by Will Durant
Molière was too much of a fighter to let these criticisms go unnoticed. In a one-act piece presented at the Palais-Royal June I, 1663, La Critique de l’École des femmes, he pictured a gathering of his critics, allowed them to voice their objections forcefully, and made hardly any answer except to let the critique weaken itself through exaggeration, and be voiced by ridiculous characters. The Hôtel de Bourgogne kept up this guerre comique by producing a skit called The Counter critic; and Molière satirized the royal troupe in L’Impromptu de Versailles (October 18, 1663). The King stood loyally by Molière, invited him to dinner, 20 and now gave him an annual pension of a thousand livres, not as comédien, but as excellent poète. 21 Time also gave the victory to Molière, and today, L’École des femmes is rated as the first great comedy of the French theater.
IV. L’AFFAIRE TARTUFFE
Molière paid a price for the King’s favor. Louis so liked his wit and courage that he made him a leading organizer of the entertainments at Versailles and St.-Germain. One such fete, Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée, filled a week (May 7–13, 1664) with jousts, feasting, music, ballet, dancing, and drama, all presented in the park and palace of Versailles under illumination by torches and chandeliers holding four thousand candles. Molière received six thousand livres for his labors on this festival. Some scholars have mourned that the King used so much of Molière’s genius to provide lighthearted entertainment at the court, and they have imagined the masterpieces that might have matured if the poet in the comedian had had more time to think and write. But he was under pressure from his company too, and in any case his cares and responsibilities as manager and actor would have kept him from any ivory tower. Many an author writes better under pressure than at leisure; leisure relaxes the mind, urgency stimulates it. Molière’s greatest play was first produced on May 12, 1664, during the height, and as part, of the Plaisirs de l’île enchantée.
Tartuffe, in this première, hardly fitted the festival, for it was a merciless exposure of hypocrisy taking a pious and moralistic dress. A religious fraternity of laymen, the Compagnie du Saint Sacrement, later known as the Cabale des Dévots, had already pledged its members to work for the suppression of the play. The King, whose liaison with La Vallière had aroused much criticism from the devout, was in a mood to agree with Molière; but, having seen the comedy in its private performance at Versailles, he withheld permission to present it to the public of Paris in the Palais-Royal. He solaced Molière by inviting him to read Tartuffe at Fontainebleau to a select group including a papal legate, who raised no objection known to history (July 21, 1664). In that month the drama was performed in the home of the Duke and Duchess (Henrietta Anne) of Orléans, in the presence of the Queen, the Queen Mother, and the King. The way was being prepared for a public presentation when, in August, Pierre Roullé, vicar of St.-Barthélemy, published a tribute to the King for prohibiting the play, and took occasion to denounce Molière as “a man, or rather a demon in flesh and habited as a man, the most notably impious creature and libertine who ever lived.” For writing Tartuffe, “to the derision of the whole Church,” said Père Roullé, Molière “should be burned at the stake as a foretaste of the fires of hell.” 22 The King rebuked Roullé, but continued to withhold permission for a public performance of Tartuffe. To show where he stood the King raised Molière’s annual pension to six thousand livres, and took over from “Monsieur” the protection of Molière’s company; henceforth it was the Troupe du Roi.
The controversy simmered for two years. Then Molière read to Louis a revised version of the play, with some added lines pointing out that the satire was not of honest faith but only of hypocrisy. Madame Henrietta supported the author’s plea for permission to produce. Louis gave a verbal consent; and while he went off to war in Flanders the first public presentation of Tartuffe was staged at the Palais-Royal on August 5, 1667, three years after its court première. The next morning the president of the Parlement of Paris, who belonged to the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, ordered the theater closed, and all its posters torn down. On August 11 the Archbishop of Paris forbade, on pain of excommunication, the reading, hearing, or performance of the comedy, in public or in private. Molière announced that if this triumph of “les Tartuffes” continued he would retire from the stage. The King, returning to Paris, bade the angry dramatist be patient. Molière managed it, and was rewarded at last by the removal of the royal prohibition. On February 5, 1669, the play began a successful run of twenty-eight consecutive performances. At the public première the crowd seeking admission was so large and eager that many persons came near to suffocation. It was the drame célèbre of Molière’s career. Of all French classic dramas it has received the greatest number of performances—2,657 (to 1960) at the Comédie-Française alone.
