Moliere and French comedy had no need to take shelter beneath the mantle of the ancients; they, together, had shed upon the world incomparable lustre. Shakespeare might dispute with Corneille and Racine the sceptre of tragedy; he had succeeded in showing himself as full of power, with more truth, as the one, and as full of tenderness, with more profundity, as the other. Moliere is superior to him in originality, abundance, and perfection of characters; he yields to him neither in range, nor penetration, nor complete knowledge of human nature. The lives of these two great geniuses, authors and actors both together, present in other respects certain features of resemblance. Both were intended for another career than that of the stage; both, carried away by an irresistible passion, assembled about them a few actors, leading at first a roving life, to end by becoming the delight of the court and of the world. John Baptist Poquelin, who before long assumed the name of Moliere, was born at Paris in 1622; his father, upholstery-groom-of-the-chamber (valet de chambre tapissier) to Louis XIV., had him educated with some care at Clermont (afterwards Louis-le-Grand) College, then in the hands of the Jesuits. He attended, by favor, the lessons which the philosopher Gassendi, for a longtime, the opponent of Descartes, gave young Chapelle. He imbibed at these lessons, together with a more extensive course of instruction, a certain freedom of thinking which frequently cropped out in his plays, and contributed later on to bring upon him an accusation of irreligion. In 1645 (?1643), Moliere had formed, with the ambitious title of illustre theatre, a small company of actors, who, being unable to maintain themselves at Paris, for a long while tramped the provinces through all the troubles of the Fronde. It was in 1653 that Moliere brought out at Lyons his comedy l’Etourdi, the first regular piece he had ever composed. The Depit amoureux was played at Beziers in 1656, at the opening of the session of the States of Languedoc; the company returned to Paris in 1658; in 1659, Moliere, who had obtained a license from the king, gave at his own theatre les Precieuses ridicules. He broke with all imitation of the Italians and the Spaniards, and, taking off to the life the manners of his own times, he boldly attacked the affected exaggeration and absurd pretensions of the vulgar imitators of the Hotel de Rambouillet. “Bravo! Moliere,” cried an old man from the middle of the pit; “this is real comedy.” When he published his piece, Moliere, anxious not to give umbrage to a powerful clique, took care to say in his preface that he was not attacking real precieuses, but only the bad imitations.
Just as he had recalled Corneille to the stage, Fouquet was for protecting Moliere upon it. The Ecole des Mans and the Facheux were played at Vaux. Amongst the ridiculous characters in this latter, Moliere had not described the huntsman. Louis XIV. himself indicated to him the Marquis of Soyecour. “There’s one you have forgotten,” he said. Twenty-four hours later, the bore of a huntsman, with all his jargon of venery, had a place forever amongst the Facheux of Moliere. The Ecole des Femmes, the Impromptu de Versailles, the Critique de l’Ecole des Femmes, began the bellicose period in the great comic poet’s life. Accused of impiety, attacked in the honor of his private life, Moliere, returning insult for insult, delivered over those amongst his enemies who offered a butt for ridicule to the derision of the court and of posterity. The Festin de Pierre and the signal punishment of the libertine (free-thinker) were intended to clear the author from the reproach of impiety; la Princesse d’Elide and l’Amour medecin were but charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth instituted between reality and appearance. In 1666, Moliere produced le Misanthrope, a frank and noble spirit’s sublime invective against the frivolity, perfidious and showy semblances of court. “This misanthrope’s despitefulness against bad verses was copied from me; Moliere himself confessed as much to me many a time,” wrote Boileau one day. The indignation of Alceste is deeper and more universal than that of Boileau against bad poets; he is disgusted with the court and the world because he is honest, virtuous, and sincere, and sees corruption triumphant around him; he is wroth to feel the effects of it in his life, and almost in his own soul. He is a victim to the eternal struggle between good and evil without the strength and the unquenchable hope of Christianity. The Misanthrope is a shriek of despair uttered by virtue, excited and almost distraught at the defeat she forebodes. The Tartuffe was a new effort in the same direction, and bolder in that it attacked religious hypocrisy, and seemed to aim its blows even at religion itself. Moliere was a long time working at it; the first acts had been played in 1664, at court, under the title of l’Hypocrite, at the same time as la Princesse d’Elide. “The king,” says the account of the entertainment in the Gazette de Loret, “saw so much analogy of form between those whom true devotion sets in the way of heaven and those whom an empty ostentation of good deeds does not hinder from committing bad, that his extreme delicacy in respect of religious matters could with difficulty brook this resemblance of vice to virtue; and though there might be no doubt of the author’s good intentions, he prohibited the playing of this comedy before the public until it should be quite finished and examined by persons qualified to judge of it, so as not to let advantage be taken of it by others less capable of just discernment in the matter.” Though played once publicly, in 1667, under the title of l’Imposteur, the piece did not appear definitively on the stage until 1669, having undoubtedly excited more scandal by interdiction than it would have done by representation. The king’s good sense and judgment at last prevailed over the terrors of the truly devout and the resentment of hypocrites. He had just seen an impious piece of buffoonery played. “I should very much like to know,” said he to the Prince of Conde, who stood up for Moliere, an old fellow-student of his brother’s, the Prince of Conti’s, “why people who are so greatly scandalized at Moliere’s comedy say nothing about Scaramouche?” “The reason of that,” answered the prince, “is, that Scaramouche makes fun of heaven and religion, about which those gentry do not care, and that Moliere makes fun of their own selves, which they cannot brook.” The prince might have added that all the blows in Tartuffe, a masterpiece of shrewdness, force, and fearless and deep wrath, struck home at hypocrisy.
