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.