Moliere's next piece was La Mariage de force (Feb.
15, 1664), a farce with a ballet. The comic character of the
reluctant bridegroom excites contemptuous pity, as well as
laughter. From the end of April till the 22nd of May, the troupe
was at Versailles acting among the picturesque pleasures of that
great festival of the king.'s. The Princess d'Elide was
acted for the first time, and the three first acts of
Tartuffe were given. Moliere's natural hatred of hypocrisy
were not diminished by the charges of blasphemy which were
showered on him after the Ecole des
femmes.
Tartuffe made enemies everywhere.
Jansenists and Jesuits, like the two marquesses in L'impromptu
de Versailles, each thought the others were aimed at. Five
years passed before Moliere received permission to play the whole
piece in public. In the interval it was acted before Madame,
Conde, the legate, and was frequently read by Moliere in private
houses. The gazette of the 17th of May, 1664 (a paper hostile to
Moliere) says that the king thought the piece inimical to
religion. Louis was not at that time on good terms with the
devots, whom his amours scandalized; but not impossible,
the queen mother (then suffering from her fatal malady) disliked
the play.
A most violent attack on Moliere, "that
demon clad in human flesh," was written by one Pierre Roulle. This
fierce pamphlet was suppressed, but the king's own copy, in red
morocco with the royal arms, remains to testify to the bigotry of
the author, who was cure of Saint Barthelemy. According to Roulle,
Moliere deserved to be sent through earthly to eternal flames. The
play was prohibited, but in 1665 the king adopted Moliere's troupe
as his servants, and gave them the title of troupe du roy.
This did not cause Moliere to relax his efforts to obtain
permission for Tartuffe, and his perseverance was at length
successful. That his thoughts were concerned with contemporary
hypocrisy is proved by certain scenes in one of his greatest
pieces, the Festin de Pierre, or Don Juan (Feb. 15,
1665).
The legend of Don Juan was
already familiar on the Spanish, French, and Italian stages.
Moliere made it a new thing: terrible and romantic in its
portrayal of un grand seignur mauvais homme, modern in its
suggested substitution of la humanite for religion, comic,
even among his comedies, by the mirthful character of Sganarelle.
The piece filled the theatre but was stopped, probably by
authority, shortly after Easter. It was not printed by Moliere,
and even by 1682 the publication of the full text was not
permitted. Happily the copy of De la Regnie, the chief of the
police escaped obliterations, and gave us the full scene of Don
Juan and the Beggar. The piece provoked violent criticisms.
L'Amour medecin, a light comedy,
appeared on the 22nd of September 1665. In this piece, for the
second time, attacks physicians. In December there was a quarrel
with Racine about his play of Alexandre, which he treacherously
transferred to the Hotel de Bourgogne.
The 4th of June, 1666 saw the first
representation of that famous play, Le Misanthrope (ou
L'Atrabilaire amoureux as the original second title ran). This
piece, perhaps the masterpiece of Moliere, was more successful
with the critics, with the court, and with posterity than with the
public. The rival comedians called it "a new style of comedy," and
so it was. The eternal passions and sentiments of human nature,
modified by the influence of the utmost refinement of
civilization, were the matter of the piece.
The school for scandal kept by
Celimene, with its hasty judgments on all characters, gave the
artist a wide canvas. The perpetual strife between the sensible
optimism of a kindly man of the world (Philinte) and the saeva
indignatio of a noble nature soured (Alceste) supplies the
intellectual action. The humors of the joyously severe Celimene
and of here court, especially of that deathless minor poet Oronte,
supply the lighter comedy. Boileau, Lessing, Goethe have combined
to give this piece the highest rank even among the comedies of
Moliere. As to the "keys" to the characters, and the guesses about
the original from whom Alceste was drawn, they are as valueless as
other contemporary tattle.