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.