The Literati, after Molière's Les Femmes Savantes

after Molière's Les Femmes Savantes

Justin Fleming, Molière, Justin Fleming

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781925359817
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

'A learnéd fool is more of a fool than an ignorant fool can be.'%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%Juliet and Clinton are in love. Guileless, sweet, all-encompassing love. However, love is not without its impediments. Standing in the way of their eternal happiness are Juliet's mother and sister, whose disapproval is of the most high-brow kind.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%Justin Fleming has audaciously brought Molière's Les Femmes Savantes (The Learned Ladies) screaming into the 21st century and created a sassy Sydney story filled with linguistic dexterity, wit and rhyme.

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

AMANDA, JULIET.

AMANDA:

What? You mean you’d give up your cool and carefree life

As a happy single girl, to be a bitter and twisted wife?

Why risk everything on marriage? You’d be better off dead.

Can such a gross little plan really have entered your head?

JULIET:

Yes.

AMANDA:

Who’d have thought, my dear sister, that the simple word ‘Yes’

Could fill the heart with utter disgust and absolute awfulness?

JULIET:

Okay: what is it about marriage itself that puts you in a bind?

Surely it’s a natural goal to leave maidenhood behind?

AMANDA:

Oh my God! Get real!

JULIET:

What?

AMANDA:

I mean, get a grip, Janet.

JULIET:

My name’s not Janet.

AMANDA:

Juliet—you’re on some other planet!

Doesn’t it make you shudder? Dear sister, come to your senses!

Could you ever resign your heart to such hideous consequences?

JULIET:

The consequences of ‘marriage’, Amanda, as far as I can tell,

Are a husband, some children and a home in which to dwell.

AMANDA:

For heaven’s sake! So being in a straightjacket appeals to you?

JULIET:

One has to ask at my age, if there’s anything better to do

Than attach yourself to a husband, for whose company you yearn,

A man who loves you madly, and you love in return?

For a couple so well-matched, surely this bond is enchanting?

AMANDA:

You’ve sunk to a new low there. My God, girl, you’re ranting.

The world’s a major stage, and you settle for a minor role,

Locking yourself away in some domestic little hole,

Never to glimpse life’s pleasures, becoming an emotional cripple,

With an idol for a husband and a brat on every nipple.

It’s not for you, those basic chores, cleaning, washing, dusting:

Leave all that to people who are vulgar and disgusting.

Hold in contempt the material world, that sense of daily grind,

And devote yourself, as I do, entirely to things of the mind.

You have our mother for a role model, so cultured and discerning,

Who is hailed by the literati as a woman of higher learning,

So prove that you’re her daughter! Do try it! It worked for me.

Aspire to the dazzling heights which illuminate our family;

Render yourself learnèd! And check out science and art;

Feel the power that a love of study pumps into the heart;

Forget being a grovelling slave, where a man’s rules are the norm;

Marry yourself to philosophy, and take the world by storm!

Taste the beautiful fires, the music of the spheres,

And live life’s every moment in the realm of perfect ideas.

JULIET:

Live your life in the stars, let your genius take flight,

Ascend the highest heaven of literature and light.

But as for me, I’ll settle for marriage and all of...