosophy from Gassendi, whose influence must have tended to loosen him from the traditional doctrines, and to encourage independence of thought. A translation by Molière of the great poem of Lucretius has been lost, but a possible citation from it appears in the second act of the Misanthrope. Legal studies followed those of philosophy. But Molière had other ends in view than either those of an advocate or of the hereditary office of upholsterer to the King. In 1643, at the age of twenty-one, he decided to throw in his lot with the theatrical company in which Madeleine Béjart and her brothers were leading members. The Illustre Théâtre was constituted, but Paris looked askance at the illustrious actors; debt, imprisonment, and release through friendly aid, formed the net result of Molière's first experiment.
The troupe decided at the close of 1645 or in the early days of the following year to try their fortune in the provinces. It is needless to follow in detail their movements during twelve years—twelve years fruitful in experience for one who observed life with keenest eyes, years of toil, in which the foundations of his art were laid. At Lyons, probably in 1655, possibly in 1653, a comedy, founded on the Italian of Nicolo Barbieri, L'Étourdi, saw the light, and Molière revealed himself as a poet. Young Lélie, the Étourdi, is enamoured of the beautiful Célie, whom the merchant Trufaldin, old and rich, has purchased from corsairs. Lélie's valet Mascarille, who is the life of the play, invents stratagem on stratagem to aid the lover, and is for ever foiled by his master's indiscretions, until the inevitable happy dénouement arrives. The romantic intrigue is conventional; the charm is in the vivacity and colour of the style. In 1656 Le Dépit Amoureux was given with applause at Béziers; much is derived from the Italian of Secchi, something perhaps from Terence; the tender scenes of lovers' quarrels and lovers' reconciliation, contrasting with the franker comedy of the loves of waiting-maid and valet, still live, if the rest of the play be little remembered.
The years of apprenticeship were over when, in 1658, Molière and his company once more in Paris presented, by command, before the King, Corneille's Nicomède, and, leave being granted, gave his farce in the Italian style, the Docteur Amoureux, before pleased spectators. The company was now the troupe of Monsieur, the King's brother, with the Petit-Bourbon as theatre, and there, in November 1659, was enacted Molière's first satiric play on contemporary manners, Les Précieuses Ridicules. We do not need the legendary old man crying from the pit "Courage, Molière! voilà la bonne comédie" to assure us that the comic stage possessed at length a masterpiece. The dramatist had himself known the précieuses of the provinces; through them he might with less danger exhibit the follies of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and the ruelles of the capital. The good bourgeois Gorgibus is induced by his niece and daughter, two précieuses, to establish himself in Paris. Their aspirant lovers, unversed in the affectations of the salon, are slighted and repelled; in revenge they employ their valets, Mascarille and Jodelet, to play the parts of men of fashion and of taste. The exposure and confusion of the ladies, with an indignant rebuke from Gorgibus, close the piece. It was a farce raised to the dignity of comedy. Molière's triumph was the triumph of good sense.
After a success in Sganarelle (1660), a broad comedy of vulgar jealousy, and a decided check—the only one in his dramatic career—in the somewhat colourless tragi-comedy Don Garcie de Navarre (1661), Molière found a theme, suggested by the Adelphi of Terence, which was happily suited to his genius. L'École des Maris (1661) contrasts two methods of education—one suspicious and severe, the other wisely indulgent. Two brothers, Ariste and Sganarelle, seek the hands of their wards, the orphan sisters Isabelle and Léonor; the amiable Ariste, aided by the good sense of a gay soubrette, is rewarded with happiness; the vexatious Sganarelle is put to confusion. The drama is a plea, expressing the writer's personal thoughts, for nature and for freedom. The comedy of manners is here replaced by the comedy of character. Its success suggested to Fouquet that Molière might contribute to the amusement of the King at the fêtes of the Château de Vaux; in fifteen days the dramatist had his bright improvisation Les Fâcheux ready, a series of character sketches in scenes rather than a comedy. The King smiled approval, and, it was whispered, hinted to Molière that another bore might with advantage be added to the collection—the sportsman whose talk shall be of sport. At Fontainebleau he duly appeared before his Majesty, and unkind spectators recognised a portrait of the Marquis de Soyecourt.
