Moliere was now thirty six years of age. He had gained all the experience that fifteen years of practice could give. He had seen men and cities, and noted all
the
humors of rural and civic France. He was at the head of a company which, as La Grange, his friend and
comrade, says, “sincerely loved him.” He had the
not very lucrative patronage of a great prince to back him, and the jealousy of all
playwrights, and of the old theatres of the Hotel de Bourgogne and the Marais, to contend against.
In this struggle we can follow him by aid of the Registre of La Grange (a brief diary of receipts and payments), and by the help of notices in the rhymed chronicles of Loret.
The first appearance of Moliere before the king was all but a failure.
Nicomede, by the elder Corneille, was the piece, and we may believe that
the actors of the Hotel de Bourgogrie, who were present, found much to
criticize. When the play was over, Moliere came forward and asked the
king’s permission to act “one of the little pieces with which he had been used to regale the
provinces.” The Docteur amoureux, one of several slight comedies admitting of much “gag,” was then performed, and “diverted as much as it surprised the audience.” The king commanded that the troupe should establish itself in Paris. The theatre assigned to the company was a
salle in the Petit Bourbon, in a line with the present Rue du Louvre. Some
Italian players already occupied the house on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays; the company of Moliere played on the other days. The first piece played in the new house (Nov. 3, 1658) was
L’Etourdi. La Grange says the comedy had a great success, producing seventy pistoles for each actor. The success is admitted even by the spiteful author of
Elomire hypocliondre (Paris, 1670) “Je jouai l’Etourdi, qui fut une merveille.”
The success, however, is attributed to the farcical element in the play and the acting;
the cuckoo-cry of Moliere’s detractors. The original of L’Etourdi is the Italian comedy (1629)
L’Inavertito, by Nicolo Barbieri detto Beltrame; Moliere pushed rather far his right to “take his own wherever he found it.” Had he written nothing more original, the contemporary critic of the Festin de Pierre might have said, not untruly, that he only excelled in stealing pieces from the Italians. The piece is conventional: the stock characters of the prodigal son, the impudent valet, the old father occupy the stage. But the dialogue has amazing rapidity, and the vivacity of M. Coquelin to Mascarille made L’Etourdi a
favorite on the modern stage, though it cannot be read with very much pleasure. The next piece, new in Paris, though not in the provinces, was the
Depit amoureux (first acted at Bezieresers 1656) The
play was not less successful than L’Etourdi. It has two parts, one an Italian
imbroglio; the other, which alone keeps the stage, is the original work of Moliere, though, of course, the idea of
amantium irae is as old as literature. Even the hostile Le Boulanger de Chalussay
(Elomire hypochondre) admits that the audience was much of this opinion: “Et de tons les cfités chacun cria tout haut:
C’est la faire et jouer les pièces comme il faut."
The same praise was given, perhaps even more deservedly, to Les
Precieuses ridicules (Nov. 18, 1659). Doubts have been raised as to whether this famous piece, the first true comic satire of contemporary foibles on the French stage, was a new play. La Grange calls it
piece nouvelle in his Registre; but, as he enters it as the third
piece nouvelle, he may only mean that, like L’Etourdi, it was new to Paris. The short life of 1682, produced under La Grange’s care, and probably written by Marcel the actor, says the
Precieuses was “made” in 1659. There is another controversy as to whether the ladies of the Hotel Rambouillet, or merely their bourgeoises and rustic imitators, were laughed at.
Menage, in later years at least, professed to recognize an attack on the over-refinement and affectation of the original and, in most ways, honourable
precieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet. But Chapelle
and Bachaumont had discovered provincial precieuses, hyper-aesthetic
literary ladies, at Montpellier before Moliere’s return to Paris; and Furetiere, in the Roman bourgeois (1666), found Paris full of middle-class precieuses, who had survived, or, like their modern counterparts, had thriven on ridicule.
Another question is: Did Moliere copy from the earlier
Precieuses of the abbe de Pure? This charge of plagiarism is brought by Somaize, in the preface to his
Veritables precieuses. De Pure’s work was a novel (1656), from which the Italian actors had put together an acting-piece in their manner;
that is, a thing of “gag,” and improvised speeches. The reproach is interesting only
because it proves how early Moliere found enemies who, like Thomas
Corneille in 1659, accused him of being skilled only in farce, or, like
Somaize, charged him with literary larceny. These were the stock criticisms of Moliere’s opponents as long as he lived. The success of the
Precieuses ridicules was immense; on one famous occasion the king was a spectator, leaning against the great chair of the dying Cardinal Mazarin. The play can never cease to please while literary affectation exists, and it has a comic force of deathless energy. Yet a modern reader may spare some sympathy for the poor heroines, who do not wish, in courtship, to “begin with marriage,” but prefer first to have some less formidable acquaintance with their wooers.
Moliere’s next piece was less important, and more purely farcical,
Sganarelle; ou le cocu imaginaire (May 28, 1660). The public taste preferred a work of this light nature, and Sganarelle was played every year as long as Moliere lived. The play was pirated by a man who pretended to have retained all the words in his memory. The counterfeit copy was published by Ribou, a
double injury to Moliere as once printed, any company might act the play. With his habitual good-nature, Moliere not only allowed Ribou to publish later works of his, but actually lent money to that knave.