Whilst waiting for permission to have Tartufe played, Moliere had brought out le Medecin malgre lui, Amphitryon, Georges Dandin, and l’Avare, lavishing freely upon them the inexhaustible resources of his genius, which was ever ready to supply the wants of kingly and princely entertainments. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac was played for the first time at Chambord, on the 6th of October, 1669; a year afterwards, on the same stage, appeared Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, with the interludes and music of Lulli. The piece was a direct attack upon one of the most frequent absurdities of his day; many of the courtiers felt in their hearts that they were attacked; there was a burst of wrath at the first representation, by which the king had not appeared to be struck. Moliere thought it was all over with him. Louis XIV. desired to see the piece a second time. “You have never written anything yet which has amused me so much; your comedy is excellent,” said he to the poet; the court was at once seized with a fit of admiration.
The king had lavished his benefits upon Moliere, who had an hereditary post near him as groom-of-the-chamber; he had given him a pension of seven thousand livres, and the license of the king’s theatre; he had been pleased to stand godfather to one of his children, to whom the Duchess of Orleans was godmother; he had protected him against the superciliousness of certain servants of his bedchamber, but all the monarch’s puissance and constant favors could not obliterate public prejudice, and give the comedian whom they saw every day on the boards the position and rank which his genius deserved. Moliere’s friends urged him to give up the stage. “Your health is going,” Boileau would say to him, “because the duties of a comedian exhaust you. Why not give it up?” “Alas!” replied Moliere, with a sigh, “it is a point of honor that prevents me.” “A what?” rejoined Boileau; “what! to smear your face with a mustache as Sganarelle, and come on the stage to be thrashed with a stick? That is a pretty point of honor for a philosopher like you!”
Moliere might probably have followed the advice of Boileau, he might probably have listened to the silent warnings of his failing powers, if he had not been unfortunate and sad. Unhappy in his marriage, justly jealous and yet passionately fond of his wife, without any consolation within him against the bitternesses and vexations of his life, he sought in work and incessant activity the only distractions which had any charm for a high spirit, constantly wounded in its affections and its legitimate pride: Psyche, Les Fourberies de Scapin, La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas, betrayed nothing of their author’s increasing sadness or suffering. Les Femmes Savantes had at first but little success; the piece was considered heavy; the marvellous nicety of the portraits, the correctness of the judgments, the delicacy and elegance of the dialogue, were not appreciated until later on. Moliere had just composed Le Malade Imaginaire, the last of that succession of blows which he had so often dealt the doctors; he was more ailing than ever; his friends, even his actors themselves pressed him not to have any play. “What would you have me do?” he replied; “there are fifty poor workmen who have but their day’s pay to live upon; what will they do if we have no play? I should reproach myself with having neglected to give them bread for one single day, if I could really help it.” Moliere had a bad voice, a disagreeable hiccough, and harsh inflexions. “He was, nevertheless,” say his contemporaries, “a comedian from head to foot; he seemed to have several voices, everything about him spoke, and, by a caper, by a smile, by a wink of the eye and a shake of the head, he conveyed more than, the greatest speaker could have done by talking in an hour.” He played as usual on the 17th of February, 1673; the curtain had risen exactly at four o’clock; Moliere could hardly stand, and he had a fit during the burlesque ceremony (at the end of the play) whilst pronouncing the word Juro. He was icy-cold when he went back to Baron’s box, who was waiting for him, who saw him home to Rue Richelieu, and who at the same time sent for his wife and two sisters of charity. When he went up again, with Madame Moliere, into the room, the great comedian was dead. He was only fifty-one.
It has been a labor of love to go into some detail over the lives, works, and characters of the great writers during the age of Louis XIV. They did too much honor to their time and their country, they had too great and too deep an effect in France and in Europe upon the successive developments of the human intellect, to refuse them an important place in the history of that France to whose influence and glory they so powerfully contributed.