Considering what I’ve been reading lately, I don’t think you would have expected to see Molière here. But I decided to read him for two reasons. 1) I’ve heard that he’s a witty social commentator, and 2) I wanted to see if I still had the brain cells to understand four hundred year old literature.
Turns out, I do. 🙂
I really enjoyed reading The Misanthrope. Even though I don’t know much about seventeenth century court life in France, I think that I understood the social behaviors that Molière was skewering here. The play begins with the main character, Alcestes, explaining to a friend his reasons for giving up the social game of flattery, double-dealing, and outright lying. (These very behaviors get played out later in the play to great effect). Even though this play was about the sort of social actions that make me feel misanthropic, I didn’t have any trouble staying interested. Bonus.
I was impressed by some of the modern touches in Molière’s dialogue. He has characters interrupting (to great comic effect) and running over one another’s words. I can only imagine how funny this would be on stage. Some portions of the script, however, drag. After a while, I don’t care how important or amusing or illustrative what one character is saying after they’ve run on for four or more paragraphs. For me, it’s a bit like a musical–very unnatural. I only know one person how speaks in paragraphs and that’s because he’s been in academia since, I think, infancy.
But I think what I really liked was the ending. I think the standard happy ending–with multiple weddings and a moral or two–would have ruined what Molière was up to throughout the play.
I think I’m going to go on and read Tartuffe as long as I have this collection of Molière I checked out from my library. But I am also reading The Last Cato and, even though I am only a few chapters in, I find that I have a lot to say about it already.