Study Guide to The School for Wives and Other Works by Molière

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645424512
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Molière, one of the greatest French writers. Titles in this study guide include The School for Wives, Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, The Miser, The Would-Be Gentleman, The Learned Ladies, The Physician in Spite of Himself, The Precious Damsels, and The Imaginary Invalid.As a French poet, playwright, and actor of the seventeenth-century, he transformed comedy. Moreover, he was considered the official playwright for the royal court's entertainment. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Molière's classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&AsThe Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO MOLIÈRE

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born in Paris and was baptized on January 15, 1622. Later in life, he used the stage name of Molière. There are few reliable sources about the facts of his life. For example, it is not known when he first took the new name, why he exactly wished to change names, and where he found the word Molière.

EARLY LIFE

Molière was the oldest child of a well-to-do, middle-class Parisian family. His father seems to have been a hard-working, thrifty, and ambitious interior decorator. In 1631 he secured an appointment as a royal upholsterer, which provided him with an opportunity to participate in the court of Louis XIII. Molière’s mother died when the boy was only ten years old, and his father remarried a year later. At the age of fifteen, Molière was sent to the College of Clermont, a school run by the Jesuits and attended by the children of rich and noble parents. At this school Molière received a thoroughly classical education and undoubtedly came into contact with the theater for the first time, since the Jesuits encouraged the study of drama. Molière also may have studied law in the city of Orleans somewhat later.

FIRST FAILURES AND FLIGHT

In 1643, at the age of twenty-one, Molière shocked his father when he declared that he did not intend to follow in his parent’s footsteps as an upholsterer. He also renounced his right of succession to his father’s royal title. Six months later he stunned his father again by forming a theatrical company. “The Illustrious Theater,” with Madeleine Béjart as his leading lady, business partner, and mistress. At this time the acting profession was condemned by the Church, and the bourgeoisie or middleclass, to which his family belonged, shunned members of the theater. Nevertheless, Molière’s father seems to have helped his son, once the initial shock passed and he saw he could not persuade Molière to change his mind. After touring in the provinces, Molière’s company came to Paris at the end of 1644. In Paris, “The Illustrious Theater” proved to be anything but illustrious. The competition of other theatrical groups in the big city resulted in the financial failure of the amateurs. Molière was arrested and imprisoned for debt. Molière’s father save his son by paying the money owed. In 1646, with three years of experience in the ways of the world of the theater to his credit, Molière fled to the provinces of France.

YEARS OF EXILE

From 1646 until 1658, Molière wandered throughout France with the remnants of his defeated acting company. Little is definitely known of these years except that they must have been years of financial hardship, with a constant change of living quarters, for Molière. However, he perfected his theatrical genius during these twelve years of wandering. He learned to be actor, director, writer, and jack-of-all-trades in the many details of operating a theater. He also came into contact with people from all walks of life. He was to use all these experiences in his later plays. In 1654 Louis XIV was crowned King of France, and the nation started along the path of great political and cultural power.

RETURN TO PARIS

In 1658 Molière returned to the capital and presented before the young king one of his own minor comedies. Its success was not overwhelmfng, but complete failure as before did not occur. In 1659 Molière had his first hit, The Precious Damsels, which was a bold satire on the exaggerated, snobbish manners of wealthy and noble women. By the year 1661 the theatrical company of Molière occupied the best theater in Paris.

SUCCESS

For the next twelve years, until his death, Molière enjoyed success on the stage. These are the years when the lives of Louis XIV and Molière are joined. Without the help of the king, before whom he presented his plays, Molière would not have been able to overcome his rivals and enemies to reach the heights of financial and literary success. The artistic originality of Molière began to be recognized in his play of 1662, The School for Wives. He combined the French farce, the Italian commedia dell’arte or improvised art, and contemporary social satire to create a new type of comedy.

OPPOSITION

Everything did not go smoothly for Molière during these years. In 1662, he married Armande Béjart, the sister of Madeleine, his old friend from the days of “The Illustrious Theater.” The marriage proved to be an unhappy one; this personal tragedy is reflected in several of Molière’s plays. Despite the fact that Louis XIV was the godfather for Molière’s son in 1664, the dramatist encountered great opposition from the Church, the nobility, and social figures who claimed they had been ridiculed by him on the stage. In 1664, he introduced before the king his most daring and controversial play, Tartuffe. It is a severe criticism of religious hypocrisy. Even Louis XIV could not protect his friend from the attacks of his enemies this time. The king was forced to ban the play, and for five years Molière worked to revise Tartuffe and begged the king to permit its performance. In 1669 it was publicly performed and was highly successful.

