To return to the order of events,
Moliere passed the year 1643 playing with and helping to manage
the Theatre Illustre. The company acted in various tennis-courts,
with very little success. Moliere was actually arrested by the
tradesman who supplied candles, and the company had to borrow
money from one Auey to release their leader from the Grand
Chatelet (Aug. 53, 1645). The process of turning a tennis court
into a theatre was somewhat expensive, even though no seats were
provided in the pit. The troupe was for a short time under the
protection of the duc d’Orleans, but his favors were not
lucrative. The due de Guise, according to some verses printed in
1646, made Moliere a present of his cast off wardrobe. But costume
was not enough to draw the public to the tennis court theatre of
the Croix Noire, and empty houses at last obliged the Theatre
Illustre to leave Paris at the end of 1646.
“Nul animal vivant n’entra dans
notre salle,” says the author of the scurrilous play on
Moliere, Elomire hypochondre. But at that time some dozen
traveling companies found means to exist in the provinces, and
Moliere determined to play among the rural towns. The career of a
strolling player is much the same at all times and in all
countries. The Roman comique of Scarron gives a vivid
picture of the adventures and misadventures, the difficulty of
transport, the queer cavalcade of horses, mules, and lumbering
carts that drag the wardrobe and properties, the sudden
metamorphosis of the tennis court, where the balls have just been
rattling, into a stage, the quarrels with local squires, the
disturbed nights in crowded country inns, all the loves and wars
of a troupe on the march.
Perrault tells us what the arrangements
to the theatre were in Moliere’s early time. Tapestries were hung
round the stage, and entrances and exits were made by struggling
through the heavy curtains, which often knocked off the hat of the
comedian, or gave a strange cock to the helmet of a warrior or a
god. The lights were candles stuck in tin sconces at the back and
sides, but luxury sometimes went so far that a chandelier of four
candles was suspended from the roof. At intervals the candles were
let down by a rope and pulley, and any one within easy reach
snuffed them with his fingers. A flute and tambour, or two
fiddlers, supplied the music. The highest prices were paid for
seats in the dedans (cost of admission five pence): for the
privilege of standing in the pit two pence-halfpenny was the
charge. The doors were opened at one o’clock, the curtain rose at
two.
The nominal director of the Theatre
Illustre in the provinces was Du Fresne; the most noted actors
were Moliere, the Bejards, and Du Parc, called Gros Rene. It is
extremely difficult to follow exactly the line of march of the
company. They played at Bordeaux, for example, but the date of
this performance, when Moliere (according to Montesquieu) failed
in tragedy and was pelted, is variously given as 1644 -1645
(Trallage), 1647 (Loiseleur), 1648 - 1658 (Lacroix). Perhaps the
theatre prospered better elsewhere than in Paris, where the
streets were barricaded in these early days of the war of the
Fronde. We find Moliere at Nantes in 1648, at Fontenay-la-Compte,
and in the spring of 1649 at Agen, Toulouse, and probably at
Angouleme and Limoges. In January 1650 they played at Narbonne,
and between 1650 and 1653 Lyons was the headquarters of the
troupe.
In January 1653, or perhaps 1655,
Moliere gave L’Etourdi at Lyons, the first of his finished
pieces, as contrasted with the slight farces with which he
generally diverted a country audience. It would be interesting to
have the precise date of this piece, but La Grange (1682) says
that “in 1653 Moliere went to Lyons, where he gave his first
comedy, L’Etourdi,” while in his Registre La Grange enters
the year as 1655. At Lyons de ie and his wife, the famous Mlle de
ie, entered the troupe, and du Parc married the “marquise” de
Gorla, better known as Mile du Parc. The libelous author of La
Fameuse comedienne reports that Moliere’s heart belonged to
the beautiful du Parc and de ie, and the tradition has a
persistent life. Moliere’s own opinion of the ladies and men of
his company may be read between the lines of his Impromptu de
Versailles.
In 1653 Prince de Conti, after many
political adventures, was residing at La Grange, near Pezenas, in
Languedoc, and chance ought him into relations with his old
schoolfellow Moliere. Conti had for first gentleman of his bed
chamber the abbe Daniel de Cosnac, whose memoirs now throw light
for a moment on the fortunes of the wandering troupe. Cosnac
engaged the company “of Moliere and of La Bejart “; but another
company, that of Cormier, nearly intercepted the favor of the
prince. Thanks to the resolution of Cosnac, Moliere was given one
chance of appearing on the private theatre of La Grange. The
excellence of his acting, the splendor of the costumes, and the
insistence of Cosnac, and of Sarrasin, Conti’s secretary, gained
the day for Moliere, and a pension was assigned to his company
(Cosnac, Mémoires, Paris, 1852). As Cosnac proposed to pay
Moliere a thousand crowns of his own money to recompense him in
case he was supplanted by Cormier, it is obvious that his
profession. had become sufficiently lucrative.
In 1654, during the session of the
estates of Languedoc, Moliere and his company played at
Montpellier. Here Moliere danced in a ballet (Le Ballet des
incompatibles) in which a number of men of rank took part,
according to the fashion of the time. Moliere’s own roles were
those of the Poet and the Fishwife. The sport of the little piece
is to introduce opposite characters, dancing and singing together.
Silence dances with six women, Truth with four courtiers, Money
with a poet, and so forth. Whether the ballet, or any parts of it,
are by Moliere, is still disputed. In April 1655 it is certain
that the troupe was at Lyons, where they met and hospitably
entertained a profligate buffoon, Charles d’Assoucy, who informs
the ages that Moliere kept open house, and “une table bien
garnie.” November 1655 found Moliere at Pezenas, where the
estates of Languedoc were convened, and where local tradition
points out the barber’s chair in which the poet used to sit and
study character. The longest of Moliere’s extant autographs is a
receipt, dated at Pezenas, on the 4th of Feuary 1656, for 6000
livres, granted by the estates of Languedoc. This year was notable
for the earliest representation, at Beziers, of Moliere’s second
finished comedy, the Depit amoureux. Conti now (1656) began
to “make his soul.” Almost his first act of penitence was to
discard Moliere’s troupe (1657), which consequently found that the
liberalitv of the estates was dried up for ever. Conti’s relations
with Moliere must have definitively closed long before 1666, when
the now pious prince wrote a treatise against the stage, and
especially charged his old schoolfellow with keeping a new school,
a school of atheism.
Moliere was now (1657) independent of
princes and their favor. He went on a new circuit to Nismes,
Orange and Avignon, where he met another old classmate, Chapelle,
and also encountered the friend of his later life, the painter
Mignard. After a later stay at Lyons, ending with a piece given
for the benefit of the poor on the 27th of Feuary 1658, Moliere
passed to Grenoble, returned to Lyons, and is next found in Rouen.
At Rouen Moliere must have made or renewed the acquaintance of
Pierre and Thomas Corneille. His company had played pieces by
Corneille at Lyons and elsewhere. The real business of the
comedian in Rouen was to prepare his return to Paris. “After
several secret journeys thither he was fortunate enough to secure
the patronage of Monsieur, the king’s only other, who granted him
his protection, and permitted the company to take his name,
presenting them as his servants to the king and the queen mother”
(Preface to La Grange’s edition of 1682). The troupe appeared for
the first time before Louis XIV in a theatre arranged in the old
Louvre (Oct. 24, 1658).