MOLlfcRE 



257 



St Valentine's ilay, perhaps earlier or later, for 

 the exact date, like almost everything else in this 

 history, is disputed ) Moliere married Armande 

 Claire Elisabeth Gresinde Bejart, an actress in his 

 own company, probahly about nineteen years old, 

 and the youngest member of the above-mentioned 

 family of Bejart, whereof two other si-frs, 

 Madeleine and Genevieve, and one brother, Joseph, 

 had been members of the Illnstre Theatre. On 

 this marriage scandal, both at the time and since, 

 has exhausted itself. It was and still is, in the 

 teeth not indeed of positive evidence, but of some- 

 thing nearly approaching thereto, maintained that 

 Madeleine hejart and Moliere were not only com- 

 rades but lovers, that Armande was not Madeleine's 

 sister but her daughter, even that Moliere 

 himself (this crowning calumny was, it seems, 

 started by the jealousy of Montfleiirv, a rival actor 

 ami playwright) was the father of liis wife. Not 

 content with this imputation, later scandal asserted 

 that Madame, or, as the time called her. Mademoi- 

 selle Moliere, was unfaithful to her husband, and 

 contemporary satire asserted that he was at any- 

 rate very jealous of her. Of this last there is, lx>th 

 from internal and external evidence, too much 

 probability ; of the graver charge there is as in the 

 other case no evidence, while such evidence as there 

 is is against it. It may be said liefore going further 

 that Moliere was during his whole life at Paris the 

 butt of vehement animosities, profeaional and other; 

 that before his death ( 1670) a sort of play, JSXomire 

 Hypochondre ( Klomire = Moliere ), am>eared, written 

 by a certain Le IJoulanger de Chalussay, with 

 intent to take revenge for Moliere's jests on 

 doctors, which contains much spiteful tittle-tattle ; 

 and that long afterwards, in Hiss, a venomous 

 lilx-l on his widow, entitled Let Fameuse Com-i- 

 ilienne, threw some mud at him in order to throw 

 more on her. A kind of Moliere-legend also sprang 

 up, composed of stories such as the famous but 

 apparently impossible tale of the en-ecu tie mnt or 

 cold collation which Louis XIV. shared with Moliere 

 in nrdrr to overcome the prejudice of his aristocratic 

 valets de cftambre, that of tne old woman to whom 

 he is supposed to have read his plays, that (better 

 ded than the others) of the m 



marquis who, 



angry at the actor's satire, ruhlied Moliere's head 

 against the sharp buttons of his own coat in a 

 fi-ignt'd embrace, and so forth. Such authentic 

 documents as we have show us a man well-to-do, 

 though not al>ove his work, well thought of by 

 cood judges, and living well. InAjigust J665 the 

 king adom^ejl_3Io]i<M^strour>e asJTk. ow 5 servants. 

 In I bt)7 symptoms of lung disease showeiT~tTTeiIf- 

 selves in him, but were for the time checked. On 

 the 17th February 1672 Madeleine Bejart, his com- 

 rade of thirty years, if nothin^jnore, died. On the 

 same day next year, after the seventh representa- 

 tion of his last play (see below), Moliere died in his 

 own house in the Hue de Richelieu of h.-emorrhage 

 from the bursting of a blood-vessel, having struggled 

 through, as no imaginary sick man, the title-part. 

 He was buried, despite the frowns of the church on 

 his profession and himself, in the churchyard of St 

 loseph, with maimed but not inconsiderable cere- 

 mony. But the exact tomb has not been identified. 

 In person he is said to have had a good figure, but 

 not a handsome face. His character would appear 

 to have l>een extremely generous and amiable, 

 though he seems to have certainly suffered from 

 jealoii-y, and most probably from hypochondria. 

 Nor is there discoverable in his work", or in any- 

 thing reported of him, the least excuse for the 



i ions of irreligion which were brought against 

 him, partly by private malice, partly as retaliation 

 fnr t IK- terrible attack on religious hypocrisy in 

 '/'inti/ifr, ami for the misunderstood irony of linn 

 Juan. The first-named piece was delayed live 



329 



years before it could be completely played, and 

 Don Juan was stopped and subjected to excisions. 

