The attractions
of Le Misanthrope were reinforced (Aug. 6) by those of the
Medecin malgre lui, an amusing farce founded on an old
fabliau. In December
the court and the comedians went to St Germain, where,
among other diversions, the pieces called Melicerte, La
Pastorale comique (of which Moliere is said to have destroyed
the MS.) and the charming little piece Le Sicilien were
performed. A cold and fatigue seem to have injured the health of
Moliere, and we now hear of the consumptive tendency which was
cruelly ridiculed in Elomire hypochondre. Moliere was
doubtless obliged to see too much of the distracted or pedantic
physicians of an age when medicine was the battlefield of
tradition, superstition, and nascent chemical science.
On the 17th of April 1667 Robinet, the
rhyming gazetteer, says that the life of Moliere was thought to be
in danger. On the 10th of June, however, he played in Le
Sicilien before the town. In the earlier months of 1667 Louis
XIV was with the army in Flanders. There were embassies sent from
the comedy to the camp, and on the 5th of August it was apparent
that Moliere had overcome the royal scruples. Tartuffe was
played, but Lamoignon stopped it after the first night. La Grange
and La Torilliere hastened to the camp, and got the king’s promise
that he would reconsider the matter on his return. Moliere’s next
piece (Jan. 13, 1668) was Amphitryon, a free adaptation
from Plautus, who then seems to have engaged his attention; for
not long afterwards he again borrowed from the ancient writer in
L’Avare. There is a controversy as to whether
Amphitryon was meant to ridicule M. de Montespan, the
husband of the new mistress of Louis XIV. Michelet has a kind of
romance based on this probably groundless hypothesis. The king
still saw the piece occasionally, after he had purged himself and
forsworn sack under Mme de Maintenon, and probably neither he nor
that devout lady detected any personal references in the coarse
and witty comedy.
As usual, Moliere was accused of
plagiarizing, this time from Rotrou, who had also imitated
Plautus. The next play was the immortal George Dandin (July
10), first played at a festival at Versailles. Probably the piece
was a rapid palimpsest on the ground of one of his old farces, but
the addition of these typical members of a county family, the De
Sotenville, raises the work from farce to satiric comedy. The
story is borrowed from Boccaccio, but is of unknown age, and
always new, Adolphus Crosbie in The Small House at
Allington being a kind of modern George Dandin.. Though
the sad fortunes of this peasant with social ambition do not fail
to make us pity him somewhat, it is being too refined to regard
George Dandin as a comedy with a concealed tragic
intention. Moliere must have been at work on L’Avare before
George Dandin appeared, for the new comedy after Plautus
was first acted on the 9th of September. There is a tradition that
the piece almost failed; but, if unpopular in the first year of
its production, it certainly gained favor before the death of its
author.
M. de Pourceaugnac (Sept. 17,
1669) was first acted at Chambord, for the amusement of the king.
It is a rattling farce. The physicians, as usual, bore the brunt
of Moliere’s raillery, some of which is still applicable. Earlier
in 1669 (Feb. 5) Tartuffe was played at last, with
extraordinary success. Les Amants magnifiques was acted
first at St Germain (Feb. 10, 1670). The king might have been
expected to dance in the ballet, but from Racine’s
Britannicus (Dec. 3, 1669) the majestical monarch learned
that Nero was blamed for exhibitions of this kind, and he did not
wish to out Nero Nero. Astrology this time took the place of
medicine as a butt, but the satire has become obsolete. The
Bourgeois gentilhomme, was first played on the 23rd of
October 1770. The lively Fourberies de Scapin began on the
24th of May 1671, and on the 7th of May we read in La Grange, that
the theatre was newly decorated and fitted with machines. A
“concert of twelve violins” was also provided, the company being
resolute to have everything handsome about them. New singers were
introduced, who did not refuse to sing unmasked on the
stage.
Les Femmes savantes, (Feb. 11),
in which are satirized the vanity and affectation of sciolists,
pedants and the women who admire them. On the 17th of February
Madeleine Bejard died, and was buried at St Paul. She did not go
long before her old friend or lover Moliere. His Manage force,
founded, perhaps, on a famous anecdote of Gramont, was played on
the 18th of July. On the 7th of August La Grange notes that
Moliere was indisposed, and there was no comedy. Moliere’s son
died on the 11th of October. On the 22nd of November the
preparations for the Malade imaginaire were begun. On the
10th of February 1673 the piece was acted for the first time.
What occurred on the 17th of February
we translate from the Registre of La Grange: “This same day, about
ten o’clock at night, after the comedy, Monsieur de Moliere died
in his house, Rue de Richelieu. He had played the part of the said
Malade, suffering much from cold and inflammation, which caused a
violent cough. In the violence of the cough he burst a vessel in
his body, and did not live more than half an hour or
three-quarters after the bursting of the vessel. His body is
buried at St Joseph’s, parish of St Eustache. There is a
gravestone raised about a foot above the ground.”
Moliere’s funeral is thus described in
a letter, said to be by an eyewitness, discovered by M. Benjamin
Fillon: “Tuesday, 21st February, about nine in the evening, was
buried Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere, tapissier valet de
chambre, and a famous actor. There was no procession, except
three ecclesiastics; four priests bore the body in a wooden bier
covered with a pall, six children in blue carried candles in
silver holders, and there were lackeys with burning torches of
wax. The body . . . was taken to St Joseph’s churchyard, and
buried at the foot of the cross. There was a great crowd, and some
twelve hundred livres were distributed among the poor. The
archbishop had given orders that Moliere should be interred
without any ceremony, and had even forbidden the clergy of the
diocese to, do any service for him. Nevertheless a number of
masses were commanded to be said for the deceased.”When an attempt
was made to exhume the body of Moliere in 1792, the wrong tomb
appears to have been opened. Unknown is the grave of
Moliere.
Moliere, according to Mlle Poisson, who
had seen him in her extreme youth, was “neither too stout nor too
thin, tall rather than short; he had a noble carriage, a good leg,
walked slowly, and had a very serious expression. His nose was
thick, his mouth large with thick lips, his complexion brown, his
eyebrows black and strongly marked, and it was his way of moving
these that gave him his comic expression on the stage.” His eyes
seemed to search the deeps of men’s hearts,” says the author of
Zelinde. The inventories printed by M. Soulie prove that
Moliere was fond of rich dress, splendid furniture, and old books.
The charm of his conversation is attested by the names of his
friends, who were all the wits of the age, and the greater their
genius, the greater their love of Moliere. As an actor, friends
and enemies agreed in recognizing him as most successful in
comedy. His ideas of dramatic declamation were in advance of his
time, for he set his face against the prevalent habit of ranting.
His private character was remarkable for gentleness, probity,
generosity and delicacy, qualities attested not only by anecdotes
but by evidence of documents. He is probably the greatest of all
comic writers within the limits of social and refined, as
distinguished from romantic, comedy like that of Shakespeare, and
political comedy like that of Aristophanes.
He has the humor which is but a sense
of the true value of life, and now takes the form of the most
vivacious wit and the keenest observation, now of melancholy and
pity and wonder at the fortunes of mortal men. He possessed an
unerring knowledge of the theatre, the knowledge of a great actor
and a great manager, and hence his plays can never cease to hold
the stage, and to charm, if possible, even more in the performance
than in the reading.