Theatre Illustre

To return to the order of events, Moliere passed the year 1643 playing with and helping to manage the Theatre Illustre. The company acted in various tennis-courts, with very little success. Moliere was actually arrested by the tradesman who supplied candles, and the company had to borrow money from one Auey to release their leader from the Grand Chatelet (Aug. 53, 1645). The process of turning a tennis court into a theatre was somewhat expensive, even though no seats were provided in the pit. The troupe was for a short time under the protection of the duc d’Orleans, but his favors were not lucrative. The due de Guise, according to some verses printed in 1646, made Moliere a present of his cast off wardrobe. But costume was not enough to draw the public to the tennis court theatre of the Croix Noire, and empty houses at last obliged the Theatre Illustre to leave Paris at the end of 1646.

“Nul animal vivant n’entra dans notre salle,” says the author of the scurrilous play on Moliere, Elomire hypochondre. But at that time some dozen traveling companies found means to exist in the provinces, and Moliere determined to play among the rural towns. The career of a strolling player is much the same at all times and in all countries. The Roman comique of Scarron gives a vivid picture of the adventures and misadventures, the difficulty of transport, the queer cavalcade of horses, mules, and lumbering carts that drag the wardrobe and properties, the sudden metamorphosis of the tennis court, where the balls have just been rattling, into a stage, the quarrels with local squires, the disturbed nights in crowded country inns, all the loves and wars of a troupe on the march.

Perrault tells us what the arrangements to the theatre were in Moliere’s early time. Tapestries were hung round the stage, and entrances and exits were made by struggling through the heavy curtains, which often knocked off the hat of the comedian, or gave a strange cock to the helmet of a warrior or a god. The lights were candles stuck in tin sconces at the back and sides, but luxury sometimes went so far that a chandelier of four candles was suspended from the roof. At intervals the candles were let down by a rope and pulley, and any one within easy reach snuffed them with his fingers. A flute and tambour, or two fiddlers, supplied the music. The highest prices were paid for seats in the dedans (cost of admission five pence): for the privilege of standing in the pit two pence-halfpenny was the charge. The doors were opened at one o’clock, the curtain rose at two.

The nominal director of the Theatre Illustre in the provinces was Du Fresne; the most noted actors were Moliere, the Bejards, and Du Parc, called Gros Rene. It is extremely difficult to follow exactly the line of march of the company. They played at Bordeaux, for example, but the date of this performance, when Moliere (according to Montesquieu) failed in tragedy and was pelted, is variously given as 1644 -1645 (Trallage), 1647 (Loiseleur), 1648 - 1658 (Lacroix). Perhaps the theatre prospered better elsewhere than in Paris, where the streets were barricaded in these early days of the war of the Fronde. We find Moliere at Nantes in 1648, at Fontenay-la-Compte, and in the spring of 1649 at Agen, Toulouse, and probably at Angouleme and Limoges. In January 1650 they played at Narbonne, and between 1650 and 1653 Lyons was the headquarters of the troupe.

In January 1653, or perhaps 1655, Moliere gave L’Etourdi at Lyons, the first of his finished pieces, as contrasted with the slight farces with which he generally diverted a country audience. It would be interesting to have the precise date of this piece, but La Grange (1682) says that “in 1653 Moliere went to Lyons, where he gave his first comedy, L’Etourdi,” while in his Registre La Grange enters the year as 1655. At Lyons de ie and his wife, the famous Mlle de ie, entered the troupe, and du Parc married the “marquise” de Gorla, better known as Mile du Parc. The libelous author of La Fameuse comedienne reports that Moliere’s heart belonged to the beautiful du Parc and de ie, and the tradition has a persistent life. Moliere’s own opinion of the ladies and men of his company may be read between the lines of his Impromptu de Versailles.

In 1653 Prince de Conti, after many political adventures, was residing at La Grange, near Pezenas, in Languedoc, and chance ought him into relations with his old schoolfellow Moliere. Conti had for first gentleman of his bed chamber the abbe Daniel de Cosnac, whose memoirs now throw light for a moment on the fortunes of the wandering troupe. Cosnac engaged the company “of Moliere and of La Bejart “; but another company, that of Cormier, nearly intercepted the favor of the prince. Thanks to the resolution of Cosnac, Moliere was given one chance of appearing on the private theatre of La Grange. The excellence of his acting, the splendor of the costumes, and the insistence of Cosnac, and of Sarrasin, Conti’s secretary, gained the day for Moliere, and a pension was assigned to his company (Cosnac, Mémoires, Paris, 1852). As Cosnac proposed to pay Moliere a thousand crowns of his own money to recompense him in case he was supplanted by Cormier, it is obvious that his profession. had become sufficiently lucrative.

In 1654, during the session of the estates of Languedoc, Moliere and his company played at Montpellier. Here Moliere danced in a ballet (Le Ballet des incompatibles) in which a number of men of rank took part, according to the fashion of the time. Moliere’s own roles were those of the Poet and the Fishwife. The sport of the little piece is to introduce opposite characters, dancing and singing together. Silence dances with six women, Truth with four courtiers, Money with a poet, and so forth. Whether the ballet, or any parts of it, are by Moliere, is still disputed. In April 1655 it is certain that the troupe was at Lyons, where they met and hospitably entertained a profligate buffoon, Charles d’Assoucy, who informs the ages that Moliere kept open house, and “une table bien garnie.” November 1655 found Moliere at Pezenas, where the estates of Languedoc were convened, and where local tradition points out the barber’s chair in which the poet used to sit and study character. The longest of Moliere’s extant autographs is a receipt, dated at Pezenas, on the 4th of Feuary 1656, for 6000 livres, granted by the estates of Languedoc. This year was notable for the earliest representation, at Beziers, of Moliere’s second finished comedy, the Depit amoureux. Conti now (1656) began to “make his soul.” Almost his first act of penitence was to discard Moliere’s troupe (1657), which consequently found that the liberalitv of the estates was dried up for ever. Conti’s relations with Moliere must have definitively closed long before 1666, when the now pious prince wrote a treatise against the stage, and especially charged his old schoolfellow with keeping a new school, a school of atheism.

Moliere was now (1657) independent of princes and their favor. He went on a new circuit to Nismes, Orange and Avignon, where he met another old classmate, Chapelle, and also encountered the friend of his later life, the painter Mignard. After a later stay at Lyons, ending with a piece given for the benefit of the poor on the 27th of Feuary 1658, Moliere passed to Grenoble, returned to Lyons, and is next found in Rouen. At Rouen Moliere must have made or renewed the acquaintance of Pierre and Thomas Corneille. His company had played pieces by Corneille at Lyons and elsewhere. The real business of the comedian in Rouen was to prepare his return to Paris. “After several secret journeys thither he was fortunate enough to secure the patronage of Monsieur, the king’s only other, who granted him his protection, and permitted the company to take his name, presenting them as his servants to the king and the queen mother” (Preface to La Grange’s edition of 1682). The troupe appeared for the first time before Louis XIV in a theatre arranged in the old Louvre (Oct. 24, 1658).