FURTHER SUCCESSES

During this five-year battle about Tartuffe, Molière continued to produce hits. In 1666 he wrote perhaps his greatest artistic triumph and probably his most profound work, The Misanthrope. He satirized the ambitions of the middle class in The Miser (1668) and The Would-Be Gentleman (1670). In The Learned Ladies (1672), Molière criticized insincerity and pretentiousness in women. At the same time that his social criticism became sharper and wittier, he was writing comedies that were more polished in form and style.

DEATH

His own unhappiness and disillusionments were reflected more and more in the plays. Although Molière won wealth and fame during his residence in Paris, his personal life became more and more tragic. Marital difficulties with his wife, Armande, increased, and the cruel attacks of his opponents began to take their toll on Molière. His health was failing, and the doctors became a source of bitter dramatic material for him. In 1666 he had already written one comedy about the medical profession, The Physician in Spite of Himself. In 1673, Molière wrote The Imaginary Invalid, a serious comedy about the vicious practices of doctors and the victimizing of a fearful public by quacks. During the fourth performance of this play, Molière, already a very ill man, was stricken by a hemorrhage of the lungs as he played the part of Argan, the dupe of the physicians. He died on the same night, February 17, 1673.

His death showed the talent of the man in several ways. Mortally ill, Molière had to portray an imaginary invalid. He also tried to carry on the best tradition of the theater - “the show must go on” - by continuing to perform until he finished the play. His wife was absent when he died because she was frantically attempting to persuade a priest to come to anoint him. At that time, actors were excommunicated or forbidden to enjoy the rites of the Church. In addition, the ecclesiastical officials, still smarting under the attacks of Tartuffe, refused to permit the burial of Molière in consecrated soil.

Molière’s good friend, Louis XIV, finally heard the pleas of the dramatist’s wife and allowed the burial in a parish cemetery. However, the funeral had to take place privately at night. There is still doubt as to whether or not Molière was buried in church ground and whether or not the remains taken to the Pantheon, shrine of great Frenchmen in Paris, during the French Revolution, were really those of Molière. Molière’s final exit from the stage of life may be summed up best in the words of Lord Morley, the British historian: “The best title of Louis XIV to the recollection of posterity is the protection he extended to Molière.”

In 1680 Louis XIV merged the theatrical company of Molière with another group to form the Comédie Française or French National Theater. It is known also as the “House of Molière.” For almost three hundred years this theater, financed by the French government, has kept alive the tradition of Molière and the other French classic writers by performing their plays. The enormous popularity of Molière continues to be shown by the fact that his plays are performed regularly and to full houses. Because of his importance in French literature, he has often been called the “Shakespeare of France.”

THE AGE OF MOLIÈRE

Age Of Louis XIV

Molière’s lifetime (1622-1673) embraces only a fraction of the period known in French and European history as the “Age of Louis XIV.” Born in 1638, Louis XIV, after the death of Louis XIII in 1643, was proclaimed king under the regency of Cardinal Mazarin but was not crowned until 1654. In 1661, the young monarch became ruler in fact as well as name by asserting his authority over the nation; until his death in 1715, Louis XIV governed as an absolute autocrat under the doctrine of “I am the State.” He was thirty-five years old at the time of Molière’s death and was generally popular with the people. He had crushed the nobles and unified the country. The order and stability thus achieved appealed to all social classes. Under able ministers like Colbert, Louis XIV employed French energies, diverted from wasteful civil wars and bad administration, in the creation of the dominant power on the European continent. Spain, after the defeat of the Armada by the English in 1688, had gone into decline, and England still had not created an empire with which to assert its growing strength. Thus, given the support of his people, a rich and flourishing economy, and a central government, Louis XIV chose to encourage any enterprise which would boost French prestige and glory.