How far do the contents of the play explain its long postponement, and its continuing popularity? They explain the first by their frontal attack upon hypocritical piety; they explain the second by the power and brilliance of their satire. Everything in that satire is, of course, exaggerated: hypocrisy is rarely so reckless and complete as in Tartuffe, stupidity is seldom so extravagant as in Orgon, and no maid is so successfully insolent as Dorine. The denouement is incredible, as almost always in Molière; this did not trouble him; after he had presented his picture and indictment of hypocrisy, any deus or rex ex machina would do to untangle the plot into triumphant virtue and punished vice. Quite likely the satire was aimed at the Compagnie du Saint Sacrement, whose members, even if laymen, undertook to direct consciences, to report private sins to public authorities, and to interfere in families to promote religious loyalty and devotion. The play twice referred to a cabale (lines 397 and 1705), evidently alluding to the Cabale des Dévots. Soon after the play’s public première the Company of the Blessed Sacrament was dissolved.
Orgon, the rich bourgeois, first sees Tartuffe in church, and is impressed.
Ah, had you but seen him . . . you would have loved him as well as I do. He came every day to church, with a composed mien, and knelt just near me. He attracted the eyes of the whole congregation by the fervency with which he sent up his prayers to Heaven. He sighed and groaned very heavily, and at every moment he humbly kissed the earth. And when I was going out he would advance before me to offer me holy water at the door. Understanding . . . his lowly condition, . . . I made him presents, but he always modestly would offer to return me part. . . . At length Heaven moved me to take him home, since which everything seems to prosper. I see he reproves without distinction, and that even with regard to my wife he is extremely cautious of my honor. He acquaints me who ogles her. 23
But Tartuffe does not similarly impress Orgon’s wife and children. His hearty appetite, his love for tidbits, his round paunch and rubicund face, dull for them the point of his homilies. Orgon’s brother-in-law, Cléante, begs him to see the difference between hypocrisy and religion:
As I see no character in life greater or more valuable than to be truly devout, nor anything nobler or fairer than the fervor of a sincere piety, so I think nothing more abominable than the outside daubing of a pretended zeal, than those mountebanks, those devotees in show . . . who make a trade of godliness, and who would purchase honors and reputation with a hypocritical turning up of the eyes and affected transports.
Orgon, however, continues to take Tartuffe at phrase value, submits to his guidance, invokes God’s aid upon him when he belches, and proposes to give him in marriage his daughter Mariane, who violently prefers Valère. The real heroine of the piece is Mariane’s maid Dorine, who, as in classic comedy, seems to prove that Providence has distributed genius in inverse ratio to money. Delightful is her reception of Tartuffe’s first entry upon the stage:
TARTUFFE [seeing Dorine, speaks aloud to his servants]. Laurence, lock up my hair-cloth and scourge, and beg of Heaven ever to enlighten you with grace. If anybody comes to see me, I am gone to the prisons to distribute my alms.
DORINE (aside). What affectation and roguery!
&
nbsp; TARTUFFE. What do you want?
DORINE. To tell you—
TARTUFFE (drawing a handkerchief out of his pocket). Oh! lack-a-day! pray take me this handkerchief before you speak.
DORINE. What for?
TARTUFFE. Cover that bosom, which I can’t bear to see. Such objects hurt the soul, and usher in sinful thoughts.
