Thon Man Molière

Liz Lochhead

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781848426573
• eBook ISBN: 9781780019314
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'Why do folk not, ever, catch on to themselves?… Ach, gies you another interesting nutter to play.'

Welcome to Paris at the time of Louis XIV. Come backstage and meet the King's theatre company – a troupe of grandes dames, old hams, ingénues and, of course, their leading man, author of their dramas and cause of all their troubles... thon man Molière.

Under constant threat of debtors' prison, in big bother with church and state and – worst of all – disastrously in love, Molière writes brilliant, scurrilous comedies inspired by a desperate life. But telling the truth is a dangerous business and his latest drama could be the death of him…

Liz Lochhead's play Thon Man Molière was first performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in 2016, in a production starring Jimmy Chisholm and Siobhan Redmond.

'I was so moved by this play, which surprised me, as I had expected a knockabout comedy. Don't get me wrong, it was funny. But I hadn't expected the tenderness and emotional complexity. The bond – eternal, exasperated, essential – between Molière and Madeleine is the core of the piece, but all of these characters seem every bit as human and deep and strange and needy as theatre people always are.' David Greig, Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

ACT ONE

Who’s the Daddy?

Prologue

Direct to audience –

MOLIÈRE. Whit got me intae aw that bother was me overestimating the King’s sense of humour.

I treated that man like an equal. I totally thought he was a man of intelligence and taste that I could trust as somebody that really liked a laugh and could take a joke. And had the sense to see through malicious troublemakers…

But you should never, ever, underestimate the stupidity of the rich and powerful.

MADELEINE. No. Whit got him intae aw that bother was the usual thing.

Whit is it gets men o your age intae trouble, every time? You tell me.

MOLIÈRE squirms and shrugs, exits.

MADELEINE continues direct-to-audience address as she goes to her dressing table.

What annoys me is I never saw it coming. I thought, after all these years, after everything we had been through, after everything the company had been through, that I really had his number.

Thought I knew exactly what he was after.

Comes swanning intae my dressing room… I’m in early, bit o peace to put in a couple of hours on the accounts – because if I left it to him, our resident genius…

I’ve been running and running that speech that he’s deliberately spiked with all those impossible tongue-twisters, just for badness, the bugger, just so he can stand there, doing nothing, one eyebrow raised, milking it, getting all the laughs, while Yours Truly does all the hard work. I’m half-made-up, lot less than half-dressed – and without so much as a chap at the door, who should swan in, bold as brass –

Scene One

MOLIÈRE. Madeleine, my darlin…

MADELEINE. Uh-huh…?

MOLIÈRE. Aw, don’t be like that.

MOLIÈRE massages the back of MADELEINE’s neck, familiarly.

MADELEINE. Paws off. I’m trying to get ready. Gie’s peace.

MOLIÈRE. I was just wondering…

MADELEINE. Beat it.

MOLIÈRE. How?

MADELEINE. Get tae. Go on. Privacy. Is that an unknown concept to you?

MOLIÈRE. Ach, it’s no as if I’m seeing anything I’ve never seen before.

MADELEINE. Wrong. You’ve never seen this before. It’s taking longer and longer with the slap these days to simulate the bloom of youth, taking longer and stronger yardages of cantilevered whalebone to hoick up the sagging auld tits and, frankly, Poky, I would appreciate that bit of privacy – Georgette!

A MAID comes and helps her into her splendid dress, as –

MOLIÈRE. Oh my God, Madeleine, but you were utterly gorgeous… I mean, you are still gorgeous, of course, you are a very, very beautiful wom–

MADELEINE. Too late. A long, long while too late.

And the answer is yes.

Yes, I’ve read it. You don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’ve come crawling in here after?

‘Did you read my new play? What did you think? Will the King no jist pish himself at this? Am I no a pure genius? Can you no just hear the clamouring cries of “Author, Author!”…’

MOLIÈRE. What did you think?

MADELEINE. I think you will get the jile.

MOLIÈRE. Some of the rhymes are quite nice I thought?

MADELEINE. Jeez, you writers are all the same! Yes, some of the rhymes are very ingenious. You are a very clever boy who is too stupid to realise that the whole thing could be taken to be a mockery of religion.

MOLIÈRE. Never! God is not mocked! Did you actually read it?

MADELEINE. Did you not actually get the jile already?

MOLIÈRE. Debtors’ Prison. Everybody’s been –

MADELEINE. Really? Did ‘everybody’ have a father that could bail them out at the last minute?

MOLIÈRE. And a beautiful generous lover like you…

MADELEINE. I must’ve been saft. Any bit of money I could squeeze out of Esprit Modène… That’s what ruined that whole relationship –

MOLIÈRE. You never loved thon Esprit Modène!

MADELEINE gasps.

MADELEINE. – Asking him for money. For you –

MOLIÈRE. – For the company!

MADELEINE. – Put paid to the whole thing.

He stretches out his arms, as in ‘don’t be like that’…

MOLIÈRE. Madeleine…

C’mon, your beau Esprit Modène, your good sugar daddy, like many a nobleman who ‘loves the theatre’, had aspirations to be a patron of the arts. Sae it was a kindness, Madeleine, to… gie him a wee haun tae achieve his dearest wish. And I will aye be grateful. To the baith of ye. For as long as I live.

MADELEINE. Look, they even banned the Precious Ladies Ridiculed. You’re lucky you never got the jile for that.

MOLIÈRE. I rewrote it. Once I made it quite, quite clear that I was not satirising either Madames de Scudéry, or Rambouillet, their ‘salons’ – nor the Rights of Women – but only getting a rise out of a couple of pretentious provincial girls aping what they thought was –

MADELEINE. The King’s mother was incensed! She –

MOLIÈRE. I changed it –

MADELEINE. Butchered it.

MOLIÈRE. So everybody would find it totally acceptable. Especially those that recognised themselves. Because it is really, really funny.

MADELEINE. Never said it wasn’t funny. (Sighs.) Poky, you must realise that you cannot be as popular as you are without having many, many powerful enemies.

MOLIÈRE. This new play couldn’t offend anyone. Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite.

MADELEINE. He is a priest!

MOLIÈRE. Aye, a badyin! Everybody knows there are many priests who don’t deserve their holy vestments.

MADELEINE. And the Church protects them.

MOLIÈRE. A minority! I’m no sayin they’re all –

MADELEINE. I should hope not!

MOLIÈRE. Look, this play: a priest pretending to extreme and evangelical piety inveigles himself into the heart of a well-to-do bourgeois family and robs them of the lot. Oor villain, the eponymous ‘Tartuffe’ –

MADELEINE. Poky, how do you think them up?

MOLIÈRE. Wheesht! This priest, och, he’s the devil incarnate! Telling ye, he has already, by the time the play begins, conned the father of the household totally. Not swindled him out of any of the money yet nor nothing, but has him in the palm of his hand.

The rest of the family can see right through him, of course, he’s a one hundred-per-cent twinty-four-carat fake, priest or no. But the paterfamilias – the one who holds the power and the purse strings –

MADELEINE. Naturally.

MOLIÈRE. – He’s a man obsessed. Won’t hear a word against him –

MADELEINE. Why? What does he see in him?

MOLIÈRE. Ah, Madeleine, who are we to try to fathom the motivations and mysteries of the human...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Introduction
• Dedication
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two
• Act Three
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information