Moliere was now thirty six years of
age. He had gained all the experience that fifteen years of
practice could give. He had seen men and cities, and noted all
the humors of rural and civic
France. He was at the head of a company which, as La Grange, his
friend and comrade, says, “sincerely loved him.” He had the not
very lucrative patronage of a great prince to back him, and the
jealousy of all playwrights, and of the old theatres of the Hotel
de Bourgogne and the Marais, to contend against. In this struggle
we can follow him by aid of the Registre of La Grange (a brief
diary of receipts and payments), and by the help of notices in the
rhymed chronicles of Loret.
The first appearance of Moliere before
the king was all but a failure. Nicomede, by the elder
Corneille, was the piece, and we may believe that the actors of
the Hotel de Bourgogrie, who were present, found much to
criticize. When the play was over, Moliere came forward and asked
the king’s permission to act “one of the little pieces with which
he had been used to regale the provinces.” The Docteur
amoureux, one of several slight comedies admitting of much
“gag,” was then performed, and “diverted as much as it surprised
the audience.” The king commanded that the troupe should establish
itself in Paris. The theatre assigned to the company was a
salle in the Petit Bourbon, in a line with the present Rue
du Louvre. Some Italian players already occupied the house on
Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays; the company of Moliere played on
the other days. The first piece played in the new house (Nov. 3,
1658) was L’Etourdi. La Grange says the comedy had a great
success, producing seventy pistoles for each actor. The success is
admitted even by the spiteful author of Elomire
hypocliondre (Paris, 1670) “Je jouai l’Etourdi, qui fut une
merveille.”
The success, however, is attributed to
the farcical element in the play and the acting; the cuckoo-cry of
Moliere’s detractors. The original of L’Etourdi is the
Italian comedy (1629) L’Inavertito, by Nicolo Barbieri
detto Beltrame; Moliere pushed rather far his right to “take his
own wherever he found it.” Had he written nothing more original,
the contemporary critic of the Festin de Pierre might have said,
not untruly, that he only excelled in stealing pieces from the
Italians. The piece is conventional: the stock characters of the
prodigal son, the impudent valet, the old father occupy the stage.
But the dialogue has amazing rapidity, and the vivacity of M.
Coquelin to Mascarille made L’Etourdi a favorite on the
modern stage, though it cannot be read with very much pleasure.
The next piece, new in Paris, though not in the provinces, was the
Depit amoureux (first acted at Bezieresers 1656) The play
was not less successful than L’Etourdi. It has two parts,
one an Italian imbroglio; the other, which alone keeps the stage,
is the original work of Moliere, though, of course, the idea of
amantium irae is as old as literature. Even the hostile Le
Boulanger de Chalussay (Elomire hypochondre) admits that
the audience was much of this opinion: “Et de tons les cfités
chacun cria tout haut: C’est la faire et jouer les pièces comme il
faut."
The same praise was given, perhaps even
more deservedly, to Les Precieuses ridicules (Nov. 18,
1659). Doubts have been raised as to whether this famous piece,
the first true comic satire of contemporary foibles on the French
stage, was a new play. La Grange calls it piece nouvelle in his
Registre; but, as he enters it as the third piece nouvelle, he may
only mean that, like L’Etourdi, it was new to Paris. The
short life of 1682, produced under La Grange’s care, and probably
written by Marcel the actor, says the Precieuses was “made” in
1659. There is another controversy as to whether the ladies of the
Hotel Rambouillet, or merely their bourgeoises and rustic
imitators, were laughed at. Menage, in later years at least,
professed to recognize an attack on the over-refinement and
affectation of the original and, in most ways, honourable
precieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet. But Chapelle and Bachaumont
had discovered provincial precieuses, hyper-aesthetic literary
ladies, at Montpellier before Moliere’s return to Paris; and
Furetiere, in the Roman bourgeois (1666), found Paris full of
middle-class precieuses, who had survived, or, like their modern
counterparts, had thriven on ridicule.
Another question is: Did Moliere copy
from the earlier Precieuses of the abbe de Pure? This charge of
plagiarism is brought by Somaize, in the preface to his Veritables
precieuses. De Pure’s work was a novel (1656), from which the
Italian actors had put together an acting-piece in their manner;
that is, a thing of “gag,” and improvised speeches. The reproach
is interesting only because it proves how early Moliere found
enemies who, like Thomas Corneille in 1659, accused him of being
skilled only in farce, or, like Somaize, charged him with literary
larceny. These were the stock criticisms of Moliere’s opponents as
long as he lived. The success of the Precieuses ridicules
was immense; on one famous occasion the king was a spectator,
leaning against the great chair of the dying Cardinal Mazarin. The
play can never cease to please while literary affectation exists,
and it has a comic force of deathless energy. Yet a modern reader
may spare some sympathy for the poor heroines, who do not wish, in
courtship, to “begin with marriage,” but prefer first to have some
less formidable acquaintance with their wooers.
Moliere’s next piece was less
important, and more purely farcical, Sganarelle; ou le cocu
imaginaire (May 28, 1660). The public taste preferred a work
of this light nature, and Sganarelle was played every year as long
as Moliere lived. The play was pirated by a man who pretended to
have retained all the words in his memory. The counterfeit copy
was published by Ribou, a double injury to Moliere as once
printed, any company might act the play. With his habitual
good-nature, Moliere not only allowed Ribou to publish later works
of his, but actually lent money to that knave. On the 11th of
October 1660 the Theatre du Petit Bourbon was demolished by
the superintendent of works, without notice given to the company.