DORINE. You mightily melt, then, at a temptation, and the flesh makes a great impression upon your senses? Truly, I can’t tell what heat may inflame you; but, for my part, I am not so apt to hanker. Now, I could see you stark naked from head to foot, and that whole hide of yours not tempt me at all. 24
The next scene is the core of the comedy. Tartuffe tries to make love to Orgon’s wife, Elmire, and uses pious language in his plea. His treachery is reported to Orgon, who refuses to believe it; and to show his trust in Tartuffe he gives over to him all his property. Tartuffe resigns himself to accept it, saying, “Heaven’s will be done in all things.” 25 The situation is dissolved by Elmire, who, having hidden her husband under a table, sends for Tartuffe, gives him a little encouragement, and soon lures him into attempts at amorous exploration. She pretends compliance, but professes scruples of conscience, which Tartuffe handles with expert casuistry; evidently Molière had read and relished Pascal’s Provincial Letters.
TARTUFFE. If nothing but Heaven obstructs my wishes, ‘tis a trifle with me to remove such an obstacle. Heaven, ‘tis true, forbids certain gratifications. But there are ways of compounding those matters. It is a science to stretch the strings of conscience according to the different exigencies of the case, and to rectify the immorality of the action by the purity of our intention. 26
Orgon comes out from his hiding, and angrily bids Tartuffe leave the house, but Tartuffe explains to him that the house, by Orgon’s recently signed deed, belongs to Tartuffe. Molière, not very ingeniously, cuts this knot by having the King’s agents opportunely discover that Tartuffe is a long-sought-for criminal. Orgon recovers his property, Valère gets Maríane, and the play concludes with a melodious paean to the justice and benevolence of the King.
V. THE AMOROUS ATHEIST
The royal benevolence must have been strained by the next audacity of Molière. At the height of the war over Tartuffe, and while the Dévots were still in triumph over the suppressing of the play, he staged at the Palais-Royal (February 15, 1665) Le Festin de pierre—The Feast of the Stone Statue—telling in rollicking prose the already oft-told tale of Don Juan, and turning that reckless Casanova into an arrogant atheist. Taking the shell of the story from Tirso de Molina and others, Molière filled it with a remarkable study of a man who enjoys wickedness for its own sake and as a challenge to God. The play is an astonishing echo of the great debate that was embroiling religion with philosophy.
Don Juan Tenorio is a marquis, and acknowledges obligations to his caste; otherwise he proposes to enjoy any pleasure he has an itch for. His valet, Sganarelle, calculates at 1,003 the number of women whom his master has seduced and deserted. “Constancy,” says Juan, “is only fit for fools. . . . I can’t refuse my heart to any lovely creature I see.” 27 Such an ethic craves a corresponding theology, so Juan, for his own comfort, is an atheist. His servant tries to reason with him:
SGANARELLE. Is it possible that you don’t believe in Heaven?
JUAN. Forget it.
SGAN. That is, you don’t. And Hell?
JUAN. Eh!
SGAN. Likewise. And the Devil, if you please?
JUAN. Yes, yes.
SGAN. Again very little. Don’t you believe at all in another life?
JUAN. Ha, ha, ha.
SGAN. Here’s a man I’ll be hard put to convert. But tell me, surely you believe in le moine bourru?*
JUAN. Plague on the fool.
SGAN. Now, that I can’t suffer; for there’s nothing better established than this moine bourru, and I’ll be hanged if he isn’t real. But a man must believe something. What do you believe? . . .
JUAN. I believe that two and two are four, and that four and four are eight.
SGAN. A lovely creed, and beautiful articles of faith! Your religion, then, so far as I can see, is arithmetic? As for me, sir,. . . I understand full well that this world is not a mushroom that grew in a single night. I would like to ask you who made these trees, these rocks, this earth, and that sky up there; was all this built by itself? Look at yourself, for example; here you are; did you make yourself, or wasn’t it necessary that your father should enlarge your mother to make you? Can you behold all the inventions of which the human machine is composed, without admiring how one part sets another working? . . . Whatever you may say, there is something marvelous in man, which all the pundits will never explain. Isn’t it wonderful to see me here, and that I have in my head something that thinks a hundred different things in a moment, and makes my body do what I wish? I want to clap my hands, raise my arm, lift my eyes to the sky, lower my head, move my feet, go to the right, to the left, forward, to the rear, turn. (He falls while turning.)