On the 11th of October 1660 the Theatre du Petit Bourbon was demolished
by the superintendent of works, without notice given to the company. The
king gave Moliere the Salle du Palais Royal, but the machinery of the old theatre was maliciously destroyed. Meanwhile the older
companv of the Marais and the Hotel de Bourgogne attempted to lure away Moliere’s troupe,
but as La Grange declares, “ all the actors loved their chief, who united to extraordinary genius an
honorable character and charming manner, which compelled them all to protest that they would never leave him, but always share his fortunes.” While the new theatre was being put in order, the company played in the houses of the great, and before the king at the Louvre. In their new house (originally built by
Richelieu) Moliere began to play on the 20th of January 1661. Moliere now gratified his rivals by a failure.
Don Garcie de Navarre, a heavy tragi-comedy, which had long lain among his papers, was first represented on the 4th of February 1661.
Either Moliere was a poor actor outside comedy, or his manner was not
sufficiently “stagy,” and, as he says, “demoniac,” for the taste of the day. His opponents were determined that he
could not act in tragi-comedy, and he, in turn, burlesqued their pretentious
and exaggerated manner in a later piece. In the Précieuses Moliere had already raffled “les grands comediens” of the
Hotel Bourgogne. “Les autres,” he makes Mascarille say about his own troupe, “sont des ignorants qui récitent comme I’on parle, ils ne savent pas faire ronfler les vers.” All this was likely to irritate the grands
comediens, and their friends, who avenged themselves on that unfortunate jealous prince,
Don Garcie de Navarre. The subject of this unsuccessful drama is one of many examples which show how Moliere’s mind was engaged with the serious or comic aspects of jealousy, a passion which he had soon cause to know most intimately. Meantime the everyday life of the stage went on, and the doorkeeper of the
Theatre St Germain was wounded by some revelers who tried to force their way into the house (La Grange, Registre). A year later, an Italian actor was stabbed in front of Moliere’s house, where he had sought to
take shelter. To these dangers actors were peculiarly subject: Moliere himself was frequently threatened by the marquises and others whose class he ridiculed on the stage, and there seems even reason to believe that there is some truth in the story of the angry marquis who rubbed the poet’s head against his buttons, thereby cutting his face severely. The story comes late (1725) into his biography, but is supported by a passage in the
contemporary play, Zelinde (Paris, 1663, scene
VIII).
Before Easter, Moliere asked for two shares in the profits of his company, one for himself, and one for his wife, if he married. That fatal step was already contemplated (La Grange). On the 24th of June he brought out for the first time L’Ecole des
maris. The general idea of the piece is as old as Menander,
and Moliere was promptly accused of pilfering from the Adelphi of Terence. One of the
ficelles of the comedy is borrowed from a story as old at
least as Boccaccio, and still amusing in a novel by Charles de Bernard. It is significant of Moliere’s talent that the grotesque and baffled paternal wooer, Sganarelle, like several other butts in Moliere’s comedy, does to a certain extent win our sympathy and pity as well as our laughter. The next new piece was
Les Fascheux, a comedieballet, the Comedy of Bores, played before the king at Fouquet’s house at Vaux le Vicomte (Aug. 15
- 20, 1661).
The comedians, without knowing it, were perhaps the real “fascheux” on this occasion, for Fouquet was absorbed in the schemes of his insatiable ambition
(Quo non ascendam? says his motto), and the king was organizing the arrest and fall of Fouquet, his rival in the affections of La
Valliere. The author of the prologue to Les Fascheux, Pellisson, a friend of Fouquet’s, was
arrested with the superintendent of finance. Pellisson’s prologue and name were retained in the later editions. In the dedication to the king Moliere says that Louis suggested one scene (that of the Sportsman), and in another place he mentions that the piece was written, rehearsed, and played in a fortnight. The
fundamental idea of the play, the interruptions by bores, is suggested by a satire of
Regnier’s, and that by a satire of Horace. Perhaps it may have been the acknowledged suggestions of the king which made gossips declare that Moliere habitually worked up hints and
memoires given him by persons of quality.
In February 1662 Moliere married Armande
Bejard.
And on the margin he has painted a blue circle, his way of recording a happy event,
with the words, “manage de M. de Moliere au sortir de lavisite.” M. Loiseleur gives the date in one passage as the 29th of February; in another as the 20th of
February. But La Grange elsewhere mentions the date as “Shrove Tuesday,” which was, it seems, the
14th of February. Elsewhere M. Loiseleur’ makes the date of the marriage a vague day “in January.” The truth is that the marriage contract is dated the 23rd of January 1662. Where it is so difficult to establish the date of the marriage, a simple fact, it must be infinitely harder to discover the truth as to the conduct of Mme Moliere. The abominable assertions of the anonymous
libel, Les Intrigues de Moliere et celles de sa femme; ou la fameuse
comedienne (1688), have found their way into tradition, and are accepted by many biographers. But M. Livet and M. Bazin have proved that the alleged lovers of Mme Moliere were actually absent from France, or from the court, at the time when they are reported, in the libel, to have conquered her heart. A conversation between Chapelle and Moliere, in which the comedian is made to tell the story of his wrongs, is plainly a mere fiction, and is answered in Grimarest by another dialogue between Moliere and Rohault, in which Moliere only complains of a jealousy which he knows to be unfounded. It is noticed, too, that the contemporary assailants of Moliere counted him among jealous, but not among deceived, husbands.
The hideous accusation brought by the actor Montfleury, that Moliere had married his own daughter, Louis
XIV answered by becoming the godfather of Moliere’s child. The king, indeed, was a firm friend of the actor, and, when Moliere was accused of impiety on the production of Don Juan (1665) Louis gave him a pension. We need not try to make Mme Moliere a
vertu, as French ladies of the theatre say, but it is certain that the charges against her are unsubstantiated.