Molière.—"Be silent, wife; you are a fool."

Mademoiselle Molière.—"Thank you, my lord and husband; that just shows what it is to be married, and how strangely wedlock alters people. You would not have said that eighteen months ago."

Molière.—"Pray be silent."

Mademoiselle Molière.—"It is an odd thing that a trifling ceremony should be capable of depriving us of all our good qualities, and that a husband and a lover should regard the same person with such different eyes."

Molière.—"What loquacity!"

Mademoiselle Molière.—"'Faith! if I were to write a play, it would be upon that subject. I would justify women in many things of which they are accused, and I would make husbands afraid of the contrast between their abrupt manners and the courtesy of lovers."

Here, we are told by certain critics, the inference is unmistakable; Molière clearly foresees the fate which awaits him. In our opinion, they are wrong. In the Impromptu de Versailles Molière and his wife do not, as in an ordinary play, represent fictitious characters; they appear under their own names. In these circumstances, it is surely inconceivable that the dramatist should have introduced this dialogue, if he had for one moment imagined it applicable to his own affairs! The very fact that he was so ready to jest upon such a subject seems to us a conclusive proof that up to that time, at least, Armande's conduct had given him but scant cause for uneasiness.

The Mariage forcé and George Dandin, the former produced early in the year 1664, when the difference of age and of character between Molière and his wife was no doubt beginning to produce its fatal consequences, and the latter in the summer of 1667, after their separation, of which we shall speak in due course, had actually taken place, contain more direct allusions to their author's ménage. Sganarelle, like Molière, had believed himself "le plus content des hommes," only to be roughly disillusioned when the carefully brought up Dorimène frankly avows her passion for "toutes les choses de plaisir"—play, visiting, assemblies, entertainments, and so forth—at the same time expressing a hope that he does not intend to be one of those inconvenient husbands who desire their wives to live "comme des loup-garous," since solitude drives her to despair, but that they may dwell together as a pair "qui savent leur monde." Angélique, in her turn, complains to George Dandin of the tyranny exercised by husbands "who wish their wives to be dead to all amusements, and to live only for them." She has no desire, she tells him, to die young, but "intends to enjoy, under his good pleasure, some of the glad days that youth has to offer her, to take advantage of the sweet liberties that the age permits her, to see a little of the beau monde, and to taste the pleasure of hearing her praises sung."

All this is certainly reminiscent of Armande, who, according to Grimarest, was no sooner married than she "believed herself a duchess," affected a coquettish manner with the idle gallants who flocked to pay court to her, and turned a deaf ear to the warnings of her husband, whose lessons appeared to her "too severe for a young person who, besides, had nothing wherewith to reproach herself." But the resemblance in the situations goes no further. If Dorimène, in her craving for "toutes les chases de plaisir" and Angélique, in her imperious temper and cold irony, bear some relation to Armande, the foolish and cowardly Sganarelle, who allows himself to be cudgelled by Dorimène's brother, Lycidas, into a marriage which he knows must bring him unhappiness, has nothing, save his age, in common with Molière; while the aspiring farmer, George Dandin, marrying not for love, but for social position, and deservedly punished for his snobbishness, is as far removed from his creator as Tartuffe or Monsieur Jourdain.

When we come to the Misanthrope, the similarity between fiction and reality is too striking to admit of any doubt as to the author's intentions. It is true that a distinguished English critic[18] professes to see in this play, as in Don Garcie de Navarre—Molière's one failure, produced the year before his marriage, and withdrawn after a run of five nights—the outcome of the actor-dramatist's "desire of indulging his humour of seriousness and a determination to example his elocutionary theories in verse that, without being actually tragic and heroic, should have something in it of the tragic and heroic quality." But, though the large number of verses from Don Garcie which Molière has incorporated with his role of Alceste would seem to lend some confirmation to this theory, the fact remains that writers are practically unanimous in regarding the Misanthrope as, primarily, a pathetic autobiography of its author under the cloak of fiction. "This Célimène, so frivolous and so charming, so dangerous and so seductive, this incorrigible coquette, who does not understand what a noble heart she is wounding even unto death: is not this Armande Béjart, embellished by all the love and all the genius of Molière? And Alceste; who is he? At the first representations people believed that they recognised the Duc de Montausier, and the Duc de Montausier remarked, with good reason: 'I thank you; it is a great honour.' But we, for our part, recognise Molière. This misanthrope is something more than an honourable gentleman at odds with the world. He is a great genius misunderstood, who endures and waits; he is a passionate sage, an honest man with a great and excellent heart."[19]