In the first place, he spent large sums of money on wars to gain military supremacy for France. The nation was opposed by alliances of the other European powers and gradually Louis XIV was checked in his territorial aims. However, he had some successes. For example, in 1700, he named his grandson king of Spain after the death of Charles II, last of the Hapsburgs, and the French royal family of the Bourbons controlled Spain. In fact, a family pact brought Spain into the French camp as an ally. It is not necessary to go into the many details of Louis XIV’s military campaigns; it is important to note that he impoverished France thereby, cost the people many lives, and laid some of the bricks for the French Revolution less than a century later, in 1789. Of course, French culture, the language and the literature, spread throughout Europe and left lasting impressions and influence in other countries.

Sun King

At home, Louis XIV, as he grew older, became more and more vain; he wanted to be known as the “Sun King,” so bright was the radiance of his power. He constructed the beautiful and very costly palace of Versailles outside Paris, as a symbol of his power. Also, Louis XIV greatly encouraged the arts. Although French literature was already in a blossoming state prior to his ascendancy, Louis XIV aided enormously in fostering the brilliance of the “Classical Age” in French culture. Corneille, Racine, and Molière in the theater; Pascal in philosophy; Boileau and La Fontaine in poetry; and the several novelists who cultivated the comparatively new form of the novel, proved that the “Sun King” could put his talents and ambition to useful purpose. Therefore, the “Age of Louis XIV,” although exhausting France and partly causing later political upheaval, provided the royal patronage, wealth, and audiences which artists required for their endeavors.

THE THEATER OF MOLIÈRE

The French Theater

During the Middle Ages, the theater was held in very low esteem because of its crude and anticlerical basis on many occasions. However, the theater was very popular during the years prior to Molière’s appearance as a dramatist; several companies, particularly Italian, performed regularly in Paris. Some prestige even accrued to the theatrical scene; for example, Cardinal Richelieu, the prime minister of Louis XIII and the real ruler of the country, wrote plays and consequently protected the theater. He even built a theater so that his plays could be staged. Despite the growing popularity of the stage and some respect for it, the profession was looked down upon as degrading. In the provinces, the strolling companies suffered from hostile audiences, who refused to pay if they disliked the shows, and uncertain living quarters and provisions.

If any literary fame could be won in the theater, it had to be in the field of tragedy and not comedy. For example, French tragedy is generally considered to date from about 1599 until 1630 with the plays of Hardy and Mairet. The first figure of importance was Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) who set the pattern with The Cid (Le Cid) in 1636. Drama must follow the rules of the three unities: time, place, and action; there is no mixture of the tragic and comic; and the subjects are historical. Duty and the will, supreme over love, are the outstanding themes. Later, Jean Racine (1639-1699), in such plays as Phèdra (Phèdre) in 1677, followed in Corneille’s path but aimed for a high degree of poetry and passion in the drama. Therefore, tragedy dominated the French theater during Molière’s lifetime and was looked upon as the highest form of dramatic art. In the “Classical Age” all art must follow the pattern of the classics, the Greek and Roman models, and adhere to the theories of Aristotle.

Original Form

However, the theoreticians of the drama set up no rules for comedy. Scaliger, one of these dogmatists, claimed that only three things were needed: an easy and common style, a complicated plot, and a happy ending. Although Greek and Roman comedy was known, and the Italian and Spanish comedies, and even works of Shakespearean origin, were played, no great attention was devoted to the theatrical form and techniques of the comedy. Molière appeared to fill this void in the theater and also to create a highly original form. In the tragedy, psychological depths and profound themes were being exploited by Corneille and the young Racine. Aristocratic audiences, particularly the immediate royal circle, preferred the tragedy; some nobles encouraged the comedy but believed that this aspect of the theater belonged to the common people and the growing middle class.

INFLUENCES ON MOLIÈRE

Literary Backgrounds Of Molière

The first influence or contact with the history of theater is found in Molière’s formal education in the Jesuit schools. At least, he must have read certain of the works of Menander, Plautus, and Terence, but these dramatists, although possibly providing some of the technical skills for the later Molière, did not write the lofty and poetic comedy he perfected. Likewise, Molière may have acted in early stage productions of the Jesuits and may have watched actors in shows during free hours. La Grange, an immediate source for much information, but unfortunately not always reliable, suggests these sources of Molière’s art.

The Farce

The first clearly defined source of influence on Molière is the native or French tradition of the farce. The farce was usually a short skit, broadly humorous and satirical of society or people, ...