JUAN. Good! Your argument has a broken nose. 28
In the next scene the tilt between Juan and religion takes another form. He meets a beggar, who tells him that he prays every day for those who give him alms. “Surely,” says Juan, “a man who prays every day must be very well off.” On the contrary, answers the beggar, “most often I have not even a piece of bread.” Juan offers him a louis d’or if he will swear an oath; the beggar refuses—“I’d rather die of hunger.” Juan is a bit startled by this fortitude. He hands over the coin, as he says, “for love of humanity.” 29 All the opera-going world knows the denouement. Juan comes upon a statue of the Commander, whose daughter he had seduced, and whose life he had taken. The statue invites Juan to dinner; Juan comes, gives him his hand, and is led into hell. The infernal apparatus of the medieval stage appears; “thunder and lightning fall with great noise upon Don Juan; the earth opens and swallows him; a vast fire rises from the spot where he has fallen.”
The first night’s audience was shocked by Molière’s exposition of Juan’s unbelief. It may have allowed that he had exposed Juan’s worthless character as well as his lack of theology, that the Don had been revealed as a brute without conscience or tenderness, spreading deception and grief wherever he went; and it may have observed that the villain’s victims were presented with all the author’s sympathy. But it noted that the answer to atheism had been put into the mouth of a fool who believed in bogeys more firmly than in God, and it was not mollified by Juan’s final damnation, for it saw him descending into hell without a word of repentance or fear. After the première Molière toned down the most offensive passages, but public opinion was not appeased. On April 18, 1665, the Sieur de Rochemont, avocat en Parlement, published Observations sur une comédie de Molière, in which he described Le Festin de pierre as “truly devilish . . . Nothing more impious has ever appeared, even in pagan times”; and the King was exhorted to suppress the play:
While this noble prince devotes all his care to maintaining religion, Molière is working to destroy it. . . . There is no man so little enlightened in the doctrine of the faith who, having seen this play . . . , can affirm that Molière, so long as he persists in presenting it, is worthy to participate in the sacraments, or to be received into penitence without a public reparation. 30
Louis continued his favor to Molière. Le Festin de pierre ran three days a week from February 15 to Palm Sunday, when it was withdrawn. It did not return to the boards till four years after the dramatist’s death, and then only in a verse adaptation by Thomas Corneille, who omitted the scandalous scene quoted above. The original version disappeared; it was rediscovered in 1813 in a pirated edition that had been published in Amsterdam in 1683. Till 1841 the Corneille version alone held the stage; and in some editions of Molière’s works 31 it still replaces the original.
VI. MERIDIAN
Not content with the enemies that he had made, Molière proceeded to attack the medical profession. He had pictured Don Juan a
s being “impious in medicine” and rating medicine “one of the greatest errors of mankind.” 32 He had discovered in person the deficiencies and pretenses of seventeenth-century physicians. He thought that doctors had killed his son by prescribing antimony, and he saw that they were helpless against his own advancing tuberculosis. 33 The King too was rebelling against weekly purges and bleedings; according to Molière it was Louis who prompted him to put the doctors on the grill. So, borrowing from old comedies on this ancient theme, he wrote in five days L’Amour médecin. It was produced at Versailles on September 15, 1665, before the King, who “was heartily amused”; and it met with an hilarious reception when it was staged a week later at the Palais-Royal. A woman is ill; four doctors are called in; they enter into private consultation, but discuss only their own affairs. When the father insists upon a decision and a remedy, one prescribes an enema, another swears that an enema will kill the patient. She gets better without medicine, which infuriates the doctors. “It is better to die according to the rules,” cries Dr. Bahys, “than to recover contrary to them.” 34
On August 6, 1666, Molière presented another short piece, Le Médecin malgré lui, as a merry prelude to Le Misanthrope, designed to offset the gloom of that paean to pessimism. It does not repay reading today. Molière hardly intended these satires on medicine to be taken seriously. We note that he kept on excellent terms with his own physician, M. de Mauvilain, and that he interceded with the King to get a sinecure for the doctor’s son (1669). He once explained how it was that he and Mauvilain got along so well: “We reason with one another; he prescribes remedies; I omit to take them, and I recover.” 35