Next February (1662) Molière, aged forty, was married to the actress Armande Béjart, whose age was half his own—a disastrous union, which caused him inexpressible anxiety and unhappiness. In L'École des Femmes of the same year he is wiser than he had shown himself in actual life. Arnolphe would train a model wife from childhood by the method of jealous seclusion and in infantile ignorance; but love, in the person of young Horace, finds out a way. There is pathos in the anguish of Arnolphe; yet it is not the order of nature that middle-aged folks should practise perverting arts upon innocent affections. The charming Agnès belongs of right to Horace, and the over-wise, and therefore foolish, Arnolphe must quit the scene with his despairing cry. Some matter of offence was found by the devout in Molière's play; it was the opening of a long campaign; the précieuses, the dainty gentle-folk, the critical disciples of Aristotle, the rival comedians, were up in arms. Molière for the occasion ignored the devout; upon the others he made brilliant reprisals in La Critique de l'École des Femmes (1663) and L'Impromptu de Versailles (1663).
Among those who war against nature and human happiness, not the least dangerous foe is the religious hypocrite. On May 12, 1664, Molière presented before the King the first three acts of his great character-comedy Tartufe. Instantly Anne of Austria and the King's confessor, now Archbishop of Paris, set to work; the public performance of "The Hypocrite" was inhibited; a savage pamphlet was directed against its author by the curé of Saint-Barthélemy. Private representations, however, were given; Tartufe, in five acts, was played in November in presence of the great Condé. In 1665 Molière's company was named the servants of the King; two years later a verbal permission was granted for the public performance of the play. It appeared under the title of L'Imposteur; the victory seemed won, when again, and without delay, the blow fell; by order of the President, M. de Lamoignon, the theatre was closed. Molière bore up courageously. The King was besieging Lille; Molière despatched two of his comrades to the camp, declaring that if the Tartufes of France should carry all before them he must cease to write. The King was friendly, but the Archbishop fulminated threats of excommunication against any one who should even read the play. At length in 1669, when circumstances were more favourable, Louis XIV. granted the desired permission; in its proper name Molière's play obtained complete freedom. Bourdaloue might still pronounce condemnation; Bossuet might draw terrible morals from the author's sudden death; an actor, armed with the sword of the comic spirit, had proved victorious. And yet the theologians were not wholly wrong; the tendency of Molière's teaching, like that of Rabelais and like that of Montaigne, is to detach morals from religion, to vindicate whatever is natural, to regard good sense and good feeling as sufficient guides of conduct.
There is an accent of indignation in the play; the follies of men and women may be subjects of sport; base egoism assuming the garb of religion deserves a lash that draws the blood. Is it no act of natural piety to defend the household against the designs of greedy and sensual imposture; no service to society to quicken the penetration of those who may be made the dupes of selfish craft? While Organ and his mother are besotted by the gross pretensions of the hypocrite, while the young people contend for the honest joy of life, the voice of philosophic wisdom is heard through the sagacious Cléante, and that of frank good sense through the waiting-maid, Dorine. Suddenly a providence, not divine but human, intervenes in the representative of the monarch and the law, and the criminal at the moment of triumph is captured in his own snare.
When the affair of Tartufe was in its first tangle, Molière produced a kind of dramatic counterpart—Don Juan, ou le Festin de Pierre (1665). In Don Juan—whose valet Sganarelle is the faithful critic of his master—the dramatist presented one whose cynical incredulity and scorn of all religion are united with the most complete moral licence; but hypocrisy is the fashion of the day, and Don Juan in sheer effrontery will invest himself for an hour in the robe of a penitent. Atheist and libertine as he is, there is a certain glamour of reckless courage about the figure of his hero, recreated by Molière from a favourite model of Spanish origin. His comedy, while a vigorous study of character, is touched with the light of romance.
These are masterpieces; but neither Tartufe nor Don Juan expresses so much of the mind of Molière as does Le Misanthrope (1666). His private griefs, his public warfare, had doubtless a little hardened and a little embittered his spirit. In many respects it is a sorry world; and yet we must keep on terms with it. The misanthropist Alceste is nobly fanatical on behalf of sincerity and rectitude. How does his sincerity serve the world or serve himself? And he, too, has his dose of human folly, for is he not enamoured of a heartless coquette? Philinte is accommodating, and accepts the world for what it is; and yet, we might ask, is there not a more settled misanthropy in such cynical acquiescence than there is in the intractable virtue of Alceste? Alone of Molière's plays, Le Misanthrope has that Shakespearean obscurity which leaves it open to various interpretations. It is idle to try to discover actual originals for the characters. But we may remember that when Alceste cried to Célimène, "C'est pour mes péchés que je vous aime," the actors who stood face to face were Molière and the wife whom he now met only on the stage.