This character in Molière the writer accords with the character of the man Molière. It might not have seemed natural to say of Molière, as was said of Dante, “There goes the man that has been in hell.” But Molière was melancholy enough in temper and in mien to have well inspired an exclamation such as, “There goes the man that has seen the human heart.”
A poet as well as a dramatist, his own fellow-countrymen, at least, feel Molière to be. In Victor Hugo’s list of the eight greatest poets of all time, two are Hebrews (Job and Isaiah), two Greeks (Homer and Æschylus), one is a Roman (Lucretius), one an Italian (Dante), one an Englishman (Shakespeare)—seven. The eighth could hardly fail to be a Frenchman, and that Frenchman is Molière. Mr. Swinburne might perhaps make the list nine, but he would certainly include Victor Hugo himself.
Curiously enough, Molière is not this great writer’s real name. It is a stage name. It was assumed by the bearer when he was about twenty-four years of age, on occasion of his becoming one in a strolling band of players—in 1646 or thereabout. This band, originally composed of amateurs, developed into a professional dramatic company, which passed through various transformations, until, from being at first grandiloquently self-styled, L’Illustre Théâtre, it was, twenty years after, recognized by the national title of Théâtre Français. Molière’s real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin.
Young Poquelin’s bent, early encouraged by seeing plays and ballets, was strongly toward the stage. The drama, under the quickening patronage of Louis XIII.’s lordly minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was a great public interest of those times in Paris. Molière’s evil star, too, it was perhaps in part that brought him back to Paris, from Orleans. He admired a certain actress in the capital. She became the companion—probably not innocent companion—of his wandering life as actor. A sister of this actress—a sister young enough to be daughter, instead of sister—Molière finally married. She led her jealous husband a wretched conjugal life. A peculiarly dark tradition of shame, connected with Molière’s marriage, has lately been to a good degree dispelled. But it is not possible to redeem this great man’s fame to chastity and honor. He paid heavily, in like misery of his own, for whatever pangs of jealousy he inflicted. There was sometimes true tragedy for himself hidden within the comedy that he acted for others. (Molière, to the very end of his life, acted in the comedies that he wrote.) When some play of his represented the torments of jealousy in the heart of a husband, it was probably not so much acting, as it was real life, that the spectators saw proceeding on the stage between Molière and his wife, confronted with each other in performing the piece.
Despite his faults, Molière was cast in a noble, generous mold, of character as well as of genius. Expostulated with for persisting to appear on the stage when his health was such that he put his life at stake in so doing, he replied that the men and women of his company depended for their bread on the play’s going through, and appear he would. He actually died an hour or so after playing the part of the Imaginary Invalid in his comedy of that name. That piece was the last work of his pen.
Molière produced in all some thirty dramatic pieces, from among which we select a few of the most celebrated for brief description and illustration.
The “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” (“Shopkeeper turned Gentleman”) partakes of the nature of the farce quite as much as it does of the comedy. But it is farce such as only a man of genius could produce. In it Molière ridicules the airs and affectations of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to figure in a social rank too exalted for his birth, his breeding, or his merit. Jourdain is the name under which Molière satirizes such a character. We give a fragment from one of the scenes. M. Jourdain is in process of fitting himself for that higher position in society to which he aspires. He will equip himself with the necessary knowledge. To this end he employs a professor of philosophy to come and give him lessons at his house:
M. Jourdain. I have the greatest desire in the world to be learned; and it vexes me more than I can tell, that my father and mother did not make me learn thoroughly all the sciences when I was young.
Professor of Philosophy. This is a praiseworthy feeling. Nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand this, and you have, no doubt, a knowledge of Latin?
M. Jour. Yes; but act as if I had none. Explain to me the meaning of it—