The king gave Moliere the Salle du Palais Royal, but the
machinery of the old theatre was maliciously destroyed. Meanwhile
the older companv of the Marais and the Hotel de Bourgogne
attempted to lure away Moliere’s troupe, but as La Grange
declares, “ all the actors loved their chief, who united to
extraordinary genius an honorable character and charming manner,
which compelled them all to protest that they would never leave
him, but always share his fortunes.” While the new theatre was
being put in order, the company played in the houses of the great,
and before the king at the Louvre. In their new house (originally
built by Richelieu) Moliere began to play on the 20th of January
1661. Moliere now gratified his rivals by a failure. Don Garcie
de Navarre, a heavy tragi-comedy, which had long lain among
his papers, was first represented on the 4th of February 1661.
Either Moliere was a poor actor outside
comedy, or his manner was not sufficiently “stagy,” and, as he
says, “demoniac,” for the taste of the day. His opponents were
determined that he could not act in tragi-comedy, and he, in turn,
burlesqued their pretentious and exaggerated manner in a later
piece. In the Précieuses Moliere had already raffled “les grands
comediens” of the Hotel Bourgogne. “Les autres,” he makes
Mascarille say about his own troupe, “sont des ignorants qui
récitent comme I’on parle, ils ne savent pas faire ronfler les
vers.” All this was likely to irritate the grands comediens, and
their friends, who avenged themselves on that unfortunate jealous
prince, Don Garcie de Navarre. The subject of this
unsuccessful drama is one of many examples which show how
Moliere’s mind was engaged with the serious or comic aspects of
jealousy, a passion which he had soon cause to know most
intimately. Meantime the everyday life of the stage went on, and
the doorkeeper of the Theatre St Germain was wounded by some
revelers who tried to force their way into the house (La Grange,
Registre). A year later, an Italian actor was stabbed in front of
Moliere’s house, where he had sought to take shelter. To these
dangers actors were peculiarly subject: Moliere himself was
frequently threatened by the marquises and others whose class he
ridiculed on the stage, and there seems even reason to believe
that there is some truth in the story of the angry marquis who
rubbed the poet’s head against his buttons, thereby cutting his
face severely. The story comes late (1725) into his biography, but
is supported by a passage in the contemporary play, Zelinde
(Paris, 1663, scene VIII).
Before Easter, Moliere asked for two
shares in the profits of his company, one for himself, and one for
his wife, if he married. That fatal step was already contemplated
(La Grange). On the 24th of June he brought out for the first time
L’Ecole des maris. The general idea of the piece is as old
as Menander, and Moliere was promptly accused of pilfering from
the Adelphi of Terence. One of the ficelles of the
comedy is borrowed from a story as old at least as Boccaccio, and
still amusing in a novel by Charles de Bernard. It is significant
of Moliere’s talent that the grotesque and baffled paternal wooer,
Sganarelle, like several other butts in Moliere’s comedy, does to
a certain extent win our sympathy and pity as well as our
laughter. The next new piece was Les Fascheux, a
comedieballet, the Comedy of Bores, played before the king at
Fouquet’s house at Vaux le Vicomte (Aug. 15 - 20, 1661).
The comedians, without knowing it, were
perhaps the real “fascheux” on this occasion, for Fouquet was
absorbed in the schemes of his insatiable ambition (Quo non
ascendam? says his motto), and the king was organizing the
arrest and fall of Fouquet, his rival in the affections of La
Valliere. The author of the prologue to Les Fascheux,
Pellisson, a friend of Fouquet’s, was arrested with the
superintendent of finance. Pellisson’s prologue and name were
retained in the later editions. In the dedication to the king
Moliere says that Louis suggested one scene (that of the
Sportsman), and in another place he mentions that the piece was
written, rehearsed, and played in a fortnight. The fundamental
idea of the play, the interruptions by bores, is suggested by a
satire of Regnier’s, and that by a satire of Horace. Perhaps it
may have been the acknowledged suggestions of the king which made
gossips declare that Moliere habitually worked up hints and
memoires given him by persons of quality.
In February 1662 Moliere married
Armande Bejard. And on the margin he has painted a blue circle,
his way of recording a happy event, with the words, “manage de M.
de Moliere au sortir de lavisite.” M. Loiseleur gives the date in
one passage as the 29th of February; in another as the 20th of
February. But La Grange elsewhere mentions the date as “Shrove
Tuesday,” which was, it seems, the 14th of February. Elsewhere M.
Loiseleur’ makes the date of the marriage a vague day “in
January.” The truth is that the marriage contract is dated the
23rd of January 1662. Where it is so difficult to establish the
date of the marriage, a simple fact, it must be infinitely harder
to discover the truth as to the conduct of Mme Moliere. The
abominable assertions of the anonymous libel, Les Intrigues de
Moliere et celles de sa femme; ou la fameuse comedienne
(1688), have found their way into tradition, and are accepted by
many biographers. But M. Livet and M. Bazin have proved that the
alleged lovers of Mme Moliere were actually absent from France, or
from the court, at the time when they are reported, in the libel,
to have conquered her heart. A conversation between Chapelle and
Moliere, in which the comedian is made to tell the story of his
wrongs, is plainly a mere fiction, and is answered in Grimarest by
another dialogue between Moliere and Rohault, in which Moliere
only complains of a jealousy which he knows to be unfounded. It is
noticed, too, that the contemporary assailants of Moliere counted
him among jealous, but not among deceived, husbands.
The hideous accusation brought by the
actor Montfleury, that Moliere had married his own daughter, Louis
XIV answered by becoming the godfather of Moliere’s child. The
king, indeed, was a firm friend of the actor, and, when Moliere
was accused of impiety on the production of Don Juan (1665)
Louis gave him a pension. We need not try to make Mme Moliere a
vertu, as French ladies of the theatre say, but it is
certain that the charges against her are unsubstantiated.