 Part of Moliere's ill-fame in this respect was no 

 doubt due to his earlier associations with Gassendi 

 and to his fondness for that teacher's favourite 

 classic, Lucretius, whose poem Moliere himself is 

 said to have translated as a whole. 



The dates and titles of Moliere's plays are as 

 follows : L'tonrdi, Le Depit Amoureux ( 1658 ; in 

 the provinces two years earlier); Les Precieuses 

 llidicules ( 16r>9); Sqanarelte (1660); Don Garde de 

 Xiii-iirrc ( 16lil ) ; L fjco/e des Maris, Les Fdc/ieitx, 

 L'cole tfes Femmes ( 1662); La Critique de I'fccole 

 des Femmes Impromptu de Versailles (1663); Le 

 Manage Force, La Princesse d'filide, Tartttffe (par- 

 tially, 1664); Le f'estin de Pierre [Don ./<>//],. 

 L'A mour Medecin ( 1665 ) ; Le Misanthrope, Le Mn/r- 

 riii Mn/yre Lni, Melicerte, Le Sicilien ( 1666) : Tur- 

 tuffe( fully, but stopped after first night, 1667): Am- 

 phitriion," George Uandin, L'A rare (166S) ; Tartiijfe 

 (at last fully), Monsieur Se~ Pourceaugnac (Kili'.l); 

 LesAmants Mar/iiijiijues, Le Bourgtoit ''< nfifhomme 

 (1671); Les Fourberies de Scapin (I(i71); La Com- 

 tesse d? Esc.arbagnas, Les Femmes Savantcs ( 1672) ; 

 Le Malnde fmnginaire (1673). To this must lie 

 added part of 1'si/clif (1671) in collaboration with 

 Quinault and Comeille, the two farces iibove 

 referred to (which are almost certainly his), attrib- 

 uted to him on the authority of J. 15. Rousseau, a 

 few arrangements of court masques, and some mis- 

 cellaneous poems, the only important one l>eing a 

 copy of verses on Mignard's. fresco-work at the 

 church of Val de Grace. 



For posterity, however, Molifere is nothing if not 

 a comic dramatist ; and the enormous majority of 

 competent suffrages a majority increasing as years 

 go on puts him at the very head of all writers of 

 his own particular class. In France he is called a 

 poet; but, though he could manage verso well 

 enough when he chose to write in it, he is almost 

 always twst in prose, and his work possesses few, 

 if any, of the nfoTe" distinguishing and essential 

 qualities of poetry. It is as a dramatist of manners 

 who more and more, adjusted his art to the direct 

 p\u pose of satirising and, if possible, reforming folly 

 anrr vice, arnt who almost alone of all writer- that 

 have done this never sacrificed the art to the pur- 

 posethat he is absolutely unrivalled. Roman- 

 tic or poetical comedy, like that of Shakespeare 

 and Calderon, he hardly ever tried (almost the 

 sole successful play in it being Don Juan), and it 

 is not very probable that lie would have fre- 

 quently succeeded in it. The time made it impos- 

 sible for him to be poetical like Aristophanes in 

 subject, and his own genius did not incline him to 

 be fancifully creative like Aristophanes in form. 

 But in the sphere defined above he has no superior, 

 and is very unlikely ever to have an equal. He 

 gradually confined himself to it more and more 

 closely, and always with the result of improvement. 

 Nothing is more instructive than to compare Les 

 Prfcieuse* Ridicules, which is almost his first play, 

 with Les Femmes Sarantcs, which is almost his 

 last. They are so closely connected in subject 

 that the later play has sometimes been called an 

 expanded recast of the earlier. But the Improve- 

 ment in treatment is immense. Amusing as Les 

 Precieuses Kidicules is, it is not much more than 

 farce of the very l>est sort. Les Femmes Savantcs 

 is comedy of the highest kind, the result of exact 

 observation of life informed by intimate knowledge 

 of character, and clothed with the most accom- 

 plished phrase. Moliere has sometimes been re- 

 proached with a leaning towards farce up to the last 

 exemplified not merely in such avowedly lighter 

 plays as Le Bourgeois Bentilhomme, and the two 

 satires on the provincial gentry, Monsieur de 

 Pourceaugnac and La- (,'omtesse d'Escarbagnas, bun 



