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mainstay of a throne. From the day of Mazarin's death, Louis 

 XIV became an absolute autocrat, and regarded with a tyrant's 

 jealousy any authority that might rival his own. He accordingly 

 allowed the satiric genius of Moliere free range, and the pitiless 

 dramatist spitted the feather-headed marquises and the canting 

 faux devots, male and female, as a school-boy will spit a cock- 

 roach, and set them buzzing and wriggling for the diversion of 

 men. 



The thirty dramas which are recognized as his authentic works 

 were produced between 1653 and 1673. They are of unequal 

 merit. Some are frivolous and unclean, without trace of worthy 

 purpose ; others, such as the Misanthrope, Tartiiffe and L'Avare 

 rise to the highest artistic and moral rank ; while a large number, 

 such as Lcs precieuses ridicules, L'Ecule des Femmcs, L'Ecole des 

 Maris, Les Fourberies de Scapin, Le Bourgeois Oentilhomme, Le 

 Malade Imaginaire, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, overflow with fun 

 more or less satiric. The principal pastures on which his genius 

 feeds are the relationship and manners of society. His plots, of 

 course, mostly turn on love and marriage. His own marriage 

 was an act of folly and brought him unmixed misery. In the 

 fine Drama of the Misanthrope which is as obviously autobio- 

 graphical as Cain and Manfred are autobiographical of Byron, he 

 describes his dismal condition. The conduct of his wife fills 

 him with disgust, and yet he loves her over head and ears. He 

 concludes that love is not an heroic passion elevating human 

 nature, but a fierce monomania that makes it weak and miser- 

 able. George Dandin, soliloquizing on his domestic woes, decides 

 that the wisest course for a man ill mated is to throw himself, 

 head first, into the horse-pond. 



French manners had become greatly relaxed and brutalized 

 by the civil wars first of the Ligne and then of the Fronde. A 

 sort of aesthetic club styling itself the Precieux, established itself 

 in the Hotel of Madame de Eambouillet for the laudable purpose 

 of reforming the manners of the nation. Its character however 

 gradually deteriorated. Eefinement lapsed into ludicrous fastid- 

 iousness and affectation, and both Paris and the provinces came 

 to swarm with pretenders to wit and learning, scribblers 

 of superfine doggerel, and all the varieties of quack gentility. 

 Moliere had no mercy for them. In 1659 appeared Les Precieuses 

 Ridicules — the Affected Ladies — which fairly drowned the pre- 

 vailing affectation in laughter. Les Femmes Savantes was written 

 thirteen years later for the purpose of rebuking those ladies who 

 put philosophy before domesticity. Snobs receive appropriate 

 treatment in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomnie, and the various species 

 of bores in the comedy of Les Fdcheux, 



What we commonly call the professional classes get heavy 

 mauling from Moliere. He could not anticipate the discoveries 



